Play Pretty Blues. Snowden Wright

among the first thirteen musicians inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, who would later go multi-platinum three times with only twenty-nine songs, had lost his guitar in a single hand of poker.

      Our husband could not find the words, let alone the actions, though his opponents had no such problem. Woodson gave his winnings a home at his side as Ferris put on a spectacular show of flatulence. Finally, after he knocked over his chair while standing up, after he mumbled some such nonesuch to his brother’s offer of help, after he dribbled sweat on the table while backing away, Robert made to take leave of Scotty Jay’s Rumpus Room. The upstairs girls marked the cross from shoulders to forehead. The knuckledusters searched their cups for a sign of divination. On the porch, leaning over the scrapwood rail and aiming for a dandelion patch, Robert evacuated the contents of his stomach, including five pints of the house lager, three quail eggs, the lobe of a pig’s ear pickled in pink vinegar, a dozen cove oysters, the oily shreds of tobacco loosed from a cheap cigarette, and seven wheat-head pennies he always swallowed before a night of gambling. He retrieved his last seven cents by hand.