The Marrowbone Marble Company. Glenn Taylor

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СКАЧАТЬ the only game allowed in the home of Don Staples. Straight poker and five-card draw had no place. If a man tried to force such a variation, Staples would walk away from the table and hit the light switch on his way to bed. The group had changed over the years but had never topped five men. Its exclusivity was born in the idea that those light on brains and nickels, while always welcome in Staples’ office or home, were not permitted to pull a chair to his round-top mahogany card table. In the fall of 1947, the group was down to three: Don, his younger brother, Bob, and Ledford. An exception to custom was made on the final Friday of October, Halloween night, when Ledford phoned ahead that Erminio Bacigalupo was passing through on his way back from Baltimore, and that he was a fine poker man. Staples said bring him.

      Before they left the house, Rachel spoke very little to Erm. She had always mistrusted him, though not as much since her wedding night, when he’d told her, “Ledford is the brother I never had, and I’d take a bullet for him.” Still, when he was under her roof, she watched him, close.

      In the basement, Ledford pulled Erm’s leather envelope from under the swastika quilt in the trunk. Erm opened it and pulled a hundreddollar bill from the stack. “For your trouble,” he said. “And if you want to double it, look at the over-under on Maryland tomorrow. Now let’s go play some poker.”

      Staples’ house was small, dark inside. From the record player in the corner, Louis Armstrong’s “Big Butter and Egg Man” played. The acorn ceiling fixture gathered smoke from below.

      Each of the card table’s four legs carried an ashtray. The men sat slouched over their elbows. They eyeballed the cards face up on the table and lifted the corner of those faced down. Ledford folded after Fifth Street, Bob after Sixth. Erm dealt in a manner bespeaking experience. The cards flipped from his finger and thumb and turned a singular revolution before landing flat. He was showing a pair of Jacks. Staples, a pair of sevens.

      “Check,” Staples said. He tossed in a nickel, and down came Seventh Street. They showed their five and Erm took the pot, again.

      Bob shook his head. He was ten years younger than Don, yet everything about them seemed identical—voice, movements, eyes, laugh. Bob was a less-wrinkled, clean-shaven version of his brother. He scooted his chair back. “I gotta hit the head,” he said.

      “Magnifying glass is in the top bureau drawer,” Don said.

      Erm laughed and raked in his dollar seventy-five.

      Staples packed his pipe and lit it. “Ledford tells me you’ve recently married.”

      “That’s right.” Erm’s nod was loose on the hinges, and his eyes were shrinking fast. “She’s a looker, but she’s goofy up top, you know?” He tapped his temple with a finger.

      Staples laughed. “I know,” he said. “Ain’t we all?”

      The clock on the wall read ten past midnight. They’d been playing for three hours. Ledford looked from the clock to his quarter-full rocks glass. He’d gone as easy as he could, but it was harder with Erm around.

      The cornet sang a sad tune from the corner.

      Bob sat back down and sighed. “I’m about busted,” he said. He’d checked his pocket watch every ten minutes for an hour. Bob was a trial lawyer with a wife and three kids and his eye on public office. And though he’d gotten on fine with Erm that evening, he’d just as soon not know him past midnight. Like his big brother, Bob was a man of God, though he’d not taken the philosopher’s path to knowing him, and he’d not wrecked his marriage and children along the way. He loved Don dearly, but he’d not gone overseas like his older brother. He’d never understood the demons.

      “Looks like you can ante and stick for a few rounds.” Erm pointed to the little pile of nickels in front of Bob.

      Bob pulled out his pocket watch again. He breathed in deep through his nose. “I reckon I could play one more.”

      “Big Bob,” Erm said. “Big Bob, Big Butter and Egg Man.”

      “Like the song says.” Staples stole a look at Ledford. They’d spent a little time in the office talking on Erm.

      It was quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet that comes when a record has stopped playing and one man is drunker than the rest.

      Bob shuffled the deck slow. Erm declined to cut. He poured another whiskey and sat back in his chair. “Ledford tells me you’re a scholar and a man of the cloth.”

      Staples smiled easy. “I’ve lived in both worlds. Even tried to mix the two.”

      “Flammable is it?” Erm studied Bob’s dealing motion, a habit of the suspicious.

      “It can combust, if that’s what you mean,” Staples said.

      “I don’t know what I mean half the time.” Erm laughed. It was loud. “But if somebody had told me I’d be at a Virginia poker table with a preacher, a lawyer, and an office jockey, I’d have told him to climb up his fuckin thumb.”

      “You’re in West Virginia Erm,” Ledford said. He peeked at his down cards.

      “That’s what I said.”

      “You said Virginia.”

      “Tomato, tomahto.”

      The Staples brothers looked at each other the way they always had when a card game went south. It was quiet, each man surveying what he had.

      “Potato, potahto,” Erm said. Then, “Shit or get off the pot, Preach. We got to go church in the morning.”

      “I fold,” Staples said. His chair whined when he leaned back in it.

      Ledford raised a dime and wished he hadn’t told Erm about Willy’s baptism the next day. Truth be told, he’d wanted to ask Don or Mack to be the boy’s godfather, but one was lapsed and the other was black. Then Erm showed up, and without thinking Ledford had asked him.

      Erm saw the dime and raised another. Bob folded. He dealt the rest of the hand in silence. Erm took the pot and kept his mouth shut for once.

      Bob stood and stretched. He said, “Well gentlemen.”

      Don stood and followed his brother to the kitchen. On the way, he asked about a case Bob was trying. “Any more on the Bonecutter dispute?”

      Erm slapped his hand on the table. “Drink with me Leadfoot,” he said.

      Ledford ignored him. He was tuned in to the Staples brothers. Bone-cutter, they’d said. It was the name from the back of the photograph. He got up and walked to the kitchen.

      Don washed and dried his glass, his back to Bob, who leaned against the range, arms crossed. He was talking about arson.

      “What was that name you used just now?” Ledford asked.

      “Bonecutter,” Bob said. He yawned. “They’re a wild bunch out in Wayne County. Trouble. Had a land dispute with Maynard Coal for years, and I’ve done some work for them, pro bono. Now all hell’s broke loose.”

      Bonecutter. It seemed to Ledford a name he’d known all his life.

      “Well СКАЧАТЬ