Ace studied the cash. “I believe I’ll have to write you an IOU.”
“Of course, of course. All bets made will be covered,” Momus said. “I guarantee it,” he added with a small white smile.
Sloane got a pen and some paper. She and Josh and Ace wrote out thousand-dollar IOUs and put them on the table. Then Sloane picked up the pack of cards. “Five cards, no draws,” she said. “No wild cards.”
“Deuces wild,” Momus said.
“Dealer calls the game,” Sloane said sharply. “No wild cards.”
“Oh, all right.”
It was an interesting choice of game, Josh thought, watching Sloane send card after card spinning across the flat tabletop. With Momus at the table it would have been insane to play any game with a lot of chances to bet, such as Texas Hold ’Em or seven-card stud. Just looking at the scarred and puckered flesh where Sam Cane’s left ear and eye used to be told you what kind of bettor the god was. But if all Sloane had wanted was for Momus to lose, she might have reasonably called as many wild cards as possible, to give Ace’s luck the most room to maneuver. It wasn’t just that she wants Momus to lose, Josh thought. She wants to win herself.
He picked up his hand. Pair of eights with a king on the side. With no draws it was an excellent hand.
“You to bet, Ace,” Sloane said.
“No bet.”
Everyone in the room looked at Momus. He studied his cards, then laid them flat on the table. He rooted for a moment in the pockets of his white linen pants and produced a small pocketknife. “I’ve seen worse cards,” he said. He opened the knife, laid his left hand on the table, and cut off his middle finger just above the first knuckle. A little blood oozed from the stump and quickly congealed, paled over as if by frost. Momus folded the pocketknife up and put it back in his pocket, then picked up the finger and threw it in the center of the table, where it lay amid the IOUs and hundred-dollar bills.
Ham turned and retched into Sloane’s sink. The sound seemed to go on and on, like the heaves of one of Joshua’s dysentery patients.
“Mr. Cane?” Momus said. “Your bet, sir.”
“I fold,” Josh said. There was no such thing as a playable hand against those stakes.
“Four thousand dollars!” Momus said, shaking his head. “That’s a lot of money to leave on the table, especially for you.”
“Not enough to buy a new finger,” Josh said. “Not even before the Flood.” He started to reach for his bottle of beer, but his hand was shaking too much. “It wasn’t a fair bet. In three or four days the moon will be new and you’ll be whole again.”
“Fair doesn’t interest me,” Momus said. “Sly, what do you say?”
“I’ll see your bet with this, if you’ll take it,” Sloane said, and from her purse she pulled a leather mask and threw it on the table. It was russet and brown and brindled, sharp-featured like a fox.
Momus chuckled. “Very well. I accept that as a calling bet. Ace, back to you. Are you in or out?”
With a start Josh realized that his father was wearing his old poker face. There had been no trace of that calm, easy smile in the man who had lain in Randall Denton’s bed, half-dead from yellow fever. Even when he was stronger, something had changed in him, as if the long years in Mardi Gras had burned the old Sam Cane away. But in this moment he was back as if resurrected, his voice light and his hands light on his cards, the very calm and grace and easiness of him, as if the last thirteen years had never happened. “I’ll see that bet and I will raise it,” he said. His eyebrows lifted just a fraction. “I’ll bet my luck, sir. Will you care to see that wager?”
The god looked at him for a long, long time.
“Well, Momus? Are you in or out?”
And then, like a miracle, the god folded his cards. “Too rich for my blood,” he said.
Josh’s breath went out of him in a long sigh. Sam Cane had turned the tables on Momus. When the god had cut off his finger, he had been trying to scare the humans out of the game with a price too dear to pay. But in the new Galveston, with magic spilling everywhere—and perhaps new gods birthing even as they played—luck was a thing Momus could not dare to lose. “Jesus,” Josh breathed. “Then it’s over. You said you would only play for one hand.”
“But the hand isn’t finished,” Momus observed. “Sly, will you see that bet or fold?”
Jane Gardner’s daughter studied her hand. “Boy, I hate to lose on good cards, but I don’t know what—” She stopped, and her hard smile faded. “No, Sly doesn’t have a bet. But I think Sloane does.” She licked her lips. Her fingers started to tremble, making her cards quiver. “It’s a funny thing to bet. Your luck.”
“It’s been my whole life,” Ace said calmly. “For better and worse. Plenty worse.”
Sloane nodded. “I’m thinking, then…” Sloane gathered her breath. It was strange how much less confident she looked than she had only moments earlier. “I bet this.” And she looked around, taking in the kitchen and the hallway and the rooms beyond. “I bet Ashton Villa,” she said. “I bet my house. My mother’s house. My home.”
Joshua’s father looked at her. “That’s a big bet.”
Sloane took a moment to compose herself. Josh could see tears standing in her eyes. “You of all people should know.”
“I accept that as a call,” Sam Cane said. “I know what it is to lose that bet.”
Josh remembered desolation sitting like ashes in his mouth as he trudged back from Jim Ford’s house behind his father, his face wet with tears, his chest sore from the effort of swallowing his sobs, their house lost and it had all been his fault for giving away his father’s hand. He couldn’t know that the loss would be even more terrible than he had imagined.
Momus tapped Joshua’s father on the wrist. “You’re called,” he said.
Ace turned over his cards. Nothing, king high. He had bluffed Momus out of the game. Sloane gasped and laid her hand on the table, showing a pair of queens.
“Miss Gardner wins,” Ace said. He actually laughed. “Lady luck favors her own.”
“HOW can you win someone’s luck?” Scarlet asked, after her grandfather had gone. The cold air Momus left behind had begun to melt away into the Texas night.
“I bet it. I lost it. Momus will take care of the rest,” Ace said.
The girl twisted in his lap to look up at him. “I better not take any advice from you, then.”
Sloane pushed her chair back from the table and stood with a long, shaky intake of breath. She touched her hands to her face and rubbed her cheeks, as if feeling a tightness there. She walked slowly to the sink, where Ham still stood with his back bowed, resting his weight on his forearms with his head down. “You okay?” Sloane said. The big man shook his head. “It’s all right to be afraid. Gods are like that.”
“You stood up to him,” Ham said hoarsely.
“I’m family. Besides, we’ve all seen him before.”
“Not Josh,” Ham said.
Sloane turned the taps and rinsed out the sink.
“If you’re dizzy, keep your head down and remember to breathe,” Josh said.
“Feels like when George dinged me with that baseball bat.”
“Easton Howitzer,” Josh said. He remembered Martha flailing furiously at George’s head, crunching his skull in, leaving him in a puddle of blood on Highway 87. What had Momus said? Fair doesn’t interest me. “Maybe get him a glass of water,” Josh said.
Ten minutes later the color had come back to Ham’s face, Scarlet was getting bored, and Sloane had written Josh an IOU for a thousand dollars. “For your expert medical advice,” she said. “Plus I think I owe you for several cups of tea.”
“I’m not sure it’s that easy,” Josh said gloomily. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Momus finds some way to get that thousand dollars out of me yet. What are you going to do with that?” he added, glancing at the withered finger lying on the table.
“Throw it out,” Ham said. “Good Lord.”
“Are you kidding?” Sloane got a hot pad from above the stove and wrapped it gingerly around the finger. “I gave away my best charm a few days before my mother died. Can you imagine a better walkaway to replace it?”
“Oh, neat,” Scarlet said.
Sloane carried the finger out of the kitchen and returned a few minutes later. “As for your thousand dollars, I can always give it back, Josh. Or,” she added, picking up the pack of cards, “you could win it from me.”
“Jesus Christ on a unicycle!” Ham said. “You aren’t seriously thinking of playing more poker!”
Sloane broke the deck one-handed, squared it, and shuffled, a long whispering waterfall. “I don’t see why not. Momus said he was only going to sit in for one hand. And after all, who will have the guts to play again, now that we know he might sit in on any game?”
“Not me,” Josh said.
“You got that right,” Ham added, shuddering. For the moment he seemed to have forgotten that he currently despised Josh. Presumably he would remember soon enough.
Sloane cut the deck one-handed, fanned it, squared it with a sharp rap on the table and cut it again. Ace chuckled, watching her. “You just want to play because you’re feeling lucky. I know you.”
“No, you don’t,” Sloane answered. “You know Sly. Sloane, now, you’ve only just met.”
Ace touched the brim of an imaginary cowboy hat. “I sit corrected.”
“Where would you have gone to live if you had lost that hand?” Josh asked. He tried to imagine her shacked up with Rachel and her brood. Waiting under the covers of the bed he and Ham used to set toy soldiers on.
Sloane shrugged. Her short dark hair swayed a little by the side of her face, and Josh felt another rush of futile desire for her. “I don’t know. Maybe I’d build a little shack down where the Balinese Room used to be,” Sloane said softly.
“Are we going to play cards or not?” Scarlet said sulkily.
And in the end they did play, though this time they bet strictly with grains of rice, pecans, and sand dollars. At first Ham had the good cards, but he absentmindedly ate the better part of his early winnings and had to stay out of the big pots afterward. He had always been partial to pecans.
Ham was a decent home player, a veteran of many bar games who knew the basic odds, but he tried to limp in with a lot of drawing hands. Josh himself was a tight player and a conservative bettor, but he could afford to be as long as Sloane was at the table. As demure as she usually was, she played like a merry sadist. She gave away almost no tells, and seemed to enjoy winning a good deal more than a well-bred lady probably should.
Josh was content to take the hands he had the cards to win, and everyone conspired to make sure Scarlet won a pot every now and then. She was not a bad player, for a kid, but she still loved romantic hands, like flushes and straights. She also had a personal liking for jacks that made her stubborn about staying in with pairs of them beyond what the cards warranted. For the most part Ace restricted himself to analyzing each hand with her after it was over, but occasionally, unable to contain himself, he would lean and whisper something in her ear during play. “No advice,” he promised. “I’m just pointing out tells.” This happened twice while Josh was deciding to bet. He didn’t like the feeling that his father could still see through him.
It occurred to him that the bluff his father had made to force Momus out of the game was nearly the same as the one that had failed against Travis Denton. Of course Momus was a better player, with more to lose, and thus was easier to scare. And unlike Josh, Scarlet had kept her poker face. Mind you, Sam Cane’s bluff hadn’t entirely worked, had it? He’d lost the pot to Sloane Gardner. Once again Galveston’s rich got richer, at the expense of the Canes. Maybe some things just weren’t meant to change.
As the evening wore on and the electric fear that had come with Momus dissipated, weariness crept back into Josh to replace it. Or perhaps it was the beer. His attention wavered until he was following the cards no better than Ham, (although at least he wasn’t eating his bankroll). Bleakly Josh tried to imagine what it would mean to live in a world where a dead woman might run the city’s most powerful Krewe and a god could sit in on any hand of cards. In this dreaming world, Chance would always be king. Joshua’s father would probably say it had been like that in the twentieth century, too. He’d say that tragedy had never been more than a car crash away, even before the Flood. Luck had just been disguised more then. Hidden a little. Well, Josh liked it hidden. The Galveston they were part of now was too unpredictable. Luck ran everywhere, unbalanced and uncatchable, like mercury from a smashed thermometer. Disaster lay coiled as close as a rattlesnake in the next dim crevice.
Ham was coughing tonight, a short, hacking cough Josh didn’t like at all. The first time he heard it, his stomach knotted up tight as a ball of twine, and he realized he had been listening for that sound ever since the long day they had spent with Martha and George.
It was probably just a cold.
The night breeze grew cooler, coming through the screen door at the back of the kitchen. Sloane turned down the unnecessary lights, until it was just them in the kitchen, warm next to the stove and playing by the light of a single gas lamp, while around them the dim house creaked and settled. Outside, in the rest of the city, darkness would be lapping at the last lights, dousing them one by one. Joe Tucker would be dropping his crutches to say his prayers, and then climbing awkwardly into bed. Somewhere in the night a child would wake sweaty and screaming with an ear infection. Prawn Men would sit on the stone jetties that stretched into the warm ocean, waiting for the moon to set.
Beyond the little line of houses, the Island would stretch, miles of empty salt-grass meadows and hackberry scrub. Across Galveston Bay, the infernal fires of Texas City would roar on. Desperate men and cannibals would look for shelter, ears straining for sounds of their own kind, ready to rob or butcher them. North of them, the whole vast continent lay, tormented by uneasy dreams, sleeping through the long night that had begun in ’04. Who could say when day would ever come again?
Out the other way, from Galveston’s southern shore, the Gulf of Mexico stretched like a desert of water, a darkness without end.
Josh folded his hand. Mrs. Mather would have a round of patients for him to visit tomorrow, and he had promised to drop in on Joe Tucker as well. He needed to make up more head lice powder and something for a rash of pinkeye going around. And aside from doctoring, there was always more beer to ferment to pay the bills.
Across the table, Sloane was fast-playing Ham again, laughing as he blustered and frowned and counted his bankroll. She was less mysterious, somehow, than she had been once, and livelier. All very well for her to be the champion of the revellers now, but Josh wondered how she would feel if she should wake up one day and find fox fur creeping across her cheeks. One thing to say, “Change is inevitable!”—another to deal with it when it’s your goddamn life slipping like seawater between your fingers.
She’s going to be a different sort of Gardner, he thought, watching Sloane. A good assistant to Miss Bettie…most of the time. But every now and then, Josh suspected, there would come a day or three when Sloane would disappear: only to turn up later, hungover, refusing to say where she had been. Promising not to do it again. Ham had warned him once about falling for Jane Gardner’s daughter. The big man might should take his own advice, Josh thought. Watching her play cards, fine and fierce and laughing, Josh thought it would probably be wonderful to be Sloane’s lover—but very hard, too. As hard as being married to Sam Cane, perhaps.
Josh glanced around at the circle of faces: Sloane merry, Ham flushed with hot peppers and beer, little Scarlet frowning and chewing on her lip. His father, old now, and smaller than Josh remembered, wasted with sickness. Ace had been stripped of his luck at last, the fine luck that had cost him his wife, and his son, and his friends, and his life in the world of men. Maybe it was impossible for a human being to know what luck really meant, Josh thought. Maybe only a god c
ould bear it.
How fine Sam Cane had looked the night he lost their house! Josh could still remember the smooth play of muscles in his father’s forearm as he shuffled and dealt. And here he was, so reduced, missing an ear and an eye, a wife and a son, but still studying cards. A whole life wasted on a game. A game.
It wasn’t just the knowledge that loss was inevitable that hurt Josh so profoundly. Part of the bitter wisdom he had won on the Bolivar Peninsula was that life, even human life, was more vulnerable than it was precious. People were fragile, badly made machines, bound to break down sooner or later. Men were born, they lived, and they passed away. To the real powers of the world, the sea and the sun and even the bright petty gods, they mattered no more than the mosquitoes bumping against Sloane’s windows. It wasn’t just that Josh was afraid of losing: now, tonight, he couldn’t see any point in playing the game.
The table talk fell away from him, voices broken into faint fragments. The light from the gas lamp went dim, as if he had grown old between one breath and the next, his corneas stiff and yellowing. Choking dread descended on him, and suddenly he knew there was something terrible by the kitchen stove; something so frightening that if he were to look up, his heart would stop and he would die of fear.
He stared at his cards, splayed facedown in front of him. Their backs were blue, worked in a pattern of ivy. Terrible silence closed around him. The room grew icy cold. Goose bumps ran up his arms and down his back. He tried to speak, but he had no breath. His fingernails were blue. If he had been able to move, he would have thrown himself on the floor and crawled under the table and cowered with his head beneath his arms.
There was a horrible cold smell of rocks and seawater. Something touched his face; a hand. He struggled with every ounce of his strength to stare at the table, but the hand was stronger. It tilted up his chin, leaving him sickeningly exposed, as if someone had taken a scalpel and laid him open from his throat to his groin. He tried to close his eyes but he couldn’t, he tried to scream but he couldn’t. All he could do was die inside and meet his mother’s eyes.