“This isn't fair,” Dean howled, his nose bleeding again. “I think we should play another hand.”
“Be quiet, Dean,” Alex shouted over the tumultuous squabbling, silencing everyone. “We had an arrangement here, an agreement. We played one hand like we said we were going to do, and Charlie won fair and square. That's it. The deal was the winner could do anything he wanted, and a deal's a deal.”
“Yeah, but Charlie ain't gonna do shit. Bobby gets the goodies.”
“So what?”
“It isn't fair.”
“Quit whining or you'll get popped right in the kisser again.”
“You wanna try it, Wiz?”
“You ain't so tough, Mr. Football Star.”
Alex launched a roundhouse fist that Dean blocked with a meaty forearm, and their efforts spilled both boys onto the deck in a racket of beer cans, tumult, grunts, hubbub, good-natured wrestling, more spilled beer, and a frantic Little Richard screaming on the radio,
“Keep A-knockin' But You Can't Come In.”
“This is
gross,”
Charlie shouted to no avail. “This is supposed to be a poker game, but it's becoming something else.”
“Stop it,”
Sally yelled, voice ripe with command. “No more fighting, Jeez, not while there's money on the table. You'll spoil the fun,”
she said brightly, winking again at Bobby. “Let's turn up the music and play another hand.”
Nelson grabbed Dean and pulled him off Alex, shouting, “You're gonna sink the boat if you keep messing around.
Cut it out.”
Bobby threw back his head and laughed. “The lady is callin' all the shots, so let 'er rip. Deal 'em, girl, down and dirty.”
“Are you rockin' tonight? Are you cruisin' in your fine automobile with your plastic Jesus on the dashboard and your baby right beside you, sittin' real close, drinkin' your Royal Crown and makin' the scene, baby? What's that? You say you got no money, got no gas, no sweetheart, no fine automobile with no plastic Jesus on the dash? You still okay, baby 'cause you always got ROCK AN' ROLL. Here's a brand new beach party tune that's gonna make you feel good wherever you are. This is XERB, the world's most powerful radio station, and the Chantays with âPipeline.' Aw right.”
Sally scooped up the cards and shuffled several times with her fancy shuffle. Oblivious, Dean played air guitar, sliding his hands down the neck of an imaginary Fender Stratocaster while Nelson chugged another beer, Charlie closed his eyes and dozed, and Alex scratched his ass and fiddled with his chips. Only Bobby was paying attention to the deck in Sally's hands because she'd dealt the first hand of low hole card wild right-handed and now was holding the deck in her right and preparing to deal with her left. Before he could blurt, “She's ambidextrous!” in one smooth motion her left hand passed over her right, concealing the deck from all eyes except his, while her right thumbnail flicked the second card from the top, sliding it forward a quarter of an inch. The moving left hand snatched the wrinkled and soiled red card in a flash and dealt it to Dean. With the same motion the next one underneath went to Nelson and then the top card to Bobby.
He blinked, glanced at Sally whose face was pinched with concentration, and then peeked at his card, a deuce. Returning his gaze to her hands, he watched her deal him the second card from the top for another deuce in the hole, and then, singing out the next
round of cardsâ“A king to Bobby, a four to Charlie, a seven to Nelson, a six to Alex, a queen to Dean, and a nine to me”âshe brazenly dealt Bobby the king from the bottom of the deck. Boggled, Bobby scanned the table for a reaction but there was none. No one else had noticed her legerdemain.
“King bets, I think,” she said in all innocence. “Is that right, just like last time?”
“You got it,” Alex said, casually surveying the table.
Mesmerized, looking at his hole cards, a pair of deuces, and the king of hearts staring at him like a red devil, Bobby's heart fluttered as he stammered, “Um, uh, okay, the king bets two dollars.”
“That's over the limit,” Nelson protested.
“What limit? In a game like this?” Alex retorted. “What difference does it make?”
“I'm out,” Charlie said without looking at his cards. “No more hanky-panky games for me.”
With a shrug Nelson tossed in eight blues. “I gotta stay.”
“I know when the cards are running against me,” Alex said, disgusted. “I'm out. Is there any beer left? I might as well drink myself to death.”
“Some big-time card player you are, Wiz, you chickenshit. I'm in,” Dean said. “I'm gonna win and then, you and me, little runaway. They wrote a song about you, you know that?”
“âLong Tall Sally?' That's not about me. I'm too short.”
“Naw. âMy Little Runaway.' You know that song by Dion and the Belmonts?”
“What the fuck is a Belmont?” Nelson demanded. “That's what I want to know.”
“Who gives a shit?” Charlie said, lolling his head and looking ready to upchuck again. “Anyway, it's by Del Shannon, not the Belmonts.”
“I'm in,” Sally said, putting in her chips and dealing the next round of cards. “A three to Dean, a ten to Nelson, another king to Bobby, Charlie and Alex are out, and an eight to me. Looks like the kings bet again.”
“Adios, Kimosabe, good-bye,” Nelson said before Bobby could bet.
“You've played before,” he added with a gesture of his head toward Sally.
She smiled and said, “Only for fun.”
“I bet another two dollars.”
“Shee-it, the poker gods must love you, boy. I quit,” Dean bellowed and tossed his cards in the air.
Bobby leaned back and stretched as much as he could in the tight quarters. The tiny galley reeked of beer and sweat. The river gurgled, the mosquitoes buzzed, the radio blared. Alex caused a commotion by pushing everyone out of the way as he slid out from behind the table, went outside, and jumped off the stern into the shallow water. Dean started methodically crushing beer cans on the galley counter as though he were a pile driver.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Bobby hunched over the table and said, “It's just you and me, Sally.”
“Two dollars?”
“Yes, eight blues.”
“Okay, that's all I have left.”
“Put it in and deal the rest of the cards.”
“Why bother?” Nelson asked. “You're both gonna win.”
Giggling nervously, Sally passed out the rest of the cards and Bobby won with four kings, a lesser hand than Charlie's five aces but still impressive. Sally's aces and eights came in second best. Awestruck, Bobby not only failed to reveal what he'd seen, he was speechless. More than a cheat, she was a wonder, possessed by genius, and he felt privileged to have witnessed her work. Her only flaw was that he'd seen her do it, but he'd bet that had been no accident.
Grinning, she wrapped her arms around Bobby's neck. “You win, baby. I'm all yoursâ” and to Dean “âfair enough?”
“Ah, shit. Are all these dammed things empty? Anybody find a full one, let me know, will ya? My daddy always said life wasn't supposed to be fair. Nothin's fair.”
Crack.
Slowly exhaling a deep breath, Bobby gathered the cards into the deck, turned them over face down, and shuffled. With a “âScuze me,” Charlie returned to the cabin, lay down, and went to sleep.
“Well?” Dean said to Bobby.
“Well, what?”
“You gonna get on with it? Whatcha gonna do?”
“Oh, man, we're not gonna put on a show, Dean. Just cool it.”
Sally picked up the radio and wandered out on deck where she tapped her feet in time to “The Duke of Earl,” still on the charts after forty-one weeks. Only Alex in the water could see that she folded her arms around herself and trembled. Alex thought she was trembling because she was cold, which was odd because it was almost eighty degrees that night at Shanghai Bend, but she was shaking from fear that Bobby would say something and provoke another ruckus, from anticipation of what was going to happen next between her and Bobby, and from the exhilaration that comes from cheating at cards and getting away with it.
The falls whispered their song from the other end of the island. Without another word Bobby slid away from the table and into the forward cabin. A moment later they heard grunts and commotion and the hatch on the forward deck popped open. Bobby sprouted through and dragged the heavy, rolled up canvas tent onto the deck with a series of violent jerks. With a heave he pushed and kicked it over the side onto the beach.
“Sally!” he hollered.
“See you later, guys,” Sally bid the rest of the boys, gathered her suitcase and radio, and disembarked from the
Toot Sweet.
On shore she picked up one end of the tent and silently followed Bobby into the woods.
The cards were cut and Alex held the deck in his hand ready to deal low hole card wild when Bobby decided to tell them something he was certain they didn't know.
“She cheated,” he said flatly, adding, “She was a mechanic and a good one at that.”
“What!?” Charlie squealed.
“She
what?”
Dean roared.
“You guys dug into her life, got your documents and everything, but you didn't learn that, did you,” Bobby said, the edges of a smug smile quivering at the corners of his mouth.
Nelson threw up his hands in a gesture of disbelief. “Come on. That's ridiculous.”
“Is it? Remember her fancy shuffle?”
“Sure. She said she played hearts with her grandmother.”
“Yeah, right,” Bobby said, picking up the red deck. “Remember Alex's demonstration hand?”
“Of course.”
“Watch.”
Bobby flipped through the cards and laid out a replica of Alex's demonstration hand.
“You can see the first player has deuces as wild cards and the second player wins with four aces, nines wild. There are a lot of aces and deuces on the table.”
He could see the light dawning in Alex's eyes, but the others remained unconvinced. He gathered the cards, shuffled in Sally's manner, cut the deck, and rapidly dealt the next hand exactly as she had, six players with the winner holding an astounding five aces in five cards, Charlie's hand.
“Voilà .”
“All the right cards were there in the first hand,” Alex said. “The ace and deuce of hearts, all of them. It's true.”
“God
damn
!”
“I didn't see how you did it,” Charlie said.
Bobby scooped up the cards, shuffled nervously and said, “You're not supposed to. It took me seven years to learn that trick, but she could do it when she was sixteen, and I believe she invented it on the spot. If she'd lived to play for real money, she might have been one of the great ones, but we'll never know, will we?”
The sting in Bobby's tone cut deep into their shame and guilt, except for Nelson who shifted into cop mode and exclaimed, “This is outrageous. Let me get this straight. She cheated and you knew about it? Where's that at, Kimosabe? You could have planned it with her when you were out by the falls.”
“Very good, Lieutenant. I understand you have to ask, but no, it didn't happen that way. I had no idea she was capable of stacking the deck and planting a hand until I saw her do it.”
“When?”
“On the very next hand. She was dealing seconds and pulling cards off the bottom, flick flick flick so slick it was greased.”
“You didn't tell us.”
“No, sir, I most certainly did not. There was no way in hell I was going to blow the whistle. I mean, I was the beneficiary, right? She was cheating on my behalf, if not for herself. I was in absolute awe, and that's what I meant when I said she blew my mind. She just blew me away, man, like nobody before or since.”
Wham, the darkness. Bobby blinked rapidly and steeled his mind to remain in control of his body. He went on, “If she'd quit after the first hand, I might never have figured it out. You said she played with our heads, but Alex, she did it with the cards. We didn't stand a chance.”
“So why'd she deal me the winning hand?” Charlie asked.
“Damned if I know, but she could tell you were gay. How? Got me. In those days you acted straight, and nobody knew about you except us. For God's sake, Charlie, not even your parents knew. It
wasn't like today. And then along comes Sally out of nowhere with insight I can't fathom, and she had us pegged the minute she stepped onto the boat and saw our tattoos. Dealing Charlie the winning hand and knowing what he would do was a game so out of our league, all of us, you never knew until now that you were had. Believe me, I've spent a thousand sleepless nights wondering what would have happened if I'd said something, but we'll never know.”
“So it wasn't fair, after all,” Dean mumbled.
“Not even close. Like your daddy said: nothin's fair. Look, if she was the queen of hearts at sixteen, maybe if she were alive today, forty-eight years old, she'd be fat and grotesque, smoke too much and have an addiction to the ten-twenty Texas Hold 'Em table at Binion's Horseshoe in Vegas.”
“I've seen plenty of them,” Nelson said.
“We all have. I make my living off of them.”
“Ever catch one dealing seconds?” Alex asked.
“I leave that to the pit bosses. Not my business. Besides, in casinos the players don't deal. Only dealers deal for just that reason.”
“What about private games?”
“Like this one?”
“Yeah.”
“I walk out. It's happened a couple of times, not very often. Good players don't need to cheat; but for some people, it's their nature.”
“Like Sally?” Dean asked.
“Damned if I know.”
“Are we gonna play or what?” Alex demanded.
“Wild thing,” Charlie sang, a little giddy. “You make my heart go ring a ding ding.”
“Ante up.”
A wave of revulsion surged through Bobby like a tide. The room began to spin like a time machine, jerking him into the past, and he remembered how much he'd wanted to kill them. Before Alex could deal the hand, Bobby stood abruptly and swept the table with cold eyes.
“I'm taking a break,” he announced and walked out of the suite and down the corridor to his room.