by Shawn Inmon
One night, Mick was tending the campfire while I read one of his Playboys. When I got home, access to a magazine like that would be a long-forgotten dream, so I wanted to absorb as much of it as I could.
“What kind of a car are you going to buy with your share?” he asked.
I contemplated for a moment. “One that runs.”
“No, seriously. What kind do you want?”
“Seriously. I just want to not have to ride the bus any more. Anything other than that is a bonus.”
“Crazy kids these days,” Mick said, shaking his head. As a car nut, he couldn’t understand that I just didn’t care.
Every three or four days, we would gather up our water containers and make the five-mile drive to the nearest running stream. As soon as the Bumblebee halted, I would jump out, run to the stream and plant my face in it. The stream originated in melting ice and snow; it was shallow, swift, and wonderfully cold. I would drink until my sides ached. I always tried to carry at least a gallon or so of the water the old-fashioned way, inside of me.
After we’d been encamped almost a month, on one of our stream trips, Mick produced a bar of Irish Spring soap and a washcloth. “I don’t know what smells worse, the crapper or us, but we’re going to do something about our half of the equation.“
I gave the stream a doubting look. A foot and a half deep, and freezing cold. What was more, the dirt road ran parallel to the water. We had never seen another vehicle on that road, but it was a road and someone would someday use it. I hung back.
“Don’t be a pansy. Come on.”
I decided to let Mick show the way. A minute later, Mick was naked and soaping himself up in fast-running water that came just below his knees. I could see goosebumps on his arms, even though it was warm out, and he wasn't dawdling. Stripping down and wading into that water was the second to last thing on earth I wanted to do. Having my brother think I was a pansy was the actual last thing I wanted. I peeled down, piled my clothes, and stepped into the water. It was cold enough to feel like burning. How the hell did Mick manage to not scream when his toes hit this?
Like a captured soldier told to march, I took stiff steps until I joined Mick in the middle of the stream. The bastard's malevolent smile told me everything I needed to know. He handed me the slippery bar of Irish Spring and the washcloth; while I did my best to soap up, Mick bent over to rinse by splashing sub-Arctic water on himself.
That was the moment we heard an engine and the sound of tires.
We looked toward the road. There was a Jeep, top down, rolling toward us. Even at a slow pace, it would arrive before we could wade out of the stream and back to our clothes. We both stood there like mannequins, hoping that if we didn't move, whoever was inside the Jeep wouldn’t see us.
As it drew closer, we saw two gray-haired ladies inside. They rolled right up in front of us and stopped. The lady in the passenger seat smiled sweetly at us. “Hello, boys. Lovely day for a swim.” The Jeep drove away, both its occupants in an uproar of laughter.
Great. No girl has ever seen me naked, but someone my Grandma’s age has.
Mick waved at the old ladies, finished rinsing off, and walked back to his clothes. I followed, marveling at his unflappable nature. When we got back to the small piles of clothing, we realized that neither of us had a towel, so we found two big rocks and sat down to drip dry.
A small cloud of mosquitoes formed. Damn. Washed off 100 layers of Cutter's. Now I’ve got to start all over again. Mick pointed to the remnants of a cabin on the other side of the stream. “Do you see where that old shack used to be over there?”
I put my glasses on and squinted. “Yeah.”
“That’s a bunch of good wood that no one is using.“
“I think that depends on your definition of ‘good wood,’ but okay, yeah.”
“I think if we could bring some of that wood back to camp, I could patch that old shack at the campground, and we could stay in there instead of in the tent.”
I looked at the stream, which was only a foot deep but about forty feet across, then at the pile of wood. I was never graceful, and I could predict the result of me trying to wade across carrying load after load of lumber. “I’m pretty happy in the tent,” I said.
“Listen. I know it will be tough to carry the wood across the stream, so we’re not going to do that. Here’s what we’ll do instead: I’ll cross over, pile up the wood we can use, then throw it across to you. Even if it doesn’t make it all the way across, you’ll just have to wade out and get it. Okay?”
It wasn't okay. I just wanted to fill our water jugs and head back to camp, but in a battle of wills with Mick, I was severely outmanned. Mick got dressed, strung his shoes and socks around his neck, then crossed the stream.
“Oh yeah!” he shouted back at me. “There’s a lot of usable wood here. You’ll see.”
He grabbed a 2 X 4 that was maybe six feet long, walked to the edge of the stream, and threw it. It didn’t reach me, but it was close enough that I was able to scramble out without falling and fish it out. I retreated to dry land and tossed it down.
Next was an old piece of plywood, which was much harder for Mick to get a grip on. He did his best to throw it to me, but it caught the wind, kited, and fell to the water closer to Mick than to me. It caught the current just right and disappeared downstream.
“Never mind, there’s a lot here. We’ll get what we need!”
The third board he threw changed the whole direction of our summer.
It was another 2 X 4 that looked longer than the first one he'd thrown. He wound up, like a washerwoman emptying a bucket of used water, and let it fly. As the stud fluttered halfway across the stream and fell, Mick screamed and bent double, his hand between his knees. The screaming went on.
“Mick! What happened?” His only answer was a stream of obscenities.
I jumped in the water and ran across the stream, managing not to trip and fall. When I reached the other bank, Mick thrust his right hand at me, gripping it tightly at the wrist with his left. A deep, bloody gash started just beneath his pinky and ran in a jagged line across to his thumb.
I didn’t look too closely because I didn't want to see whatever insides the laceration might have laid bare. Instead I looked at the 2 x 4, hung up on some rocks at midstream, and saw a nasty-looking nail sticking out from one end. He had thrown the stud hard enough to rip that wicked-looking piece of rusty metal right through his skin and tissues. We were in the middle of the Matanuska Valley, close to a hundred miles from anywhere, but we needed a doctor.
“Can you drive a stick?” Mick hissed through clenched teeth.
Damn.
The Bumblebee had a manual transmission. Mick’s right hand was in no shape to shift gears. I’d had a few lessons in my stepdad’s old Courier pickup, so I nodded. Mick was the one bleeding, but I was the one who felt sick.
We picked our way across the running water, found the washcloth we had used, and wrapped it around Mick’s hand. I dug around in the back and found an old t-shirt on the floor. I tore strips out of it and did the best I could to bandage his hand, but the blood was already soaking through both layers. We climbed into the Toyota.
I pushed in the clutch, then squinted down at the handle to see if it told me where first gear was.
“I thought you said you could drive a stick?”
“I can. Kind of. Any port in a storm, right?”
“Okay, just give it some gas and start out in second. We’re not going to be going fast enough to have to shift out of second until we get back to the highway.”
I revved the motor too high, then let the clutch out too slowly. Later than expected, the Bumblebee jerked forward. Somehow the engine didn't die, and we were off like a herd of turtles. It had felt like a long ride on the way out to the campsite, but the ride back was an eternity. Mick dozed off against the passenger side window, and I did my best not to wake him as we herked and jerked down the road.
Anchorage was the closest c
ity, but I had no idea where anything was there, and it was a big city. My stick shift driving was lame enough on back roads and small highways; I didn’t want to try real streets with actual traffic. I retraced our path toward Seward without incident or damage, except for potential long-term harm to the clutch, while Mick slept on.
Mick woke up as we came to a stop in front of the apartment. Unless, of course, he had been awake the whole time, but had closed his eyes so he didn’t have to watch me drive.
As soon as Joann saw Mick’s hand, she hustled him off to the doctor and left me behind at the apartment to wonder how things were back at camp. We had planned to be back in an hour or two. Now we were going to be gone at least overnight. There was nothing electrical to worry about, and we hadn’t had a fire going that early in the day, but I still sat and worried about our camp and our little plants.
When Mick and Joann finally got back, his right hand was covered in a bandage so thick it looked like a cast. “Doc says I was lucky. No permanent damage. I’m grounded for a couple of days, then we can go back up.”
For two days, I enjoyed the pleasures of mid-1970s civilized living, small-town Alaska style: hot water, television, a basketball court down the street. After a few days, I was antsy to get back to our camp.
The empty water jugs were still in the back, so I filled them up at the apartment and carried them back to the Bumblebee. I stashed a bag of Reese’s Cups and Snickers under the seat, hoping they would get me through the last weeks at the campsite, and we took off. Mick drove; neither of us wanted to endure another trip piloted by me. The bandage left the tips of fingers clear enough for him to grasp the Bumblebee's smallish shifter knob.
When we pulled back into our normal parking spot, I felt a grab in the pit of my stomach. “I’ll come back and grab the water in a minute," I said. "I want to run ahead and make sure everything’s okay with the camp.”
I hustled down the small trail between our water source and camp. When I ran into the clearing, the first thing I noticed was how normal everything looked. The throne still ruled its dominion from the hill. The tent was still upright, slowly becoming part of its surroundings. The paperback I had been reading the morning we left to get water—Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow—was still sitting next to the stump I used as a chair.
Worried for nothing.
Mick emerged from the brush, holding his right hand against his chest. He stopped at the edge of the clearing, looked around, and shrugged. “Feel better now? Go get the water, so we can check on the crop.”
It took me two trips to carry the water back to camp, but I hurried. I was anxious to see how much the plants had grown in the days we were gone. They had been almost two feet tall when we left, sprouting up like gangly teenagers.
Mick and I walked to the runway. It was a warm July day, and even though the days were getting shorter, we were still getting plenty of sunshine. In July, in the Matanuska Valley, there are only a few hours of night, and they resemble what most of the world describes as dusk.
As we neared the growing beds, Mick said, “Son of a bitch.” He didn’t say it loudly, but he said it like he meant it.
I squinted at the runway. I could see our growing beds, dark brown against the tan and green of the surrounding grasses.
What I didn’t see were the plants.
I broke into a run, but the closer I got, the firmer the truth. The plants were gone.
Mick didn’t run. He already knew.
When I got to the first bed, I saw huge cloven hoofprints in the dirt, something like a cow's prints but more than twice the size.
Mick put his left hand on my shoulder and said, “Moose.”
I itched to say, “And Squirrel?” in a Boris Badenov accent, but this was not the time, so I stayed quiet.
As we walked the perimeter, it took little forensic effort to piece events together. A moose had wandered into our cannabis buffet. He or she had planted those giant hooves delicately at the edge of each bed and reached a long neck out to pluck and devour each of the plants we had babied along since they were sprouts. The moose had left not a single stem behind.
I looked at Mick, whose eyes were closed. I wondered if he was mentally returning all the things he had planned to buy with his cut of the take. I was doing that with my new car, which had disappeared with a “poof” from my dream.
Mick opened his eyes. First I saw the disappointment in them. Then they cleared. He shrugged and said, “That’s that. No time to replant this year. Maybe next year.”
Mick got knocked down a lot. Maybe it had made him resilient. I was less so; I stared at the dirt and mourned our plants for a moment. It had been fun planting them, nurturing them. I had never really thought about their end use, nor had I processed the idea of getting paid for the whole project. I had spent a month camping in the Alaska wilderness with my brother. We had sat around a lot of campfires, we smelled terrible, and we had a latrine that offered the best view in the world. It had been a great way to spend the summer.
Back in Seward, I took stock of the situation. Junk food, movies, and comic books had eaten away at my bankroll. I wouldn’t even be able to buy my school clothes, let alone dream of getting four-wheeled transportation. Time to adjust.
I called the landlord, my old boss, to see if he had any work. As usual, he had units that needed painting. I spent several of my last days in Alaska that year cooped up in one-bedroom apartments, slapping avocado paint on walls.
I got my final painting payday two days before I was scheduled to fly out of Anchorage. My total bankroll came to $117. With smart shopping, I could afford to get a few pairs of jeans, a couple of new shirts, and some socks and underwear. Thrilling.
That night, as usual, a bunch of people were hanging around Mick’s apartment. Mick and Joann were not among them, but that didn’t matter. People came and went constantly. I was sitting with three of Mick's crabbing and fishing buddies from the previous season, Jay, Sammy, and Brett. All three were rolling and smoking joints in efficient fashion. By now they all knew I didn’t smoke, so no one offered anything to me anymore.
Jay blew a cloud of smoke, then produced a small rubber cup containing dice. "You ever play 4, 5, 6?”
I saw Jay glance over at Sammy. In the corner, two teenage girls sat cross-legged across from each other, knees touching, staring into each other’s eyes without saying much. They were only a year or two older than me, but ages ahead in maturity and desirability. I didn’t know any of the other people who were in the apartment. “Nope. Don’t even know what it is.”
“It’s a dice game. It’s fun. Wanna play?”
“Umm… I guess. Okay.”
“Well, you’ve got to put something into the game to make it fun, but we play for really small stakes. Quarters. Got any quarters?”
I nodded and went up to my room. I closed the door, took out my $117 and change, and laid it on the bed. I put two one-dollar bills and four quarters into my right front pocket. The rest I stuck underneath a book in a nightstand drawer. I was pretty sure I was getting hustled, and I didn’t want it to be for very much.
I went back to the living room and laid the dollar bills and quarters on the coffee table.
Jay explained the rules, which were simple. One player served as the banker. He rolled three dice, which resulted in an automatic win, an automatic loss, or a score. If he rolled a score, then the other players also rolled the three dice to try and beat the score. The game is called 4, 5, 6, because that’s the best roll you can get. All bets were made before the first roll.
I nodded and put a quarter in front of me. Jay rolled an automatic winner and scooped my quarter over to his bankroll.
I put out another quarter and lost it, too. In just a few shakes of the cup, I was down to my final dollar and congratulating myself for leaving most of my money in the room. “You want me to break that dollar for you, or you want to bet the whole thing?” asked Jay.
I was anxious to let this life lesson play out as quickly as
possible, so I said, “I’ll play the whole thing.”
Jay rolled an automatic loser, and I was halfway back to even. The stakes changed. From then on, we played for folding money.
That automatic loser for Jay was the beginning of the greatest run of luck of my life. 4, 5, 6 is a game of pure luck, not skill, and is simply a matter of how your luck is running. Someone who catches the tailwind of a lot of lucky rolls can go on a streak.
I did.
Within five minutes, I had a nice little stack of singles in front of me. Jay and Sammy seemed to be taking it well. “I knew we shouldn’t have started this with you. You’re too damn lucky, man.”
The girls in the corner continued to sit face to face, oblivious to everything else.
Half an hour later, dollar bets had given way to fives, then tens, and finally twenty dollars per roll. In 1976, twenty bucks was real money, but I was playing with other people’s bills. Guys came and went, but I paid no attention. The growing money pile fascinated me. I was also hatching a very real appreciation for the sound those dice made inside that rubber cup. Roll them bones.
Soon I had more money than anyone else, and I became the bank. Jay and Sammy busted out, but the dice game took on a life of its own, and I was at the head of it. Players came, dropped a few dollars, and left.
Eventually, I looked up at the clock and saw that it was 4:45 AM. We had been playing nonstop for almost ten hours, and only a few stragglers remained. “I’m sorry, guys,” I said. “I’m beat. Anyone else want to be the bank? I’m going to bed.”
There were no takers, so I scooped all the money into a pile and carried it to my bedroom. I was too fried to count it, so I smoothed it all into one big pile, folded it over, and stuffed it into my front pants pocket. I fell face first across the bed.
A few hours later, I awoke to Mick pulling on my leg. I felt a pain in my right hip where the bankroll was cutting off the circulation. “Wake up, little brother. I heard you were the big winner last night, so you get to buy all of us breakfast now. How much did you win?”
“No idea.” I pulled the money from my pocket and Mick helped me count it.