Chance Elson

by Ballard, Todhunter, 1903-1980

She said in a low tone as he paused beside her chair, "How's it going?'*

  "Too early to tell."

  She reached over and squeezed his hand. It did something to him. It showed him that she shared his tension, that she had as big a stake in this as any of them. It was funny. He and Judy talked about many things, but he had never mentioned business to her directly. Of course she overheard him talking to Doc and Dutch, of course she knew what was going on. She wasn't stupid, even if she was a kid.

  "You'll make it." She squeezed his hand again, and he felt the warmth of her touch, even after he had gone back into the gambling room.

  The place was beginning to fiU. He took a spot beside the first crap table from where he could watch Doc. Doc was an artist. Chance had never quite appreciated how much of an artist. This was the perfect spot for Doc and he loved it.

  Chance watched him give the business to three tourists. They came in from the hot street a Httle hesitant, uncertain of themselves, suspicious of their surroundings.

  They were a man and two oversized women. They had come from the dam where they had blistered in the fall sun while they gawked at the structure. They were hot and out of sorts and the coolness of the air-conditioned room was like a breath from heaven.

  Doc gave them a trace of a bow. "Bon jour" His French was easy, natural. He spoke the language with greater facility than Leon did.

  "Ill have a table for you in a few moments. Your name?"

  The man wore a dark business suit, badly creased from driving. He muttered something which Chance did not catch and Doc made a quick note on his chart.

  The older woman—Chance guessed that she might be sixty—was staring around. "I thought this was a restaurant?"

  Doc gave her a smile. "It is, madam. The best restaurant in the state."

  "And dinner is only a dollar?*' She was insistent.

  Doc bowed.

  "Well, I don't see how you do it, if the food is any good."

  Doc did not lose his smile. "Beheve me, if you aren't satisfied, there will be no charge. Now, if you would care for a small drink or an appetizer while you wait?"

  "We don't drink."

  Doc bowed again and they moved away down the room, gaping at everything.

  Chance eased to Doc's side and Doc said in an undertone, "Is that the type of customer you think will get us oflF our nut? They wouldn't spend a dime to see Roosevelt ride a bicycle to the moon."

  "Wait." Chance's eyes followed the group. The older woman had paused beside the roulette wheel. She said something to the dealer, who smiled at her. Then she opened her purse and brought out a ten-dollar bill. The dealer gave her a stack of chips.

  "Well I'll be damned." Doc was so busy watching her that he did not see four new arrivals until Chance nudged him. Before the tourists were caUed to their table, the chips were gone. Later, as they were leaving, the woman paused beside Doc.

  "You've got a beautiful place here." She looked cool and refreshed. "I never saw such food, and so reasonable."

  "I'm very happy that you are pleased." He handed her some folders. "Perhaps you'd care to send these to your friends?"

  "I will," she told him. "I haven't enjoyed anything so much in years." They went out into the hot street.

  Doc and Chance went home at two o'clock in the morning. The day had been a kind of kaleidoscopic madhouse. The restaurant had continued full until after midnight and Leon had run out of food three times.

  But it was the play at the tables that marked their success or failure. Chance counted the take from the cashier's cage before they started home. There was almost twenty-seven thousand more in the bankroll than there had been that morning.

  He couldn't balance it out exactly. Doc made a quick check of the tables and they estimated the number of chips still uncashed, chips still in the hands of players, chips which had been carried away in customers' pockets and which might not be cashed for a week or two.

  There was always the problem of these outstanding chips. AU the places had to contend with the same thing. But as nearly as Chance could judge, they had twenty thousand more than when they opened, and this did not include the bar and restaurant take, which was handled separately, since Leon had a percentage.

  Of course it wasn't profit. Their overhead was high, and they had to make up the loss on each dinner served, but it wasn't bad. If they could hold a level of fifty per cent of the opening day's play, they were over the top.

  He was tired and his feet hurt. He had been on them nearly twelve hours. Doc was tired, too. He had not left the door except to eat during the whole period.

  "Maybe it's worth it," he groaned as they climbed from the car and started for the house.

  The porch light flashed on and Judy suddenly appeared in the entrance. "I couldn't sleep. I had to know. Did it go all right?"

  "We're in business," Chance said, and taking her shoulders, kissed her forehead. "We're in like Flynn. Go get some ice and make us two of the biggest drinks in the world."

  She brought the drinks to the Hving room. Doc had his shoes off; he had collapsed in a chair. He lifted the glass and drained it without taking it from his lips. "Another."

  She brought him another. He sat there blinking at her. "What did you get, a permanent?"

  "Just a wave."

  "You're cute." He saw color come up under the evenness of her tan. "She's cute, ain't she. Chance?"

  The girl said, "Lay off. I'm not one of your whores."

  "Judy"—it was Chance—"what a way to talk."

  "Leave her alone," said Doc. "What the heU. She knows the way things are. I'd a lot rather she knew the words and

  used them than have her wide-eyed and innocent. This way she won't get caught short."

  Chance said, "Sometimes I wonder why I don't break your neck." He turned to Judy. "Better go to bed, kid."

  Judy started at the sudden sternness of Chance's tone; then without speaking she went into her room and closed the door. Chance got up to refill his drink.

  When he came back from the kitchen. Doc was still stretched out in the chair, his eyes closed.

  Chance said in a low voice, "Don't get ideas about Judy, Doc."

  Liller opened his eyes. "Well for Christ sake."

  "I mean it," Chance sat down. "I've seen the way you watch her."

  "So I watch her," said Doc. "She's a nice kid to look at, but I'm not a damn fool. I told you years ago that I pay for mine so I can walk away and forget it. The free stuff has a way of coming back and sandbagging you when you aren't looking."

  "Cut the crap. You're on the make for every dame you see."

  Doc grinned. He was not offended. "Why not? But I just dream and then go out and buy it. If I want to dream about Judy, that's my business."

  "As long as it doesn't hurt her. I'm beginning to think it's about time she got away from here. This is not the best place in the world for a growing kid. I was thinking about a boarding school, now that it looks as if we might have the dough to pay the freight."

  Doc snorted. "How much do you know about girls in boarding school?"

  "Not much."

  "I do. I went with several of them. Do you know the major interest in most of those places? Sex. You take a bunch of kids just through puberty and shut them away from boys, and what do you suppose they think about? Boys. Leave her be. Here she's got other things on her mind. The ranch and her chickens and those Goddamn pigs. Send her away to school and it would be almost as

  bad as sending her back to the home. We aren't much, but we're the only substitute for a family the kid has. Now, let's go to bed while I can still walk."

  ^^taftten. ^

  Judy heard every word being said in the front room. This was not the first time she had listened, sitting cross-legged on the floor behind the door.

  Actually some of the talk amused her, for she felt in her own mind that she was grown-up, that she had far more sense than either Dutch or Joe, and that Doc in many ways was a small boy who needed to be humored and guided.r />
  For weeks she had been aware of the way he watched her and had guessed accurately what he was thinking about. Nor was she entirely unconscious of his personal charm, but what romantic notions she did entertain were centered on Chance.

  While he had been ill, she had bmlt up a protective feeling for him, based on his dependence on her, and she shared many more interests with him than she did with any of the others. It was partly a matter of age, but it went deeper than that.

  There was a driving strength in Chance, a singleness of purpose which she recognized and admired, for she had much the same strength herself. She had not as yet decided what she wanted to do, but lately she felt that she wanted to be a singer, an entertainer.

  Her reading embraced most of the picture fan magazines and she followed the careers of the stars as glorified by their press agents with close attention. Twice she had almost asked Chance if she could take singing and dancing lessons, and twice had lost her nerve.

  But this year, school had assumed a much more important position in her Hfe. She no longer felt herself a foreigner, and she had lost the tension that coming in in

  the spring mid-term had meant, a stranger in a group akeady solidified.

  She started her junior year with more confidence. She was Judy Elson. She was in the dramatic class and her grades in French and Engfish were near the top of the class. She had a flair for language.

  Two weeks after the new restaurant opened, she had her first real date. She knew that girls younger than she were already going steady, but she had ducked invitations purposely. As long as Chance had been sick, she did not feel hke inviting boys to the house, and because she Uved out of town it meant that to escort her a boy needed a car.

  The first date was neither exciting nor particularly enjoyable. They went to a basketball game and afterward drove out the Searchlight road with another couple. They parked, puUing oS onto the gravel service road that ran down along one of the high-tension-pole lines.

  She let him kiss her, his mouth tasting of the peppermints he had been eating, then his hand cupped her breast under the sweater and she had a certain pleasure from the touch. But when his hot, inquiring fingers shoved back her dress, running up along her thighs, she tried to push him oflF.

  "Stop it."

  He was panting softly. He had a rather long, freckled face with a shock of uncombable hght, sunburned hair. "What's the matter?" He did not move his hands further, but he did not take them away.

  "Relax, baby."

  Judy suspected that things in the back seat had progressed well past this point. She was no prude. She actually did not care what the other girl did, but her time at the reformatory had given her a sobering knowledge of just what could happen to you if you were not careful, and she certainly did not mean to get herself in trouble. His hands started upward again.

  "Goddamn you. Stop it or I'll break your silly neck." The boy had sworn most of his life, but he wasn't used to hearing a girl use those words in that tone. There was no doubt that Judy meant exactly what she said.

  He stopped. There had been a startled gasp from the back seat, and the next day the story was all over school. The story grew with the telling. One version was that she had knocked her escort out with a rabbit punch.

  It gave her a reputation for being tough, and also gave her leadership with the girls. She accepted the leadership. It did something to her. It was her first real taste of being important as an individual, and it won her the lead in the school play.

  The day the annoimcement was made she broke Chance's rule that she was never to come to the club. She slipped in the back door and walked boldly back along the narrow hall to Chance's ofBce. Then she stopped. The door was open a couple of inches and she could hear voices inside.

  Chance wasn't alone. Deep disappointment flooded through her. All the way downtown from school she had rehearsed the scene. She would push open the door, make an entrance, bowing before his desk, telling him that she was now an actress, that the coveted part was hers. Then she would run around the desk and kiss him while he was still siuprised.

  But he wasn't alone, and she knew from his voice that he was angry.

  "So you thought that because we run the place on a polite basis, we're marks?"

  She peered through the door. Chance stood behind his desk. Across it one of the dealers faced him. Doc stood beside the window.

  The dealer's face was suUen. He was angry. But he was also scared. "Don't try and talk to me that way."

  Chance's hand flashed out. He got a fistful of the man's shirt and jerked him against the edge of the desk, hard. "I'U talk to you any way I please. I hate thieves." He drove his free fist into the man's mouth. The man went down.

  "For Christ sake." It was Doc. "Take it easy."

  Chance walked around the desk. "I want every man working out there to know what happens when you try to puU a fast one on me. Get up."

  The dealer rose slowly. He was nearly as taU as Chance.

  Chance grabbed the man and shook him. "So you think I'm

  soft? I heard you talking to some of the boys in the washroom yesterday. We're marks, we don't know what we're doing. Well, get it through your head that we do." He shoved the man away with deHberate force.

  "Get out, out of here and out of town. If you try to go to work anywhere in Vegas I'll blacklist you. Now, scram."

  Judy was caught. She tiumed to retreat down the hall but she wasn't fast enough. Doc had crossed over to pull the door open. He saw her, and stared in surprise for an instant.

  "Come in here."

  She came, meekly, a httle frightened. Chance's face showed no expression. It was as if he had known she was in the hall all the time. "Get out." He was speaking to the dealer.

  The man got.

  Judy said quickly to Doc, **What'd he do?"

  "Ganged up with one of the players to cheat the house at roulette. The floorman caught him."

  "What are you doing here?" Chance's voice was hard when he addressed her. His eyes looked like ice.

  "I—I—." All her set speech, all her self-assurance was gone. "I'm going to play the lead in the school play. I came down here to tell you."

  "You know you're not supposed to come in here."

  She was as close to tears as she had ever been. "I wanted to tell you about it and . . ."

  "You could have told me tonight."

  He was inflexible. Nothing she said seemed to touch him. Glaring at him, she wondered if she could ever get any nearer to him, if he would ever regard her as a person with feelings.

  The trouble was that he never showed the average weaknesses which made people himian. Chance was like a machine.

  He drank occasionally, but he never seemed to get much pleasure out of alcohol. He never got out and worked on the ranch the way Joe and Dutch did, and if he ever slept with any of the semi-whores around town she had never heard of it.

  For an instant she decided that he might be queer, but then she dismissed the thought. There was no question about

  his being masculine. It was more a matter of his self-control, of the tight rein he kept always, curbing his impulses almost before they appeared.

  And the trouble was that he used this same tight rein on her, and she resented it. She turned toward the door, half blind with unshed tears.

  "Wait, Judy." It was Doc. "I'U go with you."

  "Stay here."

  Doc looked at Chance, then patted the girl's shoulder. "It's all right, kid. Chance is just a httle upset."

  "Fm not upset. Go on home, Judy."

  She went out, all the pleasure of her news washed from her. She thought bitterly, "He doesn't want me here. He never wanted me here or any place else. I might as well run away."

  In the office Doc walked slowly back to the desk. He stood looking down at Chance.

  "What in hell's the idea of riding the kid?"

  "She's got to learn to mind."

  "Sure," said Doc, "she's got to learn to mind. But couldn't you pick a bet
ter time to jump down her throat? That meant a lot to her, getting the lead in the school play, and she rushed right down here to teU us. Hell, I'd think you'd be proud of her." I am,

  "You've got a damn funny way of showing it." Doc was disgusted. "I've been watching you, ever since you got well. You've changed. You used to pretend you were hard, but you weren't, really. You were just kind of scared and covering up."

  Chance pointedly pulled out some papers from a desk drawer and feigned reading. Doc paid no attention. "But now you are tough, and you're tough with everyone, even Joe."

  Chance didn't answer.

  "Look at Judy. Two years ago she was nothing, and she had nothing, and she comes out to a strange town with no family to help her get adjusted and she moves in and cops the lead in the play. Don't you want her to like you?"

  Chance laid down the papers, showing more annoyance than he usually permitted himself. "Sure, I want her to like me.

  "Then give a little," said Doc. "If you want friends in this world you've got to give them a little of yourself. Either people are afraid of you or you push them away. Take what you just did to that dealer. You could have called the cops. They would have floated him."

  "You all through?"

  Doc glared at him. "You'll never know how nearly all through I am."

  "All right," said Chance. "I don't often bother to explain things, but I'm going to lay this out in black and white because it's important that you understand.

  "John Kern made me a deal. He backed me with the idea that I'd organize the gamblers in this town to stand against the racket boys if they try to move in. Right?"

  Doc was silent.

  "So I'm a stranger. So I come in here and start a place, and it's doing okay, but that doesn't mean I'm top dog. If I expect these men to follow me when the hoodlums come in, I've got to show them that I'm tougher than the racket boys."

  Doc waited.

  "Don't kid yourself. Kern is tough, and those men we met at his place are tough. They had to be to get where they are, to claw a living out of the mining camps, but they're afraid of what the Syndicate wiU do when it moves in here."