Seven Stud by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Chapter 12
I pulled into Butch’s driveway at 8:30 AM the next morning, half an hour early. He must have heard my car on the gravel as he was waiting in the open front door in his bathrobe, when I got out of the car.
“You have trouble sleeping?” he said.
‘No, you have trouble getting up?”
“I intended to be ready at 9 AM. Don’t be annoying me now.”
“It’s probably a small thing, but we have to go over it before we leave.”
“Having second thoughts?”
I said; “Hell, no.”
“I am.”
“Oh, no, don’t tell me.”
“I woke up dreaming about what I could do with the money I already have. I’m not sure if I dreamed it or just thought about it after my awakening.”
“Ah, shit on it. It’s just last minute jitters. You’ll get over it as soon as we get moving.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Yes, you will. How long do you think $110,000 is going to last?”
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“Pretty long.”
“Yeah, if you continue to live here.”
“I could move in with Alice.”
“Just what Alice needs; an unemployed guy hanging around her all day and all night.”
“You know, sometimes you say things.........”
I sort of interrupted him and said; “Look, we’re going to have to discuss appropriate attire.”
“I dress the way I feel like it.”
“Good. Me too. At the same time we have to be aware of the other player’s reactions to us.”
“Why?”
“We can use it to our advantage. We’re going to be what we are; a couple of fucked up country boys, probably knowledgeable in the use of guns.”
Butch may have been slightly insulted and said; “I know how to use a gun as good as most anybody.”
“I know that, too. It also means nobody at the game is going to really try any shit with us. Something I use in the playing of a card game is to watch whether people act superior to us in little ways. It usually means that they also tend to over-bet their hands.”
“Yeah, I use that, too, except I don’t describe it the way you do. It’s something like, ‘Some people are full of shit and
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you just don’t listen to what they say. You watch their actions and discount the overstatements.”
I smiled at him, looked in his eyes and said; “Butch you are the almost perfect partner. We’re one hell of a team and I don’t think there are many who can beat us.”
“We’ll get our ups and downs.”
“Sure. But, the way I see it, if there are four other people in the game, at least two of them will be very beatable.
We might beat the smarter group, too and that will just be gravy.” I grabbed him around the neck, put my face alongside his, squeezed and said; “We’re going to do it, man, I just know it.”
I broke away from him, spun around and spun around again, again facing him. “One more thing. They’re going to try to get us in some conversation. We don’t want to tell them exactly where we live. It could be Pennsylvania or New York for all they know. We just say; ‘We didn’t come here to bullshit. We came here to play cards.’ We have to remember that this is probably a one-time thing, as we might get famous and it’ll be harder then.”
Butch said; “Why do you keep telling me all these things I already know? This is going to work out fine. It’s our best shot.”
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He walked away and from a distance of two feet, we shook our heads from side to side and looked the other up and down, with knowing smiles.
I said; “Did you play sports as a kid?”
“Sure, didn’t we all?”
I thought for a second; and said; “Yeah, back then, anyway.”
He went in the bathroom to dress, leaving me to stare out the window of the now sunny wooded hills. I was feeling very confident and I had a daydream. I was walking around on a sunny early spring morning. The lightly clouded blue sky evinced a remnant of the preceding night, a very clear large full moon in striated brightness. There was a half-acre muddy field ahead.
The water source must have been unnatural as the rest of the area was dry, to the point of dusty.
In the muddy field about thirty broken wooden wheels were turning on simple wooden stands. All the wood was very weathered and probably never had been stained. The wheels were assembled in a batten manner, comprised of four boards cut to the appropriate shape, held together by two straight boards nailed into the back. Each was broken in some fashion, most of them missing part of an outer section, thereby being flat on part of one side.
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Despite that, they were all turning in the deep mud with no discernible power source. They didn’t seem to be accomplishing anything, as the mud pushed out of the holes the wheels were in, would roll slowly back where it came from. I stared at them a while, wondering what they were trying to do. I hoped that someone would make himself visible to me, so that I could ask him about the wheels. No one showed up. All I heard was silence, gently marred by the slushing creaking sounds of the wheels, doing whatever job they had been assigned.
When Butch exited the bathroom the wheels disappeared somewhere into the sky or ground. I suspected they continued to work without any surveillance necessary. He had on his best cowboy duds; boots, black denim pants, a fancy blue shirt and a brown suede vest. “I’m ready,” he said.
“You remember your gun? I got mine,” proudly smacking the right front pocket of my well used blue jeans.
“Of course,” he smiled, remembering that he had loaded mine with blanks and realizing that I had not yet figured that out.
“Let’s take my car.” We walked out to the garage and got in the old Mustang. There was no major highway between us and Atlantic City, so we drove the scenic route. As we passed through Hunterdon and Somerset counties, there was little meaningful change in the topography and types of houses, except that the further we went the more suburban developments were in evidence.
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One of the more desired developments consisted of about twenty houses, with which a quick glance one could see variety; Tudors, colonials, Mediterranean styled and those with vague modern pretensions. However, closer inspection would reveal that the 4,500 sq. ft. structures were identical or mirror images, as the only difference was the type of siding. They sat in dominance over their impeccably maintained, treeless 1 1/2 acre lots.
Their current baldness was originated by the builder’s bulldozers, presumably to make the construction process more efficient, but I suspect that there were also some other considerations no one spoke about in polite company.
I noticed that the speedometer was approaching 80 when we started to encounter increasing numbers of other travelers. I said; “I don’t feel like knocking down and then fixing somebody’s mail box, today,” referring to our recent chance meeting procedure.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “If I can go 90 drunk, I can easily handle 80 sober and wide awake.”
That made perfect sense to me and I didn’t want to quibble small points when I was anxious to get to our destination.
Besides, we really didn’t have to fix it anyway. We could just keep going. My right hand grabbed the otherwise useless handle over the door and I slouched down in my seat planting both feet firmly on the sloping floor.
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“Nervous?” he said.
“No. Prepared.”
We passed through towns containing houses of every imaginable style, size and color on much smaller lots. We started to run into more annoying red lights and stop signs, most often coinciding with the turn into one of the area’s corporate campuses. I’ve always considered that terminology a bit of an oxymoron, though slightly indirect. No matter, I was just filling my head with thoughts to dispel the emptiness caused by the lack of conversation.
We again got more of the road to ourselves when we entered the Pinelands. The name says precisely what the area looks like. The flat, sandy, pine-filled land displayed a wide variety of houses, but few colonials and Tudors and a significant number requiring an extended maintenance plan. We were in the area of the famous Jersey Devil. When I was first told about him, I noticed that there were various available descriptions, but no stories of ominous deeds performed. Some devil. Maybe he worked on some subliminal level not yet explored. I saw something fitting one of the many descriptions available walk back into his bi-level carrying a six pack.
“Hey, Butch, did you see him?”
“I guess not. Who?”
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“I just saw the Jersey Devil go into that house back there.”
“You must be mistaken. He lives about a mile further down the road.”
Shortly after escaping the shadows caused by wall to wall pine trees, we started to encounter houses that are simply called “shore types.” They generally share the appearance of a traditional clapboard colonial, but with varied differences, many designed to keep out direct sunlight. There were also large boxes originally built cheaply, but now expensive because of the ocean proximity. Many were rented to young vacationers, often having twenty occupants coming and going, further increasing the economic utility.
I said; “Butch, are you all right?”
“Yeah, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing, really. It’s so quiet.”
“That’s because you shut up for once.”
I laughed. “Feeling lucky?”
“Yes, I am. How about you?”
“Really good. I’m completely relaxed and sure that our next problem is going to be where to keep all the money.”
He said; “I never thought about that. If we put it in the bank, we might wind up paying income taxes on it.”
“Right.”
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“So where do we put it?”
“Under the mattress?”
“I’ll never get any sleep on a mattress that lumpy.”
We were laughing as we saw the sign announcing Atlantic City. We crossed a bridge over a swampy area host to no other structures. Exiting the bridge we saw the abandoned apartment buildings, open lots filled with weeds and various types of garbage and houses evidencing no maintenance for decades. We saw people of various ages, sexes and colors, with one big thing in common. They looked angry. Did they actually once believe that the allowance of gambling would provide all the goodies promised by the developers and government officials? That’s too naïve. They’re probably mad about everything, as we all are, but they feel free to show it.
Then we got our first glimpse and beheld the temple of Oz, piercing and presiding over the gray overcast sky.
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