The Wild Card by Mark Joseph Page A

Everyone stayed again. By the time the final card was dealt, Benny could read every hidden card on the table.
    George’s pair of aces were the high cards showing. When George had a good hand, he tugged at his ear and pretended to waffle. “I dunno,” he said, reaching for his earlobe. “A pair isn’t that good. The bet’s a dime.” He tossed a red chip into the pot.
    Benny had a king and a pair of sevens showing. He figured George for three aces, a pretty good hand.
    â€œSee your dime and raise a quarter,” Benny promptly replied.
    Everyone else folded. George smiled and asked, “What’s the maximum?”
    â€œIt hasn’t changed in five years, George,” Benny said. “Fifty cents.”
    â€œThat’s all? Okay, I see the raise and raise fifty cents.”
    Benny hardly paid attention. For some reason his mind had drifted back to 1918, to a smoking hole in the ground that smelled like a slaughter house. It was raining. The lieutenant was staring at his arm which ended in a bloody stump just below the elbow. Blood was spurting from a severed artery, and the officer bled to death before Lance Corporal Goldman could get a tourniquet on him.
    â€œBenny?”
    The rain stopped and the sun shone through the clouds. Citation was the last horse into the starting gate. Churchill Downs glistened in the sheen of rainwater. Benny remembered the taste of whiskey and crushed mint, the flutter of ladies’ hats in the breeze, the smell of the track. The smell reminded him of the mud in France. A lot of horses had died in the war.

    Something happened. The players were all looking at him, and he knew it was his turn to bet, but his mind went red, then blank. Benny suffered a stroke, fell out of his chair and broke his neck.
    It was a mercifully sudden and quick death. Lying on the floor, a freshly minted corpse, Benny clutched his final hole card close to his stylish vest, a seven of spades that gave him a full house, the winning hand.
    Â 
    Benny was buried in Colma in the Jewish cemetery a few dozen yards from where Wyatt Earp rested in peace. Later that afternoon Benny’s son David sat down in his living room on Alvarado Street for a man-to-man chat with his eldest son Alex, seventeen, uncomfortable in his new suit and upset by the solemn rituals of funeral parlor and cemetery. All Alex really wanted at that moment was to escape the family and mourn his grandfather in his own way, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes with his buddies.
    Oblivious to the mood, Alex’s little brothers and sisters ran around the house making a racket. No one shushed them. Women bustled in the kitchen, preparing food for guests who would be arriving soon.
    â€œYou all right?” David asked his son.
    Alex shrugged. He’d worshipped his grandfather and needed time to reconcile his loss.
    â€œDo you know why your grandfather lived at Laguna Honda?” David asked.
    â€œBecause he was old.”
    â€œYes,” David agreed, “but Laguna Honda is a place for people who can’t afford something better. Your grandfather would’ve been a rich man if he hadn’t been a gambler.”
    â€œI thought he always won,” Alex protested. “He was a great poker player. He said poker isn’t gambling, it’s science.”
    â€œHe was a great bullshitter,” David said with a wan smile. “The players at the old folks’ home were fish, and he could beat them, no sweat. The problem was, he thought he was better than he was. When I was your age, he’d go to Reno once a month and lose his shirt.”

    â€œLike you do now?”
    Alex’s eyes darkened and he stared at his father with undisguised hostility. Losing his grandfather was bad enough; losing his illusions was almost too much too bear.
    â€œThis was his,” David said, taking from his jacket pocket a small leather-bound book filled with tiny, precise writing. “He said