Lonesome Animals (11 page)

“Woo trust no one,” Woo said.

“Good policy,” Strawl said.

There was a fuss at the back table. One of the poker players had busted. The dealer, young Hollingsworth, stood and grinned, watching him go. Hollingsworth's pants were wide-legged and gaudily striped like the Chicago gangsters', though his western-style boots sported pointed toes and smooth soles. He had bangs like a girl's. Strawl doubted he owned a hat. His father had once tried his hand at politics and campaigned for Strawl's sheriff position. In response, Strawl had revived a rumor Old Man Hollingsworth passed bad paper, and when the man accused him of slander, Strawl produced a copy of a check for the newspaper. It was smudged and would never suffice as evidence in front of a
judge, but the public had no legal training and Strawl won the election handily. After, Strawl issued license plate numbers and descriptions of Hollingsworth's three automobiles and ordered his deputies to ticket the cars on sight or be canned. A month and Hollingsworth quit coming to his county at all, circling it for Omak or opting for east and Spokane.

Strawl had arrested the younger Hollingsworth two or three times for general rudeness, once jailing him overnight and feeding him bologna he'd dunked in a piss-filled toilet bowl. The son looked boy; most silverspoons did till the day they died—they had poppas too big to be men ever and wouldn't know a worry from a snipe den.

“Seat right here,” the silverspoon said.

“I'm content where I am,” Strawl said. Cards never held much interest for him. He saw no sport in throwing away cards just for the prospect of more. Triple the money and it still wasn't worth the time one spent or the company required of him.

Another player circled an arm from the table. He wore striped overalls, the kind the railroad favored; a brakeman, Strawl surmised. His face was red and a pockmarked mess.

“Heard you lost your ranch. Likely too broke for a money game,” the brakeman asked.

Strawl smiled and shook his head. “You a real estate maven, are you?”

The brakeman's eyes blazed. “Land isn't the only money.”

“It's the only kind that counts, you said so yourself.”

“Ignore the old bastard. He's broker than a carousel pony,” Hollingsworth said. “I know that for a fact.”

“No fighting inside,” Woo whispered to Strawl.

Strawl nodded. He pulled ten dollars from his pocket. Hollingsworth was ahead, so he made change. The others at the table slipped back into themselves and waited on cards. A shovel-faced hired hand called Pete partnered with the Hollingsworth boy, it
was clear. Two San Poil cowhands held their cards on either side of Pete and the silverspoon. Cloud was their last name; the country held a bevy of them, cousins or brothers. He didn't know which they were, but they recognized him, he could see.

“You know the Bird folks?” Strawl asked one.

They shook their heads and a hand later, swapped their cards for their feed caps and exited through the back door.

“You do that to them?” Powell asked. He was the railroad man. He seemed good-natured enough and offered Strawl a cigarette with his grimy fingers, which Strawl declined.

Strawl said, “I have that effect on some.”

All laughed except the dark-complected man across from him. He appeared closer to Strawl's age. Strawl figured him for a black Irish. The man looked too desperate to have a ranch behind him. Strawl guessed he was one the banks undid, and from the looks of his stack, he was getting undone by his cards, too.

The cards passed among the four of them, but Strawl didn't give much heed. He'd ante and cut when the deck was offered and deal his turn. But he rarely opened and never bet past his ante. He was hoping to eavesdrop, but the card players seemed intent on disrupting his peace.

“You ever gonna play a hand?” the dark Irish asked.

Pete, the shovelface, thumbed cards to each player. Hollingsworth nodded, and he flipped Strawl's last card faceup. It was a king.

“Say, a cowboy,” he said. “Gotta be some luck in that.”

Strawl glanced at the silverspoon, then faced the card down and set it in his hand. He had two more. No one had beaten three kings since he'd taken a hand, but when the bet circled his way, he tabled the cards. When the silverspoon had his turn dealing, he tossed each of Strawl's cards up. There were a pair of twos and a king and two other cards Strawl didn't regard.

“Ain't many card players play faceup,” the shovelface said.

“May as well,” the Irish said. “He ain't parted with nothing but an ante all night.” They dealt him up the next hand and the one that followed, good cards sometimes, a high pair or one shy of a flush.

“Goddamnit, you don't like money much, do you?” the Irish said.

The railroad man took the deal, sliding Strawl three sevens.

Strawl tossed the cards on the deck.

“Why, you old bastard. Who are you to pass that hand?” The Irish stood to circle the table, then thought the better of it. “You're a stupid old goat aren't you? That's what you are. Old goat. Stupid.”

“Make up your mind,” Strawl said. “Am I an old goat or stupid?”

“Both.” He looked at the rest of the table. “Nobody calls him nothing but Stupid. Or Old Goat. Those are his names. You understand that, Stupid?”

Strawl smiled. “Old Goat. I like that better.”

“Stupid,” the Irish said.

The silverspoon and his partner grinned. Strawl studied them. They plotted like queers. To them it was always a distraction. You had to attend to what you couldn't see. The silverspoon kept a knife. He'd seen him rub the top of his boot to check its place.

A hand later, a clatter rose on the porch. The players glanced up. Elijah opened the door, picked up a whiskey bottle behind the bar, and had himself a belt and then another, then held up the bottle to the light. “Ye have not eaten bread, neither have ye drunk wine or strong drink: that ye might know that I am the Lord your God,” he said, pointing the bottle toward the card players, then drank again. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto me what is mine.”

No one answered him.

“Woo, give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away, or cast ye the unprofitable
servant into outer darkness where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Elijah offered his rifle as collateral and Woo opened the register and separated the bills into ones and fives for forty dollars.

“Goddamn thief,” the Irish said.

“Who is that speaking?” Elijah asked. “Is Coyote deceiving me again?”

“Shit,” the Irish said.

“It is Coyote,” Elijah said. “Coyote it is as the Creator said. All the animals have turned against one another. They have forgotten the Golden Rule.”

“Confusing your religions, aren't you?” the silverspoon asked.

“God knows no bounds,” Elijah said. He appeared unperturbed. Pete's boot pushed a chair from the table.

“I thank you,” Elijah said. “Perhaps you have a many-shots rifle to trade.”

“Aren't any Indians talking like that, anymore,” Pete said. “You're talking like a used-to-be Indian.”

“And now so are you.” Elijah laughed. He looked to Strawl.

“Stupid is his name,” the Irish told him. “He likes Goat. But Stupid suits him better.”

Elijah shook his head. “His name is Death and he rides a pale horse.”

“Might be old as death,” the railroader said. “We don't have a need for him or his horse. He don't ever bet.”

“Might make him good company.”

“I don't know why,” Powell answered. “He don't never talk, neither.”

Elijah said, “I am full of talk and he is full of quiet. We are like the sun and the moon, the Alpha and Omega.” He handed the whiskey to the Irish. “Maybe this will at least allow you to live with your small self.”

The Irish drank. Elijah went on, “The sun will rise from his lodge in the east, that is sure, though there is no evidence this is so, other than the days. Money will pass hands many times before it finds that person to whom it will remain. This, too, is certain.”

Pete the shovelface ignored him, working his stack of ones. The Irish watched Elijah change a dollar bill from the silverspoon's nickels and quarters.

“Andrew,” Elijah said to the Irish, “you are poor once more. God has no love for you. You gamble like Sinkalip. You should go to the privy and get some advice from your excrement.”

“Goddamn you.” Andrew opened his hand to take a swipe at Elijah. Strawl caught his elbow halfway there and shoved the Irish out of his seat.

“I ain't scared of you, Stupid.” The man fumbled and righted his chair.

The railroader handed the Irish the bottle. “ I'd let it go, Andrew.”

Elijah took the deck, rattled the cards awkwardly as he was missing his left pinky finger, then slid them across the table. Strawl was to his right, and Elijah looked to him to open. Strawl examined his hand. He had all diamonds. When he checked closer, he was shocked to see they were straight to the jack. He bet a dollar.

“Well, now maybe we'll get along,” the Irish said. He raised, and Powell raised him. It was five more when it returned to Strawl. He looked for anyone to comment, but they were all contemplating their own hands. They bumped again. The bottle went with the betting. The silverspoon and shovelface pooled their funds. Strawl heard them whispering and saw them signal to compare hands. The silverspoon folded his cards on the next pass.

Strawl reached into his wallet for the expense money. Elijah raised five more. Strawl saw it and watched the others do the same. Each was staring into his own hand, certain he had the winner, except Elijah, who was more amused by the seriousness of the game.
Strawl knew putting too much faith in the hand you could see was not good card sense, and it was the good hands that cost money—no one went broke on bad cards—and he saw that each was making the same mistake, courting his own hand rather than guessing against it.

“Cards to draw?” Elijah asked. Not a player took one.

“Shit, oh dear,” the railroader said.

The last raise had been Elijah's and he started the betting again with two bills, both twenties. He tossed them toward the middle of the table. The players all watched them flutter, then go still. “One for me,” he said. “And one for Jesus Christ, who gave his life so that sinners may live.”

The shovelface was short and at a loss.

“I'll put up the Model A,” he said finally.

Elijah shook his head. “Money,” he told him.

“I ain't got it.”

Elijah nodded at the silverspoon. “Ask your near-wife to help you out.”

The silverspoon smiled. “Time was, you'd take blankets and beads.” He dug into his pocket and sorted for three more fives.

“There was a time as well when Samson slew Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Then Delilah took his hair. But he learned and prayed to God and was permitted to pull the great house down upon all of them.”

“He was just as dead,” the silverspoon said.

“But so was everyone else.”

The Irishman stared at Strawl. His face had warmed at the turning of each card, but now it had gathered back its gloom.

“You ain't bet all night, why you going all out now?”

“I like my hand,” Strawl told him.

“We all like our hands.”

Strawl didn't dispute him. Neither did the rest, and the Irish folded.

The railroader followed without checking his wallet. Elijah offered them the bottle and the two sat swapping it.

Strawl raised ten more.

“Petey?” Elijah asked.

“I told you. I ain't got it.”

“What about you, dog lover?”

“My last is bet.”

Elijah was grinning now. “It's only me and you, it seems,” he said to Strawl.

“Whoa now,” Pete said. “You can't just shut us out.”

“Yes,” Elijah said. “I can.”

“You know my note's good,” Hollingsworth told him.

“I know you say it is,” Elijah told him. “But this man may not want to treat with you.”

“It's not square to keep Pete out of the game,” Hollingsworth said.

“You exiled me like Moses himself.”

“You earned it,” Pete said. “You wouldn't argue that, would you?”

“I would not. But that's not the point.”

“Well we ain't ever had a stake go this high before.”

“We may never again if we let you gamble with no folding money.”

“I'm not asking to welch,” Pete said.

“What are you requesting, then? The only person here who trusts you is Hollingsworth, and nobody trusts him.”

“You name it,” Pete said. “You and him.”

Elijah turned to Strawl. “Would it satisfy you to see this man eat some fresh horseshit?”

Strawl said, “His partner has to settle up, too.”

“Agreed?” Elijah asked.

“That's worth double,” Hollingsworth said.

Strawl put in another ten, so did Elijah.

Pete showed four kings. Powell sighed.

Elijah shook his head. “All that money before me and bad fortune, too.” He threw his cards in the deck without even showing them.

“Well?” Pete asked.

Strawl turned his hand on the wood table.

“Just a flush?” Pete whooped.

The railroader said, “Pete. You better look closer.”

The cards were out of order, and the moment it took for Pete to realize he'd been bested felt a little like what hitting him might have. Pete's shovelface turned red. His mouth opened once but only sputtered.