The Wild Card

by Mark Joseph

  “I think so,” she said with a gulp that provoked an outburst of laughter from the boys.

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Alex said, giving Sally a friendly but patronizing pat on the hand. “Nobody gets it right away. One other thing. An ace in the hole can be high or low, and you decide if it’s your wild card. It doesn’t have to be. Here, let me show you.”

  Alex shuffled the deck and laid out a demonstration hand for two players, dealing each imaginary player two cards down and one up.

  “Okay, the first hand shows a deuce up and the second an ace up, so one player has a pair of deuces or something better, and the other at least a pair of aces, because each has a wild card in the hole.”

  He turned over the first pair of hole cards, a deuce and an eight.

  “This guy’s low hole card is a deuce, which is as good as it gets, especially because he has one up and it’s wild, too. He has three eights. Let’s see, we’ll turn over the other guy’s hole cards, and he has a pair of nines in the hole to go with his ace showing, and this guy knows his last card may be lower than nines, in which case he’ll have three nines which is a good hand in regular poker but not good enough to win in this game with five or six players.”

  He swiftly dealt the rest of the hand, and the second player lucked out, paired his ace, keeping the nines wild and giving him four aces. His opponent received a flurry of low cards and ended up with his original three eights. “See what I mean? It can be confusing.”

  Sally laughed and said, “Let’s just play and see what happens.”

  Alex squeezed around the table, making room for Sally, and she sat down and began casually collecting the cards.

  “We have to bet something,” Charlie said. “Otherwise everyone just stays in and you might as well deal all seven cards at once.”

  “Got any ideas?”

  “Strip poker,” a leering Dean suggested.

  “No way,” Bobby said. “Don’t be a creep.”

  “I have some money,” Sally said.

  “So do I, everything I won from you guys,” Bobby hastened to say. “We’re the only two players.”

  “Wait a minute, I have some dough,” Dean announced, digging in his pocket.

  “What? You been holdin’ out on us, man?”

  “I got twenty bucks.”

  “You owe me that, you scumbag,” Alex spat. “You owe Bobby, too.”

  “Well, ain’t that just a bitch,” Dean scoffed. “Haw! I’m in.”

  “That isn’t your money, Dean. You owe everybody.”

  “Go to hell, Alex. This is a new game.” Dean slammed the double sawbuck on the table, rattling the chips and beer cans.

  “We can divide twenty bucks four ways, that’s five each and we can all play,” Nelson suggested.

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ah shit, all right. Count out some damn chips.”

  “Who’s gonna deal?”

  “Let Sally deal,” Bobby said. “It’s her ass on the line.”

  “What? C’mon,” Dean protested. “She doesn’t even know how to shuffle.”

  “So what?”

  Rubbing eyes puffy with sleep and alcohol, Charlie appeared, asking, “What’s going on?”

  “Low hole card wild, my man, with a kicker in the pot,” Dean replied.

  “Sally wants to play,” Bobby said.

  “A girl? That’s against the rules.”

  “We have new rules,” Sally said with a cheerful smile. “The winner gets whatever he wants from me unless I win, and then I get whatever I want from whoever I want.”

  Blinking rapidly, Charlie rubbed his eyes again and stared at Sally while his comprehension grew in increments. Finally he said, “Whose crackpot idea was this?”

  “Mine,” Dean and Sally said simultaneously.

  “Well, I don’t have any more money and I’m fucked up. I’m going back to sleep.”

  “No, no, no, no, no, you have to play. Everybody has to play,” Nelson insisted. “Dean was hiding twenty bucks and if we divide it four ways, we’re all in. Sit down.”

  “There isn’t any room.”

  “Stop making with excuses, Charlie. Scoot over, Dean,” Nelson ordered. “Siddown.”

  Charlie complied and wedged himself onto the bench that formed an L around the table, mumbling, “You should rename this boat the Sardine Can.”

  Alex counted chips, distributed neat stacks of whites, reds, and blues, and gestured toward the deck already in Sally’s possession.

  “Your game, your deal. Give everyone one card face down, then another one, then one face up.”

  “Shuffle first?”

  “Yes.”

  Sally picked up the cards and executed a perfect cascade shuffle, a type of shuffle sometimes seen in bridge but rarely in a poker game. The cards rippled in her hands in consonance with the gurgling river. “Like that?” she asked unable to contain a smirk.

  “God damn,” Dean swore. “Would you look at that.”

  “Hey, we got a player here,” Alex chortled. “You’ve played before.”

  “Hearts,” she said, shuffling again, her eyes flicking up to follow a mosquito. Instinctively, they all followed her glance away from the cards while she continued her patter. “I used to play hearts with my grandma and she taught me how to shuffle. She taught me a lot of things. Somebody get that bug.”

  Smack.

  “You ever play poker?” Nelson asked.

  “When the game is over, you tell me,” she answered and dealt the hand, singing out the cards the way she’d observed. “A deuce to Charlie, a six to Nelson, a nine to Alex, a king to Bobby, a seven to me, and another nine to Dean. Bobby bets.”

  “A quarter on the king.”

  “So now I put a blue one in?”

  “Yes, or two reds and a white.”

  “Okay.”

  “Want me to tell you what I’m gonna do if I win?”

  “No.”

  “I’m gonna—”

  “Shut up, Dean. You don’t have to be crude.”

  “Oh, yeah? Maybe I do. What if you win, Alex? What’ll you do?”

  “Throw your ass in the river, wise guy.”

  Everyone stayed in. On the next card Charlie paired his deuce and bet a quarter and everyone stayed in again with nothing showing. On the fifth card Charlie caught a third deuce, and before Sally could finish dealing the round, Charlie bolted from the table, rushed to the stern and vomited over the side of the boat.

  “Charlie?” Alex hollered.

  “He’s drunk and fucked up, but he’s got winners,” Bobby declared. “No one is going to beat four deuces or better.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Dean contradicted, and when Charlie returned but didn’t sit down, he said, “Your bet, Charlie.”

  Charlie reached across the table and flipped over his hole cards, the fourth deuce and an ace, giving him five aces in five cards, the best hand they’d ever seen.

  “I win,” he said simply.

  “Charlie wins? Charlie?”

  “Charlie wins the broad?”

  “Charlie the queer?”

  Flabbergasted, Bobby turned to Sally and said, “What are you going to do?”

  With the most innocent sweet smile she answered, “That’s up to Charlie.”

  Charlie took a deep breath, looked at his friends and at Sally and said, “You all know what I am, so I give her to Bobby. That’s the only thing that’s fair.”

  Bobby howled like the Wolfman, and Alex laughed loud enough to give himself a stomach cramp. Everyone hooted except Dean who screeched, “Just wait one fucking minute.”

  Bawling with laughter, Sally tried to speak, failed, pointed at Charlie, and then at the rest of them, and finally said, “You all knew?”

  “How could we not know?” Alex replied. “I’ve known Charlie since kindergarten. I don’t care if Charlie likes boys instead of girls.”

  “What about the rest of you?”

  “We’re not three dollar
bills,” Dean answered. “Only Charlie.”

  “Speak for yourself, Studley.”

  At that Nelson and Alex jumped on Dean and began cooing and kissing him, prompting a wrestling match as he struggled to throw them off, rocking the boat and once again rattling the beer cans.

  “This isn’t fair,” Dean howled, his nose bleeding again. “I think we should play another hand.”

  “Be quiet, Dean,” Alex shouted over the tumultuous squabbling, silencing everyone. “We had an arrangement here, an agreement. We played one hand like we said we were going to do, and Charlie won fair and square. That’s it. The deal was the winner could do anything he wanted, and a deal’s a deal.”

  “Yeah, but Charlie ain’t gonna do shit. Bobby gets the goodies.”

  “So what?”

  “It isn’t fair.”

  “Quit whining or you’ll get popped right in the kisser again.”

  “You wanna try it, Wiz?”

  “You ain’t so tough, Mr. Football Star.”

  Alex launched a roundhouse fist that Dean blocked with a meaty forearm, and their efforts spilled both boys onto the deck in a racket of beer cans, tumult, grunts, hubbub, good-natured wrestling, more spilled beer, and a frantic Little Richard screaming on the radio, “Keep A-knockin’ But You Can’t Come In.”

  “This is gross,” Charlie shouted to no avail. “This is supposed to be a poker game, but it’s becoming something else.”

  “Stop it,” Sally yelled, voice ripe with command. “No more fighting, Jeez, not while there’s money on the table. You’ll spoil the fun,” she said brightly, winking again at Bobby. “Let’s turn up the music and play another hand.”

  Nelson grabbed Dean and pulled him off Alex, shouting, “You’re gonna sink the boat if you keep messing around. Cut it out.”

  Bobby threw back his head and laughed. “The lady is callin’ all the shots, so let ’er rip. Deal ’em, girl, down and dirty.”

  32

  “Are you rockin’ tonight? Are you cruisin’ in your fine automobile with your plastic Jesus on the dashboard and your baby right beside you, sittin’ real close, drinkin’ your Royal Crown and makin’ the scene, baby? What’s that? You say you got no money, got no gas, no sweetheart, no fine automobile with no plastic Jesus on the dash? You still okay, baby ’cause you always got ROCK AN’ ROLL. Here’s a brand new beach party tune that’s gonna make you feel good wherever you are. This is XERB, the world’s most powerful radio station, and the Chantays with ‘Pipeline.’ Aw right.”

  Sally scooped up the cards and shuffled several times with her fancy shuffle. Oblivious, Dean played air guitar, sliding his hands down the neck of an imaginary Fender Stratocaster while Nelson chugged another beer, Charlie closed his eyes and dozed, and Alex scratched his ass and fiddled with his chips. Only Bobby was paying attention to the deck in Sally’s hands because she’d dealt the first hand of low hole card wild right-handed and now was holding the deck in her right and preparing to deal with her left. Before he could blurt, “She’s ambidextrous!” in one smooth motion her left hand passed over her right, concealing the deck from all eyes except his, while her right thumbnail flicked the second card from the top, sliding it forward a quarter of an inch. The moving left hand snatched the wrinkled and soiled red card in a flash and dealt it to Dean. With the same motion the next one underneath went to Nelson and then the top card to Bobby.

  He blinked, glanced at Sally whose face was pinched with concentration, and then peeked at his card, a deuce. Returning his gaze to her hands, he watched her deal him the second card from the top for another deuce in the hole, and then, singing out the next round of cards—“A king to Bobby, a four to Charlie, a seven to Nelson, a six to Alex, a queen to Dean, and a nine to me”—she brazenly dealt Bobby the king from the bottom of the deck. Boggled, Bobby scanned the table for a reaction but there was none. No one else had noticed her legerdemain.

  “King bets, I think,” she said in all innocence. “Is that right, just like last time?”

  “You got it,” Alex said, casually surveying the table.

  Mesmerized, looking at his hole cards, a pair of deuces, and the king of hearts staring at him like a red devil, Bobby’s heart fluttered as he stammered, “Um, uh, okay, the king bets two dollars.”

  “That’s over the limit,” Nelson protested.

  “What limit? In a game like this?” Alex retorted. “What difference does it make?”

  “I’m out,” Charlie said without looking at his cards. “No more hanky-panky games for me.”

  With a shrug Nelson tossed in eight blues. “I gotta stay.”

  “I know when the cards are running against me,” Alex said, disgusted. “I’m out. Is there any beer left? I might as well drink myself to death.”

  “Some big-time card player you are, Wiz, you chickenshit. I’m in,” Dean said. “I’m gonna win and then, you and me, little runaway. They wrote a song about you, you know that?”

  “‘Long Tall Sally?’ That’s not about me. I’m too short.”

  “Naw. ‘My Little Runaway.’ You know that song by Dion and the Belmonts?”

  “What the fuck is a Belmont?” Nelson demanded. “That’s what I want to know.”

  “Who gives a shit?” Charlie said, lolling his head and looking ready to upchuck again. “Anyway, it’s by Del Shannon, not the Belmonts.”

  “I’m in,” Sally said, putting in her chips and dealing the next round of cards. “A three to Dean, a ten to Nelson, another king to Bobby, Charlie and Alex are out, and an eight to me. Looks like the kings bet again.”

  “Adios, Kimosabe, good-bye,” Nelson said before Bobby could bet. “You’ve played before,” he added with a gesture of his head toward Sally.

  She smiled and said, “Only for fun.”

  “I bet another two dollars.”

  “Shee-it, the poker gods must love you, boy. I quit,” Dean bellowed and tossed his cards in the air.

  Bobby leaned back and stretched as much as he could in the tight quarters. The tiny galley reeked of beer and sweat. The river gurgled, the mosquitoes buzzed, the radio blared. Alex caused a commotion by pushing everyone out of the way as he slid out from behind the table, went outside, and jumped off the stern into the shallow water. Dean started methodically crushing beer cans on the galley counter as though he were a pile driver. Crack. Crack. Crack.

  Bobby hunched over the table and said, “It’s just you and me, Sally.”

  “Two dollars?”

  “Yes, eight blues.”

  “Okay, that’s all I have left.”

  “Put it in and deal the rest of the cards.”

  “Why bother?” Nelson asked. “You’re both gonna win.”

  Giggling nervously, Sally passed out the rest of the cards and Bobby won with four kings, a lesser hand than Charlie’s five aces but still impressive. Sally’s aces and eights came in second best. Awestruck, Bobby not only failed to reveal what he’d seen, he was speechless. More than a cheat, she was a wonder, possessed by genius, and he felt privileged to have witnessed her work. Her only flaw was that he’d seen her do it, but he’d bet that had been no accident.

  Grinning, she wrapped her arms around Bobby’s neck. “You win, baby. I’m all yours—” and to Dean “—fair enough?”

  “Ah, shit. Are all these dammed things empty? Anybody find a full one, let me know, will ya? My daddy always said life wasn’t supposed to be fair. Nothin’s fair.”

  Crack.

  Slowly exhaling a deep breath, Bobby gathered the cards into the deck, turned them over face down, and shuffled. With a “‘Scuze me,” Charlie returned to the cabin, lay down, and went to sleep.

  “Well?” Dean said to Bobby.

  “Well, what?”

  “You gonna get on with it? Whatcha gonna do?”

  “Oh, man, we’re not gonna put on a show, Dean. Just cool it.”

  Sally picked up the radio and wandered out on deck where she tapped her feet in time to “The Duke of Earl,” still on th
e charts after forty-one weeks. Only Alex in the water could see that she folded her arms around herself and trembled. Alex thought she was trembling because she was cold, which was odd because it was almost eighty degrees that night at Shanghai Bend, but she was shaking from fear that Bobby would say something and provoke another ruckus, from anticipation of what was going to happen next between her and Bobby, and from the exhilaration that comes from cheating at cards and getting away with it.

  The falls whispered their song from the other end of the island. Without another word Bobby slid away from the table and into the forward cabin. A moment later they heard grunts and commotion and the hatch on the forward deck popped open. Bobby sprouted through and dragged the heavy, rolled up canvas tent onto the deck with a series of violent jerks. With a heave he pushed and kicked it over the side onto the beach.

  “Sally!” he hollered.

  “See you later, guys,” Sally bid the rest of the boys, gathered her suitcase and radio, and disembarked from the Toot Sweet. On shore she picked up one end of the tent and silently followed Bobby into the woods.

  33

  The cards were cut and Alex held the deck in his hand ready to deal low hole card wild when Bobby decided to tell them something he was certain they didn’t know.

  “She cheated,” he said flatly, adding, “She was a mechanic and a good one at that.”

  “What!?” Charlie squealed.

  “She what?” Dean roared.

  “You guys dug into her life, got your documents and everything, but you didn’t learn that, did you,” Bobby said, the edges of a smug smile quivering at the corners of his mouth.

  Nelson threw up his hands in a gesture of disbelief. “Come on. That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? Remember her fancy shuffle?”

  “Sure. She said she played hearts with her grandmother.”

  “Yeah, right,” Bobby said, picking up the red deck. “Remember Alex’s demonstration hand?”

  “Of course.”

  “Watch.”

  Bobby flipped through the cards and laid out a replica of Alex’s demonstration hand.

  “You can see the first player has deuces as wild cards and the second player wins with four aces, nines wild. There are a lot of aces and deuces on the table.”