Sins of Our Fathers (9781571319128) (6 page)

“Hit me,” he was about to say, but he held up to think it through, and goatee looked over at him, mildly amused, and took a slug of his cocktail.

“You doing okay, my man?”

JW nodded, giving him minimal attention. It was stupid to banter at a time like this. It was all about managing risk. He was at seventeen, and this was not the conservative move he'd been making all night long. His heart sped up just thinking about it. But he'd seen almost every face card played already, and the tens, too, so the chances of going bust were smaller than average; in fact, they were increasingly smaller than average. Still, it was crazy to take a chance with so much money riding on one bet, so this time he held back three thousand in chips, breaking his own policy. The crowd applauded as if he'd done something brilliant. A man came out of nowhere and pointed at him.

“You, sir, are a winner!”

Obviously drunk. He sipped the water from the bottom of his ice. Stormy swooped in with another round of free drinks. “No, I'm okay,” said goatee. He lifted his hands up and leaned back, patting his paisley belly. “I gotta maintain my girlish figure.” He laughed and flung his hair. “Gotta fit in a canoe tomorrow.”

“JW, why don't you take a break?” whispered Stormy. He could feel her warm breath on his cheek as she clawed up his old cocktail napkin. “Have a drink and cool down,” she said.

He glanced at her and saw her concern. Dave Anderson, the casino manager, was watching from behind the crowd. He had read that managers often sent a waitress like Stormy in to distract a player and break a winning streak.

“We need this,” he told her. He thought about the relief, how happy Carol would be. “Hit me,” he told the dealer.

It was a three. His instincts were verified, and the crowd applauded. He had an extremely formidable twenty. Stormy sighed and pulled away with her tray.

“I'll stay!” He laughed. Three to two on twenty-four grand. He'd hit the road with thirty-nine thousand dollars, enough to really turn things around.

Goatee busted out at twenty-four. “Dude, it's all yours,” he conceded, pushing back from his chair, smiling around at the onlookers, his cheeks bright red. JW nodded and waved. Everything he had was riding on the next few cards. He should be nervous, he realized, but he felt good. Confident. The math was on his side. The probability of the dealer beating his twenty was very low. He was giddy. He was bouncing his knee under the table.

“Dealer has an ace in the hole, does the player want to buy insurance?”

It had to be the last ace. And even though he was a finance guy, JW hated insurance. He preferred to use risk management strategies that he could control. He quickly ran through the odds. If the dealer turned up an ace chances were about one in three that the next card would be a ten-card and the dealer would hit twenty-one. An insurance bet was like hedging in stocks. It paid two to one if the dealer got twenty-one,
helping mitigate the loss. But you lost it if not, which dampened the win. He drummed his fingers. Because so many face cards had already been played, the chances of the dealer turning up a ten were lower than normal, and twenty-one was the only score that could beat his hand. Plus, he only had three thousand held out of play to bet with, so even if he won the insurance bet, he'd walk away with a measly six thousand, and if he won the main bet, he'd lose the three, reducing his take to thirty-six thousand, which was short of the amount he had decided he would walk away at. He could take a loan from the casino, but he didn't really have any more money in the bank to pay it back with.

“I'll pass.” Just one card more.

The dealer's king of hearts. The blast of it obliterated all other sound. Gone were the incessant chinking and bleeping, the congratulatory encouragements of the slot machines. Gone were the music and the cacophonous crowd applauding his moves. Gone were the sibilant laughter of his children and the raspy guffaws of his wife. Gone were the discussions, the awards, the handshakes at the bank. The only sound in life was the sound of a car crashing and thundering through his chest.

“House wins,” he faintly heard the dealer say.

He closed his eyes. It was gone. He struggled for logic. Don't try to recapture it, he thought, just realize where you are now. And yet a wall of grief rose up in him. All that money, just torn away. He opened his eyes and looked down at his remaining chips. A measly three grand. The crowd of poor, older people began to drift away.

It shouldn't have been. The odds had been with him. But he had to play on, and put emotion behind him. In fact, the odds were even better now, when he thought
about it. He held back his three-hundred-dollar nut and pushed the remaining twenty-seven hundred into the box. He could claw his way back up to into thirty and this time he'd walk away, no matter what. Even at thirty. He could imagine Carol's surprise, and her relieved happy smile, at thirty thousand dollars. He needed that happy smile. The money would solve so many problems, the silly mundanities that had been driving them apart.

Two new players joined him at the table—an excited blonde in her twenties and her obsequious boyfriend. The dealer replenished the shoe, and JW slid his cards over the magic blue felt. Turned them up to look. A five and a seven, so he was at twelve. The play cycled to the boyfriend, then the blonde, and no face cards came up, making his chance of getting one that much higher. Dealer could get one, too. So he had a choice. He could sit at twelve and probably lose the twenty-seven hundred, or he could take a hit. The odds were two to one he would survive, since face cards are only a third of the deck.

“Hit me,” he said.

It was a jack.

“Sorry, JW,” the dealer said as she raked in his chips.

He sipped his drink, then picked up his original three hundred dollars.

“No worries. All about the fun, right?”

She nodded and dealt a new hand as another player took his place.

He rode the glass-and-chrome escalator back down. Willie Nelson had gone and the lines were long at all the teller windows, so he used the cashier booth in the center of the slots area. The whir of colors and ringing bells made him feel like he was standing inside a toy. The machines emitted
friendly voices, as if he were at a vast cocktail party of single robots on the prowl. The blue hairs sat staring at them, sipping their cocktails and their red wines and munching on pretzels as they pushed the spin buttons over and over. Spin, coin, spin, coin. Chink-chink.

As JW stepped up to the cashier he saw the woman across the aisle do something incredibly stupid: she left a dollar slot machine with a Top-Dollar Advisor feature and headed for the flashing-light slot machine near the front. He couldn't believe it. The Top-Dollar Advisor was one of only two machines like it in the entire casino. It was rumored to have the highest payout percentage in the state, and so it was almost never available. He knew he should be getting on the road, but he had time for a few quick spins. He traded his chips for tokens and hurried to the prized stool, slipping in ahead of a man who was pushing his walker in the same direction. Immediately, he hit a payout and collected twenty dollars.

“I think this round's on you!” the machine said in the voice of Cliff Clavin from the old TV show
Cheers,
and the chorus sang
where everybody knows your name
. He put the tokens in his keeper basket and played again.

“Congratulations!” Cliff said cheerfully, while the display advised him of the upcoming odds. If you paid attention, he knew, over time the Top-Dollar Advisor could help you beat the house.

After another hour or so he was still hanging in there. He was down to about a hundred and fifty dollars, but he still had the twenty-five in winnings off to the side, so he wasn't doing too bad. Plus he'd had a lot of fun and several more free drinks. The difference between guys like him and problem gamblers, he realized, was that he knew when to stop. He'd spent half his nut, so it was time to lock in his winnings and
cash out. All in all, he was only down a hundred and twenty-five. It was a fair price for a night out having fun, and he'd had a couple free drinks and some food to boot, so it was less than a hundred bucks when you thought about it. Not bad for entertainment.

He cashed out at the VIP window.

“See you tomorrow,” the teller said.

He shook his head. “I'm not in here that often,” he replied.

“I know,” she said, flushing. She smiled, wrinkling up her nose. “Just wanted to say something to you. Have a good night.”

As he passed the Big Winner mirror he noticed how rounded his shoulders were. He stood up and pulled them back, stretching his shoulder blades—like angel wings, the chiropractor had told him after Chris's accident, back when his headaches were nonstop and he worried he had a brain tumor. He really needed to practice better posture. He used to have that naturally from training horses. It was probably the driving. He would exercise in the morning. That kind of self-discipline was something he'd always been good at. It had always been his secret weapon, in business and in life—his ability to pursue the goals he set with unwavering determination. He glanced at his watch. 10:57.

Fuck.

He hurried to the car.

4

Carol and JW's house was on a residential street opposite the city park. When he was a kid the park had been groomed like a golf course, but in the twenty-five years since the mine closed the city had gone longer and longer between mowings. As he pulled over, he saw dandelion heads glimmering like pale mold in the moonlight. It was the house of the fateful dinner, and now it was theirs. When Carol was pregnant with Chris, Bob and Mary announced that Bob had accepted a new job in Atlanta. They had purchased a condo there and were going to keep an apartment here in town. They were giving them the family home so that their grandchildren could grow up like Carol had: playing in the park until the squirrels scampered at dusk, and dreaming of England and being royal.

The house was dark now, except for their second floor bedroom window. The clock glowed dimly on his dash: 11:15. She was likely in bed reading, or watching the late show. Perhaps it wasn't too late. He stepped out of the car and eased the door shut. He crossed the street. He would apologize. He had been delayed, and he had forgotten to charge his cell phone, he would say. It had run out. How stupid of him. But as he headed up the walk the window darkened. He continued on to the doorstep, where he saw his mail lying in a small bundle. A sticky note flapped in the breeze:

John—

Went to bed.

Carol

He picked it up. He ran his fingers down the grooves of the doorframe's half-Roman column. Rousing her at this point would not end well. He stood quietly for a moment as his hopeful vision of the evening dissolved, wishing there were some way he could reverse time and power past the gravity of the casino. He turned back to his car. He sat there outside his darkened house, then finally drove off into the night.

Aside from a few bites at the casino, he hadn't eaten since breakfast. He stopped on the way home for gas and some food. He pulled a Chuckwagon sandwich from behind the glass cooler door and stuck it in a microwave on the orange counter by the window. Outside, the local sheriff's deputy, a big bearish guy named Bob Grossman, had his red and blue lights flashing as he talked to a car full of kids parked in front of the store. He didn't look happy.

The microwave dinged. JW pushed the greasy button and pulled out the hot plastic pillow, avoiding the steam emanating from the tear he had made in the corner. The police lights shone into the store as he made his way toward the counter, turning the customers faintly red, then blue. A bunch of Native American kids tumbled out of the car. He watched them jostle each other, laughing like they didn't care, as Grossman yelled at them. He set his sandwich on the counter.

He had seen Grossman do this before. The Lions' Club had even had him in to talk about what a hazard the reservation kids were, and his strategy of keeping pressure on them. The boys ran wild and drank and caused problems
ranging from burglary to traffic accidents. The dysfunction, addiction, and poverty of the reservation was a regular point of contention at Chamber of Commerce events, where the more conservative members groaned about how the Native Americans lived in a welfare culture, while the liberal members said it was because of a cycle of poverty and broken families. Grossman was a member of the Rotary club, the Chamber, and the Lions, and was widely felt to be the best check they had on the problem. Some people were talking about supporting him for sheriff when Big Bill Donovan retired. JW grabbed a few paper napkins from the dispenser next to the register.

“Gas on three,” he said.

The cashier typed in the gas and bleeped through his food with a bored affect as JW studied the rolls of lottery tickets under the scratched plastic fog of the countertop.

“Thirty-one forty-nine. Anything else?”

“Yeah, give me a hundred and fifty in scratch-offs. Loons.”

He felt embarrassed, as if he were asking for a copy of
Penthouse
. She pulled out a long streamer of shiny-foiled tickets. The loons' backs glinted in the light.

“Thanks,” he said, folding them accordion-style as he hurried out the door, forgetting his sandwich and drink inside.