’Pologize, Dice

On my dad’s Mississippi Delta farm, payday on Friday was always followed by a dice game on Saturday.

As a small boy, I watched and listened, crouched beside Jaybird, my best friend and mentor. After I grasped the fundamentals of craps, as Jaybird called it, he spotted me a handful of change and let me join in. “If you win, repay me first, and keep the rest,” he said. “If you lose, repay me from the allowance you get for doing chores.” To win, Jaybird said I must encourage the dice, so I learned the gambler’s jargon … terms such as, “natchul.” This meant that the dice turned up the same amount as the previous roll by landing with identical numbers on each die, e.g., if the first roll was four (three plus one), a natural — natchul — would be two plus two.

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Other encouraging phrases were, “Come back, dice” (meaning, turn up the same two times in a row); “Four (fo’) — Little Joe from Kokomo”; “Five — “Little Phoebe”; “Six — Jimmy Hicks fum de Sticks”; “Seven — up pop de devil”; “Eight, skate, donate” or “Eighter from Decatur”; “Nine — Nina Ross on a roan hoss”; Ten — “Rake dat big pot in”; and my favorite, “’pologize dice,” used when a player regains the dice, having rolled craps — two (snake eyes), three (acey-deucey), or twelve (boxcars) — his last turn. Emulating Jaybird, I kissed the dice on my first roll, bounced them off the wall, and shouted, “Seven come ’leven.” The dice obeyed, and I raked in the pot — all coins, since Jaybird made the house rules, and no bills could be anted. For a while, I just kept on rolling and controlling them bones. This is so easy, I thought … I will never earn my living sweating in hot cotton fields; I’ll just be a big-time gambler. Everyone anted again, and with shameless audacity, I bounced the dice off the wall once more. “Boxcars!” Jay shouted. “You done crapped out, boy.” That was the beginning of another life lesson the old black man, a master teacher, was planting indelibly in my brain. He taught me how not to indulge in certain types of sin by encouraging me to indulge in those sins. One day when we were fishing, he lit up a smoke — a strong, unfiltered Camel. All of thirteen years old, I said, “Jay, I’m a full-grown man now, and I want to smoke like you.” Without saying a word, he passed me the Camels and a kitchen match. I lit up, inhaled deeply on the first puff like Jaybird, turned purple, gagged, wheezed, and felt woozy the rest of the day. I never smoked again. Like cigarettes, Jaybird knew gambling can be addictive, and he made sure I never became a gambler by encouraging me to gamble. Before long, I was handing over all of my hard-earned weekly allowance to him. Content just to watch, I quit gambling. Never again would I say to those evil, spotted little blocks, “’pologize, dice.”