Half of Paradise

“I’ll drag half of it,” he said.

“Let it ride,” Clois said. “You can break the game.”

“I ain’t hot.”

“You done made two passes.”

“Dragging half of it,” J.P. said to the others.

“You ain’t making no money like that,” Clois said.

“I ain’t feeling it tonight.”

“One more pass and it’s eighty bucks.”

“Shut up and let him play,” a man said.

“Coming out,” J.P. said.

He crapped out on a deuce. The other men split up the twenty dollars he had left remaining on the blanket. J.P. put the rest of the money in his wallet.

“You quitting?” Clois said.

“I reckon.”

“Wait a minute. I’ll go with you.”

Clois picked up the bills in front of him and folded them neatly and put them in his shirt pocket and buttoned it. The others didn’t want him to leave. He was ahead a good bit.

“That’s too goddamn bad,” he said, looking at them with his dull gray eyes. He and J.P. left the room.

They drank a beer at the bar and watched the pool games. It was still raining outside. The light from the neon sign was red and green on the front window.

“Let’s go out on the highway,” Clois said.

“Are they still doing business out there?”

“The sheriff raided it a while back but it’s open again now. They caught one of the church deacons trying to zip up his britches and hide in a closet. I reckon they figure they better not raid it no more unless they want to find the preacher and the mayor next time.”

They finished the beer and went outside in the rain to Clois’s car, a 1941 Ford with a smashed fender, one headlight, and a broken back window. They drove down the main street out of town with the windshield wipers switching against the glass and the rain falling in the light of the single headlamp. Clois opened the glove compartment and took out a half-empty pint of bourbon and unscrewed the cap and drank. He passed it to J.P. They went on for several miles and turned off the highway onto a dirt road, the mud and the gravel banging under the fenders. There was no moon, and the fields on each side of them were wet and dark. Ahead, there was a large two-story white house that was set back from the road with nothing around it. It looked like one of those big frame farmhouses built during the early part of the century. The shades were drawn, and there were two cars parked in the yard. Clois stopped by the side of the house, and they got out and walked through the rain to the front porch and knocked. The door opened a small space and a dark-haired woman of about forty-five looked out at them. She had a gold tooth and her face was thin-featured and pale. She opened the door wider and let them in.

“Good evening, Miss Sarah,” Clois said.

“Wipe your feet before you track up my rug,” she said.

“You remember J.P., don’t you?”

“I don’t keep count of who comes in here. You still got mud on your feet.”

“Yes, ma’am. Sony.”

They went through the hallway into a big living room that was lighted by a single lamp in the corner. The only furniture was a sofa, a scarred coffee table, and a few uncomfortable chairs. Three women sat on the sofa, and there was a drunk oil-field worker in one of the chairs trying to make another woman sit on his lap.

“Business ain’t too good tonight,” Clois said.

“Do you want something to drink?” Miss Sarah said.

“I don’t reckon.”