Fiction: Lucky Jeb

By Marco Etheridge

Jeb Blackthorn slides his only hand across the green felt, corrals a jumble of poker chips, and reels his winnings in. The three other men sitting at the table groan and pull faces. Jeb smiles as he addresses the grumbling card players.

“I don’t know why you carry on like that. You boys know I was born lucky.”

The large man sitting on Jeb’s left mops his face with a bandana, then stares at his neighbor with hound dog eyes.

“I don’t know why you persist in that lie, Jeb. How can a one-armed man call himself lucky?”

Another collective groan sweeps the table. Jeb’s good-natured smile doesn’t waver. He overhands the cards in front of him, rolls the deck, in his fingers, and begins an expert one-handed shuffle.

“Henry, you’re an attorney. I’m surprised you’d advocate that the quantity of a person’s appendages somehow equals their luck. Take yourself for example. You’ve got two arms. Most folks in town would call you a jolly man, and some might say that’s good luck. But what about Thomas? He’s got two good arms, but is he lucky?”

The man sitting opposite Jeb lets go a sour snort.

“He’s got you there, Henry. If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any. The insurance business is good, but my wife’s gone for religion and my two kids run around looking like Satanists.”

Henry folds his hands across the great expanse of his belly and nods across the table.

“Blake, you’re the tiebreaker. Good luck or bad?”

The fourth of the quartet pretends to ignore the query. Blake rolls a half-smoked cigar between his fingers, frowns at it, then sparks a lighter. After a few puffs, he leans back in a cloud of smoke. Using his cigar as a pointer, he addresses the issue at hand.

“This discussion is keeping us from our game, gentlemen, but that’s nothing new. All right, I’ll take the bait. Henry, you’re as happy as a pig in shit. That’s your nature, not your luck. Our friend Thomas, on the other hand, had the misfortune to marry badly. That’s his cross to bear. Me, I’m in the middle, what you might call the baseline of luck. But dammit, Jeb, a man shot your arm clean off. You can’t call that good luck.”

Jeb shakes his head, still smiling.

“Now, you know that ain’t true, Blake. It was the doctors cut my arm off.”

“Yes, in point of fact, but Truman made a pretty good start of it with that big pistol of his. Where’s the good luck in that?”

Jeb lays the shuffled deck on the table and taps it with a forefinger.

“You boys are looking at this all wrong. Truman aimed to kill me. Hell, he said as much right there in the town square. There was no shortage of witnesses. He had that pistol pointed right square at my chest. If that crow hadn’t shit in his eye, I’d be a dead man. If that’s not good luck, I don’t know what is.”

The others can’t help but laugh at this. Thomas raps the table and points at Jeb.

“The crow is beside the point. That bird might have spoiled Truman’s aim, but he still shot you. He always was a vindictive fellow and you were screwing his wife.”

“Millie and I were in love. There’s a difference between love and plain screwing. My poor Millie married badly. It happens, Thomas. You know that better than anyone. Fact is, she was the love of my life.”

Henry pats his belly and nods.

“I have to agree that Millie married badly. Not to speak ill of the dead but she never should have taken up with Truman. That man had a troubled soul. No secret there.”

Blake frowns, puffs his cigar, and addresses the table.

“Gentlemen, we’re straying from the point. I’ll allow this delay in our poker game, but I won’t tolerate random digressions. The subject under discussion is luck. Henry, as our resident attorney, I’m calling on you to make the case.”

“Very well, if you insist. Our friend Jeb claims to be a lucky man, yet he was shot by a jealous husband. The judge sent poor Truman down to Potosi under a sentence of seven to ten years. Meanwhile, Jeb recovers from the shooting, albeit short one arm. He and Millie live together as common-law man and wife. Before Truman is released from prison, Millie takes sick and dies. Jeb, I have to say that on the face of the evidence, I don’t see much good luck for anyone.”

Jeb reaches for a bottle of beer, takes a long drink, then places the bottle back beside his pile of chips.

“You boys are so knotted up with the facts that you’re missing the philosophy of the thing. Millie and I had three good years together, which never would have happened otherwise. It’s true that the cancer took my Millie, but her death ended up saving my life.”

Thomas breaks in to protest.

“Now, how in the hell do you figure that?”

Jeb holds up his only hand, smiling all the while.

“Truman swore he’d get his revenge. Five years in prison did nothing to change that. You know how he was. But his luck never did run good. Millie died before he got out on parole. That broke what was left of Truman’s heart. Fact is, he came to see me after he got out.”

As stir runs around the table. This is a new twist in a familiar story. They lean forward and wait for someone to speak. Finally, Thomas does.

“Let me get this straight, Jeb. You’re saying that Truman came to see you after he got cut loose? I thought he hanged himself down to, where was it Henry?”

“Springfield. They found him hanging in the garage back of his halfway house.”

Henry takes a sip of whiskey, then cocks his head at Jeb.

“I don’t believe you’ve divulged this before. Is it true?”

Jeb shakes his head and grins.

“I’m as honest as I am lucky, boys. Truman snuck up here from Springfield. Knocked on my back door and said he wanted to talk it out. Would have been a parole violation except I never said a word to nobody. Promised Truman I wouldn’t, but he’s dead now.”

Jeb pauses, drinks his beer, looks around the table.  

“You see, Truman took Millie’s dying hard. He told me that himself, said the idea of revenge just melted away like smoke. Those were his words. He went so far as to thank me for taking care of Millie in her end time. We didn’t become friends, him and me, but we parted civil. Wasn’t a week later I heard he’d hung himself.”

The men exchange looks across the green tabletop. Blake blows a cloud of smoke at the ceiling before he breaks the silence.

“Well, gentlemen, this is a revelation and no mistake. Still and all, I remain unconvinced. Millie is dead, rest her soul, and poor Truman sent himself to hell. And here you sit, Jeb, short an arm. I’ll grant you’re still alive, but where’s the luck? That’s what I want to know.”

Jeb picks up the deck of cards, executes a perfect one-handed cut, and places the cards back on the table. He flips the top card face up on the green felt. It’s the jack of clubs.

“I think we’re stumbling over the nature of luck. Say Henry here is walking down Main Street. He spies a dollar bill on the sidewalk. Now, that’s luck of the everyday sort. But I maintain there’s a bigger luck that can and does change the course of our lives. The thing is, a fella has to have the ability to see it. I’m not finding fault here, just pointing out there’s different ways to see things. You might call it a matter of perception.”

“Do I get to keep the dollar?”

“Sure, Henry, finders keepers. But that dollar don’t change your life. Hell, it won’t buy you a cup of coffee anymore. What I’m saying, there’s always two ways to look at a thing. I try to take the long view. Truman shot me and I lost my arm. That’s a fact. But I’m alive and enjoying myself while he’s gone to wherever suicides go. Bad luck for him, good luck for me. Millie and I had our time together. Some might say it was cut short, but I say what time we shared was a damn sight better than none at all. I believe a person has to acknowledge the good fortune in a thing before they can reap the benefits.”

Across the table, Thomas stirs.

“Are you saying that if I take a hard look at my bible-quoting wife and weird-looking kids, I might find some luck in there that has so far plumb eluded me?”

A laugh rolls around the table before Jeb answers.

“Maybe so, Thomas, and again, maybe not. But you’ll never know if you don’t at least try.”

Blake knocks the ash from his cigar and waves at the table.

“I don’t suppose it will hurt anything to take the long view on luck. Meanwhile, may I humbly submit that we deal the damn cards? Some of us might want a chance at winning our money back.”

Henry leans forward, a grin on his jowls.

“You sure you want to do that, Blake? Seems to me we’re playing cards with a lucky man. Jeb might just take all your money. You might think about quitting while you’re ahead. Or less behind, as it were.”

“Don’t be a smartass, Henry. I’ll take my chances. We’re talking about regular old short-term luck here, and I think Jeb’s is about to run out. Let’s play cards.”

Lucky Jeb picks up the deck, slips the jack back into the middle, and shuffles. He slaps the deck to his right. Henry cuts the cards. Jeb scoops them up and smiles.

“Okay, Gents, five card stud. Here we go.”

His thumb flicks a card down in front of each player. Then, rolling the deck in his hand, he deals another card face up beside the first. Blake shows a deuce, Thomas a ten, Henry a seven, and Jeb the jack of diamonds. They let go a collective groan while Jeb grins.

Marco Etheridge is a writer of prose, an occasional playwright, and a part-time poet. He lives and writes in Vienna, Austria. His work has been featured in over one hundred reviews and journals across Canada, Australia, the UK, and the USA. His story “Power Tools” has been nominated for Best of the Web for 2023. “Power Tools” is Marco’s latest collection of short fiction. When he isn’t crafting stories, Marco is a contributing editor for a new ‘Zine called Hotch Potch. In his other life, Marco travels the world with his lovely wife Sabine.