by JN Lenz
When we opened the back door of the Five and Dime that evening, we could see that it was going to be a full house.
“Be prepared to lose your shirts” Clyde proclaimed as we walked through the back doors. This was followed by a barrage of similar put downs by the men around the table directed towards Clyde. Rocky was already sitting in his regular chair; it sat on the right hand side of the table as you entered the storage room, from the back alley entrance. There were a number of new faces; all standing beside the regulars at the long counter which doubled as the bar on Thursday nights, during store hours it was used to fold clothes and a prep table.
Clyde and Rocky would be the longest running regulars to take a seat for the first hands to be dealt, unlike Rocky, Clyde could care less where he sat. On that night he would take a seat directly across from Rocky. The player directly to his right was a guy by the name of Jake, a regular for over half a year now. To Clyde’s left sat Matt Hiller, a local business owner with second generation money, a streaky player that you had to be careful around when luck was on his side.
Matt was reasonably well off financially, but his streaks of good luck and winning streaks, would be matched equally by his losing streaks. The loosing came as a result of Matt trying to bluff on too many poor hands; when he was down he may miss the Friday game for weeks on end. This became a tradition of his following any prolonged losing streak, and then out of the blue he would be back again, often being on the wining end for weeks straight. The guy loved to smoke black hash , Matt and a few of the regulars that came more to watch and drink than to play, retreated to the back alley to smoke their joints of hash during the breaks in the game.
I was one of the lucky ones that came more to party than to play too much stress and focus to me when everyone around you is getting drunk and high, I would help out by grabbing the players a drink or rolling them nice straight joints. I made sure to add perfect little filters, a complimentary service provided for the players that wanted a puff on one of the breaks. I would use one of the many business cards that permeated around the Five and Dime backroom every Friday night, after trimming a piece of the card off, I’d roll it up and stick in the end of the joint, making for a perfect fitting filter. I always laughed at the joints in movies and TV, all crude looking, lumpy and spun to a tip on each end, have they no pride?
Perhaps this inability in rolling a decent joint had led to the proliferation of pipes? One of life’s little mysteries I guess, for me a nice straight dube with a firmly mounted filter was the weapon of choice.
The fact you could blaze in the alley was just one more of the great things about Friday night, even the old boys that showed up to drink whiskey and smoke cigars didn’t give a shit about the few stoners that indulged themselves behind the store. The owner of the place Buck Severs always got a small cut of the cash from each pot. The town Police had let him carry on with the illegal game for years, a Parsons institution of sorts.
A pair of the remaining players, Clyde had never met. Sitting to the right side of Clyde sat the used car guy Chuck. I have to give the guy credit he must have sold a pile of wrecks at his car lot, the place had by far the towns largest inventory of cars, the only thing about Chuck was that he could be fucking annoying as hell at times. He had a classic ‘A’ type personality disorder, with his never ending stories of self-approval; this guy put the macho man in the Village People, he could be that annoying, so you had to take him with a grain of salt. It was either that or you would probably want to fucking kill the bloody guy, thing was, the bigger ass he became the more he got his ass kicked. The bright side of his large ego was watching it loose money.
Sitting beside Chuck was a guy named Louis, a sixty year old retired dentist with an intense analytical attention to the game, nice enough guy but very crafty and a strong player at times. Louis said very little, drank scotch and water having replaced a regular by the name of Duff this past March. Chuck won hands, but he was cheap, worried too much about losing to take any chances on marginal hands. All the regulars soon discovered Chuck would never bluff; it would only be the new blood sitting in on any hands that Chuck could bet them up. The regulars knew if Chuck was all in on a pot, than he had a hell of a hand and they folded quickly.
The other two players sitting at the table for those initial hands would both be fresh blood as the saying went, the table would have a pair of vacant seats because of the absence of the Smith twins, the brothers Stan and Mel had become regulars every Tuesday for the past year and a half. The brothers owned a small wood shop which manufactured high end caskets; the increased volume from a few new contracts with Funeral Homes in Toronto had greatly increased their revenue and profits. Emboldened with their recent success, the brothers were on the verge of completing a financing deal to purchase a much larger shop. Because of this, they needed to conserve cash to help finance the planned expansion.
The pair of brothers did how ever have a couple players willing to fill their seats for the Friday, June 6, 1986 game. With the larger pots as the years passed a vacant chair for the starting six required a ten thousand dollar minimum, in hand to take a seat. As the game wore on through the night and players dropped out, players not having the minimum would be allowed to play.
The new blood player closest to Clyde was on the right, two chairs over, he was a large burly man in his early forties, Bill Minor was a lumber man and looked straight out of the bush with his bushy beard and plaid long sleeve shirt. The shirt had those shiny steel snap buttons; they ran down the front of the shirt and along the top edge of the dual pockets. Bill supplied the casket making Bracken brothers with a variety of premium hardwoods; he had the rights and owned large tracks of forest north of town.
”I hear you boys play man’s poker with a real man’s wage” he growled in a deep husky voice as he sat down.
“That’s correct, do you possess either” Clyde immediately replied not looking up from the chips he was stacking in neat piles
“Fuck you boy, I got plenty of cash and we’ll just see who the man is by the end of the night”
“That we will, that we will” Clyde repeated now looking straight at the large lumber jack. This is what Clyde did best; trying to throw players off before they had even begun to play. He loved that shit.
For me I could not get the picture of Paul Bunyan out of my head, even as Bill introduced himself to me; I almost called him Paul every time I offered to fill his empty glass of whiskey. To the right of Paul Bunyan, sat the number six player, the diminutive man sat almost right across from Clyde, he was sandwiched between the burly lumber jack and the long time regular Rocky.
The man was thin and pale, his dark eyes looking out from behind a pair of small oval rimmed glasses. He was balding; his age looked to be mid-fifties.
The sight of him sitting between that pair of excessively large men almost made him look cartoonish, the little man with the round spectacles slightly raised his hand before he began to speak to introduce himself, his voice I think would surprise everyone. As he belted out his name across the storage room, the loud deep voice even caused Paul Bunyan to sway in his chair as the thin man began speaking barked out his identity.
“Good day boys, name is Fred Shackles, owner of the Shackles Funeral Home out of the lovely town of Largo. Just a pleasant three hour drive from Parsons”.
“Never met such a loud funeral director I must say” replied Rocky
“Coming from such a pip squeak at that, added Paul Bunyan
“Always a pleasure gentleman” Fred replied in a hushed voice as he sat himself back down in the chair.
Although loud, I sensed likeability in his voice, the man named Fred Shackles had the largest of grins when he spoke.
“Parsons, long way to come just to lose your money” Clyde was sure to take a poke at any new player at the table; he was usually more subdued in his comments of the regulars.
“Sorry, but I didn’t drive all this way to loose son, I’m feeling lucky tonight my friend.”<
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“Luck is what you will need; because there is a good chance you’re going home empty handed”
“Deal those cards in your hand and we will just see about that”
“Yaa let’s get a hand going so we can shut this young hot shot up for a while” Paul Bunyan added as he looked across at Clyde
“Just trying to give you fellas a chance to keep your money, this hot shot’s ready to play cards.” Clyde was starting to piss off the big lumber jack, he was already well into the game, even before the first hand.
Several of the night’s hands had gone in Clyde’s favor, looked like his prediction might be correct. By 11:30pm Clyde was up twenty three thousand on the original twenty three he started with, giving him a forty six thousand dollar stock pile. There would only be three of the original six players that started the evening still at the table, Clyde along with the two newbie’s Fred and burly Paul Bunyan the woodsman.
The large lumber jack had already consumed a twenty sixer of Crown Royal Whiskey. The large tree man had refuted the joints that had been circulating outside in the alley during a pair of breaks, preferring to chomp on the cigars he smoked throughout the night. He continued to down large amounts whiskey tumblers, consuming the drink neat, must be used to having no ice in the bush I thought to myself.
Rocky had gotten off to a poor start on the evening and after having only four thousand of the ten thousand he began the game with, left after the first hour, he had decided to call it a night early. The other pair that had been seated for the first hands would last for two and three hours and now sat on a stole at the packing counter bar nursing beers and their losses.
Fred looked to be up marginally from the twenty thousand dollar pile he started with, his pile of chips roughly half of Clyde’s pile. Starting the night with a win, he went on to win two big hands. There was also three that he has been forced to fold on, losing pots he had wagered heavily on. A few hands earlier and Fred had been almost been wiped out with close to two grand being all that remained of the twenty grand he started with. But Fred had won the last two hands and now stood closer to twenty thousand or a little better in chips.
Clyde could sense the excitement as it rushed through Fred; he could see the effect the racing adrenaline was having as it cursed through Fred’s body. The excitement had Fred convinced that his luck had turned, he continued to bet heavy on the next hand following his latest win. Those first cards would provide him with a pair of aces and a pair of queens. Bill folded soon after the pot grew over ten thousand. Clyde jumped on the chance and raised the pot fifty three thousand dollars (the initial twenty three thousand, plus his winnings). Fred looked deeply into the backside of his cards lying face down on the table, he could not let this pass him bye, and this had to be the one.
A pair of Aces and a pair of Queens, he was convinced the two big hands Clyde had won after forcing everyone else to fold by going all in, was just a bluff, that he was holding shit for cards. Reaching into his coat jacket he pulled a five by eight inch manila envelope, puffy and full from the documents that were contained inside.
“I call” pipes Fred, doing his best to convey an air of confidence like that of a victor as he threw the envelope onto the middle of all the chips.
“What the fuck is that” Clyde roiled, looking directly into Fred’s eyes even after he finished talking.
“It’s the deed to my business, and it’s worth a hell of a lot more than your damm wager, but it’s all the extra collateral that I have at the moment”
“Business? Exactly what kind of business we talking about here? You are from Fargo, was that the place?”
Clyde questioned back to the glowing Fred, who sat beaming, as he leaned back on the wooden back of his chair, his arms now folded across his chest as he listened to Clyde speak .
“It’s a funeral home in Largo, not Fargo. Like I said earlier it is a three hour drive from here, it is the busiest Funeral Home in the city of Largo”
“A funeral home” Clyde and I replied in unison, what Fred failed to mention was that it was the busiest funeral home, because it was the only Funeral Home for the six thousand residents of what he referred to as the City of Largo.
Clyde turned toward me as I sat beside the store prep table, which was now a bar. The best we could offer each other was to shrub our shoulders; the idea did not offend us in any way. I knew Clyde would have no issue with dealing with the dead; I turned to ask Stan Bracken about the place, he had been sitting beside me all night at the bar.
“What is this place like, is the building in decent shape” I asked Stan
“It’s a not a bad spot actually, could use some TLC but it is a big old century house that was his fathers before him, I can’t believe he is taking a chance of loosing it, Christ Jack you and Clyde could wear a suit everyday but you guys might have to start shaving on a regular basis” he burst out laughing
“Imagine bushman here, and the dishwasher running a funeral home. All caring and polite in their three piece suits” he was laughing hysterically now.
“Shut up asshole” Clyde responded to the wise cracks but continued to stare directly at Fred.
“So it’s a real business Stan, not some run down shed on a piece of swamp?” Clyde added before Fred erupted
“It’s not a fucking shed in a swamp young man, its a hundred and sixty year old business in a grand old Victorian Home.” Fred was becoming a little red in the face as he relied, insulted by the reference to his long running family business as he also had continued to stare directly back at Clyde.
“Sorry, no offence old man, just making sure is all. A bloody funeral home, what the hell do you think Jack?”
I could tell he was interested enough to accept it as a wager, this was just one of Clyde’s tactics in an effort to throw the little man off.
“What the hell I always wanted a business, never really thought about it being a Funeral Home, what the hell let him use it.”
“Drop it in old man” Clyde offers
Immediately I began to think how great a business to wash our money clean; we could turn all of it into legal earnings, without drawing suspicion. Hell, if the Funeral business was good enough, maybe we would even stop growing pot altogether, get out before we got caught. We both realized there was a possibility of getting caught, that’s why we kept all the cash buried in the bush.
“She’s all sixes my friend, four of them” Clyde proudly crowed, spreading the six of hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades out before him, neatly spaced beside one another. I watched past Clyde, as we both watched Fred throw his cards face up before him.
“Pair of aces and a pair of kings, I don’t believe it” Fred muttered the words before he fell off his chair and onto the floor.
“We just won a funeral home with all sixes, no fucking way” I yelled as I watched Fed slam to the floor.
“Sixes baby, sixes” Clyde jumped from his chair as we high fived each other, oblivious to the unconscious man on the floor as we celebrated.
Fred would wake up a few minutes later; a couple of the guys had moved him over to the couch in the stores lunch room. Opening his eyes slowly, Fred looked up at the group of us standing around him. Clyde and I had stopped high fiving each other and joined the group around the couch in the lunchroom.
“Was I dreaming just now, or did I happen to lose my old father’s funeral home just now” Fred voice no longer boomed, it was now more like a whimper. His face was as white as snow.
“What the fuck am I gonna do now?” the politeness was finally replaced with anger; Fred was beginning to unravel now. Sitting up with his face in his hands, he began to weep, rather loudly. A little sad, for sure, but this blubbering thing was making everyone in the room feel a little weird, suck it up butter cup, I wanted to yell.
We had way more celebrating to do now, Clyde and I had a quick talk about letting the guy just pay us the sixty grand, the amount Fred would have needed to call that pot. That talk resulted in Fred waving his hands,
mumbling through the tears and snot that was streaming down his face, how he had no money, he was dead broke, in debt to his eye balls.
“Fucking great, deep in debt, seriously old man. You wagered on debts” I wanted to lash into Fred but I knew the old man would never stop balling if I did that.
”Listen man, we are gonna need you to run the place for us. We don’t know shit about the funeral business. You need to have a license and training for that shit correct? ” I hoped asking him a question would reassure and settle Fred down.
“I’m gone boys” Bill the lumberman stated and quickly left, the sight of Fred’s emotional breakdown was too pathetic for the big burly man to handle.
”So when I show you then after a year I’m gone you just get rid of me right”
“You need a license to do the undertakers job correct” Clyde questioned
“Yaa that’s right” replied Fred “Well we obviously don’t have that” I confirm to Fred.
”So I could still work for you guys?”
“For sure” Clyde replied, I followed with an “absolutely”.
Our reassuring words seemed to calm him down as he began describing the business his father had built and he had taken over.
“I won’t lie to you boys, its good business but there is the matter of a few debts against its assets, manageable to be sure but there are a few liabilities to be sure”
The business side of me wanted to pry every detail out of him, but I thought this would not be the time to push his frayed nerves, having finally calmed him down. We gave him or good bye’s, watching Fred drive off in his car, for what must have been the longest drive of that poor bastard’s life. Largo would never be the same place for him, as for Clyde and I, we drank and smoked in celebration of our birth, our new found business, most of all we celebrated six. It would take us there.