The Preacher

by Ted Thackrey, Jr.

  A minute or two—time enough for the thirsty to sip and the necessitous to visit the restroom—passed before the doctor returned to his chair. But he came back alone, and no one asked any questions.

  The next hour or so was sleepy time again. Watrous rode a run of cards to the top of a $3,000 hill…and slid slowly to the bottom again as the laws of mathematics exerted their irresistible power.

  Dr. Woodbury and the car dealer traded pots and insults, quibbling with great heat and good feeling over who should have stayed with what and for how many raises, while Pemberton played his usual grind game, winning an occasional medium-size pot and buying a succession of low ones on the first face card until I trapped him into a fair-size loss, just to keep him honest, and he had to begin the slow process all over again.

  He did not tire.

  He did not perspire.

  I couldn’t help wondering if there was anyone inside there at all.

  And then came a hand that changed things. I had stayed for the third round of low betting, more for the sake of form than anything else, not too proud of the pair of sevens I was showing, but hoping for a third—or perhaps for a mate to the single ace that lay concealed on the bottom. But Barlow bumped the action with a bet of $1,000 to prove that the pair of jacks he was showing had friends and allies in the bushes: Still in the game, Preacher?

  He was waiting for me to answer, and there was a moment when I was almost ready to let him have the pot. It wasn’t much, aside from his bet, and I wasn’t sure it was worth any real contest…until he leaned back in the wheelchair and clasped his hands behind his head, eyes inspecting the ceiling in a gesture clearly intended to indicate that he just didn’t care.

  The hell he didn’t!

  I matched his $1,000 and bumped the price another twenty grays: Still here, friend.

  The hands remained behind the head for a moment, but the eyes flicked toward me and he took a deep breath and leaned forward again. He matched my raise and we waited for the next cards. Then let’s boogie!

  Everyone else was out by then, of course, and no one seemed to have much to say on the verbal level as the dealer flipped an ace of clubs down in front of Barlow and sent the jack of hearts skimming across the table to me.

  I almost laughed. Someone, somewhere, was playing a more interesting game than we were, and surely having more fun.

  Barlow’s face was a study in disgust, pondering the lost jack that should have been his. But he didn’t know how much reason I had for similar feelings, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell him. His pair was still best, and he put another $1,000 in play.

  My nerve’s still in good shape, Preacher. How’s yours?

  I matched him without hesitation: Can’t complain.

  The final two open cards landed on the table.

  I caught seven of diamonds, giving me trips, and counted $5,000 into the pot: Better let me have it, banker.

  Barlow’s card was the king of hearts, no visible improvement, but he matched my $5,000 and raised another $5,000: Not a chance.

  I waited a moment, to give the impression of hesitancy, and then put in $5,000 to see his raise and bump the action $5,000 more: You’re bluffing.

  He counted another twenty grays into the pot and sat back to wait for the final down-card: The hell I am, my one-eyed friend.

  My down-card was an ace, and it turned a fighting hand into a dream situation. Barlow knew about my three sevens, but both of the aces were concealed. Unless there had been a miracle on his side of the table, the only question was how far I could milk it. I put another $5,000 into the pot just because it had been the last bet. And waited: Up to you now, banker.

  Barlow studied the pot and studied his cards and studied mine and studied me and took a cool look at the chips he had left on the table. It came to about $70,000—a few thousand more than was sitting in front of me. He pushed the whole stake into the center: Right back at you, son.

  It was a good move on his part, given the information he had available, and it was exactly the one I’d hoped he might make. But all the same I took a minute to run the whole set of possibilities through the mill again before making my own decision.

  Two of the aces were in my hand and another had already gone into the discard, so there was no chance at all that he had paired the one he was holding. I had seen no other kings go down during the early rounds, so there was a bare possibility that he had one or more in the hole. Odds were against there being more than one, though, so that would make it two high pair for him at best unless there was a concealed jack. And that jack would have to be the last card he got, because the hands-behind-the-head gesture had told me that he didn’t have one in the hole to begin with.

  There was still a chance that he could beat me.

  But not a good one.

  Stack by stack, I lined up my entire table stake of grays, blues, reds, and whites beside his on the table. It left me about $11,000 short, and Barlow reached out to claim his extras, but I stopped him before he could touch the first stack.

  “I’m going to raise,” I said aloud.

  There were immediate objections from everyone but Barlow. He knew what I meant and had, I think, been expecting it.

  A few minutes after the last break in play, I had quietly removed the envelope containing the Prescott Helicopters property from my breast pocket and placed it on the table beside my chips. The envelope wasn’t sealed, and I had printed the name Prescott on the face. I had seen Barlow glance at it several times. And since it was on the table, it could legitimately be considered a part of my betting resources in this game.

  The banker’s hand dipped inside his coat and came out with a filled-gold pen, which he handed across the table to me.

  “Write a number on the envelope beside the name Prescott,” he said.

  “You know what’s inside?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then you say the number.”

  He looked at me narrowly, and I don’t know what he saw, but it didn’t seem to make him happy and he looked away.

  “Two million,” he said.

  I wrote down the figure.

  “Now write ‘eleven thousand’ below it.”

  I did that, too.

  “Now your raise…”

  I wrote “$100,000” under the other figures and put the pen down and pushed the marked envelope into the pot: Back to you, sir.

  The room had gone entirely silent. Games at the Farewell Country Club had never been nickel-and-dime affairs, but they had never been like this, either. Breathing seemed to have been generally suspended.

  Barlow had no chips left on the table, but like me he had made a few arrangements. He, too, had an envelope, and he opened it to disclose a sheaf of crisp currency. Quietly, he counted 200 thousand-dollar bills into the space beside his coffee cup, and put them in the pot: I want that property, sir, and I mean to have it!

  I picked up the pen and wrote another “$100,000” below the first one. A call, not a raise: That’s enough for now. Let’s see what made you so confident.

  I think almost everyone had expected me to raise again, but no one spoke and Barlow’s hand was steady as he turned over his final down-card to expose the third jack.

  He had caught trips the final round, and I had to admire the control it must have taken for him to avoid a show of elation after bluffing all the way behind a pair in the face of my exposed trio. The arrival of that final jack must have looked like a message from the Almighty.

  It was good enough to beat my three sevens.

  But not nearly enough against a full house.

  I used the edge of a card to flip the two aces face up, and they leaned neatly beside the sevens.

  There was a collective sigh.

  “Jesus…” said Tiny Watrous.

  “…Christ!” said Dr. Woodbury.

  Barlow’s face was rain-washed marble as I raked chips, cash, and marker deed into the open space before me. But he did not speak.

  We were fina
lly getting down to business.

  A SERMON

  (CONCLUDED)

  God set the game in motion; God made the rules.

  He showed us the choices and He left us to make the decisions for ourselves. Would you look upon the face of your judge and jury and prosecutor and executioner… and defender?

  Try a mirror.

  THIRTY

  But Barlow needed kid-glove treatment for the next hour or so.

  Pro is pro and amateur is amateur; he was one of the most talented nonprofessionals I’d come across in a long time, and the game he played, at his best, was so much better than anything else I’d seen in those parts that his main problem over the years must have been not to trim them too close to the hide or too regularly. This was a man who had the makin’s.

  There were flaws, however, and I’d spotted one on my first night in Farewell.

  Barlow played poker like a banker.

  He knew the game and he knew the mathematics and he knew the men he was playing against. He also understood the social restraints; he wanted to go on living in the town. But there was still a tendency to go for that last dollar. That last cent. Trimming Watrous that first night, he had not only decoyed his friend and sometime partner into an expensive miscalculation—as I had just done with the two concealed aces—but had taken it to an extreme that I wouldn’t have considered, even though I didn’t expect to see these people again once my business in Farewell was concluded.

  Trimming a man is one thing; it’s part of the game. Humiliating him for the sake of a few extra dollars is something else, and it told me things about Barlow, things about well-concealed pride and arrogance and basic voracity, that might otherwise have passed unnoticed in a lifetime.

  And now there was more than greed and hubris on the line.

  He had come so close to the Prescott property, to the final bit of paper that could save his reputation and his friends and his town and the whole life he had built for himself here, that he had been mentally rehearsing the telephone calls he would make to turn the Good Hope package into quiet cash.

  But once again the parcel had slipped just out of reach. Now he was possessed—judgment impaired and fingers avid. His face was composed and his breathing was regular and there were no surface tremors to tell the story, but the heat of his wa filled the room around us and his challenges to further combat on the table were too many and too directly aimed at me to be anything but an incoherent howl of rage and frustration.

  I waited patiently for him to regain the control that would allow our dialogue to continue.

  We were down to just five players now. The car dealer, astonished by the sums that had suddenly started changing hands in this quiet game—and, I suspect, a trifle horrified by the apparent nonchalance with which Barlow and I seemed to make our bets—had decided it was past his bedtime.

  Nobody tried to dissuade him. But nobody else moved to leave.

  It took only a moment or two after the big hand to settle the mechanics; the supply of gray chips (the club seemed to have no higher denominations) was running low, and I sold Barlow about $100,000 worth, plus an assortment of flag colors to enable play to proceed, quietly concealing the tiny glow of relief that I would not, at least for the moment, have to dip again into the million-dollar bankroll that Dee Tee Price had so kindly provided.

  Two people recently had told me that I have some nice friends, and both were right. The kind who will lend you a million dollars for a poker game, in particular, are not easy to find.

  But the million had been a necessity. My only real concern about going into tonight’s game had been the possibility that I might have to face J. J. Barlow without the resources to meet his basic money-power. To play for the kind of stakes I wanted, I had to come in with something really substantial in the way of a bankroll, and Dee Tee’s satchel of cash was just the right edge for the evening.

  Barlow’s resources were still far greater, of course. No contest there. But poker players do not write each other checks; markers must be paid before you leave the table, and the cash he had brought with him was about what I’d expected when I was sure he knew what I was after and what I would offer in the game.

  The $100,000 he had just laid out for chips was the last of his immediate cash. But, like me, he had other assets on the table—five envelopes bearing the return address of the Llano Escondido Exploitation and Development Company.

  They were the game I had come to hunt.

  I waited it out.

  The doctor, Watrous, and Pemberton all played their usual games. Competent but not exciting. They knew Barlow and I had some unfinished business, but it didn’t interfere with what they were doing and, in fact, gave it a certain added cachet.

  Barlow’s early heat gradually cooled. I could feel it happening when I reached out from the center of myself to touch his wa, and I could see it on the table as he slowly returned to the conservative betting pattern that was his base. He and Pemberton played a little chicken game with each other, buying the pot on the first round by a sudden high bet on the two closed cards and “accidentally” exposing them later to show that they had bluffed.

  Pemberton finally bit. Sitting in the trapping position to the left of the dealer, he met Barlow’s $500 raise with one of his own, followed it to a showdown…and lost about $5,000 backing a heart flush against what turned out to be a full house.

  But it didn’t stop him from buying the next pot, and another hour passed before Barlow and I were able to resume our conversation.

  It finally happened on a hand where Barlow, Woodbury, and I were still in on the third round, with jack-queen showing in front of Barlow, a low pair for the doctor and two low clubs for me. I had a third club in the hole, and it was worth a few hundred to find out if I could catch two more. But Barlow’s raise was $5,000.

  The doctor was out at once, and Barlow sat waiting for me to make up my mind: My luck’s back, Preacher. I’m feeling better, and I’m winning.

  I looked at Barlow’s open cards and knew he had at least a second jack in the hole—more likely a pair of jacks or queens. His wa had cooled to room temperature and he was thinking again. My clubs were just not good enough: Maybe so. But luck’s not enough to trap me into a hand like this.

  I folded, and reached down for the money satchel that had been waiting within touch of my toe since the game began. Time for it to make an entrance.

  And it did. We live in a world of paper and plastic. Credit cards and checks move large sums of money around in a kind of never-never land that makes it all seem unreal. So the emergence of actual cash can come as a shock.

  Conversation around the table lagged, lost direction, and then came to a full stop as I set out the nine paper-bound stacks that represented the rest of the one million dollars, arranging them in quiet concert with the rest of the cash that now overflowed into the empty space at my side where the car dealer had been sitting.

  “Uh, I really don’t think…” Dr. Woodbury began, staring at the stake.

  But Barlow was neither surprised nor impressed, and he stopped the doctor in midsentence with a small gesture of negation. “No problem,” he said. “The Preacher and I understand each other.”

  I finished arranging the stacks of money and looked at the man in the wheelchair, and what he had said was true. All side issues and personal differences notwithstanding, J. J. Barlow and I understood each other right well. I wished I had known him in another time and another place. But this was here and now, and wishing has no place at a poker table.

  The game resumed, and gradually, I think, the others forgot the sums now waiting on the table.

  But I didn’t.

  And neither did Barlow.

  And finally the time came to bring them into play. I had been waiting for just the right hand, and now it arrived. My hole cards were treys, paired. Barlow was in the forced-opening position, and he had started things moving with a pot-buying bet of $500. Watrous had stayed…and I pushed $5,000 into the center
of the table and waited: Luck still in, banker? Then how about your nerve?

  Barlow looked at my bet and thought it over for just a moment, and then pushed in $4,500 to match me: My luck and nerve are just fine, Preacher. Never better!

  Watrous swore, folded, and turned his eyes away from the game. He knew what was going to happen now, and he wanted to watch so badly that he just couldn’t do it.

  Pemberton, dealing, threw Barlow the king of clubs. I caught the three of hearts. He bet another $5,000: That is not much of a card, Preacher.

  I bumped him $100,000: I liked it well enough.

  He met my raise and sat back to wait: You know best, of course.

  I reached out to touch his wa again, but there was a cool shielding now, an ice-chilled wall of reserve that would not be penetrated. What a pro he would have made. I felt a pang of regret…and drove it to extinction.

  Pemberton glanced between the two of us, and for the first time I thought I detected a trace of emotion. There was a tiny bead of perspiration on the very peak of his forehead. I wondered at it, then forced my attention back to the table.

  Barlow’s fourth card was the ten of spades.

  Mine was king of diamonds.

  He took a deep breath, brought out the gold-filled pen again, wrote “$2,000,000” on the topmost Llano Escondido envelope, and looked at me for confirmation.

  But I shook my head.

  According to Mose Thieroux, the banker had only options on most of the parcels. The only one he had bought outright was the Thieroux land. It alone was worth the figure Barlow had written. The rest were nothing much, so long as they weren’t tied to the Prescott property.

  “One million for all the options,” I said. “And two million for the Thieroux piece.”

  For a moment, he was going to argue, but a look at my face must have told him it was no use.

  I watched as he crossed out the million-dollar figure and replaced it with “$250,000” on the top envelope, repeated the figure on the next three, and then wrote “$2,000,000” on the bottom envelope.