The Crapshooter

I was delighted when my parents told me Uncle Jud and Aunt Ada wanted to visit me while they were in Phoenix.  I unwisely volunteered my apartment and my services as tour guide because I had fond boyhood memories of my uncle, who I hadn’t seen since I was sixteen.  He was seventy now.

My mother cautioned me about the man I would be meeting.  Old age had changed him. He had developed a bad habit of sucking his false teeth.  She cautioned me about not getting into any political debates because he had become even more conservative.  And she warned me about his physical disability.  The stroke that had left him partially paralyzed affected his ability to control his bowels.  Despite these warnings I was determined to reciprocate my uncle’s early kindnesses.

During the weeks before their arrival, I thought often about the annual summer vacation my family took from our home in northeastern Ohio to New York State, back to my father’s hometown of Gloversville, the glove-manufacturing city at the foot of the Adirondack Mountains, where Uncle Jud still lived.  Every summer we piled into the black Oldsmobile wagon and drove north to Ashtabula, my brother and I competing to see who would be first to glimpse the calm blue ocean of Lake Erie.  Then on through the Welch’s grape country of western New York, the rows of vines like columns of soldiers standing at attention.  Buffalo, Rochester, the Finger Lakes, Syracuse, Utica, then into familiar territory, my father calling out the names of towns he had haunted as a youth–Little Falls, Canajoharie, Fonda.  For me, the high point of each trip was the visit with Uncle Jud, who treated my brother and me as if we were his own children.

 From Uncle Jud we learned to love the out-of-doors.  Each summer, my brother and I accompanied him and his dogs, Betsy and Nell, into the deep mountain woods near Canada Lake, where he’d let us target shoot with his deer rifles, much to my father’s dismay.  Unlike Uncle Jud, and other members of the Gloversville clan, my father was not a hunter.  He disapproved of firearms.  I was young, and didn’t understand his point of view.  What could be better, I thought, than to be out in the mountains with the dogs and the rifles?  I often fantasized about being a pioneer, or one of the rugged Iroquois Indians who had inhabited the region.

Back among the adults, Uncle Jud praised my brother and me, no matter how poorly we had shot.  My parents benignly tolerated his exuberance, but you could tell neither one of them approved of his actions.  Uncle Jud would just smile and wink at us, as if we were partners in a conspiracy.  At the time I felt it would be great to grow up to be like him.

* * *

My emotions ran high as I drove to Sky Harbor Airport to pick up Uncle Jud and Aunt Ada. 

Through the terminal window at Gate 21 I saw the plane roll up, and the gray accordion walkway stretch out to the fuselage.  The gate attendant announced the flight, and a minute later, passengers poured into the waiting area.  A young guy in front of me greeted his blonde girlfriend with a huge kiss.  A middle-aged man and woman searched anxiously for their first glimpse of someone, perhaps a son or daughter returning from college.  A grandfather with caterpillar eyebrows met a new grandchild for the first time.  I waited to catch sight of Uncle Jud and Aunt Ada, more nervous than I thought I’d be.

I was shocked when I saw them.  Aunt Ada’s hair was dyed an unnatural black, a color that reminded me of charcoal briquettes.  She wore a full-length winter coat, even though it was eighty degrees outside in the desert.  She piloted Uncle Jud’s wheelchair recklessly into the lounge, nearly running over an old woman who had stopped to embrace a relative.  Uncle Jud was completely bald, except for a few strands of gray fuzz that poked up in the middle of his head.  He sat in his chair like a leaning tower, tipped to his left, the paralyzed side.  He stared down at the carry-on bag in his lap.

“Hello,” I said, angling in front of him.  I shook his good hand and gave Aunt Ada a quick kiss on the cheek.  “How was the flight?”

“Goddam bumpy,” Uncle Jud said.

I thought to explain about the thermals that rise from the desert floor, but decided not to mention it.

 I took over the wheelchair and led them to the elevator that dropped to the baggage claim area.  They had so much luggage, I had to rent a cart, which I drew behind myself as I wheeled Uncle Jud one-handed to the parking lot.  Fortunately, there was plenty of room in the back of my station wagon for the suitcases and wheelchair.  Aunt Ada and I managed to get Uncle Jud into the front seat, where we propped him against the passenger door.  I had an image of him tipping over in my lap while I drove.

As soon as we got rolling, Uncle Jud said, “When do we leave for Vegas?”

That was the thing he wanted to do most.  Years ago, when he and Aunt Ada had vacationed in Las Vegas, Uncle Jud had won enough money at the crap tables to cover the cost of the trip–hotels, meals, nightclubs, even plane fare–with enough left over to pay the doctor bill for the cracked rib he had sustained banging against the tables rolling dice.  It had become a famous story in our family–Uncle Jud’s broken rib–and I still found it hard to believe that a man could do such a thing shooting craps.  But that’s the way Uncle Jud did everything.  All out.

Vegas, however, was last on our itinerary.  First we’d see Mexico, then the Grand Canyon.  Before I had a chance to tell him that, Uncle Jud turned to Aunt Ada and said, “I have to go.  Now.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Jud,” she said, “can’t you hang on until Phil’s place?”

The imperative look in his eyes made me speed through traffic to my mid-town apartment.  We got him out of the car and into his chair, then made a mad dash for the front door.  Fortunately, my place was on the first floor.  Once inside, Aunt Ada wheeled him straight into the bathroom, emerging a moment later with an expression that suggested an accident had been narrowly averted.  “It’s been like this since the stroke,” she said.  “Much of it is psychological–having to rely on someone else to take him to the bathroom.”

 Aunt Ada had been a nurse, and she knew how to handle people.  Without her, Uncle Jud would have ended up in a home.  It depressed me to picture him in a nursing home, a man who once had been such a rugged outdoorsman.

I said, “You tell him, on this trip, we’ll stop whenever he wants.”

The next morning, on the way to Mexico, while we drove along the highway beside the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson, Uncle Jud baited me into a political conversation.  “I suppose,” he said, sucking his teeth, “that you’re a Democrat like your old man.”

“Actually, I’m an independent.”

“Independent enough to vote Republican in the last election?”

“I didn’t vote in the last election.”

“You must be pretty satisfied with the way things are, then.”

“Not really.”

“Then why didn’t you vote?”

“The way I look at it is, it doesn’t matter who you vote for.  Things never change.”

Turning slightly to glance at Aunt Ada, he said, “I hope he isn’t saying what I think he’s saying.”

“He’s saying he thinks things never change,” she said.

I said, “What do you think I’m saying, Uncle Jud?”

“I hope you’re not saying you’re a communist.”

“That system of government is bankrupt, too.”

“There isn’t a government in the world better than the one we have,” he said.  “At least when the Republicans are in office.”

I was a well-read cynic when it came to politics, and I knew if I persisted, I could trip him up intellectually.  I could challenge him on any number of points, adduce disturbing facts about both political parties, show him the depth of my knowledge on the issues, astound him with my articulateness.  Instead, I let the subject drop.

We left the car in a three-dollar all-day parking lot two blocks from the border crossing.  We had to negotiate a steep hill down to the gates, and for a brief moment I considered letting loose of the wheelchair.  What an exhilarating ride into Mexico Uncle Jud would have.  We crossed over into Nogales, Sonora, and browsed along the dirty, narrow streets of the city, accosted at every turn by natives hawking their wares.  Uncle Jud and Aunt Ada bought nothing.  I could tell they were appalled by what they saw.  Aunt Ada walked stiffly, both hands clamped down on her brown leather purse.  A small beige dog with protruding ribs came wagging its whip tail at her while we waited to cross a corner, and she froze until I shooed the animal away.

Uncle Jud rode with his gaze fixed straight ahead, only occasionally turning to look at something Aunt Ada called to our attention.  Usually it was a shop selling handcrafted pots or baskets, cheap colorful blankets or earthenware donkeys ridden by sombrero-clad figurines.  Toward the end of our short visit, Aunt Ada entered a white adobe church while Uncle Jud and I waited outside gazing in.  There was no wheelchair ramp.  When Aunt Ada emerged, she had a calm glow on her face.

On the way back across the border–we stayed just over an hour–Uncle Jud said, “So that was Mexico.”

* * *

Two days later, we drove up to the Grand Canyon.  On the way to the Bright Angel Lodge, where I had booked two cabins, I stopped at Mather Point so that Uncle Jud and Aunt Ada could get their first-ever view of the canyon.  I had really looked forward to coming here because of Uncle Jud’s love of nature, and I wanted him to understand why I had moved to Arizona.  Aunt Ada was duly impressed by the vista, the deep pinks, tans, and creams of the rock formations, pine trees on the north rim made blue by distance.  “I can’t get over it,” she said.  “I just can’t get over it.”

“What’s to get over?” Uncle Jud said.  “It’s just a huge ditch in the ground.”

After we checked in at the lodge, we spent the rest of the day driving from lookout to lookout, inspecting the canyon from different perspectives.  Aunt Ada enjoyed the tour immensely, but Uncle Jud’s indifference diminished my pleasure.  I spent the whole time thinking about what had happened to him.

On the second night of our two-day stay, we had supper in the fancy restaurant at the El Tovar–steak and potatoes, a couple of beers, things Uncle Jud wasn’t supposed to have.  I felt pretty good.  The second day of sightseeing had gone well, and Uncle Jud was in a jovial mood, looking forward to leaving tomorrow for Vegas.  While we were waiting for the waitress to bring back the change from our bill, a large African-American man and his blonde woman companion entered the restaurant and were seated by a waiter two tables away from us.  I could tell by the expression on Uncle Jud’s face that their entrance hadn’t gone unnoticed by him.  No sooner had we gotten out into the lobby than Uncle Jud said, “Did you see that buck nigger with the blonde babe?”

Outside, under a sky packed with stars, I started to ask him just exactly what a “buck nigger” was when he said, “How do you figure a thing like that, Phil?  You’re an intelligent man.  What would an attractive woman see in a guy like that?”

Before I could respond, Aunt Ada–who’d been staring at constellations–said, “Why does he have to explain it?  Why does anyone?”

“Well, you never saw that kind of thing in my day.”

The next morning, before we hit the road for Vegas, we went out for one last look at the view.  The sidewalk down to the rim was steep, and while I wheeled Uncle Jud toward the canyon, I pictured the chair pulling free from the two plastic handgrips I held too tightly.  After the initial shock of realizing what had happened, Aunt Ada and I would run frantically after the aluminum chair as it rapidly gained speed toward the precipice.  Then we would stand with our mouths ajar as Uncle Jud plunged into the gaping ditch.  The headlines in the papers would read:  “Wheelchair-Bound Man Plunges into Canyon.”

It was a good thing we hadn’t checked out yet because Uncle Jud had to use the bathroom urgently.  Our wild run for their cabin barely prevented an accident.  When Aunt Ada came out a minute later, she said, “His bowels are loose today.  I’m worried about the long drive across the desert.  It wouldn’t be bad if I could go into a Men’s Room with him, but I’m afraid you’ll have to help if he has to go.”

“No problem,” I said, though the image of helping Uncle Jud that way gave me pause for thought.

 I drove across the flat plane of western Arizona desert, sneaking a peek every once in a while at Uncle Jud, who stared straight ahead.  I couldn’t begin to imagine what we’d do if he had to go to the bathroom here in the middle of nowhere.  I prayed that images of Las Vegas danced in his head, keeping his mind off his bowels.  Aunt Ada enjoyed the view from the backseat, at one point saying, “So much open space.”

When we crossed Lake Mead over the Hoover Dam, Uncle Jud stopped sucking his teeth for the first time in an hour.  “Look at that,” he said, referring to the dam.  “Now that’s a thing of beauty.”

A short while later the car crested a ridge, and we saw forever across the Nevada desert, all the way to Las Vegas, its downtown buildings like hypodermic syringes poking up into a flesh-colored sky.  Uncle Jud perked up even more.  “There it is,” he said, as if he were a pilgrim returning to Mecca.

We ate lunch at McDonald’s, then found a motel near the Strip.  After supper, before we’d even digested our food, Uncle Jud wanted to go down to the lobby to try his hand at the one-armed bandits he had seen near the check-in desk.  I had to get coins at the change counter.  Then I rolled Uncle Jud over to a five-dollar machine, where I deposited money while he used his good right arm to pull the handle.  He tried the slot ten times in a row without a hit, dropping a quick fifty bucks.  By then it was dark, and he wanted to go out to one of the casinos.

First came the tour of The Strip, a million blazing and flashing lights against a black velvet sky.  The street was clogged with traffic–cars, cabs, buses, horses-and-carriages–all filled with tourists, their eyes wide in awe of the sights.  The congestion made Aunt Ada nervous, but Uncle Jud was in nirvana, his face frozen in a comic mask as he reverently mouthed the names of celebrities on each casino marquee.

We found a small casino with parking in the rear.  I rolled Uncle Jud around to the front and into the smoke-filled gambling hall.  Here there was every bit as much noise and confusion as out on the street.  People screamed, bells rang, sirens wailed, gongs gonged, lights flashed, machines sputtered and clicked.  Gamblers spilled free drinks onto an already-sticky floor.  Uncle Jud smiled.  His lifted his good arm and pointed to a crap table.  Aunt Ada, seeing the number of men around the narrow platform, went off to try her luck at the slots.

I rolled Uncle Jud to the edge of the action, not knowing what to expect.  I had never shot craps, and I knew little about the game.  Uncle Jud locked the brakes on his chair, then motioned for me to help him up.  Since he and Aunt Ada had been with me, I had only seen him stand once, at my place, when she had scolded him for not trying to move around enough.  One of the gamblers, noticing Uncle Jud struggling to his feet, nudged a companion, and both men came over to help.  When Uncle Jud was upright, the men assisted him to the table, where they made extra space.  Uncle Jud clutched the table’s edge with his good hand, eyeing the dice like a cat watching a ball of yarn.  I didn’t know the rules of craps, and I was surprised when the stickman, responding to some unseen gesture from Uncle Jud, said, “New shooter.”

I stood with my hand against Uncle Jud’s back, pressing him against the table.  When he got the dice, he rattled them in his fist, blowing once on the white sugar cubes before flinging them backhanded across the green felt surface.  When they bounced out from the far wall, one die showed one black dot, the other, four.  “Five for the money,” said the stickman, a prematurely bald guy in a red vest and black pants.  “Pay the line.”

The men who circled the table were, to a man, fascinated by Uncle Jud’s spunk, and they smiled and whispered to one another.  Some shook their heads in good-natured amusement, and one said, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “I hope I’m like that when I reach his age.”

“If you reach his age,” another said, and the men at the table laughed.

Uncle Jud had another roll coming, but before the dice reached him, he turned to show me an anxious face.  I knew immediately what it meant.  “I’ve got to go to the can, Phil.  Now!”  Turning back to the curious faces of the men at the table, he said, “I’m sorry.”

I helped Uncle Jud down, unlocked his brakes, then wheeled him hurriedly to a restroom.  We had to leave the chair just inside because the space was so small.  I had to practically carry him across the black-and-white tile floor to one of the stalls.  Once inside the john, I realized his predicament.  Uncle Jud stood precariously, clumsily fumbling at his belt with one hand.  “Ada always helps with this,” he said, the anxiety of an imminent accident on his face.  I quickly undid his belt, unfastened his pants, pulled them and his underwear down around his ankles, and helped Uncle Jud down onto the seat.  He couldn’t hold back, and as the volcano erupted I stumbled backwards out of the stall.  “I’m sorry, Phil,” he said.

All I could think to say was, “Can you wipe yourself?”

“Yes,” he said, “but I’ll need help getting back into my pants.”

I said, “Give me a holler.”

 The bad air forced me out of the restroom and back into the casino, where Aunt Ada stood just outside the door.  “I was afraid something like this would happen,” she said.

I said, “It’s no problem.”

“I tried to talk him out of this trip, but he wouldn’t hear it.  Coming here has been his dream for years, ever since he won that money on our vacation.  He talked about it so much, I got sick and tired of hearing it.  I had to bring him here just to shut him up once and for all.”

We were quiet after that.  I waited a few minutes more, took several deep breaths, and plunged back inside.  “Uncle Jud?” I said.  “Everything come out all right?”

He didn’t laugh at the joke.  “Send Ada in here,” he said.  “I’m all alone.”

What an excellent idea, I thought, but when I went out she was gone.  I had to go back in and handle things myself.  I could tell by Uncle Jud’s demeanor that he was humiliated by the experience.  So much so, in fact, that he wanted to return to the motel.

“We can’t quit now,” I said, wheeling him out into the casino.  “They’re expecting you back at the crap table.”

“I’ve had it with craps,” he said.

I thought maybe Aunt Ada could talk him out of leaving, but he insisted on returning to the hotel.

Back in the room there, he asked if we could leave for Phoenix in the morning.  I was going to say something about hitting one of the big casinos tomorrow, but when I looked at Aunt Ada she shook her head slightly, signaling to let it drop.

Later, when I left for my room, she stepped out into the hall with me.  “It’s his condition,” she said.  “Sometimes it depresses him this way.  He’ll be over it by morning.”

“Let’s hope so,” I said.  “I’d hate to think we came all the way here for one toss of the dice.”

She touched me on the arm.  “I always knew you’d grow up to be a fine man, Phil,” she said.

I didn’t sleep well that night.  I lay in bed remembering the Uncle Jud of the past, recalling a particular incident that always came to mind when I thought about those trips to Gloversville.  I was sixteen, and for the first time ever had traveled alone with my father to his hometown.  My brother was attending college, a freshman at Ohio State.  For some reason, my mother had decided not to go along.  I had recently gotten my driver’s permit, but was frustrated at not being allowed to drive on any part of the trip.  I felt certain I could have navigated safely on the New York State Thruway, but my father didn’t want to risk a high-speed accident.  No wonder I was so ecstatic when Uncle Jud gave me my first real driving opportunity.

He had left his hunting dogs in the woods at his cabin near Pinnacle Mountain, and he needed to go out and round them up.  He invited me along.  When we got outside to his old white International, he walked purposefully to the passenger side and climbed in.  It took me a second to see what he was getting at, but when I got in behind the wheel I was smiling hard.  My father, who knew his older brother too well, had witnessed the event from the kitchen window and came outside to urge caution.  Uncle Jud shrugged him off with a wave of the hand.  “Come on, Fred,” he said, “how’s he going to learn?”

“On something smaller than that yacht,” my father said.

Uncle Jud tossed me the keys.  “Crank her up, Phil.”

I started the truck and backed carefully out of the driveway, realizing as I did that maneuvering the vehicle would demand all of my skills.  When I straightened her out on the road to Meco, I gave my dad a toot on the horn.  He waved, but I could read the expression on his face.

Along the way, Uncle Jud spoke to me as if I were an adult, explaining his job as superintendent at the leather mill, talking about townspeople, and, when we reached the dense woods that blanketed the Adirondacks, telling me why he loved hunting so much, especially for deer.  “They’re the most majestic animals in the world, Phil,” he said.  “And they’re a lot smarter than people think.”  He went on to say how the forest wouldn’t be the same without them, how he loved nothing better than to be out stalking deer, sneaking up on one for a shot.  He described how careful a hunter had to be not to step on twigs because there was nothing more finely turned than a deer’s hearing.  “And when you raise that rifle and sight down the barrel to the center of the buck’s heart,” he said, “you pray he won’t move before you squeeze the trigger.  You want a clean kill.  You don’t want the animal to suffer.”

Uncle Jud never killed solely for pleasure.  He always used the entire carcass.  He made hats and gloves from the skin, venison steaks and roasts from the meat.  He even made sausage, using the deer’s intestines.  The heads he mounted as trophies on the walls of the cabin, where he and other family members would excitedly discuss the number of points on the antlers.

 We had a hard time finding the dogs that day, and we had to split up to search for them.  It was a magical moment in my life, being alone in the deep green woods, jigsaw-puzzle pieces of sunlight scattered about the forest floor, the smell of earth and pine heavy in my lungs.  I called for the dogs loudly, praying I’d find them right away.  I wanted to make the return trip as soon as possible.  I was sure Uncle Jud would let me drive the truck back.

I didn’t find the dogs, but I did discover growing on the side of a pine tree a kind of fungus I had never seen before, a thick white growth shaped like half a dinner plate.  I pulled it off the tree, and with the pocketknife I carried, proceeded to cut into the pulpy flesh.  What I ended up doing was slicing into my left index finger right down into the bone.  The skin had peeled away like a piece of whittled stick, and as I stood in shock looking at the exposed bone, the wound began to bleed.  I was smart enough to press the skin back into place, but it didn’t stem the flow of blood that gushed from my finger.

I felt faint as I hurried back to the cabin, picturing myself bleeding to death while Uncle Jud hunted for his dogs.  But he was already there, waiting for me, the dogs secure in the back of the truck, everything ready to go.  When he spotted me, he knew something was wrong, and he came running out of the truck.  When he saw what I’d done, he got his first-aid kit, took out some salve and globbed it on my bleeding finger, placed a wad of gauze around it, and taped the bandage tightly.  Then he drove me quickly back to town, where we stopped at the local hospital’s emergency ward.

I waited in a gray-curtained cubicle until a doctor came in to inspect the damage.  A nurse irrigated the wound, then numbed my finger with a cold chemical spray from an aerosol can.  The doctor fitted the piece of skin perfectly into place, then bandaged the finger.  I thought we were done, but the doctor insisted on giving me a tetanus shot, an inoculation that hurt more than my sliced finger.

* * *

In the morning, Uncle Jud was downright morose.  I had never seen him so sullen.  He didn’t even respond when I said, “Shall we have a last shot at those one-armed bandits in the lobby?”

Aunt Ada said, “Let’s just go back to Phoenix, Phil.”

We checked out, got Uncle Jud into the front seat of the car, stowed the suitcases, and started off on the long drive across the desert.  The silence in the car would have been unbearable had it not been for the beauty of the land, statuesque yuccas casting shadows across the sand, creosote bushes twisting in a morning wind, blue mountains against a robin-egg sky.  And mine was the only car on the road.

We crossed into Arizona and drove most of the way to Phoenix before stopping at a hamburger joint in Wickenburg.  By then Uncle Jud was in better spirits, and he decided he wanted to eat something his doctor forbade.  “I want to be bad,” he said.  He had a bacon cheeseburger, large French fries, and a Coke.  When he finished, he ordered a large coffee, despite the warning from Aunt Ada.  “You know how that affects you,” she said.

He said, “To hell with my bowels.”

She tried to coax him into using the john before we left the restaurant, but he said, “I’m not putting Phil through that shit again.”

Later, as we were pulling out of the parking lot, we spotted a mule deer nibbling grass at the side of the road.  It was a young buck, nearly full grown, with an odd-colored left ear.  “Oh, how pretty,” Aunt Ada said.  “It almost seems like someone’s pet.”

Uncle Jud said, “If I had a rifle, I’d blow its ass off.”

The sighting of the deer led him into a reverie about his younger years–his hunting days–and he reminisced the rest of the way to Phoenix, going into great detail on what seemed like a hundred different stories about deer hunting in the Adirondacks.  By then I had had it with Uncle Jud, and it was all I could do to keep from telling him to shut up.  But I noticed, for the first time in ages, the white scar on my left index finger, the pale crescent of flesh that had been taped back into place all those years ago.  It occurred to me to show it to Uncle Jud, to see if he remembered that day as clearly as I did.  He went on and on about hunting, though, and I resigned myself to the fact that there was no interrupting him.

* * *

The morning of their departure, while we hurriedly got all their things together so we could check in on time at the airport, Aunt Ada did nothing but talk about how wonderful I had been, putting them up at my place, acting as tour guide.  She had especially loved the Grand Canyon, she said, and she would never forget my kindness in taking them there.

Uncle Jud had completely recovered from the casino fiasco, and he was talking again about Las Vegas.  “Maybe we’ll make it out there next year,” he said, “hit the crap tables for some big-time bucks.”

 After we got their boarding passes at the check-in counter, I waited with them in the lounge at the gate.  The place was already filled with passengers heading east.  When the airline clerk announced early boarding for disabled people, I kissed Aunt Ada goodbye and shook Uncle Jud’s hand.  He held my hand tightly for a moment, pulling me forward to whisper something in my ear.  Referring to our handshake, he said, “Is this the hand you use to wipe your ass?”

“Yes,” I said, perplexed by the question.

He said, “Really? I use toilet paper, myself.”

It was an old joke–one that seemed inappropriate given what we had been through–but I laughed anyway.

When Aunt Ada rolled him down that ramp, I was delighted to see them go.  I even stayed to watch the plane lift off.  After it was gone, I lingered in the lounge for a while staring at the sky.  I pictured Uncle Jud and Aunt Ada in their seats, way in the back near the bathroom– just in case of an emergency.

On the drive back to my apartment I had the oddest feeling.  Even if they made it back out for a visit next year, I knew I’d never see my old Uncle Jud again.