Scharlie R. Martin 1500 Words
January 2010
Aces„n Eights Bombs . . .
By
Scharlie R. Martin
The ice was extra crispy-crisp, chips showering off my skate blades like sparkling
diamonds as I pushed forward hard and fast and then spun into a pirouette. Richard, on
the other hand, just watched little brother and skated plain potatoes.
As little brother I saw the frosty trees as a multitude of cool-white, sparkling,
fuzzy caterpillars crawling up stodgy limbs. Richard noted the frost and tried to tuck little
brother‟s flying scarf in a little tighter around his neck. It was a sacred charge. He was
older. He was big brother.
Dad always claimed Richard was super strong—that he had lifted a fifty pound
sack of flour off a chair when he was only—gosh, what was it … three years old, or was
it two? I don‟t know, maybe it was before he was born. Come to think of it, Dad told that
story more than once, or twice.
Martin/Aces„n Eights Bombs/2
Anyway, every spring Richard and I would go along the railroad track looking for
baby turtles—which seems kinda crazy because who ever heard of turtles traveling by
train and throwing their babies out the window amid the cinders and flying sparks.
Actually, the baby part only seemed plausible after we looked up painted turtles,
Chrysemys picta bellii, in a book and learned that breeding occurs in late May, egg laying
in June, and hatching in late August—but that the hatchlings sometimes over-winter
inside the nest and emerge the following spring. Which is a bit hard to swallow because
in Minnesota they must freeze hard as a carp before emerging like the sluggish last trickle
of melting snow to paddle their way home.
It must be a precarious journey. The stones in the gravel along the tracks were as
big as their silver-dollar size and with their sleek low-slung racer form and only an innate
sense of direction and their tiny whiffer water sniffers to guide them, the bumpy horizon
must have seemed a perpetual monumental challenge. Last year‟s hatchlings always
occurred in the same spot along the track, about a quarter of a mile from the railroad-
bridge where Badger Creek flowed into the Crow Wing River. For the baby turtles that
stretch of track was the slippery slope of survival—if we didn‟t get‟em, the shadow of
air-skimming predators would. It‟s doubtful very few ever made it to a family reunion.
For Richard and I, combing the railroad track looking for baby turtles was no
different than any beachcomber combing the beach for sand dollars. It was something to
do with its own built-in reward.
. . .
Richard was a watcher. One time, while we were playing in the yard with our dog,
Pete, beneath the jack pines just north of the house we heard this tremendous clattering
racket coming from the road past the cornfield. It was not hard to imagine Richard‟s
Martin/Aces„n Eights Bombs/3
myopic vision jumping out to hawk-like scrutiny to figure out what was going on. But if
it did, he didn‟t say so. He just stood his ground—but I think his jaw dropped a bit when
the charging chariot of a horse-drawn cultivator came crashing through the barbwire gate
at the corner of the yard. Time stopped for a couple of eons as the horses broke free of the
cultivator and the tongue dropped, sending the cultivator catapulting (sans horses)
through the air like a new-spangled Frisbee to crash at our feet. Of course, that was long
before Frisbees. Anyway, Pete, a sort of Beagle/Jack Russell Terrier cross, tucks his tail
between his legs and gives us a “you‟ve got to be kidding me” scowl as we watch the
horses go thundering off toward the east.
Five minutes later our pencil-thin Dad comes plodding through the gate; not
noticeably perturbed except his normally bushy eyebrows were set in a single scowl
below the brim of his straw hat.
A week or so later they found Dad‟s sister Edna slumped over her cultivator seat
in the middle of her cornfield, her horses standing calm as a puddle of butter in July.
Speculation was that the horses had spooked and then stopped suddenly, throwing her
chest first into a cultivator lever causing some sort of rupture with internal bleeding or a
heart attack.
Anyway, there was a lot of mystery surrounding the whole incident. One of the
bigger questions was why was she doing the cultivating instead of her man Virgil—who
was rumored to collect mechanical pencils and wear women‟s silk underwear.
Richard and I wound up riding back home from Virg and Edna‟s in the back of
our old Plymouth with her corpse. Edna‟s face looked placid and doll-like, except her
teeth protruded slightly (an overbite that was not noticeable when she smiled) and there
Martin/Aces„n Eights Bombs/4
seemed to be tears on her dusty cheeks and wisps of wild hair. I guess Dad was too shook
up to close her eyes.
Later, Dad took Edna back to Sioux City on the train—which was really only
noteworthy because even though we lived out in the country the train stopped at our
house to let Dad off when he returned from burying her. We lived at a whistle stop named
Wheelock. It used to be on the map but isn‟t anymore.
Later that summer, our team of horses fell prey to a cowcatcher when they got out
on the tracks in the middle of the night. Cowcatcher is kind of a misnomer. Something
like horse-launcher or horseburger-maker might be more appropriate. It‟s a pity it didn‟t
happen earlier. The rotting horseflesh along the tracks might have served as fodder for
those air-skimming shadows patrolling the rails, permitting a few more silver-dollar-size
chrysemys picta bellii to make it home.
. . .
Richard got mad at me once because Mrs. Munson, our homeroom teacher,
picked my play to put on for the Christmas matinee that all our mothers were invited to.
We had actually started to school the same year even though he was a year older. But he
was smart and the school skipped him ahead a grade. Anyway, we were in the same room
with the same teacher, when he claimed I swiped his idea. Pretty fanciful, considering he
never talks. How would I ever know what his idea was if he never talked about it?
Besides, by his own admission, he takes pride in being a skeptical bastard.
Another thing that comes to mind is the time Dad accused us of cutting our dog
Pete‟s tail off. That was unbelievable! In the first place, why would we? We both loved
that dog. We considered ourselves the three musketeers—Richard and me and a dog
named Boo … er, Pete. Anyway, that‟s a mystery that survives today. It‟d be one thing if
Martin/Aces„n Eights Bombs/5
he got his nose cut off, but how do you back into curiosity? I mean, that‟s a good trick,
even for a dog—unless you‟re a reverse pointer.
Another thing I remember is the timbre of presidential voices. First, in Iowa
before we moved to Minnesota, when Roosevelt talked about Japan‟s dastardly deed in
bombing unsuspecting Pearl Harbor. Then later … that incredible August when Truman
talked about the atomic bombs we reciprocated with. On that day there was nothing else
to do but go fishing and wait for the sky to fireball.
But we survived.
Me, skating on the edge—Richard, stodgy, silent, and seemingly stern.
His demeanor and smarts got him a position as Engineering Manager and, even
though I was the one with a college degree, I wound up working for him. He was still big
brother and my protector.
Then came our family division. Mom passed away and Dad was no longer pencil-
thin. At first, my sister Jeanie moved in with Dad on the farm to care for him. But that
didn‟t last long. Jeanie claimed that in his dementia Dad kept mistaking her for our
mother in her youth. Disconcerting, no doubt! Baby sister Carol volunteered to take Dad
in when the rest of our six siblings (except for Richard) claimed he should be put in a
nursing home.
But not Richard—to my chagrin, he remained noncommittal, on the fence
between in and out.
Somewhere in the long years that followed, in an attempted conversation with
Richard, I saw there was slight tremor in his hands. Later, there were some important
papers to sign involving the farm and his hands trembled even more.
“What‟s wrong?” I asked.
Martin/Aces„n Eights Bombs/6
Richard‟s reply bomb was weak and whispery. “I have Parkinson‟s”
Dad‟s gone now and Carol and I try hard to get over the family division and get
the old zing back in our lives. And I‟ve been assured Parkinson‟s is not quite the aces‘n
eights hand it once was—but I‟ll be damned if I don‟t feel just plain guilty for being
healthy as a horse, considering my age.