Chris Offutt - The Good Brother

The game continued with a steady rhythm of cards and chips, the passing of the button that marked the player’s force bet. After half an hour, a player pushed his chair from the table and stood. His face held no expression as he slipped on his jacket and turned away empty-handed. He headed for the strip club, as if the sight of nude flesh in dim light would compensate for bad cards in harsh light. Joe pretended to read the magazine. He was waiting for the manager to call his name because he wanted to develop the habit of responding to it.

“Seat open, Joe,” the man said.

Joe moved to the low table covered by scarred green felt and laid his money down. He belonged. After a few hands, it became apparent that everyone was after the endless cash supply of a man with powerful forearms and large fingers that covered his cards like piled lumber. He drank steadily, bet each hand, and didn’t seem, to mind losing. When it was his blind bet, a new dealer asked if he was taking points.

“What for?” the player said.

“Tournament. That’s how you qualify.”

“When is it?”

“Saturday.”

“I’ll be in Hawaii.”

“Think of me,” the dealer said.

“I will. I just got back from Alaska. Six months on a boat. I never want to see snow again.”

No face registered the news, but everyone knew that the man from Alaska had ended the fishing season with a wad of cash. With a mark like him at the table, the game became a contest to see who got more of his money. Players only left if they got broke and were unable to borrow a stake.

Two hours later, the fisherman departed cheerfully after dumping six hundred dollars into the game, the price of reassuring himself that strangers liked him. Joe had captured seventy dollars and considered cashing out. Instead, he loosened his play and chased poor hands. Within thirty minutes, he’d lost his winnings and was making a rebuy. He concentrated on getting even.

After an hour of folding bad cards, he won three pots in a row. He tipped the dealer and stacked his chips. He was on a rush and could feel the luck surrounding him. Other players sensed his power and threw away cards they’d normally play. He won two small pots simply by raising in good position. He was playing well because he truly didn’t care if he won or lost. He understood why Boyd had been such a consistent winner.

The dealer gave him pocket kings and he raised the limit before the flop. Four players called. The dealer flopped three cards simultaneously, a nine of hearts and an ace, deuce of clubs. Everyone checked to Joe and he bet out. Two players called and he put one on a club flush draw, the other on a pair of aces. The dealer burned a card and turned a king. With three kings, Joe checked, setting a trap. There was a bet and he raised, and a player re-raised. The third man called the bet and Joe considered folding. Three kings was a good hand but the action suggested higher cards against him. Joe made the final raise.

The river card was a nine of clubs. That gave the board two nines and three clubs with an ace and a king. Joe had a full house, kings over, against a certain flush and an unknown hand. He bet the limit, found a raise, and re-raised. The player raised back. Joe pushed the remainder of his stack to the middle, and the other two players called.

“Let’s see what we got,” the dealer said.

Joe hesitated before displaying his hand, in order not to appear overeager for the pot. He showed his cards and prepared an expression of sheepish good humor, as if he felt bad for possessing a hand of such strength. One player flashed his club flush and threw it in the muck. The other man flipped two aces, giving him a higher fall house than Joe’s. The dealer paused so everyone could see the outcome, then shoved the chips to the winner. Joe pushed his chair from the table. He had a headache and an urge for candy.

“Drawing dead, wasn’t I,” he said.

He walked through the cafe in a loser’s daze, reliving the hand. It made a good bad-beat story, but everyone had them, and no one wanted to hear another.

The bars had closed and people were staggering into the cafe. A trio of bleary-eyed students bumped against him and continued without apology. Joe stepped aside as a biker escorted one of the strippers to her car. In the bright fluorescence, she looked tired and lost. A young woman sat before a slot machine, pushing buttons in a daze. A scar cut her eyebrow in half. At her feet slept a baby in a car seat.

A waitress stood beside a table of fraternity cowboys from the university. She raised her voice and called to the cook behind the counter.

“He needs them,” she yelled. “We got one who needs them!”

The cook grinned at the waitress, who was grinning at her customers. Everyone seemed to be grinning but Joe, who was envious of a kid so much at home here that he could order brains and eggs for breakfast.

Outside, falling snow blurred the air. The lights of the city were softly diffused, casting a glow over the silent streets. Joe drove home, parked, and stepped into the harsh wind that sliced through his pants and numbed his legs. He recalled making a windbreak for his trailer at home. He had planted hybrid poplars that were guaranteed to grow six feet per year, the result of a special root grafted to each stem. He felt similar to those trees. Just as their alien roots had grown into the earth, he needed a past that led here.

In the cabin he built a fire as his father had taught him, tightly rolled paper on the bottom, kindling with air channels, two small logs over that, and a big log in the back. Making a fire was one of the few endeavors that he enjoyed. He went outside and stacked wood on his right arm against his chest. The smell of smoke hung in the air, held to the earth by snow. He remembered Boyd’s contempt for people who lived in a hollow rather than on a ridge. “House in a hollow makes weather follow,” he’d often said. Now Joe had become a lowly hollow-dweller, even though the hollow was fairly wide. This much open space in Kentucky would be the site of a town.

Light leaked through wall cracks like grain from a slashed feed sack. There were hills and trees and a creek, but none of it was his. He thought of his father’s log cabin and knew he’d never live in it. It was the only thing he’d ever truly wanted. He wanted to cry, but it was a distant sensation, like the first urges of hunger.

He packed the stove, knowing that the wood would burn to ash by morning. He slid into his sleeping bag. The bare walls seemed to contract and expand like a lung. He wanted some pictures and a radio. He wanted something to read.

In the morning, fog lay across the mountain peaks as if the trees were wrapped in gauze. He drove to Missoula, The Wolfs bar was already lined with drinkers and he vowed to stay out. He searched the junk shops until he found a clock-radio, a deck of cards, and a toaster. The book selection was mainly romance with a few cookbooks. Deep in a corner, beneath a brittle canvas tent, he discovered a milk crate filled with paperback westerns, a thick history of railroads, a computer guide, and an economics textbook. While carrying the crate through the store’s narrow aisles, his elbow brushed a pile of tri-folded pamphlets to the floor.

At the top of each in big letters were the words LIBERTY TEETH. Below was a quote from James Madison: “Americans have the right and advantage of being armed — unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust people with arms.” At the bottom of the page was the phrase MONTANA FOR FREE AMERICANS ONLY.

Joe stacked the pamphlets on the counter, confused by their purpose, Kentucky was a gun culture, but he’d already seen more weapons in Montana than at home. It seemed odd for people here to be concerned about having enough guns, like a wheat farmer who worried about running out of seed.