Black Cat Weekly #57

Chapter 7

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byIt was spring. Like bears out of their caves, we’d all crawled out our shacks and come down through the pines. Some of us hadn’t been off our claims in months, and we were all looking for a little antidote to the cabin fever that set in around the new year in Dark Timber and didn’t let up until snowmelt. I squeezed my way in through the door at the Pole’s and ordered a shot of the house rotgut. I sipped it as if it were fine wine. The whole winter had passed, and I’d barely a dollar to show for it. After about ten minutes, Bea came over and made it clear that I had to either start drinking for real, start gambling, or start leaving. Otherwise, I was just taking up her real estate. It might have been the Pole’s place, but Bea ran it.

I went over to the game. Doc was at the table, and that was usually a good thing. Everyone knew the Pole cheated, but when Doc was playing, the rest of us could usually get a straight game. This was because Doc was the only man in Dark Timber, besides the Pole, who was making money there. He owned the general store, and as a result, the Pole fleeced him when he gambled.

When I got to the table, Doc was still drinking, laughing, and winning. It’d keep on that way for a couple hours, until he was good and drunk, and then the Pole would start taking it all back. It’d end when the Pole said the only word he ever said, “Closed.”

Everyone knew the Pole cheated. Everyone knew, but we all played anyway. There was always at least one winner—the Pole made sure of that—and the odds didn’t really feel any longer at that table than they did on our claims, where a month of panning might bring you a handful of dust.

I put down a nickel bet, and Shaw called me tighter than a rusted screw. He had a jar in front of him with what looked like a couple raisins floating inside. I asked him what they were.

“They’re my good luck charms.” He grinned, then said they were the toes he’d lost last winter. I wasn’t sure why such things would bring luck, but he did seem to draw a lot of doubles to split when playing Twenty-one. And the game was always Twenty-one with the Pole. I don’t think he knew any other game.

I played next to Vera. Vera never talked to anyone, but every now and then she’d shake her head or point that I should hit. I followed her advice and won more than I lost. Once I got up a dollar, I started drinking like Bea wanted me to. Then McIlhenny pulled out a nugget the size of a tooth, a great roar went up, and he started buying rounds for everyone.

More folks were coming in, but nobody was leaving. It got so that you couldn’t turn sideways without spilling someone’s drink, and so I can’t say when the stranger arrived. He was just there at some point, standing by the table, in a purple coat with tails and a big stovepipe hat. He had a watch on a gold chain tucked into the breast pocket of a vest that shined in the light of the room. His pants were skintight.

Shaw took one look at him and started laughing until tears leaked out his eyes. When the stranger spoke, Shaw laughed even harder.

“Ma name eez Guy,” he said. “Pleeze, if I might make accommodation for the night.”

Bea was happy to accommodate him, but Doc waved her away, struggling to his feet.

“Monsieur,” he said, almost falling with a bow, “I will be happy to provide you with the finest accommodations in all of Dark Timber, just so soon as I have finished at this table.”

The stranger’s nose twitched like a hare’s. He was clearly nervous. The Pole watched him with narrowed eyes.

“What the hell are you doing here?!” someone yelled.

“I come for gold,” the stranger said simply, at which point McIlhenny let out a whoop and pushed a jar into Guy’s slightly confused face.

“Drink up, Frenchie!” McIlhenny commanded. “And tomorrow we’ll all go out and get so much gold you’ll buy the Eiffel Tower!”

Guy did as he was told, and pretty soon he was so lit he was speaking to everyone in something that sounded like French, though I can’t say for sure. He had taken out a purse and picked up the tab for the house, once McIlhenny’s nugget had played out, and so we all laughed and started toasting France, though I think at some point he clarified he was Belgian. Doc took him under his wing and endeavored to teach him Twenty-one.

He lost, of course. Round after round he lost, betting way too much on bad draws and not even caring. All the rest of us were winning, though, and the Pole appeared to be willing to share the wealth of this particularly choice score. We all rejoiced and became Guy’s best friends. Shaw and I told him we’d help put up his shack on the claim McIlhenny was going to help him scout. Doc had even pledged to set him up with a full prospecting kit in the morning, free of charge. “That’s how Dark Timber is,” he said, which caused us all to laugh some more.

I remember stepping outside at one point to piss and spying the stranger’s horse around the side of the shack. It was a beautiful animal. The starlight shone across its smooth, even back. There was barely a bedroll on it. Of all the strange things about Guy, that probably struck me as the strangest. Where were all his things? How had he gotten here, just like that?

I didn’t think too hard about it, though. It was well past midnight, and we were all drunk, happy, and winning. Everyone but Guy, that is. On one particular hand, we all bet generously, but Guy bet immensely. Even in our state, we all took notice of the size of the bet. I saw a faint grin twitch across the Pole’s typically stoic face, and couldn’t help shaking my head.

The cards came. The Pole had a six showing. Most of us had nineteen or twenty. Sitting pretty. Guy had fourteen. I told him to hold. Six was a bad up card. The Pole could easily bust. Guy ignored me. He hit and drew lucky seven. Twenty-one.

The Pole turned over his down card and showed an ace: seventeen. All the prospectors, Doc, and even a few of the Pole’s very own working gals whooped it up. The Pole looked like he’d swallowed a turd. Bea paid out the bets, and the Pole signaled her to switch the cards to a newly shuffled deck.

Vera cashed out then and there. Gathered her chips, finished her drink, and left without a word.

One the next hand Guy bet big and won again. Most of the rest of us won too, and the shack positively shook with our shouts. I saw the Pole dart a furious glance over his shoulder. He looked murderous.

Everyone bet heavily on the next hand, and everyone lost.

Everyone but Guy, that is.

When the current changed, it changed fast. Within a half-dozen hands, Guy was back in the black against the Pole and no one else had won a single hand. One by one we dropped out, as Guy continued on, somehow defying the stacked odds. He didn’t always win, of course, but he always won the big hands, and he seemed to know things he shouldn’t have. He hit when it didn’t make any sense, for instance, and would then stand on twelve, when the Pole was showing ten. Those were the kinds of hands he won.

The Pole kept looking over his shoulder. It was a tell—a tic—I’d never seen before. Bea looked grave. She shuffled a new deck after every hand, until the Pole finally took the cards and handled the shuffle himself. It didn’t matter. Guy kept on winning the big ones, and chiseling away at the house. We all stayed and cheered him on, while watching the Pole’s face become paler and paler, a queer mix of nausea and rage flashing across it periodically.

And then Doc changed everything.

One hand, instead of placing a bet down for himself, he put money on Guy, and challenged the Pole to cover.

The Pole hesitated, and in that moment the whole shack went silent. The Pole hesitated, and for the first time in anyone’s memory there was weakness perceptible in his features: fear. The expression passed in a moment, and the Pole grimaced, as if such a sensation had been disagreeable to his digestion. He let Doc’s bet stand, and promptly began losing to both Guy and Doc.

A month in Dark Timber is a long time. I’d been there a year, but most of the folks at the Pole’s that night had been there two or three. Some had even been there as long as the Pole, who’d helped start the whole camp five years before. No one had ever seen the Pole lose. The working girls, who’d merrily flitted about during the period of our collective prosperity, now dithered in uncertainty. Some of them hesitantly stayed beside Guy, either because they figured the Pole would want them to get his business or because they felt the tide in Dark Timber was turning. Others stayed behind the Pole, who was livid and appeared to need support. Bea, however, was at Guy’s side.

We all started putting our money down on the stranger, and the stranger kept winning. There was very little conversation now. The game had taken on a different complexion. Before, it’d been joyous, a kind of celebration; now it had taken on a tone more akin to vengeance. There was a feeling that the Pole had had this coming for a long time, and we all placed our invincible bets and watched him bleed.

He could have closed. He could have swallowed his pride, licked his wounds, and began to build back the day after, but he refused. He just kept going until the sky had gone gray with morning light and a mountain of money lay on the table. At that point, the question arose as to whether the Pole could even cover the bets. He’d sent Bea away three different times in the course of the night to return, each time, with an identical black iron box full of cash and gold. But he couldn’t send her away anymore. It was clear there was no more to get. A bead of sweat rolled down his still smooth brow. He was chewing his lip—another tic had revealed itself. He was staring furiously at the money on the table. Doc was holding a wad of cash as thick as his fist, ready to put down. He was beaming. Guy spread his hands.

“I tell you what,” he said, and it seemed to me, at that moment, that his accent wasn’t quite as pronounced as it had been before. “You cover their bets,” and Guy pointed to all of us around the table, “you cover their bets, as best you can, and I’ll make up the difference. To even it, though,” and here Guy held up a single finger, “you will wager this entire establishment,” and Guy’s hand swept over the room, “including your female employees... against my horse.”

their Guy smiled a thin, merciless grin. The Pole never saw it. He looked only at the money. Years of savings were piled there, not only his own, but those of many of the men of Dark Timber who’d lost at his table, and whose savings had then become his own. I knew that in the Pole’s estimation, it was all his, and to part with it by anything other than force would be a betrayal of both his mistress and god. He nodded once.

He dealt.

The Pole showed a six. Guy had twelve with an eight and a four. He smiled, leaned back, hooked his thumbs in his vest pockets. He took out his fine gold watch and glanced at the time. Then he leaned over and tapped the table for another card. The Pole’s face was inscrutable. It didn’t show even a trace of a smile when he turned over a ten.

Twenty-two.

The feeling of a big loss, it’s like falling in place, like disappearing a little, collapsing on the inside. Everyone felt it. Everyone but the Pole. We’d all lost. We’d all bet too much, but Guy and Doc were in the worst shape of all. They were white as sheets. The girls began to gather up the money; Bea drew a dagger as thin as a stiletto and pressed it to the stranger’s throat. “About that horse... ” she said, and the two of them went outside. I was too stunned to move. McIlhenny was puking on the floor. Shaw was weeping over his dismembered toes. The Pole spoke up: “Closed!”

We all began to gather ourselves, working to accept the awful reality of the morning, when a gunshot sounded outside the door. We heard a shout, and everyone flooded outside just in time to see Guy and Bea galloping away on his horse. Bea was holding on to the stranger with one hand and on to one of the Pole’s iron cash boxes with the other. The Pole roared an inhuman bellow, and we scattered. Within a half hour, he’d saddled up every girl he had and they’d all gone forth as a posse in pursuit of his prize w***e, the stolen cash, and his new horse. The Pole rode at their head, a rifle at his side and a g*n on his hip, and after they cleared Dark Timber that morning none of them ever came back.

We were all dumbstruck. We wandered up the slopes to our shacks to try and piece together in our heads just what exactly had taken place. After the first couple weeks, we didn’t talk about it much. No one went near the Pole’s, which had been abandoned and felt like a cursed place, and no one gambled anymore either. Doc sold off his stock and left town before midsummer, and the rest of us cleared out before the snows.

It took me years to make it to California. I went from South Dakota gold to Nevada silver to turquoise and a long drunken haze in Albuquerque. Finally, I made it out to San Francisco, on my way chasing gold again, this time in the Yukon.

The day I booked passage north on a steamer, I wandered into a place called Comrades, just up from the wharf. He was a good bit older, of course, and a bit more stooped, but it didn’t take me a minute to recognize the Pole, tending bar behind a nice varnished oak counter complete with a real brass railing. He remembered me. Of course, people like him never forget a face, but to my surprise, he was genuinely warm toward me. His vocabulary, apparently, had expanded to include “welcome,” because he kept saying it over and over to me, clapping me on the back and even setting me up with a free whiskey. It was good stuff too, a good deal better than anything we’d known in Dark Timber anyhow. It was while sipping that drink that, to my surprise, I spotted Bea.

She was dealing a card game in the corner of the room. It shocked me so much when I saw her that I had to move closer just to be sure it even was her, but despite the years, there could be no doubt. Either she didn’t remember me, though, or she didn’t want to, because our eyes met for just a moment before her gaze passed on, neutral, to the game before her.

It was Twenty-one. There were a half-dozen or so players. One of them, his back to me, was betting big and losing. The other fellas at the table kept laughing and patting this man on the back; he seemed indifferent to his losses, though, and simply ordered up a round for the table.

I could not see his face, and his voice had no trace of an accent, but I knew who it was, the same.

For a moment, I was almost angry. I gulped the last of the whiskey and let it burn right down to my heart. It didn’t last, though. In the end, I simply buttoned up my parka and walked out into the San Francisco fog.

Hell.

Everyone knew the Pole cheated.

Aaron de Long runs a farm and market business with his wife in southeastern Pennsylvania. He has been writing fiction for most of his life and draws inspiration from the natural world, as well as from writers spanning the gamut from Virginia Woolf to Raymond Chandler. For the last ten years, while weeding crops and driving trucks, he has been working on an oral epic, inspired by the bards of old.

Sometimes our only choice is a rigged game, but even when things seem fixed there can be an unexpected twist.