Эд Макбейн - Happy New Year, Herbie and other stories

I think he was beginning to like his title by then. Or perhaps he was only beginning to like his wealth. Whatever it was, he could not afford to drop out of the race. He studied the new rules, and learned them. They were really quite simple. If someone challenged you, you could either accept or decline the challenge. But once you had accepted, once the question “Odds or evens?” was asked in earnest, you either called immediately or lost the bet by default. In the beginning, Jimbo took no chances. He deliberately sought out only those campers whose luck had been running incredibly bad. His bets were small, four marbles, seven marbles, a dozen marbles. If he won a bet, he immediately pocketed a portion of his initial investment and then began playing on his winnings alone. And then, because he thought of himself as a blood-smelling champion closing in for the kill, he began to bet more heavily, taking on all comers, swinging freely through the camp, challenging campers and counselors alike. Eventually he wrote a bookie slip for five hundred and seven marbles and won the bet from a kid in bunk seven, knocking him completely out of the competition. Jimbo’s luck was turning out to be almost as incredible as his skill had been. He lost occasionally, oh yes, but his winnings kept mounting, and marble after marble poured into the locked suitcase on the shelf over his bed. It was becoming apparent to almost everyone in the camp — except Uncle Marvin, who still didn’t know what the hell was going on — that an elimination match was taking place, and that the chief contenders for Jimbo’s as yet unchallenged title were Ronnie and the nouveau riche kid in bunk nine, who had parlayed his shipment from home into a sizable fortune.

Irwin, the kid in bunk nine, was a tiny little kid whom everybody called Irwin the Vermin. He wore glasses, and he always had a runny nose and a disposition to match. Ronnie, correctly figuring he would have to collar every loose marble in the camp before a showdown with Jimbo, went over to bunk nine one afternoon and promptly challenged Irwin the Vermin. The number of marbles being wagered on a single bet had by this time reached fairly astronomical proportions. It was rumored that Irwin owned one thousand seven hundred and fifty marbles. Ronnie, whose number of marbles now totaled nine hundred and four, sat on the edge of Irwin’s bed and wrote out a slip of paper with the number 903 on it.

He folded the slip of paper and then looked Irwin directly in the eye.

“Odds or evens?” he said.

Irwin blinked behind his glasses, grinned maliciously, licked his lips with his tongue and said, “Odds.”

Ronnie swallowed. “What?”

“Odds,” Irwin repeated.

“Yeah,” Ronnie said. He unfolded the slip, and together they walked back to his bunk where he made payment. “I’ve got a few marbles left,” he lied; he had only one marble to his name. “Do you want to play some more?”

Irwin looked at him steadily and then, true to his nature, said, “Find yourself another sucker, jerk.”

Ronnie watched Irwin as he left the bunk loaded down with his winnings. He must have seen in that tiny figure retreating across the grounds a symbol of all his frustration, the quarantine that kept him from the mysterious Laura, the defeat of his system to beat Jimbo. It was late afternoon, and the cries of the boys at Free Play sounded from the ball diamonds and the basketball courts far off in the camp hills. Ronnie must have watched little Irwin walking away with his shattered hopes and dreams in a brown cardboard carton, and it must have been then that he made his final decision, the decision that brought the marble madness to its peak of insanity.

I was coming back from the tennis courts, where I was trying to help little Max with his backhand, when I saw Ronnie striding across the grounds towards Jimbo’s bunk. He was carrying an old battered suitcase, and there was something odd about his walk, a purposeful, angry stride which was at the same time somewhat surreptitious. I looked at him curiously and then followed him past the flagpole and watched as he entered the bunk. I stood outside for a few minutes, wondering, and then I quietly climbed the front steps.

Ronnie was in the middle of forcing the lock on Jimbo’s suitcase. He looked up when I entered the bunk and then went right back to work.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” he answered.

“It looks like you’re trying to break open Jimbo’s suitcase.”

“That’s right,” Ronnie said, and in that moment he broke the lock and opened the lid. “Give me a hand here,” he said.

“No.”

“Come on, don’t be a jerk.”

“You’re stealing his marbles,” I said.

“That’s just what I’m doing. It’s a gag. Come on, give me a hand here.”

The next second was when I almost lost my own sanity because I said, I actually heard myself say, “You can go to jail for that!” as if even I had begun to believe there was a fortune in that suitcase instead of hunks of colored glass.

“For stealing marbles?” Ronnie asked incredulously. “Don’t be a jackass.”

His answer startled me back to reality, but at the same time it puzzled me. Because here he was, a grown man, twenty years old, and he was telling me these were only marbles, and yet he was thoroughly involved in all this frantic nuttiness, so involved that he was in Jimbo’s bunk actually stealing marbles which he claimed he knew were only marbles. He opened his own suitcase and then, seeing I was staring at him with a dumfounded expression, and knowing I wasn’t about to help him, he lifted Jimbo’s bag himself and tilted it. The marbles spilled from one bag to the other, bright shining marbles, yellow and red and striped and black and green; glass marbles and steelies and glistening pureys, marbles of every size and hue, thousands and thousands of marbles, spilling from Jimbo’s bag to Ronnie’s in a dazzling, glittering heap.

I shook my head and said, “I think you’re all nuts,” and then I walked out of the bunk. Ronnie came out after me a minute later, carrying his own full suitcase, bending over with the weight of it. I watched him as he struggled across to the flagpole in the center of the camp. He put the bag down at his feet and then, his eyes gleaming, he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Where’s Jimbo McFarland?”

There was no answer.

“Where’s Jimbo McFarland?” he shouted again.

“Stop yelling,” I called from the steps of the bunk. “He’s up at the handball courts.”

“Jimbo McFarland!” Ronnie screamed. “Jimbo McFarland!” and the camp voice-telephone system picked up the name, shouting it across behind the bunks and down by the gully and through the nature shack, “Jimbo McFarland!” and over to the lake where some kids were taking their Red Cross tests, and then up into the hills by the mess hall, and across the upper-camp baseball diamond, and the volleyball court, and finally reaching Jimbo where he was playing handball with one of the counselors.

Jimbo came striding down into the camp proper. He walked out of the hills like the gunslick he was, his back to the sun, crossing the dusty grounds for a final showdown, stopping some twenty feet from where Ronnie stood near the flagpole.

“You calling me?” he said.

“You want to play marbles?” Ronnie answered.

“Have you got any marbles?” Jimbo said.

“Will you match whatever I’ve got?”

Jimbo hesitated a moment, weighing his luck, and then said, “Sure,” tentatively accepting the challenge.

“Whatever’s in this bag?” Ronnie asked.

Again Jimbo hesitated. A crowd of kids had begun to gather, some of whom had followed Jimbo down out of the hills, the rest of whom had felt an excitement in the air, had felt that the moment of truth had finally arrived. They milled around the flagpole, waiting for Jimbo’s decision. The gauntlet was in the dust, the challenge had been delivered, and now they waited for the undisputed champion to decide whether or not he would defend his title. Jimbo nodded.