Crows & Cards

by Joseph Helgerson

  At the same time, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of folks did such a thing as this to their own son. Weren't they the same Ma and Pa who once let a runaway slave hide in our hayloft for a week? And now hadn't they locked me into an apprenticeship that wasn't but one step removed from slavery? Who could find any sense in that? Up to then I don't think I'd ever hated any people that I loved so much.

  CHAPTER THREE

  JUST WHEN MY LOWER LIP WAS HANGING all quivery, things took an unexpected turn for the better and I made me a friend. He must have been watching my goodbyes, 'cause without introductions he stepped up and reminisced, "I still recall the day I tried out my own wings."

  Looking over, I faced a gentleman dressed like someone who owned ten plantations, and not little ones either. Beneath his black top hat was a head of black hair and a black goatee that was even shinier than his black boots. His voice was low and easy and didn't have no cracker crumbs to it.

  "Beg pardon?" I said.

  "Son," he answered, "there's no reason to go begging for anything around me. I'm the fellow you've heard of who believes in giving away the best of what he's got. It will only come back a hundredfold. That's my philosophy. What's yours?"

  Well, he'd flummoxed me good with such talk, to say nothing of overwhelming me with the fine cut of his clothes and the lordly line of his nose and the generous gleam of his blue eyes. His mouth was so full of handsome pearly teeth that it could have gone neck and neck with a king's. What's more, smack in the middle of the ruffliest white shirt I ever hope to see flashed a diamond stud that could have hypnotized a snake. Without thinking, I answered, "Staying clear of slivers. That's my philosophy."

  Such talk tickled him hard. He laughed a bit and then started stroking his goatee and sizing me up real thoughtful-like.

  "Name's Charles Larpenteur," he said, putting his hand out for shaking purposes, "though most call me Chilly. What'd your pa call you?"

  "Zebulon Crabtree, sir." I gave him my best manly handshake.

  I almost lost my hand in his, oversized as it was. Height-wise, he may have been smallish, but across the shoulders he was worth an ax handle and his paws were monsters.

  "Most call me Zeb." I pulled my hand to safety. "Do you mind if we step back from the railing a ways?"

  "Not at all, Zeb. Not at all."

  He took a leisurely glance up and down the deck, as if on the lookout for someone, then waved me behind a cord of

  firewood stacked for the ship's boilers. We took up residence atop a couple kegs of applejack. One of the barrels was weepy on a seam and the air hung heavy with the sweet, tangy scent of last fall's spitters.

  Once settled, Chilly offered me a chaw of tobacco, but I passed, saying I didn't indulge on account of how it knotted up my stomach.

  "Sensible," he agreed. "Do you mind if I exercise my powers of deduction on you, Zeb? It's one of the games I like to play on these boat rides. Helps whittle down the time."

  "Feel free," I told him, relieved that he hadn't hoo-hawed over my refusing tobacco.

  He took a good, long gander at my jacket, which Ma had sewn out of old jeans, my homespun pants, and my resoled boots. If I'd had my way, I wouldn't have been wearing boots at all, warmish as it was, but I figured that without them I'd be so busy watching for slivers that I'd never get anywhere.

  "I'll lay you're fourteen or fifteen," he said, "and headed downriver on some important business."

  He'd got the downriver part right, though that didn't count for much, seeing as the Rose Melinda was pointed that way. I suppose the important business was true enough too, though sort of vague to be worth counting. But the part about my looking fourteen or fifteen was an out-and-out lie. People were generally hard pressed to put me at my rightful twelve. Most of the time they came up with a guess of nine or ten, sometimes even low as eight, rarely up to eleven. Needless to say, I was considerably charmed.

  Skipping over my real age, I said, "I'm headed to St. Louis to learn a trade."

  "Don't tell me any more." Chilly Larpenteur held up a hand to stop me. "Let me guess."

  So he went over me again, paying special attention to my palms and the profile of my nose, as if they had as much to say as the Old Testament. He counted up the four or five freckles roosting on my cheeks, sneaked a peek in an ear, and pretended to be afraid of my front teeth, which have been compared to a beaver's, though not by anyone I'd call a friend. Satisfied at last, he leaned back and closed his eyes.

  "As I see it," he guessed, "there's two possibilities. Both of 'em are likely, but I'm leaning toward the one with more glory. How do you feel about glory, Zeb?"

  "All for it." So long as it didn't involve slivers, getting burnt, high places, or swimming. Avoiding the dark was pretty close to being on that list too.

  "I thought as much. But before I say my piece, would you hold your hands flat in front of me?"

  I did as asked, kind of puzzled and enjoying the game all the more 'cause of it.

  "Just hold 'em there," he told me, inspecting them real close-like, as if they might turn into butterflies or something even more amazing. At length, he chuckled and shook his head.

  "Steady as rocks." Chilly clicked his tongue in admiration. "You're not going to make this easy, are you?"

  That puffed me up considerable, so I hung my hands out there a spell longer, even though they were already dog-tired.

  "Could go either way," Chilly judged. "And that's a fact. Guess I might as well choose and have done with it. I'd say you're headed down to Jefferson Barracks to sign up as a scout for the Army."

  He nodded his head sagely, as if he'd nailed my plans dead center. I really had the gent going. Jefferson Barracks was the Army outpost in St. Louis, and they weren't likely to waste their time with an undergrown specimen such as me.

  "Nope," I advised him.

  Chilly wore a pained expression for a bit, sort of like a man working around a toothache.

  "That only leaves one thing." He took a deep breath and plunged ahead. "With hands so steady as yours, a goldsmith or jeweler, I'd say. Are you going to learn to cut diamonds and rubies for some far-off king?"

  "Wrong again." Though I mightn't have minded such work at all, so long as there weren't any splinters.

  "Well, I'm busted," he muttered. "You'll have to lay 'er out for me, Zeb, 'cause far as I can tell, you're a might too young to be running for president."

  "My ma and pa are sending me down to St. Lou to learn to be a tanner."

  The instant I said it—why, Chilly's liveliness shriveled up to nothing. All the warmth flew right out of his face, and it felt like a heavy, dark cloud had passed between me and the sun. I guessed he wasn't about to waste any time on some lowly tanner's helper. He looked at me close again, but this time he was checking out my eyes, as if searching for something. There was a worrisome crease to his brows too, which left me feeling as though I'd somehow let him down.

  It nearly made me cry. Here I was, all alone on the river, couldn't swim a lick, and about to lose the only friend I had. I may have been only twelve, but I knew that a friend was a rare thing in this world—hard to make, easy to lose. And a man as worldly as Mr. Chilly Larpenteur was a keeper for sure. Trouble was, I didn't know how to make things right again.

  After a bit, Chilly hopped down from his barrel and spoke in a tone so polite, it nearly cut me in half.

  "I'm sure your ma and pa mean well," he informed me.

  Holding out his hand, he gave me as stiff a handshake as you're likely to encounter outside a graveyard and started off as if we'd never met. A feeling of loneliness swamped me, and I couldn't breathe, not a bit. Well, a drowning man's not going down without yelping for help, and I wasn't either.

  "Chilly!" I called, hurrying to catch up to him. "What would you do?"

  He held up, giving me the idea he had something on his mind, but then he shook his handsome head all regretful-like, as if it wasn't his place to say it.

  "No," he judged, acting noble, "I wo
uldn't want to step between a pa and his son."

  "If you got some kind of better idea," I babbled, holding on to his coat sleeve, "I'm sure my pa would want me to hear you out. It's not like he had his heart set on my being a tanner."

  Which was true—far as it went. The only thing my pa had been really keen on was having me cub on a steamer. I felt a little rumbling below my ribs over the fib but kept on babbling.

  "There was a whole bunch of other trades we talked over, but for one reason or another, they didn't pan out. So if you've got some advice to offer, I'd be ever so much grateful."

  The way he reached out and patted the top of my head was a comfort. And didn't I need it? You see, I was quaking away, half expecting Pa to come thundering down on me, wanting to know just what in blue blazes I was talking about. But you know what? Pa didn't show up. Ma neither. While I was getting used to that, Chilly was checking up and down the deck as though he didn't want anyone to overhear what he had to say next.

  "All right, Zeb," he confided. "Maybe I can offer an idea of how I might help you. But it won't lead to anything easy. I wouldn't want you to have that notion."

  "I'm not afraid of hard work," I promised.

  "I didn't figure you to be," Chilly assured me. "But can you keep a secret? That's the part weighing on me. This idea I'm going to tell you, it's in need of being kept a secret. You don't, and things can get mighty hot."

  "Secrets are my specialty," I said, which was mostly true, except for the time I told on my brother Harold for trying to shoot an apple off Emily's head with a bow and arrow.

  "How about loyalty?" Chilly asked.

  "Had it for dessert every night to home."

  And we did too, seeing as how we rarely had lump sugar or jam lazing about.

  "All right then," Chilly said, "but before I can tell you more, you'll have to pass a test."

  "A hard one? I ain't had much schooling. Just some reading and ciphering from Ma."

  "It's not a school test. More a reading of your character. You game?"

  "I'll give 'er my best shot."

  "Joan of Arc couldn't ask for more," Chilly declared, back to smiling. That lasted until a dark thought murkied his brow and he lowered his voice again. "Not a-scared of tight places, are you?"

  "That part of the test?"

  "A qualifier."

  "Well, I don't like to brag," I said, "but I been known to take a candle into caves no one else would touch."

  If Pa had been around, I'd have got a knuckle up top of my head for such blowing, even if it was true. Scrawny as I was, crawling into tight spaces had saved my hide more than once when dealing with town bullies. Chilly wasn't entirely sold though and asked me to stretch out flat on the deck so's he could do some measuring. Strange though it seemed, I did her, trying not to think of the slivers beneath me or the rushing waters beneath them. Chilly, he kneeled down beside me and pulled out a gold pocket watch that was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen and probably worth an entire farm, livestock and all. He used the watch's gold chain to measure how far off the deck I came.

  "I do believe you'll do." He sounded awfully pleased about it. "Yes, indeed. But now for the test."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ONCE AGAIN CHILLY CHECKED UP AND DOWN the deck, casual-like, as if he didn't want anyone noticing him doing it. Satisfied that nobody was paying us any mind, he tugged me behind a stack of chicken crates for some privacy. As a general rule, I keep my distance from chickens, which are about the peckingest bird you can imagine, especially when you're after eggs. To keep from flinching away from their beaks, I concentrated for all I was worth on what my new friend had to tell me.

  "Let's say there's an old gentleman planter aboard this steamer," Chilly speculated. "He's here to take in the sights. He's traveled the entire length of the river, or at least the part of it you can reach by steamer, New Orleans to St. Paul, and now he's headed back home. He did it just to see how the river looked and smelled and tasted—especially tasted. He carried a little silver dipper for sampling it each morning. All the way he booked a whole stateroom to himself, ate at the captain's table every meal, and drank bottled wine at the bar. No corn squeezings from a jug for the likes of him. Can you imagine having money enough to do all that, and for no better reason than to say you've done it?"

  "Why, no sir, I can't."

  "It's hard for me to digest too," he admitted, nodding in agreement. "You might say it makes me uneasy, thinking of a man with that kind of money. Why, he must have whole trunks of it at home."

  I caught Chilly squinting sideways at me, so I bore down to show I was keeping up just fine.

  "What do you think a man who has that kind of fortune ought to do with it?" Chilly asked.

  That sounded kind of like a test question, which threw me on alert. I couldn't for the life of me see what any of this had to do with fitting into tight spaces, but I gave it some major thinking anyhow.

  "Oh, maybe build a palace," I guessed. "Paint her white. Lay in some windows and plenty of gold."

  When I studied Chilly's face for some hint as to whether I was on the right road, it didn't look good.

  "And maybe buy a new suit," I threw in quick-like. "Right from a store, to wear in that palace."

  That didn't appear to be any go either, not with Chilly looking ready to wag his head no. Quick as lightning, I tossed out one last guess.

  "And 'course I'd order up some furniture and quality stuff all the way from New Orleans. Made in France, they would be, and so pretty that you wouldn't hardly want to sit on 'em. And all the time you'd be after your servants to dust 'em up till they shined enough to show your grin."

  "That'd be exactly what most of your basic rich gents would do." Chilly nodded wisely. "And then some. Do you reckon that'd make them great men?"

  "Great?" I blinked, not sure if I'd heard him right.

  "That's the question before us," Chilly said. "Would all those things you talked up make a rich man stand head and shoulders above everyone else? Would they make him a man that people looked up to? And sang the praises of? And told their grandchildren that they once shook his hand?"

  "I don't see why not."

  "No, no, no," Chilly moaned, kind of low-like, which made it sound as though I'd muffed 'er pretty bad. "Not by a long shot, they wouldn't. Take your palace—that might work for a king, but just let some ordinary fella try to build one and everyone thinks he's putting on airs."

  "That's so," I said, seeing his point.

  "And the clothes don't ever make the man."

  "True enough," I admitted, thinking that I must have heard Pa warn me about the exact same thing a hundred times or more.

  "And there's nothing ever been made in France that made a man great, unless he was a Frenchman, and this old gent I'm telling you about doesn't have a drop of French blood in him."

  "So what would make him a great man?" I asked, figuring the answer was way beyond me.

  "That's the question," Chilly agreed, sounding mighty pleased with himself for asking it. "What would make such a man great? It's a tough old nut to crack, all right."

  Then he commenced to ho-humming and rocking on his feet, which made it seem like he was giving me a second chance at tackling it. I poured on the steam too, giving his question a double heaping of attention, but truth be, I didn't know the first thing about rich folks. Why, the closest I'd ever come to one was waving to passing steamers. Finally I called her quits and blurted, "Well, maybe he just ought to share it."

  "That's it!" Chilly slapped me so hard on the back, he nearly knocked me over. "That's exactly the answer, son. He ought to share it. That surely would make him a great man."

  He grew real thoughtful then and checked around the chicken crates to make sure no one had sneaked up on us. "But rich men never do," he lamented. "They don't seem able. If you was to ask 'em what they wanted out of life, they'd tell you they hoped to be remembered as great men. I know. I've asked. I see 'em on these steamers, mooning around the railings and lo
oking miserable as fleas, and I've asked. They generally get kind of choked up about it too, 'cause they know it ain't likely to happen, don't matter how many factories or plantations they own.

  "But when I tell them how they can pull it off, they blush like schoolboys and say they couldn't ever do it. No sir, not on a dare. It wouldn't be right to share their money, they say. Don't ask me why they cling to it so. I've never heard a satisfactory answer to that one. Why, you'd think it ought to be the easiest thing in the world to dip in their pockets, pull out a bankroll, and pass it around. They can't though. It's a bona fide mystery." Putting a hand on my shoulder, he gazed dead into my eyes and said, "What if I told you that I knew someone whose lifework was helping these rich gents become great?"

  "I wouldn't be surprised," I said. "Not a bit."

  "What if I told you that this fellow was on the lookout for a helper, an apprentice of sorts?"

  I gulped and nodded, too afraid to ask the obvious.

  "What if I told you he was a gambler?"

  "A gambler?" His answer had sneaked up on me something fierce.

  "And not just any kind of penny-ante card shuffler either," Chilly sailed on. "He's a genuine riverboat gambler, top of the breed."

  "Riverboat?" I whispered, going weakish in the knees 'cause of course riverboats meant rivers and deep water.

  "What if I told you that he was me?" Chilly went on.

  My mouth most flopped open like a door in a high wind. You could have hung a lantern on my jaw. In the backwoods where I grew up, you heard about creatures like riverboat gamblers, same as you heard about herds of buffalo flowing like rivers and desert spiders big as your dinner plate. Romantic hogwash, my pa always called it, but for me they was mythical and wonderful as them ancient Greeks.