Ronnie watched Irwin as he left the bunk loaded down with his winnings. He must have seen in that tiny figure retreating across the grounds a symbol of all his frustration, the quarantine that kept him from the mysterious Laura, the defeat of his system to beat Jimbo. It was late afternoon, and the cries of the boys at Free Play sounded from the ball diamonds and the basketball courts far off in the camp hills. Ronnie must have watched little Irwin walking away with his shattered hopes and dreams in a brown cardboard carton, and it must have been then that he made his final decision, the decision that brought the marble madness to its peak of insanity.
I was coming back from the tennis courts, where I was trying to help little Max with his backhand, when I saw Ronnie striding across the grounds towards Jimbo’s bunk. He was carrying an old battered suitcase, and there was something odd about his walk, a purposeful, angry stride which was at the same time somewhat surreptitious. I looked at him curiously and then followed him past the flagpole and watched as he entered the bunk. I stood outside for a few minutes, wondering, and then I quietly climbed the front steps.
Ronnie was in the middle of forcing the lock on Jimbo’s suitcase. He looked up when I entered the bunk and then went right back to work.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he answered.
“It looks like you’re trying to break open Jimbo’s suitcase.”
“That’s right,” Ronnie said, and in that moment he broke the lock and opened the lid. “Give me a hand here,” he said.
“No.”
“Come on, don’t be a jerk.”
“You’re stealing his marbles,” I said.
“That’s just what I’m doing. It’s a gag. Come on, give me a hand here.”
The next second was when I almost lost my own sanity because I said, I actually heard myself say, “You can go to jail for that!” as if even I had begun to believe there was a fortune in that suitcase instead of hunks of colored glass.
“For stealing marbles?” Ronnie asked incredulously. “Don’t be a jackass.”
His answer startled me back to reality, but at the same time it puzzled me. Because here he was, a grown man, twenty years old, and he was telling me these were only marbles, and yet he was thoroughly involved in all this frantic nuttiness, so involved that he was in Jimbo’s bunk actually stealing marbles which he claimed he knew were only marbles. He opened his own suitcase and then, seeing I was staring at him with a dumfounded expression, and knowing I wasn’t about to help him, he lifted Jimbo’s bag himself and tilted it. The marbles spilled from one bag to the other, bright shining marbles, yellow and red and striped and black and green; glass marbles and steelies and glistening pureys, marbles of every size and hue, thousands and thousands of marbles, spilling from Jimbo’s bag to Ronnie’s in a dazzling, glittering heap.
I shook my head and said, “I think you’re all nuts,” and then I walked out of the bunk. Ronnie came out after me a minute later, carrying his own full suitcase, bending over with the weight of it. I watched him as he struggled across to the flagpole in the center of the camp. He put the bag down at his feet and then, his eyes gleaming, he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Where’s Jimbo McFarland?”
There was no answer.
“Where’s Jimbo McFarland?” he shouted again.
“Stop yelling,” I called from the steps of the bunk. “He’s up at the handball courts.”
“Jimbo McFarland!” Ronnie screamed. “Jimbo McFarland!” and the camp voice-telephone system picked up the name, shouting it across behind the bunks and down by the gully and through the nature shack, “Jimbo McFarland!” and over to the lake where some kids were taking their Red Cross tests, and then up into the hills by the mess hall, and across the upper-camp baseball diamond, and the volleyball court, and finally reaching Jimbo where he was playing handball with one of the counselors.
Jimbo came striding down into the camp proper. He walked out of the hills like the gunslick he was, his back to the sun, crossing the dusty grounds for a final showdown, stopping some twenty feet from where Ronnie stood near the flagpole.
“You calling me?” he said.
“You want to play marbles?” Ronnie answered.
“Have you got any marbles?” Jimbo said.
“Will you match whatever I’ve got?”
Jimbo hesitated a moment, weighing his luck, and then said, “Sure,” tentatively accepting the challenge.
“Whatever’s in this bag?” Ronnie asked.
Again Jimbo hesitated. A crowd of kids had begun to gather, some of whom had followed Jimbo down out of the hills, the rest of whom had felt an excitement in the air, had felt that the moment of truth had finally arrived. They milled around the flagpole, waiting for Jimbo’s decision. The gauntlet was in the dust, the challenge had been delivered, and now they waited for the undisputed champion to decide whether or not he would defend his title. Jimbo nodded.
“However much you want to bet,” he said slowly, “is all right with me.” He had irrevocably accepted the challenge. He now had to call or lose the bet by default.
“Okay, then,” Ronnie said. He stooped down beside his suitcase. Slowly, nonchalantly, he unclasped the latches on either side. He put one hand gently on the lid, and then he looked up at Jimbo, grinned, quietly said, “Odds or evens, Jimbo?” and snapped open the lid of the bag.
From where I sat, I saw Jimbo’s face go white. I don’t know what crossed his mind in those few terrible moments as he stared into the bag at those thousands and thousands of marbles. I don’t know whether or not he even made a mental stab at calculating the number of glistening spheres in the suitcase. I only know that he staggered back a pace and his jaw fell slack. The kids were silent now, watching him. Ronnie kept squatting beside the suitcase, his hand resting on the opened lid, the sun glowing on the marbles.
“Well, Jimbo?” he said. “Odds or evens?”
“Odds or evens, Jimbo?”
Perhaps Jimbo was feverishly calculating in those breathless moments. Perhaps he was realizing he had walked into a trap from which there was no return: he would either call correctly and become the marble king of the entire world; or he would call incorrectly or not at all, and lose his fortune and his fame.
“Odds or evens?” Ronnie demanded.
Odds or evens, but how to call? How many thousands of marbles were in that suitcase, and really what difference did it make when it all narrowed down to a single marble, the real difference between odds and evens, one solitary marble, call wrong and the empire would come crashing down. Jimbo took a deep breath. The sweat was standing out on his face, his eyes were blinking. The kids around the flagpole stood silently awaiting his decision. Ronnie squatted by the suitcase with his hand on the lid.
“Odds or evens?” he asked again.
Jimbo shrugged. Honestly, because it was what he was really thinking, he said, “I... I don’t know.”
“Did you hear him?” Ronnie said immediately. “He loses by default!”
“Wait a minute, I...”
“You refused to call, you said you didn’t know! I win by default!” Ronnie said, and he snapped the lid of the bag shut, latched it and immediately lifted it from the ground.
“Now just a second,” Jimbo protested, but Ronnie was already walking away from him.
He stopped some five paces from the flagpole, turned abruptly, put the bag down, grinned, and said, “You stupid jerk! They were your own marbles!”
For a moment, his announcement hung on the dust-laden air. Jimbo blinked, not understanding him at first. The kids were silent and puzzled in the circle around the flagpole. Ronnie picked up the bag of marbles again and began walking toward his bunk with it, a triumphant grin on his face. And then the meaning of what he had said registered on Jimbo’s face, his eyes first, intelligence sparking there, his nose next, the nostrils flaring, his mouth then, the lips pulling back to show his teeth, and then his voice, bursting from his mouth in a wounded roar.