The Rambling Read online

  Food and drink and card games were going all over the place, every table filled with chattering, screaming, dancing people. The smell was tremendous. There were folks from all over, folks from lands I’d never even heard of, a million different accents and faces and ways of being, each one more fascinating and beautiful than the last. Never in my dreams had I imagined a place so fearful and noisome as the Skinny Yellow Dog. It was wonderful. I felt like Heaven was a gutter and I’d just stepped right in it.

  “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” I said.

  Nobody listened.

  “I need to find passage to the Swamplands.”

  Nothing.

  “Some bad folks stole my daddy and I need help.”

  You couldn’t hardly hear me over the fiddle and the dancing and the knives scraping plates.

  “This is durn useless.”

  I saw a girl dressed in rags begging. She was going table to table, holding out a tin cup, clinking the change in it. People ignored her or yelled at her or told her to bug off. She seemed so tired and sad and innocent. It made me mad the way folks were treating her. It made me mad I didn’t have anything to give her myself.

  “Please, sir,” she said to one bearded man. “I just need some food for me and my granddad. We’re starving, we are. We’re plum out.”

  “Scram, you little cockroach,” said the man, and shoved the girl down. Her change went sailing across the floor.

  I took a step toward her, like I was going to jump in and do something about the man, or at the very least help her gather her coins back.

  Then I took a look closer. The girl straggled to her feet, all limping-like, her face hidden from the bearded man by her hood. But from my angle I could see that she had a wad of bills in her left palm and she was smiling something secret. That’s when I realized it.

  The girl was a pickpocket. She wasn’t begging, she was distracting folks while she robbed them blind.

  She caught me looking at her and winked.

  I don’t know. That showed some spunk. You got to admire a person like that.

  Something about her made me brave. So I cupped my hands and shouted as loud as I possibly could.

  “Excuse me, everyone! I am looking for my pop! His name is David Josiah Pennington and he was kidnapped by two low-down scoundrels and that grizzled dog Boss Authority!”

  A hand clapped over my mouth. I was yanked backward and tumbled over something stuck out, like a foot.

  “What are you doing, you idiot?” said a girl’s voice. “Looking to get yourself killed?”

  I tried to mumble back but her hand was strong and she had my arm twisted behind my back. It hurt. This girl had some strength to her.

  “You better hope nobody else heard you, boy,” she said.

  That made me scared a little bit. I looked around the room, trying to see if anybody was noticing us. The music was loud and wild, and people were munching fried catfish and fried chicken and sopping up gravy with cornbread and slamming frothy mugs onto tables, same as before. The pale magician cocked an eye at me, but then he turned his head back to his magic hat. I was pretty sure no one even noticed I was there.

  “If I let your arm go, will you promise not to say another word about Boss Authority?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Okay, I’m trusting you.”

  She let go and I whirled around. It was the pickpocket girl. She had deep brown skin and green eyes. She grinned at me.

  “My name’s Talia, but everybody calls me Tally. What’s yours?”

  “None of your business,” I said. I was all huffy. How was I going to find my daddy now?

  “It isn’t, is it?” she said, her hands on her hips, like she was bossing me. “Well, you just about told the whole tavern your business. How your daddy is the notorious Parsnit hustler David Josiah Pennington—”

  “That’s my pop!” I said, all proud.

  “—and now they’re all thinking about how they can kidnap you and get a leg up at the Parsnit table, weasel your pop with a witch’s bond.”

  I didn’t much like the sound of that, not at all, but Tally was just getting warmed up.

  “And on top of that, you were ludicrous enough to say”—she dropped to a whisper for this next part—“Boss Authority is after your daddy? Here? Not a soul in here don’t hate Boss Authority, plain as day. Twisted, he is, gone deep rotten with borrowed magic. And yet not a soul in here wouldn’t split a belly to be on his good side. You know that old saying, ‘the swamp’s always creeping’?”

  “Yeah, I know it,” I said. “It means that the swamp is always moving a little upriver, inch by inch, and one day it’ll take over the whole world. It’s what folks say when they mean for you to stay ready and vigilant.”

  “Exactly,” said Tally. “And it’s the same way with Boss Authority. He’s always gathering his magic, killing people and worse, all to gain more power. Pretty soon he’ll rule the whole swamp. And as the swamp creeps upriver, so will Boss Authority’s rule. Let’s face it, if Boss Authority’s after your daddy, he’s probably after you too. So I figure at this point, half the tavern wants to kill you for who your daddy is, and the other half is just ornery and wants to kidnap you and bring you to Boss Authority as a favor. If I were you, I’d come with me. I can take you to my granddad. If anybody knows where your daddy is, it’ll be him.”

  I studied her a minute. Maybe her granddad knew something and maybe he didn’t. Maybe the whole thing was one big setup and I was about to stumble myself right into it. I’d gotten lucky—a rare thing for me, mind you—finding that old lady at the dock, even if she did scare me a little. Did I dare push my luck further with some other old fogey? Besides, what did I know about this girl in front of me? Well, she was a pickpocket, and she might have saved my life. At the same time, she might also be lying to me. She might have just kept me from finding my daddy. All the while, time was a-wasting, Pop getting further and further on down that river without me.

  “No thanks,” I said. “I had about enough of strange old folks today, if that’s all right with you.”

  Just then I noticed a pigeon perched on a beam about level with my head. The whole place was rotten with pigeons, cooing around on the floor with their funny head-bobbing walk, kind of pretty birds but kind of like rats too. I never did quite know what to think about pigeons, if you want to know the truth about it. But this one was different. For one, it was staring right at me. I mean that. Its head cocked a little to the side, but its gaze fixed on me, like it was waiting on me to up and talk to it.

  Also the thing had one eye, a big one, right there on its forehead, boring right into me. It was just like that toad I’d seen the day Mom’s bakery burned down, the one that had mesmerized me. The one that had . . .

  “Nice Parsnit deck,” said Tally. “How’d you get it? Huh? Did you steal it?”

  Somehow she’d slipped Pop’s Parsnit deck right out of the knapsack and I hadn’t even noticed. Tally sure was one heck of a pickpocket. I tried to snatch it back, but she yanked it away again. By God, she was quick.

  “Where’d you get it from, boy?” she said. “I happen to know a lot about Parsnit, and I know this ain’t yours.”

  “Just give it back to me, okay?” I said.

  “At least tell me your name,” she said, “so I don’t have to keep calling you ‘boy’ like a durn idiot.”

  “Fine,” I said. “My name is Buddy.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Buddy,” she said. Tally smiled at me like she meant it. Still, I didn’t like getting pickpocketed, even if it was by a nice person.

  “Just give me my daddy’s cards back,” I said.

  Her eyes grew wide. “This is Davey Boy Pennington’s Parsnit deck? The famous one that . . . Hey, wait a minute. Why doesn’t he have it on him? Every Parsnit player always carries his deck around with him. They get all twitchy when you separate them. I’ve seen it a million times.”

  “I told you already, he got kidnapped. Now can I hav
e it back or what?”

  “Sure,” she said, and held the cards out to me. I snatched them back and tucked them away in the knapsack. I was going to have to keep a much better lookout on my stuff henceforth if I was going to make it out of Gentlesburg in one piece. “I really think you should come see my granddad right now.”

  “I told you I ain’t got time for your granddad,” I said. “I’m not trying to be rude, really I’m not, but I got to find Pop.” Then something occurred to me. “Hey, did you happen to see a one-eyed pigeon?”

  “A what?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “It ain’t important.”

  I turned to go, make my way around the Skinny Yellow Dog, see if I couldn’t rustle up some answers for myself.

  “You know,” said Tally, “I can show you a Parsnit duel.”

  That stopped me cold. A real live Parsnit duel? One I could watch with my own eyes? It had been so long since I’d seen a real Parsnit duel, with a witch and everything.

  “Yep,” she said, like she could read my thoughts. “A good one too, with real Parsnit players, not like those jokers upriver. They hold them in a secret room in the basement. I’ll take you there, no problem. The men who kidnapped your daddy are probably there right now.”

  She did have a point. I mean, where else would I find Pop if not around a Parsnit table somewhere? It was as good a shot as any.

  “Fine,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Tally smiled at me. I don’t know, that made me feel good, to be honest with you. I was wondering if finally I had made a friend.

  8

  TALLY LED ME DOWN A staircase, musty and winding, through a kitchen filled with steam and fire and pots and pans. A skinny man tossed vegetables up in the air, shouting, while a big lady chopped fish heads and screamed back at him. I stopped to stare a minute as she conked a still-wriggling catfish on the noggin, sliced its head clean off, and chucked it at the man. He caught it in one meaty fist, fish guts exploding all over his apron. The man began to shout while the woman cackled and tossed her knife in the air. It stuck right into the ceiling.

  “Hurry!” said Tally. “You don’t want to be there when they really get into it.”

  She led me through a trapdoor, up a weird scaffolding, onto the rafters in the ceiling, through a hole in the wall, to a beam overlooking a tiny, lamplit room, where two sweaty men sat at a table, cards out in front of them. A straight-backed beautiful woman elegantly dressed who I took to be a witch sat hovering just a tiny bit over her chair, like her body never quite touched the furniture. The duel was still in the early stages, the men having just flipped their top cards over until they landed on a Person card. Pop always said if you knew your deck, really truly knew it same as you do your own left arm and fingers, then you could summon the card you wanted, that you could draw it out of the deck first every time, no matter who shuffled.

  “But Pop,” I had said, “that’s like magic.”

  Pop just nodded. “Sounds about right to me.”

  At one end of the table sat a man with a long mustache, twisty and droopy that dangled far off his face like catfish whiskers and dribbled down to his chin, with a great big sun-faded cowboy hat on his head. He was skinny and dusty-looking, like he’d been riding around on his horse all day. He took huge glugs from an unmarked jug next to him every minute or so. He had drawn the High Lonesome Traveler, with his fiddle and horse and clouds of dust behind him, that haughty chestnut horse swaggering through the desert like all that hot and lonely didn’t bother him one bit. The other player was a black lawyer-looking fella with a nice suit and a monocle. He chewed a cigar but wouldn’t light it. He had drawn the Ornery Banker, and you could tell he was mighty excited about it.

  The players turned their Home cards next. The lawyer flipped a Cold Dark City and smiled a little. This was a man who knew his cards all right.

  The lawyer began to Orate.

  Now, this is the part where Parsnit gets tricky. It’s hard to explain just what happens when a player begins to Orate. It’s something to do with the cards, how the cards are specifically theirs, how well they know their cards, each tiny detail of them, and how well the player can tell the cards’ story. Because Parsnit is all about storytelling, when you get down to it. It’s about weaving a story with the cards, until the two players weave their stories into one.

  Orating is the best part of the whole game. I had a feeling about this lawyer fella. He was about to do something incredible, that I knew.

  The lawyer’s voice was strange-accented, like it had picked up a little bit of here and there along the way. It was rich and gentle, a good dessert of a voice, like hot cider on a cold night. And that’s what I felt all of a sudden, with a chill—I was cold. The Parsnit cards were working, the lawyer was telling the right story for them. I heard him tell of a man gone a long way off for business—his person, the Ornery Banker, the card that always irked me, because who would want to be an Ornery Banker when you could be a Rambling Duke or a High Lonesome Traveler or even a Fish Boy? But as he Orated I began to feel for the person, just a little bit. I was cold and wet and my legs hurt from tramping through the snow, and I ached in my bones for home.

  See, all Parsnit decks are a little bit different, that’s a fact, though they all are based on the same ideas, the same places and people and pictures. The difference is in the details. Like Pop’s Cold Dark City card was the absolute pits. The snow comes down long and heavy in great gray streaks, and a woman drags a screaming kid through muddy streets, and the kid has lost his shoe, you can see it sticking up in the mud, all the snow half-melted and sludgy and black. Pop’s Cold Dark City card was the worst and most miserable place I could imagine folks living.

  But the lawyer’s Cold Dark City was a different place entirely. Yeah, the snow was coming down thick and heavy, and the town seemed grim with darkness. But that wasn’t all. The snow was piled in soft white clouds all over the rooftops, like something you could fall down in and it wouldn’t hurt. The mom and child darted through the streets, same as Pop’s, only the kid didn’t have his boot stuck, and there was someone waiting for them—the daddy maybe—on the front porch, his hat in his hand, the door wide open. They were heading home. This was the story the lawyer was Orating, this was the exact perfect story his cards wanted him to tell. I began to see the scene with my own eyes, the card wafting through my brain, the ice and snow, that poor man having made it back from his long journey in time to welcome his wife and kid home from church. Just listening to him you could imagine hot coffee waiting for you, a warm fire and thick blankets and maybe even a dog, yapping and running around and licking all the melting snow off your hands. It was a happy home in the Cold Dark City, that’s for sure. When he finished Orating the snow on the card seemed to twinkle and flurry, and I saw the lawyer’s mouth twitch, just a little hint of a smile. He had given the card power, or else the card had called that power out of him. Only the sitting witch knew for sure.

  The scene faded before me, and even the witch had gone misty-eyed. That’s how you do it. It was going to be tough for the cowboy to top that one, I knew it.

  The cowboy was sweating, oh man was he. He took a big long glug from his jug and spat once on the floor, doing a little shimmy from his boots to his hat. He coughed and flipped his next card.

  It was the Far Yonder Mountains, and you could tell it was not the card he wanted, not one bit. The cowboy banged the table and cussed. The witch sat stock-still, floating a bit over her cushion. The lawyer leaned back in his seat and chewed his stogie like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  A Parnsit duel can surprise you, it really can. You never know what a player’s got up his sleeve. You never know what bewilderment can spring from some little well-dressed nobody’s voice.

  I couldn’t wait to hear the cowboy try and Orate himself out of this one.

  Man, I was just so happy to be sitting here, watching a real live Parsnit duel. It had been ages and ages. I shifted on the rafters and they made a lit
tle noise but no one noticed. I turned to say something to Tally, like good gracious wasn’t this just the most exciting Parsnit duel ever?

  When I realized she wasn’t next to me anymore.

  I patted Pop’s knapsack and found it open, and empty. She had thieved me, right there, while I was watching the Parsnit duel. She had Pop’s cards.

  I just caught a glimpse of her scurrying across the beams, to the hole in the wall, her brown ragged cloak vanishing into the darkness.

  If I didn’t hurry I was going to lose those cards for good.

  I scooted myself across the rafters and crawled through the hole and headed back into the tavern. My balance was a little shifty, and twice I almost reeled. But I had to find Tally. I had to get my daddy’s cards back.

  I hustled through the kitchen, past the lady who was chucking fish heads at the screaming cook, through the Skinny Yellow Dog as heads turned to watch me go, but I couldn’t worry about that, I couldn’t. I caught a glimpse of Tally’s brown cloak wisping down an alley, so I followed it.

  I sprinted so hard I got a stitch in my side. I scrambled through the streets, bumping into strangers, knocking a cigar from a mustached man’s lips. It fell, scattering little gold nuggets across the pavement, while the man stood shaking his fist at me. “Sorry!” I yelled, but I kept moving, I had to.

  I saw Tally pause a moment and glance back at me, her eyes catching mine, that little thief, and she took off running again. Why had she stopped to look back, like she was trying to make sure I was keeping up? I had no choice but to follow her down an empty alley. I hopped a stray cat lazing belly down in the dirt. Tally hit the end of the alley and flung open a door I could hardly even tell was there. It led to a staircase, and she launched herself up, and I followed her, you bet I did, I wasn’t letting her get away with my Pop’s Parsnit cards, not on your life. They were Pop’s livelihood, his prize possession, and he entrusted them to me. He wasn’t gonna let any Cecily Bob or Mr. Hugo have them, and I wasn’t going to let any two-bit pickpocket have them neither, not even if she was a nice pickpocket, one who saved my life once already.