by Chris Offutt
“River card,” Catfish said. “Read them and sleep.”
Duke refused to look at his final card. He stared at Connor for a long time and asked how much money he had in front of him.
“Hundred and eighty,” Connor said.
“Then the bet is three eighty.” Duke counted money, slow and careful for all to see.
Connor rubbed his face with both hands. He lit a cigarette and examined his hole cards, chewing his lower lip. The cigarette burned unsmoked between his fingers. A couple of minutes passed in which Duke still did not look at his last card. Connor cracked his knuckles, a sound like green wood in a fire.
“Call, raise, or fold,” Catfish said.
“Are you in this?” Connor said.
“It’s your bet’s all.”
“I don’t need no tips on how to play.”
“Then do it and keep your mouth off me.”
Connor tipped his chair on its back legs and slipped his hands behind his head.
“Boys,” he said. “I’m trying to give the man a chance to look at his hand. I was raised right, not like some.”
Duke pressed his forefinger on his final card and slowly pushed it into the center of the table beneath the pile of cash. He pulled his hand back empty.
“Maybe I don’t need it,” he said. “Maybe all I need is your bet.”
“I’m shy two hundred,” Connor said.
“You could raise me your truck.”
The skin of Connor’s face paled as he glanced at the door, on the other side of which sat his pickup. He studied Duke’s four diamonds and fingered his money. With shaking hands Connor turned a hole card to show his straight. His voice was sharp and disgusted.
“I’m out,” he said. “First good hand all night and goddam if I don’t run into a diamond flush.”
“Girl’s best friend,” W. said.
“Shut up, old man. What you know on girls won’t fit up a gnat’s ass.”
“I been married fifty-one years, to a woman.”
Fenton’s last card was worthless, leaving him with the two pair. He began counting diamonds. He’d seen seven and Duke was showing four more, which left two for the flush. Duke hadn’t bet early. He’d been fishing then, and Fenton realized it was a bluff. Duke had nothing. If Fenton won, he’d be even for the night.
“I call,” Fenton said. He was fifteen dollars short. “And raise.”
He reached in his pants for a pocketknife. It was old and not worth much, but still his favorite. He snapped the blade open. Duke shook his head, refusing the property bet.
“This ain’t it,” Fenton said.
He slowly lifted the knife and slid the blade into his open mouth, below the bridge. He squinted, blinking when the tiny strut pulled from his gum. He pried the entire bridgework loose and tossed the shiny wet gold on the table. The knife’s tip held a drop of blood that he wiped on his pants.
“Jesus God,” Duke said. “If I raised back, I guess you’d bet a finger.”
He turned his cards face down and pushed the money across the table. Connor stood, clattering his chair to the floor. His pupils were barely rimmed by iris. He swayed for a moment, trying to speak.
“The house?” he finally said. “You got a full house?”
“You don’t want to know,” Fenton said.
Connor flipped Fenton’s cards to show his hand.
“Two pair,” Connor said. His upper lip rose, showing teeth the size of soup beans. “That’s my pot,” he said.
Duke’s voice came hard and mean.
“Stay off that money.”
Connor jerked his head wildly, settling on W.
“Old man,” he said. “You going to set and let them railroad me? You against me, too?”
“It’s only a game,” W. said. “Folding a winner’s good poker. Makes up for all the losers a man stays in on.”
Connor pivoted and kicked his chair. A rung broke and he continued to kick until the dry maple lay in pieces. The floor shook and rafter dust sifted down. When Connor was finished he snatched a chair leg, turned and snarled. No one moved. He stepped to the door and pushed it open. Cold air rushed into the smokehouse, causing the hole in Fenton’s gum to ache.
“I ain’t forgetting this,” Connor said. “I ain’t forgetting how you run me out. Every damn one of you.”
He walked into the glittering darkness of the snow. Wind smacked the door, pinning it to the outside wall. Cards and money blew off the table to mix with the wreckage of the chair. Fenton watched the edges of a five-dollar bill blacken against the stove. Catfish closed the door. No one looked at each other.
Fenton walked around the room collecting money from corners like hunting mushrooms. Three kicks made the door rattle. Duke picked up a thin log and moved to a corner. Connor stood outside, refusing to enter. A stripe of snow clung to the right side of his body.
“Won’t start,” he said. “Who’s got cables?”
“I walked,” Fenton said.
“Me and W. came with Duke,” Catfish said.
Duke turned from the stove. “In the trunk.” He pushed a hand in his pocket for keys.
“Keep them,” Connor said. “I ain’t owing you nothing.”
“It’s hardly owing,” Duke said. “Winter’s winter.”
Connor spoke to Catfish. “I’ll borrow some kindling, if you ain’t caring.”
Catfish loaded Connor’s outstretched arms and closed the door. The room was cold again.
“Somebody better help him,” Fenton said.
No one moved, and Fenton put on his coat. Outside, snow hit him at a hard slant. He raised a shoulder and tipped his head, walking at an angle to the wind. Snow blew like vapor across the ground, squeaking beneath his boots.
Connor was jacking the front of his truck, cursing steadily. He spun with a pistol in his hand.
“It’s me,” Fenton said.
“There’s a goddam coyote out here,” Connor said. “First I ever seen one. Big as a hound dog.”
“Need a hand?”
“I don’t need nothing.” He plunged the lever down, the jack clicking loud. “Cables won’t do any good. The block’s froze up.” He switched hands. “I never did see a truck that didn’t pick the worst time to break down. My whole life I’ve worked on cars at zero weather with no goddam gloves.”
The front bumper was two feet off the ground.
“Ought to do her,” Fenton said.
Connor twisted newspaper into rolls and placed them beneath the engine block. He laid a few twigs over the paper, built a tepee of bigger sticks. “Block the wind, will you,” he said.
Fenton squatted beside him, feeling the cold slice through his coat. Connor struck three matches until the paper caught. He worked the fire carefully, making air holes at the bottom and maneuvering sticks over the burning twigs. Snow turned to water on the front of his coat. He used the biggest branch to make a torch, which he moved in circles around the metal.
“She’ll start now,” he said.
He climbed into the cab. The pickup rocked but remained on the jack, and the engine caught on the second try. He swallowed two pills from a plastic bottle in the glove box.
“Give me a lift,” Fenton said.
The road led past his house and he wanted to make sure Connor went home. Connor had already served thirty days for assault and the county judge didn’t like him. He’d made it clear that Melungeons should stay where they belonged.
“You’d better walk,” Connor said. He patted the pistol beside him on the seat. “Could be I ain’t headed straight home.”
He eased the clutch until the jack fell and the front wheels bounced in the fire, scattering sparks. The pickup blurred into the gray air. Fenton stomped the fire, wondering if he should warn Duke. He didn’t much care for him but nobody deserved a bushwhack. Telling him betrayed Connor, but it might also stop him from killing a man. Fenton shuddered. He trudged to the old chimney and dug his bottle from the bricks. Connor was a lot of talk and maybe th
is was more of it.
Fenton capped his bottle, returned to the smokehouse, and opened the door. A wave of heat stung his face. W. and Duke were passing a flask.
“Game’s over,” Catfish said. “Want a drink?”
Fenton shook his head.
“Shut that damn pneumonia hole,” W. said. He placed a gnarled hand on Duke’s leg. “You know this pup’s part Melungeon on his mama’s side. By God, I knew it, by God.”
“Thought you’d be off counting your winnings,” Duke said to Fenton.
“I broke even.”
Duke laughed and patted W. on the back. “If old W. would loosen up and take a chance, he might be the big man.”
“Way I see it,” W. said, “you don’t have much bragging room.”
Duke smiled a hard, tight-lipped smile. “All I lost was money.” He poured whiskey into the flask lid and drank it, staring at Fenton. “I got all my teeth and nobody saw my wiener. I won what counted.”
The money felt heavy in Fenton’s pockets, like wet insulation that let weather in. He decided to give Connor’s back to him, but not tonight, when Connor was somewhere waiting on the road, trigger finger tucked in his armpit to keep it warm.
“Be leaving,” Fenton said. At the door, he turned to face Duke. “Watch your chimney.”
Tree limbs crackled in the woods, tightening in the frigid air. Pale breath clouded around him. He’d walked home a loser many times, feeling bad. The times he’d won felt just as bad for taking money from his friends. Tonight, breaking even was the worst of all.
He started downhill and his foot skidded on frozen moss. He grabbed a sapling and the wood broke, stiff and fragile from the cold. Fenton twisted, flailing his arms and falling backwards over the steep hill. He watched the snow-laden treetops give way to black sky. His head struck a rock.
He was not sure how long he’d been lying on his back but he was cold, very cold. Snow beaded on his face. His head hurt and he wondered if anything was broken. He turned his head to check his neck. It still worked. A coyote stood just beyond arm’s reach, shaggy fur ruffled around its head. Fenton lifted a stiff knee and the coyote growled, a low sound like a motor deep in a mine. It backstepped into shadows.
Fenton crawled to a tree farther up the slope and used it to stand. The wind was slower now and he wondered how long he’d been out. Neither knee worked well. He fell again, and realized that he couldn’t make it home.
He stood and began walking, unsure if he was lifting his feet because he could no longer feel them in his boots. Sweat turned to ice on his forehead. He left the woods and headed for the dark shadow of the smokehouse. Leafless trees threw gray shadows across the snow. A car engine sputtered twice before cranking loud along the ridge. Duke’s taillights flashed like animal eyes on the snowy road.
Fenton limped to the smokehouse and beat on the crossbar lock, surprised to see blood on his hand since nothing hurt. When the latch slid free, he stepped inside and closed the door. The fire was out.
He draped his body over the stove, pressing his hands against its warm underbelly, and stayed that way until the pain arrived and he could control his fingers. He banked the few glowing coals with a broken chair rung. He needed smaller kindling, but Catfish had given it all to Connor. Fenton dropped a playing card in. It burned feebly at the edges, the plastic coating releasing a black smoke until the tiny flame died. Fenton opened the bottle and sipped, hurting his chapped lips. He gasped as whiskey ran into the space where his bridge had been.
He searched his pockets for something to burn and found a used tissue matted into a frozen ball. He remembered his mother ironing his father’s handkerchief Sunday morning before church. When the iron hit a wrinkle of dried mucus, it crackled from the heat. Fenton emptied his pockets, finding nothing.
From the direction of the road came two quick pistol shots, sharp and clear in the night. There was no answering gunfire. Fenton touched the back of his head and found blood clotted over a wound. The cold had probably stopped the bleeding early, and he wondered if the shot man had been so lucky. Connor had never been much of a hunter, plus he was hopped up. Fenton decided he’d probably missed.
On the table, Fenton divided his winnings into piles of ones, fives, and tens, hoping the ones would be enough. Newer bills, folded lengthwise, worked the best. Twice he had to warm his hands against the fading heat of the stove. His fingers were black and smoking but didn’t hurt.
He blew on the embers and when they stayed orange he quickly arranged the folded dollars in the coals, laid two chair rungs like a grate, and placed a split log on top. The paper turned crisp and curly and finally flared. He could smell the old varnish burning off the rungs. Fire moved along the bark. There were four logs left, enough to get through the night.
He felt very old and realized that being forty-four meant knowing what not to do. Twenty years before he’d have waited with Connor. Maybe in another twenty, he’d warn Duke straight out. Fenton stretched on the floor, then curled on his side, facing the stove. His wife would call Catfish’s wife in the morning, just as their mothers had called each other when they were kids. He closed his eyes. Catfish would come for him.
BLUE LICK
The funny-talked lady gave me a ten-page test that like to drove me blind marking in little circles no bigger than a baby catfish eye. When I was done, she said I was precocious. Then she called me a poor dear and I got mad on account of Daddy telling me never to let nobody say we were poor. He said to fight them if they did. I put my fists up fast. She saw how mad I was and asked me whatever for in that funny-talked way of hers.
I told her and she said, “I don’t mean poor like that, there’s other ways.” She just set and looked at me, real pale like she never got out much. On her back was a new flannel shirt, still yet with the folding marks not wore out. She wore red-laced shiny boots. I’d never seen a woman wear blue jeans before unless it was somebody’s granny but she wasn’t that old. I put my fists back down.
She kept looking at me like I was some kind of black snake that you ain’t supposed to kill or the rats will eat you out. My daddy said he chopped a black snake in half when he was little, and his own daddy tied him to a bucket and lowered him down a well over killing it. Daddy seen stars and it full day. Down below it was blacker than a cow’s insides, and the brick well walls were slick as a glass doorknob. He said they’ve got glass ones down to the courthouse. Daddy ought to know because he’s been there plenty, which is why I took them precocious tests anyhow.
She wasn’t a state lady and she wasn’t from town. She was a VISTA lady that got sent here over me and my brother, who can’t talk plain. He can’t say his Rs or his Ls, and there’s some sounds he don’t even know. I’m the one to understand him most. He ain’t precocious. What he is, is a singer, singing made-up stuff. Daddy calls him Little Elvis.
That lady, she went and reached her hand over mine and it was the smoothest thing, smoother than a horse’s nose hole, which is pure soft. She held my hand like you do a frog when you’re fixing to cut its legs off and eat them. I let my fingers lay real still so they wouldn’t wiggle and give her no big ideas. Mommy always did say I was full of big ideas. She took off two summers back and we ain’t seen hide nor hair of her yet. Daddy used to say “fuck you bitch” to her and that was one of my brother’s songs till we went to live with Granny on the Blue Lick River. Granny filled my brother’s mouth full of lye soap over that song. He never liked her after that. He called her the fuck-you-bitch when she was far enough away, like out back at the toilet by the river. Granny goes in there at least a hundred times a day. She’s skinny as a broom straw.
Daddy got out of prison early over there not being nobody to raise us up but Granny, who’s old as God. The funny-talked lady asked if I knew why Daddy went to prison the first time. I knew all right. Daddy’d told us a million times about wrecking his car and waking up thinking he was dead. What he done was run his car ninety miles an hour off the road by a Shell gas station and plow through
a fence into a horse. He woke up and the horse had come in the windshield on Daddy, covering him with blood that he thought was his own. A tree was blocking the S off the Shell sign. Daddy said he seen them big red letters and knew right then he’d died and gone to where everybody always said he’d wind up anyhow. The horse’s belly had tore open and half a colt was hanging out with its legs on the floorboards. Daddy thought he’d turned into part goat, like the devil.
They locked him up a year because the man whose horse it was didn’t like losing two at once. Daddy said he wouldn’t have a record if he’d had the sense to hit a mare that wasn’t knocked up. Plus the car was a borrowed car. When the man he borrowed it off heard how he run through a pasture fence into a horse, the man claimed it wasn’t borrowed after all. He took to watching out for us when Daddy was in prison. He watched good, I reckon, because Mommy took off with him. After Daddy got out of La Grange, the man’s barn burned down and people said it was Daddy done it, but nobody told the law.
Daddy came home with two tattoos on him right smack over his titties. One said “Blue” and the other said “Lick.” Little Elvis wrote on his ownself with an ink pen and Daddy laughed like a wild man when he seen it. You couldn’t read what was wrote. It wasn’t even letters, more like worm tracks on the riverbank.
Daddy’s feet stunk bad, too. He said it was from wearing shoes all the time in La Grange, even in the shower and bed. Little Elvis started wearing his shoes to bed, but Granny said it made the sheets bad to be muddy, and Daddy took her side because there wasn’t no mud in the joint. He said they had boys like girls in prison, too. Little Elvis wanted to know if their feet stunk. Daddy said we’d know we were grown-up men when our feet had a good solid stink to them. Little Elvis wanted Daddy’s socks so he could hurry it up, but Daddy said that was bad luck and we’d have to find another way.
