Durty South Grind (14 page)

“This is the library-study-groove room,” she cooed in the husky voice he recognized as the one that had answered the phone earlier.

They passed through another door that led to a room with two card tables with gamblers in thick cushioned chairs. At the larger table sat a big brother in a fedora crunching on a fat cigar. He was sitting in a circular straw wicker chair with huge potted plants on each side. Had to be Al. Beyond the gambling tables along the wall there was a craps table, a miniature roulette wheel and another Ms. Pac-Man machine.

The room was filled with gamblers trash-talking, as they tossed money around like water. JJ, Debra and Percy and two other players he hadn't seen before were at the table with Al.

“Godayum, a nigga's luck be running like donkey shit around this bitch, damn.” Sparkle smiled at the familiar voice of his nephew, Stacy, who screamed in disgust and flung his cards on the table.

Sitting across from him, beaming as he raked in the pot, was his lifetime buddy Johnny Bee. “Damn, Junior, you go for that one every time.” He shook the money at the other players around the table. “Ya'll people been good to an old playa tonight as usual; appreciate it. I really do.”

He was immediately bombarded with curses around the table. “Fuck you. Go to hell. Kiss my ass. Move ya money, nigga; we going to the next hand.”

A sweetie in an orange halter top and tinted glasses picked up
the deck and started shuffling. “Ya'll crybabies need to ante a five spot on this here low-ball hand. I got to get my nephew some of them baby Jordans; let's go.”

Another honey in tight braids with jet-black skin joined in the banter. “Damn, bitch, that's the only game yo ass know, ain't it?”

Halter top shot right back, “Aw, ho, you deal yours; I deal mine. Chuck your five in the pot if you in. If you ain't, shut the fuck up and let us play.”

Sparkle stood, admiring the bantering for a couple of hands, before he slid up behind Johnny Bee and tapped him on the shoulder. “I really don't like the way you taking advantage of my nephew here, player.”

“B” tensed up from the touch and then tilted his hat back. “Fuck you and your good-paying nephew.” His eyes blinked and he shivered. He looked over his shoulder and squinted at the intruder before he leaned back in his chair and slapped himself upside the head with both hands. “Aw hell to the naw!” he yelled. “Oh my holy be damn, say it ain't so?”

“It's so, nigga.” Sparkle beamed down at him.

As one, “B” and Stacy got up to crush him in a double bear hug. “Unc.”

“Partner, my nigga.” The two greeted Sparkle with exuberance.

“Aight, I appreciate the love, but godayum, I gotta breathe, ya'll, shiiit.”

“B” beamed, stepping back. “Man, why didn't you let me know you was out?”

Stacy added quickly, “Man, I started to call you and let you know that I was coming over here, but I figured you was worn out. But shit, I'm sho' glad you showed up because this black-ass nigga done sliced my ends like they was his from the get-go.”

The commotion caught the attention of the folk at the other
table, where Al had just pulled in a fairly decent pot. “So that's your brother, Deb?”

She cut her eyes at him as she was counting her money. “Uhhuh, yeah, dat be my big bro, Sparkle.” Her eyes lit up when she saw the take-outs. “Is one of them for me, bro, 'cause I'm hungry for a mug. Good looking, uh, bro, could you throw me a few ends? This nigga's got to hit a brick sooner or later.”

Sparkle jerked his head back and gritted on her but reached in his pocket and tossed her a couple of bills anyway. She didn't even look back and held her hand over her shoulder. “Hold up there, nigga. Let me cut those if you don't mind, please.”

Percy pushed the deck in her direction and mumbled, “Girl, you need to be keeping yo head in the game instead of doing all that hollering, disturbing a nigga's concentration and shit.”

Al drubbed his fingers on the table and intervened. “Man, you know you got to let folk cut the cards before you deal; come on now.”

Sparkle stood, playing ghost, while he was checking out their hand moves and poker face expressions as they continued the trash talk. From years of experience, he honed in on lip twitches, eye arching and posture movements; any telltale signs that most players didn't pay any attention to.

After a few rounds, JJ nudged Sparkle on the hip and pointed to Stacy, lying on one of the beanbag chairs lined against the wall. Sparkle strutted over and took a seat in the one beside him. “Bad night, huh, baby boy?”

There was a sneer on his face until he looked and saw who it was. He straightened up as best he could and said, “Yeah, Unc, shit be rough right now.”

“Gets like that every once in awhile, youngun,” Sparkle said with an understanding tone.

“Man, I been losing my ass off for weeks now,” Stacy said as he shook his head in disappointment.

“Brighten up, baby boy, old Unc's gonna come to the rescue. How ya been doing other than having this dry run at the table? Heard ya been making babies by the car load.”

Stacy smiled in his squinty-eyed way and hunched his shoulders. “Shiiiit, honeys be blowing up before I even get the dick in, Unc.” He harumphed.

Sparkle laughed right along with him, glad that he was able to lift his spirits. “Son, you still a wild dog, just like your pops. Speaking of…what's my nigga Sam up to these days?”

Stacy twisted his mouth to the side and sucked on his teeth. “Man, I holla at Pops whenever I hit the News. He still be running that skag wid dat bitch Rita; no-good-ass ho. Know what I'm saying, Unc?”

“So he's still oiling that shit, huh?”

“Hey, Unc, every time that I see him he's nodding.” He shook his head in disgust. His expression faded into a distant sort of look, the way he usually did when he was talking about his old man's drug habit.

“Oh yeah, I definitely know how that be.”

“I sure wish he'd quit, but I know he ain't, though.” Stacy sighed.

Sparkle decided to change the subject. “How many babies you got now, yo?”

“Hell, I don't know; that shit hard to keep up with. Uh, okay, let's see. Uh, three crumb snatchers that I know about for sho, a coupla I got a few doubts about, and a couple dat bitches be claiming.” He squinted his eyes and ran a finger under his nose before he gave a short snort. “I know it had to be that Kym or Krys one who told you that.”

“Krystal,” he admitted.

“Figures, well, you know they be riding a nigga about doing dumb shit like getting married and shit,” he said with a sneaky smile.

“Hey, man, you know how women are about that.”

“Yep, you right; dey sumthing else wid dat mess.”

Sparkle placed a hand on his shoulder. “Uh, you lose a lot?”

“About thirty-five hundred dollars in the last few days. Shit, to tell you the truth, I lost count,” he replied disgustedly.

“Yep, well, let's split. I got something. Aw hell, it's time to show you a few things.” He cleared his throat harshly to get JJ's and Debra's attention. “Me and Stacy about to make a run. Ya'll want anything from the store?”

Before either of them could respond, Big Al spoke up. “Hey, soldier, if it ain't too much of a bother, could you pick up a case of Heineken and Old E for me? I'll hit ya off when ya'll get back or do I need to give it to you now?”

“Yeah and naw, I can handle it. It'll be a minute, though,” Sparkle said. A chorus of sounds followed them out the door. Stacy led the way to a black Cadillac with a gold rag top.

“Let's go to one of them all-nighters where I can pick up some decks of cards.” Sparkled pulled out a deck he had slipped off the table. “Mmm-hmm, Hoyles, they should be easy enough to find. Ain't there a Cub Foods or Kroger around this way somewhere?”

“Sure, about a five-minute drive down I-20.”

“Okay, let's go. We can pick up the beer there, too.”

They bought five red and five blue decks, Elmer's glue sticks, single-edge razor blades, emery boards, sandpaper, red and blue magic markers and the cases of beer.

As they were exiting Kroger, Sparkle said, “I saw a Thrift Inn right down the street. Can you go get us a room? Yo ass ain't all the way broke, are you?”

Stacy nodded and went to get the room after they had parked.

When he walked into the room on the balcony level, he tossed the items on the bed and sat down. “Now, youngun, you can never let anybody, and I do mean absolutely nobody, know about the things I'm about to show you.”

While Sparkle began opening the stuff up, Stacy sat on the edge of the bed, toying with the TV remote. He waited until he found a station he wanted to see.

“By the way, I gave Debra these cheat lessons a year before I got out last time, and she been killing niggas ever since.”

Stacy jumped off the bed with a look of shock written on his face. “You mean to tell me that my own auntie's been cheating me outta my money for all these years?” The fire was certainly lit up under his young ass and he started pacing the floor with his jaws puffed out.

Sparkle lay back on the bed and lit a cigarette and eyed him for a moment before he resumed unwrapping the stuff. After lining the decks up, he took the razor and cut all the cellophane off carefully. Then he used the markers to place strategic marks on the cards for suit and numeration before placing them on the bed to dry.

The way that Sparkle ignored his anger, steadily continuing what he was doing, curbed Stacy's pacing and he sat on the bed to observe. To say that he looked astounded was an understatement, for youngun was straight-up dumbstruck.

Knowing that his nephew's mind was racing in all kinds of directions, Sparkle smiled. “That's the same attitude these suckers are going to have if you give them any kind of sign that you down with the cheat. Uh-huh, that goes for somebody else,
anybody
else that even sniffs at you being hip to this stuff. Hell, I've been skinning JJ for years and ‘B,' too, and you know he my dog. That is, until I finally hipped him a couple of years ago while we
was in that camp in Columbus. Nephew JJ don't even know that your auntie be cheating to this day.”

Old slick-ass auntie.
He smiled as he sat on the bed, stunned by the things he'd learned.

Sparkle cleared his throat to draw his attention back to what he was doing. “Now watch me carefully; I'm going to let you do the last deck to see if you got it.”

“Okay.” He nodded, turning his full attention to the lessons at hand.

He proceeded to take out the aces, kings and queens and used the emery boards to file down the edges at each corner. Then he used the sandpaper to sand down the middle of the rest of the deck. He carefully explained the process as he was going. “These, baby boy, are called slides because you take ‘em like this here and slide out the cards you done fixed up. You use these mostly for Georgia skin to shoot what niggas call the curb, but they also work pretty well for three of a kind playing poker.”

Next, he took out the deuces, treys and fours and marked them with very small dits on the edges. “This, way you'll know where twelve cards are in poker, and they also come in handy in skin, as you can see. And let's not forget the advantage you'll have knowing what cards a nigga's dealt and holding in tonk.”

Finally, he placed the deck back in the cellophane, using the glue stick to gently paste the cellophane and stamp back together. “Usually, you will let somebody else open the deck up. But for right now, I want you to stand close enough to me where you can hand me one of these decks for the switch. You can handle that, can't you?” As an afterthought, he added, “Of course you got to do it quickly and out of sight.”

Stacy nodded in understanding.

Then Sparkle took one of the decks and showed him how to
run up hands, followed by doing false shuffles and cuts. “We'll do some more of this later. I wanted to give you some hand maneuvers to practice on.”

He gave him enough time to get a grip. “Now, for the encore, here's how you suck most of the money out of a game when you set to roll.” He gave him a sly smile and picked out five low-ball hands, arranging the cards where everybody would be forced to go in the drywood to trade cards for a better hand.

After watching him maneuver through the concept a couple of times, Stacy leaned back on the bed, smiling. “Unc, I had no idea… damn, you something else, yo. Guess I got a lotta practicing to do, huh?”

Sparkle nodded. “Yeah, nephew, I've been at this for a long time and I still got to get that practice in on the regular. And you had no idea; ain't that something else? Now Stacy, you have got to remember this at all times. Look at the hits and side dits really quickly and natural-like and never get caught staring at the deck.”

“Yeah yeah, unc…damn, where you learn all this stuff from?”

Sparkle snorted a short laugh. “Man, this is how Debra and your grandma been skinning folk for years, yo.”

His eyes widened in shock. “Ah, man, Grandma be cheating a nigga all this time, too?”

Sparkled laughed out loud. “Man, she's the one that turned me out and I came up with the rest over the years.”

“Well, I'll be damned.” He shook his head in amazement.

Sparkle held up his hand to get his attention. “Now concentrate on this here, for real, yo. When I rub my hair and scratch behind my ear three times, I want you to say something funny as hell to get everybody to look at your face. And slide me this deck here so they don't see your hands making the switcheroo, got that?”

“Yep, oh man, this is going to be sweet.” Stacy gleamed, his eyes shining.

“Okay, now what I do is play down the river, sometimes with a wild card; that way I can see what I dealt everybody. And then spread the deck out like this so I can see the next four cards coming off,” he added, studying his reaction.