The Gamble

by LaVyrle Spencer

  “I see a lot of improvement in Willy since you’ve been here.”

  “I meant to thank you for giving me jurisdiction over him. I think it helps if he knows from whom to get his instructions.”

  “No need t’ thank me. You were the natural one.”

  “He’s very bright. He learns fast.”

  “Yes, he’s come in here when I’m workin’ and read things aloud over my shoulder.”

  She laughed softly. “He does like to show off, doesn’t he?”

  Gandy laughed, too. The subject seemed completely covered.

  “Marcus and Jube seem happy,” she said, voicing the first topic that came to mind.

  “Yes, very.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  “Bother me?”

  Whatever had she been thinking to ask such a question? No matter how many times she’d wondered about it, she should have guarded her tongue.

  “I mean... well, the fact that Jube was...” She came to an uncomfortable halt.

  “My lover, and now she’s Marcus’s wife? Not at all. Does it bother you?”

  “Me!” Her eyes snapped to his. He took a slow sip of brandy.

  “Well, does it?”

  “I... I’m not sure what you mean.”

  He studied her with distracting totality for several seconds, a half-puzzled expression about his eyebrows. Then he glanced aside and rolled his loose ashes against the ashtray. “Forget it, then. We’ll talk about safe subjects. The cotton. Have y’ seen the cotton? Why, it’s up to my knees already.”

  “No. I... I haven’t been out that way.”

  “You should take a walk out there. Or if you prefer, you could ride. Have you ridden yet since you’ve been here?”

  “I’ve never ridden—in my life, I mean.”

  “You should try.”

  “I don’t think I could.”

  “You didn’t think you could dance either, but you did.”

  “I didn’t really dance and we both know it. But it was so kind of you to let me pretend.”

  “Kind?” He studied her unwaveringly. “Did you ever stop t’ think that maybe I wanted t’ dance with you?”

  No, she hadn’t. She had thought of it only as something he gave, not something he enjoyed.

  The front door opened and their guests, a railroad baron and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. DuFrayne of Colorado Springs, came in. As they passed Scott’s office door, Jesse DuFrayne said, “We were out for a last walk. Beautiful night.”

  “Yes, it is,” Gandy returned.

  “And there’s the sweetest smell in the air,” Abigail DuFrayne added. “What is it?”

  “Jasmine,” Agatha replied. “It’s new to me, too. Isn’t it heavenly?”

  “This whole place is heavenly,” Mrs. DuFrayne returned. “I’ve told Jess we must come back every year.” She smiled back over her shoulder at her husband and Gussie felt a pang of jealousy as he rested his hand on the back of her neck and smiled into her eyes as if the rest of the world had suddenly faded away. They were expecting their first child, yet they acted like newlyweds.

  Agatha thought, If Scott were mine, I’d treat him exactly the way Mrs. DuFrayne treats her husband.

  The couple in the doorway brought themselves forcibly from their absorption in each other and Abigail said, “Well, good night.”

  “Good night,” Scott and Agatha said in unison as the couple linked hands and headed upstairs.

  They were both aware that the DuFraynes were the last ones up. Nobody else would be coming through the foyer anymore tonight. When their footsteps disappeared overhead the office grew silent.

  Scott finished his drink and tamped out his cigar.

  “Well, I really should be going to bed, too.” Agatha moved to the edge of her chair.

  “Just a minute,” he said, stopping her as she began to rise. “There’s one more thing.”

  He rose casually, stepped before her chair, leaned forward, and rested both hands on its arms and kissed her indolently. She was so surprised that her eyes remained opened while his closed and he took his time, brushing her skin with his moustache, touching his smoky tongue to her lips. The only other place he touched her was at the knees, where his legs flattened her skirts. The kiss was lingering but soft, and it left her feeling stunned.

  He locked his elbows and looked in her pale eyes.

  “Sleep well, Gussie,” he murmured, then straightened and saw her to the door.

  All the way across the rotunda she resisted the urge to touch her lips, and the even greater one to turn back for more. Standing between the rolling doors, she turned, studied him with wonder, their expressions intent. Then, wordlessly, she backed into her room, rolled the doors closed, and let the shock waves build. She spun and leaned back against the doors and wondered what in the world had prompted him to do such a thing in such an offhanded way—Just a minute... there’s one more thing—as if he were going to remind her to buy one last item of groceries as long as she was going to town anyway. She lifted her face to the ceiling, rested her fingers over her hammering heart, and let out a brief, silent laugh. Was this how courtships started? Or seductions? And did it matter to her anymore which it might possibly be?

  She arose the next morning excited, expectant, and dressed with infinite care only to learn when she went to the dining room for breakfast that he’d left at dawn and wouldn’t be back for two weeks. He was buying horses in Kentucky.

  Two weeks! Kentucky!

  Her world turned blue and empty.

  Those fourteen days seemed endless. On the thirteenth evening she washed her hair and put vinegar in the rinse, and on the fourteenth day she styled it high, tight and becoming, and dressed in an ice-green day dress that made her eyes look paler, her lashes darker, her hair redder, and her skin fairer.

  And every time the front door opened her heart seemed to slam into her throat and her pulse went crazy.

  But he didn’t come home.

  On the fifteenth day she went through the same ritual again, only to go to bed deflated and worried.

  On the sixteenth day she wore a plain gray plaid dress with a simple white collar because she and Willy were studying herbs in the garden while she gathered them for Leatrice. It had rained during the night and she had forgotten her hat. The sun was fierce, the humidity sapping, raising sweat on her brow that immediately brought flies buzzing. Slapping one away, she caught her wrist buttons on her hair and pulled the neat French twist askew, after which an irritating strand kept falling down across her jaw.

  Of course, that’s how he found her, sitting on a low “weeding chair” between the rows of basil and comfrey with sweat darkening her underarms and her hair untidy and a smear of dirt on her chin and a flat basket on her lap. The garden was on the opposite side of the house from the driveway, so she didn’t know he’d returned until his shadow fell across her.

  “Hello.”

  She looked up and felt the familiar earthquake in her chest at the sight of him standing above her with his hands on hips and one knee cocked.

  “Hello,” she managed to say, lifting a hand to shade her eyes. “You’re back.”

  “I missed you,” he said without prologue.

  She flushed and felt sweat running down her sides and wished terribly that she could dip in the pool and not see him again until she looked as she had the day before yesterday in the cool green dress with her hair glossy and high.

  “You’re two days late.”

  “Have you been countin’?”

  “Yes. I was worried.”

  “Hi, Scotty!” Willy interjected. “We’re studyin’ herbs.”

  The tall man rubbed the boy’s head affectionately, but he gazed at Agatha all the while.

  “Herbs, huh?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Scott dropped to one knee, curled a finger beneath Agatha’s chin, and brushed the dirt with his thumb. Holding her so, he kissed her, a light, brief graze, while the scent of dill and angelica and saxifrage and s
pearmint lifted from the steaming earth and steeped like potpourri around them.

  “I’ve brought you somethin’,” he told her softly, while Willy watched and listened.

  “Me?” It came out in a whisper.

  “Yes. The calmest horse I could find. Her name is Pansy and you’re goin’ t’ love her. Can the herbs wait?” She nodded dumbly while his thumb continued brushing her chin. “Then, come. You have t’ meet her.”

  And so he gave her the third gift of the three unattainables she had mentioned so long ago on a landing in Kansas. Agatha was terrible at riding, stiff and tense and frightened. But he put her in the saddle and led Pansy around the paddock and taught Agatha to loosen up and enjoy the easy walk of the mare. In time she took the lines herself and guided the horse beside his, always at a sedate walk, beneath the shady trees in the pecan grove and along the grassy verges between the unused cotton fields and through the thick green shade of the wild magnolias that pressed close to the Tombigbee, where the horses dipped their heads to drink:

  May turned to June and they rode each day, but the fleeting kisses were not repeated and she was left to wonder to what end he wooed her.

  June came on torpid, sticky.

  Gandy had spent one morning clearing the riding trails with a scythe. He’d forgotten how fast kudzu vines grew in the summer. They could strangle an entire garden in a matter of days. Out in the woods, where they were often forgotten, they could get a tenacious foothold if not discouraged regularly.

  Riding in on Prince, with the scythe handle across his thighs, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and swabbed his neck. Sweat ran down the center of his back. His trousers stuck to his thighs. He wore a dusty broad-brimmed black hat with a sweat-soaked band. It was deadly hot for June. He left Prince at the watering trough and checked the thermometer on his way to the ice house. Ninety-two degrees already and it wasn’t even eleven o’clock. He descended five steps to a submerged stone building and from its wooden doorframe pulled an ice pick. Inside, it was dark and cool and smelled of wet sawdust. With a dusty boot he scraped some aside and gouged out a sharp wedge of ice, kicked the sawdust back into place, and emerged into the blinding midday light, sucking. He rammed the ice pick into the doorframe, left it twanging, and took the steps two at a time. At the top he almost knocked Agatha off her feet.

  He grabbed her to keep her upright. “Gussie, I didn’t see you.”

  “You didn’t look.”

  He smiled down at her from beneath the brim of the dirtiest hat she’d ever seen him wear. She smiled up at him from beneath the brim of a simple wide sunbonnet of unadorned straw.

  “Sorry. Y’all right?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “You comin’ out here for the same thing I just got?”

  “I needed something. Gracious, but it’s hot.” She plucked at her dress as if to free it from her chest.

  “You’re in the South now. Gotta expect it to be hot.” Suddenly, he slipped his ice into her hands. “Here, hold this while I get y’ some.” His hands were none too clean and she caught a whiff of sweat—half man, half horse—as he turned and headed back down the steps. As he yanked the ice pick from the doorframe, she noted the rings of dampness beneath the arms of his loose white shirt, and the long line of moisture running down its center back. In the year-plus since she’d known him, she’d never seen him so dirty. It felt intimate to see him so and did strange things to her insides. She heard the dull, rhythmic thud of the pick on the ice. Then he came back out, stabbed the doorframe, and closed the door.

  “Here. Got you a nice pointed one, easy for suckin’.”

  They traded ice. His hands were no cleaner than before. Neither was his face. It was streaked with sweat, grimy in the cracks at the corners of his eyes. He made no apologies but sucked his own ice chip while it melted between his fingers and made rivulets of mud on his hands. She stood watching him with great fascination, her pale eyes fixed upon the springing black hair on his chest where the water dripped from his ice chip. She forgot that her own hands were freezing.

  He pulled the ice from his mouth, backhanded his lips, and said, “Go ahead. It’s good.”

  She took a lick and got some sawdust. When she spat, he laughed.

  “A little sawdust never hurt anyone.”

  She licked again and smiled.

  “Well, listen,” he said offhandedly, “I’m goin’ t’ see if Leatrice has some cold tea. See y’all at dinnertime.”

  He dropped a kiss on her mouth with even less forethought than either of the two times before. His tongue took a single cold swipe at her lips. He backed up, stuck it out, and picked a piece of sawdust off it.

  “Sorry,” he said, grinning. And left her standing there, stunned.

  Courtship or seduction? Either way, it matched none of her preconceived notions, but the chances of an unexpected kiss made her blood course each time she encountered him.

  Gandy found Leatrice in the cookhouse with Mose, smoking her pipe and husking corn. It had to be one hundred five degrees inside.

  “Lord, woman, you’re goin’ t’ die of heatstroke.”

  “Heatstroke ain’t nowhere neah as scary as what Mose just telled me. Tell ‘im, Mose.”

  Mose didn’t say a word.

  “Tell me what?”

  “Hants is in de pool house now,” Leatrice stated, too impatient to wait for Mose.

  “In the pool house!”

  “Mose see ‘em. Carryin’ light, too, and lookin’ for folks to pull unduh de watuh.”

  “What’s she talkin’ about?”

  “I seen ‘em. Lights flickerin’ roun’ down dere deep in de night when de res’ o’ de house asleep. Seen ‘em floatin’ in, like swamp mist, all white an’ shiftin’. Ain’t got no shape atall. Heard ‘em laugh, too, high, like screech owls.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Mose seen it.”

  “I seen it. Come up from de buryin’ groun’, dey did.”

  “You claimed there were ghosts in the house, too, but you haven’t seen any since you’ve been in there, have you?”

  “’Cause I wear my asafetida, dat’s why.”

  “Mebbe dey move out. House too crowded, so dey tuk to de pool house instead.”

  Maybe they had. It had been some time since Gandy had experienced any manifestations of spirits in the big house.

  It lay on his mind the following night when he couldn’t sleep. Beside him, Willy was restless and he wished for a room of his own. But he and Willy doubled up to free more rooms for guests. The sultry weather continued. The sheets felt damp and the mosquito netting seemed to block out any moving air.

  Scott rose, slipped on his trousers, and found a cheroot in his coat pocket. Barefoot, he padded out onto the upstairs veranda. He propped a foot on the rail, lit the cheroot, and thought about a night when he’d sat just like this on the sorry little landing he’d shared with Agatha in Proffitt. Lord, it seemed such a long time ago, yet it was less than a year. August, it had been. August or September with the coyotes howling.

  An owl called softly and he lifted his head.

  At the far end of the driveway a tiny light flickered.

  His foot dropped off the rail and he pulled the cigar from his mouth. Hants? Maybe Mose and Leatrice were right again.

  He was downstairs in a trice. Not until he was reaching for the derringer in his desk drawer did he realize it would do little good against hants. He took it just the same—hard telling what he might run into at the pool house.

  Outside it was no cooler than inside. The air was motionless, thick. Down by the river frogs sent up a full range of notes, from the shrill piping of tree frogs to the basso bark of bullfrogs. Walking barefoot through the damp grass, he stepped on a snail, cursed softly at the squish, and moved on soundlessly. The light was steady. He could see now that it came from a window of the poolhouse.

  He approached the building stealthily, backing up against the outside wall—cold against his bar
e shoulder blades—holding the derringer in his right hand.

  He listened. Sounded like someone was swimming. No voices, no movement of any other kind, only the soft lap of parted water.

  He eased himself into the lighted door space. His gun hand relaxed and he breathed easy. Someone was swimming, all right. A woman, dressed in nothing but a white combination, and she had no idea he was here. She was on her stomach, heading for the far side of the pool with slow, easy strokes. A lantern sat on the marble steps. He moved beside it, curled his toes over the sleek stone edge, and waited. At the far end she dipped beneath the surface, came up nose first, smoothed the water from her face, then headed for him, on her back.

  He waited until she had nearly reached him before speaking.

  “So this is our ghost.”

  Agatha thrashed around, found her footing, and gaped up at him.

  “Scott! What are you doing here?” She crossed her arms over her breasts and ducked below the surface. He stood stiffly, dressed in nothing but a pair of black trousers, his feet widespread, a gun in one hand, a scowl on his face. Lit from below, his expression appeared devilish.

  “Me! What in tarnation are you doin’ here in the middle of the night?”

  She brought one hand from underwater to smooth her hair nervously. “Aren’t I supposed to be here?”

  “Hell’s afire, Gussie, there could be snakes in that water!” He gestured impatiently with the gun. “Or you could get a cramp—and who’d hear you yell for help?”

  “I didn’t think you’d be angry.”

  “I’m not angry!”

  “You’re shouting.”

  He lowered his volume but propped both hands on his hips. “Well, it’s a damned dumb idea. And I don’t like you bein’ here alone.”

  “I don’t always come alone. Sometimes I come with the girls.”

  “The girls. I should’ve known they’d be behind it.”

  “They taught me to swim, Scott.”

  He softened somewhat. “So I saw.”

  “And it’s been so hot, I’ve had trouble sleeping.”