Keeping Score

The cards nestled under their noses like a magician themoment before the final act. How they abracadabra amemory out of breath. Call a spade a spade or called it asputtering streak of light.

    Pops and Uncle Craig eyed each other from across    the table. Blinking like they could communicate the    count in their hands through their retinas. Spades    be like that. Will have grown men thinking they’re    X-men reincarnated at a 7th ward barbecue, like they    could turn the porch into the sort of sanctuary that    scoffs at what the world says they cannot do.

        Mom and Auntie Ness laughed like they        had nostalgia smoldering in their bellies.        Heads bent backwards toward the sky as if        watching constellations playing the dozens        behind the moon.

            You could tell they had the lead by            the way Mom crossed her legs. How            the crisscross of her brown beckoned            for Pops’s excuses, begged for him to            claim she ain’t do nothing but get a            lucky hand. How she kept tapping            the pencil on the yellow notepad the            same way the rain is a metronome            against concrete.

                She loved to rile him up like that,                turn him into the boy she met back                when none of them were keeping                score.