The Jack Finney Reader

by Jack Finney

  Only once, when I was in high school. Then we just drove through it on that trip East I made with my folks.

  Well, I've been there, he said eagerly. Maybe half a dozen times when I was — oh, nineteen and twenty. It's quite a place. Each of the big hotels has a big fancy dining room with a stage for floor shows. I saw Frank Sinatra once in a show at the Riverside Hotel. And Hazel Scott at the Mapes. They're regular big-time shows, honey, complete with a chorus line, comedians, and other acts. And dancing afterward. Pretty good food, too. And not too expensive; the idea is to draw people in for the gambling. So for once, let's blow twenty bucks. Drive to Reno; we'll make it by one. See the two o'clock show at one of the hotels, sleep late at a motel, and drive on back tomorrow. What do you say, Laurie? How does that sound?

  It sounds good, she said slowly. Then she smiled with pleasure. It sounds wonderful! Sam, let's do it! I'll phone Mother from the gas station; come on! She picked up the check from the seat between them and held it out to him. Better take this, she said.

  He nodded, took the check slowly, then sat holding it, not reaching out for the key in the dashboard.

  What's the matter?

  Well, he spoke slowly, not looking at her, that's what we'll do in Reno, all right. And it's all we'll do, if you say so. He turned to her. Now, look; don't say anything till you hear it all. And don't make up your mind right away even then. He drew a breath, then said, A friend and I drove to Reno once for a week end without much money. At one point, all we had was ten dollars, and we needed twenty. I stepped up to a crap table, Laurie, and when my turn came, I put the ten dollars on the table, picked up the dice, threw them, and rolled a seven. And our ten dollars was twenty. I picked it up, and we walked out. Listen to me, Laurie. He rattled the rectangle of paper in his hand. This is a lot of money; there are a million things we could do with it. But we won't. This was for a house, only it won't buy one. So for all the good this check is doing us right now, I could tear it up, and we'd be no worse off!

  She was staring at him, her jaw slack with astonishment. Then, she shook her head and, almost whispering, said, Sam, Sam! You went a whole winter without a raincoat or topcoat of any kind just so you could save fifteen dollars buying one in the spring.

  Sure! And you made the coat you're wearing. For even less than I spent! Three years ago. And you're still wearing it. I know! We've passed up movies we wanted to see, just to save two bucks for the house fund, and eaten all our meals at home instead of getting out once in a while. You ready to keep right on doing that? For three or four more years? Laurie, don't you realize? If we could only buy our house now, we would have it, and all the scrimping and scrounging would be over, too! Payments would be less than we pay now in rent! We'd start having a little fun again, a trip once in a while, real vacations in the summer! His voice dropped. And it's possible, Laurie, it is absolutely possible that we could buy a house — that little pale-blue place you liked this morning — by this time tomorrow night.

  She actually shivered, shoulders huddled as though she were cold. How would you do it?

  He shrugged. Craps, I suppose. Just one roll: double or nothing. You know how to play it?

  She shook her head, staring at him, her eyes looking frightened.

  Well — he shrugged — it's the simplest game in the world. Anyone can understand it, and a child would be bored with it. You just put down your money and roll out the dice. If you roll a seven or eleven, you've won. Your money's doubled, and you can pick it up and leave. Throw a two, three, or twelve, and you lose — just as quickly. Throw any other number, and you've neither won nor lost; the game continues. You just keep rolling the dice till you repeat the first number you rolled; if you do, you win. If you roll a seven first, you lose. That's all there is to it. Stand at any crap table in Reno for only four or five minutes, and a dozen times or more you'll see people win their bets.

  And lose them, too?

  Just as often. It's close to an even bet, Laurie, as close as you'll find in a gambling casino. You might lose; you might win.

  Sam — she put a hand on his arm — it's fantastic. It's absolute—

  Sure. It's fantastic even to talk about it. And yet — he leaned toward her, arm on the back of her seat, grinning down at her excitedly — how would you like to be sitting in the dining room of the Mapes or Riverside in six hours time? Ordering a drink or two first, then dinner, then watching a good show, dancing afterward, knowing all the time that tomorrow we'd be driving back to Marin County to buy our own house? How would you feel? Well, fantastic or not, it's possible. We've got almost an even chance of doing just that — if we've got the nerve. And I don't know — he sat up, frowning, shoving his hat back off his forehead — maybe sometimes you've got to have the nerve, if you don't want to live with your nose to the grindstone forever. He leaned forward to switch on the ignition and start the motor, then dug into his pants pocket to bring out a small handful of change. He held some coins out to Laura. Here; we'll find us a gas station and phone booth, and you call your mother. She looked down at the coins in his palm, then slowly up to his face again, but made no move to take them. Here — he extended the coins to her again, grinning — take them. We'll have our trip to Reno anyway, and make up our minds on the way. Nobody's forcing us to do anything we don't want to. After a moment, glancing up at his face again, she reached out slowly and took the coins.

  For a long time they didn't talk, as they drove through the night toward Reno. They turned off 101 onto U.S. 40, heading straight east now toward Sacramento and the mountains beyond; it was full dark, and Sam reached forward to turn on the radio. It warmed, then the old Glenn Miller recording of “String of Pearls” came on, and Laura snuggled down in her seat, moving closer to Sam. This is nice, she murmured. I love my baby, and in a way I miss him already, but — it's nice to be away. With just you.

  He smiled. You hungry at all?

  No. She shook her head. It was three-thirty when we stopped for lunch; I can hold out till Reno if you can, and Sam nodded.

  They passed the 2,000-foot marker near Auburn where the real ascent began; the road curved rhythmically left and right, left and right, up into the Sierra Nevadas. They passed the 3,000-, then the 4,000-, then the 5,000-foot marker beside the highway; off in the woods in the starlight, snow was visible where scattered pockets of white still remained after the spring thaws. Laura glanced at Sam and said, What are you thinking about?

  He smiled, and this was the first time he mentioned what lay in the backs of both their minds. Just that in Reno you often see a man shooting craps and winning two, three, four, or more times in a row. I've done it myself. I was thinking that if we won four times in a row, letting our winnings ride each time, we'd end up with forty thousand dollars. He glanced at her startled face. Don't worry, he said, grinning, I'm not that brave. Even if I were, and won, you'd have a dead husband on your hands — from heart failure, just as I made that fourth pass. 'Course, that wouldn't be so bad; a young, good-looking widow with forty thousand bucks shouldn't find things too tough.

  She smiled. It'd be the other way around; I'd die, just knowing what you were doing. And in a month, I suppose, you'd find some blond —

  A month? Why wait, when Reno's full of them?

  She smiled, and again they sat in silence for a time. At the summit, well over 7,000 feet high, a three-quarter moon was visible through the trees. Now they could clearly see the miles of evergreens, the great rocky cliffs, and frequent, swift little mountain streams. The air was cool, almost chilly here, but Sam had the heater on, and they kept their windows open; the air, clean and redolent with pine, streamed past their cheeks. The deep valleys beside and below them, the other peaks in the distance, were washed in lovely and mysterious moonlight. When Sam asked, What's wrong with us that we've never done this before, only five hours from home? Laura, gazing out the open window, shook her head.

  The 2,000-foot descent onto the mile-high plain leading into Nevada was rapid, the road twisting sharpl
y, dropping swiftly. Within 20 minutes they were down out of the mountains. Sam picked up speed, the road stretching straight ahead now, toward Reno. Sam. said Laura, and she was nibbling at her thumbnail, have you really won often in Reno?

  Often. He glanced at her worriedly. But I've lost even more often; don't forget that. Make up your own mind, but really think, Laurie, how you'll feel if we lose. All the money we've scrimped and saved a few bucks at a time for four years — he snapped his fingers — gone like that. It can happen easily and fast. You'd better be sure you could take it.

  The minutes passed in silence, as the headlights pushed across the barren, moonlit landscape. Soon a huge painted sign, CALIFORNIA-NEVADA BOUNDARY, stood in the bright beam of their headlights, swelling rapidly in size as they approached it. All right. Sam said quietly. we're not going into Reno still debating; it'll spoil our trip. You made up your mind? Laura nodded, as the big sign flashed past them, the line down the center of the road changing from white to yellow. Sam said. Me, too. You want me to say first? She nodded again, and he said, I'm for it. I want a house now if we can possibly have it.

  Laura nodded once again and drew a breath. Me, too. Sam, I'm scared sick, but — let's try it. I want that house; oh, how I want it.

  Sam and Laura parked near the Mapes Hotel in Reno, the midnight streets busy with people, the air pink with neon. Under the illuminated marquee of the hotel, a doorman, elaborately dressed in a cowboy uniform, opened the big double glass doors for them, and they walked inside. Instantly they heard the sound, unlike any other, of the vast room that stretched off from the lobby to their left. They walked toward the noise, then stopped in the doorway, staring.

  The room was jammed with people, moving slowly through the crowded aisles, or sitting or standing at a score or more of green-covered tables arranged in a great oval at the center of the room. Behind the high, flat-topped blackjack tables, the girl dealers in their white blouses stood, endlessly dealing out cards to the men and women perched on high-legged stools facing them. In the lower chairs at the rectangular roulette tables, other players stared at the polished wood and glinting metal of the turning wheels. At the high-sided crap tables — like massive spinet pianos, their mechanisms replaced by a flat felt surface — the players clustered shoulder to shoulder, almost hiding the tables from view. On every table in the vast room lay money: silver dollars, a few, a dozen, or great stacks; chips of every color, in stacks and in heaps. Everywhere hands were picking up, putting down, stacking, dropping, tossing, or carefully placing money or chips, singly and in stacks, on the ruled-off green surfaces of every crowded table in the room.

  Hard ten, a winner! The crap dealers cried out endlessly. Pay the field, and mark the come! Craps, a loser; double in the field! Seven, front-line winner; double up, and beat the come! Under the sound of the calls, the murmuring, laughing, excited, muttering voices blended into one sound. In the long aisles of silvery slot machines at one side of the great room, the levers moved and the machinery crashed unceasingly. Laura felt a touch on her arm and heard Sam say, Wait here. She turned to see him moving through the crowd across the room toward a barred window marked CASHIER.

  Sam! she called out in panic, and he stopped, then returned. Oh, Sam! she said. Do you think —? Do you really think we —? She stopped, staring up at him in wordless appeal.

  Look, Laurie, he said gently, we've made our decision, but if you tell me you just can't go through with it, then that's that, and we won't. Otherwise — He stopped and waited. After a moment, when she didn't reply, he made the decision for her. Life's full of risk, he said quietly. Sometimes you've got to take a chance; wait here. This time, staring after him, her lip caught between her teeth, Laura did not call out.

  When he returned, the money was wrapped around the middle finger of his left hand-folded once, lengthwise, then wrapped around his finger like a green-and-white paper ring, the ends of the folded bills held tight in his fist. Printed in green on the back of the uppermost bill around Sam's finger, Laura saw “Five Hundr” and knew that Sam held five five-hundred-dollar bills in his hand. She shivered involuntarily, and for a moment her eyes closed. Then she followed Sam through the crowded room.

  Both crap tables were crowded, but there was a little space at the end of one of them. The players there made room for them, they squeezed up to the table, and Laura stood staring at the money-strewn green felt. The morning and afternoon seemed to her to be infinitely far removed in distance and time. At the far end of the table, a heavy-faced man, a dead cigar in his mouth, picked up two red dice from the kelly-green felt before him, then tossed them the length of the table. They scampered toward Laura and Sam, struck the high, rubber-padded end wall of the table under their eyes, bounced off, rolled back, then stopped abruptly, four white spots uppermost on one, a single spot on the other. Five, winner in the field, one of the two whiteshirted dealers behind the table chanted. The other dealer, leaning forward over the table, began placing silver or chips beside some of the bets lying in the many ruled-off spaces on the table top. Excitedly, Laura said, Sam, what's happening? I don't understand at all.

  Don't try. He smiled at her tensely. There are a dozen different ways to bet, with every roll of the dice, and there's a space marked on the table for each of them. But they don't interest us; don't give them a thought. There's only one bet we care about, and for that one I'm rolling the dice myself.

  The man with the cigar continued to roll out the dice, money and chips changing hands each time he did so, and Laura watched one of the dealers reach out onto the table with a long, thin stick each time the dice stopped rolling. Made of varnished wood, the stick was bent into an L-shape at the far end, and with the dice nestled in the curve of the L, the dealer would slide the dice over the table top, returning them to the shooter. A man near Laura was playing with black chips, she noticed presently, often betting a stack of them two inches high, sometimes two or more stacks. When she noticed the lettering in gold on each chip, “Mapes Casino, $25,” she realized that this man was betting over $2,000 at times, and that a bet of $2,500 here would cause no surprise or comment.

  The dice changed hands; a young Air Force lieutenant began rolling them out now, and Sam saw that there were only three players between the lieutenant and him. He had better be playing, he decided, before his turn with the dice came, lest he be mistaken for a spectator and lose his turn. He took a dollar from his wallet and stood waiting, and soon, when the lieutenant lost and the dealer called, New shooter now, coming out for a point, Sam laid the dollar, on the table before him.

  The next player was a woman, middle-aged, well-dressed, and wearing a diamond ring that flashed each time she rolled out the dice. On her first throw of the dice, she rolled nine; continuing to roll the dice, she soon rolled nine again, and Sam's paper dollar was replaced by two silver ones. He picked up one of them, thinking that if he had put down their money — still wrapped around a finger and clenched in his fist — they would now have won and would be leaving, ecstatic with success. But he didn't really regret not having done so, and he did not even yet know whether he would actually have the nerve to do so when the moment came.

  The woman rolled out the dice, and they stopped, two sixes uppermost. Twelve, crap, a loser, one dealer called, and the other picked' up the dollar Sam had left lying on the table. Sam bet again, putting down the other silver, dollar in his hand. So easy to win, so easy to lose, he thought dully, and wondered what was going to happen. If Laura at that moment had asked him to leave, he knew he'd have gladly turned from the table.

  The woman again rolled a point, repeated it on the next roll, and Sam's silver dollar became two dollars again. This time he left them both on the table. Again, her ring flashing, the woman cast the dice; they bounced off the backstop, rolled, then stopped, a six uppermost on one, a five on the other. Yoo, eleven, a winner! called the dealer. Sam's two dollars became four, and he picked up three of them. You can win here, he thought. You can! A deep, slow excitement began
to swell inside him. He watched the dealer slide a stack of 15 silver dollars across the table to a man who had bet one dollar in the space marked “Eleven; 15 to 1.” Then the woman rolled the dice again.

  When she failed to repeat her point, rolling a seven instead, the dice were passed to the next player, a tall bald-headed man in a sport shirt. Sam put down one of the silver dollars in his hand, feeling no interest in the result. It was meaningless whether he won or lost now, for he was merely marking time, establishing his right to roll the dice when his turn came; though presently, since the bald-headed man won several times, he had four or five dollars in his hand, he felt only dread and rising excitement. He was almost superstitiously sorry that he was winning now when it didn't matter, afraid he might be using up his luck. He was anxious, tired of waiting, wanting the dice in his hand; if now Laura had urged him to leave, he knew that he couldn't.

  The man beside him now had the dice. Sam, whose turn was next, glanced at Laura and wet his lips. Dropping the big silver coins into a coat pocket, he unfolded the wadded length of bills in his other hand. With a kind of numb curiosity, he looked at the picture engraved graved on the face of the uppermost bill; “McKinley,” it said under the oval portrait; otherwise the bill looked like any other, except for the numbers, “500,” in the corners. He fanned the five bills out slightly, suddenly concerned that there be no mistake; when he laid them down, he wanted it plainly visible to the dealer that there were five of them. He glanced at Laura again and saw that her face, staring down at his hands, had gone white.

  When the man beside him had lost, and the dice were waiting motionlessly in the curve of the long stick while bets were paid off or collected, Sam stood in agony, his mind in chaos. Now was the time, he knew — the last moment to turn and leave. But the decision they had made seemed binding. As the dice were slid over the table toward him, his hand reached out and laid the five bills on the green felt before him.