by Otto Penzler
Deek says, "When you won the pot, we paid up, din't we? Now you got to pay, Anns'lee. That's poker."
In just my swimsuit, what can I do. Can't take off the halter-top, but for sure can't take off the bottom.
My sandals! Maybe the guys would let me substitute my sandals.
Except: I don't see my sandals on the messy floor.
Maybe I lost them in the other room? climbing through the window?
The guys are pounding the table: "Strip! Anns'lee's got to strip! Top or bottom, you owe us. That's poker."
Deek is practically on top of me. Not just his underarms smell, but his oily-spiky hair that's cut mini-hawk style. Big yellow crooked teeth, breath in my face like fumes. Deek is saying, like you'd talk to a young child, or some animal like a dog that needs to be cajoled, "Take off your top, li'l dude, thass all, thass a damn cute li'l top, show us your cute li'l boobies, you ain't got nothin' we ain't seen already, wanta bet?" All this while I'm hunched over trying to shield my front with my arms, but my arms are so thin, and Deek is pressing so close, slides his arm around my shoulders and I'm on my feet, panicked, trying to run to the door. But Croke grabs me like it's a game we are playing, or him and Deek are playing, like football, Anns'lee is the football, captured. Croke's big fingers tear at the halter straps, Croke manages to untie the straps and pulls off the halter, Ohhhh lookit!—the guys are whistling and stamping their feet teasing, taunting like dogs circling a wounded rabbit, and I'm panicked like a rabbit, trying to laugh, to show this is just a joke, I know it's a joke, but I'm desperate to get away from them, stumbling to the bathroom, the only place I can get to, shutting the door behind me, fumbling to latch the door, had a glimpse before I shut it of Croke (I'd thought was my friend) with the halter-top on his head, tying the straps beneath his chin like a bonnet.
Somewhere not too far away Momma is looking at the clock fretting and fuming where is that girl?—where the hell has Annislee got to this time?
They wouldn't hurt me—would they?
They like me—don't they?
How long I am crouched in the bathroom in terror of the guys breaking in, how long I am shivering and trembling like a trapped rabbit, I won't know afterward and even at the time what is happening is rushing past like a drunken scene glimpsed from a speeding car or boat on the lake. My right breast is throbbing with pain, must've been that Croke squeezed it, an ugly yellowish-purple bruise is taking shape.
Croke, I'd thought liked me. Helping me out of the boat.
Back in grade school already we'd begun to hear stories of what guys can do to girls if they want to hurt them, though we had not understood why. And sometimes the girls are beaten, strangled, left for dead, it isn't known why.
"Hey: Annis'lee."
There's a rap on the plywood door. I'm not going to open it.
One of the guys rattling the door so hard, it slips open. It's Jax leaning in, seeing me crouched against the wall so frightened my teeth are chattering, says, like he's embarrassed, "Here's the swim top, nobody's gonna hurt you."
I'm too scared to reach up and take the halter-top from him. Jax shoves it at me, muttering, "Put the damn thing on."
Jax shuts the door. With trembling fingers I refasten the top.
Avoiding my reflection in the mirror. That greasy smudge where I'd kissed my own lips.
When I emerge from the bathroom, stiff and numbed, my eyes blinking back tears, the guys are still at the table, still drinking. Seems like they're between poker games. Or maybe they're through with poker for the night. Their eyes swerve onto me in that way that reminds me of excited dogs. Deek says, "Li'l dude! There you are. C'mon back sit on Deek's lap, eh? You're my girl."
A glint like gasoline in Deek's bloodshot eyes and a way his big teeth are bared in a grin without warmth or mirth warns me that I am still in danger. Through the plywood door I'd heard Deek mutter what sounded like ain't done with her yet, so don't fuck with me.
Outside, all I can see of the early-evening sky is massive bruise-colored clouds. Still there is heat lightning 'way in the distance.
"Here y'are, Anns'lee. Shouldna been so scared."
Croke tosses the Cougars T-shirt at me. I'm so grateful for the shirt, smelly from where Croke had wiped his sweaty face with it, I'm stammering, "Thank you!"
There is a break in what the guys are doing, I can feel it. Or maybe they've been waiting for Anns'lee to emerge from the bathroom uncertain what they would do with me, or if they would do anything with me: like turning a card, possibly. It just might be the card that makes you win big or it might be the card that assures you will lose. It might be a card that will mean nothing in your life. Or everything. It might even be a card you won't need to request, the card will come flying at you.
Now I'm wearing my Cougars T-shirt over my swimsuit top again, I am not feeling so exposed. It's a baggy shirt, coming down practically to my thighs.
I will pretend I haven't heard Deek. How he's staring at me with a loose wet smile running the tip of his tongue around his lips.
Things a guy can do. You don't want to know.
My heart is beating hard hidden inside the T-shirt, my voice is calm-sounding, telling the guys: "There's other kinds of stripping, not just taking off clothes. There's this card game we play called Truth—you ever heard of Truth?"
"Truth? Some kids' game? No."
I'm a little distance from the nearest of them, who happens to be Heins. The way I'm standing is to let them know that I am not going to make a run for the front door as I tried to do earlier, I am not panicked now, or desperate. I am smiling at them, the way a girl might. I am trying to smile. The heat pumping off these guys is a sex-heat so palpable you can feel it yards away. like the charged air before a storm. I don't want to think it's the dogs' instinct to lunge, tear with their teeth, they can't help it.
I tell the guys maybe we can play Truth: "It's a little like poker, except you don't bet money, instead of paying a bet you pay in 'truth.' There's high cards and low cards and a joker that's wild. If you lose, you reveal a truth about yourself that nobody else knows."
Nobody seems very interested in learning this game, I can see. Deek says disdainfully, "How'd you know what a person said was true? Any old bullshit, how'd you know?"
"You would want to tell the truth—wouldn't you? If it was the right time."
Croke says, "You tell us, li'l dude. Make up for how you been acting, like you're scared of us."
Quickly I say, "I'm not scared of you! I love being here, coming across the lake on Deek's boat.... There's nobody I know has a boat like Deek's."
At this, Deek smiles. Then the smile freezes.
"You bullshittin' me, babe? Wantin' a ride back acrost the lake, that's it?"
No! I'm smiling at Deek keeping my distance from him. Between us there is Heins, slouched at the table, idly shuffling the pack of cards. I tell Deek I wouldn't lie ever, not to him and his friends. I would tell only the truth, that is "stripping" the soul.
Jax shoves a chair out for me, beside him at the table. So I sit down. There's a little distance between Deek and me. One of the guys has opened an ale for me, I will pretend to sip.
I'm not drunk now—am I?
Drawing a deep breath. This truth I have to reveal.
"...two years ago this August, my father was driving back with me from his cousin's place down in Cattaraugus, this town called Salamanca on the Allegheny River. It was just him and me, not my mother or my brother Jacky. Driving back to Strykersville from Salamanca and Daddy wants to stop at a tavern in this place outside Java. Daddy was living away from us then, like he does now, and this was my weekend to be with him. At the tavern that was on a lake where people had rowboats and canoes, Daddy bought me some root beer and french fries and I was sitting at a picnic table while Daddy was inside at the bar. There were kids in the park, people were grilling hamburgers and steaks, some girls playing badminton asked me if I'd like to play with them, so I did, but after a while they went away and I w
as by myself and thought that I would walk around the lake. It wasn't a big lake like Wolf's Head, and I thought that if I walked fast, I would get back before Daddy came out of the tavern. But the path around the lake wasn't always right beside the lake and was sort of overgrown so I wasn't sure if I should keep going or turn back. I was worried that Daddy would come out of the tavern before I got back and see I wasn't there and be anxious. These years he'd been away, at Follette, he'd got so he worried about things more, like his family, he said, he'd had a lot of time to think—"
Deek interrupts: "Follette? That's where your father was?"
"Yes."
Not like I am ashamed, just this is a fact: Daddy served four years of a nine-year sentence for "aggravated assault" and was released on parole for "good behavior" when I was eleven years old. Follette is the men's maximum-security prison up north at the Canadian border, the facility in the New York State prison system where nobody wants to go.
The guys' eyes are on me now. The guys are listening and I continue with the story, which is a true story I have never told any living soul before this evening.
"...so I'm hoping that I am not lost, I'm on a kind of wood-chip trail and there's a parking lot nearby and a restroom, I'm thinking that I can use the women's room, except out of the little building there comes this man zipping up his trousers and he's seeing me, he's in these rumpled old clothes and his face is boiled-looking and hair sticking up around his head, older than my daddy, I think, and he's coming right at me, saying, 'H'lo honey, are you alone 'way out here?' and I tell him no, my daddy is right close by, so he looks at the parking lot but there's no cars there, but he says, 'Well! Too bad, this time'—I think that's what he said, he might've been talking to himself.
"I wasn't listening and walked away fast. And I waited for him to go away and I thought he did and I went inside the women's room that was hard to see in, there wasn't any light and the sun was about setting, and I'm inside one of the toilet stalls, and there's a scratching noise, and this guy—it must be this guy—has followed me into the women's room! where a man is not ever supposed to be! He's poking a tree branch beneath the stall door, to scare me, saying, 'Li'l girl, d'you need help? Need help in there? Wiping your li'l bottom? I can wipe, and I can lick. I'm real good at that.' I'm so scared, I am crying. I tell the man go away please go away and leave me alone, my daddy is waiting for me, and he's laughing telling me the kinds of things he was going to do to me, things he'd done to girls that the girls had 'liked real well' and nobody would know not even my daddy. But there was a car pulling up outside, and a woman comes into the restroom with a little girl, so the man runs out and when I come outside he's gone, or anyway I think he's gone. The woman says to me, 'Was that man bothering you? D'you want a ride with me?' and I said no, I was going back to my daddy's car and would wait for him there. Why I told the woman this, I don't know. I thought that the man was gone. I headed back to the tavern the way I'd been coming, now the sun is setting, it's getting dark. I'm walking fast, and I'm running, and there's the man with the boiled-looking face, almost I don't see him squatting by the path, he's got a rope in his hands, a rope maybe two feet long stretched between his hands he's holding up for me to see, so I'm panicked and run the other way, back to the parking lot, and the man calls after me, 'Li'l girl! Don't be afraid, li'l girl, your daddy sent me for you!' Things like that he was saying. I found a place to hide by some picnic tables, and for a long time, maybe twenty minutes, the man is looking for me calling, 'Li'l girl,' he knows that I am there somewhere, but it's getting dark, and then there's headlights, a car is bumping up a lane into the parking lot, and I can't believe it, it's my daddy. Just taking a chance he'd find me, Daddy would say afterward, that I'd be on this side of the lake, he'd asked people if they had seen me and somebody had and he'd come to the right place, at just the right time. He caught sight of the man with the boiled face. I told Daddy how he'd been following me, and saying things to me, wanting to tie me up with a rope, and Daddy runs after him and catches him. The man is limping and can't hardly run at all, and Daddy starts hitting him with his fists, not even saying anything but real quiet—Daddy does things real quiet—it's the man who is crying out, begging for Daddy to stop but Daddy can't stop, Daddy won't stop until it's over.... Daddy says, when a man uses his fists it's 'self-defense.' Fists or feet, nobody can dispute 'self-defense.' Use a 'deadly weapon'—like a tire iron—like Daddy used fighting another man in Strykersville, that got him arrested and sent to Follette—and you're in serious trouble, but just your fists and your feet, no. What Daddy did to that man who'd wanted to tie me up and hurt me, I didn't see. I did not see. I heard it, or some of it But I did not see. And afterward Daddy dragged him to a ravine, where there'd be water at some times of the year but was dry now, and pushed him over, and I did not see that, either. And Daddy comes back to me excited and breathing hard and his knuckles are skinned and bleeding but Daddy doesn't hardly notice. He grabs me, and hugs me, and kisses me, Daddy is so happy that I am safe. 'You never saw a thing, honey. Did you?' And I told Daddy no, I did not, and that was the truth."
Listening to my story, the guys have gotten quiet. Even Deek is sitting very still listening to me. The look in his face, like he's waiting to laugh at me, bare his glistening teeth at me in a mock-grin, is gone. Fresh-opened cans of Black Horse Ale on the table, the guys have not been drinking. Must be, they are waiting for me to continue. But my story is over.
Hadn't known how it would end. Because I had not told it before. Even to myself, though it is a true story, I wouldn't have known that I had the words for it. But you always have words for a true story, I think.
I am not going to tell Deek, Jax, Croke, Heins how there was never any article in any newspaper that I saw about the man with the boiled-looking face if he'd been found in Java State Park in that ravine. What was left of that man, if anything was left. Or maybe he'd gotten all right again, next morning crawled out of the ravine and limped away. That is a possibility. I didn't see, and Daddy never spoke of it afterward. Daddy drove us back to Strykersville that night. It was past midnight when we got home, and Momma was waiting up watching TV and if she'd meant to be angry with Daddy for keeping me out so late, by the time we got to the house she was feeling different, and kissed us both, saw that I was looking feverish and said Annislee, go to bed right now, it's hours past your bedtime. That night, Daddy stayed with Momma.
Off and on then Daddy stayed with us. Then that fall something happened between him and Momma, so Daddy moved out, that's when he began working at the stone quarry at Sparta. But Sparta is only about fifty miles from Strykersville and Daddy and Momma are still married, I think. Till death do us part Daddy believes in and in her heart Momma does, too.
I'm smiling at these guys crowded at the battered old table in Deek's uncle's cottage, so close I can see their eyes, and the irises of their eyes, and as far into their souls as I need to see. Saying, "I feel lucky, I'd like to try poker again, a few hands. I think I'm catching on now."
The Stake
Sam Hill
A woman pulling a clattering roll-aboard eyed them in prim disapproval. The younger man took a defiant drag on his cigarette and spoke, the cautious tone of a stranger careful not to overstep, "Waiting on my limo. Do you live in Chicago?"
"Minneapolis," the fat man in the silver suit said, "but I'm on my way to a new job in Miami. I've spent a lot of time in Chicago, though. I love Chicago." People in Chicago and Atlanta and Dallas always want to be told that.
"Yeah?" said the young man. "What do you do that brings you to Chicago so much?"
The fat man sized him up, seeing the watermelon-colored knit shirt from a famous golf resort, expensive Louis Vuitton travel bag, and cheap synthetic goody bag with the drug company logo on the side. "I'm a professional poker player." He noted the quick intake of breath and pegged the man as one of the new breed that watches poker on TV and dreams of winning a seat at one of the big tournaments. He stuck out his hand. "Shiny Sarkis
ian."
The other man stared at him. "Shiny?"
"Yeah," laughed the heavy man, "Shiny. I always been a little heavy and I got this oily Mediterranean-skin thing going. It's always hot in poker rooms, so I sweat a lot. A player named Dolly Brunson started calling me Shiny, and it stuck."
The young man stared back, mouth hanging open. "Doyle Brunson gave you a nickname? The Doyle Brunson?"
Shiny laughed, dropped his cigarette and ground it with his toe. "I only know one Dolly Brunson." Shiny lit another cigarette, smiled, and waited.
The young man with the sparse brown hair did not disappoint. "Marc Weinberg. I play some poker, too. Online, that sort of stuff." Shiny nodded. Weinberg tried again. "I don't recognize your name. Do you play any tournaments?"
Sarkisian shook his head. "Cash-game guy."
"And that's how you know Brunson?" Weinberg said.
"Sure." Shiny laughed. "Forty years ago, bunch of us rode around in this old green Cadillac playing in the back rooms of bars and Elks lodges. Half the time somebody would get mad about the whole thing, and one of us would say he had to go pee. Then he'd sneak out to start up the car, and bring it around front so the rest of us could come hightailing it out and dive right through the windows and take off with those other guys chasing out the door after us. That was back before Dolly was a TV star."