Rudolph Wurlitzer - The Drop Edge of Yonder

That night they camped among the crumbling ruins of an abandoned pueblo, the wind howling around their fire like a chorus of grieving widows. Halfway through a meal of Annie May's remaining biscuits and dried jerky, Hatchet Jack stood up, his head swiveling back and forth.

An ancient Mexican stood in the shadows, his nearly toothless face marked by an empty eye socket. His skeletal frame was wrapped in torn leggings and a long white cotton shirt.

"You leave a trail like a wounded buffalo," the Mexican said with a soft Spanish accent.

"Plaxico!" Hatchet Jack exclaimed. "How did you find me?"

"I didn't find you. You found me."

"But — "

"Your problem is that you think too much. And not enough."

Without another word, he turned and disappeared.

Spooked by the old Mexican's ghostly appearance, Annie May paced back and forth, raising her arms against the elements: "Hurrah fer mountain doin's and all the old warriors in all the times! My boys and I, we come in peace and we'll leave in peace and we'd be grateful if all you dead and dyin' red niggers and bean-eaters put the stopper on your salutes. One day soon I'll pitch my tent inside the big circle. But not now Not this night."

Zebulon and Hatchet Jack joined her, shuffling their feet around the fire, faster and faster as they hollered their mountain yells: "Waaaaaaaaagh…! Waaaaaaaaagh…! Waaaaaaaaagh!"

Collapsing on their backs, they finished the last of the whiskey as they sang an old family song:

Hatchet Jack reached into his pocket and removed a paper bag full of penny candies. Popping half of them into his mouth, he threw the bag to Zebulon, who took a fistful and passed the bag to Annie May, who gobbled up the rest.

"We're markin' the bush on sacred ground," Hatchet Jack said. "Plaxico might make us pay for that."

Annie May sighed. "You seen one old buzzard around these hide-outs, you seen 'em all. The hell with him. I'll settle for a healing. What about it, Mister Healer-Dealer? Can you strut your healin' stuff? Got me a bad knee, shoulder ain't right, arrowhead been stuck in my leg for ten years, teeth gone or rotten, sluice line to my gut plugged up. Not only that, but I'm spiteful with bad notions."

"I can handle that," Hatchet Jack said, showing no confidence at all.

"Check out Zeb while you're at it," Annie May suggested. "He's tough to figure, shot up with no bullet in his pump. Like he don't know if he's here or down under."

Hatchet Jack shook his head, not wanting to go ahead with any of it. "I never done two straight up. I always been the helper."

"Yoke us up anyway," Zebulon said. "Never mind the windy complaints."

Hatchet Jack poked their shoulders and cheeks with his forefinger, blowing tobacco smoke over their heads and shoulders and into their faces. Then he stood up and opened his arms to include the night sky and the black clouds drifting beneath a quarter-moon like a procession of giant bones.

"Old Father," he cried out, "don't contrary me now!"

Arching his neck and head, he shut his eyes and sank to his knees, pounding his fists on the earth.

The wind stopped as if turned off by a spigot.

Annie May shook her head in wonder. "I'll be stripped naked and fried in goose grease. Maybe the boy ain't such a lyin' shuck after all."

As the wind rose again, Hatchet Jack disappeared into the darkness. Just when they thought he had run out on them, he returned.

"Plaxico says it's all right to join him."

They followed Hatchet Jack down a steep path, descending a series of narrow, winding steps that led to a stone platform lit by a fire and a single torch set into a cliff. Beyond the platform, a deep canyon separated two mountains shaped like pendulous breasts.

Plaxico sat cross-legged on one side of a large circle made from white flour mixed with corn shuckings and colored stone beads. Above him on the crumbling walls, mounted warriors threw lances at running mountain lions and antelopes.

Hatchet Jack motioned for Zebulon and Annie May to sit opposite Plaxico, then took a position at the lower end of the circle, behind an altar of flat stones. On one side of the altar, a statue of the Virgin Mary had been placed next to an eagle feather and a brightly colored Kachina doll. On the darker side, the skeleton of a rattlesnake circled a human skull. A dozen tomahawks, as well as swords and hunting knives, were stuck in the ground in front of the altar.

Hatchet Jack stood up. "This medicine is from old Mex. It raises the dead and then some. It has the power to cozy up to the underworld of the snake, the middle world of the mountain lion, and the higher world of the eagle. I never tried it, but that's what I been told. So here goes."

Plaxico sat behind the altar pounding a flat drum and chanting an incomprehensible prayer. He broke off a few times to yell instructions in Spanish to Hatchet Jack, who motioned for Annie May and Zebulon to stand at the top of the circle. Then he approached them holding a hollowed-out gourd in both hands.

Hatchet Jack drank, then offered the gourd to Zebulon, who drank and passed it to Annie May. After she drank, she handed the gourd to Hatchet Jack, who handed it to Plaxico, who finished what was left. After a consultation with Plaxico, Hatchet Jack pulled a long curved sword out of the earth and rushed straight at mother and son, yelling and dancing around them as he slashed the sword above their heads.

Annie May and Zebulon stood as if their feet had been nailed to the ground as Hatchet Jack replaced the sword in front of the altar and collapsed by the fire. Behind him, Plaxico swayed from side to side, shuffling around the circle, moaning and shaking his rattle.

The medicine roared through their bodies in noxious waves until they sank down on all fours, vomiting and heaving until nothing was left inside them. They stayed that way until the first light of dawn shuddered over the horizon. As the mountains grew bolder and more defined, Annie May cried out at a long parade of skywalkers moving towards them over the snowy peaks. Some were conquistadors and mountain men, others Hopis, Navajos, Zunis, and Apaches. All of them were raising their arms to greet the rising sun. Behind them, bringing up the rear was Annie May's long-dead brother. He was followed by her mother and father and then the preacher of her youth, who used to terrify her with fiery sermons on sin and repentance, and who now seemed, as he looked over the valley, sad and confused. The sky shifted and the parade dissolved as she saw an image of herself as a young girl standing in the middle of a field of tall, wavy grass, a bonnet pulled over her head, her bare feet planted on the black earth, crying out in fear as an eagle glided towards her in slowly decreasing circles. Her mother watched from the door of their homestead as the eagle gently lifted her up in its talons and flew her across the grassy plains into the foothills and mountains beyond. Fragments of her life appeared one after the other: her first shoes; her marriage bed; the long white beard of her father as he stood behind the mule on the last furrow of a plowed field; her husband, Elijah, whirling her around a dance floor, then carrying her on his shoulders through the door of the cabin he had built for her; and there was baby Zebulon crawling over the dirt floor. She wept and wept, haunted by the memories and the approaching shadow of her own death.

"Are we dead?" she cried. "Or does it just seem that way?"

Zebulon cradled her frail, broken body in his arms as Hatchet Jack, seized with his own visions and oblivious to her racking sobs and sudden peals of laughter, smacked the earth with his palms. "Who are my real Ma and Pa," he howled, "and why have they forsaken me?"