TWENTY

A record drought began in the middle of June. For weeks on end the sun bore down while farmers scanned the skies for signs of rain with dwindling hopes. The land baked. Crops withered in the fields and cattle ate the grasslands down to the roots. Those ranchers who could afford it leased pasture in the less arid eastern part of the state where there was still grass to be found. Those who couldn’t were faced with the grim prospect of having to sell off parts of their herds in a plunging market. Two cattlemen committed suicide that summer, and each time I went by the bank the lobby was full of ranchers and cotton farmers waiting to see Manlow Rhodes. He helped those he could help; the others he could only turn away, knowing full well that in some cases his refusal amounted to a death sentence. The bank’s reserves hovered just above the legally required minimum for months on end, and as the oil money came in as deposits he sent it back out as loans. Through it all he remained steady and silent.

The air itself became dirty as the trucks that rumbled incessantly through the county kept the roads churned into a cloud of dust that settled over everything. A shirt collar was filthy by noon. Laundry that was hung on clotheslines to dry came back into the house as dirty as it had gone into the washtub. Women ceased going out in their best clothes, and white dresses and blouses were no longer seen on the streets. I cleaned the filters on the air conditioners every day and Della bought the most powerful vacuum cleaner she could find and used it almost continuously, yet the dust still crept in and settled everywhere.

I played at the Weilbach nearly every weekend, and soon came to be accepted as a regular. I clashed a few more times with Clifton Robillard in those weeks, and I was beginning to wear on his nerves. I never mentioned the Meese or Kraft leases, and neither did he. Finally, during the second weekend in August my chance came and I bore down on him hard. With a little help from the cards I managed to trim him of $17,000 between Friday night and the wee hours of Sunday morning. Several thousand of it was a result of the natural attrition that occurs when an inferior player confronts a superior one. He lost a number of small pots simply because I knew the odds better than he did and outplayed him. Then an opportunity came and I hit him hard. It was a hand of five-card stud, and I would like to be able to say that I won it because the gods favored me. But the gods had nothing to do with it since I’d dealt it to myself some twelve hours earlier on my own coffee table at home.

Every week a bonded courier delivered fifty new decks of playing cards to the hotel from a novelty company in Dallas. Half of these decks had blue backs while the other half were red. Whenever a player called for new cards, a deck of the color opposite the one then in play would be handed over by the porter whose responsibility it then was to count the cards in the discarded deck. Once he was satisfied that no one had held any cards out to run into the game later, he tore the discarded deck in two and threw it away. The previous weekend I’d simply pocketed one of the red decks when the porter was distracted.

It’s easy enough to run in a cold deck when you’re the dealer, but it’s also dangerous to win a big hand by doing so. It is somewhat more difficult to cold deck a game when it is another player’s turn to deal, but it can be done; every stage magician pulls off more difficult illusions every time he performs. The only practical time is when it’s your turn to cut the cards. For my plan to work, it also depended on a certain number of players in the game. If there was one too many or one too few at the table, the order of the cards would be thrown off and the hand would be useless. I also wanted as few players as possible in the game at the time I sprang my trap. The more players at the table the more chance that someone would stay for a round or two with a poor hand and throw the order of the cards off. I chose five players as the average number at the table in the early hours of the morning, and fate gave me the extra bonus of Zip Zimmerman’s absence. Zip had been my real worry because he was the one player likely to stay in the hand for a round or two while holding junk in the face of good cards. About 1:00 A.M. everything fell into place and I slipped the cold deck into the game on the cut.

After the first two cards were dealt, Robillard had the ace of diamonds showing, and I knew he had a second ace in the hole. I held the jack of hearts on top, and he bet a modest $500. The other three players folded, and I pretended to deliberate for a few moments, then called him. On the next round he drew the queen of spades and I drew the eight of hearts. He bet $1,000 and I raised him a $1,000. Surprise showed on his face, but he met the raise and tapped the table for cards.

His next card was the queen of clubs. Mine was the seven of hearts. The dealer called my possible flush and Robillard’s pair of queens. Robillard checked, no doubt hoping to sucker me into betting since he had the ace of spades in the hole, which gave him two pair. I tried to feign relief as I also checked. On the final card he drew his third ace and I drew the ten of hearts. The dealer called his two pair and my possible flush.

My opponent took another quick peek at his hole card, then looked across the table at me and smiled. “I’m willing to believe you have that flush, my friend,” he said. “So I believe I’ll just check.”

He hoped I had the flush, he should have said. And he was sandbagging me in hopes that I’d bet heavily so he could raise me. I wasn’t hesitant in satisfying him on that score. There was a total of $6,000 in the pot, and I matched it. Robillard leaned back in his chair thinking he had me beaten since his third ace gave him a full house, and he wanted to savor the moment. When I dealt the hand that afternoon at home I had intentionally added a pair of queens to go with the aces rather than a pair of numbered cards. Against a flush they didn’t make the hand any stronger than a pair of deuces would have, but such is human nature that face cards always seem bigger and inspire confidence, especially when paired with aces. And I wanted him just as confident as possible. “That’s a nice strong bet,” he said. “But I believe I’m going to have to raise it.”

He only had about $5,000 left in front of him and he pushed it into the pot. I tried to look surprised as though I had been expecting him to fold against a bluff.

“I’d even like to go a little heavier than that if you were interested in taking my marker,” he said.

“I would be more than willing to take your marker, sir,” I said, trying to put a worried frown on my face. “But I’ve always thought it unlucky to exceed table stakes. It’s a superstition of mine.”

“Oh, I see,” he replied with a patronizing smile. “Well, then … Are you going to call the bet?”

“Give me just a moment to think, please,” I said.

“Take all the time you want.”

He sat back comfortably in his chair, the very picture of confidence. I took at least a minute, time he would know had been spent for my own sadistic amusement the moment I turned over my hole card. I fingered my money dubiously, then finally nodded and met his raise. “Even call,” I said.

This time around he didn’t have to be reminded that it was up to him to show his hole card first. He reached down with a carefully manicured hand and slowly turned over his third ace. “I guess that says it all, doesn’t it?” he asked.

“Not quite,” I replied. With the most casual, offhand motion I could summon, a motion no more studied than turning the page of a dull novel, I flipped over that glorious, magic nine of hearts that gave me a straight flush. He froze for a moment in disbelief, then lunged to his feet, his breath coming in short gasps.

“I don’t complain about getting beat,” he finally managed to say. “I don’t like it, but I can stand it. But what I want to know is why you took so damn long to call that last raise? What have I ever done to make you treat me like that?”

It was my turn to have a self-satisfied smile on my face, one that I hoped he found truly hateful. “That’s just the way I like to play the game of poker, Mr. Robillard.”

He quickly got control of himself once more. “I see,” he said, nodding solemnly. “Well, you did pretty good this time. But I once heard about a smart man who said that in the long run God’s with the big battalions.”

“He had it wrong,” I said, my voice as cheerful as his was cold. “In the long run we’ll all be dead.”