The Wager

I stood on the sidewalk with my arms crossed, scowling at my father as Brook rode up on his one-speed. Brook wanted his money, but we were just about to drive away from Minneapolis forever, and cash was tight. From the back of the station wagon, the cat in its cage protested the move. From her car seat in the back, my sister explained to the cat: you’re stuck.   

Is that your friend, asked my mother, pointing to Brook. His scuffed-up knees poked under ratty orange swim trunks. He balanced a large fishing net on the handlebars of his bike. Wrapped in the nylon mesh was this huge snapping turtle we’d been hunting for months—we called the turtle Whitey.  

Brook wants his money, I told my father, who shrugged.  

You didn’t think I’d catch him, said Brook to my father.  

You’re wrong, said my father.  

Don’t get dirty, said my mother. She was talking to me.  

I didn’t touch the turtle because those things are quick—I’d seen what Whitey could do to ducklings. My sister squirmed, cranked the back window down an inch. Brook got off his bike, pushed it right next to the car window so that my sister could see the enormous turtle spinning ponderously in the net—my sister squealed. From behind bars, the cat hissed.  

Brook’s kickstand was busted, so I held his handlebars while he talked money. The turtle never made to bite me, but I kept arching my body, sidestepping its head.  

Impressive, said my father.  

A forty-dollar catch, said Brook.  

My father fished four folded tens from his wallet, held the bills in the air. Forty dollars was a fortune. Brook was poorer than us; he lived in a rotting green bungalow next to the convenience store where boys stole gum and gave each other bad advice. Brook’s mother, who used to work at the food co-op, sometimes cut my mother’s hair. Brook’s father spent most of his time chiseling ducks out of maple blocks to forget Vietnam. Maybe Brook would treat his parents to six Chinese food dinners with the money, I thought. Maybe Brook would release the turtle back into the lake to ambush more ducklings.  

My father found the yardstick in the U-Haul: Whitey was a full nineteen inches in diameter. This was two inches older than the time Brook’s sister was stillborn, three inches older than when his mother quit her job at the co-op because the Hubbard squashes kept giving her miscarriages, and four inches older than when his mother talked his father off the highway overpass and into her arms. 

You’ve got a knack, said my father, handing Brook the bills. You’re persistent, crafty, he said. You triangulate; you plan. You figure out what to do, and you do it. People like you are successful in life, don’t ever forget it, Brook. It can take a long time, fifteen years, a lifetime even, but you’ve got it in you.  

I did plan, said Brook with great pride. I watched where the ducklings swam. I slunk out into the shallows beyond the cattails. I held the net for an hour, waiting for that turtle to snag a little flipper in its jaws right in my path. Could’ve waited forever, wouldn’t have bothered me, said Brook. 

 We’re so lucky, said my mother, later, weaving her hand through the highway wind. The car was hot. The cat glowered, cultivating a urinary tract infection. We ran out of cash in Indiana and gas in Ohio. So lucky so lucky so lucky.  

BARBARA LOCK

Barbara Lock, MD ’97 (BUSM), MFA ’22 (Sarah Lawrence College), works as an emergency physician and teaches Narrative Medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. She edits fiction at Variant Lit. Her writing appears in STORY, The Forge, Superstition Review, and elsewhere. For more about her: barbaralock.com.