The Hand You're Dealt Read online

  “Thank you, Father. Thank you,” I said, shaking his hand over and over. “I won’t let you down. I won’t. I promise.”

  Then I grabbed the bucket and sponge away from him and scrubbed at that car like it was my own.

  When he finished speaking, Father Dineros gave everybody a little wave and walked out of the gym. Soon as he was gone, most players, including Abbott, pulled a stack of black chips from their pockets to make side bets for real money.

  “What a great guy, the Father,” said the man sitting on my left. “I take lots of plumbing jobs here in Caldwell, and I’ve snaked a few drains at Saint Bart’s. That’s how I met him. Nice guy—down to earth.”

  “Tony” was written in script over his shirt pocket. His fingernails were lined with dried grease, and his armpits reeked from sweat, like he’d just knocked off work.

  “Hey, know what you call a flood in a church?” Rooster asked him.

  “No. What?” answered Tony, cracking up before he even heard the punch line.

  “Holy Water,” Rooster came back, slapping his big hands together.

  I tossed a white chip into the center of the table to ante and peeked at the pair of cards the dealer sent me. So did everybody else.

  Tony pitched two black chips into a side pot, along with Rooster and the Human Calculator. Then Tony leaned over to me and asked, “So, Huck, you’re only interested in winning pretend money—a young gun like yourself behind those dark glasses? I mean, you might as well be home playin’ Monopoly.”

  I just looked into his blue eyes and stayed blank on him.

  “Maybe he’s feelin’ us out first,” said Rooster from across the table.

  “He must be, with a stare-down like that,” smirked Tony. “Jeez, nobody could look so serious over winnin’ nothin’.”

  chapter three

  BESIDES POKER, THE BIGGEST buzz in Caldwell came from the new women’s clothes outlet that took the place of Dad’s shop. For the two weekends of the tournament, the store advertised that it was going to have live models in the window. Their ad even had pictures of women wearing string bikinis and sexy nightgowns, and that got everybody’s attention.

  I’d stared into that same window maybe a million times, watching Dad cut hair. Now it was filled with smooth-faced, bald-headed mannequins holding handbags.

  “Hey, Porter! It’s the freakin’ middle of the week,” somebody screamed from up the block. “That skin show doesn’t start till Saturday. You hard up for a front-row seat or what?”

  It was a group of varsity baseball players and their girls, and Cassidy was right in the middle of them.

  “Porter’s a perv!” shouted one of them.

  “Super-perv!” yelled another.

  I fixed a look on my face like nothing they had could touch me, nodding my head and smiling from the corners of my mouth.

  Cassidy looked me in the eye as he walked past, holding hands with his girlfriend. He was the only one not laughing, but he didn’t cross any lines and tell anybody else to quit it either. And he never came over from his half of the sidewalk to slap my hand or say anything. I didn’t expect him to now. But I know two or three years ago, we would have had each other’s backs, no matter what.

  I remember a road game when we were playing junior varsity together, and Cassidy smacked two home runs in a row. I came up to bat right after him, and the pitcher drilled me in the ribs with the ball to get even. I was so mad. I charged the mound, and both benches emptied onto the field to fight. I was maybe five feet from the pitcher when Cassidy sprinted past me and tackled him first.

  The umpires ejected the both of us, and we sat on the team bus waiting for the game to finish, laughing our asses off.

  “You know I only got beaned because of your homers,” I’d told him.

  “Then you owe me, ’cause that was the first hit you had in three games,” he roared.

  All that ended after I couldn’t learn to hit a curve-ball and didn’t make the varsity team. I guess it was easier for Cassidy to just replace me with somebody who was wearing the same uniform and invited to the same parties.

  I turned back to the store window with their voices echoing through the street. I hadn’t moved a muscle in my face. Then I saw my reflection.

  For a second that mask melted away, and I could see everything inside me that was hurting so bad. I wanted to take my fist and shatter the glass to pieces. But I closed my eyes instead, pushing my toes hard into the ground. I could almost feel Dad standing at my shoulder and smell the hair tonic he used in the shop. Then a bell rang as a woman opened the door, stepping inside.

  I was alone again.

  So I pulled myself together the best I could and started home.

  After three hours of poker, I was behind a few chips. Rooster was partly right. I was playing cautious to start, trying to feel everybody out. But I was nervous, too, worrying about making a big mistake early.

  Tony had lost two big pots already, and most of his black chips were sitting in front of Rooster and the Human Calculator now.

  “These are the only two at the table I got a handle on,” said Tony, pointing to the empty chairs of the players who’d been busted. “I can read them so good, I can see right through ’em.”

  I didn’t want to put too many chips in against the Human Calculator. I even folded with a decent hand one time after he raised me, figuring his brain probably had the odds down to a science.

  “Poker’s straight mathematics, nothin’ tricky,” Calc said, stacking his chips in the shape of a pyramid. “Numbers don’t lie. They don’t know how.”

  “You an accountant or a tax auditor?” Rooster asked him.

  “Somethin’ like that,” he answered, shifting his head from side to side.

  That started me thinking—if the worst thing happened and I got knocked out of the tournament, maybe the Human Calculator could put Abbott in his place.

  Two more players at our table got busted quick, leaving us four. And I even broke one of them myself. On the hand before, the man had lost a big side bet to Rooster and was still kicking himself. He didn’t give a damn about the watch, or a seat in the Vegas tournament. He was there to make money, and once his black chips were gone he’d lost his focus, too. So when the man bet what was left of his red and white stack without even looking at his hole cards, I pounced. Winning that pot put me on the plus side and gave me enough chips to survive the first day easy, as long as I didn’t get suckered by somebody into going all in.

  Across the room, Sheriff Connor had spotted some guy from another town who’d never showed up to court for a traffic violation in Caldwell. But Connor wasn’t going anywhere during the tournament—not unless there was a murder or something. So he handcuffed him to a chair while they both played poker. And people were howling over how that guy got busted before he’d even made a bet.

  Some freshmen from school were serving food, and I was glad when none of them gave me a second look. I stopped playing long enough to wolf down a bologna sandwich, and went to tip the girl who’d brought it over.

  “Hey, Huck’s takin’ out the real money,” cracked Tony, seeing the dollar in my hand. “Sure you can afford it, Mr. Trump?”

  So I decided to give her two bucks instead.

  That’s when one of the tournament directors moved us to another table that had four players left too. I needed a fast read on who they were and had to sell them on who I was, and wasn’t. But I was sitting closer to Abbott now and could see the ceiling lights glaring off his shades. And I had to work extra hard at pretending he wasn’t there.

  “I hope the last guy took all the bad luck in this chair with him,” said Rooster, breaking the ice. “I hate this climbin’ into somebody else’s grave.”

  “You want to see what the stiff looked like?” asked a man in a foreign accent. “I take his picture right here on my cell phone, with the camera. I take everybody’s picture I make broke. I got two of them today. This one even smiles for me. See?”

  The m
an said his name was Sammy from Miami, and he looked right at Tony the plumber and asked, “I take your picture last year, yes?”

  “Nobody ever took my picture at a poker table!” sparked Tony.

  “Okay, maybe soon then.” Sammy laughed, getting into Tony’s head.

  The Human Calculator showed off his same trick. But this time he listened to the new people’s birthdays one by one, before giving the answers all at once.

  “Friday, Thursday, and you’re a Thursday on a leap year,” he said, restacking his chips.

  The guy sitting across from me blew off the Human Calculator’s question like he didn’t hear him. No one at the table knew who he was or anything about him. He just played his cards and kept his mouth shut. Sammy tagged him “Mr. Nobody” and said he hadn’t spoken a word since the tournament started.

  “Well, Mr. Nobody, it’s nice to meet you, too,” Calc said, sarcastic.

  There were two women at the table, and I was surprised they’d both told the year they were born.

  Mrs. Emerson worked at the bank and probably knew what everybody in Caldwell was worth. I figured out in my head that she was forty-eight. I knew Mom would be interested to hear it, only I couldn’t tell her how I’d found out.

  The other woman was much younger, and a real knockout. She wore big round shades, but I don’t think anybody was too interested in scoping out her eyes. She had on a pink halter top, and every time she took a deep breath, that’s where most of the men were looking.

  “Go ahead!” Abbott’s voice cut through the crowd, as everyone suddenly got quiet. “You’re tryin’ to be somebody, right? Go for it!”

  All across the gym, the cards stopped flying and almost every head turned toward Abbott’s table. Players stood up at their seats to see, but my feet wouldn’t stay put and I had to move closer.

  “Here, I’m all in too!” called Abbott, shoving his whole stack into the center of the table.

  My heart was pounding faster and faster, thinking this could be it for the bastard.

  The guy Abbott was up against had a few more chips than he did. That meant Abbott should have been standing, ready to leave the table if he got beat.

  But Abbott wouldn’t do it.

  “You gotta stand!” shouted the guy. “I got the bigger stack! That’s just respect!”

  “Why the hell should I?” Abbott said, calm as anything. “I’m not losin’ to you.”

  I hated the way Abbott was sitting. I’d seen him humiliate kids in class with his body leaned forward like that.

  Still, I was praying I was wrong.

  Abbott flipped his cards over first.

  The guy looked at them and took a tantrum, almost stamping his foot through the floor. Seeing that was like getting socked in the gut for me, because I knew Abbott was going to survive and double up his stack.

  There was still the river to be dealt. But somebody standing almost right on top of them came walking back and said, “There’s not a card in the deck that can save him. He’s drawing dead.”

  The guy sank into his chair in front of his last few chips, crushed, as the river card got turned over.

  “Next time, don’t lecture me on poker etiquette,” Abbott said, twisting the knife. “You just know how to lose. I know how to win.”

  I limped back to our table, and Tony asked, “You okay, Huck? You look worse than that guy the champ just popped.”

  “Must be the bologna,” I answered.

  Sammy was bragging how he was going to take Abbott’s picture soon.

  “I don’t think anybody can,” said Rooster. “He’s like a goddamn vampire—no soul. I’m not sure his reflection would even show up.”

  Then, halfway though the next hand, Mrs. Emerson told the Human Calculator, “I don’t know what you were tryin’ to prove with all that nonsense. I know for a fact I was born on a Sunday—my mother missed church.”

  That’s when I saw Calc’s shoulders shrink and the confidence run out of his face. He was a fraud, pure and simple.

  “Nah. That can’t be right,” said Calc.

  I was so pissed at myself for thinking he could beat Abbott that something inside me pushed to finish him off.

  “I didn’t want to say anything before, but he got my birthday wrong too,” I told the whole table.

  “So you were playin’ us all for suckers with that made-up numbers routine,” said Tony. “The nerve of this guy.”

  Two hours later the Human Calculator’s pyramid of chips was gone, and his long face was just a memory on Sammy’s cell phone camera.

  At the next table over was a man with no arms. He wasn’t wearing shoes or socks, and he used his feet to move the chips and see his cards. He was thin as a toothpick, and his head shook like a bobblehead doll, beneath a ball cap and dark shades.

  “Motorcycle accident as a teenager. His own fault, too. Doin’ somethin’ like one-twenty before he wrecked,” said Rooster, who saw me staring. “But he never quit, and learned to do things with his feet. I’ve even seen him whack a baseball with the bat tucked under his chin.”

  I didn’t know what that man would do with the watch if he won. But I’d rather see it around his ankle any day than on Abbott’s filthy wrist.

  Just outside the gym, a couple of librarians had set up a “bad beat” table. And if you donated two dollars to the Caldwell Library, they’d listen to you cry about the poker hand you never should have lost. They even served milk and cookies to make you feel better.

  I kept thinking how nobody had a bad beat story like that man without arms. But he wasn’t crying to anybody. He was playing poker with his two good feet.

  chapter four

  I GOT HOME FROM the tournament that first night and Mom was half-asleep on the couch, waiting on me. She’d just finished work and was still wearing her pink waitress uniform with the white lace apron tied around her waist.

  Every summer Dad and her used to take road trips up and down the California coast. They’d leave late on a Sunday afternoon when Dad closed the shop and wouldn’t be back till Tuesday morning. Once I hit high school, they’d let me stay home alone, with just the neighbors to look in on me. They didn’t even have to make a bunch of house rules for when they were gone, like no parties or girls in the house. That’s how much they trusted me.

  Now the closest Mom got to the road was that metal box of a diner she worked in—an old trailer car sitting up on cinder blocks just off the side of the highway. And that trust Mom had in me was about to go flying out the window too, because I was ready to lie through my teeth to her about what I’d done that night.

  “Well, I know where you been,” she said, as I bent down to kiss her. “Don’t try to deny it. You got the smell of that gym all over you.”

  I tensed up inside, thinking she knew I was playing in the tournament.

  “Slacks and shoes? Maybe that Audra was workin’ there with you, huh?” she asked with a half smile.

  But I wouldn’t answer.

  “I won’t even ask about Abbott. You woulda come through that door dancin’ if he’d got knocked out tonight,” she said, sounding exhausted. “So what kind of tips did you make servin’ sandwiches? Better than what I did at the diner?”

  The truth was on the tip of my tongue. But I bit it all back and played Mom like she was sitting across a poker table from me.

  “You don’t want to know,” I answered, shaking my head.

  Then I reached into my pocket and put fourteen dollars down on the table.

  “Honey, that money’s yours. I wasn’t asking for it,” she apologized. “You keep that for yourself.”

  I knew I’d touched a nerve in her, and that was the first step in winning any big hand. So I headed up to my room and left Mom calling after me. When I reached the top of the stairs, I looked back down and said, “That’s not the whole thing. There’s more you don’t know about.”

  “Well, you treat yourself to something nice,” she said. “And don’t let Abbott get to you. All right?”
r />   But I’d already turned around, and those words just bounced off my back.

  I shut my bedroom door behind me and looked deep into the mirror over my dresser. I wasn’t happy with what I saw. So I pulled my cap and dark glasses from my back pocket and put them on. I molded my face around them to every expression I knew—confident, sincere, nervous, scared—and studied each one close. Then I practiced them over and over, pretending it was Abbott staring back at me.

  I felt like somebody different in that disguise—somebody who could dodge the hits and make you see him the way he wanted. I’d hit bottom enough already, and if I couldn’t solve my own problems, maybe this Huck in the mirror could.

  On Sunday, Abbott and his wife were sitting up front in church as usual.

  “Some sinners think they can get closer to God with a front-row seat,” sniped Mom.

  Father Dineros’s sermon was called “Self-Indulgence,” and he started out fast with a full head of steam.

  “I’m not talking about ordering the biggest ice cream on the menu, or trading in your old car for a classic like mine.” He smiled wide. “Those are simple indulgences and easy to understand. I mean the kind of self-indulgence where you convince yourself that your dishonesty is supported by the right reasons. Grudges, payback, revenge—they’re the worst kind of crutches because they provide us with excuses. You won’t solve your problems with the rest of the world until you can look yourself in the eye first.”

  It was so hot and humid I was squirming in my church clothes and had to undo the top button on my shirt just to breathe. The sun was streaking white, yellow, and red through the stained-glass window, right onto my forehead. And I figured it was payback for every ant and spider I ever burned up beneath a magnifying glass when I was a stupid kid.

  Then a fly started dive-bombing me, and I took two good swats at him before Mom elbowed me in the side to stop. I suffered through every word of that sermon. And when Father Dineros finally finished, I left there drenched in sweat and needed a second shower when I got home.