Eureka (6 page)

Brodie got a quick look at it. A three of diamonds.

A pair of threes!
Brodie thought.
What are his other two hole cards? Even if Eli had another three and a pair of jacks, O'Dell's full house would beat Gorman's. This was a hand Eli couldn't bluff.

O'Dell did exactly as Gorman anticipated. He checked.

Either he had two pair and was hedging, or it was a sucker bet. He'd figure Gorman, with a straight, would bet. O'Dell would raise him and drive him out of the game.

O'Dell swept up his stash and counted the hundreds. Gorman's expressionless eyes watched him. He had sixty-nine hundred dollars left.

He looked across the table at Gorman's neatly stacked cash. Easy to count. Sixty-seven hundred dollars.

Gorman looked at him for a minute or more. O'Dell finally looked away, lit a cigarette.

Gorman bet a hundred dollars.

The bet reduced O'Dell's stash to sixty-eight hundred, Gorman's to sixty-six hundred.

The pot was sixty-six hundred, the maximum bet.

“Looks like you're gonna get your beauty sleep early tonight, old man,” O'Dell sneered. “You think you can bluff me out with a little straight?” He counted out a fistful of hundreds and dropped them in the pot. “The limit: six thousand six hundred dollars.”

He leaned back in his chair and smiled.

Eli sat quietly for a moment. Then he counted out his last dollar and dropped sixty-six hundred dollars on top of O'Dell's bet.

“I'll just call,” Eli said. “If you've got that filly, let's see it.”

O'Dell's left eye twitched. He looked at Gorman but saw only the dead stare he had seen all night.

He turned his first two hole cards over. An ace and a jack.

“Jacks full,” he snarled. “Let's see that little straight of yours.”

“Oh, I have the little straight,” Gorman said, and smiled for the first time during the evening.

Gorman turned his first two hole cards over.

An ace of diamonds, a five of diamonds.

O'Dell started to reach for the pot.

Gorman turned over his last card. A three of diamonds.

“But they're all diamonds,” Gorman said. And he laughed. “A straight flush.”

O'Dell stopped and looked at the trey of diamonds with disbelief. He wiped his mouth with his hand. Beads of sweat gleamed from his forehead. He looked at Gorman with hate.

The gallery began to babble. Hennessey poured himself a double bourbon.

“You kike bastard,” he bellowed, grabbing his full house and throwing the cards at Eli. A couple hit Eli's chest, the others fluttered to the floor.

Tallman slammed his hand on the table.

“This was a gentleman's game. Act like one!” he ordered. “Ace-five straight flush is the winner.” He took O'Dell's stack of deeds and placed them on top of Eli Gorman's land titles. “Winner takes all.”

Eli stood up and raked nineteen thousand eight hundred dollars into his satchel.

O'Dell was left with two hundred dollars, only enough for an ante. He would be beat on the first up card. He was trembling with rage. The gallery was crowding around Gorman, slapping him on the back, congratulating him, thanking him for saving the valley.

O'Dell threw his suit jacket over his shoulder and propped his derby on the back of his head. He started toward the door and over his shoulder he yelled, “Hey, Gorman.”

Eli stared at him through the friends gathered around him.

“I just want you to know that I sold the six square blocks of Eureka to Arnie Riker this afternoon for a dollar. You got rid of me, I'm leaving tonight. But you're gonna have Riker up your ass until the day you die.”

The celebrating was over, and Ben and Brodie had gone off to bed. Eli decided to have a final cigar and told Maddy he would be upstairs in a few minutes. He went out the back door, snipped the end off his stogie, and lit it. He heard Brodie's voice down near the stable and followed it out to the paddock.

Brodie was feeding Cyclone an apple, telling the horse about the game.

“It was really somethin' to see,” he said softly to the white horse.

The remark surprised Eli.

“Do you have something to tell me, Thomas?” he asked.

When Brodie didn't answer, the old man went in. “I can read you like I can read a hand of cards. I can see it in your face.”

“See what?”

“A kind of admiration toward me I've never seen before.”

“Well, sure. You won the game.”

“Not just that.”

Brodie could not lie to Eli Gorman. He stuck his hands in his pockets and thought for a moment and said, “We was . . . were . . . there, Mr. Eli. Ben and me were hiding up in the loft.”

“What!” he snapped, his face clouding up.

“Ah, c'mon, sir, you think we could pass it up? We were behind you and we had the opera glasses. I saw every hand you played.” Brodie flashed his crooked smile. “You were really something, Mr. Eli.”

Eli glowered for a moment more, then the glower slowly turned to a smile. He nodded.

“I should have guessed,” he said. “Too good a show to miss, eh?”

“But I got one question,” Brodie said.

“What question is that?”

“On that last hand? Why did you only bet a hundred dollars?”

“Did you watch him? He's a sloppy player. He never counted his money, he just piled it up. I'm a numbers man, Thomas. I knew after every hand where we both stood.

“The pot was sixty-four hundred dollars. I knew O'Dell had his full house already, he barely looked at his last card. And I had my straight flush. O'Dell had sixty-nine hundred, I had sixty-seven hundred. By betting a hundred dollars, it limited the pot to sixty-six hundred, which is what I had, so there was no way he could bet me out of the game. When I beat him, he had two hundred dollars left, just enough for an ante and one bet, so he was beat. Had I bet the limit, he could have raised me four hundred, and with only two hundred left, I couldn't call the bet and he would have won.”

“I saw you throw in four winning hands during the night.”

“Actually five. So he pegged me for a poor bluffer. On that last hand, he figured me for a small straight and thought I was trying to bluff him out with a small bet when he checked. There's no way he wasn't going to bump my hundred-dollar bet and run me out of the game.”

Brodie shook his head. “You didn't have your winning hand until the last card.”

“That's right. If I hadn't drawn that three of diamonds when he checked I would have checked, too. He would have won the hand, but I still would have had sixty-seven hundred dollars.

Eli ground out his cigar, started for the house, then stopped and turned back around. “Did you learn anything tonight, Thomas?”

“Oh yes, sir. I learned two things.”

“And what were they?”

“The art of the bluff,” Brodie answered. “And the luck of the draw.”

Writing the letters was the hardest part. He had already packed all his belongings in two saddlebags, which were under his bed. His entire fortune—four hundred dollars, most of it paper money—was in a cigar box tied with twine in the bottom of one of them. He had twenty gold eagles in the pocket of his only suit, blue serge, a bit shiny at the elbows. He put the pocket watch Eli had given him once, as a Hanukkah present, in his jacket pocket.

He sat down on the edge of his bed and reread the letters he had written to Mr. and Mrs. Gorman and to Ben. He had struggled over the words for two days, writing and rewriting. He was no poet and he knew it. In the end, the letter to the Gormans was simple and to the point. A thank-you note for all they had done for him. It was time for him to leave the sanctuary they had provided, leave their care and affection. Time to find his own way in the world. They would understand.

“You have been the family I lost,” he finished. “I thank you for the offer of college, but I think we all know I am no student. It is time for me to find my true place in this world. I will miss you two and Ben and this house. I love you in my heart. Thomas Brodie Culhane.”

The letter to Ben was harder.

“You are the brother I never had and the best friend I will always have,” he wrote. “You and Isabel have your future planned out. Right now, I have no future. There is nothing here for me in Eureka. I will leave Cyclone at the sheriff's office. I'm sure Buck will bring him home. Take care of him for me. He's the first thing I ever bought with my own money that was worth a damn. I leave this place to take on the world, Ben. I know you will understand. If you ever need anything—
anything
—I'm sure you will find me and I'll come running. Have a good life, and thanks for taking care of me all these years. Brodie.”

The letter to Isabel was impossible. He wrote and rewrote it a dozen times, crumpling each one and throwing it on the floor.

“Dear Isabel,” he finally wrote. “You and Ben will be going back East to start a new life in a few weeks. He is the man for you. He loves you dearly and will bring magic to your life. It is time for me to leave here and look for my future. I will remember you forever. Brodie.”

He rode down the pathway and tied Cyclone to a tree, gave him an apple to munch on, and looked up at the Hoffman house.

The light was on in the corner room.

She had sneaked out and was waiting for him.

He decided to wait until she went back to her house and leave the note for her in the greenhouse.

Then he thought better of it. Her mother or father might find the letter.

Even worse, it was a cowardly way to bow out.

But he approached the secret hideaway fearfully. Thirteen years of poverty and the loss of two parents he adored had left him emotionally barren. He had learned affection and self-respect from the Gormans, had found in Ben a brother figure in whom he had confided his fears and his joy.

But Isabel.

Isabel was different. Isabel had been his first love. She had awakened emotions he had never felt before. Each eagerly had surrendered their virginity to the other. She had revealed in Brodie a gentleness of spirit that both awed and terrified him.

How can I say good-bye,
he wondered
, when my heart aches at the thought?

He knew what he had to do, knew he had to dig deep down inside himself, to reach back four years, to search for and rekindle the cynicism, the toughness, the solitude of the kid who had grown up in Eureka and who, when his mother died, had cowered alone in his bed in the corner of the laundry until Ben had come and found him and taken him to the Gorman mansion and a new life that was far beyond his wildest dreams.

Payback time.

He entered the greenhouse resolutely.

She rushed from the darkness before he was halfway to the back. She was wearing a nightgown and a silk robe covered with tiny embroidered roses.

His throat closed. He couldn't swallow.

“Daddy told me about Mr. Eli. Isn't it wonderful! It turned out so perfectly,” she said joyously.

She threw her arms around him, hugging him, and her hair swept his face. He kept his hands at his sides.

She stepped back and looked up at him, and saw something she had never seen before. There were tears in his eyes.

“Brodie . . .” The first hint of apprehension.

His lips moved but no words came.

“Brodie,” she said, lowering her head a trifle, staring at him, her head cocked slightly to one side.

He touched her cheek and realized his hand was shaking.

“Something's bad,” she said, and tears flooded her eyes. She put two fingers against his lips. “I don't want to hear anything bad. Please.”

“Isabel . . . I've got to . . . I have to go away.”

“What do you mean, ‘go away'? Where? Where are you going?”

He looked at the ground. He could not stand to look at her face, at the tears edging down to her chin.

He shook his head. “I don't know. But it's not fair for me to stay here.”

“Fair!
Fair!
”

“Look at me, Isabel. Please. I got nothing. All the clothes I own wouldn't fill the corner of a closet. I got four hundred dollars in a cigar box and that's all I got in the world . . .”

“Stop it!” she said.

“Ben loves you. He can give you everything you want.”

“I don't care!” she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I love you, and I know you love me.”

“I left a note for Mr. Eli and Miss Madeline, and one for Ben. I'm leaving, Isabel. I'm leaving San Pietro valley for good. It's best for everybody. Especially you.”

“It is
not
best for me,” she said, anguish accenting every syllable. “You care about Ben, you care about the Gormans. Don't you care about me?”

“We're just kids,” he said harshly. “It's puppy love.”

“That's what you think?
Puppy love?
” She was crying hard now. “Is that all I mean to you?”

He couldn't stand the hurt. He reached out to her but she backed away, into the shadows at the back of the greenhouse. She sat down on the hard earth.

“You're just throwing me away.” Her voice was like a whispered wail, a cry in the night, her grief so deep that Brodie did not know how to respond.

“I gotta go,” he said in a voice he didn't even recognize. “It's best for everybody.”

“How do you know what's best for me?” she moaned. “I thought you loved me. I thought you would protect me and . . .” Her voice dissolved into more tears.

Jesus,
he thought,
why won't she understand?

“My heart hurts,” she sobbed. “It will never stop hurting. You've turned my dreams into nightmares.”

“Isabel . . .”

“If you're going, then go. Get away from me.”

He stood his ground for a few moments and then backed down the aisle to the door. He couldn't tell her there was a crushing hurt in his heart, too.