Little Boy Blue (13 page)

“Sho’ nuff glad you can read my
hand,” Barzo said. “But whatcha gonna do?”

“I call.”

“Then throw in another quarter.”

The man did so. His face was full of tiny
blue-red veins, giving a purple cast to his face.

First Choice flipped up the four of hearts.
“Gotta go,” he said, throwing in his hand. The other two called. It
made Red the focus of their attention. They thought he had either the Joker or
another seven.

“Cards comin’,” Red said,
leaving the deck on the blanket and turning each card with one hand so there
would be no question of trickery. “No pair,” he said. “Ace
still bets.”

“Check to the raiser.”

Those in between also tapped the blanket or
said “check.”

Red had a wilted dollar bill ready and
dropped it in, a substantial but not enormous second-card bet in this game.
The next man, he of the Jack and the quip, looked at the nine beside
Red’s seven and then at his own six. He put a dollar in the pot. The Ace
had added a Queen and called. The other two folded. “Naw,” the
attendant said. “You can’t have but sevens, but if I draw out
on you, one of them is liable to draw out on me.” He tapped the blanket
with the back of his knuckles and was turning over as Red spun the fourth
round.
“Jacks a pair… a trey to the Ace-Queen,
and a King to the dealer.
Jacks bet.”

“Five dollars,” the alcoholic
said.

The Ace-Queen was face-down before the bill
landed.

“I call,” Red said.

“Gonna try and draw out,” the
alcoholic said, as certain now as if the cards were face-up that Red had
another seven in the hole. The last thing in the world that he expected was
another King from the way the hand had played.

“Last card,” Red said. The pair
of Jacks caught a three, and Red had a five.

“Beat the Jacks,” the alcoholic
said, his voice assured. It meant he didn’t have anything more than the
Jacks. Two pair was a cinch, and it was forbidden to check a cinch in five-card
stud.

Now Red had the man in the crosshairs.
“How much you got?” he asked, eye-gesturing toward the pile of
money. “Whatever it is, that’s what I bet.”

“Oh no, Mr. Slick
Barzo.
You can’t run me this
time. Just
cause
you got all the money on the
ward.” He was quickly counting the dimes, quarters, and half-dollars.
“Fourteen dollars,” he said.

“Put it in,” Red said, dropping
three five-dollar bills into the pot. The other man didn’t hesitate.

Red turned up the hidden King.

The alcoholic’s face was already red,
and now it blotched. “I can’t go for that bullshit. Not with you
dealin’.”

“Sheeit”, First Choice said.
“Talkin’ like a fool.
Nobody gotta cheat you. An’
if you’re gonna be a sucker, be a quiet one
.“

“Right,” the young attendant
said. He was the voice of authority. “If you can’t lose quietly,
don’t play.”

Red stacked the coins and watched the play of
emotions. A good confidence man reads human nature unerringly, understanding
beyond the wildest hopes of the psychologist. A con man must be right to
prevail, where the psychologist depends upon his diploma for a living. Deciding
the man was no actual threat, he cooled him off. “I didn’t know a
King was coming. I put
a chickenshit
two bits in the
pot as a raise to make you think I had the Joker or a pair of sevens. It was a
setup for just what
happened,
that I catch a pair of
Kings and someone would be able to beat the sevens but not the Kings. If nobody
paired, I run the bluff all the way through. If somebody made Aces, or
could beat the Kings, I fold up… with a dollar- fifty invested. The trap
got set, and you fell for it. Don’t feel bad—good poker players get
nailed in that one, and you ain’ too good.” He extended three
one-dollar bills to the man.

Alex hadn’t needed the explanation. It
was analogous to a chess gambit, offering the poisoned pawn. Chess was another
game Alex had learned with ridiculous ease. First Choice had taught him how the
pieces moved and the purpose, and in two weeks Alex won regularly. Now the
other poker players were digesting the information. First Choice caught
Alex’s eye and winked. Although Alex was around Red more, Red being more
voluble, he was more comfortable with First Choice. The black man also showed him
boxing rudiments: how to stand, how to stick out straight left jabs instead of
the head- lowered wild roundhouses natural to young boys. Minds were too sick
with other things to be sick about racism in the state hospital, so nobody
thought anything about the boy hanging out with black confidence men. And Alex
liked being around them; they made him laugh and were obviously fond of him.
They told him stories of prison, where the “code” of violence was
similar to that of the Old West, and for Alex it had a similar fascination.
They told him about hustling, too, and about things an eleven-year-old
doesn’t usually learn: how to spot a card mechanic (his hands were too
small, actually, to learn how to do anything), “short” con
games such as “The Match“ and ”The Strap,“ the ethics
of criminality, and tales about hustling and thieving. He remembered one story
about a crap game in the parking lot of Churchill Downs at Derby time, where
they’d switched in ”Ace-Trey-Fives,“ dice with only those
numbers and consequently unable to ”seven,“ giving them into a
mooch.
The mooch
was shooting twenty dollars, while
they made side bets of a hundred and two hundred. After five passes, when
they’d trimmed off two thousand, they walked away, leaving the square
with the dice. Now they laughed in recollection, conjecturing what might have
happened if the others had found the square shooting phony dice.

“Wanna play for me, Alex?” Red
asked. “I’m gonna take a shit, shave an’ shower, an’
get ready for my woman.”

This was precisely what Alex had been waiting
for the last three hours. Whenever Red won, he pocketed his investment and some
of his winnings,
then
left the remainder for the boy.
The first time, thanks to strict instructions to play only cinches, and also
thanks to the other players never believing an eleven-year-old, he won thirty
dollars. The next three times he lost, but only small amounts, once less than a
dollar. Now he grinned, and Red tousled the boy’s hair while turning over
the seat. Red picked up the currency, but the remaining stacks of coins equaled
what most of the other players had before them. The tightness was already in
the boy’s stomach, the quickened heartbeat and utter concentration on the
falling of the cards. Red paused a moment to watch; Alex had a Jack in the hole
and a nine up, and he folded the hand. Red patted him on the back and left. In
all previous sessions, Alex had been allowed to play only an Ace or a King in
the hole or a pair back to back, and he had to be able to beat whatever he
could see, with no bluffs. Now Red had told him to keep playing that way, but
if he had a King in the hole and had an Ace up, he could bluff, if that pair
would beat whatever else someone might have. As the cards came, he felt a
glorious fear—glorious because it was equal parts hope.

Two hands later he won with a pair of eights
back to back, catching the third eight on the last card to the
attendant’s two Aces. It was a fairly good pot. Because he was ahead, he
decided to bluff at the first chance, and because it was more fear and hope
than batting a cinch hand. The chance came two deals later. He had a King in
the hole and an Ace exposed and didn’t pair either. Another player paired
tens on the last card and checked. Alex shoved out ten dollars, delicious
terror spreading from his stomach to his throat and limbs. The pair of tens
hesitated, while Alex wondered if his face was showing his fear. The tens
turned over, flinging the cards angrily to the next dealer. “Fuckin’
kid sleeps with Aces and Kings…”

Playing the Joker in the hole, Alex caught a
Queen-high straight on the next hand, trapping the attendant with two big pair
and another player with three of a kind. It was a huge pot for an institution,
nearly fifty dollars. The attendant slammed the cards down and quit. First
Choice was short of money, and Alex gave him twenty dollars.

On weekends the game always lasted until
supper and started again after the weekend movie on Saturday night. On Sunday
there were fresh players, since patients got visits and money. But this was
Saturday, and the game ended at one-thirty. The last player with three sixes
ran into Alex with three Aces. In a fury, the man tore up his cards and threw
them into the air; then he kicked his chair over as he stood up. First Choice
leaned back, grinning, but there was no doubt what would happen if the losing
man tried to strike the boy. Alex couldn’t help but flinch in the face of
a furious adult.

The crashing chair brought attendants into
the room; they were keyed to psychotic assaults and explosions. When they saw
the man slowly picking up the chair, they relaxed.

Just one player besides First Choice remained
in the game, and now he claimed a headache. Alex had nearly all the money in
the game, and had already squirreled away two twenty-dollar bills, which were
contraband in the institution. Nobody was supposed to have anything of a larger
denomination than a ten-dollar bill, and a total of twenty-five
dollars—but Red had a huge bankroll and First Choice Floyd also had several
hundred. Now Alex’s shirt pocket was stuffed with bills, and his jeans
pocket bulged with coins that pulled them dangerously low. “I wanna catch
Red before his visit,” he said, glowing.

“It ain’t always gonna be
gravy,” First Choice said. “Believe me, boy.”

“I bet I won over a hundred
dollars!” To an eleven-year-old it was an immense amount.

“So you’re a poker prodigy,
young’un,” Floyd said. “An’ sho’ nuff a lucky
young motherfucker.” He was folding up the card table blanket.

Alex started across the dayroom, glowing and
bouncing, paying no attention to the minds full of unreality around him. Then
his eyes focused on a grossly obese man (a round circle of a body topped with a
round circle of a head) who was beardless as a eunuch, and whose cheek flesh
was wrinkled in infinite tiny creases rather than seams. Red had said the man
was a hermaphrodite, and when Alex learned what the word meant he thought Red
was joshing him. Alex never did find out for sure, though he peeked at the
man’s penis in the shower and it was no bigger than a pencil. The other
part he couldn’t see. But since then he had talked to the poor demented
creature and couldn’t help teasing him. Now he looked around the dayroom
for attendants (they’d warned him already), and he saw none. Probably drinking
coffee in the office, he thought, flopping down in an empty chair beside the
man. The beardless blob didn’t even glance around.

“Look here,” Alex said, tugging
at his sleeve.

The round dome turned slowly, the eyes
blinked slowly, and the stubby, nicotine-brown index finger and thumb (from
butts pinched to the last puff) came slowly to the mouth.
“Gimme
Ol’ Gold.
Please.
Ol’ Gold.”

“Fuck you and Old Gold, too, queer old
cocksucker. Tell me what you’re gonna do about it.”

One hand stayed gesturing at the mouth,
while
the other came ponderously up and patted the immense
belly. “Of Gold…
Ol’ Gold.”

Alex’s eyes shifted to the corridor,
again seeing no attendant. He bit his lip and quickly slapped him—a
whiplike flip of the fingernails—across his flat snout. The round
head jerked back like a turtle’s. A shadow passed over his face, and
a redness
suffused it. “Bad boy, bad boy…”

“Tell me what the fuck you’re
gonna do.”

“Stick a stake in your ass, bad boy.
Stick pins in your eyes, naughty boy. Put you on a big ship with a frying pan
in the hold, and put you on there, so when the ship rolls in the sea you slide
back and forth and sizzle…”

“Hey, kid!
Goddammit
to hell!”

Alex jumped before looking around. The
attendant in charge of the ward, a redhaired man in his forties, thin and
sourpussed, was just inside the dayroom from the corridor. “I’ve
goddamn told you not to tease Benny. Someday
he’s
gonna backhand you across the room. He’ll stop talkin’ and make it
real as hell.”

“I thought he had one of those brain
operations where he can’t.”

“That’s what they say. Anyway,
you don’t fuck with him anymore. Christ, I’ll be glad when they
send you to the juvenile ward. Get away from him.”

The fat, lobotomized, hermaphrodite
schizophrenic was still chanting a litany of grotesque tortures when Alex
scurried away from the man in white. The boy headed toward the other wide
corridor, down which was the big ward restroom, dormitory, showers, and
clothing room, all the places the light-skinned black man might be unless
he’d already gone on his visit. While Alex walked, the words of the
attendant went through his mind, making him wonder why he hadn’t been
sent to the juvenile ward. Nearly all new patients were sent to permanent wards
in two weeks, and juveniles usually sooner, most of them to the regular
juvenile ward and a few to the electric-shock ward. Just one juvenile that Alex
knew about had been kept in Receiving during his entire observation commitment,
though he’d left before Alex arrived. The other boy had killed his father,
sneaking up behind him with a .22 rifle while the man was in a chair. Alex had
seen the juveniles but kept away from them. They had their own courtyard for
recreation, but it was too small for softball so they came to the main yard
once or twice a week. It was big enough for four softball diamonds, all formed
by the surrounding buildings. All the male patients sane enough to find their
way back to the wards were let into it during the day. When the juveniles were
out in it, they kept to one area, and Alex kept away from them. Now as he
looked for Red, he realized that they must think his case was serious, like the
other boy’s; otherwise they would have moved him. It didn’t matter.
He preferred being right where he was.