The Magnetic Girl. Jessica Handler

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СКАЧАТЬ old molars, rattled across the surface, the first one rolling head over heels and landing with the four side up. The second die followed, a lagging twin, until it stopped near the raw edge of the plank. Three up. Seven.

      “Owes me again,” Bill Lee said, not bothering to look at Harmony. Bill Lee took a cone of notepaper from somewhere in his jacket, unrolled it, and jotted a note with a pencil stub. “Asshole,” Harmony said.

      Will finished cleaning his rifle. Needing something to do while he studied the craps game, he had cleaned it twice. He set the weapon down beside his hat and wiped his greasy palms on his trousers, stiff with sweat and smoke.

      “Y’all interested in showing a man the game?” Will inquired. “Not much for gambling, but I figure I might could play and keep busy.”

      Bill Lee and Harmony, each in a throwing crouch level to Will’s knees, looked up at him, a silent duet. Although they’d been side by side for months, the men formally introduced themselves.

      “Harmony Any Last Name’s as Good as Another, Knoxville, Tennessee.” Harmony was red-headed, thin, and hard-muscled like a whip.

      Will shook Harmony No Last Name’s hand. The fellow held on an extra second, a salesman’s grip.

      “William Hurst, Tennessee,” he answered, turning to Bill Lee.

      “William Lee Borden. My ma calls me Billy, but I spell it like two names.” He grinned in an ear-to-ear little boy’s smile, a beam of sunlight. Like Will, he was blond, but had stayed nearly a tow head although he looked to be near thirty. His eyebrows were white-blond, and his lashes, too. Bill Lee had a roll of fat around his waist even after months in camp, and Will wondered if the man hadn’t stashed some chow in his rucksack and secretly nibbled away on jerky or chunks of dried apple when no one was looking. Will’s stomach pinched.

      “Set down here and we’ll get a game on. Learn while you earn.” Bill Lee patted the plank beside him.

      Will knelt, and Harmony put the dice in Will’s outstretched palm. Cupping his hand around the dice put Will in mind of the trick his mother had taught him. Fold your right thumb into your right palm so it can’t be seen. Bend your left thumb so the nail touches your left pointer finger. Now press the back of your right thumb against your left nail, turn your hands around, pull them apart real quick, and presto! A thumb split in half!

      For an entire afternoon, Bill Lee and Harmony taught Will the game. Roll like this, light, like you’re letting a baby bird fly loose from your hand. Feel the dice under the tips of your fingers as you warm them in your hand: imagine they’re a lady’s titty. Look at him blush. He don’t know what that feels like! You’ve thought about it, for sure. When they’re ready to go you’ll know it, don’t think about it, just feel it—sling ‘em out there on the wood, easy does it. Don’t look away, watch how they fall.

      Will’s childhood attempts at prestidigitation came back, but he’d never been effortless. He had craved the attention, the winning and walking away with the secrets, the money, and the power. He’d never had the knack to master the trick itself. He lacked his mother’s patience.

      The three men played until it was too dark to see. Bill Lee could have gone for his lamp, but by then chow seemed the wise choice. Harmony leaned the plank upright against a dogwood tree and pocketed his dice.

      “I need to eat, if you’d call that shit food, pardon me,” Harmony answered. He made a show of rubbing his almost concave middle. His hip bones pushed sharp edges against his trousers.

      Like a father teasing a child, Bill Lee reached down and ruffled Will’s hair.

      “We’ll pick it up tomorrow. Looks like we still ain’t going nowhere.”

      Bill Lee and Harmony headed into the dark together, one of them hawking and spitting on the ground. Will smoothed his hair down, then flexed his fingers before he took three flat pebbles from his pocket. Practice makes perfect.

      The three of them played craps for a week. No orders came to move camp. Cannon fire shuddered in the hills. Refugees rolled by in a line of carts coming from one settlement, going to another. Children waved at the soldiers, who waved back. The soldiers with children at home went to their tents afterward, writing letters or staring at the grime of their canvas tents. Someone shod a horse. Someone else sewed torn trousers. They expected to pack up within a few days. In the meantime, Will’s throw got lighter and faster. Once in a while, he won a game, but his IOUs piled up quickly under the fist-sized chunk of stone by Harmony’s rucksack.

      While they played, Harmony tried to preach his beliefs to Will.

      “The human body is made up of fluids,” Harmony began one afternoon, watching Bill Lee prepare to roll the dice.

      “Fluids you piss out,” Bill Lee muttered.

      Harmony, entranced with speaking his catechism to Will, ignored him.

      “We have tides in us, rolling like the ocean. Magnetism is its name. Magnetic fluids.”

      “Seven,” Bill Lee said, a risky come-out. He shook the dice and looked heavenward. Bringing his gaze back down to earth, Bill Lee threw. Harmony was silent for the throw.

      The dice landed six and six up. No seven.

      Will held out his hand for the cubes. Harmony started up again.

      “The motion of the planets pulls our internal tide like the ocean’s tide. The planets pull on our fluids, and our nerves react. It’s science and nature combined.”

      “You yap this shit all the time,” Bill Lee said. “You’re getting on my nerves, and that’s my nature.” He worked this like a variety amusement act.

      “The body has its poles, oppositional. Fluid goes back and forth evenly if a man’s in balance.” Harmony stopped and looked at Will, who had not yet thrown.

      “You ever been sick?”

      Of course he’d been sick. Who the hell hadn’t?

      “What kind of sick?”

      “In the head,” Bill Lee said. He was drawing in the dirt with a stick, figure eights and waves.

      “I’ve had the grippe, I’ve had stomach trouble, I had an infected finger one time got drained and cauterized. I’ve been . . . ” Will stopped himself here, still surprised by his reticence. Ten years had passed since his mother’s failures.

      “What. Been what?” Bill Lee was interested. Harmony said nothing, patient.

      “Morose. I’ve been morose,” Will said. He’d slipped up and given Harmony precisely what he needed. Will could have kicked himself. “That’s a sickness,” Harmony said. “All these illnesses,” he pressed down hard on the word, making “ill” weigh more than the next two syllables—“are natural magnetic fluids out of balance in your body. Your magnetism was disturbed, and you were out of alignment with the planets.”

      “Roll the damn dice,” Bill Lee said.

      Will looked at his hand, surprised to find the dice still there. He hadn’t shaken or rolled or given a thought to what he’d call to try and take Bill Lee’s money. They were playing for actual dollars today. Confederate money wasn’t worth much, but the idea СКАЧАТЬ