Another card and the bet was to him. He picked up five twenty-dollar gold pieces and tossed them in the kitty. The other five players followed suit.
Again the cards flew around the circle of men, and the man on Abner’s right, a merchant named Harris, had the bet with a pair of jacks showing. The pot quadrupled.
When the fifth card was dealt, Abner couldn’t believe his luck. With his down cards, he had an ace-high flush, and while Harris had three jacks showing, Abner had the man’s fourth jack down. Harris boosted the pot by two thousand. Two men folded and two matched the bet.
The sixth card came, and Abner tried to remember the call.Black Mariah.Black Mariah. High spade in the hole splits the pot. He knew Harris couldn’t have four jacks, since he had it in his own down cards, so since Harris was pushing up the pot, he must have a high spade. Abner matched the bet and the two others folded.
The last card was dealt. “Down and dirty,” the dealer quipped.
Sweat beads popped through the pores in Abner’s forehead and the sting of smoke scratched his eyes. The last card lit face down in front of him. By the rules of the house, neither man could look at the last card.
Harris eyed Abner’s bank, then bet. If Abner wanted to call, he’d have to bet everything on this one hand. With a nonchalance he didn’t come close to feeling, Abner pushed his bank into the kitty. “I call.”
Harris laughed when the dealer flipped over the hole cards. He had the ace of spades, giving him a full house and the high spade in the hole.
Abner lost. Numb, he stared at the pot. Harris laughed and laughed. The sound gritted down Abner’s spine.
The jeering merchant started to gather the kitty, but the dealer stopped him. “It’s Black Mariah, remember? Not all the cards are up.”
Abner didn’t understand. Another player nodded at Abner’s two remaining hole cards and explained. “In Black Mariah, if the queen of spades is a hole card, it beats both the best poker hand and the high spade. The holder takes all.”
The dealer reached in front of Abner and flipped over his two hole cards. The queen of spades stared back at him.
Cheers erupted from the table; he’d won, all of it. The moisture evaporated from his mouth. He felt the others crowd around him and clap him on the back. Someone shoved a canvas bag into his hands to hold all the money on the table.
The boisterous voices of the surrounding men made him suddenly nervous. As he scooped his winnings into the bag, he could feel their expectant stares. A few coins were left on the table, and he waved them off. “The drinks are on me,” he boasted.
The crowd swarmed back to the bar, and Abner knotted the heavy bag through the fastener on his suspenders. He jerked his sack coat closed. A bottle of whiskey sat forgotten on the table. He was still numb, and needed to feel something, even the bitter burn of rotgut whiskey. Abner took a gulp.
It took about three minutes for the whiskey to create a war in his stomach. Painful cramps shot like lightning from his belly, knifing their way to his lower organs. A splitting ache ran from his rectum up his spine to his neck, and made him flinch.
The whiskey bottle crashed to the floor. He groped through his coat for his medicine bottle. “Water, please,” he croaked at one of the nearby men.
A little Chinese man shuffled over. He picked up the laudanum bottle and examined it. Abner jerked the bottle from the man’s claw-nailed hand. “That’s mine!”
The man grinned and nodded his pigtailed head.
“Get away!” Abner hugged the bottle and squeezed his eyes shut when another pain gripped him. When it passed and he opened his eyes, the strange little Chinaman stood in front of him, holding a glass of water. Abner uncapped the tincture and tried, with shaking hands, to pull some of the liquid into the dropper. The bottle was empty, so in desperation he dumped the small amount of remaining medicine into the glass. Instead of tinting a rich ruby, the water barely turned pink.
“All gone,” the grinning man said and shook his head while Abner pounded the heel of his hand against the bottle, trying to jar loose any last bit. He slammed the bottle onto the table and grabbed the glass, inhaling the contents as if he were smothered and the glass held air.
“You come. You come.” The little man nodded, still wearing that toothy expression. He tapped a curved nail on the dark brown silk tunic that covered his frail torso. “Chi Ho. Chi Ho.”
Abner grunted in pain. He had to get out of there while he could still walk. He pushed himself up and Chi Ho repeated, “You come. Chi Ho take you.” Putting his arm around Abner’s bent waist, he helped him into the alley through a small side door.
The medication had hardly dulled the sharp pain. Abner was so consumed by it that he wasn’t even aware of where Chi Ho took him, nor did he care. All he wanted was the relief of a sweet, medicated sleep.
It seemed like timeless hours later when Abner choked on a strange-smelling smoke. He opened his eyes, and the little man stood over him waving a long skewer with a smoldering ball. Abner tried to push it away from his face, but the man persisted. Abner was weak and drained and he could barely hold Chi Ho’s arm. He just wanted to sleep. “Let me sleep... please.” The smoke continued to drift at him, and Abner lay there, somnolent, as the black ball of opium paralyzed the pain in a way the laudanum couldn’t.
7
“Ohhh-ohhh, here’s to the man who darts a whale
And lives to ‘poon an-nah-ther-r.
Here’s to the man who irons a whale
And lives to ‘poon an-nah-ther-r.
