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.
