Chapter 3 3

"Excellent, I said, excellent actually. You need to do a little more shuffling practice, but so far it's good. I ran into Fern at the Sandbit store yesterday, and I Told him I wanted him to teach you something. He said he'd love to teach you. By the way, which is better, a straight or three of a kind?" Winchell said without hesitation, "Shunzi." "Is it better to have two pair or three cards of the same number?" "Three cards of the same number." "Is it better to have two pairs with jacks or one pair with aces?" "Two pairs are always better than one pair."

"Is two pairs better or the biggest pair?" "Two pairs." "A straight flush or a straight is better?" "A straight flush." "What are the percentages of bets to hit a straight flush on the first round in straight poker?" "650,000 to 1." "Fine. You'll probably only see a big straight flush once or twice in your life, so don't expect that kind of unbeatable luck. In a long, boring hand, most of the money is lost to poor but well-played players. People win. Pushing forward a little at a time, always adding today's gains to yesterday's gains, is a general law of life, and I call it the value of a small surplus."

"Now, what are the chances of changing two pairs into a full house with three cards of the same rank plus a pair by drawing only one card?" Winchell always struggled to recall those specific bet ratios and hesitated.He looked up at his father and said, "About... 11 to 1?" "True, but you've got to be good at calculation, good enough that you can focus on the flow of the game instead of the numbers. You're on your way. Keep it up." His father smiled again: "Your mother said you've improved in math recently, and she doesn't know why. Let's go to the store and find Finn. I don't appreciate his moral code, but I do. Have great respect for his skills.

"And about Finn, I have to warn you. He can talk big and whisper into tree holes. He can make your mind tend to think he's great at everything, including women, Horses and witchcraft to find water. Concentrate on what he says about card-playing, and ignore the rest of the crap he's pouring on you." In the autumn of 1938, the midday temperature was still well over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, though there were indications of something that it would be a little cooler in a week or two.Those things were about the evening shadows that loomed through the cacti and Thompson yucca bushes.Those things were about the feel of the wind, swirling all the way north, fluttering a Texas flag hanging from a pole at the Sandbite store, occasionally crackling with a sharp gust of wind.

When they got to the store, Finn was sitting on the front porch.He reclined in a chair, his boots resting on the railing.He was studying a gold watch on a gold chain intently, as if the end of the world was coming, and he was trying to figure out how much time he had left. In Winchell's mind, when he recalled his life, it always seemed like a story, as if everything had never really happened, but was just hearsay.Life is like a bonfire in someone else's life.A string of false fragments with a thousand twists and turns is strung together, like a fire lit on a prairie night.In the next second, the fire was still there, but it was gradually extinguished. When the riders after the long journey finished telling stories, wrapped their blankets tightly, and fell asleep soundly, the fire gradually turned into warm ashes.

Winchell took the cards in front of him, shuffled, dealt, and sorted them, but he was in no mood to play Virginia Real Solitaire again.He got up to pour a glass of water, leaned against the sink to sip from the glass, and poured the water down the drain again.He held the bottle at an angle, studying it--the third time the glass was full.He poured out two finger-high wines, and carried the glass into the billiard room.It was almost one o'clock in the morning. Half a kilometer north of Winchelsea, Pablo was walking through the darkness, dehydrated and exhausted.When he finally reached the mud-brick house, his steps were extremely heavy and messy, like a blind man stumbling with difficulty.Even on this cool desert night, he had already sweated his shirt a hundred times on the way, and he knew that he smelled worse than a lion that had been slaughtered in midsummer and left for another four or five days.He tapped lightly on a window on the west side, and the woman appeared. She moved the window away and stretched out her hand silently.He handed her the bundle and climbed over the window sill himself.

Immediately she began voluntarily and impassionedly complaining about his stench and telling him to leave his bedroom and go into the kitchen.The bedroom, Pablo noticed, didn't smell too good either, a strong smell—a mix of sex, chatte, and sweat from undeserving labor.The bed was unmade and in a mess, with an empty wine bottle lying across a pillow.There was a dying candle on the table by the window, and the cooled candle oil was hanging on the candle, as if wearing a skirt for it, and the candle oil flowed down the candlestick to the table.Pablo sat at a green-painted table while a woman named Sonia warmed up the beans, rice, and cooked kid.The foil on the table had come off and was deeply scored in several places where it had been used for a long time by the Comberloes and later by those who worked for them, leaving these scars and stains.He drank three glasses of water, then sat quietly with his head in his hands, unable to remember a time when he was so tired.The trip north was not easy, requiring the strength and will of a young man, and Pablo had neither.He also knew that soon he would not be able to carry cargo for the Cartel.But before that he hoped he could secure a small piece of land in the high, cool, water-rich Sierra Madre.Sitting at the woman's table, Pablo forced himself again to regard the hazy hope as an agreement with himself, imagining green trees and flowing water to strengthen the effectiveness of the agreement.

When his food was ready, he had fallen asleep with his head resting on his arms folded on the table. The woman shook him roughly and said, "Wake up, you old man. Eat your food, sleep for a few more hours, and get out of here." Wearily Pablo rolled beans, rice, and cooked kid meat into a tortilla and ate it, looking down at the plate and not at the woman.She leaned on the stove and watched him, wondering if she should report to them that the man named Pablo was exhausted every time he arrived, and perhaps suggest that they replace him with someone more competent.There are many law enforcement personnel in this place-Texas Ranger Patrol Police, Border Patrol Station, Drug Enforcement Administration The US drug enforcement agency: DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration). , state cavalry and other police.They knew that Pablo was driving north, day and night, and Sonia didn't want them to catch the old man, who would say everything without restraint.

He glanced up at her, his eyes misty, his hands trembling with fatigue.Madonna, Sonia thought, he looked like he could fall asleep with a tortilla in his hand, sitting there motionless like a statue of pastoral life. "I've put a blanket on the floor next to you. I'll wake you up two hours before sunrise." She wrinkled her nose. "Does it stink when you climb on your wife? If If that's the case, then your wife is really generous." "I think I might have a fever," Pablo said. "You need sleep, old man, that's all." Saying so, she took the package into her bedroom, and closed the door behind her.She would then scrape two ounces out of the bag for personal storage in Longlife Cave, before relocating the contents of the bag into a suitcase.Her collection is handled by that young musician who lives in Creel Segno, and when she brings him a new shipment, he always pays and tells her how good the drug is, and the price to pay It was $150 a pound, and he had to pay another $400 to have them packaged and shipped further afield to sell to his friends.Those friends smoked these, a little escape from aimless, or seemingly aimless, lives.Although after a while this comfort becomes the cause of life's worthlessness, the illusion of drug power can blind people to this transformation.

Sonia would spend three nights packing two suitcases onto a wheelbarrow and taking them to a hiding place—under the road bridge across Slater Creek.The man, Noppy, would drive there at two in the morning in his new Buick, timing his arrival to make sure his car was the only one on the deserted stretch of the West Texas Parkway.He would stop on the bridge, sound the horn four times quickly, and take the suitcase.He'd leave her two empty boxes where they were, pay her, and start all over again.In a few years, even if she sends a third of the money back to Mexico to her mother and sister, Sonia will still have enough money to buy a house in a better part of the town of Creelsegno , From then on, I spent a prosperous and peaceful old age.

She could hear Pablo snoring through the bedroom door and shook her head in disgust.He even wore old-fashioned sandals, while everyone else wore low-heeled traveling boots or sneakers.None of these bumpkins, including the occasional Anglo-American southwestern Norse-English-speaking American, showed style or class. .By the way, except for that young man named Franklin.He had said that he had been a professional surfer, although Sonia wasn't quite sure what surfing was for.During his last visit, he seemed to have expressed interest in her, perhaps thinking about some future possibility, of course, all this only after he was done with food.But business and pleasure don't mix, and it never happens.Sonia has her own rules and strictly abides by them. Sonia wound the bedside clock and set the alarm, then shed her cotton gown and lay down on the crumpled sheets.She was naked and took a magazine to fan herself.The alarm was set just before sunrise, but that brutish fellow named Pablo was probably still sleepy, and it would probably take him a while to wake him up and get him out of her wallpapered room on time. kitchen. She got up and drew aside the curtains of one of the south-facing windows.Apparently the old Winchell was still awake, for the lights in the main house were still on.But she already knew his way of life, that he was a night-crawler.Tomorrow she would cook for him, clean his room, make his bed, as she had done for the past two years.He had been careful not to touch the obnoxious pistol that hung on the right hand side of his headboard. He was a strange and quiet man, always taciturn, and often played with cards, and sometimes she could hear them being played and shuffled as she worked.She watched him secretly, marveling at the lightness and effortlessness with which he played.She wondered about the pistol, too, wondering if he really knew how to use it, or if he just kept it nearby for safety, like a baby clutching a blanket, or a traditional Mexican woman at home . It's been a year since he threw that foreign girl out with the loudest voice a year ago - what a fight it was.The woman screamed obscenely, claiming that he should have known what she was like when he brought her here. However, if all aspects were taken into consideration and the whole matter was viewed in a responsible light, Sonia would have taken advantage of it, and she knew it well.Winchell was not like the brutish Rick before him, who was always polite, generous and gentle when he asked her to do things, and would often go away for a week or two—sometimes even a month—in his car. A dark blue Cadillac made her night work easier.With these things running through her mind, she fell asleep on her pillow just after midnight.On the pillow there is still a family of Kamanzi North American Indians.The smell, she smiled, thinking of him, how lean and hard he was to the touch. But her smile widened as she began thinking about one day buying a house in a better location in the town of Clearsegno, Texas.Not bad for a woman who has lived with her tail between her legs and dreaded deportation all year round.She lived in such trepidation until the amnesty in 1986 allowed her to become a U.S. citizen.Pretty good already, maybe not so good. About ninety minutes southeast of El Paso, the cream-coloured Lincoln Continental sails past the Texas town of Coovera with ease. Matty pointed, "Look there. The sign says 'Power supply and fresh ostrich meat'. What kind of business combination is this? Hey, there's a convenience store open there. You really think we need some gas already ?” "Better watch out here, Marty. The gas stations are miles and miles apart. Notice, we haven't even been listening to decadent music on the radio for sixty-five miles. America A pop music style from the 1970s. Yeah, just static." "That's true," Marty said, "where is there no station at night?" "This place." The driver sighed and pulled over next to the water pump at the Amigos store. "We were supposed to fly to El Paso and rent a car. Why didn't we do that?" The driver opened the door and said, "Marty, think about all those things glued to the metal box in the engine mount. It's kind of dangerous to go through baggage security at the airport. Might lose it." "Yeah, you're right." Marty opened the passenger door. "I forgot about that. But we didn't have any trouble at the Sierra Mablanca checkpoint, did we?" Like you said, let us pass with a wave. You're glad I'm white, aren't you?" The driver inserted the nozzle into the gas tank of the Coney, looked up at the Texas night sky, and said nothing.His mother, who was Mexican, gave birth to him when he was fifteen.He knew nothing about his mother.She crossed the border to give birth when she was just fifteen, so that her child would become a U.S. citizen.Then she was sent back to Mexico for reasons no one had ever explained to him.He stayed and was raised by two distant aunts and uncles.He had heard that his father was an Anglo, fair-skinned father who worked on a fishing boat outside San Diego. Marty walked to the front door of the car, stretched, and hopped a few times on tiptoe. "My back is a bit uncomfortable. It's because I've been sitting on this road. Everyone in my family has back problems. Do you have back problems when you drive long distances?" "Marty, go in there and see if they have good coffee." The driver ignored Marty's question, inserted the nozzle into the Coney's gas tank, and filled it up. "Bring us some big mugs if they have it. I want black coffee with a little sugar." The driver wondered what was the minimum IQ required to be able to load and unload a Beretta 93R submachine gun.It wasn't hard to fire the gun at all, that's for sure, or Marty would have been out of a job long ago. In the Amigos store, Marty was complaining about the lack of fresh coffee.The young girl who took care of the shop was chewing gum, leaning on the cigarette rack and staring at him, fiddling with the three rings on her left hand with her right hand. "Did it never occur to you that some night walkers might need a good cup of coffee?" "We're almost closing," the girl said. "We never make fresh coffee after eleven. That's the owner's rule. He says it's a waste." "Huh, that doesn't make sense at all, does it?" Marty was annoyed by the lack of coffee, and by the way the girl was talking nonchalantly.It was probably the way the words came out of her mouth that offended him, or so.The driver had said the place was as deserted and lifeless as a goddamn desert, and now Marty was starting to agree. When the driver entered the room and took out the wallet, the girl walked over, looked at the digital display and said, "It's seven or nine cents." "They don't have any fucking fresh coffee." Marty's voice was clear, expressing his anger. "We don't make fresh coffee after eleven o'clock." The girl repeated the owner's rules, and gave a dime to the driver: "We close in fifteen minutes." "That doesn't make any fucking sense, that's all." Marty studied the revolving head on the key chain. "No need to be reasonable," she said, tearing off the gas receipt and throwing it in a ball in the trash. "That's the rule. I do what my boss tells me to do. If you're looking at this revolving head key chain, it's not real silver." Marty scoffed at that. "You think I'd think a sixty-eight-cent key chain was real silver? Besides, I have a real leather one for that Chevrolet." He glanced over at the driver and saw Looking at him, he said in a half-complaining, half-threatening tone: "I think we should get the owner out of bed and see if we can change the rules and get some fresh coffee, what do you think?" "Okay," said the driver, giving the girl a sympathetic look. "Let's have some Cokes. Marty, get us two iced Cokes." "Coke is 1.80 cents." The waitress girl said lazily. Marty's voice came from near the cooler at the back of the store: "Good idea. Coke has caffeine in it, like coffee, right?" They walked out of Amigos, and outside, Marty kept moaning about this goddamn place—whatever the hell it was—how ridiculous people were talking, and just hearing them talk made him feel sick. How upset.A bunch of goddam rednecks, that's what they are.A cowboy is filling a dusty pick-up truck with gasoline, inspecting the Lincoln Continental carefully, and then walking around the Continental in his battered boots. "Hey, do you know what you're doing?" Marty yelled. The cowboy looked up and gave a lazy smile. "Just admiring your car. How much does a car like this cost?" The driver didn't know how much it was worth, it wasn't his car.Marty didn't know either. "A lot of money... quite a lot," said the driver. The cowboy grinned: "Put a washstand in it, and you can live in it comfortably. It must be more expensive than the house I rent on Joy Street." "What the hell do you want to know about this anyway?" Marty looked up at the cowboy, who was easily fifteen centimeters taller than the little man in the expensive suit. "No reason, just curiosity. Never could afford a car like this on a cowboy's salary." Marty lifted his trousers and said, "Well, then, it's pointless to ask, is it?" The cowboy's smile faded, and he looked down at Marty and said, "I meant no harm. I'm sorry if I bothered you." In a drawl, longer and deeper than the wait girl's, he walked back to his pickup truck, one boot on the running board of the car, and turned the gas pump on full blast.At ten dollars he turned off the spout, hooked it to the pump, and watched the Lincoln slowly drive out of the Amigos area, turn right, and drive off in the direction of San Jacinto. "See? We don't have to pay until we fill up with gas. Long time no see," said the driver. "Wait, why the hell am I turning right out of the gas station? This isn't the main road." "Maybe tired, maybe," Marty said. "We'd be better off if they had fresh coffee. Shall I drive for a while?" The driver shook his head, thinking that having Marty behind the wheel was the worst thing that could happen. "No, I'm fine. We're definitely within a two-hour drive of Creel Segno. Get me a can of Coke, I'm turning back...Damn, there's no fork in this town. I thought I can drive around the block." Marty hands him a can of Coke. "Damn it, you're right. There's a Viken block there, just go there. No side roads, not even street lights. What the hell is there to be neither street lights nor side roads?" "This place." The driver answered, turned left, made a U-turn, and drove the Conny through a weedy neighborhood.Just as the four wheels of the car were about to grind back into the dirt in San Jacinto, there was a small thud in the front of the car. "What's going on?" Marty asked. "I hate to wonder what's going on. Sounds like a tire. Give me that flashlight in the glove box." The driver stopped the car and walked out the door with the flashlight, just in time to see the right front wheel slowly Leaked out.He kicked the tire, regretted it immediately, and shone his flashlight on his flats.Marty opened the door too and stepped out to stand beside the driver, who was balancing on one foot and wiping his shoes with a handkerchief. "What's the matter?" The driver pointed to the tire with a flashlight. "That's it. Fucking tires." "I'm not going to change," Marty said. "I'm wearing an expensive suit. You don't expect me to change a tire in such an expensive suit with a deadly back pain?" "Okay, Marty, my clothes are expensive too. My shoes are expensive too. Now we can just stand in the dark and talk about how much our clothes are worth, or we'll put the bastard tires on Change it and get on with what we're going to do tonight." The driver took off his jacket, folded it, and placed it gently on the front seat.He rolled up the sleeves of his blue-striped shirt and tucked his tie back into the shirt.He opened the truck and said over his shoulder, "Marty, hold the fucking flashlight, or I can't see." "It's kind of gray, isn't it?" Marty looked at the truck carefully. "Dust is what the state's nickname is." The driver undid the spare tire and yanked it out, leaning it against the rear bumper. "The jack and tire wrench must be in this plastic bag." Five minutes later, the right front of the Coney was jacked up and the driver was unscrewing the wheel. Marty bent down, resting his hands on his thighs: "Look, from this angle you can see the box glued to the engine mount. And, if it blows out again, where are we going to get a spare? If our tire Is it deflated again?" "I don't know," grumbled the driver, wrestling with a wrench against a tightly twisted wheel, "Hope we get through the night without blowing out and we'll fix that flat tire in the morning .” "Yeah, but what I want to know is, what if we blow out another tire at the same time? So what do we do?" "God, Marty, can you just keep your mouth shut and hold the flashlight steady?" With one hand on the back of his clothes, Marty leaned forward, muttering something, which caused him great pain. "Well, don't get mad. You know I'm just asking. There's nothing wrong with asking, is there?" A pair of headlights shone at them from the gravel road.Marty squinted his eyes into the light and saw the silhouette of the police car, which was everywhere. "Oh shit, it's the police." "What?" said the driver, standing up straight with the wrench in hand.He had just removed a flat tire and was about to put on a spare. "Stay calm," he said, "make yourself look like a local. Be nice and don't make them think there's anything suspicious about us." When the police car turned and pulled up behind the Lincoln, Marty became restless.It took a moment for the officer to get out of the car, his radio crackling and beeping, echoing through the empty street.The driver is busy equipping the tires and has begun to lightly tighten the nuts on the wheels. "Hello everyone," said the policeman as he emerged and walked toward the Lincoln. "Is there something wrong here?" He was young, maybe twenty-five, and he was wearing a uniform and a cowboy hat.He also had a cowboy drawl, which aggravated Marty again. "Good evening," the driver mumbled, his fingers turning the nut, and he began to sweat.Before he could put the Coney down, he had to screw in three more nuts and make them tight.He repositioned himself so that his body partially blocked the officer's view of the metal box glued to the stand. Marty watched the officer approach step by step without saying a word. The driver has one nut left to turn.He threw it in the dust, wiped his sweat, and said quietly, "Shin the torch on the wheel, Marty, and keep your mouth shut." "You two are far enough away from home." The policeman turned on his flashlight, and the beam moved up and down on Connie's car. He walked to the left side of the car and shone the flashlight on the seat and the wiper. "Yeah, we're really far from home, officer. And now we got a flat tire in your town again." The driver looked for the dropped nut, which rolled under the car, and the driver fumbled around trying to put It finds out. "Where are you two going?" "Dallas. We have business there tomorrow," the driver replied, before suspecting that he might have made a mistake.His geography was never top notch, and he only knew roughly where Dallas was to the east. "What business do you two do?" "Well, business forms...for the paper industry." "If you want to get to Dallas tomorrow, why don't you take I-10? OI-90 turns to the river." "Wrong way, I think. City boys don't do much on country roads. I was talking to my lieutenant that we'd better head back north in a straight line." The policeman squatted down, put his arms on his knees, and watched the driver work.His flashlight was a Magritte, and its light jumped directly under the metal box, although he didn't seem to notice the boxes.The radio blares like background music in his police car, and he shakes his head.By this time Marty had moved to this side. "You two have a nice car. What year was it made?"