It was a game of knowing the numbers and percentages. There were six pegs in three colors, side by side. In total there were three rows of 120 holes you had to work your way through to get to the finish, and three more holes for each peg behind the starting gate. At the end of the 120 holes was one single hole for the winner. In a two-person game, each player was dealt six cards. Two of those went into the crib, four extra cards whose points went to the dealer. Then the deck was cut, and the top card was flipped over. Each player took a turn laying cards, trying to add up the point values of the cards to 31 or as close as possible. Then the next player laid a card. Matching a laid card was two points. Laying a third of the same was worth six. Adding a card to total 15 was two points, adding up to 31 was also worth two points. One point for the last card. Any runs gave you however many points as there were cards in the run. After both hands were laid, each player counted their hands, using the card that was turned up earlier, counting runs, doubles, triples and combinations that added up to 15. The dealer also got to count the four-card crib. Each player inched their way forward, hoping to reach 121 points first.
Cribbage was Chuck’s game, his heart and soul. For a while, he found the game sickeningly boring, watching his parents play it endlessly, day after day. But then he picked up a book from his school library about mathematics and cards. He worked through the exercises in the book and, one day, challenged a friend to a game for his 25-cent allowance. He won and was hooked. Before long, Chuck improved by patiently watching and playing all the games he could, for money or not. With a newfound sense of excitement, he watched his friends play, then watched the old men in coffee shops live and breathe to play the game while the world turned around them unnoticed. There were even games in his dad’s barber shop where his dad paid him 10 cents an hour a day to sweep up and run errands.
From early on, Chuck was seen as a wonder-kid to so many people: from his friends and fellow students and teachers, even to his parents and grandmother. He was the kind of kid who could tinker with just about anything and not only take it apart, but figure it out and put it all together again. Once when he was just 11 years old, he managed to learn from a library book how to take apart his mom’s broken blender, order the malfunctioning part from Sears and install the replacement part that got it working again.
Everyone who encountered him in his early days thought he was a marvel. In class, Chuck would pretend to be working or reading, but he was actually daydreaming about Patricia, the prettiest girl in his class and the only other student who got marks as good as him. In the fifth grade, he had brought home more 100% score tests than any other student in his school, beating Patricia by only two tests and four percentage points.
When the final results of the competition came out that year, Patricia looked sad at losing the top spot to Chuck. At the end of year ceremony to give out academic awards, Chuck walked away from his spot on the stage and gave Patricia a kiss on the cheek and a hug while the entire audience, including Chuck’s parents watched. There was no end to the pride his mom and dad held for him.
Despite showing an interest in girls, Chuck was obsessed with the math and science of card games. His parents had dreamed of sending him to university, but instead he read books about gamblers and pool hustlers, leaving the educational books and gifts he was given to gather dust. In Chuck’s mind, playing cards was the only way for him to come out ahead in life. He never saw a future of dry theories, technical studies and lectures about people who didn’t have his ability or killer instincts.
Back in the late 1950s, Edmonton was home to all kinds of money games for crib players, from the penny-a-point matches he played with friends to the $5-per-person games he could only hungrily watch and patiently wait to join. Then there were the tournaments. There was plenty of room there for someone who was good enough to win, big but the game had its risks. Everyone could get bad cards. Regardless of luck, however, the best players consistently made it to the top.
As time passed and Chuck went into junior high, he thought a lot about Patricia. He always imagined living with her in a big house in Los Angeles with a pool, all of it bought with card game winnings. She would be the perfect wife, still as cute as she was at the time, working somewhere as a scientist, changing the world while Chuck brought home the big bucks.
One Wednesday, screwing up all of his courage, he looked up her number in the phone book. His parents were in the backyard having a barbecue, allowing him the privacy he needed. He had prepared and practiced for weeks regarding what he would say.
Finally, he called her house.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Patricia. I’m so glad you’re home!” Chuck said.
“This is Patricia’s mother. What do you want with my little girl?” Chuck’s eyes went wide and he was struck dumb for a moment.
“This is Chuck from school. I needed to ask her something about homework,” he lied.
“Chuck? Good heavens, you’re the wonderful young gentleman who kissed my daughter and embarrassed her.” Something seemed off.
“Hey, who is this?” His question was met with a snort and a giggle. In the sounds he recognized Patricia’s voice.
“It’s Patricia, silly, I was kind of hoping you might call one day.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. What are you up to?”
“Well, I read this book and the movie to it is at the theatre. I thought you might want to go with me.”
“I would love to. What night? What time?” she asked.
“Friday. How about we meet at the Silk Hat on Jasper first for a milkshake?”
For two teens, it seemed like it took years for Friday night to finally arrive. A couple of times Chuck saw Patricia at school but felt self-conscious about talking to her, almost as if the date were a wedding and he couldn’t see the bride beforehand. What Patricia didn’t know was that the movie was the Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason classic, “The Hustler.” Chuck loved every word of the book and dreamed of one day being like Paul Newman’s character, Fast Eddie Felson, except that he would be a card hustler. He also dreamed of Patricia being a part of that and had planned out the next 10 years with her. As they were leaving the theatre, Patricia was silent.
“Hey, what did you think about how bad Fast Eddie Felson beat that guy on the billiard table? Man, $12,000 bucks in one night!”
“Umm, yeah, well-uh, it’s getting kind of late. My mom gave me cab fare to get home so I should really go.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. I was hoping to walk you home.”
“Yeah, sorry. Got to get home on time.” Just then, a cab went by and Patricia waved it down.
“But wait…” Chuck said.
“Yeah, what?”
Chuck moved in close to her with his eyes closed, and as his lips drew close to hers, she leaned back to avoid him. He opened his eyes as he almost fell over, looking surprised. “What a mixed-up guy,” Patricia thought to herself. She leaned forward and met his lips with hers; then they hugged and Patricia ran off to her cab.
The reality of Chuck’s dreams was that there were only a few card players in the world who earned enough to make a living like the one he dreamed of. Playing cards was mostly something people did with friends for small wagers. Anything big, or in games with people you didn’t know, you risked your own safety. Pulling down the big wins was long odds for everyone except the experts who were freakishly talented. Being young and indestructible, Chuck felt that he was also infallible, on or off the card table.
Chuck went back to school on Monday and glimpsed Patricia. When he walked through the crowded hallway of his school to where he saw her, she was nowhere to be found. In the coming days, this scenario happened a couple more times until, finally, on Thursday after school, he phoned her.
“Hello, Patricia?”
“Yes?”
“This is Chuck. I haven’t spoken to you in a while.”
“Yeah Chuck, that was kind of on purpose.”
“What? Why?”
“Well, that was a good movie we went to see, but I think you kind of missed the point of it. Do you seriously want to be like some pool hustler — getting his thumbs broken and losing all his money?”
“What’s so wrong with that? If you’re the best at something, you need to go after it.”
“Don’t you see it? You are smart, you can do math so well. There is no telling how far you could go if you were an engineer or a doctor.”
Devastated, Chuck hung up the phone at the thought that the one girl he felt was worthy of him didn’t see him as a winner.
As Chuck grew older and spent more time gambling, he learned about cheating, swearing to himself he would only ever use the knowledge to stop others from cheating him. Undeterred, he still loved to hear stories about people making millions on the turn of a card or the spin of a wheel.
He was fascinated by players heartlessly trying to get points at the expense of others’ mistakes. When they weren’t able to capitalize on an opponent’s mistake, Chuck watched for the tell-tale signs that would reveal what a player had in his hand. Some of the time he could judge partially by knowing people and partially by counting the cards that were already flipped over, even getting an edge from keeping a close eye on how the cards were shuffled. As he played crib for fun or for points, he always tried to guess what card would be turned up next that would signal the race for those precious 121 points.
After school, Chuck watched the old men his father let lounge around the shop each day, how they displayed mountains of patience and ambition while playing the game few kids his age had. They had patience but, often, their memory or focus was going. He learned to think fast, count fast and remember the value of each card and each suit so he could make quick decisions. Soon, only the best players that came to the barber shop would play him, and they would mostly lose. The game was never boring to Chuck after he realized how aware you had to be to keep up with each development, each card turned up. Even when he wasn’t playing, Chuck’s mind was active. He would deal imaginary cards to himself, calculating chances of loss, chances of giving away points, of making stupid moves.
If it was a random money game in some hidden pool hall, and he planned to win without cheating, he would have to hide his abilities so his opponent didn’t know how skilled he was. Watching games where this dynamic happened helped him learn more about cheating. Then there was always the psychological aspects of playing. He often watched the old men at his dad’s shop let out a string of obscenities when an advantage was given, slamming down their cards when they made a key move. Sometimes when they did this, an unnoticed left hand would slip a jack or a five off the table and into their lap. Sometimes they didn’t cheat, hoping to rattle their opponent with anger and strong words. Regardless, there was a beauty to the game, a rhythm that drew Chuck into every little intricacy of Cribbage.
As Chuck grew and watched his parents play crib, he would carefully tune in all of his senses, focusing completely on the nuances of the games, the special rhythm of chatter that went on as the communal card and then the dealt cards were laid. He even developed the unique skill of being able to tell a face card from a number card by the weight of the ink on it. One thing Chuck learned that kept him on his toes, was that no two games were ever exactly alike. You always had to stay on the ball through the whole game if you wanted to win.
“10,” The first player after the deal would say after putting down a 10 or a face card.
“15 for two,” Came the response as a five was laid down.
“20 for two,” Came the defiant words as a second five was laid, earning two more points. “I don’t think you have the other one,” the player said, to bait and put pressure on his opponent.
“Maybe you shouldn’t think at all,” the grey-haired, crew-cut, tough looking Hungarian said as he laid the third five, slapping it down on top of the card he previously played. “25 for six”
“I would call you a bastard, but the fact is you’re more of a lemming. 30 for 12.” The fourth and final five was laid, as the player grinned from ear to ear, and then counted the 12 points on the board with his colored pegs.
12 points. That was some magic. It was also $1.20 at the agreed upon 10 cents a point when the final scores were added up. 12 dimes.
Chuck thought, Four comic books and a bag of chips, plus a couple of bottles of pop for proving you were the better man by holding onto a couple of fives.
Chuck learned games fast, but he always went back to crib. All ages played it, and it was mainstream enough for a professional to always find a game or a tournament. It took a lot of skill to evaluate and judge the six cards you were dealt, quickly choosing two to throw into your crib or your opponent’s crib. On the fly, at a rapid pace, a player had to calculate odds, think about what cards an opponent or opponents might be holding, what they may have tossed in the crib, and which card may be turned up from the deck, always being aware of which cards he could best use for pegging.
So many possible combinations, so many ways to get lucky while you balanced your luck with skill, and the money could be huge. One man had kept winning tournaments so many times that the organizers of the tournaments pooled what they had to spare and bought him out of ever playing again in a tournament just so their customers wouldn’t give up trying to enter, knowing they could never win.
When Chuck made it to high school, a good deal of his time was spent in the cafeteria of his school, with a lookout at the ready to warn him and his friends if a teacher or administrator was coming. Day after day, game after game, this was how most of his school years went by when he should have been learning what he would need one day if he wanted any kind of future other than being a card player. It earned him clothes, sports equipment, meals in restaurants. But it didn’t earn him Patricia.
Chuck didn’t care that he didn’t know how to fix a car or write a poem. He had never met anyone who had finished high school and college and made more than those few top card players he had heard about. Chuck’s Dad was behind him all the way. In fact, he would set up games for Chuck in some of those very same back rooms of pool halls or in his barber shop at a dollar a point, even $5 a point.
Here he was: a zit-faced and young, skinny 15-year-old, beating people 40, 50 years old who had played and won their whole lives. Things went so well that his Dad kept the shop open but rarely had to earn his money giving a haircut while his son was around. He was too busy counting money his ‘friends’ ended up losing, of which he would keep a generous cut for himself.
During the mid 60s, the world was reeling in the backwash of the Vietnam War and the death of a dearly loved American president. Soon, the indescribable feeling that the first Apollo moon landing gave to so many people happened right when his good fortune finally came to a crashing halt. He had been playing with some shady people, gangsters basically, in a makeshift unlicensed bar they called a ‘booze can’ when it was raided. When the dust settled, Chuck got six months in jail, mainly because there were illegal drugs and some stolen property found in the raid that everyone ended up taking the blame for. It should have reformed him, but it only made him bitter, and developed in him a desire to lie, cheat and scam his way through life.
In jail Chuck learned new kinds of card games, as well as all methods of cheating and getting an edge, and he played more than ever, for more money than ever before. He played crib in the mornings with the old men. He played poker with the younger ones in the evening and, in between, whatever game others were into. There were a thousand ways to win and lose money. Even in his cell, he played solitaire after lights out until he could no longer keep his eyes open.
Chuck lived and breathed cards until he was so far beyond simple mastery that he could well have been one of the greatest players ever. The money was flowing in from all directions. Jail currency was funny, though. It could come in the form of favors, sexual or otherwise, cigarettes, home-brew alcohol, easy jobs assigned by guards or staff that allowed him to look like he was working hard and paying the price of his crimes while, in reality, he was playing cards all day. Prison changed him, including developing a taste for prison home brew.
When Chuck got out of jail, he was ready to take on the world. It wasn’t long before his biggest dream came true. With constant dedication to his game of choice, after three years, Chuck had won so many crib tournaments from Fort McMurray to Medicine Hat, he was given that golden offer to move to another province and never play in a local tournament again for the princely sum of $27,000. He took the check, even though it meant leaving his parents and friends behind. Why not? The world was full of dreamers who think luck is enough. What he won didn’t come from anyone but him.
Chuck did have some luck; he couldn’t deny it. But he also was the one who took the risks, developed the skill and played with thugs who would cut off parts of his body if he didn’t somehow make it look like they had a chance when they played him and lost. For that risk, he figured he deserved to be a one-man operation and to be able to keep what a manager or business partner would take.
With the money he got, Chuck packed up his belongings with the intention to head for Ontario and even bigger action. Through a real estate agent, he sent a lot of his cash on ahead for a down payment on a house, but first took a vacation to Las Vegas, the city of lights. Little did he know that, with his criminal record and status as a player, the Vegas casinos knew he was inbound to get in some money games and travel home with more money than he brought. No casino owner or manager wanted him there, and they were far better prepared for his type of crook than the police in those days. They weren’t stupid in Nevada.
When a card player as known as Chuck was, booked a vacation, photos of him would be shared with all the major casinos. Information about him down to the last detail would be sent along with the pictures. He had a few days of reckless abandon, throwing money around, downing 12-year-old bottles of scotch and paying for the company of women. Then, when post-jail wild oats were sown, and he calmed down, Chuck entered a crib tournament and won more than $7,000. Before winnings could be picked up, he was asked to go to a special room by two massive bruisers whose muscles bulged through their dark suits, their eyes hidden by sunglasses. The bruisers searched every inch of his person, and roughed him up as they did, taking every cent he had, even the key to his hotel room, his identification, and his ticket home. They made it clear to him that his Las Vegas privileges were revoked. He was to leave, and his picture was permanently posted in every major casino on the strip.
Chuck left Vegas with a bad taste in his mouth, with nothing but the torn and wrinkled clothes on his back and the power of his own two legs, weakened by a steady stream of scotch. That feeling was all he had to propel himself down the thin shoulder of the cold, lonely highway that ran north. As the bright lights began to fade behind him, and a billion stars became visible in the achingly beautiful desert night sky, car after car went by without him getting a ride. He kept on walking. His feet were blistered heavily. He was running out of steam, wondering what he would do for water when the sun came up, when a car finally stopped. It was a cop car, and the occupant gave him a one-way ride to the county jail where he was soon sentenced to another six months, this time on the charge of vagrancy.
The Las Vegas jail was a good deal more brutal than the one he had been in back home in Alberta. There were ruthless, intimidating, shaved-head, iron-pumping goons that ran the institution from inside their cells. Even most of the guards were afraid of them, aside from the few who worked on the payroll of the older and more brutal “connected” inmates. Opposing them were also gang members from Crips to Bloods, to Hells Angels and onward down the food chain. Chuck stayed in his cell as much as possible and played games of crib against himself, using an old deck with three cards missing and a pencil and paper to count points. His only other pastime was reading dime-store novels.
Eventually, his sentence was up, but not his punishment. Chuck was put on an immigration bus that brought him all the way to the Canadian border where he was unceremoniously dumped. He took the $22 US he had on him from playing penny-a-point crib, and bought a bus ticket most of the way home. He walked the last 15 miles to Edmonton in the drizzle and cold November winds. A call to his real estate agent in Ontario revealed that he had forfeited his deposit on his new home a month ago when they couldn’t get in touch with him.
Home wasn’t quite the place it had been. It seemed like a lifetime had passed since he had been able to talk to anyone. When in jail, he had too much pride to call people collect and have them know this was how he had ended up. Calling them now was worse. Many of his old friends were now married, some with children, some with just a general low opinion of him and steady jobs to justify their opinions. The reaction from them was almost uniform. They got extremely apprehensive, talked to their wives and came back with a firm no. There were even a few of his old connections who had given up all forms of gambling to focus on a new religion or lifestyle choice.
No one from his youth was interested in getting a money game going. He was too ashamed to contact his dad, so for the next few nights he slept behind a dumpster. His luck improved when he made friends with some street people who told him about a shelter where he could stay and get food and find work. Even though it seemed like a million years ago, thoughts of Patricia were still in the back of his head. He wondered what she would say if she saw him all beaten down and dirty.
Things could have improved for Chuck from there. Instead, they got worse. Chuck had never really worked a day in his life at anything but learning how to shuffle a deck so the top card favored him, or how to deal a choice card from the bottom of the deck, or a dud card to an opponent. His youth had been wasted on nothing but learning how to count cards at lightning speed.
Now the only work available from the shelter’s in-house employment agency was either labor or construction jobs. He went from placement to placement, working a few days, trying to fake his way through the job long enough to collect his daily pay. After a month, his clothes filthy, his messed-up hair greasy, he walked into a casino and put all he had on the roulette table, a 2:1 paying bet, that the ball would land on a red number. As the croupier spun the ball in the wheel, it seemed like a hundred years slowly slid past before him as the ball spun in its track above all the numbers, then slowed, taking an agonizingly long time. The ball bounced in and out of black and red numbers, and for a moment it seemed it would settle into a 00 number which meant he had no chance of winning. Finally, it stopped, on a red number. Chuck felt no elation, no emotion, said nothing. He took his chips, exchanged them for cash and walked out, then got a room at the YMCA with a shower.
A week later, clean, shaven, benefitting from proper sleep and a few hundred practice card games at the Y, Chuck left his room in the midwinter chill and walked into a downtown pub known for hosting money games. He didn’t waste his time. He put his $230 out in the open on a table with a crib board on it. A slick, well-dressed, tall and skinny man with a smug look on his face and a pencil-thin dark moustache that matched his eyes and hair (which were obvious dye jobs) came and sat across from him.
“Can I take your money now or do I have to beat you first?” Slick said with a smile.
“230 bucks for one game,” Chuck said without hesitation. “First to finish gets all of it. You in?”
Slick got a quizzical look on his face, his eyes darting from one side of the room to another like some small rodent ready to move in on a tiny piece of cheese or bread. As he looked, it seemed like a couple of people who noticed him were trying not to laugh. They didn’t seem to be concerned about what he was doing. It was almost as if Slick wanted some kind of recognition or approval. Chuck was now certain he would win. After an awkward couple of minutes of this strange display, Slick took out his wallet and counted out his money, then set a neat, new stack of bills on the table beside Chuck’s pile.
“You have a bet. Cut for the deal.”
Each player cut the deck, showing the card at the bottom of the stack they had picked up. Chuck drew a deuce while Slick drew an eight. That made it Chuck’s shuffle and deal, and it also meant that he got the first crib. Chuck took an early lead, seemingly being able to know every move before it took place. That old rhythm started going. “10. 20 for two. 30 for six.” He was at home now. He was in his element. His fingers seemed to glide over the cards. They practically shuffled themselves. It was so easy to peek at the bottom card and deal Slick garbage for his hand. In no time, they rounded the last bend on the board. Chuck passed the skunk line, situated at 80 points, where all bets double for those who haven’t crossed it before the game ended. Slick made it across as well, then Chuck moved to within 20 points of finishing the needed 121 he had so effortlessly done a million times before. Chuck started to feel the old excitement and passion rifle through his veins, the feeling he only ever got from playing cards for money. Then it was time for Slick to deal, which meant he would have the crib, which also meant Chuck counted the points in his hand first because not having a crib was a disadvantage. There were no more tricks now. Chuck couldn’t stack a deck someone else dealt, and there was no way for Slick to cheat right in front of him.
Chuck’s six cards were dealt, and he picked them up. Then, without hesitating, he casually threw two threes into Slick’s crib. Those would theoretically cost him nothing if he could somehow finish the game before Slick got to count his own points. Slick put in his two cards. Then the deck was cut, revealing a six as the communal card. They began to take their turns trying to peg as much as they could with their doubles, runs and 15s, knowing the game and the money depended on it.
“Six,” Slick said.
“12 for two,” Chuck said, laying down another six and counting his two precious points.
“22,” Slick replied, playing a Queen, which was 10 points that got him nothing.
“31 for two,” Chuck said as he laid a nine.
As they played, the two drew closer to the 121-point finish. Then the cards were all played, and it was time to count the points in their hands and in Slick’s crib. Chuck had almost enough in his hand to win. Silently, he cursed as he tried to read the blank expression on his opponent’s face. His hands didn’t shake. He didn’t hesitate in any way. Slick threw down his cards to reveal he had just about nothing in his hand but didn’t look in any way concerned. He was 10 points out. With any luck, Chuck could make it on the next hand by pegging before the actual hands and crib were counted. It all came down to what was in Slick’s crib.
The two threes Chuck discarded into the crib should give him nothing. Two points tops. People get nothing in their crib all the time. It’s the most likely hand to have, since they are discarded cards. Chuck kept telling himself he could do this, that he could beat this guy all night and catch a jet to Ontario. As Slick reached across the table to turn the four cards of his crib face up one by one, he looked at Chuck, not the cards. The worst of it was that as he did this, he smiled his sickly-sweet little smirk that Chuck wanted to remove from his face. The first card was a three. The second, another three. OK, Chuck thought. That’s my two threes. What did he throw out? Slick turned over the next card. Another three. That’s six points! No way in a million years will he get the other card he needs to win. Slick slid the last card towards him, smiled and tossed it down toward Chuck as it flipped. It was the fourth three. 12 points. He had won. Chuck had lost everything.
“Very sorry, good, Sir. Seems I’ve won this one,” Slick said in a slightly loud, obnoxious manner.
“Fair and square. The money’s yours. Just one small request,” Chuck replied.
“Sorry, I don’t want to go double or anything,” Slick said.
“No, I wanted to ask if you could buy me a bottle of the good stuff. I’m feeling pretty down, and I know without it I won’t sleep tonight.”
“Yeah, sure. I can’t hold any hard feelings. Jerry!” Slick shouted toward the bar. “Can you bring a full bottle of Johnny Walker red label and put it on my tab?”
“Sure thing, Nicky. Got to get one from the back,” the bartender replied.
“Wait a minute,” Chuck said as the burly and tough looking bartender disappeared. “Don’t tell me you’re Nicky Proust?”
“In the flesh,” Slick responded.
Chuck fumed as he looked at him with his all-too charming smile that came along with a slight squint to his eyes and a raise of an eyebrow that only a person with a massive ego would use. His grin displayed every perfect tooth in his mouth.
“You’re the guy who was bought out of crib tournaments for life a couple of years back!”
“Yes,” Nicky said with a sudden dead serious expression on his face. “And they did the same to you. Only I never dealt from the bottom of the deck.”
Chuck went red in the face. How could he have seen that? The bartender brought Chuck’s bottle and stood waiting for him to leave. He put it under his coat like it was a delicate kitten or a small child he was sheltering from the cold, and shuffled out of the bar with no further argument or requests. He knew the Y wouldn’t let him in with or without the bottle. His rent was past due, and he had a strong feeling in his head that even begging on the main streets of Edmonton wouldn’t give him enough to put a roof over his head.
He could sell the bottle, but it was his last friend in the world. Chuck walked for a long time, his thinking convoluted by his devastating loss. Then he started to drink, and he felt waves and ripples of the kind of pleasure only good scotch can give. After walking halfway across the city, through empty Edmonton alleys, and taking in enough alcohol to have difficulty walking straight, Chuck nestled in behind a dumpster that looked warm enough for sleeping in and finished up the last third of his bottle.
He had a happy feeling, one that brought back memories of good times and joy, love and laughter with family and friends surrounding him. He felt wonderful right up to when the whiskey hit him full force and his head spun while a sickly feeling washed over him, causing him to vomit. After graduating to the dry heaves, what was left inside of him of the booze drained him of all his energy and made him fall into a deep sleep, as the walls around him swam as though they were made of rubber. By some cruel quirk of fate, after he managed to close his eyes, it began to snow, and the temperature dropped drastically. Chuck wasn’t seen again for some time.
It was a year and a half later that Nicky ran into Chuck again. He was sitting at a table in a crowded coffee shop, a dirty red flannel work shirt on, wearing a baseball cap with a bent rim, and he had about three inches of beard growth on his face. Leaned up against the table was a cane, but Chuck looked good overall. He even looked healthier somehow, everywhere but his eyes. He still had those piercing, intelligent dark brown eyes ringed with a tinge of red that no one could ever forget. What was different was that now they betrayed a sense of loss, hurt and pain that no one knew the source of.
“Chuck?” Nicky asked. “Is that you?”
“Yes, and you’re Nicky Proust, right?” It had been a tragic year since he had last seen him.
“In the flesh,” Nicky said to Chuck with an air of serious concern, his face purposely not flashing his signature grin. “How are you?”
“Nothing too different. I’m a loser like any other.”
“Loser?” Nicky exclaimed. “You were one of the best card players I’ve ever seen! You had me on the ropes and for a long time I was considered the best in the country.”
“Only because I cheated.”
“I have news for you. We were playing with my marked deck, but you dodged every trick I knew,” Nicky shot back, not expecting at all the answer that came back from the revelation.
“What difference does it make?”
“I guess it means I feel I owe you. You don’t look like things are going that well. I want to give you a hand. With the talent you have you could start up again and make a decent life for yourself. Hell, we could team up and enter tournaments down in the U.S. and clean up.”
“I have a decent life. I work, I sleep, I eat. No more gambling, no more hand-outs.”
“But why?”
“Everything I get that I don’t work for seems to hurt me. A year ago, when I was done with rehab, I found a lousy little job as a warehouse distributor and I grew to like it. I like having a reason to get out of bed, to say hi to my newspaper carrier and feel that first cup of coffee waking me up. I have a girlfriend, she’s an older, kind of rough woman, but I love her. I like my life, and I like myself now. I don’t want to jeopardize those things for anything.”
“Are you seriously telling me that after the heights of greatness you once were at you don’t want a fellow player to give you a hand? You could get back in the game and be a millionaire in no time. Forget work, forget wearing cheap clothes and drinking the cheapest beer.”
“I’m drinking coffee now. It’s all I drink. Besides, you did me a favor already. You got me that bottle a year ago. If you hadn’t done that, I would be dead or in jail. Right now, I don’t need a hand at all, but I sure could use a couple of feet.”
“How so?”
Chuck reached down and pulled up the legs of his pants to reveal that he had two prosthetic lower legs.
“They froze that night we played. I got a little too drunk.” Chuck paused, took a deep breath, looked out the window at the vast blue sky, took a moment to gather his thoughts, then continued. “I passed out and woke up covered in snow. My lower legs were frozen solid and had to be amputated. I spent time being trained to walk at the Glenrose Hospital. They taught me how to earn an honest living despite my disability. I didn’t really have any honest skills to begin with. When I learned how to make my own living, I lost my stomach for card games, gambling, all that crap.”
“Well, you’re a better man than I am, Chuck,” Nicky rose and thought of putting a $100 bill on the table to pay for Chuck’s coffee, but thrift got the better of him. “Best of luck to you then.” He put a five down, and walked out.
Soon, Nicky realized he could put the $95 he saved on Chuck’s handout on a game of roulette and never miss it. He had a feeling he was going to win too, lucky number 27. As he entered the doors of the dimly lit casino with its flashing lights, bells, sirens, and whistles, he felt like he was home. Having $95 in chips seemed so much more like real money than $95 in cash. The lone player at the lone roulette table, Nicky put down his pile of chips on 27. As the wheel spun and the croupier prepared to throw the ball, something sank inside Nicky’s chest. The ball was thrown and it stopped on number five.
For a moment, a brief moment, Nicky looked into a mirrored wall a few feet from the roulette wheel, and he didn’t like what he saw. The meeting with Chuck had rattled him and, as the croupier raked in his chips, he strangely felt so afraid, so small and weak and ready to freak out that he swore he would never gamble again.
But he did. Six months later, Nicky was stabbed during an illegal poker game. No one who cared found out for a while. He had alienated his family a long time ago. By the time anyone with any concern for him found out, instead of a funeral, the friends he had just got together and drank. Toward the end of the evening, just about every one of them came up with a story of how Nicky had ripped them off. Despite the money he had, he was buried in an unmarked grave.
Chuck and his wife continued to work and save. When the time for their retirement came, they found a modest apartment in Victoria on a lovely tree-lined street. They lived out their days in simple happiness, going for long walks, playing endless games of cards together. They lived not just as two adults going through the twilight of life, but as two best friends who wanted nothing more than to spend all their time left on Earth together.
Eventually, near the end of his life, Chuck wrote to Patricia. Someone from her estate wrote back to tell him she had passed away from cancer 13 years ago. When he heard this, he finally told his wife about Patricia and how he always wondered if she was right, if he really could have been someone special. All she did was kiss him lovingly on the forehead and tell him that to her, he was someone special, the most special person in the world.
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