The Israel Bond Omnibus (10 page)

Lighting a Raleigh, he laid his plans for the coming match. It’s about time, he said to himself facetiously, that I laid
plans!

The day of the game dawned bright and clear.

Bond, dressed in a sporty one-piece Air Force-type jump suit, walked over to a spot about a mile from the Kahn-Tiki’s main wing after receiving a terse call from Poontang. His hand felt considerably better after repeated soakings and an injection of Hexaphilonovademocaine, a new drug invented by an Israeli, Dr. Bernard Amster, which was highly effective in reducing swollen tissue, but in a few rare cases produced an unpleasant side effect —it grew hair on the kidneys and spleen. Dr. Amster himself was one of the unfortunate few to suffer these effects. Twice a year he had to be opened surgically and shaved.

The secret agent was a bit apprehensive. There was no package from Milton at the desk. Got to play it by ear, he decided.

Poontang, all business, was wearing a sweatshirt on which were emblazoned the letters “Kansas City, Mo., Jaycees Marbles Tournament Champion 1954-55-56-57” and a pair of faded jeans that did not entirely hide her wicked silhouette.

She’s trying to “psyche” me, Bond thought. All right, I know she’s a good marbles shooter. But there are a few things she doesn’t know about me, which I’ll tell her in good time.

Pine trees and thick clumps of bushes encircled the brown patch of earth she had selected.

“Buster, I think we’ll start off with a little game called ‘in-the-hole.’”

“That’s how it may end up, too,” Bond jested lightly.

Preferring to ignore his quickie, she said: “You’re an Israeli and I don’t expect you know much about our games. But I’ll teach you this simple one. I’ve dug a hole over there”—she indicated a depression about four feet away—”and over here I’ll make two parallel lines about three feet apart.” She busily drew them in the earth with her sneaker tips. “Now we stand on this line and trawl—throw the marble—to that line. One closest to the line goes first. He, but it’s gonna be she, buster, then shoots at the hole. So does the second player. One closest to the hole gets the next shot. Object is to get into the hole first ‘cause then you’re eligible to shoot at the other guy’s mib. If you hit the mib, it’s yours. Or rather it’s mine, Hercules. And it’s twenty smackeroos for me. Here—take a shooter.”

They stood at the first trawling line, peering intently at the second. She wound up like a baseball pitcher, then with startling delicacy let it fly. It landed about two inches from the second line. “Trawl,” she said with a pleased expression. He did so. His landed six inches away.

“I’m first!” she cried triumphantly and for a moment she was the rock-hard sophisticate no longer, just an eager young girl with wind-blown hair on a spring day in Missouri.

She knelt, holding her blue marble in the V of her forefinger, shoving her thumb forward. It skittered along the loam, straight into the hole. On the first shot!

Lucky, Bond mused, particularly because of the way she shoots. It’s a fairly accurate style, but not basically powerful.

“I’m in, buster! Now you’re in trouble. Either you’ve gotta make the hole on the first shot or stay away. Because I’m now eligible to knock the crap out of your aggie.”

Sticky situation, he conceded. He bent over and duplicated her shooting method, affixing his red alley in the V-position, fired toward the hole. It stopped about two feet away.

“Spansies! Spansies!” she bubbled in delight. “That means, Richard the Chicken-Hearted, that since I’m in the hole already I can take the span of my hand, either once or twice, and move my shooter closer to yours. That’s one of the privileges you get when you’re in first. And,” she paused dramatically, “I’ll take double spansies—if you please.”

Her two hand lengths placed her within inches of his red alley. She shot. Click! Her aggie drove his spinning ignominiously into a bush. “Twenty
schmolyeres
, buster! Cough up!”

Expressionless, he peeled a twenty from his roll, paid up and went into the bush to retrieve his shooter. He nearly stepped on the soft, plump hand of Estrellita Kahn, who was writhing passionately on the ground with Henny Benny Lenny, West Coast comedy sensation. They did not notice him as they gyrated their locked bodies in animalistic fury, the little laughmaker whispering, “Speaking of sex, this married couple, Abie and Becky, go to a motel and ...” “Shush with the goddam jokes and swing!” she moaned. Henny Benny Lenny was a sensation at something, obviously, Bond thought.

He found the marble and returned to a smiling Poontang, his eyes radar-scanning the sky anxiously. Where the hell was Milton?

Poontang repeated her victories in the next six games, following the same pattern. She was now 140 dollars ahead. “Want to quit, he-man, and admit she-man shot the pants off you?”

Then he heard it. The motor of a small plane. Milton’s Piper Cub! Soon it was just ninety feet above them and Bond could see his brother waving frantically. An object dropped out of the Piper, thumping near his feet. With another wave, Milton was headed back home.

“What kind of a tinhorn gimmick is that?” she said angrily. “Trying to rattle me, Bond?”

He lit a Raleigh, looked into her eyes with disdain, but pitched his voice low.

“My dear, I’m going to give you a short, but highly informative lecture.”

“Do go on, Mr. Bond, if you think it’ll help you—and it won’t.”

“Poontang, in ten minutes you’re going to undergo the most traumatic experience of your life. Know ye this, Miss Plenty; it’s a fact that I’m an Israeli, but by choice, not by birth. I saw the light of day first in Trenton, New Jersey, where as a boy I played this game at a certain intersection—Market and Lamberton Streets. Mean anything to you?”

“Not a damn thing,” she said. But her voice was guarded.

“There is a vacant lot there—or was, before urban renewal changed things around—owned by one Butsi (Heavythumbs) Colodny, the butcher. And on that lot, my venomous pet, I learned the art of marbles from the greatest of them all—one Sonny Jo Washington, better known in the annals of marbles as Sonny the Schvartzeh. In fact, Sonny Jo once told me I was the best white player he’d ever encountered. No, I never beat him; no white boy ever did. But I came so close to doing it on several occasions that Sonny the Schvartzeh, as a token of his esteem, gave me this.”

From the object dropped from the Cub, a burlap bag, Bond extracted a marble from a leather bag in which he found a note: “Iz, sorry I’m late. Weather was bad. Thought I’d just hedge-hop around until I spotted you. Zai gezunt—Milt.”

“This, my sweet, is Sonny’s own shooter, the immortal ‘Potbuster.’” He let her feel it; she seemed entranced as she held the black and white beribboned aggie which brought back to Bond memories of great duels to the death under the Delaware Valley sun.

“And while we’re at it, Poontang, let’s dispense with this ‘in-the-hole’ crap. We both know it’s for babies. The real test of marbles is the five-foot bullring. Here’s a string with the exact measurements. Put it on the ground and trace around it while I change into my outfit.”

For the first time she knew uncertainty ... even fear ... but she set about etching the five-foot ring. Bond disappeared behind another bush, slipped off his jump suit. So intent on revenge was he that he scarcely took notice of Eve Brown’s cheery “Hello, Mr. Bond!” which seemed to annoy the grunting Schuyler Kahn who was making vigorous love to her. “Shut up and pump!” the hotel owner snapped grumpily.

When Poontang saw Bond reappear her blood ran cold. In his new garb, which had been among the items in the bag, it was frighteningly clear that Israel Bond was—a shark!

The difference between a shark and an ordinary marble player could be likened to that between a gimlet-eyed Dodge City hired gunslinger and a homesteader.

Bond was wearing knickers!

With reinforced kneepatches!

And on his right hand was a dirty glove with the fingers cut out, affording protection to just the knuckles!

Worst of all, he wore a red corduroy shirt and a beanie whose letters read: “ORPHAN ANNIE AND SANDY DRINK OVALTINE. SO DO I.”

His killer eyes boring into her own, Bond said coldly, “It’ll be one hundred bucks a marble now, Poontang. Strict rules of the Asbury Park World Tournament. Now put ten of your mibs in dead center of the bullring ... bunch ‘em up tight ... no stragglers ... now add these ten of mine. We’ll trawl for firsties.”

His eyes in deadly slits, he casually flipped his shooter from the trawling line. It landed squarely on the second line. “Your trawl.” Dazedly, she trawled. A foot off the mark.

“My firsties. And, incidentally, watch the way I hold my shooter, Poontang.”

Now her worst fears were realized. Previously he had copied her own V style, but that had been a ruse, she now knew. For this time he was positioning his shooter the shark’s way, aggie held between the topside of the thumb and the tip of the forefinger.

I asked for it, she thought helplessly. Now he’s “psyched”
me!

Bond cocked, shot. The “Potbuster” whizzed, crunched into the twenty bunched mibs like a missile, scattering them to the four winds. With a single shot he had knocked ten out of the ring! And worse—his shooter had “stuck” in the middle.

“Time for a little pot-clearing, Poontang, but I may leave you a couple just to see your bullring technique.”

With a series of short powerful shots Bond blasted eight more out of the circle. Then he deliberately closed his eyes and missed.

He’s toying with me now. And I deserve it.

Two forlorn marbles were all that were left to her in the bullring which seemed as vast as Shea Stadium. Her shot didn’t even come close to either, barely making it across the ring.

“You inched,
[2]
Poontang! You inched!” His voice was a whiplash of contempt, melting the wax in her ears. “And with all your inching, you just about made it across. Watch this, Poontang.”

He did not assume the kneeling position this time, but stood straight, firing his shooter from his hip. It dive-bombed on one of the survivors, driving it fully six feet past the line.

My God! she thought. A drop shot! Who alive today could zero in on a mib from three feet up with a drop shot? Oh, Bond, Bond, she whispered, you’re incredible. And a strange song, one her body had never heard before, began to sing in her inner marrows.

“Your shot, Poontang.”

Now he isn’t even looking at me when he speaks. He hates me. I love him and he hates me. The Lord has punished me for my false pride. At least I’ll show him I can get across the ring faster. She gave her arm a push from the elbow as she shot.

“Cowhunching,
[3]
Poontang? COWHUNCHING?” His contempt knew no bounds now. “No real power, so you throw your aggie, you bitch!”

Cowhunching! The foulest crime. And he’s right—I cowhunched.

With a last flourish he backed three feet away from the ring to show the true power of a shark, aimed the “Potbuster” and walloped the last aggie. It did not go out of the ring. But he felt no shame. His shooter had cracked it in half!

Bond looked down at his hand, which throbbed terribly, red rivulets pouring down his fingers. The hatred was gone from him now. “I’m surprised you didn’t pull the lowest trick of all, Poontang, switching your shooter for a steelie.”
[4]
But he sounded as though he didn’t care anyway.

“Oh, your poor, poor blessed shark’s hand! It’s bleeding. And you shot with a hand like that ... with pain like that? Just for the sake of my damn stupid challenge? Oh, Bond, Bond! I’m yours!”

She stood naked before him, her trembling hands having stripped off her garments. “Have you any strength at all left in that golden hand?”

“Yes,” he said dully. Fatigue had formed on that dark, cruelly handsome face.

“Then take that magnificent agate, that ‘Potbuster’ of yours, and shoot it at me ... my breasts, my thighs ... shoot it at me!” Her voice rose to a frenzy.

“Don’t forget you owe me two thousand dollars,” he said. “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!”

Bond took aim, letting the “Potbuster” fly again and again. Circular red welts mottled her heavenly nakedness.

“Now!” She pushed him into the bushes, clawing off his clothes like a mad woman. “Take me, Israel Bond! Take me! I love you! Take me!”

“Yes, for God’s sake, take her!” roared Schuyler Kahn. “This damn bitch I’m balling is so excited she can’t concentrate on
me!”

“And this schnook comic ain’t paying no attention to me either!” yelled Estrellita Kahn from another bush. “Take her already!”

Bond whispered to Poontang. “Yes, darling, you’re ready for my kind of love now. Because you’ve lost
all
your marbles.”

He took her.