“Yow!”
“You the varmint who wanted an interview?”
“You mean you’re one of the….”
“Spooky Scary Skeletons? That’s me.”
“But you’re….”
“Dead? And you’re a smart little reporter. We gonna do this or not?”
“Let me grab my notepad. So you had to die to be a spooky scary skeleton?”
“No, pard: been dead for years. Haunted a ghost town out Wyoming way for a hundred twenty years or thereabouts. Sat in the broken down old saloon and played cards with any tourist dumb enough to play me.”
“How often did you win?”
“Oh, I always let ‘em win…after a while. Gave ‘em something to tell back home and maybe come back to try it again.”
“Did they?”
“If somebody alive had been in charge, I mighta got some ink in the papers, but as it was, people found the place maybe every nine, ten months. Sat there day an’ night, an’ all through winter, dead grass and snow and mice rolling in. But that was the job they gave me when I cashed in my chips.”
“So how did you change professions?”
“Dunno who told who about it, but one day this skinny kid floats down the chimney, which was blocked and busted, says he’s the spirit of pop music, an’ he’s lookin’ for spooky, scary skeletons.”
“What does that kind of job pay?”
“Pay? Sound like you’re alive. Oh, that’s right. No offense, pard. What I get is some other spooky, scary skeletons to talk to. Mighty lonely with only the mice all those years in the saloon. Sit around with ‘em between shows, cracking jokes an’ our knuckles.”
“You like the life? I mean….”
“No offense taken. It’s scads better, friend, even if I had to learn to dance.”
“You never danced before?”
“Just in winter in that consarn saloon. Even a skeleton has to keep warm.”
“You were a skeleton from the first, then?”
“Well, for about thirty years, I was alive, newspaperman. Not many people start off life being just bones. I ain’t that peculiar.”
“Of course not. What did you do when you were alive?”
“Card player. Gambled in saloons down south and moved onto riverboats. The Martha Grundy, finally, that was my place. Made a heap of trips up and down river on her.”
“And I take it in those days you didn’t let people win.”
“Well, now, you got to know how to lose, too. Paid my fare at first, see, on the riverboats, losin’ just enough to the crew. After a while I cut ‘em in on my winnings, as people came to dare me. There was a time, if you wanted people to think you were a whiz with cards, you had to beat the gambler on the Martha Grundy.”
“You were that good?”
“I was that good.”
“At playing? Or at dealing?”
“You’ve been there yourself, hey? Gee, I’d like to…. No, gave that up. Had to do it all those years in that dusty wreck of a saloon after that last game aboard the Martha Grundy.”
“What happened?”
“You want people to know who you are, you talk big. So I got to sayin’ I could beat any taker, living or dead. One night this ugly customer came round. Asked if I could beat anybody at all. I told him I was pretty sure I could. He asked if I’d like to play against Death.”
“Death?”
“Well, I says you’re pretty close to death on a riverboat, but I’d never met the guy. So I told him I didn’t suppose Death could be much of a card player, ‘cause when’s he got time to practice? Maybe I’d had a drink or two. Didn’t know they’d be my last ones.”
“And you played against….”
“The jasper disappears and card room gets dark and then I was all alone with this woman who looked like one of the dancing girls there’d be on the showboats. The Martha Grundy wasn’t a showboat, but I played on a few of those, too. Cep’n this gal was cleaner, fancier, and about three foot taller.”
“This was Death?”
“That’s what she said, and I didn’t see any reason to call a lady a liar. And she puts a stack of gold coins on the table, nearly’s tall as she was and nearly’s wide as her collar, if you get me. She says she’ll play me for my life against that stack of money. She’s brought the cards, but she lets me have first deal. So I get three of a kind against her pair, and that made me think.”
“About?”
“About HER pair. Couldn’t concentrate: you’ve got to remember what you’re doin’, when the cards are on the table. After a couple hands, I had a right nice stack of coins, and I was feeling the drinks, so I say, ‘How about we make this game interesting by making it strip poker?’ She chuckles, which shakes me AND her upper balcony, and then she starts to deal.”
“And you lost? You were distracted by….”
“You play strip poker with Death, you don’t get to lose gracefully, pard. She wins her money back, then she wins my clothes, and then she starts to strip the skin from my body with a full house here, and a flush there.”
“You couldn’t quit the game?”
“That wasn’t the deal. ’Sides, you don’t know beans about gambling if you think I’d quit. A gambler always knows the next hand’s going to turn things around. Pair of sixes got me the muscles of my legs back, and I bluffed her out of the skin on my face with a Jack of Spades and a Queen of Diamonds.”
“But eventually she stripped you….”
“Is that the time? Already? Got to get back to work. Anyhow, THAT’S how I worked my way up to being a spooky scary skeleton. Get that all down?”
“Just one more thing. There’s a Kenny Rogers song….”
“Sorry, got to skedaddle.”
“Well, at least nowadays you know when to walk away.”
Blogsy Babbles 