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."