High Hunt

“Or maybe I’ll shoot you,” I said extravagantly. “Maybe some day I’ll just decide that you’re no good, and I’ll take my gun and shoot you. Bang! Just like that, and you’ll be dead, and I’ll betcha you wouldn’t like that at all.”

Jack snorted again and rolled over to go to sleep, or to wrestle with the problem of being grown-up and still being afraid, which was to worry at him for the rest of his life. But I lay awake for a long time staring into the darkness. And when I drifted into sleep, the forest in the kitchen echoed with the hollow roar of that old rifle, and my shadowy old dog with the sad, friendly eyes tumbled over and over in the snow.

In the years since that night I’ve had that same dream again and again—not every night, sometimes only once or twice a year—but it’s the only thing I can think of that hasn’t changed since I was a boy.

The Gathering

1

I guess that if it hadn’t been for that poker game, I’d have never really gotten to know my brother. That puts the whole thing into the realm of pure chance right at the outset.

I’d been drafted into the Army after college. I sort of resented the whole thing but not enough to run off to Canada or to go to jail. Some of my buddies got kind of excited and made a lot of noise about “principle” and what-not, but I was the one staring down the mouth of that double-barrelled shotgun called either/or. When I asked them what the hell the difference was between the Establishment types who stood on the sidelines telling me to go to Nam and the Antiestablishment types who stood on the sidelines telling me to go to a federal penitentiary, they got decidedly huffy about the whole thing.

Sue, my girlfriend, who felt she had to call and check in with her mother if we were going to be five minutes late getting home from a movie, told me on the eve, as they used to say, of my departure that she’d run off to Canada with me if I really wanted her to. Since I didn’t figure any job in Canada would earn me enough to pay the phone bill she’d run up calling Momma every time she had to go to the biffy, I nobly turned her down. She seemed awfully relieved.

I suppose that ultimately I went in without any fuss because it didn’t really mean anything to me one way or the other. None of it did.

As it all turned out, I went to Germany instead of the Far East. So I soaked up Kultur and German beer and played nursemaid to an eight-inch howitzer for about eighteen months, holding off the red threat. I finished up my hitch in late July and came back on a troopship. That’s where I got into the poker game.

Naturally, it was Benson who roped me into it. Benson and I had been inducted together in Seattle and had been in the same outfit in Germany. He was a nice enough kid, but he couldn’t walk past a deck of cards or a pair of dice if his life depended on it. He’d been at me a couple times and I’d brushed him off, but on the third day out from Bremerhaven he caught me in the chow line that wandered up and down the gray-painted corridors of the ship. He knew I had about twenty dollars I hadn’t managed to spend before we were shipped out.

“Come on, Alders. What the hell? It’s only for small change.” His eyes were already red-rimmed from lack of sleep, but his fatigue pockets jingled a lot. He must have been winning for a change.

“Oh, horseshit, Benson,” I told him. “I just don’t get that much kick out of playing poker.”

“What the fuck else is there to do?”

He had a point there. I’d gotten tired of looking at the North Atlantic after about twenty minutes. It’s possibly the dullest stretch of ocean in the world—if you’re lucky. Anyway, I know he’d be at me until I sat in for a while, and it really didn’t make that much difference to me. Maybe that’s why I started winning.

“All right, Arsch-loch.” I gave in. “I’ll take your goddamn money. It doesn’t make a shit to me.” So, after chow, I went and played poker.

The game was in the forward cargo hold. They’d restacked the five hundred or so duffle bags until there was a cleared-out place in the middle of the room. Then they’d rigged a table out of a dozen or so bags, a slab of cardboard, and a GI blanket. The light wasn’t too good, and the placed smelled of the bilges, and after you’ve sat on some guy’s extra pair of boots inside his duffle bag for about six hours, your ass feels like he’s been walking on it, but we stuck it out. Like Benson said, what else was there to do?

The game was seven-card stud, seven players. No spit-in-the-ocean, or no-peek, or three-card-lowball. There were seven players—not always the same seven guys, but there were always seven players.

The first day I sat in the game most of the play was in coins. Even so, I came out about forty dollars ahead. I quit for the day about midnight and gave my seat to the Spec-4 who’d been drooling down my back for three hours. He was still there when I drifted back the next morning.

“I guess you want your seat back, huh?”

“No, go ahead and play, man.”

“Naw, I’d better knock off and get some sleep. Besides, I ain’t held a decent hand for the last two hours.”

He got up and I sat back down and started winning again.

The second day the paper money started to show. The pots got bigger, and I kept winning. I wondered how much longer my streak could go on. All the laws of probability were stacked against me by now. Nobody could keep winning forever. When I quit that night, I was better than two hundred ahead. I stood up and stretched. The cargo hold was full of guys, all sitting and watching, very quietly. Word gets around fast on a troopship.

On the morning of the third day, Benson finally went broke. He’d been giving up his place at the table for maybe two-hour stretches, and he’d grab quick catnaps back in one of the corners. He looked like the wrath of God, his blond, blankly young face stubbled and grimy-looking. The cards had gone sour for him late the night before—not completely sour, just sour enough so that he was pretty consistently holding the second-best hand at the table. That can get awfully damned expensive.

It was on the sixth card of a game that he tossed in his last three one-dollar bills. He had three cards to an ace-high straight showing. A fat guy at the end of the table was dealing, and he flipped out the down-cards to Benson, the Spec-4, and himself. The rest of us had folded. I could tell from Benson’s face that he’d filled the straight. He might as well have had a billboard on the front of his head.

The Spec-4 folded.

“You’re high,” the fat dealer said, pointing at Benson’s ace.

“I ain’t got no money to bet,” Benson answered.

“Tough titty.”

“Come on, man. I got it, but I can’t bet it.”

“Bet, check, or fold, fella,” the dealer said with a fat smirk.

Benson looked around desperately. There was a sort of house rule against borrowing at the table. “Wait a minute,” he said. “How about this watch?” He held out his arm.

“I got a watch,” the dealer said, but he looked interested.

“Come on, man. I got that watch when I graduated from high school. My folks give a hundred and a half for it. It’ll sure as hell cover any bet in this chickenshit little poker game.”

The fat guy held out his hand. Benson gave him the watch.

“Give you five bucks.”

“Bullshit! That watch is worth a hundred and a half, I told you.”

“Not to me, it ain’t. Five bucks.”

“Fuck you, Buster. You ain’t gittin’ my watch for no lousy five bucks.”

“I guess you better throw in your hand then, huh?”

“Christ, man, gimme a break.”

“Come on, fella,” the fat guy said, “you’re holdin’ up the game. Five bucks. Take it or leave it.”

I could see the agony of indecision in Benson’s face. Five dollars was the current bet limit. “All right,” he said finally.

He bet two. The dealer raised him three. Benson called and rolled over his hole cards. He had his straight. His face was jubilant. He looked more like a kid than ever.

The fat guy had a flush.

Benson watched numbly, rubbing his bare left wrist, as the chortling fat man raked in the money. Finally he got up and went quickly out of the cargo hold.

“Hey, man,” the fat dealer called after him, “I’ll give you a buck apiece for your boots.” He howled with laughter.

Another player took Benson’s place.

“That was kinda hard,” a master sergeant named Riker drawled mildly from the other end of the table.

“That’s how we play the game where I come from, Sarge,” the fat man said.

It took me two days to get him, but I finally nailed him right to the wall. The pots were occasionally getting up to forty or fifty dollars by then, and the fat man was on a losing streak.

He had two low pair showing, and he was betting hard, hoping to get even. It was pretty obvious that he had a full house, seven and threes. I had two queens, a nine and the joker showing. My hand looked like a pat straight, but I had two aces in the hole. My aces and queens would stomp hell out of his sevens and threes.

Except that on the last round I picked up another ace.

He bet ten dollars. I raised him twenty-five.

“I ain’t got that much,” he said.

“Tough titty.”

“I got you beat.”

“You better call the bet then.”

“You can’t just buy the fuckin’ pot!”

“Call or fold, friend.” I was enjoying it.

“Come on, man. You can’t just buy the fuckin’ pot!”

“You already said that. How much you got?”

“I got twelve bucks.” He thought I was going to reduce my bet so he could call me. His face relaxed a little.

“You got a watch?” I asked him quietly.

He caught on then. “You bastard!” He glared at me. He sure wanted to keep Benson’s watch. “You ain’t gettin’ this watch that way, fella.”

I shrugged and reached for the pot.

“What the hell you doin’?” he squawked.

“If you’re not gonna call—”

“All right, all right, you bastard!” He peeled off Benson’s watch and threw it in the pot. “There, you’re called.”

“That makes seventeen,” I said. “You’re still eight bucks light.”

“Fuck you, fella! That goddamn watch is worth a hundred and fifty bucks!”

“I saw you buy it, friend. The price was five. That’s what you paid for it, so I guess that’s what it’s worth. You got another watch?”

“You ain’t gettin’ my watch.”

I reached for the pot again.

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” He pulled off his own watch.

“That’s twenty-two,” I said. “You’re still light.”

“Come on, man. My watch is worth more than five bucks.”

“A Timex? Don’t be stupid. I’m giving you a break letting you have five on it.” I reached for the pot again.

“I ain’t got nothin else.”

“Tell you what, sport. I’ll give you a buck apiece for your boots.”

“What the fuck you want my fuckin’ boots for?”

“You gonna call?”

“All right. My fuckin’ boots are in.”

“Put ’em on the table, sport.”

He scowled at me and started unlacing his boots. “There,” he snapped, plunking them down on the table, “you’re called.”

“You’re still a buck light.” I knew I was being a prick about it, but I didn’t give a damn. I get that way sometimes.

He stared at me, not saying anything.

I waited, letting him sweat. Then I dropped in on him very quietly. “Your pants ought to cover it.” Some guy laughed.

“My pants!” he almost screamed.

“On the table,” I said, pointing, “or I take the pot.”

“Fuck ya!”

I reached for the pot again.

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” His voice was desperate. He stood up, emptied his pockets, and yanked off his pants. He wasn’t wearing any shorts and his nudity was grossly obscene. He threw the pants at me, but I deflected them into the center of the table. “All right, you son of a bitch!” he said, not sitting down. “Let’s see your pissy little straight beat a full-fuckin’ house!” He rolled over his third seven.

“I haven’t got a straight, friend.”

“Then I win, huh?”

I shook my head. “You lose.” I pulled the joker away from the queens and the nine and slowly started turning up my buried aces. “One. Two. Three. And four. Is that enough, friend?” I asked him.

“Je-sus Christ!” some guy said reverently.

The fat man stood looking at the aces for a long time. Then he stumbled away from the table and almost ran out of the cargo hold, his fat behind jiggling with every step.

“I still say it’s a mighty hard way to play poker,” Sergeant Riker said softly as I hauled in the merchandise.

“I figured he had it coming,” I said shortly.

“Maybe so, son, maybe so, but that still don’t make it right, does it?”

And that finished my winning streak. Riker proceeded to give me a series of very expensive poker lessons. By the time I quit that night, I was back down to four hundred dollars. I sent the fat guy’s watch, boots, and pants back to him with one of his buddies, and went up on deck to get some air. The engine pounded in the steel deck plates, and the wake was streaming out behind us, white against the black water.

“Smoke, son?” It was Riker. He leaned against the rail beside me and held out his pack.

“Thanks,” I said. “I ran out about an hour ago.”

“Nice night, ain’t it?” His voice was soft and pleasant. I couldn’t really pin down his drawl. It was sort of Southern.

I looked up at the stars. “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been down at that poker table for so long I’d almost forgotten what the stars looked like.”

The ship took a larger wave at a diagonal and rolled with an odd, lurching kind of motion.

“You still ahead of the game, son?” he asked me, his voice serious.

“A little bit,” I said cautiously.

“If it was me,” he said, “I wouldn’t go back no more. You’ve won yourself a little money, and you got your buddy’s watch back for him. If it was me, I’d just call ’er quits.”

“I was doing pretty well there for a while,” I objected. “I think I was about fifteen hundred dollars to the good before I started losing. I’ll win that back in just a few hours, the way the pots have been running.”

“You broke your string, son,” Riker said softly, looking out over the water. “You been losin’ ’cause you was ashamed of yourself for what you done to that heavyset boy.”

“I still think he had it coming to him,” I insisted.

“I ain’t arguin’ that,” Riker said. “Like as not he did. What I’m sayin’, son, is that you’re ashamed of yourself for bein’ the one that come down on him like you done. I been watchin’ you, and you ain’t set easy since that hand. Funny thing about luck—it won’t never come to a man who don’t think he’s got it comin’. Do yourself a favor and stay out of the game. You’re only gonna lose from here on out.”

I was going to argue with him, but I had the sudden cold certainty that he was right. I looked out at the dark ocean. “I guess maybe the bit about the pants was going a little too far,” I admitted.

“Yeah,” he said, “your buddy’s watch woulda been plenty.”

“Maybe I will stay out of the game,” I said. “I’m about all pokered out anyway.”

“Yeah,” he said, “we’ll be gettin’ home pretty quick anyway.”

“Couple, three days, I guess.”

“Well,” he said, “I’m gonna turn in. Been nice talkin’ to you, son.” He turned and walked off down the deck.

“Good night, Sergeant Riker,” I called after him.

He waved his hand without looking back.

So I quit playing poker. I guess I’ve always been a sucker for fatherly advice. Somehow I knew that Riker was right though. Whatever the reason, I’d lost the feeling I’d had that the cards were going to fall my way no matter what anybody tried to do to stop them. If I’d have gone back the next day, they’d have cleaned me out. So the next day I watched the ocean, or read, and I didn’t think about poker.

Two days later we slid into New York Harbor. It was early morning and foggy. We passed the Statue and then stacked up out in the bay, waiting for a tug to drag us the rest of the way in. We all stood out on deck watching the sun stumble up out of the thick banks of smoke to blearily light up the buildings on Manhattan Island.

It’s a funny feeling, coming home when you don’t really have anything to come home to. I leaned back against a bulkhead, watching all the other guys leaning over the rail. I think I hated every last one of them right then.

Two grubby tugboats finally came and nudged us across the bay to a pier over in Brooklyn. Early as it was, there must have been a thousand people waiting. There was a lot of waving and shouting back and forth, and then they all settled down to wait. The Army’s good at that kind of thing.

Benson dragged his duffle bag up to where I was and plunked it down on the deck. I still hadn’t told him I had his watch. I didn’t want him selling it again so he could get back in the game.

“Hey, Alders,” he puffed, “I been lookin’ for you all over this fuckin’ tub.”

“I’ve been right here, kid.”

“Feels good, gettin’ home, huh?” he said.

“It’s still a long way to Seattle,” I told him. His enthusiasm irritated hell out of me.

“You know what I mean.”

“Sure.”

“You think maybe they might fly us out to the West Coast?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “I expect a nice long train ride.”

“Shit!” He sounded disgusted. “You’re probably right though. The way my luck’s been goin’ lately, they’ll probably make me walk.”

“You’re just feeling picked on.”

Eventually, they started unloading us. Those of us bound for West-Coast and Midwest separation centers were loaded on buses and then we sat there.

I watched the mass family reunion taking place in the dim gloom under the high roof of the pier. There was a lot of crying and hugging and so forth, but we weren’t involved in any of that. I wished to hell we could get going.

After about a half hour the buses started and we pulled away from the festivities. I slouched low in the seat and watched the city slide by. Several of the guys were pretty boisterous, and the bus driver had to tell them to quiet down several times.

“Look,” Benson said, nudging me in the ribs. “Eine amerikanische Fräulein.”

“Quit showing off,” I said, not bothering to look.

“What the hell’s buggin’ you?” he demanded.

“I’m tired, Benson.”

“You been tired all your life. Wake up, man. You’re home.”

“Big goddamn deal.”

He looked hurt, but he quit pestering me.

After they’d wandered around for a while, the guys who were driving the buses finally found a train station. There was a sergeant there, and he called roll, got us on the train, and then hung around to make sure none of us bugged out. That’s Army logic for you. You couldn’t have gotten most of those guys off that train with a machine gun.

After they got permission from the White House or someplace, the train started to move. I gave the sergeant standing on the platform the finger by way of farewell. I was in a foul humor.

First there was more city, and then we were out in the country.

“We in Pennsylvania yet?” Benson asked.

“I think so.”

“How many states we gonna go through before we get back to Washington?”

“Ten or twelve. I’m not sure.”

“Shit! That’ll take weeks.”

“It’ll just seem like it,” I told him.

“I’m dyin’ for a drink.”

“You’re too young to drink.”

“Oh, bullshit. Trouble is, I’m broke.”

“Don’t worry about it, Kid. I’ll buy you a drink when they open the club car.”

“Thanks,” he said. “That game cleaned me out.”

“I know.”

We watched Pennsylvania slide by outside.

“Different, huh?” Benson said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “More than just a little bit.”

“But it’s home, man. It’s all part of the same country.”

“Sure, Kid,” I said flatly.

“You don’t give a shit about anything, do you, Alders?” Sometimes Benson could be pretty sharp. “Being in Germany, winning all that money in the game, coming home—none of it really means anything to you, does it?”

“Don’t worry about it, Kid.” I looked back out the window.

He was right though. At first I’d thought I was just cool—that I’d finally achieved a level of indifference to the material world that’s supposed to be the prelude to peace of mind or whatever the hell you call it. The last day or so, though, I’d begun to suspect that it was more just plain, old-fashioned alienation than anything else—and that’s a prelude to a vacation at the funny-farm. So I looked out at the farmland and the grubby backsides of little towns and really tried to feel something. It didn’t work.

A couple guys came by with a deck of cards, trying to get up a game. They had me figured for a big winner from the boat, and they wanted a shot at my ass. I was used up on poker though. I’d thought about what Riker had told me, and I decided that I wasn’t really a gambler. I was a bad winner. At least I could have let that poor bastard keep his pants, for Christ’s sake. The two guys with the cards got a little snotty about the whole thing, but I ignored them and they finally went away.

“You oughta get in,” Benson said, his eyes lighting up.

“I’ve had poker,” I told him.

“I don’t suppose you’d want to loan me a few dollars?” he asked wistfully.

“Not to gamble with,” I told him.

“I didn’t think so.”

“Come on, Kid. I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Sure,” he said.

The two of us walked on down the swaying aisles to the club car. I got myself about half in the basket, and I felt better.

In Chicago there was another mob of relatives waiting, and there was a general repetition of the scene on the dock back in New York. Once we changed trains though, we highballed right on through.

I spent a lot of time in the club car with my heels hooked over the rung of a bar stool, telling lies and war stories to a slightly cross-eyed Wave with an unlimited capacity for Budweiser and a pair of tightly crossed legs. At odd moments, when I got sick of listening to her high-pitched giggle and raucous voice, I’d ease back up the train to my seat and sit staring at North Dakota and Montana sliding by outside. The prairie country was burned yellow-brown and looked like the ass-end of no place. After a while we climbed up into the mountains and the timber. I felt better then.

I had a few wild daydreams about maybe looking up the guy Sue had told me about in her last letter and kicking out a few of his teeth, but I finally decided it wouldn’t be worth the effort. He was probably some poor creep her mother had picked out for her. Then I thought about blousing her mother’s eye, and that was a lot more satisfying. It’s hard to hate somebody you’ve never met, but I could work up a pretty good head of steam about Susan’s mother.

I generally wound up back at the club car. I’d peel my cockeyed Wave of whomever she’d promoted to beer-buyer first class and go back to pouring Budweiser into her and trying to convince her that we were both adults with adult needs.

Anyhow, they dropped us off in Tacoma about five thirty in the morning on the fourth day after we’d landed in New York. My uniform was rumpled, my head was throbbing, and my stomach felt like it had a blowtorch inside. The familiar OD trucks from Fort Lewis were waiting, and it only took about an hour to deliver us back to the drab, two-story yellow barracks and bare drill fields I’d seen on a half dozen posts from Fort Ord to Camp Kilmer.

They fed us, issued us bedding, assigned us space in the transient barracks, and then fell us out into a formation in the company street. While they were telling us about all the silly-ass games we were going to play, my eyes drifted on out across the parade ground to the inevitable, blue-white mound of Mount Ranier, looming up out of the hazy foothills. I was dirty, rumpled, hung over, and generally sick of the whole damned world. The mountain was still the same corny, picture-postcard thing it had always been—a ready-made tourist attraction, needing only a beer sign on the summit to make it complete. I’d made bad jokes about its ostentatious vulgarity all the way through college, but that morning after having been away for so damned long, I swear I got a lump in my throat just looking at it. It was the first time I’d really felt anything for a long time.

Maybe I was human after all.