I even thought about the time I got tricked into an arm-wrestling match with a guy who’d hurt his good hand in a car wreck. It was still in a cast, so we went left-handed. I didn’t find out until a couple of days later that the fucking hustler was a natural southpaw.
The guy who told me was Buddha, the wheelman. This place—just a dump of a bar where guys like me hung around when we weren’t working—it was never loud, never any fights. The reason for that was the same reason that it wasn’t a place where you’d bring a girl.
They had a table for arm-wrestling, with pegs and all. The guy who ran the place, Nathan, the deal was this: if you wanted to do something for money—they had darts, and a full-size pool table, even a place to play cards—Nathan was the ref. And you didn’t argue with Nathan. Not because he was such a hard guy, because that was the rules. Anyone who could walk into that place knew the rules.
I never did stuff like that for money. It’s just stupid. You win, then there’ll always be some other guy who wants to try you. And then another one after that. And if you lose, what good comes out of that?
This guy, he outweighed me by seventy-five pounds, easy. I don’t make the same mistake about fat guys most people do. Some guys, they can power-lift like gorillas, they still stay fat. Fat-looking, I mean. No definition at all. Big round arms, thick around the gut. But strong. Real strong.
I’d never seen this guy before, and I could tell nobody else had, either. I could feel how bad people wanted me to take him on.
“How do you do it?” I asked.
That was fair—the table was there, all right, but nobody had ever seen me on it.
That’s when Buddha tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and followed him over to the table. Buddha showed me how it worked. When I thought I got it, I sat down.
“A little side-bet?” the fat guy asked.
“Not for me,” I told him. “You look like a pro at this.”
The fat guy grinned. One of his front teeth was chipped. He sat down across from me. Nathan came over and wrapped this strap around our wrists. My elbow was on some padded thing; the other guy’s, too. Buddha told me my elbow had to stay on that pad or I’d lose.
“When I let go,” Nathan said.
The fat guy jerked so hard I almost couldn’t hold him. But I did. I just stayed like that, same way you pull against the bars in prison. You can’t bend the bar, but it’s a great isometric.
The fat guy’s face got all red. A vein came out across his forehead. He called me some name, but I couldn’t make it out, what with everybody yelling at the same time.
Butterfly, I thought to myself. In my mind, I was back in the gym, pulling the two pads together, over and over again. I’d gotten to the middle, where the pads meet, so I should release to set up another rep. But I couldn’t do that, so I made like I was doing a shoulder cross, pulling my right hand against the peg and my left toward my right shoulder.
To the fat guy, I was the prison bar. Maybe he was gassed from struggling, maybe he saw it coming, I don’t know. I just pulled. Smooth and slow, like you’re supposed to do, not jerking the weight like the fat guy had tried to do to me.
Even after I felt him start to give, I didn’t speed up, just pulled all the way through until I touched down.
The fat guy mumbled something, and we shook hands. Left hands, ’cause his other one was in that cast.
I could tell the people watching were happy, but nobody really said anything to me.
Except Buddha, later. That’s when he told me what the fat guy’s hustle was.
“How’d you know?”
“I’ve seen his act before. That other guy with him? He’s the moneyman. Backs his boy against anyone who wants action. He’s slick. Never does anything lame like asking for bets, but he’ll cover anything you put down. If you ask him for odds, he’ll give a little—three-to-one is about as far as he can go without tipping his play.”
“Why didn’t you tell—?”
“Like I said, I’ve seen his act before. The way they work it, they just pick a guy