Short Money Read Free Page B

Budweisers, took a huge bite of his Juicy Lucy. Hot cheese spurted from between the twin hamburger patties, searing his lower lip. “Yow!” he gasped, dousing the pain with a torrent of beer.
    Bellweather laughed, snorting through his nose, hitting the table with his palm.
    Anderson wiped his mouth with a handful of paper napkins. “Man, that’s hot!” He swallowed a few more ounces of beer, then gave Bellweather a puzzled look. “Hey, Doc, I thought you were a vegetarian.”
    Bellweather grinned and took a cautious bite of his own Juicy Lucy. He chewed and swallowed before replying. “I am,” he said. “Except when I’m on a hunting trip. Then I turn into this carnivore. It’s a hormonal thing, Stevie. Can’t you feel the juice? That buff started toward you, you looked so scared I bet you could’ve run a four-minute mile. You’re still feeling a little shaky, right? Your glands pumping out that adrenaline, noradrenaline, glucagon, all kinds of neurotransmitters. Your blood is still loaded with the stuff. You need meat to replace those hormones. It’s a medical fact.”
    Anderson took another, smaller bite of his cheese-filled burger.
    The doctor went on, as if seeing it all again. “Buff coming at you, eyes popping out of your head, you got your gun. …” He rapped the tabletop rapidly with his knuckle. “Bapbapbapbapbap! Never knew what hit him.”
    Anderson shifted his eyes away from the doctor’s florid features. They had driven to within fifty yards of the bison. Ricky had shown him how to load and operate the MAC-10 with the buff standing right there, watching them, about as suspicious as a pet cow. It had started trotting toward them, and Anderson had enjoyed a brief moment of fear before squeezing the trigger of the MAC. The gun had jumped in his hand, but he’d managed to get half of the thirty-round clip embedded in the bison’s woolly body. The animal had stood there stupidly for several seconds before dropping, first its front legs, then its hindquarters, then tipping to the side, eyes protruding, blood-streaked gray tongue unrolling and lying motionless on the grass.
    Now with the glory of the kill fading, he was left with the suspicion that the bison had been approaching them expecting to be fed a carrot. Still, it had been a kick unlike anything he had experienced before.
    “I tell you, Stevie, the way you turned that buffs face to hamburger, Ollie here is going to be patching holes for days. Right, Ollie? You going to mount up this young man’s first kill?”
    Ollie shrugged. “If he wants.”
    “Patty isn’t going to let me keep the damn thing anyways,” Anderson said. “I don’t know why I should have it mounted.”
    “Got to have it mounted, Stevie. Your first kill? Got to have it mounted. I bet Ollie, here, will give you a discount. Right, Ollie?”
    Ollie made a noise through his nose. “Negatory. You wanna play cards or what?”
    Ricky said, “Yeah, let’s play some cards.”
    Bellweather gave Anderson the elbow. “Whaddya say, Stevie—shall we show these country boys how we do it in the big city?”
    Bellweather won the first three hands, buying the first one with a blind twenty-dollar bet and taking the other two with a pair of aces and a baby straight.
    “Sheeit,” Ricky muttered, throwing his cards away facedown.
    Bellweather laughed, raking in the small pot. Anderson shuffled the deck and slowly dealt a hand of five-card draw. The hormones in his bloodstream were turning sour. The Juicy Lucy had settled low in his gut, swimming in a sea of Budweiser. He completed the deal, picked up his hand, and looked at three queens and two deuces—a full house before the draw. His weary adrenal gland managed to produce a few more molecules; his heart started thumping.
    “Your bet,” Anderson said. A full house! He was no expert, but a full boat was a powerhouse in anybody’s hand.
    Bellweather took a look at Anderson’s flushed cheeks and pulsing carotid artery and said,