All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

We laughed, but she got up in his chair, took her next card, and folded.

Scott won that hand and when he went to deal, he skipped Wavy.

“What, Scott, you don’t like taking money from kids?” I said.

So he dealt her in. She lost fifty bucks on that hand, but she won the next one. Kellen had been down by almost two hundred dollars, but now he was up again. The next few hands, she won more than she lost. Her dealing left a lot to be desired since she had a hard time shuffling, but at least you knew she wasn’t cheating.

Kellen came back with beer about the time Scott and Vic decided to show her how the big boys played. It pissed them off that she’d managed to win some money, so they upped the ante and put down bigger bets. Even though it was his money, Kellen stood back and watched her play. Didn’t tell her what to do.

A couple hands in, Wavy apparently got some cards she liked, because she kept raising. Next thing you know, there was almost five thousand bucks on the table, and that was too rich for Vic.

Seeing she’d raised almost everything she had in front of her, Kellen reached into his pocket, and handed her a roll of bills. Big enough she could barely close her hand around it. All business, Wavy snapped the rubber band off and started counting out hundred-dollar bills.

“You do understand that’s real money, little girl? This ain’t Monopoly.” Scott grinned and raised another two hundred.

Wavy slid the last of her chips out to see him and then the pile of cash she’d made: a thousand bucks. Raised him.

Scott looked down at the chips he had left and the roll of bills she had left. Took him a good minute before he folded. The kid had just taken us for more than a grand a piece. She went to pitch her cards in, but Scott slapped his hand on them.

“Hey, you didn’t pay to see,” Kellen said.

“Come on, this isn’t Vegas. Just a friendly poker game, right?” I was curious.

Kellen looked at Wavy and she shrugged. Scott flipped her cards over. Pair of fours.

We busted up laughing, Vic clutching his sides and sobbing, “You do understand that’s real money, little girl?” Kellen laughed so hard he laid down on the floor next to Wavy’s chair and cried.

Scott, he about cried for real. Wavy watched us with this little smile on her face. She had a hell of a poker face.

Laying there like a beached whale, so weak from laughing he couldn’t get up, Kellen said, “Wavy, tomorrow we’re going into town and buy you anything you want. Anything at all.”

Giggling behind her hand, she put her foot on his chest and nudged him.

He took ahold of her leg and said, “First thing, I’m buying you some new boots. You got holes in these from too much walking.”

Right up until that moment it was sweet and funny. Odd couple that they were, they had a real connection. Then he tugged her boot off and kissed the bottom of her bare foot. I could see him doing that kind of thing to his own kid, but she wasn’t. She was somebody else’s little girl.

9

WAVY

July 1982

I waited by the porch to Sandy’s trailer, where the old gray cat lived. At night, the big yellow light over the garage cast shadows into my hiding place. People walked by and didn’t even notice me crouched there.

Dee and Lance left, probably going to the barracks to fuck. Sandy sat on the porch smoking and crying, talking to herself: “I don’t know why I put up with it.” When Butch came, she went inside with him.

Danny left in the Charger and brought back beer. While he carried a case to the lab barracks, I snuck out of my hiding place and stole two cans. When Danny came back, he looked at the torn-open case in the trunk and yelled, “That’s not funny, you assholes! Don’t be poaching brewskies.”

I started to think Kellen wouldn’t come, or that he wouldn’t be alone. The night he brought the snake tattoo girl on his bike, I did something reckless. I went into the trailer to get him. After that, he came to me on his own, so it had been worth the risk.

I sat down on a cinder block and slipped my boots off to bury my toes in the cool silt under the porch. I listened for the Panhead, but it never came. Finally, Old Man Cutcheon’s truck pulled into the yard, groaning as Kellen stepped out.

He jingled his keys as he walked across the yard, clouds of dust kicking up around his boots. Only when he put his foot on the bottom step did I climb over the railing. Step out sooner and someone else might see me.

Kellen walked across the deck, making the floorboards thump. From inside, Butch called, “Fee fi fo fum!” Sandy giggled.

Careful to stay to the side of the front window, I stepped out of the shadows. Sometimes Kellen had business and couldn’t come with me, but tonight he was waiting for me step into the light.

“There you are. I was up to the house looking for you, but the Corvette was there, so I didn’t go in,” he said.

Uncle Sean was there all the time now.

“Fee fi fo no?” Butch called from inside the trailer.

Hearing that, I hurried back to my hiding place. Kellen came down the stairs while I put my boots on. When he walked around the porch, I picked up the quilt and the cans of beer, and followed him across the yard, going away from the sound of Butch and Sandy.

“Is that Kellen?” Sandy said.

“I thought so, but there’s nobody out here.”

In the meadow, I had Kellen all to myself. He smelled good. Sweat and motorcycle and wintergreen. No stinking weed smoke. No perfume. No sadness. He smelled like love. Between the cottonwoods and the bluff, I spread out the quilt and offered him the cans of beer.