The Rambling

by Jimmy Cajoleas

  “Come on then,” she said. She led me to a stinking hut with one seaward window just a bit off from the rotted pier.

  “My husband built this shack.”

  “Where’s he?” I said.

  “Long dead now.” She sighed real deep. “Years and years and years.”

  “So who were you waiting for out there on that pier?”

  “Just waiting for my ship to come in, I suppose.”

  She smiled a little. It was broke-toothed and crooked, and it made me sad. She gave me some bread and cheese and I gobbled them down. My head started nodding a little and I guess she could tell how tired I was, because the old lady pointed to a musty old quilt in the corner of the room. It looked like where a dog might sleep. But that was okay, the way I looked and felt, I’m sure I wasn’t much better off than a dog.

  I fell right asleep, my daddy’s knapsack held tight in my arms.

  I woke up, maybe around noonish, because the light shining through the cracks in the ceiling was bright as fire and spears of sunlight glistened all over the floor. The old lady was just sitting there, smiling at me.

  “I could’ve had a boy,” she said. “I could’ve had a son just as you are, if only things had gone different for me.”

  She was cleaning her fingernails with a knife.

  It made me hurt for that lady, and I knew I needed to rise and go find Pop but I was just so tired, so worn-out from floating all night that I could barely keep my head up, I barely could keep awake.

  “Came all the way here from a big city up north, with great buildings and churches with stained glass and a bell tower you could hear clanging for miles and miles. I remember what it was like there, the way people spoke, the bright, pretty clothes they wore. I remember so much of where I left. Of course, that’s when my Leroy came and swooped me away. Said he heard of a magic game—a card game—folks down toward the Swamplands were playing. Said he had to go there himself to play, that the cards didn’t work the further from the Swamplands you moved, that they revolted against the holder, they became nothing but paper. Said if I went down there with him, we’d find our fortune.

  “I agreed right away. I didn’t hardly know what a swamp was, but I loved old Leroy, and I loved adventure. I wanted to see the world, I did. I wanted to know all that lay beyond the city. I wanted to see mountains and forests, I wanted to float down rivers, I wanted to see the ocean. And I did, I saw all of it, and it was beautiful. And my Leroy was with me through every hill and mountain and river and countryside. Until we came to Gentlesburg, my new home. But then poor Leroy had to go on and get in over his head. Then poor Leroy had to make a wager no one could pay up.”

  “Why do you stay here?” I said, my voice just a scratchy whisper against all my tiredness. “Why don’t you up and leave?”

  “Oh honey,” she said. “But this is Leroy’s pier. He said when he bought it, don’t you worry, one day our ship will come in. And old Leroy was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a liar. So I’ll be here waiting until it does.”

  The way she sat there, in the shadows, like she was crouching away from the light . . . I don’t know, something about it scared me. What loneliness could look like, what it could do to a person. All that time alone, waiting for something that was never going to come. Later I would think maybe I dreamed it, that all this was just a melancholy notion that drifted right into my noggin and swirled around, and through that magic became a dream. I don’t know, but I think it was real. I drifted myself right back to sleep.

  When I woke up the sky was dark and clear and the moon was bright and wild out the window. I’d slept through the whole durn day. No telling where my daddy was now. The old lady had a plate sat out with some salted fish for me and another scrap of bread. She sat there and watched me, a little grin on her face. I wondered if this was all she had. I wondered what else she would eat.

  I sat up and realized something was missing. Pop’s knapsack. I must have looked panicked because the old lady said, “Don’t you worry now. I just set your things out to dry. Turns out I needn’t have bothered.”

  Laid out on the cabin floor were my daddy’s Parsnit cards. That must have been what was in the knapsack, what Pop had entrusted me to keep safe from Mr. Hugo and Cecily Bob. The cards had been floating in water for hours and hours. They should have been soaked through, the colors all run, the cards bent and faded. But nope, they were shining, pristine, same as if they were brand-new.

  “Capital deck of cards you got there,” she said. “Go on. Ain’t a one of them missing, not by my count.”

  There they all were, and I had them for the first time to myself. I flipped each card over one by one, watched them dazzle in the sunlight. The Corpse Laugher with his dead mouth all twisted and that cackle you could practically hear, the sort of thing that could give a boy nightmares if he dwelt on it too long. The Brightly Shining Dancer with her red cheeks and dark eyes, pigtails coming undone as she twirls. The Lowdown Howler with his pants ripped at the knees, his old mangy hound bawling out the night. I turned over the Plains of Plenty with their rustling fields of golden brown and the Hermit’s Woods, a hawk flying black over the treetops. I saw the Far Yonder Mountains and the snow falling calm and quiet over them, a little puff of black smoke coming up from a cabin hidden somewhere deep in those crags.

  What was it about these cards that sent a shiver right over me, and had ever since I was just a little kid sitting in Pop’s lap? Was it really only a game, something grown folks do for money, or was there more to it than that?

  I knew it was hard to get a real good honest-to-God Parsnit deck, though Pop never quite told me the specifics. It wasn’t like there was anybody I could ask around our little town after Mom dragged me away from Pop. No, Parsnit was a swamp-folks game, one the townsfolk frowned on if ever they’d even heard of it. Rumor was a witch had to make them for you, a special mix of hexes and conjuration.

  Staring at those cards in that old lady’s shack brought to mind a memory, like they were speaking the images back to me, straight into my mind.

  I wasn’t more than four but it came to me in that moment, clear as yesterday. It was an endless winter’s night, cold and rainy, fire burning bright, Mom reading a book, Pop with that wild shut-in look glistening his eyes. Pop hated winter, hated being hemmed in by the cold. We’d been sitting like that in peace and quiet all night. It was like Pop couldn’t take it anymore. Suddenly he broke the silence of the evening and spoke.

  “It takes a great art to make a true deck of Parsnit cards,” said Pop.

  Pop was sometimes of a mind to make pronouncements like this, and I always waited eagerly for them, especially on boring winter nights like these.

  “Yes sir. Try showing up to ol’ Baudelaire Quatro’s Place with a false Parsnit deck, a pitiful pack of dead paper. They’d right slit your throat for that. They’d tie you to a rock and dump you right in the swamp water.”

  “Can you teach me to play?” I asked him, for what was probably the ten thousandth time.

  Mom looked up from where she sat reading, casting a fierce eye on my daddy.

  “Naw Buddy boy,” said Pop, chuckling. “You’re far too young to be messing around with the sort of riffraff that play Parsnit. Nope, your pop is long retired, he is. Just keep this deck here for sentimental reasons. Like I said, this Parsnit deck here is a work of the rarest of arts.”

  “The rarest of arts indeed,” said Mom, grinning a little.

  “It’s a fact,” said Pop. “This deck here can whoop any Parsnit player in the Swamplands. Provided that the right fella wields them of course.”

  “Ah yes,” said Mom. “The pride of the Parsnit player.”

  “You saying I should be ashamed of all the duels I’ve won?” said Pop.

  “Oh certainly not,” said Mom. “It’s just that you have something made by—what’d you call it, the ‘rarest of arts’—and all you can think to do with it is make some money.”

  “It ain’t just about the money, and you
know that, darlin’,” said Pop. “You know good and well Parsnit’s about more than that.”

  “Okay then,” said Mom. “It’s not just about money. It’s also about winning.”

  That flustered Pop a bit, I could tell. After a minute, Mom lowered her eyes to her book. Pop leaned in close and whispered to me. “Truth is, I’m pretty sure your dear sweet mother would not approve of me teaching you Parsnit. I’d never hear the end of it.”

  “If you ‘dear sweet’ me one more time,” said Mom, not bothering to look up from her book, “you’ll be sleeping in the outhouse tonight.”

  I must have looked so dejected at that news that Pop said, a bit too loud, “I figure it’s okay if I tell the boy the basics, right sugarplum? It sure won’t hurt the boy to know a bit about the rules of the game, were someone out there to someday wind up playing it.”

  Mom sighed a little, but she didn’t say anything else.

  “I think we’re in the clear,” whispered Pop. “Okay, here’s the basics. Parsnit tells a story, each card does, the chance of it, the cunning of the player, how well he can react. How well he knows his cards, and how well his cards know him.”

  “How can cards know a person?” I said.

  “That’s one of the great mysteries of the game, ain’t it? And oh what a powerful sight it is to see two Parsnit masters at play. You watch how the two dueling stories become one, how they turn and tangle into the same story, how they set off on a journey together, where only one player can come out alive. It’s downright intoxicating, it is, both for the players and for the crowd. And I imagine for the cards as well.”

  Pop had this far-off sparkle in his eyes, and I knew it wasn’t any good interrupting him now, that even if I asked for an explanation it would be so long-winded and glassy-eyed I couldn’t make much sense of it. But then I thought of another question, one more practical, and I couldn’t help but ask it.

  “Pop,” I said, “have you ever lost a Parsnit duel?”

  Pop looked down at the table a minute and popped his knuckles.

  “Never have,” he said. “And I can tell you right now that I never will.” He slapped the table. “You know what? I don’t think your mom will mind if we have a little fun here, will she?”

  Mom didn’t move. She just kept reading, or at least acting like she was. But she wasn’t turning the pages anymore.

  “Fine, fine,” said Pop. “Watch this.”

  He picked up the Parsnit deck and began to shuffle the cards, which was always a sight. They were flying every which way like sparks shooting off his fingers, all landing like magic right back in Pop’s hands. You never seen cards fly so fast as when Pop shuffled a deck. You were afraid to stick your hand out lest the cards be moving too fast and you wind up losing a finger.

  “Tell me when to stop,” said Pop.

  “When!” I said.

  Pop scooped all the cards together and slapped them down on the table, a tall flat deck, perfectly uniform, sitting there like a gold brick.

  “Now put your hand on it right there, Buddy boy,” he said. “Touch the deck lightly, with just your fingertips.”

  I did what Pop said.

  “Clear your mind now. Make it absolutely blank and empty, like the night sky without any moon. Can you do that? Sure you can, sure you can. Now when your mind is absolutely clear, I want you to listen. Listen with your fingers now. What are the cards saying to you? What do they whisper?”

  I couldn’t hear a word. I mean it. Not one tiny sound. Just maybe a little snicker coming from Mom in the corner.

  “Now flip over the first card,” said Pop.

  I did.

  “What do you see?”

  I did it now too, in this very moment, in the old lady’s shack. I flipped over the exact same card I had in my memory: the Fish Boy. There he was, looking all baffled and confused, that fish poking right out of the cup of water like it was wanting to whisper him a secret.

  But tonight the Fish Boy had changed. A softening of his eyes. They had gone brown, a little green to them. His face wasn’t so round and red this time. No, it was skinny and pale, his chin sharp now, his eyebrows furrowed like he was wondering about something.

  Yep, the Fish Boy looked like me.

  I mean just like me. We could have been twin brothers. We could have been the exact same person.

  Had he always looked like me? Or had something changed?

  There was something to these cards all right, and it spooked me good. I peered close at that card. It was like the Fish Boy was looking straight at me. I thought I saw the card smile.

  The old lady coughed. I snapped right out of my daydreaming.

  “Like I said,” croaked the old lady, “capital deck of cards you got there.”

  Enough of that. I wrapped the cards back up in their cloth and put them in the coffin box and hid them in the knapsack.

  I promised myself one day I would come back and help her out if I could, same as she helped me. I promised myself that, even if I was a scoundrel and worldly and all that, the least I could do was help this old lady out. I swore it, right then and there.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “If you’re searching for somebody, you’ll head to the Skinny Yellow Dog, you will,” she said. “Tavern down about that way. If a fella’s anywhere, he’ll be there.”

  “Thank you again, ma’am,” I said.

  “It’s no trouble in the world,” she said. “Not like any trouble I already seen. I been lost before and nobody helped me. I been all alone and stayed that way.”

  I gripped my daddy’s knapsack close to me and turned to go.

  “Sonny?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “If I were you, I’d be mighty careful about who I let see those cards of yours,” she said.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said. “I’ll guard them with my life.”

  “Hope it won’t come to that,” said the old lady.

  For a second I thought she was kidding, but the lady didn’t smile any. That didn’t make me much feel good, if you want me to be honest about it.

  7

  I WALKED DOWN THE DIRTY dusty streets. Men hung on street corners smoking and scowling, and women stood around in groups, laughing meanly.

  “You know where the Skinny Yellow Dog is?” I asked an old man with buckteeth.

  He just sneezed on me.

  I tried a young lady, maybe twenty-two, tall and pretty with a long flowy dress.

  “Skinny Yellow Dog?” I said.

  “Three blocks thataway,” she said, gesturing with a white-gloved hand, “and take a left.”

  “Much obliged,” I said, and gave her a bow.

  “What a little gentleman you are!” She giggled at me, which made me feel ridiculous. “What are you looking for a place like that for?”

  “I’m trying to find the two low-down varmints who kidnapped my daddy.”

  “Gracious lord alive!” she said. “You’re a cute one, you are. And your daddy got kidnapped? My, my.” She leaned in close to me. “Revenge is a tricky business. Perhaps I could interest you in one of these?”

  She opened her petticoat to reveal a whole arsenal of knives sewn into the lining. The pretty woman slipped one out, a nasty little thing.

  “You can really stick somebody good with this one. But you gotta be quick. Once in the belly”—she poked me a little, not too hard, but enough to give me shivers—“then once slow across the throat.” She drew a cold line soft across my Adam’s apple. “Could be yours, just cost you a bit of silver is all.”

  I stammered, backing away from her. She stood there, a big smile on her face, that knife cold and gleaming.

  “No thank you, ma’am,” I said. “You be having a good evening though.”

  “It isn’t safe,” she said. “Walking into a place like the Skinny Yellow Dog without any protection.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I called to her, still backing away.

 
“Sorry is what you’ll be!” she hollered, and gave me a dainty little wave. “Toodleloo!”

  Well, so far I’d been heckled, sneezed on, and offered weaponry. I guess Gentlesburg was every bit as wicked and low-down as folks said it was. I had a thrill just walking down the street, seeing people leer at me from under caps and through grubby windows, wondering at me just like I was wondering at them. It made me feel like a baby mouse scuttling through a whole yard full of snakes, each one sizing me up. Maybe I should have bought a knife from that lady. Maybe I should have had some money on me. Maybe I was in way over my head here, chasing down the two killers who made off with my daddy.

  I looked up at the moon and stars, I heard the river lap up against the pier, I felt the knapsack full of my daddy’s Parsnit cards.

  I needed to get my mind right.

  Pop always said, “You win at first sight. An ace hustler wins just by walking into the room, if only your walk is good enough.”

  I wasn’t any mouse running scared through a yard of snakes. I was the durn snake. And all those creepy no-goods gaping at me with their peepers better remember it. And I strutted all the way to the Skinny Yellow Dog.

  I found it, three stories tall and at a weird angle, like it was about to topple over into the street. The windows were lit bright and the doors were wide open and it seemed stuffed full of people, like any moment arms and legs would start dangling out the windows because there wasn’t space inside for them anymore. I could hear music and laughing and cussing and hollering, cigar smoke lingering around like a fog of lazy ghosts.

  It seemed like just the place for a kid like me.

  I walked my swaggering self right through the front doors, and nobody even said a word to me about it.

  It was even wilder inside.

  There were scraggly fellows with big bushy beards and folks with scars all over their faces and women with rings on their ears and lips and noses who scowled and spit and roared louder than the men. A woman with long black hair and a red hat played the fiddle while a man stomped and hollered and strummed a guitar. A one-eyed man danced on a table, banging a spoon into a metal plate. Barefoot women turned circles, their dresses floating out like jellyfish. Another fella walked around on his hands, a knife carried between his teeth. Best of all was a pale boy about my own age, wearing a tuxedo and a top hat. The pale boy was a magician. He grinned and pulled a large-mouth bass out of his top hat. The bass was alive and wriggling in his hands. The pale boy bowed while folks threw coins at his feet. I wanted to clap for him myself. I never saw a fella pull a fish out of a hat before.