Chapter 21

Bud learned to play Tonk while working at the Veterans Administration. Four or five of the workers got together almost every lunchtime and played and laughed together over the fast-moving version of rummy. Bud watched several games while he ate his sandwich and drank his Coke, and when one of the regulars was missing, he was asked to sit in. The stakes were a nickel a hand, except for a few dime payoffs when somebody was dealt fifty points, so not much money changed hands in any lunch hour.

Bud quickly learned to play on other men's runs and to be careful about trying to drop his hand and declare himself low man. He won a few and lost a few and made some new friends. When he thought about it as he rode a bus out Georgia Avenue, he suspected he was one of the few white boys in the whole County with black men they could call friend. The players bummed cigarettes from each other and traded stories about their girl friends. Bud was careful not to let slip the fact that he was married.

At the junior college, after his short-term appointment to VA expired and he left with a Zippo lighter as a present, he learned to play bridge at lunchtime. The version of bridge played at school was almost as fast and noisy as the Tonk games downtown, but, of course, all the players were white. If you didn't bid game, you seldom got to play and there was some wild bidding and even wilder finessing going on almost every day as well as a lot of kidding and "table talk."

Bud became almost famous in a narrow circle of college bridge players for his three-no bid after there were three passes to him. He didn't always use that pre-emptive bid, but he did get a number of hands to play that way and soon was making seven or eight out of every ten no-trump bids he tried. Bud found that he was a good card counter and generally looked forward to lunchtime. Seldom was score kept and no money changed hands, as far as Bud knew.

The other thing he did at Montgomery Junior College during his year and a half as a full-time student was to get another chance to play baseball. The team played against the other community colleges in the State, even making one trip over to the Eastern Shore, and had several games against the local colleges' freshman squads. Bud was second-string catcher and enjoyed almost every minute of the season. His parents even came to see one game in Takoma Park.

That spring, during the baseball season, the Winsor girls disappeared, just plain up and vanished. Bud stopped by their little house late one Saturday, feeling unusually horny, and noticed that the house was dark. He assumed they were watching TV and knocked on the red door. It sounded a bit odd to him, sort of hollow. He knocked again.

"They's gone," said a loud voice from his left. He saw a cigarette glowing and a face in the shadows.

He walked to the next house and said, "Where did they go, Pickles?"

"Damn if I know," the little man said, a bit unsteady of his feet as he stood in the open doorway. "He jus' come and took 'em."

"Who did, the police?" Bud asked, trying not to smell the breath of the man he was talking to, a man sometimes known as the mayor of Mudmont.

"No fuggin' po-lease," the girls' long-time neighbor said, rubbing the top of his bald head. "Damn if it weren't Mister fuggin' Winsor hisself. I ast and that's what he tole me."

Bud shook his head. "Where'd they go; did he say?"

"Shit, I dunno. Wait. Nova Scotia, yep, thas what he said, Nova-by-damn-Scotia. He come with this here farm truck and cleaned out the place. What he didn't want, he threw in the yard. Kids got most of it by now."

"The girls too?" Bud asked.

"Haw," the man laughed loudly, "y'could'a heered them in Poolesville. They sure didn' wanna go. But he put 'em up in that ole stake body truck like they was furniture. Didn't take no sass neither."

Bud shook his head, surprised and disappointed.

"One a'them run off, galloped over toward the golf course. Reckon she's around some place, shacked up."

"He say anything else to you?" asked Bud.

The man in his undershirt shook his head and spat on the sidewalk. "You best go down there on St. Elmo and see Mabel. You ain' gonna get no young tail here no more." He slammed closed his door and turned off his porch light.

Bud went out to the Pike and hitched a ride home.