The Gamble (I) (9 page)

Agatha and Violet gaped at the doorway, then at each other.

“Tt-tt.”

“Violet, you must stop tittering every time you see that man. And you’re blushing, for heaven’s sake.”

“So are you.”

“I am not!”

“You are, too! Why, Agatha, he called you a wench!
Tt-tt.”

“I’ve never been so humiliated. The man has no manners at all.”

“I think he’s adorable.”

Agatha sniffed. But inside, she was beginning to agree with Violet.

Violet fanned her warm face. “My, my, my.” She studied the curtains that had brushed his shapely shoulders. “A cover for that birdcage?”

“Saloon people are crazy. Don’t try to figure them out.”

“But why would he want such a thing?”

“I’m sure I have no idea.”

They hadn’t time for speculation before they were surprised by the reappearance of Gandy, this time bursting in through the back door, towing Miss Jubilee by a wrist. She was followed by Ruby and Pearl.

Again both milliners blushed highly. And Agatha became so incensed, she got to her feet. How dare he bring those painted women in here!

“Girls, I want y’all t’ meet Miz Downin’ and Miz Parsons, our closest neighbors. Ladies, these three delightful creatures are Jubilee, Pearl, and Ruby, the gems of the prairie.”

Jubilee dipped her knees. “Charmed.”

“Pleased to meetcha,” said Pearl.

“Miz Downin’, Miz Parsons,” Ruby greeted.

Agatha and Violet stared. Gandy stalked out to the showroom and returned immediately with a bolt of red satin. He flopped it onto the worktable and clinked down a stack of gold coins beside it.

“Ten of ‘em. Count ‘em. They’re yours if you can have a drawstring cover made for that birdcage by seven o’clock tonight. Jube, Pearl, and Ruby’ll help you stitch it.”

“Aw, Scotty, come on...”

“Now, Jube, honey, you’re a female, aren’t you? All females know how t’ sew.”

“Not this one!”

Agatha’s gaze flashed between the two brightest things in the room: Miss Jubilee and the stack of gold coins. One hundred dollars. Her mouth watered. Her eyes flickered to the drawing of Mr. Singer’s masterpiece with the price printed in bold numbers beside the flywheel. Forty-nine dollars. When would she ever again see enough money to cover the price of the only thing in the world she coveted?

Her lips opened but no sound came out. What would Miss Wilson say? What would her fellow union members say? The president of the local W.C.T.U. sewing accoutrements for the Gilded Cage Saloon. But, oh, all that money!

Pearl was complaining. “I never sewed anything in my life!”

“I did. And plenty,” put in Ruby. “Nothin’ to it.”

“But, Ruby—”

“Quit your frettin’, Pearl. If the boss say stitch, we stitch.”

“I’m with Pearl,” Jubilee said. “I’m no seamstress.”

Agatha found her voice at last. “Neither am I. I’m a milliner. And at seven o’clock tonight I will be in the Gilded Cage soliciting signatures on temperance pledges from the customers at the bar. What would my coworkers think if they knew I’d made the red cover for your birdcage?”

“Nobody has t’ know,” Gandy interjected, stepping closer to Agatha. “That’s why I brought the girls in the back door, so nobody’d see them.” He stood so near she smelled tobacco smoke on his clothing again. She dropped her gaze to the floor. Her chin snapped up again when he lightly grasped her upper arms.

“Please, Miz Downin’?”

How disconcerting to be taken so by a man. “It would be a conflict of interests, don’t you see?”

“Then perhaps a little added incentive...” He turned and she thought he was going to add another coin to the stack. Instead, he took one away and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.

“We’ve wasted five minutes already. In another minute the price goes down ten dollars. The sooner you say yes, the better.”

“But you... I...” Agatha clasped her hands and glanced helplessly from Gandy to his ladies to the stack of coins.

“Agatha,” Violet warned, “don’t be foolish.”

“Violet, shush!” She would not be coerced this way, especially by a woman without enough sense to see they were being bribed.

“Your money undoubtedly came from the poor unfortunate souls of this town who frequent your estab—”

“Eighty,” he interrupted calmly, removing another coin and dropping it in his pocket.

“Mr. Gandy, you’re despicable.”

He glanced in a circle. “Don’t see an overabundance o’ customers in here today.”

He directed his next question to Violet. “How’s business been lately, Miz Parsons?”

“Not too—”

“Violet, I’ll thank you to take a lock!”

“Well, he can see it’s true, Agatha. All he has to do is look around. And weren’t you just saying the other day—”

“Violet!”

Violet ignored her boss and leaned confidentially close to Gandy. “Things aren’t going so well in the hat business. Seems with all this talk about women’s suffrage the hat is becoming the symbol of emancipation. Tsk, tsk.” She shook her head sadly. “Some women are actually giving up wearing them altogether. It’s bound to get worse, too, now that we’ve started our own temperance union.”

Gandy’s dimples appeared. He stretched out a hand and plucked up another coin. Then he grinned askance at Agatha.

“Seventy.”

Agatha’s throat went dry. She stared at the remaining coins, wishing she could gag Violet.

“I haven’t the foggiest notion of what it is you want in the first place,” she said, less forcefully. “All I know is hats.”

“Something t’ cover the birdcage. Use your imagination. Tied at the top, loose at the bottom, split up the side so the door can open. Jube can show you.”

“I sure can, Miss Downing.”

Agatha looked into the stunningly beautiful slanted eyes of Miss Jubilee and recalled her sitting perched like a snow-white dove on the swing as the wagon rolled down the street.

“Sixty,” Gandy said in the softest tone yet.

Agatha’s head snapped around. Her glance dropped to the dwindling stack of coins, then lifted to the picture
of the sewing machine. Greed buoyed her heart. Despair weighted it. Two more coins and the sewing machine would be beyond her means. Gandy’s hand moved again.

“Stop!” she called.

He hung the hand by one thumb from his waist and waited.

She dropped her head guiltily. “I’ll do it,” she agreed quietly.

“Good. Jube, Pearl, Ruby, y’all do whatever she says. Just be ready t’ greet the customers at seven o’clock sharp.” His hand moved to the coins again.
King-k-k-king!
The four rescinded gold pieces joined the others. “A deal’s a deal,” he said, then stepped close to Agatha, extending his hand. “By seven, then, Miz Downin’?”

She stared at his hand. Long, dark fingers peppered with wispy black hair. Clean nails. Thin wrist. The conspicuous diamond glittering from his little finger. She removed her thimble and placed her palm in his very warm one. He squeezed firmly and shook hands with the solidity he’d afford any man. Somehow, she felt flattered. Against her will, she looked up. His dimples were deep. His eyes were unduly attractive. He had disarmingly perfect lips. Why did it seem that only the scoundrels were so blessed?

“By seven,” she agreed.

But it felt as if she’d made a pact with the devil.

Agatha sent Pearl over to measure the height and circumference of the cage. Then the five women set about making the cover. It was a simple enough design, like a flat window curtain with a drawstring at the top. She lit a fire in the stove and warmed the irons to press a one-inch hem around the perimeter. She handled the irons herself, while Violet and Ruby worked just ahead of her, marking the width with chalk, and Pearl kept the silk flowing wrinkle-free from the pressing board. Jubilee, meanwhile, took the cool irons to the stove and brought the hot ones back. Then the women sat in a rough circle and began stitching the hems into place.

It was immediately evident that Jubilee and Pearl had told the truth; they were hopeless with a needle. Ruby, on the other hand, was nimble-fingered and careful to make her stitches uniform and invisible. It wasn’t long before Jubilee jabbed her finger. “Ouch!” She stuck it in her mouth and sucked. “Damn and double damn anyway! I can’t sew! I’m making a regular mess of it, and now I’ll get blood on the silk.”

“Why don’t you just sit back?” Agatha suggested. “Actually, with Ruby being as adept as she is, we’ll finish with time to spare.”

“Can I quit, too?” Pearl pleaded. “I’m no better at this than Jube is.”

Agatha glanced at Pearl’s pitiful handiwork. “You, too. If you’ll just hold the satin on your lap and help guide it
around to keep it from wrinkling, that will be sufficient.”

Three thimbles clicked against three needles and the shimmering cloth shifted slowly across their laps.

“Would you look at Ruby!” Jubilee exclaimed after some time. “Where did you learn to stitch like that, Ruby?”

“Where you think? Waverley, o’ course. My mama work in the big house for Miz Gandy and she teach my mama t’ do fine stitches, and my mama teach me.”

“You mean the young Mrs. Gandy or the old Mrs. Gandy?”

“Old one. Young one too flighty for stitchin’.” The black woman gave the white one a meaningful grin. “She jus’ like you, Jube.”

The three laughed good-naturedly.

Violet missed a stitch at the mention of the young Mrs. Gandy. “Waverley?” she probed.

“Waverley Plantation, down in Columbus, Miz’sippi, where Mr. Gandy grew up.”

“You mean our landlord grew up on a plantation?” Violet’s romantic visions became evident in her eyes.

Ruby’s husky voice reminisced. “Prettiest one you ever seen. Big white columns out front and back, big wide verandas. And cotton fields all around, reachin’ farther than a fox can run on a cool mornin’. And the Tombigbee River shuggin’ through the middle of ‘em. It a glory sight, that place.”

Agatha’s interest had been aroused, but she let Violet ask the questions.

“You mean he owned it?”

“His daddy did. That was the old Mr. Gandy. He dead now and so’s his missus. But they was as fine a white folks as you’ll find. My mama and daddy was slaves for old Mr. Gandy. Me, too, before the war come. Me and Ivory and the boss, we all born on Waverley. Runned barefoot together and shucked pecans and swum in the river in our nothin’-ons. Whoo-ee, that was a time! ‘Course, that was before the war.”

Agatha tried to picture Gandy as a young boy running barefoot with a pair of black children but the picture wouldn’t gel. She saw him instead with a cigar in his
mouth and a glass of whiskey in his hand.

Violet was so curious she sat on the edge of her chair. “What happened to Waverley?” she prompted.

“Still there. War missed Columbus. They fight in a big circle all around it, but not there. All the big houses still standin’.”

“Waverley,” Violet repeated dreamily. “What a romantic name.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Try though she might, Agatha could not keep her curiosity at bay. “Who owns it?”

“He does, the boss. Only went back once since the war, though. Found too many ghosts, I reckon.”

“Ghosts?” Violet’s eyes rounded.

“The young Miz Gandy—she and the little girl.”

Agatha’s needle stilled. She looked across the red satin at Ruby. “He had a wife... and a daughter?”

Ruby nodded, never taking her eyes off her stitching. “Dead. Both of ‘em, and after the war ended, too. But he never made it home in time t’ see ‘em again.”

It flashed through Agatha’s mind that other men had turned dissolute for far less reason. Still, it was a shame. He was young, after all.

Violet had become so engrossed in the story she had to be reminded to keep sewing. Still, she asked more questions.

“How did they die?”

Ruby’s glance lifted briefly, but her fingers kept moving. “If he know, he might go back, but nobody know for sure. Found ‘em on the road, halfway to town, layin’ upside the wagon, and the mule standin’ there between the hitches, waitin’ to be drove on. Young Mr. Gandy, he gits back and they’s already buried inside the black iron fence ‘cross the road beside his mama and daddy.”

“Oh, my, that poor man,” sympathized Violet.

Ruby nodded. “Lef’ to fight them Yankees an’ come back to nothin’ but a few niggers tryin’ to scratch some collard greens outta them used-up cotton fields.” She shook her head sadly. “Second time he lef’ he never go back.”

“And he took you with him?”

“Me?” Ruby looked up, surprised. She laughed in her
throaty contralto. “No, not me. I one uppity nigger. When they tell me I free, I go off to the city. Natchez. Figure to live fancy an’ have me easy days till I see my chariot comin’.” She chuckled again, ruefully. “Ended up on my back on the rivuh-boats, pleasurin’ the gennulmen. No chariot comin’ for me no more,” she finished realistically.

To Agatha’s surprise, Jubilee leaned and pressed her white cheek to Ruby’s black one. “Now, Ruby, that’s not true. You’re a good woman. The best. Why, look what you did for me. And for Pearl, too. Right, Pearl?”

Pearl said, “You listen to Jube, Ruby.”

Ruby kept stitching, her winged brows lifted as if with superior knowledge. “Wasn’t me did it. It was him.”

“Him?” Violet’s eyes glittered with interest. “Who?”

“Young Mr. Gandy, that who.” While she continued her story, Ruby stitched steadily, her eyes on her work. “Took to gamblin’ on the riverboats, an’ he git wind Ivory an’ me workin’ the
Delta Star
outta Natchez. I was doin’ what I was doin’, and Ivory, he was a roustabout—roosters, they called ‘em. ‘Hey, rooster, we got to double trip this load,’ they’d call, and them poor deckhands has to unload a hunnerd tons o’ cargo to lighten the load when the river she’s low, then load it all again when the captain come back after leavin’ off the first half upstream. They got to cut firewood an’ dive under when we hit snags—don’t mattuh how many snakes in that watuh! Cap’n say dive, roosters they dive. Poor Ivory, he never been whupped before, not while he work for old mastuh Gandy. And me, I nevuh know how good Waverley is till I go ‘way on my own.

“So after the war is over, young boss he find Ivory workin’ deckhand, bein’ whupped by dat bastuhd mate, Gilroy, whenever he took a mind to whup ‘im. An’ me and the girls here, workin’ that floatin’ crib, hatin’ every minute of it. Hogg, too—Gandy’s bartender?—he a fireman, workin’ in that stinkin’ engine room, standin’ in river water to his knees. An’ Marcus, playin’ banjo but gittin’ laughed at ‘cause his tongue ain’t right an’ he can’t mutter nuthin’. We all on board one day when the cap’n send down the order t’ tie down the valve—ice jam ahead. Jack Hogg, he says, ‘Can’t do it, suh. She ready to blow now, suh.’
Cap’n holluh, ‘Tie de son-bitch down and stroke ‘er good, fireman. I got apples and lemons’ll be worth half as much, that suckuh Rasmussen beat me to Omaha!’