ROMAN
383
next
trip I dealt myself the six of Diamonds. Roman was holding
his
card close and pondering it. Finally he laid it down, face up
on the table. "I'll ride on what I got," he said. Besides his King
he had the nine of Spades. That beat my sixteen points.
I put my cards on the table beside his and said: "I'll hit it
again." There wasn't anything else to do.
Excepting an ace, which we let ride for one point or eleven,
whichever the player wanted, I had to have a four spot or a five to
beat him. Anything any higher would bust me out. I waited a long
time before I pulled off the next card. I could feel Roman waiting
too,
but I didn't look at him. Finally I picked the card off the
deck
and looked at it. It was
a
God-damned eight spot. I don't
remember the suit it was in, but I can still see those little 8's facing
each
other from the corners.
"Well," I said, "that cleans me out."
Roman looked at a corner of the room and smiled out of the
side of his mouth.
"You want some of it back?" he said.
I thought about my cotton money in his pockets and I wished
he was dead and in hell.
"Keep the damned money," I told him. "I can make some
more."
He was smiling again as he stuck my money in his pockets.
"Suit yourself," he said.
"I will," I said and I got up and left the place.
I went up town to the Dug Out Cafe, the only white folks'
place in Corinth that stays open all night. There was a bunch of
late drunks in there and one of them was sick. He gave me a short
quart
of white liquor. I sat there drinking the liquor and coffee
the rest of the night. I went home at sun-up.
About two weeks after that one of the niggers who stayed on
Old Man White's place found Roman lying on the back doorstep
of
the shack he slept in. His head was split open. They said it
looked like the murderer used an axe.
The Sheriff came out and looked around some, but not much.
They held an inquest and decided that Roman met death by violence
at
the hands of unknown parties. The Sheriff and the rest of the
Courthouse ring were mighty busy along then because it was about
election time, so they didn't waste much time on Roman. I guess
