Dead Man's Hand

by Otto Penzler

  I don't want to play a stupid fucking game, the Baron said.

  Come on, Lars, Toni said, singsong. Play! she cried. She was not only a little drunk—she had told us that the folks in Unalakleet, by necessity, were expert cardsharks. How else to pass the long winter darkness? She'd kicked off her boots, and one of her warm stockinged feet touched about a millimeter of my left thigh.

  The Baron took a drag, held it, and said, Fuck.

  Come on.

  On a Friday night, I'm playing a game with children.

  I could see how it seemed that way. We'd all learned, to our chagrin, that we were broke. For betting, I'd been reduced to emptying out the change jar I kept up in my room. Dook was, at that moment, dividing up equal piles of pennies, nickels, and dimes.

  I decided it was best to keep things moving. What's our game? I asked.

  Strip? Paulie asked, eyeing Toni's breasts. She sighed.

  The Baron reached over—faster than a man smoking a joint had any right to move—and grabbed the front of Paulie's shirt. He then brought his fist, knuckles down, onto the top of Paulie's head. Toni let out a squeak. The Baron wore a lot of ornate rings—skulls, demon heads, that sort of thing. Paulie didn't scream—I give him that—but when the Baron released him, Paulie clapped a hand to his head, eyes watering and downcast.

  Little boy, the Baron said, I can see Bethany's titties without having to play cards for them. And little Toni will not show you hers. We play for money, or we do not play.

  Dook—who'd looked a little excited when Paulie'd said "strip"—nodded right away. Money, sure, he said. We're ready to go.

  Right on, I said.

  Right on, the Baron said, Like a fucking hippie. This is not money. Get me some paper.

  I gave him the message pad from beside the phone. He wrote out FIFTY DOLLARS on six sheets of paper, and handed one to each of us. These are your markers, he said. Each of you sign it. The coins are our chips. Pennies are one dollar, nickels five, dimes ten.

  I tried my best not give anything away with my face. Playing for real, huh? I asked.

  The Baron grimaced at me. Very fucking real, monkey boy.

  All right then, I said, and signed my slip.

  Another thing you should know: I was, then, pretty good at poker. Mom and Dad, before the divorce, had trained me during years' worth of weekly family games. I had a natural poker face and, thanks to Dad, I could calculate odds fairly well. He and I used to play for chores. This was why I mowed the lawn, almost every time. But I'd win against my friends more often than not, when drunkenness wasn't a factor. And, even though I was drunk that night—well, I also figured I wasn't quite so drunk as everyone else. I knew I was a lot more sober than the Baron, and he was the only person at the table I felt I had to impress. If not beat.

  He tapped my marker, glaring at me. The others handed theirs in, with varying degrees of hesitation. Then we played.

  I dealt the first hand. Basic five-card draw. My father had taught me this: Use the first hands to scout people's faces. I lost the hand—I folded on nothing, chasing two pair—but not too much money with it. The deal went around the table. Paulie was his usual incomprehensible self—five-card draw, sevens and sixes wild, it made no fucking sense—and even Toni stared at him with open contempt.

  But I saw a few things. The Baron had good hands each time, picked up a nice little pile of change by the time the deal went to Toni.

  Hold 'Em, she said. She had to explain the rules. I pretended not to know them.

  I picked up the hand on a pair of jacks. Drew out Dook, who should have known better, and the Baron, who assured me I was very fucking bluffing. He had a pair of tens. He also showed me the most obvious tell in the book. A lot of players—thanks, Pop—think they have a poker face. But they only use it when they're holding something of value.

  Every good hand, the Baron composed himself. When he had nothing, he relaxed, drank from his bottle. The Baron, I knew, was an amateur. If that.

  Toni saw it, too. I saw she saw it and she saw I saw it. We traded a glance. Otherwise Toni was made of stone.

  The deal came back to me. Let's stick with Hold 'Em, I said. I smiled at Toni and repeated her line. It's the purest form of poker.

  I fucking hate it, the Baron said.

  We played an hour. Toni and I kept cleaning up. For the most part we avoided going head to head. But we were winning so much—we wiped out Bethany and Paulie almost immediately, and then began chipping away at the others—that I faced her down on a couple of shit hands, so at least no one could accuse us of cheating.

  But then—this was Dook's deal—I pulled the last of the Baron's chips away from him. Two queens showing, and I had the other two on the deal. It was academic after that, but, as I've said, I was pretty good. I bled the Baron dry, and I'd be a liar if I said I didn't enjoy myself. He had a full house, too.

  You're fucking cheating! he roared, and stood.

  Bullshit, I said. I was buzzed and happy. I'm good at this. That's all.

  You and that little cunt have a code, the Baron said.

  Hey! Toni and I said in unison.

  Bethany roused herself from a semi-nap. That's not nice, Larsy.

  Fuck all of you, the Baron said. You're cheating. I know it.

  Poor little baby, Bethany said, and giggled.

  I'm going to piss, the Baron said, and he stalked off, boots clomping on the floorboards.

  We played two more hands while he was gone, but it was mostly Toni and I exchanging a couple bucks. The sole of her foot was now pressing against my calf. It didn't occur to me to notice that the Baron was gone a long time. If I heard footsteps upstairs during those hands I might have convinced myself they were Dook's—he'd excused himself to the kitchen a while before.

  The Baron came back. He sat back on the couch, smirking.

  I pushed him. I couldn't help it—I grow bigger balls when I'm drinking. You want to buy back in? I asked.

  He just smiled. Then Bethany put her head on his shoulder, drowsily. He grunted and closed his eyes too. I wondered if I'd have to get the couch fumigated before Mom got back from California.

  Toni and I played a couple more hands. Dook and Paulie, eye-lids droopy, both went into the kitchen for a side game. When they were gone, Toni leaned across the table and kissed my cheek.

  Hey, I whispered.

  Hey yourself. She raised an eyebrow. Come on.

  Where—

  Upstairs. She smiled. Let's talk about our secret code.

  This sort of thing, as I've explained, did not happen to me. I followed her, nearly light-headed, praising in my head the loneliness and diminished expectations of Unalakleet, Alaska. When we were at the landing, hidden and shadowed, Toni kissed me for real. Stood on her tiptoes, put her hands in my hair.

  Wow, I think I said. Toni—

  Hey, she said, it is what it is. You're cute and nice and you can play the guitar and cards. She touched my cheek. I like that in a boy.

  She took me by the hand and led me upstairs. We turned and tumbled into the den, pressed together. I had a boner the likes of which I have never had again. She kissed me.

  Play something for me, she said, and turned on the light.

  I said, I don't know if I can concentrate, but okay, and turned for my guitar.

  Something was wrong. Off. I stood blinking in the new light, my blood and the booze in it rushing everywhere, and tried to focus. Everything was as we'd left it. The amp was off. The mirror from my mother's room was unbroken.

  Oh, no, Toni said.

  I saw it, too. Mephisto, my beloved guitar, was different. Wrong. I wasn't so drunk I was seeing things that weren't there. There was something on it.

  I walked to it, knelt. On the front, on that gleaming, spotless black just below the bridge, there was now a shape: a pentagram.

  I touched the shape. It had been carved into the paint. There, on the floorboards—I saw little chips of the paint and wood shavings. And, as though it was in the
room with me, I saw very clearly the leather knife case on the Baron's belt.

  I stood up and looked at Toni, then out the window, through my blurred reflection and into the night. I felt a number of very complicated things. Disappointment, first—who knows what Toni had in mind for me, up there, but whatever it was, was now over. She touched my shoulder, but there was no heat in it, and any of mine had been pulled down a sucking drain. Then worry—how was I going to explain this to my mother? And, too, scheming and calculation—I'd have to take the thing to a luthier, there was one in Westover—and get it repaired and repainted, and that was going to cost just about every dime I had and some I didn't.

  But those concerns were secondary They rose and faded in the face of terrible, wrenching fury.

  I'd been in fights before, had gotten insulted or punched in ways that made my fists ball up and my arms pinwheel and a red curtain drop over my eyes. But this was different. Worse. This rage made me feel weak, made my fingers tingle, made me want to cry and scream all at once. The fucker. The Baron had come to my house and had insulted me and my mother and a girl I liked. He'd shown me up on the guitar. He was a fucking Nazi, for Christ's sake. And now he'd gone and desecrated my guitar. This thing I'd loved above all others.

  Yes. Past tense. On top of the anger I felt grief, too.

  Because I knew: I'd never love the guitar the same. I'd never pick it up and not think of the Baron. I'd never look at it with awe. I'd never think of it as a gift from my mother but, instead, as a thing I had to sneak. It was flawed. Imperfect. And why? Why? Because I'd beaten him in a game.

  Because the Baron couldn't fucking play cards.

  I turned for the door.

  Daryl, Toni said. Wait.

  I have to say something.

  He's dangerous, she said. I've spent two days with him and Bethy, and he's—

  I know. But I have to do something.

  God. Her eyes were a little moist. Maybe it was the drink, I don't know. But I stirred her face into the mixture. Took courage from it. She liked me. I could play. I needed to avenge my axe. My honor. I had to do something.

  We walked downstairs into the living room and stood in front of the coffee table. The Baron was awake again, just putting down the whiskey bottle, empty now except for pale watery backwash. His eyes were a shining pink, and that color was in his cheeks, too. Dook and Paulie had returned to the room, and they looked up at me and Toni, both of them lost in jealousy.

  So, the Baron said to Toni. How is the party boy's very enormous wang?

  Fuck you, Lars.

  Little girl, he said, I'm about to wash that mouth out with piss.

  My rage grew, shifted. I had no muscle, no weapon that could break through to the Baron. I looked at his bare muscled arms, at the Nazi tattoos, at the knife case. I could not fight him.

  But I couldn't let things go, either.

  What did you do to my guitar? I said to him. My insides felt calm, cool, floaty.

  He grinned at me and hugged the bottle to himself.

  I improved it! It's a very evil axe. Now it announces itself to the world!

  Dook looked at my face. The blood drained from his to match mine. He stood, then went upstairs.

  You're a prick, I said.

  Yes! the Baron said. About time you fucking noticed. I am an evil motherfucker!

  I said, my mother spent a lot of money on that guitar. She'll take it away, now.

  You're a fucking pussy, the Baron said. Seriously. You want to play metal? Who the fuck cares about your fucking mother? Go run away. Live on someone's floor. Live in a goddamned car. I have. You think anyone wants you to pursue this course? No. They do not. I am liberating you. If there is ever going to be a Pitch Black—he snickered a little when he said it—then you are going to have to quit thinking so much about your fucking mother.

  Fuck you, I said.

  Fuck you, he said, mocking my pitch, the quiver in my voice. You know nothing. You think your little band is evil. You think playing loud chords and drawing skeletons is evil. He laughed. You don't know what you're doing.

  Put your money where your mouth is, I said.

  I do not think you mean that.

  Sure I do.

  Dook clattered down the stairs, his face twisted. My homeboy. He knew the stakes, now.

  I want you to pay to repair the guitar, I said. I've got fifty bucks of your money already. Now give me the rest. You owe me.

  No. He said it and then looked at me again. No! I give you strength—a gift!—and then pay you money? No. Go finger your vagina.

  He was cutting the cards, over and over, each time looking at the card on the bottom. Like he was playing some kind of private game, barely listening.

  You don't have any guts, I said. You're a coward.

  He laughed and his eyes flickered up to my face.

  You're not? he asked.

  No.

  listen, he said. These other pussy boys are nothing. You? You're not bad on that axe. You have a brain in your head. But you choose to be nothing. Nothing at all. It is very fascinating to me.

  He cut the deck, smiled, and showed me a queen.

  A brave man would embrace that guitar, he said. He would not care what his mother thought. He would understand the path to greatness. The Baron looked at me sideways. He would do what is best for his band.

  Let's play a hand for it, I said. You and me. A paint job or a new guitar, it's all the same to me. Five hundred bucks, all or nothing.

  He said, sniggering, Don't bet what you don't have.

  Actually I do have it, I said. I turned and went into my mother's room. I still felt calm. I wonder now if people who lose their lives in Yegas—who in the course of a night max out their credit cards, pawn their cars, the wedding rings off their fingers—feel the same calm I felt. I don't know. I opened my mother's closet and felt around on the top shelf. I found the old jewelry box. I lifted the lid and felt the money my mother had been squirreling away since Dad left. I counted it in the light of the hallway. Seven hundred dollars. Her Hawaii money, she called this. Before she'd bought the guitar for me it had been much more. In my head, somehow, that made what I was doing right. I was avenging her. Her trust in me. Her money which had turned into something so valuable.

  I reached back up onto the shelf, feeling for something else. My mother had told me about the Hawaii money. It was a matter of trust between us; I had never disturbed it.

  The other thing I had discovered while snooping. Actually, I'd seen it reflected in the long mirror, the first time I'd wrestled it off her closet door.

  I returned to the living room. Dook saw the cash in my hand before anyone else did, and he looked for a moment as though he might die on the spot. Dude, he said, pleading. In his eyes was the destruction of the band, the death of all our dreams, the end of me personally.

  I dropped the money in the middle of the table.

  One hand, I said. That's seven hundred bucks.

  Oh God, Toni and Bethany said in unison.

  The Baron looked at the money and pursed his lips. He shook his head.

  I don't have that kind of cash, he said. He added, Not on me.

  I said, That versus everything in your trunk. All of it. The whole rig.

  Ridiculous. Fuck you.

  I stared at him. I guess you're not man enough.

  He reddened. He picked up the whiskey bottle and looked at it and then set it down again, with a crash. Then he stood and bent over and swept the money off the table in his fist.

  You do not understand! he said. I do not get ordered around by little—by little stupid pussy boys! Fuck you! I take your money. Now you have nothing—

  I wasn't stupid. I was unwise then, sure. But not dumb. Of course I knew he'd try to take the money. So I pulled my mother's little .22 pistol out of my belt and pointed it at the Baron's head.

  Daryl! Toni cried.

  I told him, You're going to give me your guitar. I'm going to sell it and repair mine.


  Fuck you, he said, looking at the mouth of the gun. But his face had gone pale.

  Come on, I said. Give your keys to Dook.

  Dook could have quailed, but he didn't. He walked to the Baron and went to reach for the keys in the Baron's pocket. The Baron said, Don't you fucking dare—

  I stepped forward and put the barrel of the gun against the Baron's chin.

  All right, he said. All right. He looked at me, over the gun, right into my eyes.

  I would like to tell you I held firm. That I gazed at him with his own strength. You see what was at stake. Not just the matter of my guitar. I took the gun out, raging; I held it to the face of another man. And he stared me down. Overcame his fear and looked me in the eyes.

  And it was revealed to me, in his gaze: That while the Baron was an asshole, and maybe, just maybe, as evil as he claimed, he was not a liar.

  He was right about everything. I was good at the guitar, but I was not great. And I was the best of us. Our band consisted of children pretending at something we would never be. I could steal the Baron's guitar. I could sell it and fix my own. I could shoot him dead, right here and now. But no matter what I did, there would never be a band, not the one we'd imagined.

  We didn't have it in us.

  He kept his steady stare on me. I looked away. I could bluff at cards, but not at this. Not at blood. We both knew it.

  Without blinking, the Baron reached up and took the gun from my hand. I gave it up, almost relieved. I heard a whistling in my ears. The Baron looked at the pistol in his hands, and then he did something I'd not considered. He flicked off the safely and showed it to me, one eyebrow lifted. Then he pointed the gun at my face.

  Toni screamed. Shut up, the Baron said. All of you shut up and stay very still.

  Incredible, you say? That somehow a night like that one produced such a scene? Me, the violence in my heart replaced by despair—and then by mortal fear? Not a minute after I first held a gun, that gun being pointed at me? It happened. It all happened. I can still feel the loosening of my bowels, still feel the sickness that rose up in me. You must know this.

  The Baron pointed the gun at my head and I divided, became new. My old life was revealed as useless, a shirt too small for me; in that second, as my gaze flickered back and forth between the open mouth of the pistol and the Baron's bloodshot eyes peering at me over it, down the length of his beefy arm, I understood that everything good I would ever feel in my life had yet to happen. And I knew that, through my vanity and rage, I had just pissed all these things away. I hadn't been betting my mother's money, my guitar. The Baron was as evil as he claimed; I believed that now. I had sat down to play cards with the Devil and had finally offered up the thing he was, by nature, bound to take. Now here we were.