May 27, 2005

The Meaning of a Flush

Inspired by this previous post, here's a little futuristic, fictional short story I recently wrote.

“You remember what I told you?” Gaston asked the kid to keep him from crying. The only light in the damp basement crept in through a crack beneath the door at the top of the stairs. It was too dark to see the boy’s face, but Gaston could hear fear in his trembling voice.

“Play tight, but play aggressive,” the kid said, pausing at the sound of glass breaking upstairs.

“What else?” Gaston snapped at him.

“Read your opponent. Everyone has a weakness. You just have to find out what it is.”

“You’re a smart kid,” Gaston said as he patted the kid’s head.

Upstairs, it sounded like someone was driving a bulldozer through the living room. Gaston tried to count the footsteps and guessed there must be at least five cops up there, breaking every piece of glass he owned and kicking down every door that didn’t open of its own will. Maybe they’re not cops, Gaston thought, maybe they’re Crusaders. It didn’t really matter either way. The Crusaders owned the cops, along with most of the judges, lawyers, or anyone else who could have helped them.

The more Gaston thought about it, the more he became convinced that the old man in last week’s game was probably a Crusader himself, and all of this was his fault. Normally it took weeks of evaluation and testing for someone new to make it to their poker table, but Gaston had so desperately wanted the kid to test himself against a fresh face, he let the old-timer in without so much as a second guess. The guy walked and talked like a genuine poker player from back in the day. He even had table name; called himself the Texas Rattler. But that’s the way the Crusaders worked; they would send in converted players to make it seem legit. They knew they couldn’t send in a mole who had never so much as picked up a deck of cards.

“There’s something I want you to have,” Gaston said and reached in his jacket pocket. When his fingers came up with nothing other than a couple of pennies and some lint, his heart rate doubled and he felt stomach acid creeping up his esophagus.

“Oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” he muttered as he frantically patted down every pocket on his body.

“What? What is it?” the kid blurted out with a heightened sense of panic. Until that moment, Gaston had tried to remain as calm as possible, for the kid’s sake.

“Where could they be? What the hell did I do with them?” he said through clenched teeth while pacing around the room. “Stop being such a fucking baby and help me look,” Gaston snapped when he heard the kid start to whimper.

He tried to retrace every waking moment of his life since the last time he had seen them, but all his mind could think about was the breaking glass upstairs and the taste of peanut butter that was creeping up his throat. He stopped pacing and closed his eyes, breathing deeply, and finally decided to look in the only logical place they could be. He walked over to the large, round table in the center of the room and lifted up the green felt on its surface, feeling around for the right spot. He pressed a section of the table and it gave to the pressure, revealing a small compartment.

And there they were. Gaston felt like a weight was lifted off his chest. Better yet, he felt like he’d just gone all-in against a high straight and caught the flush on the river. He looked at the kid and smiled.

“I want you to have these,” he said as he handed him the pack of cards. “Sharky Peterson gave them to me years ago.”

The kid ran his fingers over the gold-case. The ace of spades was outlined in platinum on the front cover and almost glowed in the dim light. If Gaston had been sitting, he would have been leaning on the edge of his seat, tapping his leg furiously, waiting to see the kid’s reaction.

“Sharky Peterson was the greatest player to ever pick up a pack of cards,” he told the boy, trying to peak his interest. “He was nearly unbeatable at no-limit…won six consecutive World Series bracelets before they shut the tournament down.”

The kid nodded his head the way teenagers do when listening to advice from their parents that they don’t think they need. Gaston decided to risk exposing their hideout and turned on a small table lamp.

Taking the case from the kid, Gaston pulled out the cards and held them under the light. The intricate patterns on the back of each card glittered under the lamp, the diamond dust and gold plating made the kid’s eyes balloon. That was the reaction he had been waiting for.

“Who’s Mark Twain?” the kid asked as he read the inscription etched on the inside cover. The inscription read:

There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker. The upper class knows very little about it. Now and then you find ambassadors who have sort of a general knowledge of the game, but the ignorance of the people is fearful. Why, I have known clergymen, good men, kind-hearted, liberal, sincere, and all that, who did not know the meaning of a "flush." It is enough to make one ashamed of the species.

“He was an author. A damned good one too. But the Crusaders banned most of his books long time ago. Said they were immoral”

“Just because he wrote about poker?” the kid asked.

“No, it’s hard to explain. It wasn’t just about poker. It was about everything and anything that they decided to define as immoral. Sex, drinking, gambling. You name it,” Gaston replied. “There was a time, around the turn of the century, that poker really started to take off. You could get into a game in almost any town in the country, or you could play from your home on the Internet. It was on t.v.; it was in books; it was everywhere. But we got so big that we became a target for the Crusaders. We weren’t the only ones, but we got hit the hardest since gambling was already illegal.”

“And so they went after this Mark Twain guy?”

“No,” he lauged. “He had been long dead. At first they just banned gambling publicly. The same with drinking and pornography and all the other so-called vices. But they weren’t satisfied, so they went after the books and movies that mentioned these things. They claimed these books were pushing a “sinner’s agenda” on their children. But they were just closed-minded bigots.”

Gaston stopped talking and realized something had changed. “Do you hear that,” he asked the kid.

“I don’t hear anything..”

He lean over and whispered in the boy’s ear, “Get out of here. Now!”

Gaston tried to push the kid toward the escape hatch, but he squirmed out of his grip.

“What’s going to happen to you?” the kid demanded.

“I’m going to be fine. I’m coming out right behind you. Besides, even if they do catch me I’ll just have to pay a little fine. A night’s worth of winnings,” he said, unconsciously fingering the revolver in his jacket pocket as he talked. The kid didn’t budge and looked at Gaston with sad, lonely eyes. They both knew Gaston had never been able to bluff the kid. That’s what made him so good; he had a natural ability to read people.

Just as the kid started to respond with a sentimental farewell, whoever was upstairs kicked the door off its hinges and started making their way downstairs. Gaston pushed the kid to the escape hatch and forced him inside. Several sets of footsteps began making their way down the stairs.

“Wait, I almost forgot. The cards,” Gaston said and handed the kid Sharky’s case. “Keep them with you always. They’re good luck.”

The footsteps quickened at the sound of his voice. They were almost at the bottom of the stairs, and Gaston heard the metallic click of guns being cocked.

The kid stopped and turned around to look at him. “I thought you said there was no such thing as luck?”

Gaston wanted to argue with him, but he didn’t have time. “Just get the hell out of here,” he said and slammed the door. The footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs, and there was nothing left for Gaston to do but turn around and face them.

Posted by Elyas at 09:31 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack