The Rambling

by Jimmy Cajoleas

  I gulped.

  Tally put her hand on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “You’re attracting an awful lot of attention, considering no one’s supposed to know we’re here.”

  “I’m not real sure what I’m supposed to do about it,” I whispered back. “I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t scared.”

  “You’d be a durn fool too,” she said. “But you’re here, and now you got to play. Do your best not to lose too much in the process.”

  That’s the thing about Parsnit. I know it seems like just a card game, where you play a few hands and tell a story or two and that’s that. But the game goes much further. You play and it feels like you’re handing a little bit of your soul over too, like it’s your heart and guts battling somebody else’s hearts and guts. It ain’t just the players either. In a truly great Parsnit duel, the audience’s hearts beat fierce and wild and all their hair stands on its ends.

  It’s magic, real honest-to-God magic, that’s what I’m telling you.

  Radegar tossed me his deck to shuffle and I gave him Pop’s. The cards had a weird energy to them, a fishy stink of swamp water and grit. They felt different than Pop’s did, made of coarser stuff. I wasn’t much good at shuffling, couldn’t do anything flashy like Pop, but I got the job done. We traded decks back and laid them on the stone table and it was decided that Radegar, being the one who issued the challenge and all, should draw the first card.

  He flipped the Mountebank, first try. Radegar whistled real loud and all the house regulars took to chuckling. You could tell that was the card he wanted, the card he felt his heart most attached to.

  But hold up a minute. I took a closer look at his card, and it didn’t seem a bit like any of the other Mountebank cards I’d ever seen. Sure the figure was there, a fellow in a top hat and suit, a little seedy-looking, hawking his wares and caught midgesture with a bottle of some sort, probably some miracle cure made out of old bathwater. But instead of being tall and lean with big owl eyes and thin cheeks, the Mountebank on this card was portly, red-faced, with a pair of muttonchops, big and bushy as Radegar’s. I remembered something Pop had said about how Parsnit cards bound themselves to a player, how they changed as he changed, how they came to be about him. You could almost hear the sweet lying words come tumbling right out of his mouth, you could feel the little tug of his lies begging you to buy, urging you on, pulling you toward this one little object that might change your life, that could open up worlds to you, that could make your pop love you for real and end all the curses on your blood and get you home safe and sound, that would make your life bearable forever.

  Then I snapped out of it. Miss Arabella was smiling, and I knew this was a powerful Parsnit card indeed, truly one tied to Radegar’s own heart.

  Radegar began to Orate. It went a little like this:

  “Now welcome, ladies and gentlemen and other folk, to the most sad and lamentable tale of old Turnjack the Mountebank. A man persecuted beyond all others, pursued by ungrateful associates, hounded by unscrupulous lawyers, and dogged by impecunious masses . . .”

  He droned on and on like that. Radegar wasn’t much of an Orator, and that was a fact. He could tell a good yarn, but he used too many words, he stumbled over himself, he kept distracting you from the card, from the story, from the heart of the man. That I knew very well. Even Miss Arabella had a hard time keeping track. I could see Turnjack the Mountebank quite well in my mind’s eye, I could see him wrangle his wares and argue with his wife, I could feel how wronged he felt by the world, how he felt there was no real place for him, but it didn’t break my heart any. Felt a bit to me like Turnjack deserved all he got.

  All in all, it wasn’t much of an introduction.

  It was my turn. I felt real nervous, hoping in my heart that I would draw the Fish Boy, the card I knew the best, the card that I always saw myself in, or better yet, felt myself in. It’s hard to explain I guess. It’s like, have you ever looked at a painting or heard a song or just been somewhere beautiful—maybe an old creaky house or a sunlit field or in front of a wild oak tree, just as the moon was rising—and felt like, yes, this is me, this is me exactly, I could be looking in a mirror of my dreams? Have you ever felt anything like that at all in your life? If not, well, take it from old Buddy here—you ain’t been looking hard enough. It’s out there for you, the feeling of recognizing yourself in something else, and when you find it, oh it will feel so good deep inside of you. It’ll change you forever.

  Everyone was silent. I sure hoped I wasn’t going to embarrass myself by flipping over a home card, or an action or a word, anything that I couldn’t call my person. That sure would be an unrecoverable mistake. That would more or less ensure that I didn’t stand a chance in this game, that I’d gone and lost for sure.

  The Fish Boy, I prayed. The Fish Boy please.

  I flipped my card.

  There he stood, a little awkward, his face perplexed and determined, same as the way I saw myself every time I looked over the edge of the skiff and into the waters, holding aloft a cup with a weird-eyed fish springing out of it. The Fish Boy. My card. I was so happy right then I could have cried.

  The rest of the crowd felt it too. There were a couple of gasps even, some yokels slamming down glasses in disgust and some hollering out in applause. Tally clapped her hands and squeezed my shoulder and that made me feel good, real good, actually. I had done it. I flipped my Person card first try.

  Now it was my turn to Orate.

  My turn to Orate.

  Mine.

  I realized right then that I’d never Orated before. Not out loud anyway, not even once. I’d only ever done it in my head. And let me tell you, Orating all alone in your head is much, much different than doing it out loud, much less doing it out loud in front of a bunch of seasoned Parsnit pros in the last free house in the swamp.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slow, like I’d seen other Parsnit players do when they were all nervous.

  “Well . . . ,” I said.

  My voice cracked. It did. A few of the house folks cackled. Even old Radegar grinned a little bit, though you could tell he was trying to hide it. That made me mad, it did. I wanted to whoop all the smiles right off those fellas’ faces.

  “Well,” I said again, fiercer now, trying to sound as grown-up and manly as possible. “This is a tale about a small-town boy living far away from his home. Far, far from the land of his birth, the Riverlands, where the water is always rushing and the boats are on the move and the source of all your food is right there, just outside your door, a whole river of fortune, a treasure chest you drop a line in and pull up who knows what. This is the story of a small-town boy exiled from his beloved pop, forced to coop up with his mom in a land of dirt and gossip and boredom. This is a story about a boy who loved his pop so much he’d do anything to find him back, who would face any kind of dangers, who would stare down death in his one single black beady eye just to gain back what he’d lost, his pop and his river life, every last thing he’d ever held dear.”

  I said it just like that, with my voice deeper and fuller and stronger than I knew possible. I said it all and I didn’t crack even once, and that was a fact. It was the story of my life as I saw it, and I told it as true and direct as I could.

  It didn’t quite seem to do the trick though. I could tell the crowd heard it, that they could see it too, even old Radegar’s eyes were wide and focused as the pictures flickered in his mind. They heard it, they even saw it, but it didn’t crack them open, not one bit. My story didn’t make it into their hearts.

  I wondered why.

  Still, I hadn’t fallen flat on my face, and that was a fact. I could do this. I could play Parsnit as well as anybody else, and I had my first round to prove it.

  Next came the Home card. Radegar drew his three, and his eyes went wide with big obvious pleasure, like he’d pulled exactly the cards he wanted. He laid down the Wayward River, one of my favorite cards, and one of Pop’s too. You could recognize it, the
way the water curved and curled, how rocks jutted out of the blue like the river’s own fangs, like if you didn’t keep rushing by the river would snap its jaws shut and swallow you whole. The Wayward River is the card for bandits and wild folks, for those who live by the cunning of their minds and their skill with a knife, the exact kind of folk my pop was.

  But again, Radegar’s card looked a little bit different from Pop’s. It was the Wayward River, sure, except instead of the swirling gray-blue gone on and on, it was the murky green of the swamp, the water rushing by in a slow and steady current, tugging quiet underneath. Instead of rocks jabbing upward like in Pop’s deck, Radegar’s had knotty cypress knees poking out, with gray moss beards dangling down to the water, and in the far background of the card, a great long distance away, there was a figure holding a lantern, standing upright in his boat like he was searching for something long gone and lost. It was a beautiful card when Radegar drew it, just as free and wild as Pop’s, but with a mournful side, like all those good times came at a price.

  And that was the story Radegar told. How the wild Mountebank floated downriver on his boat, selling cures that were certain to work, absolutely certain, if only applied right and in the proper dosage, though nobody ever bothered to do that. How he was welcomed into homes all over the bayou, and how he welcomed himself into homes when nobody else was there. Never to steal nothing, mind you, but to sleep in a real bed, with covers and a top sheet, under an old quilt someone’s beloved grandma had sewn. To sit at a chair and drink a cup of water, pretending that it was his chair and his cup of water, that he had a loving wife to draw it for him, that his boy came to sit in his lap, grateful he was home. The Mountebank was just lonely, he was, out on the wild waters looking for love, for family, for a place to call home. It was a sad place, the Mountebank’s Wayward River, where every bit of freedom just made him wish to be tied down by something good, something permanent, some kind of home.

  What a load of hogwash.

  But it seemed to connect with a lot of the Parsnit regulars. I mean that. Wasn’t nearly a dry eye in the entire room. Old men in ratty clothes shook their heads sadly, the lines grew on sad ladies’ smiles. Everyone seemed older and more alone, like all this rambling and card playing wore on a body. Some of the oldest and most bedraggled folks even clapped. That kind of junk made me mad. Who didn’t love the Wayward River? Of course it isn’t a real house-and-a-yard home, that’s the whole point. Who in the world gets all the freedom they want and winds up whining about having it? A durn fool, that’s who. I was about ready to stomp Radegar and his pitiful woe-is-me Orating into the dirt, if you wanted to know the truth about it.

  My turn was up, and I was ready.

  Please give me the Bramble, or the Long Way Round. Heck, give me the durn Cold Dark City. I been there. I could make a story out of it.

  I took a deep breath and drew my three cards.

  It was a disaster. I drew the Moanful Ghost, the Dolly Witch, and the Corpse Laugher. Not a single one of those was a Home card.

  I lost. I lost already. My deck blew it for me. I didn’t even get a chance to try.

  I just sat there, my face gone blank, staring at the three dead cards in my hand.

  “Go on, boy,” said Radegar. “Play your card.”

  I laid them all faceup. The whole room erupted in laughter. I had lost, and lost spectacularly. Only the worst Parsnit players—the ones who don’t know their decks, the ones with not a lick of magic in them, the ones with hexed durn blood—don’t draw a single Home card when it’s time. I’d shamed myself and shamed the deck and shamed Pop too. My head hung so heavy I couldn’t bear to lift it and look a single Parsnit player in the eye.

  “Well,” said Radegar, looking anywhere but right at my face, “not bad for your first try, I suppose. It ain’t like Parsnit runs in the blood. Not like luck, anyhow. Who knows? Maybe your daddy ain’t all he’s cracked up to be either. He whooped me solid when we first met, but that might have been a fluke. Regardless, it was nice to Orate a little bit. It was nice to see my words float up and become something, you know what I mean?”

  I packed up my cards and put them back in the knapsack. I was so ashamed I could hardly bear it. Tally gave me a little pat on the back, like nice try, and that somehow made me feel even worse.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I guess I messed it up pretty bad, huh?”

  “Everyone’s got a first duel,” said Radegar. “Put her there.”

  He reached his hand across the table and I shook it, even if his palm was hot and clammy. The Parsnit players all clapped. It was the end of the duel, and I’d blown it royally. I only hoped Pop wouldn’t hear of it, wherever he was.

  Slowly everyone filed out of the room except for Miss Arabella. She walked over to me and Tally and sat beside us. She put her hand on my neck and it felt soft and cool, like a breeze on the hottest summer day. It put me at ease a little bit.

  “Can I tell you a secret?” she said.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said. “Though secrets ain’t been a whole lot of help to me lately.”

  “Would you like to know what Parsnit cards really do?” she said. “Why witches make them?”

  “I sure would,” said Tally. “I been wondering that my whole life.”

  “Parsnit is much older than this game here,” she said. “The cards are, anyway. They were made by witches and artists—who frankly aren’t all that different, if you want to know the truth about it—ages and ages ago. They were a means of telling a story.”

  “Not to be rude,” I said, “but that ain’t hardly a secret. Everybody knows that. And witches gave the Parsnit cards to regular folks so they could have a taste of magic themselves, right?”

  “It also gives witches a way to make money,” said Tally. “Err, not that you would need that.”

  “All true, yes,” said Miss Arabella. “But that isn’t the point. These cards show people and places, images and symbols. They’re the stuff of dreams. So often a Parsnit player will use the cards to tell a story that’s really just her own story as she best sees it. She’ll tell the story of her dreams. It’s her own legend she’s spinning. Take care to remember that each legend is just one person’s truth in a whole bunch of other truths that whirl and swirl around each other. Sometimes the truths agree, and other times they don’t. Be careful not to take one single person’s truth as the final say in the matter.”

  “You saying Parsnit cards lie?” I said.

  “I’m warning you not to use the cards to lie to yourself, Buddy,” she said.

  “Miss Arabella,” said Tally. “Can I ask you for a favor?”

  “Sure, honey,” she said. “Go right on ahead.”

  Tally was looking right bashful, her face down to the floor, wiggling her foot back and forth like she was grinding out a tiny fire.

  “You seem like a real powerful witch,” she said, “and I got this problem, with how I was born.”

  “You mean with how you were born, being spider-folk and all?”

  “You could tell?” said Tally.

  “I wouldn’t be much of a witch if I couldn’t,” said Miss Arabella. “But it’s a great gift, being spider-folk. Many would kill—and I mean that literally—to have an ounce of your power.”

  “But I don’t want it,” said Tally. “I’ve never wanted it. I hate it. I hate it more than anything in the whole world.”

  Miss Arabella rubbed her chin all thoughtful-like.

  “I suppose I could repress the spider part of you, yes,” she said. “I could hide it deep in your mind, waiting there, curled up and asleep for all your life. Would you like that, honey?”

  “Yes,” said Tally. “I’d like that more than anything.”

  “It will be a hard spell,” said Miss Arabella, “and quite painful. Are you sure you want that part of you hidden?”

  Tally looked up at Miss Arabella, her eyes soft and unfierce and tearful. “I don’t want to be a monster anymore.”

  But Miss Arabella wasn’t lis
tening. Her face had gone blank, like the moon, like someone had up and wiped it clean.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  An explosion sounded on the fourth floor. Folks were screaming.

  Through the open doorway I saw a woman dressed in a wedding gown that stretched long and elegant twelve feet behind her like a train of white ghosts running down the hallway, her head thrown back cackling, her eyes red as fire. She had to be a witch, I just knew it. Her hair was black and flowing behind her, her teeth were jagged like fangs, and her fingernails grew out long in front of her like knives.

  Miss Arabella whirled toward the door, and her dress seemed to rise and cover both me and Tally, making us small somehow, sweeping us right under her skirts to where we clung to her legs all old and thin and bony.

  “Drusilla Fey, honey, is that you?” said Miss Arabella.

  “Arabella,” said the other lady. “Looking well, considering.”

  “I am under a bit of duress at the moment,” said Miss Arabella. I could feel her legs quaking, I could feel how brave and afraid she was.

  “There’s no resistance now, dear,” said Drusilla Fey. “Bow to him, and he will show you mercy.”

  “I think not, honey,” said Miss Arabella. “I don’t consider myself one to bow to any living person, and not to borrowed magic such as his.”

  “Oh but you will bow,” said Drusilla Fey, “even if he has to break your legs to make you do it.”

  “If you have come here to take my life, Drusilla Fey, then I suggest you get it over with, and quickly. I am not one for delaying the inevitable.”

  “That would be too easy now, wouldn’t it?” said Drusilla Fey. “I look forward to watching you grovel at my feet.”