Crows & Cards (8 page)

The window in the room had several pieces of glass left in it, though there was one pane less after the second morning we pulled in. That day started out sunny, but I woke to a clap of thunder and a crash of glass. Chilly had spotted a crow at the window and taken aim. He sent me outside to hunt for a bird carcass and wasn't pleased when I couldn't find so much as a feather. 'Course, Chilly's shot turned out all the hounds that was tied up in back, but as I was to learn, it generally took considerable less than gunfire to roust those dogs. They harmonized with Goose's piano playing, barked at roosting passenger pigeons, and snarled up a storm at any raccoons crossing by upwind. Once they got going, sleep was all uphill.

The meals served down in the kitchen weren't regular, but they weren't skimpy either. The fellow doing the cooking was a largish, roundish slave, name of Ho-John, whose skin was dark as good, rich earth and who three times had been caught clinging to a log while trying to swim to Illinois, which didn't tolerate slavery. Goose made him wear chains around his feet 'cause of his swimming habits, and Ho-John made sure everyone could hear those chains jangle and clink with every step he took. He also had himself a real stubborn way of burning most everything on the edges and leaving it runny toward the middle. Even the porridge had singe marks. No amount of thundering could shake him of the habit either. He claimed he was a carpenter slave by trade—no cook—and that till he figured out some way to use a hammer and nails and saw to fix up meals, he reckoned we could expect more of the same to land on our plates. Since there weren't any ladies allowed at the inn, he did all the seamstressing too and could sew a tolerably straight line, though he didn't think any more kindly of that duty than any of his others.

I gave Ho-John a careful looking over but couldn't spot nothing out of the ordinary 'bout him, 'less you counted the lodestone he kept on a piece of rawhide around his neck. He claimed that stone always pointed north, which was the general direction of the Free States and his hopes. I'd known others with hopes, of course, but none what had a north, south, east, or west attached to 'em. Other than that lodestone, the only thing that Ho-John cared for at all was the hounds living out back. He considered those dogs family and pampered 'em worse than royalty.

There were six guest rooms at the inn, all upstairs. One room was Goose's, one belonged to the Professor, and one went to Chilly and me. The rest were on hand for any gambler too liquored up to make it home without falling flat. The first floor had a couple of gaming parlors out front, the kitchen to the rear. Large affairs, the parlors were. They had tables built from scratch by Ho-John, right handsome ones too, with plenty of split-bottom chairs around 'em. Lanterns hung everywhere, as nighttime was when all the gambling got done.

Paintings fancied up some of the walls, with President Washington being a favorite. Goose Nedeau liked to claim he was related to the old French families around town and so gave Lafayette equal billing. Napoleon and a couple of French kings named Louis got footage too. The guests were pretty rough on the paintings—sassed 'em regular. Their words were considerably shocking, but their tongues never did fall out, the way Ma had always claimed mine would if I'd dared speak thataway. It was just one revelation after another around that inn, and grown up as most of these discoveries made me feel, I wouldn't have had it any other way.

'Course, the reason all these paintings got talked to so much was the bar, which took up the side wall in the main parlor and served everything from bust-head whiskey to some special punch dipped from a kettle. The Professor, who presided over the bar, wore a mostly white apron and tied black garters around his sleeves. He had a slow, friendly way of pouring a drink that made everyone feel welcome. All the gamblers said so.

It didn't sit too good with Chilly, but me and the Professor and Ho-John fast became friends. The reason for that was the respectful way I kept my distance from the Professor's hens and the fact that I didn't complain none about Ho-John's cooking. I ran errands for one or the other of them whenever I had the time, but mostly I was kept hopping with my apprenticing. My days didn't have much room for being homesick, though such feelings did rear their heads at the darnedest times, say when passing the whale sign, or when listening to the hounds howl, or when a steamboat whistled away over on the river in the middle of the night when everything was lonesomest. But such bouts lasted only as long as it took me to remember who'd bundled me off to St. Louis in the first place.

Since Goose Nedeau was in league with Chilly, he now became my teacher too. He appeared to be thrown together out of gristle and ruin, a hard-luck gambler who made little honking squawks in his throat all the time, like some sick goose. Most days he spent a good deal of time complaining that he hadn't had a good solid breath since Andy Jackson first muddied up the White House twenty years back. He shaved regular and missed various patches of stubble regular too. Bad as his hands shook from swilling whiskey, he rolled a loose cigarette that dropped enough ash to set himself on fire once or twice a night. His prize paisley vest was pitted with burn holes, and smoke seemed to rise like early morning fog off his silver mane of hair. He said he'd been forced into innkeeping 'cause of his health, though he didn't seem to take much interest in his new profession. Mostly he sat around dredging up days of yore, when he claimed to have single-handedly captured Black Hawk and made the entire Mississippi River safe for settlers. He had a go at the piano regular too, though he was banned from playing music, as he called it, whenever a card game was in progress.

On the day after we pulled in, Chilly sat me down in the main parlor. It was early yet, which around there meant any time before noon, so there weren't any customers about. Goose was already slouched at the table Chilly steered me to. The Professor had tied on his apron and was wiping out glasses over behind the bar. His chickens—Aphrodite and Venus—were up on top of the bar, inspecting each glass when he was done cleaning it.

"How you liking your new digs?" Chilly asked me.

"It's awful grand," I answered.

There wasn't any early-to-bed, early-to-rise philosophies, and the burnt edges on the vittles hadn't started to churn my innards yet. What's more, being around a pair of birds named after the Greek and Roman gods of love seemed powerful civilized. And 'course I was looking forward to doing more for the orphans of St. Louis, and showing Pa and Ma by sending winnings home to 'em, and maybe even buying myself a first-class pocketknife.

"Are you sure he's small enough?" Goose piped up while casting his eyes in my general direction. At the moment he was studying the empty chair beside me.

"Measurements have been taken," Chilly boomed, speaking twice as loud as normal 'cause he'd been contradicted.

"How's his eyesight?" Goose asked, resorting to his nose to find me. He had himself eyeglasses but rarely trotted them out, claiming they were about as helpful as a pair of stove lids.

"Keen enough," Chilly reported. "Did you want to check his teeth?"

"He got any extras?" Goose asked, sounding ready to claim 'em. Those of his teeth that hadn't gone missing had a mossy shine to 'em.

"The main thing you need to know about Zeb," Chilly said, "is that we can trust him. He's been sworn into the Brotherhood."

"Which brotherhood's that?" Goose wanted to know, turning suspicious.

"Why, the Brotherhood of the Gambler," Chilly answered, considerably put out over having to explain something so secret. "What'd you have for breakfast, anyway?"

It might have seemed a queer question if but a half hour before I hadn't seen Goose tell the Professor to pour him a good stiff breakfast of his best medicine. The Professor's restorative smelled the same as a small bottle of rye whiskey my ma kept on hand for toothaches and other ailments too terrible to think on.

"Zeb," Chilly said, appearing tired of shouting at Goose, "come out to the kitchen. There's something I want you to try on for size."

So we trooped out to the kitchen with Goose bringing up the rear 'cause he needed a couple of sit-down breathers on the way. Ho-John sat over by the stove, whittling a toy out of a block of wood and paying us no mind as we all squeezed into a pantry.

"Climb onto that middle shelf there." Chilly pointed. "Take a look through that hole in back."

I did it without no trouble, though I wasn't thrilled by its height, and if I'd bulged an inch or two bigger in any direction, it would have been a pinching tight fit. There was a crowd of crockery on the shelf above me, all full of pickles and relishes and such, while a troop of bottles and jars were spread across the shelf below me. The middle shelf had been cleared of everything but some grains of spilt salt, which was about as worrisome a sign as could be. Knowing how stern the Brotherhood felt about charms and portents and what have you, I waited till Chilly wasn't watching before sneaking a pinch of salt to throw over my left shoulder. I didn't skimp on crossing myself either. There wasn't any telling how long those grains had been laying there churning up bad luck, and I didn't plan on taking any chances.

"What do you see?" Chilly asked.

Rolling on my side, I squinted through a hole in the back wall.

"The main parlor," I said.

"All of it?"

"Well"—I pressed an eye against the hole and searched around some—"pretty close to all of it. But mostly I got a view of the big table in front of me."

"Perfect. And are you comfortable?"

"Tolerably." I skipped over mentioning the salt or the height or how cramped it was.

"If a pillow and blanket will square things, we'll get 'em for you. And anything else that'll make that shelf feel homey. You just name 'er and it's yours."

"Oka-ay," I drawled, puzzled-like. "But why would you want me to feel at home on a pantry shelf?"

"Oh that's not a pantry shelf," Chilly corrected.

"It's not?" I squirmed around to see if I might have missed something. But no matter how hard I scouted her over, it still stacked up as a plain old wooden shelf.

"No sir," Chilly boasted. "That there's our new telegraph office."

CHAPTER TEN

L
INED UP AGAINST THE OTHER WONDERS
of St. Louis, that new telegraph office was a considerable letdown. I put a brave face on my misgivings, not wanting Chilly to think me some ungrateful little carp, but my disappointment must have showed through, 'cause Chilly laid down the law.

"Now see here, Zeb, can't everyone go expecting to start at the top. That ain't the way things work in this here world."

"Expect not," I mumbled.

"Come along now," Chilly ordered.

And he jerked me off that shelf and marched me out of the kitchen, and back around to the parlor, where he stood me right before the wall shared with the pantry. As walls go, it weren't anything more special than some rough-cut old lumber that was pegged together. A long time back somebody had splashed Spanish brown wash over it. There were two pictures hanging on it, one of George Washington, all noble, the other of King Louis something or other, doing a bang-up job looking important too, though I wasn't in any mood for admiring them, not as sore as my arm felt after Chilly's roughhousing. If I'd been back home, my brother James would have been making crimpy baby faces at me, the way he did whenever I was about to cry. Just thinking of that made me want to blubber all the more, so I bit my lip and did my best not to snivel.

"Now where do you reckon you were looking through this wall?" With a sweep of his hand, Chilly invited me to check things over.

Well, the whereabouts of that peephole was a champion mystery. I couldn't find it anywhere, not in George Washington's or King Louis' eyes, nor any of the knotholes to be found here and there, which were all plugged solid.

"Check that lower corner there." Chilly pointed me toward the frame around President Washington.

Painted all gold and green and blue-purple, that frame was crawling with curlicues and carved vines and clustered grapes that looked more artful than the picture itself. After a minute or two of snooping, I found the hole I'd been peering through. The bottommost grape in a ripe-colored cluster had been punched clean out, not that you'd have ever noticed without putting your nose right up to it. The pantry on the other side was shadowy as Pa's smokehouse, so there wasn't any light leaking out.

"You see?" Chilly said. "Won't anyone know you're there at all."

If that's what Chilly thought was souring me, he was way past wrong. What had me so puckered up was that I'd just caught a whiff of something, maybe a rat.

"I'm kind of wondering," I said, picking my words with care, "what I'll be doing back there?"

"Why, helping rich men share their bounty," Chilly explained. "Here, let me show you something."

He set Goose Nedeau down in the chair nearest the portrait of President Washington. Pulling out a deck of playing cards, he fanned five of 'em out in Goose's hand. "Sit still," he ordered Goose before parading me back to the pantry and waving me onto the shelf again. When I put my eye to the hole, I found myself looking over Goose Nedeau's right shoulder. He was holding two nines, a king, a ten, and a six.