The carcass caught the highbeams. Not flattened. Not dead on impact. The trauma slowly spread from her skin to her innards. There wasn’t even blood, and if it weren’t for the rank stench wafting in the nighttime cool like a dense grenade stink bomb Chuck and Derek wouldn’t have even known she wasn’t alive.
Deer, flashlight, axe. He won a dollar.
He always started with one – a Deep Woods pull tab – and always bought more if it scratched his itch. Derek salivated at the thrill of tiny sinful victories.
“Three on Two, Two on Three, and One on Five?” Jerry asked behind the bar, cocked strawberry blonde. He knew the ritual. “And a Manny’s?”
Every Tuesday afternoon, Derek sauntered in from the bright sidewalk so only the buzz of neon signs struck through the dim as he hunched on his stool. Bud light, Bacardi, and a Seattle Mariner’s compass were his favorite ones to sit under so blue and red lights scrawled on Jerry’s chalky teeth when he smiled.
“Iii klsdlfkaskaslkd,” he mumbled something in return and pulled the exact amount of cash from his pocket. It was a deer, for sure, Chuck had gotten out and checked. Anyway, it was four decades ago; they had been fifteen, sixteen. Derek relaxed and grinned at the bartender’s blue eyes before reaching for his pile of lottery tickets.
Peeling back the bit of cardboard on the tabs to reveal three cartoon-like images was even more satisfying than cranking a slot machine lever. It picked a particular scab inside his chest, got his blood flowing. When a red line with a prize amount appeared on top of the pictures, a bit of bile rose in his throat. The first set was called Hot Wings: A peanut, a baseball, a stern mustached man. A bat, a chicken, and something unspeakably red. A hot rod, french fries, a drumstick.
No red lines. Three losses. He threw them into the red gingham picnic container meant for bar peanut shells and spent pull tabs.
They went to the baseball game the day after. Didn’t talk about the accident, or what went down in the truckbed with the Glad garbage bags, by the Carson family’s red mailbox at two a.m., back at the cabin in the top bunk.
The bleachers burnt Derek’s hands when he sat on them. Chuck inspected the home team’s slugger swing in double-knit polyester and striped pants while he cracked a peanut shell, popped the salty morsel into his mouth. His forearms and biceps strained with the cracking sound of a moonshot, and the player’s cleats kicked dirt up towards the too-blue sky on his ceremonial run around the bases.
Derek wanted to remember, so he watched Chuck and thought about the deer’s fur.
A pool shark broke on the table behind Derek, clattering the balls across the green velvet. He shook his head. He felt embarrassed when he lost, in case Jerry was watching while he began to peel open Pirates Plunder. Rogue wave. Jolly Roger. Gold dubloon. Eye patch. Treasure chest. Turquoise squid. No prize.
In the middle of the night the boys snuck down to the lake, just the two of them. Chuck’s idea, of course. Derek was always following him around. There weren’t any clouds to hide the quarter moon’s shine magnified by the water’s reflection. The woods on the far shore were the only dark, and that is where Chuck wanted to go.
He gulped from the frosted glass. The cold in his chest was refreshing. It spread from his throat to his abdomen, soothing. It was an issue of focus: He could never pay attention to the right things, and the important details missed him, followed by a choice to forget.
When jumped in, the water was warm still from the scorching August heat even though the night had chilled the air. Chuck went first, pencil dropping with hardly a splash. “C’mon, let’s swim over,” His bobbing head laugh-whispered.
It was two of the regulars at the pool table, but he didn’t remember their names or faces. He liked their hands, the different ways their fingers balanced and manipulated the cue stick. The one with thicker fingers and calloused thumbs chalked and lined up a shot for number 2, solid blue, but the angle was slightly off and it went astray of the corner pocket.
Derek was sloppier when he entered the lake. Clumsy, he hit it wrong and made a loud smacking sound. What if someone had heard them? The second after impact the heat from the water covered his face as he sank like a rock, fingers holding closed nostrils. Count to three, opened eyes. Chuck was already breast-stroking away. He emerged above the water and took a deep breath of air before he followed the boy into the dark.
The final pull tab lay in front of him on the bar. Red White and Win. He held it in his right hand, tempting a paper cut with his thin skin, wanting to bleed. The fireworks, three bursts in a row. The regular with more delicate hands aimed a bank shot for red-striped 11. First one thud on the rail, and a clunk as the shot sank in.
“We’ve got a winner!” He wished that Jerry had been watching after all and he would beam at him, finally. Derek would feel that warmth for the first time in years as his favorite bartender crossed the last $500 off the sign with a thick permanent marker. Imagine!
The rest of the memory waterlogged the unbraided threads of the rope swing and the scrape of dry bark on his footsoles. There was an aftertaste of clean lake water, salted flesh, milk breath. Jerry was busy at the other end of the bar serving a couple of handsome twenty-five year olds, tracing their outlines as he shot Coke from the soda gun into a glass. The itch tore open across his chest and his want became too much to bear.
Pathetic. Even winning was not enough. Derek chugged the rest of his beer and threw the unredeemed pull tab away.
♢
December 21, 2024