At the mouth of Shanghai Bend the levees formed an artificial canyon that concealed all signs of life in the broad valley beyondâno lights, no highway buzz, no vast tracts of lettuce and tomatoes, only the tangled wilderness of a small island that lay close to the east bank.
Picking through the underbrush with a flashlight, Bobby and Sally could hear the cheerful, rowdy noise from the boat over the hiss of the falls.
“Sounds like your friends are having fun, playing cards and whooping it up,” Sally said.
Bobby wisecracked, “They're practicing for college.”
“If I wasn't here, you'd be with them, wouldn't you?”
Smack
. “There's a lot of bugs out here,” he said. “We're being eaten alive.”
“Do you want to go back to the boat?” she asked.
“Nah. There's probably more bugs over there because of the lights.”
They reached the tip of the island which afforded a splendid view of the falls. Fifty years earlier, heavy pumps and dredges had gouged tons of clay from the river bottom and formed the cataract, a series of staggered terraces and stunted waterfalls, the deepest of which in June was no more than two feet. Between the vertical drops, whitewater swirled around strange, pitted boulders, the tortured dregs of the last gold rush. Although Bobby knew nothing of hydraulic mining, he could tell the river had been mauled and deformed.
“This place is weird,” he said. “Look at those rocks full of holes.”
While Bobby tried to figure out what had caused the strangeness
of the falls, Sally used the uniqueness of the odd formations to fire her imagination.
“Let's pretend it's the moon,” she said gleefully. “President Kennedy says we'll go to the moon real soon, so here we are ahead of schedule. Our rocket ship is right over there, full of drunken astronauts, and here we are visiting the first moon river. Nobody knows the moon has a river except us. We've made a discovery. We're pioneers.”
Laughing, she took Bobby's hand and led him to the edge of the water. “I'd jump in if I could swim,” she said.
“You really can't swim?”
“I can wade,” she declared, kicking off her tennies and rolling up her jeans.
Before Bobby could shed his hightops and socks, Sally splashed into the river, promptly slipped on the slick bottom, and fell on her ass. Delighted, she sat in the inches-deep water and let it run over her like a cool bath.
“I'm not afraid,” she said, giggling and speaking to herself in a state of wonder. “It's not like the ocean. It even tastes good.”
Awestruck, realizing he was witnessing a moment of liberation, Bobby jammed his wallet in his shoes and jumped into the river next to Sally.
“Maybe I won't go to San Francisco,” she said, cupping water in her palms and pouring it over her head. “Maybe I'll stay right here forever.”
She threw her arms around him and began kissing him, saying, “Thank you thank you thank you.”
“For what?” he stammered. “I didn't do anything.”
“You let me stay on the boat so I could come to this magical place.”
“You really think it's magic?”
“Sure. Don't you?”
“If it's magic, it might be black magic,” he said.
“Places have souls,” she said. “Don't you know that?”
She kissed him again, and this time he kissed her back. They
were both soaked from head to toe and she trembled as she pushed against him.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“I'm warming up,” she answered with a giggle.
Suddenly they heard banging and crashing in the woods behind them.
“Hey, Bobby! Where the fuck are you, man?”
A beer can clanged off a tree.
“Hey! Yo! Bobby!” Dean's voice echoed off the levees. “We can't play four hands anymore. Charlie won the last hand with a pair of deuces. That's crazy. Where are you, man?”
Bobby and Sally were standing ankle deep in the water and grinning like elves when Dean burst out of the woods.
“There you are,” he shouted. “Whatcha doin', man? We got a game goin'.”
They crashed. Recognizing that they were no longer young studs with the stamina to play night and day without a break, Bobby checked into his room, taking his sudden riches with him, while the others flopped in the bedrooms and living room of the suite. They slept through the morning and past noonâdreaming perhaps of the queen of heartsâand roused themselves at a leisurely pace in mid-afternoon.
Dean called Billie.
“How's the game, honey?”
“Interesting.”
“You winning?”
“It's not over.”
“Hmmm. You still want me to come down tomorrow?”
“I don't know yet.”
“You hung over?”
“Yep.”
Nelson swam a few laps in the hotel pool. Alex plugged in a laptop and checked his e-mail, deleted all his messages without reading them, and then, as an afterthought, dropped the computer into the trash compactor in the kitchenette and crushed it. Charlie, always the host, ordered breakfast for everyone, coffee, aspirin, a case of beer, and another bottle of rum for Dean. The caterer's carts were cleared away and a stack of room service trays lay outside the door. They didn't talk much. Mose Allison was on the stereo, the shades drawn tight to blot out the useless light of day. The air conditioner whirred away. Brushed clean, the felt glistened under the lamp.
It was four o'clock on Saturday afternoon when the game resumed. Cards from a new deck whistled like bullets over the felt and landed in tidy piles for a hand of draw, Alex dealing. The ante
was now a thousand dollars, the new value of a white chip. Reds were ten thousand, blues twenty-five thousand, and a bumblebee chip was worth one hundred thousand dollars. Each player started with a half million in chips, one hundred times the first buy-in.
Two million five hundred thousand dollars in five canvas bags were stacked in a corner of the living room. Even for rich men, the money was enough to make them dizzy. Under his hat, surrounded by a cloud of Lucky Strike fumes, Alex couldn't control his smirk. Finally playing the poker game of his dreams, his eyes flicked around the table taking snapshots. Dean, hung over and sweating, corralled his chips with his arms, coddling them like babies; Charlie was flushed, his face red with wonder at what he was doing; Nelson looked grim and resolute, determined not to lose; Bobby alone was relaxed, leaning back in his chair and toying with a bumblebee chip.
As a pro, Bobby wasn't fazed by mind-boggling stakes, but he knew the others were. They were flat-out crazy to begin with, tortured by guilt and who knows what else, and it occurred to him that perhaps they expected him to inflict punishment by taking all their money. He was happy to oblige.
“It's only money, hey boys?” Charlie said with a nervous chuckle. “We talked about doing this for years, and now that it's happening, Jesus.”
“It's just cards and chips,” Alex said, not entirely convinced himself. “Can you open, Studley?”
“I open for ten,” Dean said, dropping a red chip into the pot.
“Uh oh,” Bobby said. “The captain has openers. Okay, I see your ten and raise twenty. Thirty to you, Fishman.”
“I'm in,” Charlie declared. “Thirty large.”
“I fold,” Nelson said.
Alex peeked at his cards one at a timeâthree sixes, the devil's hand. He contemplated his chips and selected two blues.
“Thirty plus twenty is fifty grand.”
This time it was Dean who started laughing and sputtering, “It's funny money, fifty thou' on fucking openers. I call.”
“Call,” Bobby said.
“I'm still in,” Charlie said.
“One card for me,” Dean said.
Bobby tossed away two cards and said, “Give me two.”
“Three,” Charlie said. “Make 'em three big ones.”
“Dealer takes two,” Alex declared. “You opened, Deano. Your bet.”
“Ah, shit. I check.”
“Me, too,” Bobby echoed.
“Fifty thousand dollars,” Charlie shouted. “I bet fifty grand, hahaha.”
Alex looked at triple sixes and two new cards that didn't improve his hand. Without a doubt, Charlie caught good cards and had a better three of a kind. He'd call any bet.
“Fold,” Alex said, rapping the table sharply with his knuckles.
“I'm gone,” Dean said.
“Take it, Charlie,” Bobby conceded and tossed in his cards.
Charlie shrieked with joy and stood up to rake in the pot. “I can't fuckin' believe it. Wow. Three eights and I win what? What's in here? One hundred twenty big ones. Thank you, eight of spades. My lucky card.”
Alex looked up and saw Bobby smiling at him.
“Nice move,” Bobby mumbled under his breath.
“Thank you.”
“Ante up for seven stud,” Dean announced. “Rolling. Read 'em and weep. A queen, a seven, a ten, a jack, and another ten to the dealer. Queen bets.”
“I remember the last time I sat down with you boys,” Bobby said as he counted out chips to bet on the queen.
“On the boat,” Alex said.
“Yeah, on that damned boat in the middle of fucking nowhere. I was pissed off.”
“It didn't show,” Nelson said. “You seemed happy to take our money.”
“As I recall, you all ran out of money pretty quick, and we started playing for beer.”
“Well, we didn't have anything else.”
“Except the girl,” Charlie added.
“Fifty on the queen.” Bobby tossed two blues into the center of the table, clucked his tongue twice, and said, “Yeah, the girl.”
Pulled up on the beach, the boat tilted stern down which meant no level surface anywhere. Drunk as a Hollywood cowboy, Nelson had slipped off the bench and puked so many times they'd kicked him out and made him sit in the stern and hang his head over the transom. Charlie was curled up in the forward cabin, passed out, leaving Bobby, Dean, and Alex still at the table while Sally watched. Miraculously, the little radio picked up Wolfman Jack broadcasting nonstop rock and roll from Tijuana, Mexico, six hundred miles south.
“That's it, boys and girls, I know you love it, The Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Blues comin' right atcha from XERB, the world's most powerful radio station. Oh yeah. Now hold onto your hats and put on your dancin' shoes, 'cause we got a request from Bonnie in San Diego for somethin' real special now. My main man, the godfather of soul, the baddest of the bad, Jaaaaames Brown!”
The galley deck was awash with beer foam and tin-plated steel cans that rattled with a timbre deeper and richer than aluminum, a hearty industrial tune that would soon disappear from the land. In 1963, with America on the cusp of a social revolution, liberation was in the air, in the lively beat of the music, in the desperate yearning of the lyrics. On the
Toot Sweet
Sally was the incarnation of liberation because she'd broken away, every teenager's dream. To her, the scent of freedom was as heady as a bath in
eau de cologne,
and she felt good, a little tipsy from three beers but safer than she'd ever felt with the surfers. On the beach in L.A. a tinge of menace always lurked in the sand dunes. Posturing punks, muscleheads, killer waves. Here, with Bobby and his friends, she felt as though she'd stepped into another world with rules they could make up on the spot. So far, running away was a success.
Sally stood behind Bobby, one arm draped over his shoulders, fascinated by the game. On a hot streak, Bobby was winning hand after hand, taking all of Alex and Dean's money, and when they ran out of bills and coins and started playing for beer he won all the beer.
“You think you're Doc Holliday or what?” Dean taunted.
“Hell yes,” Bobby barked and flashed a grin at Sally. “Just like in the movies, hey, babe?”
She winked and laughed and drank a mouthful of beer.
Dean rapped knuckles on his cards and demanded, “Beat two pair aces up, Doc?”
“Dunno. What's it worth to you to find out?”
“A case of that fancy Coors beer from Colorado.”
“That stuff is elk piss but okay, you're on.” Bobby flipped over the seven of clubs and won again. “Three sevens, sucker. You gonna drive to Denver to get it? I don't think this boat will make it.”
“God
damn!”
Sally had never seen anything as exciting as the boys' poker game. Surfing came close, but that was boy against ocean and this was boy against boy. It was a fight without blows, a war without weapons, and she was bright enough to understand that luck was a small part of this cerebral and emotional game. Right away she caught on to the rules, the sequence of hands, and the concept of bluffing. What else was there? Nuance and subtlety and deceit, and she thought it was the greatest thing since rock and roll.
“I want to play,” she said to the boys.
“What? You gotta be kidding,” Dean scoffed.
“Aw, c'mon, guys. You afraid?”
“You're a
girl!
Jesus,” the three boys exclaimed simultaneously.
No matter how much she cajoled, they wouldn't let her play.
“Maverick's rules,” Bobby cited. “Women don't play poker.”
“It's in the book,
Poker According to Maverick,
and that's our rule book,” Alex said.
“Maverick is full of it. It's just a TV show,” she retorted, but they still wouldn't let her play.
“The game is over anyway,” Bobby said. “I'm going to set up the tent.”
Alex wasn't ready to quit. “What do you mean it's over? We can still play.”
“With what? Chips? Chips don't mean dick, and I'm tired of playing for beer we don't have.”
“We can play for the broad,” Dean suggested.
Bobby screeched, “You want to what?”
“Play a hand for the girl.”
“You're sick, Dean.”
“Yeah. Ain't it a goof?”
“No, it's a fucked-up, perverted idea.”
“Why don't you ask her? Maybe she'll like the idea.”
“I don't think so. I don't like the idea.”
“You're a chump, Bobby.”
“You're drunk, Dean, but that's no excuse to start calling people names.”
“Hey, chickee. What do you think?”
“Do I look like a poker chip?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe you need glasses.”
“You got a smart mouth for a broad.”
“Oh, yeah? You've got a smart mouth for an asshole.”
“Did you hear that? Did you hear what this hitchhiking runaway said to me? Shit.”
“Shut up, Dean.”
“Fuck you. Why do you think I wanted her on this boat?” Dean shouted.
“I thought you felt sorry for her and wanted to be a nice guy.”
“Like I said. You're a chump, McCorkle.”
Bobby lunged across the table and jabbed Dean hard in the nose, breaking his septum. Blood spurted onto the table and chips. More surprised than hurt, Dean tried to stand up, slipped on the wet deck, and collapsed on the table, bleeding on the cards.
“I'll kill you, you son of a bitch.”
“You're too drunk to kill bugs, let alone anybody else,” Alex laughed.
“Stop this,” Sally insisted. “What is the matter with you people?”
“Dean's jealous and drunk.”
“We're all drunk,” Alex said.
“That's no excuse for disrespect,” Bobby said. “Hell, it's no excuse for any damn thing.”
“Listen,” Sally said. “You want to play a hand for me? Oh-kay. Bobby will win.”
“And what if he doesn't?”
“He will.”
“You don't understand poker,” Alex said. “Anyone can win one hand.”
Sally kicked at the beer cans on the deck, sending one through the hatch where it landed at Nelson's feet, rousing his attention. He looked up, waved meekly and asked, “What's goin' on?”
“Come in and find out,” she replied.
She shook her head, violently flailing her hair as though she was exorcising a demon. Outside, the river gods responded to her gesture by conjuring a gust of wind that whistled through the trees and mottled the surface of the water. The boys were mesmerized, nonplussed by having their fantasies thrown back in their faces. Sally snapped back her shoulders, pushed out her chest and lit a cigarette.
“Well, boys?”
“This doesn't sound right to me,” Bobby said.
“No? Fine. I have a better idea.” Sally leaned over the table and blew smoke in all their faces. “I'll tell you what, guys. You let me play, and whoever wins can do whatever he wants with me, and if I win, I can do whatever I want with any of you.”
They were stunned. Nelson stood in the hatch looking confused. Alex's jaw dropped. Dean, still bleeding, muttered, “What a broad,” and Bobby slowly shook his head in wonder, thinking, life is full of surprises.
Then Sally leaned over and kissed him. “Don't worry, baby,” she said. “How can we lose?”