Noses Are Red (13 page)

The campers are milling around. Colored lights around the door spell out OMEGA CASINO. Victor pulls me away from the crowd. His TRAILBLAZERS T-shirt is too small for him. “I want to warn you about Trixie.” He looks over his shoulder.

“What about her?”

“She really has it in for you, after this afternoon. I told her you played poker, and –”

“Hello, boys!” Boomer’s chins wiggle. “Are you having fun, Victor? Alan, how’s that hypothermia?”

I’ve learned my lesson. “I’m feeling a bit low,” I say.

“That’s the spirit! Enjoy casino night.” She wanders away, slapping backs as she goes.

“What about Trixie?” I say.

“Yes, what about me?”

I stand away from Victor and look up. It’s her, all right. Tall, slim, washed, and changed. Her hair is away from her forehead, pulled back in a no-nonsense ponytail. She pushes Victor out of the way and stares down at me.

“What did Victor say about me?”

She towers over me. I’m glad she’s Zinta’s problem, not mine. I wonder how good a poker player she is. I can’t think of anything to say now. I don’t want to get Victor in trouble.

–
He said he saw bottles of horse liniment in your cabin.

Victor sputters. “Alan! Listen, uh, Trixie, I did not say that. I …”

“Would you leave us alone for a second, Victor?” she says. “Maybe pick up your chips and get over to the roulette wheel. I want to talk to Alan about six things.”

“Huh? Oh, sure.” He smiles nervously, and goes.

Trixie puts her arm on my shoulders and leads me around the side of the dining hall. We’re out of sight now.

“You’re a funny guy, Alan,” she says. “Brown hair, brown shoes, ha ha ha. And Victor tells me you’re a good card player. But you won’t win tonight.”

Her eyes jump around in her head. Her chin sticks out. “That’s one thing I wanted to talk to you about. Here’s five more.” She waggles the fingers of her left hand in front of my face. She clenches them into a fist, and punches me in the nose with it. Then she spins on her heel, and walks away.

I am in shock. There’s a ringing in my ears, but it’s not the bell from the dining hall.

–
Earthquake!
shouts Norbert.

“Are you okay, Norbert?” I feel my nose. Doesn’t seem to be broken. It hurts, though.

–
Something spilled here in the back room.

“Blood?”

–
I think it might be cocoa
, says Norbert.
I was sitting in my easy chair, and now my mug of cocoa is gone. What happened? The lights flickered and I ended up on the carpet.

“She punched … you,” I say.

Punched? She punched me? That tall one?

“Her. Trixie Mintworthy.”

–
Punched me? Like I was a pillow?

“Uh … yeah.”

So. It’s war.

He doesn’t say anything else. I move around to the front of the dining hall.

Victor comes up to me with his eyes wide. “What happened?” he says.

“Trixie.” I wipe my nose cautiously on my sleeve. “She’s got a good left,” I say.

“She’s good at cards too. Did you know she went to Las Vegas for a week, to take lessons from a poker teacher?”

I swallow. Las Vegas? I’ve never played poker in a room that didn’t have a furnace in it. Why am I doing this again? I do not want to let Zinta down, but I may be out of my depth here.

“And she’s out to get you, Alan. I’m glad I’m not going to be at your poker table.”

I wait in line to get my chips. The counselor giving them out has shiny hair and chewed nails. “You’re Alan, right?” he says. “The new kid. Here you go.” He hands over my stack of chips, and writes my name at the bottom of a typed list.

Four round tables are set up along the far wall of the dining hall. I sit at table one with three other players. There’s a counselor in a green LUMBERJACK T-shirt to act as referee.

“Draw poker is simple,” he explains. “You get five cards. You bet. You get a chance to improve your hand by discarding the cards you don’t want and drawing new ones. If you don’t like your hand, you fold. If you like it – or if you want to bluff the other guys – you bet some more. The other guys either fold, or bet along. Everyone who calls the last bet shows their hand. Best hand wins. Understand?”

We nod. “Good luck, everyone,” calls the counselor. “And now, ante up!”

We all throw chips in the middle of the table. The cards are in front of me. I deal.

The evening is under way. All I have to do is win. All I have to do is be the best. No pressure. None at all.

Five cards facedown. I stare at the familiar blue-backed cardboard rectangles. Relax, I tell myself. Pretend you’re
in Victor’s basement. I check my cards, keeping them close together. Two tens and some garbage. Not a good hand. I put it down. I never look more than once. The cards won’t change. Anyway, I’m more interested in the other players. The guy on my right drops a card on the table, picks it up, and drops his whole hand. Clumsy. The girl across from me thumbs carefully through her cards, and puts two of them in a special place. I figure she has a nice pair, kings or aces. On my left is a kid wearing mirror shades. I’m not kidding: mirror sunglasses at a poker game! That’s not cool; that’s stupid.

Nobody bets before the draw. Everyone takes three cards. I don’t look at mine. I watch the others’ faces, especially the girl’s. If she draws another king or ace to make three of a kind…. She’s disappointed. She didn’t improve. Good.

I check my hand. I didn’t improve either. Still the pair of tens, and that’s all. Oh, well.

Shades’ turn to bet first. “Nine chips!” he says confidently.

That’s his whole stake. All he’s got left after the ante. Sounds like he’s got a huge hand. A straight or flush. Maybe better. The girl hasn’t looked up from her cards. She’s a cautious player. She folds. Good. The clumsy guy puts his cards down quickly. Good.

“Nine chips to you, dealer,” says Shades. “Unless you want to fold too.” He sounds eager. If I don’t call his bet, he wins.

This is such a gift, it’s hard to keep a straight face. You
see, I know Shades has a terrible hand. I can see it reflected in his sunglasses. “I’ll call your bluff,” I say.

Shades gulps, turns over his cards. King high. No pairs.

I show my pair of tens. He’s out of the game and I have more than doubled my stake.

“Hey,” says the cautious girl. “I had a pair of kings. I would have beat you.”

Would have. “You didn’t bet,” I say. “You have to bet, to win.”

“Next deal,” says the counselor.

“How did you know I was bluffing?” Shades asks me.

“Let’s say that I had a vision,” I tell him.

We keep playing. Cautious gets a couple of really good hands, and cleans poor Clumsy out. Just two of us now. I bet five chips, and Cautious thinks I’m bluffing. She screws up her courage and throws in ten chips to scare me out. I raise her ten more. She uses her last chips to call with two pair – a pretty good hand. But I’m not bluffing this time. Two pair loses to three of a kind, and I have three sixes. I stand up from the table with forty chips.

“The poker final starts at eight o’clock,” says the counselor. “You’ve got a half hour.”

It’s getting pretty raucous over at Trixie’s table. “Ha HA!” she calls, slapping her cards down. “Kings full of aces. Read ’em and weep, Four Eyes!” She grabs a pile of chips. A kid with glasses looks unhappy.

I check the other tables. At table two, Zinta has a stack of chips in front of her. So do Eric and Derek at table
three. Lumberjacks are winning. Maybe I won’t have to do it all myself. “I’ll be outside,” I say to my table’s counselor. “Don’t you want to play dice or skee ball?” he asks.

“No.”

The bathroom looks like one of the regular cabins, but the smell is different, even from the outside. And from the inside it’s worse.

–
When are we going to beat her down?

“Who?” I’m washing my hands. I stare at the bathroom mirror. My hair is sticking up. My checked shirt is rumpled. I wet my hair, but it doesn’t stay down.

–
You know who, Dingwall. And you look a mess. Don’t worry about it. Are we going to beat her down?

“Trixie? No, of course not. She’s bigger than I am.”

–
So what are we going to do? We can’t let her punch us!

“We’re going to take her poker chips away. Then the Lumberjacks will win the games, and Zinta will be happy.”

–
I want to beat her down.

“You mean beat her up.”

–
No I don’t. When I’m finished, I want her DOWN.

I step out the bathroom door, and stop dead. Christopher’s voice is coming through an open window next door. “I feel so bad!” he says. Not the way a patient normally says this. “I left those boys alone in the woods,” he says.

“But why?” asks the nurse. “Why did you do that?”

I want to know the answer too. I run up to the cabin, crawl past a prickly shrub, and peek in the window.

A storage cabin. Crates of canned goods on shelves. Bare walls, board floor. Harsh overhead light. Christopher limps back and forth underneath the light.

“Why?” he says. “You want to know why, Bernice? I’ll tell you why. It was the bears.”

Oh. I almost say it aloud. Time to reconsider, perhaps. Can I forgive him for running from bears? I think so. I think so. After all, I ran from them too.

“They were after me, Bernice. Following me. Faster and faster. I didn’t know what to do. I knew I should warn the boys. I wanted to … but I didn’t. I dropped the food pack. I dropped everything except the canoe. I couldn’t think of anything except getting away from those bears. I was … scared, that’s why. Plain scared.”

“Oh, poor you,” says Bernice. She’s over by the shelves, gazing up at him. It creeps me out when she talks like my mom. She even has her intonation.

“And I thought, if I could draw the bears away from the boys, they’d have a better chance,” he says. “You see, I know what bears can do to people.”

He stands there under the bare bulb, twisting his hands together. “I hate bears. Do you know how strong bears are? Do you know how sharp their claws are? I was on a canoe trip once, years ago, with my best friend, and a grizzly bear came into our campsite. He … I can’t say any more. It’s too painful.” He hides his face in his hands.

Wait a minute. Something not quite right here. Drawing the bears away? Like he’s running away for
our
sake? That doesn’t sound right. He’s too obvious. He wants her sympathy.

If this conversation were a poker game, I’d call his bluff.

She believes him. “Oh, there there,” she says, going over to pat his shoulder. “You poor brave man.” She keeps her hand there.

“You understand! I knew you would. Oh, Bernice!”

“Oh, Chris!”

He puts his arms around her and starts kissing her. She lets him. Then she starts kissing him back. He reaches up to turn out the light. I creep away, feeling dirty.

“It’s a disaster!” Zinta meets me outside the entrance to the dining hall. Her face is screwed up into a knot of worry. She pounds one fist into the palm of her other hand.
Sounds like a baseball hitting a catcher’s mitt.
Pow pow pow.

“Huh?”

“I had a flush! A flush, for heaven’s sake. All diamonds! How did I know he’d have four of a kind? The big fat ape. Get in there, Alan. They’re waiting!”

She pushes me hard enough to knock me over, almost.

“Huh?” I say.

Eric and Derek are inside. They look mad. I wonder who they’re mad at?

“It’s your fault,” says Eric.

Oh. I guess they’re mad at me.

“I did what you told me,” he says. “There were two of us left: me and this pimply Trailblazer kid they call the Calculator. And I bet without looking at my hand.”

“I never told you to bet –”

“And he called me. And he had a good hand. And I didn’t. It’s your fault!”

They all lost. The poker final is me against three Trailblazers. I represent the sole Lumberjack hope for the games. I am Zinta’s chance to hang on to the Master Tripper Scroll. Great.

“Did Trixie win?” I ask.

Derek nods his head. “I thought I had her at the end,” he says. “I drew two cards and ended up with two pair. She drew three cards, and ended up with three of a kind. You’d better watch her, Alan. She’s good.”

“The Calculator is good too,” says Eric. “He’s really smart. He knows all the odds for everything.”

Campers are still calling out, and laughing, and eating and drinking, and moving around. Fewer and fewer are playing. I guess they’re running out of chips. The roulette wheel spins slowly, slowly.
Clack
…

clack
………………
clack.
Sounds like a bag of popcorn in the microwave.

The microphone booms out: “ALAN DINGWALL, COME TO THE POKER TABLE. THE FINAL IS ABOUT TO START.” Funny to hear your name bouncing around the rafters.

I’m still trying to believe what I saw earlier. Christopher and the nurse! The thought makes me all creepy inside. I am not in any condition to play poker.

“Huh?” I say. Zinta is talking to me. “What was that?”

“Weren’t you listening?”

“Come on up, Alan!” Boomer is standing on a chair. She waves me forward. Campers turn to stare at me. Those with the green LUMBERJACK shirts are smiling and clapping. Those in the yellow TRAILBLAZER shirts are staring coldly. There’s Victor! He smiles nervously at me, then looks away. Thanks, Victor.

The referee for the final is a redheaded girl with a ring in her nose. The ring is gold, to match her TRAILBLAZER shirt.

“Hi, Alan,” says Trixie. She introduces me around the table, as polite as pie, as if she’s never punched me in the nose. Very strange. Like we’re guests at a garden party. Behind me I can feel Zinta breathing heavily. A small
pimply guy on my right says hello. He’ll be the Calculator. The fourth guy at the table is a lummox with long dark hair and a gold tooth. “Hey – oh!” he says, and belches loudly. He may be the only person in camp not wearing a team T-shirt. His is a vivid Hawaiian number, with a missing button.

“Quiet, Dudley!” says Trixie.

He belches again, and smiles at me. His gold tooth winks.

I wonder where Dudley has been all day. I’m sure Pd have noticed him.

I say hello. There’s only one empty chair at the table. I take it, and look around. Come on, Dingwall. Pay attention. There’s nothing you can do about Christopher and the nurse. This is something you can do. Play cards. I try to get my head back in the game.

I think I like my spot. Pm behind the Calculator. He’ll probably be cautious. Dudley looks like a wild and crazy guy. Pd rather be in front of him. Trixie is right opposite me. I take out my stack of forty chips.

The counselor with the ring in her nose speaks up. “We’ll still be playing draw poker, no wild cards. Pot limit. Three raises.” She doesn’t explain the rules. This is the final. We know the rules.

Trixie is shuffling the deck. I find myself thinking about the scene in the storage shed. Do I really feel…

–
Did you come here to sit around or to play cards!
shouts Norbert.
Deal!

Calculator stares at me and doesn’t say anything. Dudley chuckles. Trixie drops the deck so that it spills all over the table. Dudley laughs loudly. Trixie glares at me.

The first few hands pass in a daze. I don’t see any really good cards. I don’t bet. I’m still processing the information. Christopher and the nurse. What does it mean to me? To Mom? I don’t like him kissing her, but I don’t like him kissing anyone else when he should be with her. Do I tell her? Do I tell anyone? I wish I could stop the world for a bit, and take some time to pull myself together.

Calculator deals. I pick up my cards automatically. All black. Like my thoughts. I put the hand facedown on the table.

Everyone looks at me. Must be my turn to bet. “Check,” I say.

“Five!” That’s Dudley. He has a glutton’s approach to poker: more is better. He shovels poker chips into the pot the way Victor shovels potato chips into his mouth.

“Your five, and five more,” says Trixie. Her lips are thin with strain.

Calculator is taking his time. He blinks rapidly, checking his hand once more.

“All right. Ten chips to me. I’m in.”

Silence. “Hey, Alan,” says Dudley. He’s fingering his pile of chips.

“Huh?” Oh, no! I’ve forgotten my cards. I pick up the hand.

–
We’re in
, says Norbert.
Your ten and ten more!

I don’t move. What has Norbert done to me? That’s half my stack of chips!

“Come on, Alan,” says the counselor. “Put the chips in.”

“But I… I didn’t….”

They’re all staring at me. I don’t know how to explain about Norbert. I find myself pushing twenty chips into the middle.

“Oh, boy,” I mutter. Just what I need right now is Norbert feeling feisty.

–
Let’s play poker! That’s fifteen to you, big guy!

Dudley stares at me. “You didn’t bet right away, and now you’re raising the bet,” he says. “Check and raise? Smells fishy. I don’t like it. I’m out.”

That’s the first time he hasn’t bet.

I lean back in my chair. “Where did you learn to play cards, Norbert?” I whisper.

–
We have poker on Jupiter. Everyone learns at school Poker and hopscotch.

“Quiet,” says Trixie. “I’m trying to think.”

–
In or out isn’t too hard, girlie. Flip a coin.

“Hey,” says the counselor.

“Sorry,” I say.

Trixie pushes a pile of chips into the middle.

–
Should be ten chips there
, says Norbert.

“Why, you little…. There
are
ten chips.”

She spreads them out to show. There are ten. Calculator hesitates, then he counts out his chips too. Three of us are in so far. Now the all-important draw.

“How many cards?” Calculator asks me. I still haven’t checked my hand. Before I can look, Norbert answers.

–
No cards.

Calculator pauses a second. Dudley’s out, so it’s Trixie’s turn next. She glares at me, keeps three cards and takes two. Can she have three of a kind? Maybe. Probably.

Calculator himself takes three cards. He must be holding a pair of aces. Nothing else would be worth twenty chips to him.

A ring of people is forming around the table, watching the game. No one says much, but the attention is a bit disturbing. “Keep back, please,” calls the counselor. “Give the players room.”

My bet first. I still don’t know what I have.

–
Might as well bet ten more
, says Norbert.
Either you can beat a flush or you can’t.

I’m glad I’m not looking at my hand because I might have missed Trixie’s eyes widen when Norbert says the word “flush.” She can’t beat it. Three of a kind is a good hand, but a flush is better.

Well, well.

Dudley is staring at me and shaking his head. “You trying to make us mad?” he says. “Talking all the time?”

“No,” I say.

–
Yes
, says Norbert.

“Which is it?’

–
Angry people have bad judgment. They think about punching someone in the nose, when the best thing to do would
be to smile and fold their cards. Isn’t that true, Trixie?

She’s staring at me. Her left hand is clenched into a fist. Her clean, tanned knuckles stand out like pecans. Her jaw works.

“Very … funny,” she says. “I’m not mad. I don’t need to chase the pot. I can act rationally. I … fold.”

Calculator folds too. Well, well, well! I’ve won a good pot without showing my cards. I have more chips than anyone else. Zinta is standing off to one side. She claps her hands loudly, and calls, “Come on, Lumberjacks!” Trixie shoots her a glance of pure hatred, and grabs my cards.

“Let’s see this flush, this … what?” She stares. “WHAT IS THIS? I can’t BELIEVE it! You were BLUFFING!!” She throws the cards onto the table for everyone to see.

“Was I?” I say.

–
No
, says Norbert.

But the cards don’t lie. There they are, four clubs and a spade. All black, like I remember. But not a flush. I guess I was bluffing, after all.

–
Pretty good, eh?
says Norbert.
Ace high.

“Um … that’s not a flush,” I whisper.

–
They’re all the same color. On Jupiter, that’s a good hand.

“Well, here, a flush is all the same suit.”

–
Suit? What do you mean, “suit”? Like all plaid? All pinstripes? That’s a flush?

“Forget it, Norbert.”

Dudley shakes his head. Zinta laughs. Trixie is so mad she picks up my cards again, and rips them in half. We have to get a new deck.