The Hand You're Dealt

by Paul Volponi

  Two years back, Abbott married the school shrink, Ms. Harnish, and kids thought it was perfect that he had his own private head doctor at home. Only she was a real looker, too, with long legs and bleached-blond hair. And nobody could understand why she’d be with a creep like him.

  The year after Dad destroyed Abbott at the final table, she stopped me in the hall at school a few times, asking if Dad had any special strategies, and wasn’t there more money being a professional poker player in Las Vegas than cutting hair in Caldwell? So I figured she was riding Abbott like a racehorse, looking for some jackpot down the line.

  Then one Sunday, while I was working my shift at White Castle, the kid on the squawk box at the drive-through window called everybody in the kitchen over to listen.

  A couple had been giving their order when they started arguing.

  “It bothers me ’cause YOU ARE the best!” scolded a woman’s voice. “We should be sitting on top of the world in Vegas by now.”

  “I know. I’m better than this town. I know it,” a man whined.

  “Say it like you mean it!” she pushed him. “Say it!”

  “MY WORLD! MY TIME!” he came back strong. “NOTHIN’ CAN TOUCH ME!”

  When they finally drove around to pick up their food, it was Ms. Harnish in the passenger seat fixing her lipstick, and Abbott behind the wheel, opening his wallet to pay. That’s when I knew she practically owned his pathetic ass.

  This September I got called to her office the first week of school.

  “How are things with the new situation at home?” she asked, scribbling notes on a long yellow pad.

  That’s when Abbott tapped on the glass part of her door. He looked right past me, like I was invisible. But that was nothing new. Abbott was so conceited and into himself, for a million dollars he probably couldn’t pick me out of a group of kids from around school.

  He blew her a kiss off the same wrist Dad’s watch was on.

  “It must be very difficult,” she told me, winking at him as he walked off.

  I clammed up tight after that and wouldn’t tell her anything. A couple of times I was sent slips in homeroom for another appointment. But I just trashed them and went on to class instead.

  Abbott almost never took his shades off, not even when he was teaching. The first day of class, he had us standing for twenty minutes, looking everybody up and down while he assigned seats.

  “Calculus is a system of reasoning based on mathematical notations. I give each of you a specific value in my mind, according to what I think you’ll be worth in this class. I evaluate things like posture, the time you take between breaths, and in some cases that vacant look behind your eyes. All genetics. Nothing you can change about yourselves,” he said, smug, pointing kids one by one to their chairs. “The five rows balance out equally between highs and lows—gods and clods. So my head doesn’t have to tilt too much to either side of the room when you don’t understand something, and half of your hands go up.”

  Seniors are like school hostages—they just want out. Nobody can afford to fail a class and not graduate on time. That’s why kids mostly knuckled under, letting Abbott have his bullshit way. Lots of students had complained about Abbott over the seven years he’d been a teacher, but none of it had done any good because he somehow had tenure. So unless Abbott put his hands on a kid, he’d probably never get canned.

  Abbott pointed to the last seat in the middle row, and then to me. That suited me fine. His desk was dead center to that, so I could lean to either side and see him clear, or keep my head behind the kid’s in front of me, blocking Abbott out completely.

  “Let me quote to you from some of the letters misguided students have written against me over the years,” he said, flipping through a stack of them. “‘Insulting, manipulating, Nazi-like’…Here’s a good one, ‘Coldhearted and uncaring.’ None of these complaints has ever made a dent in me, and I was still the one who gave those students their grades. So think twice, children. I’m not the forgiving type. Oh, and nowhere in the letters does it claim that I don’t have a total command of my subject matter, mathematics.”

  Sitting in the first seat of that same row as me was Audra, and I didn’t mind seeing any part of her, even if it was just her brown hair hanging over the back of her shoulders. I’d been out with her twice since November. I thought we had fun, but I couldn’t get a third date. She’d never say no straight out, just that she was busy. So I played along like that was the truth, and maybe we’d do something another time. But that stung me hard. There were other girls at school I’d gone out with. Only nobody I liked as much as her.

  Cassidy was in the class too. He was my best friend during freshman and sophomore year. But when he’d made the varsity baseball team last spring, and I didn’t, he started hanging out with kids whose cool quotient was way over mine. Most of the time I got from him now was second-string, hearing about everything he was doing without me. It even got hard for me to look him square in the eye without feeling like some kind of complete loser who couldn’t cut it.

  Then one day toward the end of March, right before the season started, Cassidy came to class late, wearing his baseball jacket and cap. Before he even got to his seat, Abbott told him to put the first homework problem up on the board.

  Soon as Cassidy started writing, Abbott sneered, “What’s that supposed to be?”

  “The-first-problem-on-page-seventeen,” he answered, ready to blow.

  “I know you’re going to college on some kind of athletic scholarship, but that doesn’t excuse you from thinking,” Abbott said slow, enjoying every word. “The assignment was the first seventeen problems on page twenty.”

  Something small and petty inside me appreciated that.

  “No, it’s not! Look, I got it written right here!” snapped Cassidy.

  “It’s backward,” pronounced Abbott.

  Kids loved every second of it, hooting and hollering behind the two of them till Abbott cracked a ruler down on his desk.

  “How ’bout a little proposition?” Abbott asked. “If I’m right, you lose that precious baseball cap of yours for good. I don’t even want to see you outside with it.”

  “And if I’m right, you don’t wear that poker watch anymore,” popped Cassidy.

  Everybody knew that Cassidy was wrong, and by that point maybe even he did too. But kids pulled hard for him anyway, probably because he had the nerve to stand up to that asshole.

  Then it happened. Abbott drummed his fingers across the desk, with his head cocked sideways, like he might lose that bet and had to really think about it. But I could see he was just reeling Cassidy in, playing him like a fish on a line.

  “All right, I’m in,” Abbott finally said, standing up from his chair and taking off his shades to grill Cassidy. “How ’bout you?”

  His eyes were a cold steel gray, and sent a chill through me to see. But I got hit with something much more important—a pure bolt of lightning. That was the first tic I’d seen in Abbott’s game, and I wouldn’t forget it.

  “You’re on,” answered Cassidy, who looked at the homework of every kid in the front row, before cursing Abbott under his breath and burying that baseball cap in his book bag.

  A current ran through me, and every nerve I had stood on edge.

  I realized that sitting in Abbott’s class put me in perfect position to get a real read on him. And I was so charged up it was all I could do to stay in my seat.

  I wondered how many of Abbott’s tics I could pick off over the semester. And in my mind, I already saw myself sitting across a poker table from that bastard, settling up the score.

  Sometimes early on Sunday morning, Dad took me fishing down by Watson’s Creek. He taught me how to bait a hook and dangle a drop-line in the water with just enough slack to get a bite. But mostly we’d just kick back, sharing time together.

  “Your mother and me are thinkin’ ’bout givin’ Caldwell that whole Vegas pot I won. Our half, the sixteen grand—that’s not gonna cha
nge our lives any,” Dad said, casting his line into the shallows, about a week after he’d made that big score. “But I know some folks round here really need it. What do you think, son?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I’d never seen sixteen grand in one place in my whole life. I just stuttered with my mouth open, till Dad grinned wide and said, “I threw enough money away in my life getting beat at cards. This is the kind I don’t mind losin’.”

  “I guess,” I said, amazed.

  “Nothin’ to worry ’bout,” he said. “I’m gonna wear this silver watch again next year. And when I take down that cool twelve mil, we’ll keep our share. That’s for sure.”

  That’s what burned me and Mom the most, when Abbott stiffed the town out of its cut.

  Cassidy came fishing with us sometimes too. Only after he made varsity, his party schedule got so crazy he couldn’t get out of bed early enough anymore.

  “I’m not about to trade a Saturday night of real fun for a morning of worms and mosquitoes,” Cassidy explained to me. “Who would if they had a choice?”

  I went down to the creek one time by myself this year, and took a radio along just to have other voices for company. But it wasn’t close to being the same. I felt too alone there, like I’d lost everything I ever had. And I never even got a line into the water.

  For the next few months, I watched Abbott like a hawk, studying every move he made. Sometimes I had to force myself to keep looking at his sorry ass. I saw how he held his hands and shifted his weight when he was busting on kids.

  I guessed wrong about what he’d do lots of times and even got spanked in class once when Abbott swiped at me, “You don’t like the way I combed my hair or something today, young man? ’Cause you’re starin’ up here like you’re ready to give me a makeover!”

  Cassidy howled hysterical over that, and even Audra turned around laughing. I was burning inside, but I sucked it all up. The next day I stopped guessing at Abbott’s moves, trying to feel how he was sticking it to kids instead. I memorized all his expressions—every muscle that twitched around those dark shades, till I started to see his face in my sleep.

  Then, during a pop quiz one day, Abbott stood behind some kid’s desk, looking down and shaking his head. When Abbott got back to his chair he cleared his throat, locking his fingers together and stretching them, like he was about to play piano.

  “Some of you can do the work all right, but you’ve got the formulas backward,” Abbott announced, glancing over to that kid’s side of the room. “It’s a real pity.”

  The kid started erasing answers, and so did a few others. But I knew in my bones that Abbott was bluffing. I would have bet anything on it.

  Five minutes later, we all switched papers and graded that quiz on the spot. The kid who Abbott really suckered was kicking himself over the answers he’d changed.

  I passed with a perfect score. On the way out of class I could hear Abbott’s voice ringing in my ears, and I felt like telling that kid, You’re so fuckin’ dumb.

  By the beginning of June, I was confident that I could read Abbott like a book.

  I’d pitched the idea of playing in the tournament on and off to Mom, who’d been working double shifts at the diner to support us. Only she’d never caught on how serious I was. Then, when I pressed her on it right before the tournament, she put her foot down.

  “Money’s too tight to throw away like that. Even that community college you picked in Pike County isn’t cheap,” she said, dead set against me entering. “You’ve got finals to study for and everything. You just worry about graduating.”

  “I don’t need you to give me money. I’ve got some savings on the side I can use. I’m not lettin’ that sack of shit get away with—,” I ranted, till she cut me off fast.

  “No! I don’t want you gambling!” she hollered, losing her temper in a heartbeat.

  “It’s not about that,” I said. “It’s about—”

  “Listen to me! You’ll get your hopes up, and if that creep wins again you’ll just blame yourself. I’m not even sure I want you hangin’ around there this year. Besides, you’re not old enough to enter. Case closed. Do you hear?”

  I lowered my head and stared at the floor without answering. Then at least I could sell myself on how I wouldn’t be lying to her. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d disobeyed Mom, but there was never a thought in my mind that I was going to walk away from facing Abbott.

  That next Saturday, the first day of the tournament, there were more cars in Caldwell than I could count. The overflow from the lot outside the rec center reached nearly three blocks. People were parked everywhere—on lawns, sidewalks, and there was even a sheriff’s deputy waving cars onto the athletic field.

  I’d walked the half mile from my house, and the whole way my legs were shaking like jelly. I was hiding beneath dark glasses, a hat, and headphones. I didn’t want Abbott to recognize me, and I didn’t need Mom finding out from anybody but me that I was playing in the tournament. I had my shirt collar turned up and was wearing slacks and dress shoes, too, trying to look older. I hadn’t worn those shoes since Dad’s funeral. They were tight on me then, and now they really pinched with every step I took.

  That’s when I started to drag my left leg a little bit as part of that getup.

  There were fifty-four card tables covering the gym floor, and my seat was at number forty-three, with an index card that read HUCK taped to the back. Eight players and a dealer sat around each table, and everybody started out the same, with a stack of red and white chips worth a fake hundred and fifty dollars.

  Most players had on shades—every shape and size you could think of—so their eyes wouldn’t give away their cards. But some people went even further to try and stop you from reading them. There was a guy dressed as Santa Claus, and another like Fidel Castro, with a beard and army fatigues, chewing on a big cigar. A woman had her face painted up like a cat’s, with ears and a tail to match. Somebody had on a howling ghost mask from that movie Scream, and somebody else was Elmo from Sesame Street. There was even a guy with a dummy on his lap that did all the talking for him, and they were both wearing dark glasses.

  Abbott was sitting way on the other side of the gym, showing off the watch. I would have given anything to see him get busted on the first day, especially by one of those circus acts. But I knew that wasn’t going to happen. And if I was ever going to get my chance at Abbott, I needed to forget about him for a while and concentrate on the players in front of me first.

  “When’s your birthday? What year?” another player was asking everybody at my table. Then he’d close his eyes to think for a second and tell you what day of the week you were born on. Somebody called him the Human Calculator, and it stuck quick.

  When he got to me, I pushed my birthday up by two years, so nobody would give me any static about being only seventeen.

  “That was a Saturday, like today,” he said, dead sure of himself.

  “I guess it’s better than being born yesterday, huh, kid?” crowed a guy named Rooster.

  Rooster was the mechanic down at the garage, and he had muscles cut like bricks from lifting truck tires and motorcycle chassis all day. He had a tattoo of a fighting rooster wearing boxing gloves on one forearm, and a coiled-up cobra ready to strike on the other. But somehow the rooster won out, and that’s what everybody called him.

  I reached across the table to shake Rooster’s hand. I made my voice deeper and said loud enough for them all to hear, “The name’s Huck.”

  My fingers disappeared inside his huge grip, as he crushed my hand like a vise.

  He’d played poker a lot with Dad and had seen me around since I was small. So when he didn’t recognize me in that disguise, I felt better and got a surge of confidence.

  Right before the first hand got dealt, Father Dineros stood up to speak.

  “Let me thank you all for supporting such a worthy cause as the recreation center,” he said, before bowing his head. “Lord, look down on all
those here today and help them to know you and themselves better through this competition. We praise the values of honesty, fair play, and brotherhood over any victory or token prize. Help us to keep sight of your light through the darkness of our personal trials.”

  “Amen,” echoed the voices through the gym.

  Father Dineros had been my only hope of getting a seat. I found him out back of the rec center on the Tuesday before the tournament, washing his old Mercedes—the one with the license plates that read GDZBENZ. That car was older than I was. But it was still one of the sharpest rides in town—a classic, and nearly every kid I knew drooled over it.

  He saw me standing there with a wad of cash and joked, “No, you can’t rent out my car to impress your young lady friends.”

  But I was wound up too tight to crack a smile.

  “It’s that Abbott. Please. I gotta get into the tournament,” I said, showing him the ninety-five dollars I’d saved from working at White Castle, after helping Mom with bills.

  And with every kid in Caldwell hungry for a job, I was lucky to have that one Sunday afternoon shift.

  “So you have ninety-five dollars,” he said, squeezing the water out of a soapy yellow sponge.

  “I can get the rest in a couple of weeks. I know I’m not eighteen, but I’m not gonna gamble a dime, just play tournament chips.”

  “There’s nothing official in the rules about being a certain age to play,” he said. “And the recreation center’s purpose is to serve young people, so I don’t see why you’d need an entry fee. I suppose it’s all right. And you will just play our tournament chips. No side bets. But let’s keep this quiet anyway. Maybe just you, me, and your mother should know for now. I’ll take the heat if anything negative comes from it.”

  “About my mom,” I said in a low voice.

  He saw the sorry look on my face and said, “I know you’ll talk to her again before Saturday. Now if you promise not to let this interfere with school, I’ll go ahead and reserve you a place.”