By
seal
No matter where I am or when I get to bed, I am always up around 5 am. One morning on my recent visit to Florida, I was surprised to see my father get up and join me for coffee at that early hour. It turns out that, in his relatively young retirement, he enjoys playing tennis in the morning with the mostly older men in Boca West. Since the rest of my family wouldn’t be up for hours (and heaven knows I can use the exercise) I decided to come along, at least for a walk.
As we arrived, my father introduced me to the men. I got the feeling right away that he must talk about me sometimes as several of the men asked me questions about my kids and poker. One man sat with my father and I and started talking as if we were old friends. My father had one of the earliest matches and, within minutes, he was gone and I was listening to my new friend’s tales of betting at the local dog track.
The man, who made me promise to call him Clark, looked and seemed older than his healthy 74 years. His skin was brown and leathery from the strong Florida sun, and hung loosely from his neck in a skinny pouch. His few remaining short white hairs desperately clung to the back of his head, reluctant to give in to total baldness. Around the back of his left ear, he wore one of those too-big hearing aids that fought for head space with his black, horn-rimmed glasses.
Clark had just finished telling me about how he won a daily double at the track, and he got up to freshen up his coffee. As he sat back down I asked him if he ever played poker at the track. He leaned forward and said in a horse, raspy whisper full of gravel, “Your dad told me you are a poker player. Can you keep a secret?”
I assured him I could, although since I am writing this I guess you could say I lied. But Clark was satisfied and he said, “I play poker all the time. And I have an edge too. I never like to gamble without an edge. I don’t know if you could say that I cheat, but I definitely have an edge.”
He tapped the back of his left ear and I wondered if he knew he had a tell as he continued. “Most of the players around here are old men. One thing about us old men is that we like to mumble and grumble. Some of us do it without thinking and some of us just got used to complaining, but most of us do it. And one day by accident I made an interesting discovery about all this mumbling. If I turn my hearing aid up a bit I can hear the softest whisper.”
Clark smiled and showed more than a few missing teeth. “I remember the first day I found out what this baby can do. I was in a hand with this guy around my age, and I figured he was on a draw but I couldn’t tell if he was drawing to the straight or the flush. Well, the straight card hits on the river and I hear him clear as day say, ‘About time,’ so I fold my set.”
“The thing of it is that I hear pretty good out of my left ear but not so good out of my right. So the next day I switched it to my left ear and now I can hear a bird fart from the other side of the golf course. I’m like freaking Superman. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made good poker decisions based on what I hear mumbled under some guy’s breath. This thing is a gold mine.”
Well, I am an honorable SOB and this casual admittance of cheating appalled me. But I know old men and I didn’t waste my time trying to convince Clark that what he was doing was wrong. Instead, I made up some lame excuse and left the café to walk back to my parent’s apartment. I did however buy an extra loud dog whistle at the local flea market later that day. The next morning I again joined my father and when I saw Clark I snuck behind the drawn plastic rain shield and blew that thing as hard as I could. “Superman” indeed.