Chop, Chop

by LN Cronk

  “Pool is all about physics,” Greg said as I was lining up my shot. He’d been pretty quiet until then and I looked up at him and sighed heavily.

  “I’m just saying,” he said, holding up his hands, “that any shot can be made if you just use physics.”

  “Would you be quiet please?” I said.

  “You don’t want some advice?”

  I glared at him. “No. I don’t want any advice.”

  I got ready to shoot and he interrupted again.

  “Because,” he told me, “I’ve got some really great advice.”

  I put my pool stick down on the table.

  “Say it,” I said. “Say whatever it is you have to say and get it over with.”

  “Aim right here,” he suggested, pointing to the edge of the table. “It’ll hit the eight ball in and deflect hers out of the way.”

  I didn’t know that much about physics, but it seemed to make sense.

  “Okay,” I said. “Will you move now?”

  He nodded.

  “And be quiet?”

  He nodded again, smiled, and stepped back against the wall.

  I took aim and hit the cue ball. It knocked Laci’s ball out of the way, but missed the eight ball and shot into the pocket. They both burst out laughing.

  “I could have told you that wasn’t going to work!” Laci said.

  I laid my head down on the pool table.

  “Why didn’t you?” I yelled.

  “Because,” she said, still laughing. “I really want to go ice skating.”

  Fortunately ice skating wasn’t a lot different from roller blading so I caught on pretty quick and didn’t embarrass myself too badly. Apparently they roller blade in Florida a lot because Greg was literally skating circles around me and Laci all afternoon.

  At one point he sped off to check on our red flags back at the fish houses and Laci and I were left alone by the marina.

  “Hey, Laci,” I said, trying to figure out how to go backwards.

  “What?”

  “You wanna help me get even with Greg?”

  “For what?” she asked.

  “Well, for his little physics lesson in there for one thing,” I said. He’d already invented a hand signal for it, dragging a claw through the air like fingernails on a blackboard. Scratch.

  “Why would I want to help you do that?” she asked. “That worked out pretty well for me.”

  “Well, that’s not the only reason,” I said. “I’ve been wanting to get even with him for something else too.”

  “What?” she asked.

  I told her about how he had pretended to be hurt after he’d soared off The Sluice when we were skiing.

  “I don’t know . . .” she hesitated.

  “Come on,” I coaxed her. “It’ll be fun . . . nothing too bad.”

  “Tell me what you’ve got in mind.”

  Greg came back and reported that no red flags had popped up yet.

  “Where’s Laci?” he asked.

  “She went into the marina to get some hot cocoa.”

  “Oh.”

  We skated around for a couple of minutes until she emerged, carrying a little cardboard tray with Styrofoam cups for each of us.

  “Thanks,” Greg and I both said.

  “Oooh, that guy’s mad,” Laci said.

  “What guy?” Greg asked.

  “The guy that’s working in there,” Laci said, pointing toward the marina.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “His phone’s missing.”

  “Did he lose it?” Greg asked.

  “No,” Laci said. “He accidentally left it here last night and he thinks a chuffer got it.”

  I decided right then that Laci was too good of a liar to ever trust again.

  “What’s a chuffer?” Greg wanted to know.

  “You don’t know what a chuffer is?” Laci asked.

  Greg shook his head.

  “Oh brother,” I said. “Now I know why they call you guys Floridiots. Are you serious? You really don’t know what a chuffer is?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “They probably don’t have them in Florida,” Laci told me.

  “I guess not,” I agreed.

  “What’s a chuffer?” Greg asked again.

  “Well,” Laci said, “it’s kind of like a big squirrel . . .”

  “Or a small raccoon,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Laci nodded. “I think they wash their food off like raccoons do . . .”

  “How did a chuffer get his phone?” Greg asked.

  “Oh!” I said. “They’re like little thieves with fur. They can get through cracks about this big,” I held my hands about three inches apart, “and then they steal shiny stuff and hoard it away in their chuffer holes.”

  “My dad always calls them chuffer troves,” Laci said. “He found one when he was hunting in Canada one year and it had a brass compass in it.”

  Man she lied good.

  “Really?” Greg asked.

  “Oh yeah,” I said, nodding.

  “What do they look like?” he wanted to know.

  “The holes?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “They just look like holes in the snow,” Laci said.

  “Or the mud,” I said. “Tanner and I found one in the summer once.”

  “What was in it?” Greg asked.

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged, “nothing too great. A button, I think maybe fifty cents, a busted lure . . .”

  I was doing a pretty good job too . . . I bet Laci was never going to trust me either.

  “How hard are they to find?”

  “Oh,” Laci said, “they’re real easy to find, but you only want to look for them at night.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you don’t want to go sticking your hands down in a chuffer hole during the day,” I said. “They bite!”

  “They only bite during the day?”

  “No,” Laci said. “They only stay in their holes during the day. At night they go out looking for food and more shiny stuff.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve only looked for them at night before.”

  “Can we look tonight?” Greg asked.

  Bingo.

  “Well,” I shrugged, “I guess we could.”

  “I doubt we’ll find anything good,” Laci said.

  “It wouldn’t hurt to try,” Greg said.

  “No,” I agreed. “It wouldn’t hurt to try. You never know what you might find.”

  Laci managed to give me the thumbs up at dinner. Our hand signal may not have been as imaginative as Greg’s, but it got the point across: I knew that her “trip to the bathhouse” before dinner had been successful.

  After dinner we headed back to the marina to play some more video games. I’d convinced Greg it was best not to mention what we were going to do to his mom and dad.

  “Parent’s always get all worried about rabies and stuff,” I’d said. “Better to beg forgiveness later than ask permission first. We’ll just play some video games, and on the way back we’ll look around for a few chuffer holes . . . no big deal.”

  After we’d played video games for about an hour, Laci said all the chuffers were probably out for the night and that we ought to get going.

  I let Laci take the lead since she’d planted everything.

  “Here’s one!” she cried, shining her light on a hole.

  She tugged off her glove and put her hand down into the hole. She pulled out a barrette and a dime.

  “No phone,” she said.

  “Don’t give Greg that barrette,” I warned her.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, putting it in her pocket.

  I got to check the next hole we found. I took off my glove and pulled out a pair of tweezers and a quarter.

  “Are you sure that’s all that’s in there?” Laci asked.

  I reached in again and found her nail file.

  “You can look in the next one, Greg,” I told
him.

  “Okay,” he said. “This is cool.”

  “They don’t have thieving alligators or anything in Florida?”

  “Alligators, yes . . . thieving ones, no.”

  At the next hole Greg knelt down and started to reach in.

  “You’ve got to take your glove off first,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because if it’s something small like money you won’t be able to feel it and you’ll just shove it under the snow and you’ll never find it.”

  “Oh.” He pulled off a glove and tentatively stuck his hand in the hole.

  “Ugh!” he said, pulling something out.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, holding his light on it. “I think it’s a fish.”

  It was. A minnow.

  “Oh, yeah,” I nodded. “Sometimes they hoard fish too.”

  “Keep looking,” Laci urged. “There’s probably something under the fish.”

  He stuck his hand back in and pulled out more fish, and more, and more.

  “There’s nothing else in here,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” Laci asked.

  “I can’t find anything,” he said.

  “Did you put anything else in there Laci?” I asked her.

  “No,” she answered. “Pretty much just fish in that one.”

  “Do you want your nail file back?”

  “Yes, please,” she nodded, “and my tweezers too.”

  “Oh!” Greg cried, “I’m going to kill both of you!”

  But Laci had already started running, so he just tried to kill me.

  We dropped Laci off at her fish house and then went to ours. Mr. White was reading by the lantern light when we came in.

  “Have fun?” he asked.

  “Yep!” I said.

  After a moment he glanced up at us.

  “What’s that smell?”

  “Fish,” I said.

  “What’s all over your jackets?”

  “Minnow parts . . .” Greg said.

  “Minnow parts?”

  “We kind of had a fish fight,” I said.

  “A fish fight?”

  “Yeah,” Greg said. “After Laci and David took me chuffer hunting.”

  “We weren’t hunting for chuffers,” I corrected him. “We were hunting for chuffer holes . . .”

  “Chuffer holes?” Mr. White asked. “Is there any chance that’s a lot like snipe hunting?”

  I nodded and grinned.

  “So is Laci covered with minnow parts too?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “She pretty much just stood there and laughed at us.”

  “I see,” Mr. White said.

  “As a matter of fact,” Greg said, “Laci did a lot of standing around laughing at us today . . .”

  “Oh, really?” Mr. White asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, furrowing my brow. “She did.”

  We decided that Laci was probably going to be pretty suspicious of anything we tried to pull at this point and on such short notice we couldn’t come up with anything too creative anyway. The best we could do was to listen for the door of the ladies’ fish hut to slam shut when they left for the bathhouse to brush their teeth and wash up before going to bed. We convinced Mr. White to stick his head out the door.

  “Dana?” he called. “Oh, you go on ahead, Laci . . . I need to talk to Mrs. White for a second.”

  He held the door open for Mrs. White and she stepped into our fish house. Mr. White looked at us.

  “Don’t you two make me sorry that I helped you,” he said, pointing a finger at us and we shook our heads at him.

  “What are you three up to?” Mrs. White asked.

  “Nothing . . .” we all said in unison and she rolled her eyes at us.

  Greg and I snuck outside and could see Laci off in the distance, nearing the bathhouse. As soon as we started after her I slipped on the ice.

  “Ooof!”

  “Be quiet!” Greg whispered.

  “I’m sorry!” I whispered back. “I’ll try to break my neck more quietly next time.”

  “Get up here.” Greg stuck out his hand and helped me up.

  We saw the bathhouse lights come on. That was good . . . she was alone. We crept up to the door and quietly sat down, our backs firm against it.

  She took forever.

  “What is she doing in there?” I whispered.

  “Shhhhh.”

  “What if she decides to wait for your mom?”

  That time I got a “shhhhh” and an elbow in the ribs.

  “Ow.”

  “Would you shut-up!?” Greg whispered. I shut up.

  Finally we heard footsteps coming toward the door and heard her flip off the light switch. We braced ourselves against the door.

  Thump.

  Thump, thump.

  The light came back on.

  Thump. Thump, thump.

  There was a long pause.

  “I know you guys are out there . . .”

  I put my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

  “All right, that’s enough,” she said. “Let me out!”

  Thump, thump, thump.

  “LET ME OUT!”

  Thump, kick, bang.

  “You guys . . . come on, you guys . . .”

  I heard her sigh and then it was quiet.

  “What’s she doing?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Greg whispered back, “but when she starts pushing again we’ll move on the count of three and she’ll come flying out.”

  But Laci didn’t push again. Instead, Laci took her shampoo bottle quietly to the sink and filled it to the top with water. Then she shook it, snapped open the squirt top, aimed it at the crack under the door and emptied it. By the time we felt it soak through our jeans to our skin the bottle was empty.

  “What the . . .”

  Both of us reached our hands down and got our gloves covered with soapy goo.

  “Oh, man!” Greg said and we both scrambled to our feet. Greg slipped in the goo and grabbed my arm, trying to save himself, but we both fell hard.

  This time Laci didn’t have any trouble getting the door open. She peeked down at us and smiled and when we got back to our fish house Mr. White said that we smelled like coconuts.

  The next day, while Mr. and Mrs. White were finishing packing up and turning in the rented equipment, Greg and Laci and I went up by the parking lot and sat at a picnic table.

  “Let’s play cards,” Greg said, pulling a deck out of his backpack.

  “Whatdya wanna play?” I asked.

  “Idiot’s poker.”

  “I don’t know how to play . . .” Laci told him.

  “Me neither,” I said.

  “It’s real easy.” He dealt each one of us a card.

  “Don’t look at it,” he said. He picked up his card and held it up to his forehead so that Laci and I could see what it was (an eight of hearts), but he couldn’t.

  “Okay,” he said. “Now you hold your cards up and don’t look at ’em.”

  I slapped my card onto my forehead and Laci did the same. She had a queen of spades.

  “Now what?” Laci said.

  “Now you have to decide if you think you can beat the other two.”

  “But . . .” I said, “I don’t know what I have.”

  “Exactly.”

  Could I beat a queen of spades? I was trying to figure out statistically what my chances were of beating Laci’s card when she said, “I’m out.”

  “Why’d ya do that?” I asked. “You had a good card!”

  “I did?” She looked at it. “Oh . . .”

  “No talking!” Greg said. “You can’t go out Laci. You have to bet.”

  “With what?”

  He pulled a bag of marshmallows out of his backpack and gave us each seven.

  “Now we have to start over . . .”

  We laid our cards down – (
I’d had a jack of clubs).

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s try this again. Hold your card up, NO TALKING, and just put your marshmallows in front of you to bet.”

  He dealt again. Laci held up a four of clubs and Greg a six of spades. I could beat that easy. I put all seven marshmallows in front of me. So did Laci and so did Greg.

  We all showed our cards. I had a two of diamonds. Greg took all of our marshmallows.

  Laci and I looked quizzically at each other and Greg handed out more marshmallows and cards.

  Laci held up an ace of diamonds, and Greg a queen of clubs. None of us put any marshmallows out. We looked at our cards. I’d had a king. We all started laughing.

  “What’s this called again?” Laci asked as Greg dealt out three more cards.

  “Idiot’s poker.”

  I held my card up to my forehead. Laci and Greg were doing the same thing when Mr. and Mrs. White walked up to us. We must have looked so stupid. All three of us burst out laughing.

  “I brought the camera,” Mrs. White said, “and I forgot to take pictures all weekend. Let me at least get one now before we leave.”

  She walked to the edge of the table and we put our cards down and faced her, smiling.

  “Everybody say ‘cheese’,” she said.

  “Cheeeese!”

  “Hi, honey,” Mom said when I came through the front door. “Did you catch any fish?”

  “No,” I said, dragging my suitcase behind me through the living room.

  “Oh,” she said as I started up the stairs. “I’m sorry you didn’t have a good time.”

  I honestly had no idea what she was talking about.

  ~ ~ ~

  BY SUMMER, GREG’S hair was indeed long enough for a small ponytail. I couldn’t believe it, but a few guys in our class had started growing theirs out too.

  “You have groupies,” I told Greg. “Are they going to donate their hair to Locks of Love too?”

  “I don’t know,” Greg shrugged. “If they are, they didn’t get the idea from me. I haven’t told anybody what I’m doing except you and Laci.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Well,” he said, “and obviously my parents. But it’s like you told Laci . . . you’re not supposed to let anyone but God know what you’re doing when you give . . . it’s supposed to be done in secret.”

  “She told you I said that?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “She also said you made her feel really bad about looking like a boy. I don’t know why you’re always so mean to her.”

  “I’m not always mean to her!” I said. “We were like in the fifth grade! I can’t believe she told you I said that.”