Champion of the World Page 2

  “For your trouble,” the longshoreman said, plucking a twenty-five-cent chip from his stack and flicking it across the felt at her.

  When she explained to him she was not allowed to take tips from players, the longshoreman sneered. “Take it as a loan,” he said, letting the chip lie. “When I bust you, maybe we can work out some form of repayment.”

  Right then, she should’ve taken her chips and walked away. She could’ve let one of the other girls take over the poker table and switched to dice or even blackjack. It would’ve been the smart move, but sometimes the card player in her got the better of her good sense.

  She won the next three hands without looking up from her cards, ignoring the dealer when he touched his tie knot. Grumbling, a couple of the other men decided to take their chips to a different table, and underneath the skirt of the tablecloth the dealer kicked her in the shin. She promised herself she would fold the next hand, but when her first two cards were a pair of queens, she felt the stir of good fortune in her belly. She couldn’t fold two queens. Again she blew through the dealer’s fold sign, playing her hand slow and careful, trapping the longshoreman into making a big bet on the final round.

  “Let’s see what you’ve got, girlie,” he said, fingers playing idly at his belt buckle.

  Just for show, she checked her hole cards one last time. “My, my,” she said. “What’s a nice girl like me doing with a hand like this?”

  When the longshoreman saw her queens, black hatred spread over his face. From a shoulder sling under his vest he pulled out a short, bone-handled dagger and began using it to clean his fingernails. The sight of the blade twisted her stomach, and the snub-nosed pistol she had strapped over her ankle suddenly felt as hot as a lump of coal. She tried to catch the dealer’s eye, but now he was steadfastly avoiding her gaze. She crossed her legs and eased the gun out of its holster.

  When there was trouble at the tables, it reassured her to think of her father bellied-up and dealing a card game in his pin-striped shirt with garters around the elbows. By the time Moira came along, her father had already ditched the pinched nasal accent of his Pennsylvania upbringing in favor of the soft drawl of a riverboat card dealer. Even as a little girl she understood he was the sort of man women adored. Casino cocktail girls made sure his drink was always full. Men liked him, too, drawn to his easy manner and dry wit. Most of the time he could cool out a sore loser or broke drunkard armed with just his smile and a handful of complimentary chips.

  “I’m just the middleman,” he told her on the first night she worked running ice in the casino ballroom, age twelve. “My job is to make it as painless as possible for people while I empty their pockets.”

  Now she tried to put some of that faux Southern hospitality into her voice as she batted her eyes at the longshoreman and said, “Surely there’s no need for that. Stow that thing away and let us refill your drink on the house.”

  He ignored her, puckering up to blow a speck of grime off the tip of his knife. She looked around for a roustabout or a pit boss, but all the men had gone out to the big tent to help with the show. There was nothing to do but play the next hand, and by the time four more cards had been dealt, the other men got out of their way and it was just the two of them again.

  “I fold,” Moira said, without even bothering to look at her hole cards.

  “You got the best hand,” the longshoreman protested. “You don’t fold the best hand.”

  She eyed his cards across the table and then sighed at him, this stupid man. “You’re chasing a straight,” she said, “but you’re not going to get it.”

  “Now, see,” the longshoreman said. “How could you possibly know a thing like that?”

  A strange barking laugh escaped her lips, and it seemed to stoke his anger even more. He leaned forward in his chair and ground the tip of his dagger into the table’s wooden rail. He said, “You think I haven’t noticed the two of you signaling each other all night long? Your carnival shams might fool these other mugs, but it hasn’t worked on me, has it? I’m too skilled a player for you—for any of you—even in a rigged game. Now, play on.”

  Her knees felt watery and she thought of telling him the truth: the only way this game was fixed was to keep Moira from cleaning him out in minutes. She didn’t need to cheat. She could explain the numbers of this hand to him, why following after an inside straight was a sucker’s bet, but the odds would mean nothing to him. Plus, she was not a card counter. Her own game was more guts and instinct than any kind of science. She could read the lay of a gambling table like a boat captain saw the rolls and draws of a current. With the slightest move, a quiver in the corner of an eye, a crossed or uncrossed leg, another player could tell her what they were about to do, the same way an outfielder could tell where a batter was going to hit the ball by the position of his feet and the angle of the bat. But why try to explain that to a man as obviously bad at cards as the longshoreman? Why think he might understand when she didn’t fully understand it herself?

  “Fine,” she said, giving him the full benefit of her eyes. “I bet all.”

  The longshoreman measured her stacks with a wide skeleton’s grin. She had a little more than half his own holdings left. A smart player would have at least taken some time to think it over, but the longshoreman called the bet immediately. She turned slightly in her seat, aiming the gun at him under the table, curling her finger lightly on the trigger.

  Don’t make me, she said to him in her head, trying to breathe and hold the thing steady.

  Just as the dealer sent their last cards around facedown, the flap on the tent’s door rustled and over the longshoreman’s shoulder she saw Pepper come into the gaming pavilion. He was still in his purple cape and wrestling tights, his fingers massaging the groove in his throat where the noose had caught him. After pausing to give his eyes a chance to adjust to the glare of the lights, he gave her his funny, crooked smile. It felt like someone had set a flock of doves loose in her chest.

  She didn’t even bother checking her last card. She knew her ace high would carry the day, so she flipped them over to show the table and waited for the longshoreman to realize he’d lost. His eyes danced back and forth between his cards and hers. She watched it register in his face as he tried all the possibilities in his head. When he saw there was no way he could win, a low growl came from deep in his throat and he lashed out with one arm, scattering chips like a cloud of flies. His chair toppled backward as he stood, dagger clutched in one fist. Before he could move, Pepper was standing by his side, laying a hand casually on his shoulder.

  “What’s all this?” he said, like they were all in on some kind of joke together.

  The longshoreman jerked away, wheeling and slashing with his dagger, but then he was down on one knee and Pepper was bending his knife hand back toward his elbow at a sickening angle. The longshoreman cried out and the knife dropped to the ground. With a quick twist, Pepper forced him down onto his belly and put a knee between his shoulder blades. The longshoreman cursed and thrashed, but Pepper’s expression was as flat as glass as he scooped up the knife and set it on the table. A couple of roustabouts showed up then, too late as usual, and hauled the man to his feet.

  “Cash this fellow out,” Pepper said, stuffing chips into the longshoreman’s pockets. “Make sure he knows not to come back.”

  As they dragged him away, the heels of his boots skittering in the grass, the longshoreman yelled something at them. Moira couldn’t make it out, but in his voice she recognized a lifetime of anguish and misfortune, a man foundering with no end in sight. Her throat felt dry and she realized she still had the gun pointed at his upturned chair. Slowly she lowered the barrel into her lap and turned to the dealer.

  “Aren’t you just about the most useless man?” she said.

  Pepper touched her lightly on the arm. “Easy,” he said, and bent to pick up the longshoreman’s chair. “It’s taken care of
now.”

  They left through the tent’s rear exit, walking into the carnival’s backyard area, where a couple of Wild West trick shots stood in fringed jackets, balancing the butts of their rifles in the grass like walking sticks. When he saw how badly her hands were trembling, Pepper took her lighter and lit her cigarette. She took a greedy first puff, the smoke scorching her lungs and easing her nerves.

  His smile dried up when he saw the pistol in her fist. He took it from her and tucked it under his cape. “Jesus, Moira, that’s really stupid,” he said quietly. “What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking I might have to shoot that longshoreman,” she said. “He came at me with a knife, in case you didn’t notice, so I could really do without the scolding.”

  They moved through the alley between the backyard fence and the trailers, the names of the carnival’s various acts painted on them in big bright letters. Hedgweg the Great Colossus! Wayne Munro & His Congress of Performing Hounds! Beneath the words were full-color portraits of the performers: the Human Projectile streaking across a blue sky; the aerialist Starr DeBelle, her dark hair flying as she turned a flip; and Jupiter, the carnival’s sickly old elephant, rearing up on hind legs. When they got clear of the trailers Pepper slipped his arm around her waist.

  “Can you imagine the hell Boyd would raise if assholes started getting shot at the gaming tables?” he said.

  In spite of herself, she smiled at him. They wound their way past the animal trucks, where a roustabout rolled two big, claw-marked balance balls out of a prop box while a couple of other men struggled to fit a bear with roller skates and a tiny top hat. Drugged up on something powerful, the bear’s eyes tracked them lazily. A few feet away, the animal trainer sat oiling his whip. By the time they got to the outfield wall, a twelve-foot green barrier covered in peeling billboards for cigarettes and safety razors, she was starting to calm down. Her hands were steady as she pitched the butt of her smoke onto the ground.

  “How was the drop?” she finally asked him, ready for a new subject.

  He tried to hide the tightness in his face. “Fine,” he said.

  She stepped back and gave him the once-over. “How’s your weight?”

  He rolled his eyes, shrugging like a kid forced to model his new Sunday school clothes. “My weight’s good, Moira,” he said. It was a lie. He swung his arms at his sides as if trying to get the feeling back in them.

  “If you were overweight,” she said, “you’d tell your loving wife the truth about it, wouldn’t you?”

  “It’s just a couple of pounds,” he said.

  She shook her head. “But you went ahead and did the act anyway. I suppose this is the part where I ask you what you were thinking.”

  “It’s just a couple of pounds,” he said again. “It’s not a big deal.”

  His eyes danced up over her shoulder, where a group of clowns had come out of a dressing tent and stood passing a hand-rolled cigarette around in a tight circle. The confrontation with the longshoreman had drained her energy, and now she felt suddenly exhausted. She didn’t want to play the nagging wife just then.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “You’ll skip dinner and lose it overnight while we make the jump up the coast.”

  “I’m hungry, Moira,” he said, “and I’m tired. I’m going to put this gun back where it belongs. Then I’m going to the pie car and I’m going to buy some hemp from those clowns. Come and get me when it’s time.”

  She heard the whine in his voice and could barely blame him. They’d been on the road all summer, trouping down the Atlantic coast from the carnival’s winter quarters in New York and then cutting a jagged path through the South all the way to the Pacific before marking a course north. From here they would head all the way to the Canadian border before making for home, through either the American Rockies or even Canada if Boyd could get the work permits. It had been a tough trip for Pepper already, starving himself to keep his weight under 155 pounds in order to do the hangman’s drop while taking on all comers in nickel challenge matches during the carnival’s athletic show. They still had a long way to go.

  “Of course,” she said, trying to soothe him. “Where will you be?”

  He nodded toward the wall. “Across the street,” he said. “Where it’s quiet.”

  “Where it’s morbid,” she said. She was wearing heels, so she had to lean down to peck him on the cheek. “Thank you for saving me from the bad man.”

  His response was to raise a victorious fist above his head as he turned and went.

  It surprised her sometimes how attracted to him she still was after all these years. She liked the sharp blade of his wrestler’s body and the look he always carried around in his hard walnut eyes, indifferent and challenging at the same time. Like he was daring the world to give him a reason. Other men feared him, and she’d admitted to herself a long time ago that she liked that, too. Still, at times his bullheadedness was a burden. She tried not to be so hard on him, knowing that the way he worked he deserved to treat himself now and again; but she also knew he was the kind of man who didn’t think about the landing until after he’d jumped. The kind of man who’d rather run through a wall than try to find a way over. When the reaper finally came for him, which she hoped with all her might was years from now, she knew Pepper Van Dean would ask him if he wanted to wrestle for it.

  A racehorse, her father told her once, would run itself to death if the jockey let it. This was on one of their first Sunday trips to Jefferson Park in New Orleans. The riverboat was docked on Sundays and Mondays so the crew could go ashore. For her father that meant the racetrack, a cardroom, or a dark saloon with a chalkboard giving odds on the ball games. She had just started helping out in the boat’s gambling hall when he began inviting her along, figuring if she was old enough to hold down a job she was old enough to learn how to be good at it. That first day, wearing her best dress in the magnificent, pillared grandstand at Jeff Park, she was thrilled by the teeming crowd and how, atop every gleaming, whitewashed turret and gazebo, flags rippled and popped in the breeze. Eighteen, she’d counted by the time they took their seats.

  Before the first race a horse with emerald green diamonds on its hood had panicked in the blocks and thrown its rider. It scared her, and she asked her father if the men were hurting the horses by forcing them to race each other.

  “No, honey,” he said to her. That smile, that voice. “It’s the thing they love most in the world. It’s what they were born to do.”

  That day they blew their whole bankroll on doomed bets, but it didn’t matter. Her father saved out a dime and bought them both ice creams on their way back to the boat. For years after that the two of them were inseparable during their time off, always seeking out the track or a card game. They earned a reputation as a team, a father-daughter tandem that could empty your pockets as fast as any stick-up artist. She learned to navigate the world the way only a gambler’s daughter could. She loved her father. He was the smartest, most put-together man she ever knew. Then, on an overnight trip during the summer Moira turned sixteen, he left their family’s cramped stateroom for a late shift in the riverboat’s cardroom and fell into the water, or was thrown.

  Inside the right-field scoreboard was a narrow passageway that smelled of dust and oiled leather. It ran the length of the stadium in either direction, and on the far wall, rows of numbered scorecards dangled from metal hangers. A line of overhead bulbs squatted dead in their sockets, but enough light seeped in through the seams in the wall that Pepper could make out where someone had scrawled To Hell with You Jimmy Claxton! in smart little pencil writing next to the door to the street.

  The rain stung the back of his neck as he jogged across the cobblestones and vaulted the low fence into the cemetery. Night was coming on moonless and cold and he felt the chill through the seat of his tights as he hoisted himself up and sat on a high headstone. Dangling his boots six inches ab
ove the grass, he fired up the hemp cigarette and filled his lungs. His shoulders throbbed from the hangman’s drop, but as he blew his first cloud of green-gray smoke up into the tree branches, a calm settled over him. Taking his chin in his palm, he turned his head one way, then the other, until a series of cracks raced down his back. The adrenaline from the performance and then the trouble in the gaming pavilion was starting to ebb, leaving him with a shaky, empty feeling. His belly rumbled and he pulled out the two pickles he’d gotten from the pie car. The pickles were wrapped in paper and he peeled them like bananas as he ate.

  He didn’t have high hopes for the athletic show. In his four and a half years wrestling openweight challenge matches for the carnival, this summer’s crowds were the worst he’d seen. Tonight, after the evening performance in a city big enough for people to have other things to do, he’d be lucky if a dozen guys stuck around to try their luck against him. He wouldn’t argue with making an easy time of it, but it also meant another boring night on a tour full of them. He hoped things would get better as they moved up the coast, especially once they reached the timber camps in the hills of Northern California and Oregon. There would be some tough guys up there, he told himself. He was looking forward to it.

  His father had worked as a lumberjack for a short while. At one time or another his father was also a miner, a horse jockey and a barroom bouncer, and had failed at all of them. The summer Pepper turned nine years old, the old man lost his job at a feed store outside Salina, Kansas, and moved their family west to Boise, Idaho, where he’d heard a bunch of big tree-cutting operations were starting up. Of course, the lead was a dead end and by fall he was working early mornings sweeping out neighborhood stores before the shopkeepers opened and nights guarding the door at a local tavern.