The Card That Looked the Same

At the far end of the Ropewalk there was a coil of rope too heavy to move and too good to cut up, so Tace Ropewright had tipped it on its side and made it into a card table. On the side of the coil, about as high as a sitting man’s knee, somebody had written in chalk: Winter. Disputed.

The somebody was Tace.

He had hosted card night at the Ropewalk for years and years. He brought the stools down from the loft. He swept the hemp dust off the coil. He kept a hot paper packet from the quay warm on the stove for whoever lost first, so that nobody went home with nothing. He said this was hospitality, and everyone else said it was a bribe to come back. And at some point in every card night, usually when he was winning, he tapped the chalk with one finger.

“Last winter,” he said. He was saying it to a new deckhand off the Gannet, a young woman called Hal Fernley, who had only asked where to put her cup. “Night round. I had one lantern left, and a Lantern Page standing in front of it with his little pole up. And Pell plays a Kind Gust.”

Across the coil, Pell said, “Here we go.”

“A Kind Gust,” said Tace. “Ordinary card. Everybody has one. But it came off Pell’s fingers and went across this coil like a plate across a wet table. I have never seen a card go like it. The gust blew my page clean off the edge into the sweepings. The poor little fellow lay there napping till we’d packed up, and my lantern went out.”

Hal looked at the chalk. “So what was wrong with the card?”

“It was a different card,” said Tace. “It looked the same.”

“He called it a cheat,” said Pell, who was eating out of the hot packet, having lost first.

“Once,” said Tace. “Last winter. Since then I have only said disputed.”

“It was my own card. It’s been in my deck for years.”

“Then bring it up,” said Tace. He said it nicely, because he was the host and Pell was a guest with a mouthful. “I only want to hold it. I’ll give it straight back.”

“Tomorrow,” said Pell. “Definitely.”

Tace had been counting. That was the eighth.

On the shelf above the stove sat a biscuit tin where Tace kept his tracer ends. A tracer is a bright yarn laid into a rope so that anyone can see who made it. When a rope was finished Tace snipped the ends and saved them, and every tag that left the Ropewalk was tied with one, so a crew could tell a Tace rope from across the quay. There were reds in that tin, and blues, and a green like a new pear, and a yellow the crews called egg. Pell had looked into it on every card night since the autumn. Twice Pell had been caught counting.

Tace had seen. Tace had said nothing. Those ends were for the year’s rope tags, and he was not giving them to anybody, not even for a look at a card.

* * *

The next morning Tace and Moss were splicing an eye into a mooring line, which is slow work and leaves a man plenty of breath for talking. Pell came up the long shed for a coil of lacing cord.

Tace raised his voice. “Moss. Did I ever tell you about last winter?”

“You told me before I’d got my coat off,” said Moss, and tucked a strand.

“A Kind Gust,” said Tace, to the whole shed. “Went across the coil like a plate across a wet table.”

Pell was at the cord rack, measuring lacing against one elbow, and did not turn round.

“It was a different card,” Tace told the rafters. “It looked the same.”

“Tomorrow,” said Pell, to the cord rack.

“Ninth,” said Moss, and pulled her strand tight.

On the way out Pell stopped by the stove and lifted the lid of the biscuit tin about an inch. Pell looked in for a while, then put the lid down very gently, the way a person closes the door on a sleeping baby. The tenth tomorrow came and went the same way, two days later, over a different splice.

* * *

So Tace wrote a tag.

Every finished splice at the Ropewalk went out with a tag on it saying what it was and who it was for. That afternoon a splice was going down to the Gannet, whose envelope lay across Pell’s bench being patched. Tace took a tag and wrote on it in large, careful capitals: BRING THE CARD. TACE. He tied it on with a good long end of red, and he sent it down.

At dusk the handcart came back up the shed, empty except for the tag. Somebody had untied it and sent it home. On the back, in Pell’s looping hand, it said: Tomorrow. P. And underneath, smaller: Is this red from the tin?

“Eleven,” said Tace, to nobody.

He sat on his stool by the coil and turned the tag over a few times. He had known since autumn what Pell wanted. So that was the price of the card. He looked at the tin. He looked at the chalk. He wanted to know about that card more than he wanted to keep his reds.

* * *

And the next day, to the surprise of everyone in the shed, and possibly of Pell, the tomorrow came.

Pell walked the whole length of the Ropewalk holding a square of envelope lining out in front, the way people carry a cake. The lining was gold, with small green stars stitched all over it. It was the sort of thing Pell sewed inside airships where only the crew would ever see it. Pinned to the middle of it, face up, was a Kind Gust.

“Before you say anything,” said Pell. “Terms.”

Tace put down his fid. “Go on.”

“A hand’s length of every color in that tin. Your hand. Not mine.”

Tace looked at his hand. He had been making rope for a very long time, and it was a large hand.

“And you never call that game a cheat again,” said Pell. “Whatever you find.”

“Whatever I find,” said Tace slowly.

“Whatever you find. You can say anything else you like. You can tell it every card night till the coil wears through. You just can’t say cheat. And you keep the card. I’ve lost enough card nights to it.”

Moss had stopped splicing to listen. Tace looked at the card. It looked like every other Kind Gust on the harbor: a round-cheeked little wind blowing a hat off a post.

“What do you want them for?” he said. “The yarns.”

“The inside of a lining,” said Pell. “Round the seams. Where nobody will ever look.”

“Then why does it matter what color they are?”

“Because I’ll know,” said Pell.

That seemed fair to Tace. It was very nearly what he would have said about a rope tag. “Done,” he said, and they shook on it over the coil.

Then he took down the tin.

He did not hurry. He set the tin on the coil, took the lid off, and laid the lid beside it. He took out each end one at a time. He laid it along his palm, from the crease of his wrist to the tip of his longest finger and not a hair past, and cut it with his knife. Then he named it and handed it over.

“West Mooring red,” he said. “Bell rope blue. That green’s off the Gannet’s spring lines. That one’s egg.”

Pell took each one as if it were hot. There were twenty-two colors in all. By the end Moss had come over to watch, and Hal Fernley had come in from the quay to find out what the quiet was about.

Then Tace unpinned the card.

He noticed the weight before he had even turned it. It was a little too thick between his finger and thumb. He turned it over. The whole back had been patched, edge to edge, with a scrap of silk the color of a plum. It was a shade nobody would have chosen for a card, and nobody but Pell would have chosen for anything.

“It went in a puddle on the quay,” said Pell. “The week before that card night. The back came off in strips. I had a bit of lining over, so I mended it. It’s the same card.”

“You could have told me.”

“You’d have said I made up the puddle. You had to hold it.”

Tace thought about this. “I would have said that,” he said.

“And I wasn’t bringing it up for nothing,” said Pell. “I’ve been looking at that tin since October.”

Tace laid the card face down on the coil. He put one finger on it and gave it the smallest push.

It went. It went right across the top of the coil on its silk back, like a plate across a wet table, and off the far side. Moss caught it without looking, the way she caught everything that came off that coil.

Tace sat back on his stool. He had been sure of something for a whole year, and he had just found out he was only half right. For Tace, half right was a very good result. He looked as pleased as anyone had seen him look all winter.

“It was a different card,” he said. “It looked the same.”

“Same card,” said Pell.

“Same card,” said Tace. “I’m glad it was a puddle.”

“So am I,” said Pell. “It was a good puddle.”

Tace licked his thumb and rubbed out Disputed. In its place, in his best chalk hand, he wrote: Same card. Different card. Then he wrote the whole story on a rope tag, small, down both sides. He tied it with the last stub of the red and hung it on the peg with the finished splices, where everybody coming up the shed would see it. The card he put in his own deck.

Pell stopped at the door of the shed with both hands full.

“Card night,” said Tace. “Friday. There’ll be a packet.”

“Is that a Friday,” said Moss, “or a tomorrow?”

“A Friday,” said Pell.

Then Pell went off down the quay with twenty-two colors in one fist, quite certain of having had the better end of the bargain. Tace sat by the coil with the card in his fingers, quite certain of the very same thing.

They were both right. And on Friday Tace played it. The little round-cheeked wind went across the coil like a plate across a wet table and blew Pell’s squire into the sweepings, and this time everybody cheered.