The Tin Snail by Cameron McAllister

Author:Cameron McAllister
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2016-01-12T05:00:00+00:00

Victor brought a tray of lagers over to the table and settled down to join our poker game.

It was two days since Bertrand had issued his ultimatum, and Christian and my father had been working on the car night and day. If Christian had been unsure about my father’s styling, that was forgotten now. All that mattered was making sure that the new suspension system worked perfectly.

Christian had arrived at the bar an hour or so before, dripping with sweat from an unusually humid evening in the workshop. During the winter months it was like a fridge, offering precious little protection from the icy blasts from the north. Now, as the first really hot days of summer were upon us, the workshop had become a metal oven. Opening the doors would have helped, but Bertrand had insisted on total secrecy. So we had been forced to endure rocketing temperatures.

As he pulled up a chair and joined us, Christian looked exhausted. He still wasn’t entirely happy with the suspension system and had spent the day painstakingly tweaking it. But it was too late and he was too tired to do any more tonight. Tomorrow would be another day.

Two hours later, the game was still going strong; it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. Even with the doors wide-open, the air in the bar felt stale and heavy. Piled up on the table in front of us was a mound of dog-eared notes—easily our largest “pot” yet.

Having spent most of the evening grumbling over his poor hands, my father now seemed confident that he was on to a winner. Sneaking a glance over his shoulder, I saw that he already had two queens. Another queen was sitting faceup in the center of the scuffed table.

One card was yet to be revealed. If it was a queen, my father would have four, an all-but-invincible hand. But if, by a stroke of almost unimaginable luck, Victor was concealing under his squat, hairy fingers the king of clubs, he would have a royal flush—the highest hand possible. So high that in all the months I had lived in the village, I had never seen it.

Christian and then Félix folded, tossing their cards into the pile. Next up was Benoît. He threw in his cards, but like the others, he wasn’t about to leave. Not till I had dealt the last card.

My father blinked slowly, his face a mask of calm that hid his tension. I knew there was much more at stake for him than the winnings. This was about reputation, but more than anything, it was about beating Victor.

Victor smiled at him, showing his nicotine-stained teeth. “Your call, I believe.”

My father pushed all his remaining chips, coins and cash into the center.

“All in.” He was gambling everything, or almost everything, as I was about to discover.

I watched closely as the smile faded from Victor’s lips. In the background, Dominique had stopped clearing tables and was now watching closely like the rest of the locals.

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