Mr. Gamble and Poor Caroline

I bet all our money at the tracks today and lost. I can’t help it. I go to the tracks a genius, with special powers of intuition, I get high watching my horse catch up, fall behind…one moment I’m cold-sweating, beating my head, another I'm ready to conquer the world. And I leave penniless and sorrowed, head spinning, pounding. When I dream, it's always that I can move mountains and part seas with my thoughts alone. Mr. Gamble makes me believe it, at least down at the track. Sometimes I think briefly, enough’s enough, but by nightfall, it is: how am I going to play it right next week? They can’t keep throwing new wrenches at you, after all. My friends all gamble too, and we don’t talk about how sad it all really is. We aren't really friends, we just exist together like barnacles. I have done something unforgivable today, and I don’t know what to tell my wife. I emptied Cookie Jar, I spent it all. I had to break glass to do it. This time I feel so low down, because I know what will happen—but there’s a way to win it all back, an un-Godly way, that I’d been too scared to try until now.

* * *

She was a Vaudeville girl, Caroline. My first true love, but I had to let her go about five years ago. I met her when her traveling show came into town. I remember watching her set the night ablaze, glowing and shimmering and flying above the band. I was a poor ranch stable-boy with nothing tying me down, and the show had just lost one of their hands to a railroad job, so they hired me for double what I was getting on the ranch.

We first became acquainted over tea. Tea, by God! It was at an English restaurant with a big Union Jack above the door, hanging just below Old Glory. The manager suggested we all go there, which drew a great “huzzah!” from the players, and everyone started talking like Shakespeare and calling each other limeys and toffs. Sitting by my lonesome and feeling out of place, my eyes found Caroline’s. My heart jumped at the sight of their fire, and she motioned me to her side.

“Good afternoon, my servant,” she said, and I felt like a mad fool in a Shakespeare show.

“Jolly good, my Queen” was all I could manage, and I must have run the gamut from pirate to prime minister in those four words. Her laugh was warm and kind.

“I’m surprised you made it here,” she said.

“What do you mean, I just walked on in with the rest.”

She dropped her British accent for the New York one she was born with: “Our last groom couldn’t seem to wash out the smell of hay and manure, so we’d try to lose him and leave him to his own adventure.”

“It ain’t such a tribulation to keep clean as a stable-hand, and judging his work, you ought to have sent him packing long ago. The poor horses are neglected!”

She looked at me and knew I was genuine. Caroline’s eyes were like dynamite in the mountains and her heart was an excellent prospector. She could bore into your soul and tell right away if it were gold or the fool’s imitation. In my foolishness, I would trick myself into thinking I could hide from her, and it was always mighty difficult to look back into those righteous flames when they flared up, because it made you feel so low and mean and undeserving of kindness, and kindness was Caroline. How could someone look upon me, see me through, and still give me the time of day, let alone their heart? There were only two times when I dared to hold my gaze up to hers: when I confessed my love, and when I said goodbye. It was that day clinking tea cups that I, young and wild, learned to love, and I curse my continuing fondness for her, seeing as I’d hurt her so bad. Mr. Gamble’s a smotherer. Mr. Gamble doesn’t know how to lose.

So after that day, I tried my luck with Caroline. You can imagine a gambler’s persistence when he thinks luck is involved, because a gambler thinks luck is something you can make and keep, like a rock you can will into a blade. It was several months of wondering and waiting before we gave our hearts to each other. Excuse the comparison, but when I bet on a horse, I go by something in their eyes, their gait, the flare of their nostrils, or even how the jockey’s hands fidget while holding the reins. A human being surely ain't no horse, but I started watching her, and Mr. Gamble saw patterns: when she and I talked there was something about how she ran her fingers through her hair, how her mood seemed to depend on the rings she chose to wear or the length of her eyelashes that day; I tried to act in ways that produced certain signs, and I judged my success on such as how many times during our conversation she tugged at one the one arm that crept up and made uneven her favorite embroidered purple hand-me-down dress, and I cam to believe that my heart had the winning ticket. It was probably all just chance when you get down to it, but Mr. Gamble doesn’t believe in chance. A man isn't supposed to think the way I do, because Lord knows it’s done me more harm than good, but, feeling that I’m nothing without my good intuition, I owe all of my happy moments to Mr. Gamble, the same ways I owe Him my sorrows and regrets. The many nights I lay awake knowing she’d have died before leaving me, I think to myself, you took your eyes off the real prize, you donkey, but I suppose that’s all a pupil of Mr. Gamble ought to think of life: as nothing but a load of prizes to win and lose and win again, the thrill of it being the game, the torture and ecstasy of losing it all and winning a little back. When I’m down at the track, I forget that money and love are two different things, and they don’t always get along or make sense together.

On the road it was cards instead of horses that I chased, and instead of weekends at the races, it was every night at the saloon. When I won, I felt invincible, but when I lost, I was a cold sweat that found no remedy but the arms of Caroline. She forgave me my great vice, but worried for my health and, I knew, for her own heart, seeing me unhappy and unwell so many days, and I began to neglect the horses. I told her about my “cookie jar,” where I stowed away a fraction and promised not to gamble it, but there was no cookie jar. Not until I made it my resolution and redemption to maintain one for Rosalie. At last, I sank to my first low: being without gambling money, I remembered Caroline’s purple dress, the very same that helped me win her heart, and the rubies and diamonds embroidered in it, so I stole away with it, snuck to an evil place behind a secret door, and, among bankers, politicians, and oil men who'd have you hanged if you said anything about their being there, wagered it and lost it. I remember how, when I made my way back to our quarters in the boarding house, I was afraid to walk on the leaves of grass, as if doing so, crushing them, would add to my crimes.

I crept into our room, lit a candle and began to undress.

“You were out so late, Henry,” she said from the dark of the bed, and I almost jumped, because it was the voice of someone wide awake cutting into the terrible night's quiet, and it stabbed my whole heart.

“Just playing cards, like always. Spend a little, save a little,” I lied.

“But you told me you ran out of money to spend last night,” she said.

“I found some extra. Don’t worry your mind, Caroline.” I tried to be cute, like a true ingrate.

“Henry, where’s my purple dress?”

How quickly I was found out! How all that guilt suddenly turned into anger! I cannot believe it now, but I was angry at her for my own wickedness.

“You—you don’t know what they did to me! They robbed me, those politicians and pigs! I had to do it. I can’t help myself. I told you I can’t help myself! I tried for you, and we deserve better than this. You deserve a thousand dresses like that!”

But I could see through the darkness the candle’s reflection in her eyes which covered me like the heat from a pouring vat of melted steel, and my throat shut.

After a long silence, she said “Henry,” and her voice was like a spider’s web when the rain starts to fall. “That dress meant more to me than all I could have bought with it, and you know that. You’ll remember that. But you—I’d throw that dress into the ocean before saying goodbye to—” she couldn’t finish.

I turned on the gaslamp, and both of us were looking each other dead in the eyes. Hers glowed a righteous Earthen green, and mine the blue of the river Styx.

“Then I’ll be the one to do it. I’ve hurt you enough. Goodbye Caroline.” So I left, making my way back to my old home and living on alms as the town fool.

* * *

After a year of destitution during which the bottle better served me than the betting ticket, Rosalie and her brother Jim intervened like angels and gave me a new life. Jim, who was jobbed with finding strong young men for the new Ford factory, found me, a stumbling wreck. How I remember our introductions, I can’t tell you.

“Sir,” he said.

I was busy singing, badly, a song I was writing: “My Caroline, Poor Caroline…”

“Sir, are you back from the War?”

“No, sir, obviously I’m still over there right now. Ha ha ha! ‘Over there…’” I began to bleat.

“Sir, the War is finished, you must know. And you must be looking for work. I can tell that you’re a strong young man wanting to forget his troubles, and I have an offer for you.”

“Offer me a singing contract. Ha ha ha! I’m working on a song, it’s about a girl named Caroline…I just don’t have a good first line for it.”

“Ford is looking for workers at his new factory just down the block. Henry Ford believes that his workers ought to have enough pay to some day buy their very own Model T. What do you say? The factory line has a rhythm to it, and maybe that’s just what you need to come up with your little song.”

“You’re no good at sweet talking, sir.” I said.

I remember him giving me a look that made me remember, but what, I was too fuzzy to tell.

“Sir, my name is James, Jim, if you would, and I’ll be plain. This is a good job. I’ll look out for you. I’ve seen you every day on this street. You don’t mean anyone any harm, but no one’s given you a chance. Come with me to the office, and I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. You’ve been neglected, sir. What’s your name?”

At that moment, I felt like one of the horses from that Vaudeville carriage when I first arrived there. Disheveled and sad, which of course I was. “Henry, sir.”

“Ah! A namesake of the genius Ford himself! Come on, Henry.”

I don’t know why I went with him, except something made me trust him. He didn't mind to find out later that I hadn't gone to the War.

The long hours left me tired and sore, but the money was good. Yet, though I had been away from the track for a spell due to my poverty, the thought of money in my pocket caused Mr. Gamble to begin his sweet talk again. I said no, no, no to Him, but He wouldn’t keep quiet. Fortunately, Jim was better company than Mr. Gamble. It pains me to remember how he had managed to keep me from running to the track, and to the bottle, and how when I was cleaned up, Rosalie saw in me a man worthy of her heart, and how Jim placed in me the greatest trust a man can do, permitting our marriage, believing I was changed, and how after he died at the factory, we carried on, and how I had stayed strong for Rosalie as we tried for a baby, and how we failed, and how I finally lost my strength, for I am weak, and found myself back at the track, ticket in my hand, again a sick man among the terrible throng of sick men. And like Caroline, Rosalie wouldn’t let me go.

“Rosalie,” I had said to her last week, “I don’t deserve you. I can’t resist my terrible vices, and I leave only a little for us here at the house.”

“Stop,” she said. “I believe in you just like my brother believed in you. Dr. Clark is a world-famous hypno-therapist. In a week you’ll be cured, I just know it.”

“But what if—”

“Stop, I said.” Her eyes were different from Caroline’s. They were sadder, and they didn’t see through to your bones, and after Jim’s passing, they became clouded with blind hope. I was all she had left. If only I had just held out for two more days, and seen this Doctor Clark then maybe…

* * *

They say Caroline's gone mad, and that cuts me to the bone. They said she was blinded by bad moonshine, and started to see visions all the time, filling in the darkness, and talk in tounges and trances. I know her, I loved her, and I know about her dream-talk, because in those old days, around the fire, lying on our scented pillows, smoking our long pipes, we fell into those trances, and on my mother’s grave what she revealed in her talk was nothing less than prophecy.

"What a big yellow moon," said Tom, a Buck-and-Wing dancer with his eyes half closed.

"The crickets are really putting out tonight," I said.

"Momma, I brought home a jumper, a bone-jumper!"

We laughed our slow laudanum laughs.

"Caroline, love," said Shirley, an acrobat, "The men are getting worried. Are they gonna get rid of liquor like they got rid of Opium?"

Caroline opened her eyes. "What are we doing in Paris?"

"We're not in Paris," said Tom.

"Yet," said Shirley, who never doubted Caroline's visions.

"Alcohol is flowing down the streets, and men are jumping out the windows," said Caroline.

"Ridiculous," said Tom, but deep down, he also believed.

"Why is alcohol going down the streets?"

"They're pouring it out, they're getting rid of it, but just wait. You'll get it back, but steer clear of the Hefe Weizen once the shrieking glass flies and fire tangles and ashes cry..."

"It's a lot of strange words," said Tom.

"I wrote it all down," said Shirley. And Tom would roll his big eyes.

It would come to pass, if you knew how to hear it. Is it really a dream if it just hasn't happened yet? Her dream-talk was funny and strange, and she forgot it quickly afterward, leaving it to future people to remember. We had all sworn not to come to her for personal gain, but the reason why, in all that time, Mr. Gamble didn't direct me to ask her about cards was because Mr. Gamble doesn’t want you to win. Mr. Gamble just wants you to play the game like a starved dog lost in a maze, following the smell of chicken dinner. You want to believe that you yourself can predict the future, or that there is some kind of code you can break, and when you win, you'llkeep winning, so keep playing. My mind repelled the frightening thoughts of the unholy door that would open if I asked her to tell me what the winning hands would be. I'm a wicked man for purposing to go to her like this, but I don't trust my own self, and I'll either die by Mr. Gamble's false promises, or live by those of poor Caroline

Last year is when she got stuck, but the powers that be declared her insane and sent her to a dreadful place in a far-off town. I can’t imagine that her friends in Vaudeville gave her up willingly; she must have wandered off one day and drawn to herself a crowd, which would have summoned the mob of terrified zealots come to protect their Godly town and remove the devil-woman. Up until she had fallen stuck asleep, despite all my lowness, Caroline kept up writing to me as a friend and confidant. She became a friend to Rosalie and Jim, too, after we’d all met and talked over a fire at her visiting show. I am ashamed to go to her, a long journey away, because it is an unkindness to Rosalie, an abuse of friendship, and a wicked purpose. But I feel I have no choice now, because the greater unkindness is that I’ve left us with nothing but the dark cold. If I don’t bring home good news, the weight of my actions might press us both to death, so off I go to see Caroline.

My Caroline has lost her mind

She dreams awake, and all the time

But in her eyes, your fortune find

What can you ask poor Caroline?