CORRECTION
487
saved up so I wasn't in any strain about money. But I wanted to make a.
living somehow without having to break in on the money I had saved. I
tried to farm a little better than I'd been doing, hut it wasn't much use.
My land is too poor to sprout a decent crop of peas.
I managed to make enough to feed me .out of the farm and I pieced
out my income by playing poker every Saturday night in Corinth. I got to
playing poker when I was in the Army and ever since the war I had been
playing a little, usually with considerable success. I played poker seriously
and when I didn't have anything else to do I would study about the game.
After a while I got so good that very few people in Corinth would play
with me for much money.
Roman had never played poker with me while I had him hired and I
didn't know that he cared for the game, but
it
seemed that he did. I kept
hearing from the brickyard niggers about him. They all said he was hell.
I was a little afraid to play with him;, he was always too close-mouthed
and hard-working for a nigger.
I didn't have much to do along then but ponder over losing my liquor
trade and my still and finally I worked up my nerve and decided to try
and get Roman in a big poker game and break him. I knew he must be
pretty good, because I had heard that he won twelve hundred dollars from
Charley Duke and Charley was the next best in town to me. Still I believed
I could take Roman to the cleaners.
One Saturday night Roman was in town and some of the boys got us
together in a game in one of the back rooms of the New York Cafe. The
New York Cafe is a nigger joint over in the Shantytown section of Corinth,
but a lot of white folks hang out over there because you can buy liquor
there and practically anything else that you want.
I went to town fixed for Roman
if
he happened to be there. I had all
the money I had with me that night. A little over five thousand dollars,
mostly in hundred dollar bills.
There was a good crowd playing there that night, but the real playing
was between me and Roman. The room we played in was right beside the
cafe kitchen and you could smell catfish frying in corn meal grease while
we played. The game went on until four o'clock in the morning with the
advantage shifting from one of us to the other, but toward the last he got
lucky and cleaned me out. He was just naturally lucky that night. He
didn't brag about beating me; he didn't say a word, but you could tell that
he was pleased. I hated to lose all that money to him, especially with all
those boys there to see it, but I never let on that I cared.
That was in the early part of August. I didn't see Roman again for
about three months.
I made two hales of cotton that fall and when I sold them I had a
hundred and twenty-five dollars. I made up my mind that I wouldn't play
poker any more, because that money had to run me till I could make an–
other crop, or find a job somewhere.
One night
in
the first week of November I was
in
Corinth and I went
into the hack room of the New York Cafe to buy a drink. Roman was back
