“It’s a six, I know it,” Ryder said. “Show me that silly little six.”

Leo flipped the queen card over so fast it fell back down on its face again.

“What was that?”

Lars was already laughing, Jim too. Leo turned the queen over and slid it up against the jack. He smiled up at Ryder.

“Nobody gets a queen high straight in the first hand of the first game of their life!” Ryder shook his head and smiled right at Leo. “That’s it, now. No more presents from me.”

Jim pushed the chip pile over to Leo and told him to keep it slow.

“Don’t listen to your old man,” Lars said. “Get as sloppy as you want.”

While Cody collected the cards and shuffled the deck, Leo stacked his chips. He wanted to count them but there wasn’t time with Cody already starting to deal and talking about what the game was, five-card draw.

Cody won with a full house he didn’t really need because the next-highest hand was Lars’s pair of nines. “Sorta feel like I went bird hunting with a cannon.” Cody pulled in his chips, smiling that warm smile of his that reminded Leo of Chick Donovan.

“Who you calling a birdy, cuz?”

“A bald birdy,” Ryder said.

“I have never, balled, a birdy.” Lars said it with his face so composed, his voice so solemn, Leo thought at first he’d missed something. Then everyone laughed, including Jim, and Lars went right into a joke about a truck driver and a horny parrot and a rig full of chickens.

31

Allie Donovan switched off the headlights of her mother’s car, turned down Saunders Hill Road, and parked well back from the Suthers’ cabin. She sat there a moment. The trees were silhouetted in the light from the house and she could see the tops of three cars. Behind her belly button, a cramp turned over and let go. The cramps were better today, the tenderness in her breasts was gone, and by Sunday, the lady had said, there would probably be no more spotting in her underwear. Today was her first shift back at the UFO Show and she only felt a little queasy and that was from the fireflies in her stomach every time the door opened and she looked up hoping to see and hoping not to see Leo. And she thanked God she was out back helping Sidney make hamburger patties when Leo’s father walked in and bought a cake from Beatrice. He glanced through the food tray hole once, but Allie turned her back in time, almost dropping her new patty to the floor.