Gambler
Author: Bill Roberts
My mother loved the tinkle
of the nickel falling
through the slot
the tug of the steel arm
as she pulled down
with deliberation
the dizzying whirr
of the three drums
rotating so madly
the chink, chink, chink
as they suddenly
bounced to a stop
then the silence
that followed
for she’d closed her eyes
waiting for the rattle
of coins falling
into the winner’s tray
or more often
the longer silence following
the immediate silence.
Note: Mom usually played the nickel slots at broken-down North Beach, Maryland, where we’d vacation one week every summer, its water as nasty as the decayed town itself. But there was magic of a sort. What was it? Well, for us kids it was the adventure of just getting away from home, driving all those miles (40 maybe), and camping in another person’s rooming house. A whole week away! Mom never brought any money back from the slots, but she did well at other gambling investments. Her dime-a-day habit of playing the numbers (3-1-4 her favorite combo) about once a year netted her three hundred dollars in cash from Whitey, the old one-eyed numbers runner for the local mob. About $13 to make $300 is a pretty fair return. Too bad she didn’t have a dollar a day to play. But so it goes.
