Nothing Gold Can Stay

by Ron Rash

  “I’m going to get another beer.”

  “I can fetch it for you,” Lisa offers.

  “No, I need to move around a bit,” Danny says. “Just stay on the stool until I get back.”

  Lisa does what he says, watching the machine.

  “They used to call these things one-armed bandits,” the vet says, smiling at Lisa as he speaks. “You reckon that’s the why of me not winning?”

  Lisa, unsure how to answer, just smiles back. The vet swivels on the stool to face her.

  “Where you all from?”

  “Sylva,” Lisa says.

  “I’m from over that way too,” the vet says. “Glenville.”

  “That’s not far from us,” Lisa says, her eyes still on the credit line.

  “Up to 640,” he says. “You about to cash out?”

  “Not yet,” Lisa answers.

  “You’d be crazy to,” the Metallica fan says, entering the conversation. “You get these damn machines in a mood to give it up you best stay on them.”

  Danny comes back and Lisa gets up. When Danny settles on the stool, the vet holds out his hand.

  “Lucas Perkins, but I go by Perk. I hear we’re near about neighbors.”

  “He’s from Glenville,” Lisa says.

  “Danny Hampton,” Danny says as they shake. “Good to meet you.”

  “Good to meet you too,” Perk says, and pauses. “Can I ask a favor?”

  “What sort of favor?” Danny asks.

  “Let me put ten in on your next try.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Danny says.

  “Just one time,” Perk says, and offers Danny the bill. “I just want a touch of luck, just so I can remember what it feels like.”

  “What if I lose?” Danny asks.

  “Then you ain’t done nothing but what I’d do my own self.”

  Danny hands the ten to Lisa, changes the bet to 20 and presses the button. The numbers settle and he saves a cherry. The tumblers spin and a 7 and another cherry appear.

  “There you go,” Perk says.

  “Give him twenty,” Danny says.

  As Lisa peels off two tens, the Metallica fan mutters something and turns back to his machine. Perk tucks the bills in his pants pocket, gestures at the beer can as he gets up.

  “Let me buy you and your lady here a drink.”

  “No thanks,” Danny says. “I’d as soon not risk a DUI.”

  “I figured you two to be staying in the hotel.”

  “No,” Danny answers.

  “How about a drink for you,” Perk asks Lisa.

  Lisa thinks how at least a Coke or bottled water would be nice, but she shakes her head.

  “Mind if I rub that rabbit’s foot?” Perk asks. “I’m going to try poker with what I got left. Maybe I’ll have enough luck to at least lose slow.”

  “Sure,” Danny says.

  He rubs the green rabbit’s foot between his index finger and thumb.

  “Maybe one day I can do you all a good turn too,” Perk says, and disappears into the maze of machines.

  When the credit line hits 700, Danny pauses to take a long drink from the beer can. The casino is warm and cigarette smoke drifts into the nonsmoking section. Lisa’s thirsty but she’s not about to leave Danny’s side until they’ve won or lost. Perk’s stool remains unoccupied. The younger guy watches Danny’s credit line instead of playing his machine.

  For the next hour, the line rises and falls. It reminds Lisa of a kite in a gusting wind, rising but never quite able to hold on to the sky. When the credit line falls to 480, the Metallica fan catches Lisa’s eye, smiles smugly. So that’s what you’re waiting around for, Lisa thinks. His smile vanishes as the numbers rise again.

  Perk returns, a plastic room key in his hand.

  “Still ahead, I see.”

  Danny nods.

  “I come out three hundred ahead,” he says, and offers Lisa the key. “It’s paid for, in cash, so the minibar is on your dime.”

  “You ought not have done that,” Danny says. “You don’t owe us anything.”

  “Figure it a bit more luck then,” Perk says, still holding the key out to Lisa. “If you don’t use it, it’ll just go to waste, including the free breakfast.”

  Lisa takes the key, thinks how if she and Danny lose the 157 dollars they came with, they can figure the money went to a night in a swanky hotel.

  “Thank you,” Lisa says.

  “Glad to do it,” Perk says. “If you’re ever over in Glenville, look me up.”

  Lisa watches him ascend on the escalator. At the top, Perk glances back and doffs the bill of his cap, though to her and Danny or all the players she cannot tell. Lisa checks the credit line and it’s at 480, 470, 460. Two wild cherries appear on the screen and Danny saves them, pushes the button, and a third drops into the middle slot as if fallen from a tree. The machine makes its noises and 960 appears on the credit line.

  “We made it,” Danny says.

  His voice is like a still pond, soft and calm, as if afraid he might startle the machine and cause the numbers to rearrange.

  “It’s not a thousand,” Lisa says.

  “It is with the money in your handbag,” Danny answers.

  “You’re not thinking about cashing in,” the young guy says. “You got to ride this kind of luck out.”

  “I don’t got to do anything,” Danny says.

  He’s staring at the 960, and Lisa knows there are other numbers spinning in Danny’s head, two thousand, three thousand, five. He’s thinking about a year’s rent paid up, enough money set aside to start a family, that the jerk next to them may be right. Lisa knows he’s thinking these things because she is too. She waits for him to look up at her and say it aloud.

  Instead, Danny punches the cash-out button and a white slip emerges.

  “Boy, you need to grow a pair,” the Metallica fan says, turns and walks away.

  For a moment, Danny looks ready to go after the guy, but then his face settles into a smile. They find an exchange machine and Danny puts the white slip in and nine one-hundred-dollar bills slide out, each so new looking you could believe the machine made them on the spot, three twenties equally crisp.

  “Want to head back home?” Danny asks, his tone suggesting he would.

  “No, let’s stay,” Lisa says. “It’d be a shame to waste a free hotel room and breakfast. They hardly charge for food and drink, so we can celebrate and still leave with the thousand. It’ll be like a minivacation.”

  “All right,” he says. “I’m hungry, so let’s get something to eat.”

  They go to a restaurant and eat their fill of fried chicken and vegetables, a thick wedge of pecan pie topped with ice cream. Afterward, Lisa wants to go straight to the bar, but Danny says they need to make sure they can get in the room. They ride the elevator up to the sixth floor and follow the numbers down the hallway. It’s the most beautiful hotel room Lisa has ever been in, nicer even than the one in Gatlinburg where she and Danny spent their honeymoon. A crystal chandelier hangs from the ceiling and a thick maroon carpet muffles their steps. On one side of the room is a small bar with a glass mirror, and opposite, a canopied bed whose pillowcases and bedspread look as if they’ve never been wrinkled. Lisa goes to the window, touches the plush velvet drapes as she looks out at mountains turning bluer and bluer as they stretch westward into Tennessee. Danny comes over to look as well.

  “It’s such a pretty view,” Lisa says. “I bet some of those mountains go far as Knoxville.”

  “Probably so,” Danny says.

  Lisa presses her palm against Danny’s cheek and lifts her mouth to his. She thinks about taking him by the hand and leading him to the bed, but there will be time enough for that later tonight and in the morning too.

  “Let’s go,” she says. “I’m going to get me one of those fancy-colored drinks with an umbrella in it.”

  They sit at the bar and Lisa chooses a piña colada from the plastic drink menu. Danny orders a
draft beer, same as he’d get at The Firefly. When the drinks arrive, they turn their seats and watch the players at their machines. The lights and noise remind Lisa of the county fairs of her childhood. Only a Ferris wheel is missing. When she finishes her drink, Danny’s glass is half full, but he tells Lisa to go ahead and order herself another. Her next drink is so blue it shimmers within the glass. Soon the casino’s bright lights begin to blur. The vibrating bass connects her whole body to the music. Lisa wishes she and Danny could dance, but there’s no dance floor.

  Her glass is empty, Danny’s as well. Two drinks are usually her limit, but it feels so good to be away from everything familiar, to have the kind of luck, twice, that people hardly ever get. She can’t help thinking it’s the best day of her and Danny’s life together, better than the night they got engaged or their first Christmas, even their wedding day.

  “Third time’s the charm, right,” Lisa says as she looks over the drink list.

  “It was today,” Danny says.

  Lisa gets the bartender’s attention and orders her drink and, though he doesn’t ask her to, another beer for Danny. This drink is green and sweeter than the others, like liquid candy. She sips and watches the players. Many rise from their stools empty-handed, but a few carry white slips over to the exchange machines. A woman in a blue jumpsuit is hugging a man at a poker machine as an employee hands them a stack of bills.

  “Why don’t they have a white slip?” Lisa asks.

  “If you win over a thousand,” Danny says, “an employee has to pay you.”

  Lisa scoots her chair closer to the bar, her eyes on Danny as well as the machines. He watches the players intently, but with yearning or just curiosity she cannot tell. Two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, five. In the alcohol haze it’s as though the numbers are rolling out in front of her. Shouldn’t two pieces of good luck lead to a third, she tells herself. The straw sucks air and Lisa peeks beneath the little umbrella, confirms the glass is empty. The room tilts and Lisa almost loses her balance when she sets her glass on the bar. She giggles. Danny opens her handbag, takes out a twenty and a ten, and lays them on the bar.

  “You’re my lucky boy,” Lisa says as he guides her through the casino, up the escalator, and across the walkway to the hotel.

  Danny doesn’t remove his arm until they are in the room. When he does, the pastel walls shift. Lisa flops onto the bed and grins up at him.

  “Come keep this girl company,” she says, but the room is tilting more now. She shuts her eyes so it can settle.

  When Lisa opens her eyes, her throat is parched and her head aches. It is light outside, enough to make her want to pull the drapes. The bedside clock says 9:20. She turns over and finds Danny’s side is vacant. He’s not in the bathroom or on the balcony.

  She stays in bed a few minutes longer, then gets up and dresses. She doesn’t look in her handbag, doesn’t want to look. Instead, she goes down the hall to the elevator. Lisa watches the numbers light up and then go dark as she descends. The elevator door opens and she steps into the lobby. The breakfast section is bustling. Elderly women wearing purple hats and name tags crowd around a waffle maker, children scamper around the room. A man who looks as hungover as Lisa grimaces at the poached egg on his paper plate.

  As Lisa is about to head for the walkway, she sees Danny seated alone in their midst, a Styrofoam coffee cup in his hand. Something shifts inside her with an almost audible click. When she opens the handbag, all the money is there. The elevator closes behind her, and she walks toward a man who knows as well as she does that their luck couldn’t last.

  Where the Map Ends

  They had been on the run for six days, traveling mainly at night, all the while listening for the baying of hounds. The man, if asked his age, would have said forty-eight, forty-nine, or fifty—he wasn’t sure. His hair was close-cropped, like gray wool stitched above a face dark as mahogany. A lantern swayed by his side, the twine securing it chafing the bullwhip scar ridging his left shoulder. With his right hand he clutched a tote sack. His companion was seventeen and of a lighter complexion, the color of an oft-used gold coin. The youth’s hair was longer, the curls tinged red. He carried the map.

  As foothills became mountains, the journey became more arduous. What food they’d brought had been eaten days earlier. They filled the tote with corn and okra from fields, eggs from a henhouse, apples from orchards. The land steepened more and their lungs never seemed to fill. I heard that white folks up here don’t have much, the youth huffed, but you’d think they’d at least have air. The map showed one more village, Blowing Rock, then a ways farther a stream and soon a plank bridge. An arrow pointed over the bridge. Beyond that, nothing but blank paper, as though no word or mark could convey what the fugitives sought but had never known.

  They had crossed the bridge near dusk. At the first cabin they came to, a hound bayed as they approached. They went on. The youth wondered aloud how they were supposed to know which place, which family, to trust. The fugitives passed a two-story farmhouse, prosperous looking. The older man said walk on. As the day waned, a cabin and a barn appeared, light glowing from a front window. Their lantern remained unlit, though now neither of them could see where he stepped. They passed a small orchard and soon after the man tugged his companion’s arm and led him off the road and into a pasture.

  “Where we going, Viticus?” the youth asked.

  “To roost in that barn till morning,” the man answered. “No folks want strangers calling in the dark.”

  They entered the barn, let their hands find the ladder, and then climbed into the loft. Through a space between boards the fugitives could see the cabin window’s glow.

  “I’m hungry,” the youth complained. “Gimme that lantern and I’ll get us some apples.”

  “No,” his companion said. “You think a man going to help them that stole from him.”

  “Ain’t gonna miss a few apples.”

  The man ignored him. They settled their bodies into the straw and slept.

  A cowbell woke them, the animal ambling into the barn, a man in frayed overalls following with a gallon pail. A scraggly gray beard covered much of his face, some streaks of brown in his lank hair. He was thin and tall, and his neck and back bowed forward as if from years of ducking. As the farmer set his stool beside the cow’s flank, a gray cat appeared and positioned itself close by. Milk spurts hissed against the tin. The fugitives peered through the board gaps. The youth’s stomach growled audibly. I ain’t trying to, he whispered in response to his companion’s nudge. When the bucket was filled, the farmer aimed a teat at the cat. The creature’s tongue lapped without pause as the milk splashed on its face. As the farmer lifted the pail and stood, the youth shifted to better see. Bits of straw slipped through a board gap and drifted down. The farmer did not look up but his shoulders tensed and his free hand clenched the pail tighter. He quickly left the barn.

  “You done it now,” the man said.

  “He gonna have to see us sometime,” the youth replied.

  “But now it’ll be with a gun aimed our direction,” Viticus hissed. “Get your sorry self down that ladder.”

  They climbed down and saw what they’d missed earlier.

  “Don’t like the look of that none,” the youth said, nodding at the rope dangling from a loft beam.

  “Then get out front of this barn,” his companion said. “I want that white man looking at empty hands.”

  Once outside, they could see the farm clearly. Crop rows were weed choked, the orchard unpruned, the cabin itself shabby and small, two rooms at most. They watched the farmer go inside.

  “How you know he got a gun when he hardly got a roof over his head?” the youth asked. “The Colonel wouldn’t put hogs in such as that.”

  “He got a gun,” the man replied, and set the lantern on the ground with the burlap tote.

  A crow cawed as it passed overhead, then settled in the cornfield.

  “Don’t seem mindful of his crop,” t
he youth said.

  “No, he don’t,” the man said, more to himself than his companion.

  The youth went to the barn corner and peeked toward the cabin. The farmer came out of the cabin, a flintlock in his right hand.

  “He do have a gun and it’s already cocked,” the youth said. “Hellfire, Viticus, we gotta light out of here.”

  “Light out where?” his companion answered. “We past where that map can take us.”

  “Shouldn’t never have hightailed off,” the youth fretted. “I known better but done it. We go back, I won’t be tending that stable no more. No suh, the Colonel will send me out with the rest of you field hands.”

  “This white man’s done nothing yet,” the man said softly. “Just keep your hands out so he see the pink.”

  But the youth turned and ran into the cornfield. Shaking tassels marked his progress. He didn’t stop until he was in the field’s center. The older fugitive grimaced and stepped farther away from the barn mouth.

  The farmer entered the pasture, the flintlock crooked in his arm. Any indication of his humor lay hidden beneath the beard. The older fugitive did not raise his hands, but he turned his palms outward.

  The white man approached from the west. The sunrise made his eyes squint.

  “I ain’t stole nothing, mister,” the black man said when the farmer stopped a few yards in front of him.

  “That’s kindly of you,” the farmer replied.

  The dawn’s slanted brightness made the white man raise a hand to his brow.

  “Move back into that barn so I can feature you better.”

  The black man glanced at the rope.

  “Pay that rope no mind,” the farmer said. “It ain’t me put it up. That was my wife’s doing.”

  The fugitive kept stepping back until both of them stood inside the barn. The cat reappeared, sat on its haunches watching the two men.

  “Where might you hail from?” the farmer asked.

  The black man’s face assumed a guarded blankness.

  “I ain’t sending you back yonder if that’s your fearing,” the farmer said. “I’ve never had any truck with them that would. That’s why you’re up here, ain’t it, knowing that we don’t?”