Eddie delicately exposed the butt end of a bank
that looked like a rolled roast for a large supper. The Pole sighed with happiness,
and the other two, who were remarkable and successful for no other reason than
that they could disappear in a crowd, rubbed their hands involuntarily, as
though to keep their fingers warm. Eddie concealed his poke as modestly as a
young woman adjusts the straps of an evening gown that has no straps. He
kneeled down beside the blanket and said, “What about is the tariff?” A wall of
spectators closed behind him.
Eddie faded thirty of a hundred. The Pole
rolled and won and let it lie, and Eddie took a hundred of the two hundred and
the Pole shot a six and made it. Behind the dense circle of spectators running
feet could be heard. This was to be a game. The ship took a slight list as GIs
ran from all over just to be near a game like this, even if they couldn’t see
it.
The four hundred lay on the blanket like a
large salad. The two disappearing men looked at Eddie, and Eddie went into his
roll and undid four hundred in small bills and laid them timidly out. This Pole
glared at him with his brown eye, and smiled at him with his blue eye, a trick
which served him very well in poker, but had little effect on a crap game. He
breathed on the dice and didn’t speak to them. He rolled an eight and smiled
with both his eyes. Again he breathed on the dice and cast them backhanded to
show how easy that point was, and a four and a three looked up at him.
Eddie, breathing easily, relaxed and sure,
pulled the big green salad gently to his side of the blanket. He unrolled two
hundred more from his roll like toilet tissue, and laid them down. “One grand,”
he said, “all or part.”
The Pole took half and the two anonymous men
split up the rest, and Eddie rolled a rocking chair natural, a six and a five.
“Leaving it lay,” he said softly.
Only the Pole listened to him. He picked up the
dice and looked them over carefully to be sure they were the ones he had put in
himself. And then, scowling with both eyes, he covered Eddie. The pile of money
was ten inches high now, and spilling down like a loose haycock.
Eddie hummed a little to himself as he rolled,
and a seven settled firmly. The Pole snorted. Eddie said, “And leaving that
lay, all or part, anybody.” Breathing had stopped on the ship, only the engines
went on. Mouths were open. Figures frozen in the dense crowd about the blanket.
Only once in a while word was passed back about what was happening.
