by T. K. Chapin
Arriving back at the table, I was pleased to see that Robert was still there.
“Welcome back, Blaze,” the kid said, grinning from across the table as he rolled a poker chip between his fingers on one hand.
The corner of my mouth hinted at a smile as I pulled the chips Joe gave me over to my spot on the table. I had been coming to Joe’s table for years. He was really the only one who knew the real state of my addiction. “I came to take my money back, plus yours,” I said to Robert.
“Confident,” the kid replied. He looked over at the cowboy as he continued, “Larry here was telling me that you played in the Horseshoe Tournament a while back.”
“You heard right. I placed fourth, right outside of the bubble for a prize. Didn’t earn a dime.” My words were heavy as I thought about the bad beat I had in the tournament.
“That ain’t right,” the kid replied as Joe began dealing us cards. I favored Joe the most out of all of the dealers at North Bend Casino because he was quiet, yet always kind and respectful. He didn’t put up with the obnoxious drunks or jerks either. He wasn’t like the other dealers who would take anyone inebriated just so they could make a few extra bucks in tips.
“It happens. The tourney only paid out the top three spots. I laughed a little as I continued, “Sometimes that’s just how the cards fall.”
“Yeah.” As he looked at his cards, I took note of his lack of an earbud. Wasn’t sure if he forgot or if it was because we were chatting.
He raised. This time, it was $100. Still no earbud.
Peeking at my cards, I saw that I had a pair of aces—hearts and spades. There wasn’t a hand that I hated more. I was never able to win with them, but I always felt an obsessive need to play them.
“Call,” I said, tossing my chip into the middle of the table.
The flop came. It was a two of hearts, two of clubs and a queen of hearts.
The kid raised another hundred dollars’ worth of chips. Then he grabbed his earbud that he hadn’t had in and placed it into his ear. That’s his tell, I thought to myself. He’s bluffing. The kid focuses more on the music playing in his ear when he doesn’t have anything. How did I not notice it before?
“Raise,” I said. Tossing in the original hundred to call his, I followed it with another hundred dollars.
He smiled at me and raised again, this time forcing me to go all-in.
Everything told me he was lying. He was pot committed and trying to scare me off. Without hesitation, I went all-in and stood up.
He removed his earbud and looked up at me. “Really? First hand back and you’re all-in?”
I grinned at him. I suspected that he was sweating bullets underneath that hard exterior.
He leaned in and looked at the flop for a moment and then called my all-in. “I’m sorry to do this to you, Blaze.” He flipped a two of diamonds and a king of spades. He wasn’t bluffing. My read was wrong.
Flipping my two aces over, we both waited for the turn and the river.
Another queen came up on the turn, this time a diamond.
My heart raced for what felt like a million miles per hour as Joe turned over the River card. Come on, please! An ace! Come on! Come on! I rooted myself on internally.
Ace of clubs.
Shooting both my hands up into the air, I felt like I was on top of the world. “Congratulations,” the kid said from across the table, smiling. “Won it on the river.”
“Yep.” Leaning across the table, I shook his hand and sat back down. Pulling the chips over to me, I began stacking them up. I was back in business. Up to a grand already, and the night was young.
The kid, the cowboy and I played for the next couple of hours at that table. My stack went up and down like waves in an ocean: up one hour, down the next.
As we approached the three o’clock hour that next morning, I began to think of Susan and how she’d be getting up in a mere four hours or so. I needed to get back up to my room and get a little shut eye before she woke up. Folding my last hand and electing not to play, I said to the kid, “I’m calling it a night.”
“It’s been a pleasure.” His eyes watched me as I loaded the poker chip holder with my winnings to leave.
Taking my chips, I stood up and headed over to the cage to cash them in. As I waited for the cashier to tally them up, I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Blaze,” a familiar voice said from behind me.
“What’s up?” I said, turning around. It was Robert.
“You have some serious skill. You should go down to Vegas next month and play in the World Series of Poker.” He looked serious, but that didn’t stop me from laughing.
I laughed, shaking my head. “I’m not that good, kid. I couldn’t sit with those hall of fame poker players. Plus, everyone and their cousin tries to get in on that.”
He shook his head. “I went a few years back. It’s not like what you think. It’s more than just one main event. They have multiple tournaments scattered across a three month window.”
The idea sounded like a farfetched fantasy, but I entertained the thought for a moment. “What’s the buy-in? You going?”
“Not this year. Ten grand for the one I played in when I went. It’s one of the last tournaments they host every year. I believe it’s on the twenty-ninth of this month.”
I was about to respond, but the cashier caught my attention.
“Sir,” the cashier said.
“Yeah?” I leaned up toward the cage.
“How would you like your payout?”
“Uh . . . in cash,” I replied, distracted by the thought of the kid’s proposition.
She laughed. “I mean, what bills would you like?”
“Hundreds is fine.” My face went flush, I could feel it.
She counted it all out to me. All two thousand and fifty dollars of it. I was on top of the world. My eyes were wide as I scooped up the cash. “Thank you,” I said to her. Turning, I left the cage and the kid followed beside me.
“Look at that. Two grand for the night. What’d you start with?”
I shrugged. “Two hundred and then another five.”
He lightly pushed my shoulder, stopping me. “See that? You turned seven hundred dollars into two grand in one night. Vegas better watch out!”
“Yeah, but I rarely win like this. Vegas sounds like a lot of fun, but I can’t see it happening.”
He nodded. “You broke or something?” he asked with his chin raised, almost looking a bit suspicious.
“Excuse me?” I snapped at him.
“Sorry.” He shrugged slightly. “Just figured maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree. I don’t want to waste my time working on getting you a free hotel stay if this isn’t even a reality for you.”
“No. I have money—plenty of it, kid—but I’m not sure about Vegas. I’ve been coming here for decades playing at my little five-man table. Seems extreme to go to Vegas.” I didn’t really have a ton of money, but I wasn’t going to reveal that to some kid.
“I understand. Just think about it, Blaze. Last time I went, I placed sixth and walked away with a hundred grand.”
His comment piqued my interest. That was a lot of dough for sixth place. “How many people bought in?”
“Three hundred,” he replied.
That was a lot of people, but only two hundred more than what I was used to at North Bend. “I’ll think about it, kid. Thanks.”
Heading out of the casino, I hid the cash in my inside coat pocket so I could sneak it back into the bank before work on Monday without drawing any suspicion from Susan. I hid all but five hundred to show Susan. She’d be happy about it and I could put that portion back into checking. It was the only way I could share in the victory without mentioning that I took money from the other account.
As I rode the elevator up to my room in the hotel, I thought about Robert and that tournament in Vegas he had been talking about. Ten thousand dollars is too much for one shot. But then again, that kid did walk away with a hun
dred grand. The best I did in any of the tournaments was getting a buffet coupon. I didn’t entirely discount the idea of going; there was a lot of possibility in it.
CHAPTER 3
Back at home two days later, my favorite smell in the world tickled my nose as I came down the stairs, causing me to crack a smile: bacon. Susan made me breakfast the first morning of every work week. It helped motivate me for the week of work ahead. Coming into the kitchen with a smile, I walked to her side and kissed her cheek.
“Finally feeling a bit better today, dear?” I asked as I took a seat at the table. “I didn’t hear you get up once last night.”
She brought over a plate of eggs and bacon and set it down in front of me. “Yes. Much better, thank you,” she replied. “Coffee or orange juice?” she asked on her way back around the kitchen island.
“Coffee, please,” I replied, bowing my head to say a quick prayer over the meal. I picked up the newspaper and thumbed to the sports section.
Susan returned back to the table with a cup of coffee and set it down beside my plate. I looked at her with an appreciative smile. “Thank you.” She smiled at me and then went over to the sink to start on the dishes.
After eating my breakfast and reading the paper, I showered and got ready for work. On my way back down the stairs, Susan met me near the front door to open it for me.
“Why are you leaving early?” she asked, her eyes innocent, her face soft.
It broke my heart every time I had to lie to her, so I’d look for ways to modify it. My lies were more comfortable that way. “Just dropping off the extra money I won from the other night.”
She smiled. “I can take it for you, dear. I have a list of errands I have to run. I’ll just stop by and drop it off in our savings account.”
“No!” I accidently snapped from nervousness. “I mean . . . sorry, it’s not a big deal. I like the extra commute. It gives me more time to listen to my new audiobook.”
“Okay,” she replied, a little taken aback. She looked at me and said, "Have a good time at work. See you after your shift.”
Relieved that she didn’t keep pushing it, I kissed her and told her I loved her. I stepped out onto the porch and thought to myself, crisis avoided, again. It seemed that almost every time I withdrew money from the account, I was just a few wrong words or moves away from her discovering my trespasses.
I wanted out of gambling a year ago, but by that time I was already down over half the eighty grand I started with in our savings. Every day at work, every moment I had alone in my days, my mind continuously searched for a way out of the mess I had gotten myself into. The only solution I ever found was winning the money back somehow. On my drive to the bank, I turned off the audiobook I had started and thought about the Vegas proposal the kid had mentioned.
It sounded good, but it was a lot of money.
It would take almost everything I had in my savings. The tournaments I had participated in at the casino were only a grand here and there, nothing that big. Not ten grand!
I made my mind up right there on the spot. Vegas wasn’t an option, I wasn’t going to do it.
I pushed the thoughts away and turned the volume back up on the audiobook.
Even with the pit stop by the bank, I arrived twenty minutes early to work. I made my way into the multi-purpose room to catch the morning news on the television. I wasn’t the least bit surprised when I saw Ted already there, his eyes glued to the TV.
“Hey, Alderman,” he said without looking.
“Sherman,” I said, taking a seat.
“Did you win?” he asked, again without breaking eye contact from the television.
“Of course,” I replied.
A smile crept from the corner of Ted’s mouth as he looked over at me. “You say you win every single time you go up there. If that’s true, when you going to say goodbye to being a firefighter?”
I laughed. “I love this job. I’m not going to leave because I won some money. Well, I take that back. I would leave if I won the lottery.”
“Whatever,” Ted laughed. “You still putting your money on the Mariners for the game this Friday?”
“Yep.”
Shaking his head, he replied, “Easy money for me. They suck this year.”
“We’ll see. I have a good feeling about this one.”
“You saw their last game, right?” Ted asked with a raised eyebrow, looking over at me.
“No, but I read about it.”
He shook his head. “Huh. Well, you want to put your cash on a team who’s not showing up to play the game, that’s fine. I’ll be showing up to collect.”
“We’ll see.”
Ted and I watched the news until about eight o’clock. Then we joined everybody as they showed up and headed over to the training room that was adjacent to the dining hall. We had meetings once every two months in there. The meetings were mostly to go over any concerns and to talk about upcoming trainings on-site or out of town. They were usually a pretty cut and dry type of thing. This time it wasn’t.
“Thank you all for being here,” Chief Paul Jensen said as he stood at the front of the room.
“Like we had a choice in the matter,” I said with a grumble.
“Put a lid on it, Alderman. We have some serious stuff to talk about today.”
Sitting up a little more in my seat, I leaned forward and asked, “What’s going on, Chief?”
Cole walked to the front and stood next to Paul. He looked worried. His arms were crossed and he stood like a nail about to get smacked with a hammer. He wasn’t one to be upset over a kinked hose, so it made me worry a little.
Paul crinkled up the paper in his hands and threw it into the waste basket behind him. “I’m not going to read that stupid memo from the Mayor’s office. Basically, our station is having part of its budget cut.”
“What? Why?” Kane asked.
Brian chimed in. “What’s this mean?”
The room was in an uproar. Micah and I were about the only guys keeping quiet. Once everybody settled down, the Chief spoke again.
“Everybody knows the economy has been on a downward slump. We’re not immune because we are firefighters.”
Grunting a little, I cleared my throat. “Sure doesn’t seem to affect the twenty people it takes to stand around a pothole in the middle of the road while one guy fixes it. That Francis Street road project is a joke!”
“Yeah,” Kane said, nodding as he looked over at me.
“The city just wasted a ton of money by putting in a splash pad in that new park over on the west side. Why do we get punished for the city’s lack of budgeting and responsibility?” Brian added.
“I swear, this city gets dumber by the minute,” I said. My words were heavy with grief as I thought about the downward slide the city had been going toward over the last decade or so. Looking up to the front of the room at the Chief, I said, “Paul. Is there anything we can do to stop it?”
Shrugging, he replied, “I’m doing everything I can since I found out. I’m going to meet with some of the city officials to see if there is any possible way around this.”
“What exactly are the cuts going to do?” Ted asked the Chief.
“No raise this year for starters. That’ll be frozen. Some personal cuts, pensions, that kind of stuff.”
Everybody started talking at once, so nothing was comprehendible. My worry soared at the mention of pensions. I was only a few years out from retiring. Once the yapping died down again, I looked Paul in the eye. “You’d better fix this.”
“We’ll figure this out, Alderman,” Paul replied, giving me a confirming nod. It helped that he seemed so confident.
Cole unfolded his arms and said, “We protect the people in this city. We suffer, the city suffers. I think we can draw on that fact alone and hopefully get some adjustments made to the budget.”
Cole was right. The city officials were aimed toward helping the community, and cutting back on safety wasn’t helping anybody. They
’d be jeopardizing their own citizens. “Yeah. Maybe they’re just unaware,” I said.
“I’ll keep you all updated and in the loop. Would anyone object to a group prayer?” Cole asked.
There were no objections.
Cole bowed his head, and we all followed suit.
Cole said, “Dear Heavenly Father, we come to your throne with humble hearts today. We are worried about our station and the men that serve this city. Please let your will be done with the matters of the city. Not our will, your own. We pray these things, in your name, Amen.”
I liked Cole. He had a good head on his shoulders and was a good fit for the role of captain after Thomas Sherwood passed away. The Chief had approached me first about the open position of captain, but I declined it. It was too much of a headache to deal with all the drama and the guys around the station. I wasn’t cut out for caring that much. I just liked showing up and doing my job and then going home.
While the meeting went on for another half hour, I didn’t pay much attention. I kept thinking about my pension.
A call came in later that day for a fire. Suiting up in my turnouts, I turned to Cole as he walked behind me on his way to get into the ladder truck. “Hey,” I said.
“Yeah?” He replied, stopping and looking at his watch. “Make it quick.”
“If you and the Chief have issues getting Mayor Gordon to fix this . . . I say we take it to the streets.”
One of Cole’s eyebrows shot up as he crossed his arms. He looked slightly confused at my wording. “What do you mean, Alderman?”
“Door knocking. We can get her fired or something. The community loves us firefighters.”
Cole nodded. “We don’t need to get her fired, but you think that’d work? To get supporters.”
Shrugging, I replied, “It couldn’t hurt anything. At least a petition or something. We get a pretty good return for the boot fundraiser thing we do every year.”
“Yeah, but that’s for children with muscular dystrophy.”
“Still, it’s us out there. I think it could work.”
Cole nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He climbed up into the truck’s front seat.