Grifter’s Gift
A strange woman’s gaze met his like a soft touch on callous skin.
His eyes shrank into his bowl as he counted his peas.
She hated peas.
His memory, a splatter of festering doubts like shadows cast by raindrops on window panes that the storm left behind.
But that one thing was real: She hated peas.
The drops may have cast darkness, frozen in time, filling every moment after with uncertainty and hate, except for those darned peas.
He lifted an empty mug to his lips before it slipped, crashing carelessly to the table’s edge.
His square shoulders slumped.
All the mugs at the table were empty, like his pockets, like his chest.
The mug’s very last drop dripped to the floor, arousing his attention.
A man snored with his head in his arms at the next table.
The stranger met his gaze once again as she shrunk from negotiations with a drunk over the price of his horse.
She winked and he could have sworn for a second that she was her.
Two slow blinks later, and the stranger stood before him with a pitcher of sin.
They moved to a table and played cards on borrowed coin long into the night.
They borrowed every penny in the whole cursed tavern before he took her for everything she didn’t have.
And as soon as she saw that every last coin in the whole small town sat on a table between them, she hollered and whistled and two large goons stepped toward her while the room slunk in despair.
He was slouching pretty good, blinking pretty slowly, and she was looking pretty good. But how would she know he buried his heart in the fist-shaped earth between the tavern and the stable out back.
The last of his peas rolled from the table as she pulled a gun.
Bang! Bang!
He slipped to the floor from his chair and crawled toward her boots.
He picked a squished pea from the boot of the goon—ten toes up next to her.
As he crawled between the stranger and the goon, while they gurgled and they coughed, he explained it to them real slow. Turning to his back and crossing his boots, he holstered his 6-shooter and stared at the ceiling between them.
“One,” he said, holding up a finger. “If you’re grifting in a new town, best make sure you’re not the one being hustled.”
“And Two. When it comes to hustling if you don’t mind another man’s peas you’ll surely miss the cues.”
“And Three,” said a growling voice above him. “Learn to count.”
Copyright © 2021 by Matt Antis. Originally published in Short Story Society on May 31, 2021, by Ink Jot Kingdom.
