Ain't No Winners in this Game - part 1

Suzanna Prescott Clay couldn’t sleep. At least, the woman who used to be Suzanna Clay couldn’t sleep.

She was Suzy Prescott now, she had to remind herself. She and her brother, who lay snoring gently beside her in the loft of the barn, had decided to change their names almost immediately after they left Manchester, Tennessee that morning. As they left the familiar land where they had lived all their lives, her brother, Jackson Lee Clay, suddenly announced, “Suzanna, everything is changing. We need to change our names, too. I think, from now on, my name’s Jack Straw.”

While the area and most of it’s people were nothing to them now, Suzanna was unwilling to sever every tie and so, to honor their dead mother, Suzanna Clay became plain Suzy Prescott.

They decided to leave Manchester after it came out they had been secret abolitionists helping local slaves escape to the North before the war. They might have been able to stick around in the community until people forgot that fact but the other thing that became known around the same time they weren’t sure they could survive, literally. That was the fact that they had assisted the Union forces against the Confederacy during the Recent Unpleasantness.

Suzy suspected it was more than coincidence that both of these secrets came to light about the same time that she had finally, and at the point of a gun, desuaded Virgil Cooper of the idea that she was going to be his wife. She had no idea how he’d managed to find out about the latter, but he might very well have put two and two together and figured out the former. After all, Suzy had helped many of Virgil’s slaves escape over the years.

Unbeknownst to Suzy, her and Jack’s daddy had promised her to Virgil before he joined the Confederate army. Once he returned and tried to collect his bride, he was quite put out that Suzy refused to have anything to do with him. At first, she politely tried to ignore him, but Virgil was never a man to take to being ignored. He eventually got so worked up over Suzy refusing his attentions, he tried to take her to his place by force. That’s when Suzy had to convince Virgil once and for all that he needed to get that idea out of his head. He swore he’d make her sorry she’d refused him. And now they were forced to leave the only home they had ever known, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing how upset she was.

Suzy had known Virgil since they were children and had always disliked him. He had always been arrogant and rude to anyone he felt was beneath him and that included Suzy and Jack. He was a cruel child and grew up to be a cruel master to his slaves. He treated them worse than his animals and that wasn’t saying much. Unfortunately, even though he acted scornful and superior toward Suzy, he had also fancied her from the time they were young adolescents. Suzy could only imagine why her daddy had promised her hand to him. except that William Clay probably saw something in it for himself and had never cared what Suzy thought, but Daddy was dead now and there was no way Suzy was going to become that insufferable prick’s wife.

In some ways it did not surprise Suzy that her daddy had done to her what he did. He had always liked Virgil and, unlike most, Virgil had never shown William Clay anything but respect. It was also true Daddy Clay could be as arrogant as any man alive. In fact, his arrogance had finally gotten him killed when he refused to give his best Tennessee Walker to a Union officer whose horse had

gone lame. The officer shot William Clay, apologized to Suzy and Jack, but took the horse anyway.

Admittedly, Suzy and Jack were more shocked than sad at the death of their father. William Clay treated his slaves humanely but still thought of them as property. He only treated Suzy and Jack marginally better and thought of them as his property as well. He believed completely in the succession and had he not been too old when the war started, he would have joined up.

As soon as Daddy Clay was in the ground with Suzy and Jack named as heirs to all the property, they gave all the slaves still on the farm their freedom. Even with that, all their older slaves chose to stay with Jack and Suzy. With ol' Massa Clay gone, they knew Suzy and Jack would treat them well and keep them safe from those who would resent their freedom. The few young men that Suzy hadn’t already helped escape decided to go North and try and join the Union forces.

Suzy and Jack, once he was old enough to be trusted, had, for a number of years, helped any slave in the area who wanted to, to run away. No one ever suspected anything because of the Clay family’s prominence in the community of Manchester.

Once the news got out about the Underground Railroad work and the spying, Jack and Suzy decided pretty quickly to leave. The last piece of business they had to attend to was signing over all two-hundred acres of their farm to their mammy and her husband, Henry, who had been slaves of their daddy since they were young. That was the final slap in the face to all the fine, upstanding citizens of Manchester that were now treating Jack and Suzy like so much manure on their shoe. It gave them both a particularly satisfied feeling to do that for Mammy and Henry and do it to their former friends and neighbors.

Suzy suggested Henry and Mammy, whose name she finally learned was Hannah, ask some of the newly freed slave families to come and live on the land and sharecrop. It would help Henry and Mammy manage the land and also provide for a number of people to be around in case their was trouble. And Suzy warned Henry as they left to expect trouble.

Suzy lay in the dark of the barn and smelled the sweet straw as she thought about all that had transpired over the last year. She wondered where she and Jack should go now and what they should do. She finally fell asleep with all this on her mind and it seemed like no time before Jack was shaking her awake.

“The cows are starting to stir around, Suzy. I think it might be getting toward daylight.”

Sure enough, when they peeked out the barn window, there was the faintest glow in the East. Fortunately, no light shown at the house yet. They quietly saddled their horses, filled a bag they found with sweet oats for the horses’ breakfast later and walked off, leading their horses toward the road they had been on last night.

After they had been riding for an hour or so, they found a quiet place in the trees where a stream passed through. There they stopped to let the horses rest and feed while they ate some of the delicious biscuits and jam that was part of the huge hamper of food Mammy prepared for them. They tried to tell her she needed to hang onto as much food as she could until the crops started to come in later in the summer, but Mammy wouldn’t hear of letting Jack and Suzy go off into the unknown without knowing how they would eat.

Suzy finally brought up the subject that had been dwelling in her mind since they got free of Manchester, “Where we gonna go, Jack? What’re we going to do? Our $300 will hold us for awhile but we need a plan.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about that, Suzy. I think we should go to St. Louis. It’ll take us a while to get there but I think we could earn us some money, save up and head out West.”

“How, Jack? You and I don’t have any real skills. I suspect our Southern gentility and manners won’t exactly be in high demand as job skills go.”

“Depends on what you’re talking about, Suzy. I didn’t say it had to be honest money. Look, you and I have been deceptive and sly since we were in our teens in the service of other people and causes we believed in. I think it’s about time we put some of that deceit and guile to work for our ownselves. It’ll take two and half, three weeks to get there. We’ll have plenty of time to come up with a plan.”

The three weeks it took Jack and Suzy to reach St. Louis passed quickly. Suzy remembered it as the last innocent period of both their lives, despite the occasional egg stealing and barn loft trespassing to escape the rain. Mostly, they slept out under the stars, taking time to hunt for dinner when they found a suitable spot and talked about the different ways they might go about supporting themselves when they reached St. Louis.

They agreed they should use several different means to separate people from their money. The primary way would, of course, be a widely played card game called Bluff, or as it was starting to be known; poker. Suzy and Jack learned how to play Bluff from Henry when they were young. They rapidly improved their skill with the game and used it as a means to gain information from the Grays and to barter that information for resources they needed from the Blues.

They became quite adept at both winning and losing when it served their purposes.

Once arrived in St. Louis, they quickly found an inexpensive set of rooms in an undistinguished part of town and started to work. One day they might set up at a busy corner in a well-to-do section of town and collect money for Civil War widows and orphans. The next day, Suzy would pose as the sister of a gold miner who had hit a rich vein, but needed cash in order to stake the claim and start mining operations. This was their most successful bit, as everyone wanted a chance to get in on the opportunity to own shares in a gold mine. They even had shares printed up, along with a fake map to the fake mine location. They didn't need to do this one too often, as it often netted them a month's worth of expense money for just one or two days work. That suited Suzy just fine. She thought it was too easy and found no challenge in the deception.

Along with the different frauds they were employing, they also started using a variety of identities and costuming. This made it much easier to work the same areas time and time again. Suzy liked being able to dress up and play different parts. Sometimes it was such a relief to be someone other than herself.


They played Bluff in various card parlors and saloons two or three times a week. At first, this was uncomfortable for Suzy. As a proper Southern lady, she had never ventured into one of these places, but as she kept telling herself, “You have done all sorts of things you never thought you could, this is just one more thing and it's for your survival this time.”

In playing Bluff, they each had their own strengths. Jack was excellent at being able to shuffle and deal any cards he wanted from the deck. When he was feeling full of himself, he would boast, “I can tell the Queen of Diamonds by the way she shines.” Suzy, on the other hand, could tell who was bluffing and who was holding a winning hand as if they were showing her their cards. They had also learned and agreed on certain subtle signals to pass each other information. They played carefully, each slowly building their bank, but not winning so often it raised suspicion. It was all going very well.

Until Shannon O'Dell came into their life.