Free Jordan County by Shelby Foote

she desired.
    He was Chance Jackson, a gambler well known in theregion for his instant willingness to bet on almost anything, as well as for his loud clothes, his pearl-gray derby, and the big yellow diamond studs he wore in place of buttons on his shirtfront. Born and raised in Oxford, where his mother worked in the home of the president of the University of Mississippi, he had been given his mother’s employer’s official title, Chancellor, as a first name. Faculty members and townspeople thought it a ludicrous name, until he began growing up and it was shortened to Chance. Then they realized how apt it was. While still in knee breeches he became known as a master at dice, coon-can, pitty pat, and all the other Negro gambling games. When he had cleaned out his section of the state he widened his field, and now he went from town to town, staying no longer than the winnings were good; ‘pickings’ he called them. He was nearing forty. There were men who had saved between visits for more than twenty years, awaiting an opportunity to skin him, not so much for the money — though it would have been considerable, by their standards — as for the prestige, the sake of being able to boast about it later. It had been known to happen, but the satisfaction was short-lived; they either had to face him when he returned, or decline the contest, or move outside the circle of his glory. All the same, they kept waiting, hoping, trying, and they kept losing.
    Bristol was on his itinerary; he came here twice a year. A section at the rear of the Mansion House dance room was partitioned off by an old theater curtain nailed along its top edge to the ceiling, thus forming an alcove in which two blanketed card tables and a canvas-bottomed dice table stood under steel-blue cones of down-funneled light. Whenever there was a hush on the dance floor, which was rare, the rattle of dice and the cries of gamblers came through the curtain. Foot-high letters across its center spelled ASBESTOS and there were faded advertisements of harness shops and restaurants, gunsmithies and clothing stores, whose dead proprietors had never guessed the final room their names would grace.
    Duff was resting on one of Blind Bailey’s special numbers when he saw the gray derby above the red silk dress. He watched, brooding, for Chance had a reputation for handling women that almost equaled his reputation for handling cards and dice; it was a bad sign that he had forsaken the gambling alcove for the dance floor. But when the piano stopped, Julia came to the rostrum. “Make him leave me lone,” she said. “I’m scared of that man.”
    “Whats he doing?”
    “Nothing. But I’m scared. He
holds
me funny.”
    “Stay away from him then,” Duff told her.
    Half an hour later he saw them together again. He could see that they were talking while they danced, Julia with her head tilted back, looking up at Chance, who was looking toward Duff on the bandstand. Though he could not hear what they were saying, Julia was telling the gambler that Duff had said he would beat her if she danced with him again. “He’ll do it, too,” she added.
    “Him?” Chance peered through the smoke at Duff. “He aint going to bother
no
body. Watch here.” He danced toward the rostrum. “Hey, boy,” he said. “Was you wanting to beat on somebody?”
    It was between pieces; Blind Bailey had just finished the special, and Duff sat with the cornet in his lap. The gambler’s diamonds flashed yellow as he leaned forward, one arm around Julia’s waist. His face was close; his nose was large, fleshy and powerful-looking. “Was you?” he insisted. Duff did not answer. Chance leaned closer and spoke again. His voice was soft, almost caressing, his face less than six inches away. “I said
was
you?”
    “Move on and let that girl alone,” Duff told him.
    What followed happened so quickly that he was not aware of any sequence of events until it had ended. Without taking his arm from around