When Lady Luck Gives You the Finger

CW: dismemberment.

It took me twenty four years to find my finger. That’s twenty three and three-quarter years after Debbie left me at the altar.

Okay, we never quite made it to the altar, but we did have matching rings. She was my high school sweetheart and I had big dreams for us. I had a sweet job and a football scholarship promised me a pro sports career. Everything was bright.

My major was meaningless. Coach told me I was the best wide receiver the school had ever seen and nothing else mattered. I supported myself with the coolest job ever, at the Tender Dairy ice cream factory. Perks included free ice cream, including boxes and boxes of their signature ice pops. Lime-chocolate, orange-vanilla, butterscotch-walnut, and the infamous passion fruit. Art, the owner, loved handing them out and I took them by the armful. My friends couldn’t get enough, and me and Deb were royalty at every party.

Looking back, Art paid crap, but I was fine with it. It was a temporary job till I made pro, and I just liked it. Loved working with my hands. I spent countless summers helping my old man tinker with boat engines, old bikes, and lawnmowers. My ice pop packing machine reminded me of those days.

I was the fastest packer. The machines all ran the same speed but there was always room for mistakes, for wastage, and I just didn’t waste. I liked how I could turn my mind off for a while and just do. When Art offered overtime I always took it, because I wanted the best ring for Debbie.

The thing about ice cream is, it’s cold. It was cold in the factory, it was cold in the walk-in freezers, and the product was cold. It didn’t matter how quickly I moved my fingers, they always went numb.

And the thing about an ice pop packing machine is, eventually it gets clogged up. Yeah, I didn’t waste anything, but all machines eventually do. Now, like I said, I liked maintenance. I was good at it. Fast. What would happen is the ice pops wouldn’t be perfectly centered, and over time some of the ice cream would smear against the chute and build up. Plaque inside arteries.

So, I was basically a heart surgeon. As soon as I noticed an ice pop getting stuck and others piling into it, I’d shut the belt down, open the maintenance access, scoop out the wastage – oh, so this ice cream was deformed but it was otherwise perfectly fine, so Art was okay with us just taking it for ourselves – clean up the chute, do a six-point inspection – twice – close the maintenance access, and restart the belt. A second later the machine hummed and the ice pops again popped out the other end, perfectly packed.

My record was thirty-four seconds. Well under the average of two-minutes-seventeen.

So, I made a bunch of money and bought a ring. And Debbie said yes. And this happened a day after I got accepted for my football scholarship.

Life was awesome! The girl of my dreams, the world’s best career – all of it. I couldn’t stop grinning. Everyone patted me on the back and Art even asked for an autograph from me before I got famous.

So, I was distracted.

When my machine jammed I hustled like never before. My days at the job were numbered and I wanted to leave a legacy. Dreams of picket fences and Super Bowls filled my mind. I was on track for hitting an unheard of sub-thirty-second unjamming.

I blew through my six point inspections. Maybe I skipped one out of excitement. I restarted the machine, shouted about a new record, and felt a dull ache in my hand. Only after about a hundred ice pops had been packed did I notice I was missing most of my right ring finger, along with my ring.

The damnedest thing is, my hands were so cold I barely felt it until I got to the hospital.

Everything after was a blur, but the key points still haunt me. One, I lost the scholarship. Coach said I’d never play football again, and I believed him. Two, Debbie left me. Said it was nothing personal and then shacked up with the quarterback. Three, I kept my job, but only for another year.

Art gave me a bunch of ice cream to help me cope with the loss of my finger. I realize now that this was a bribe so I wouldn’t sue. Well, I was young, dumb, and down on my luck. I didn’t know better back then.

A year later, Art was shut down by the government for bribery and safety violations. And my finger? It was never found.

Until now.

Maybe.

I left home after that and spent my best years drifting from one crappy job to another, one broken relationship to the next, but I did keep in contact with my sister. Or, she kept in contact with me. When we were kids I thought she was the most annoying person in the world – because she was – but everything changed when we went our own ways. Turns out, she’s the only constant in my life, and I’d probably have wound up on the street or worse without her. Where everything falls to crap for me, she’s got a stable marriage, two lovely kids who happen to be the world’s best niece and nephew – and ain’t nothing ever going to change my mind about that – and this infinite well of patience and understanding for when the world takes another punt at me.

And a spare couch with my name on it.

I told her time and again my whole life went to hell the moment I lost that finger. Like I died that day. But she always found a way to make me feel better. Like it was worth it to keep trying anyway.

Sometimes she finds leads for me. The latest? An old newspaper from a podunk called Granning Falls, in Arizona. The internet says it has a population of 2,700, is nowhere near a waterfall, and is picturesque, if you like deserts.

So the front page is a photo of Mandrew and Rosalind Becker, smiling against the backdrop of the town hall. The headline: Granning Falls Heroes Score Win Against Big Ice Cream. Turns out, they won a settlement of $5,000 when they sued Tender Dairy.

Because they found a finger in their ice pops.

It wasn’t hard to learn the Beckers still lived in Granning Falls. My pickup looks extra beat-to-death when I park in front of their home, a broad adobe house. Their lawn is a manicured rock garden, with tactically placed cactuses. There’s short ones and tall ones… I don’t really know anything about cactuses. They look pretty though.

There’s a red stone path that winds towards their door and I feel like I’m on safari. I pass a kind of tiny Grand Canyon, with a garden gnome and plastic flamingo chilling in it. By the door, a couple spiky plants. I think they’re agaves, but I don’t really know. They got that kind of blue/green colour, like on the tequila labels. Well, not the tequilas I buy, but the fancy ones.

I hear a man clear his throat, and I startle. When I look up, I see an old guy standing in the shade of the door. He’s wearing sunglasses and cowboy boots, but also really short shorts and his legs are pasty.

“Can I help you?” he says. It sounds like a genuine question, not like a passive-aggressive what the hell are you doing here?

“Um,” I say.

“Mandrew Becker,” he says, and he holds out his hand. Shaking makes me self-conscious and I hate it, but I reach out before I know what I’m doing.

“Corey Farcus,” I mumble. I guess I’m still stunned that he’s the guy and that he caught me snooping in his yard. As soon as we shake, he glances down at my hand.

“Oh,” he says, and then he grins. “Well, come inside, friend.” He calls out to his wife, “Rosie! Some lemonade please! We have a guest.”

Their house is cool and reminds me of stepping into an ice cream freezer. I numbly follow Mandrew to a shaded room with wicker furniture. We sit. Then Rosalind – I presume – shows up with a tray and giant pitcher of pink. She sets it down and looks at me with wonder.

“Rosie!” Mandrew says, grinning. Her eyes dart to my hand before I’m able to hide it. She smiles. Then she pours three glasses and sits beside her husband.

“Um,” I say, not sure how to begin.

“We’ve been expecting you,” she says, and they share a look.

Well, now I’m completely lost. “Uhh… you’ve been expecting me?”

Mandrew claps his hands with glee. He points to my hand and then to me. “You’re the guy, aren’t you? The guy that lost his finger.”

I hide my right hand in my left and I’m suddenly overcome with emotions. My eyes are watering and my breath’s unsteady. “Yeah,” I manage.

“Oh, it’s okay,” says Rosalind. She passes me a tissue. “We didn’t mean to stress you out, it’s just we’re very excited. Have some lemonade.”

The tissue’s welcome and the lemonade’s pretty dang good, even if it is pink. It calms me down.

“Why were you expecting me?”

They look at each other again. “Well,” says Mandrew, “we only kind of were. Always said to ourselves, ‘Say, wouldn’t it be something if the fella stopped by one day?’ Isn’t that right, Rosie?”

Rosalind nods. “Passion fruit, right? The double popsi-pack, from Tender Dairy?”

“Oh my god!” I say, covering my mouth with both hands. I don’t even register that my mutilation is on full display. It doesn’t bother the Beckers. “It is you.”

“It is you,” Mandrew repeats. They hold each other’s hands. “It was, uh, Corey, right?”

I nod.

“So, Corey,” Rosalind says. “What finally brought you to our door?”

Again, I’m finding it hard to breathe. “My finger!” I blurt out. “You’re the last people that ever saw it. My whole life went to hell when I lost it.” I keep rambling. I don’t know how long, but I spill everything. The scholarship, Debbie, losing the job and then all the crap years since. Like an endless prison sentence. I go through a dozen tissues and Rosalind coos to me and pats my back. Mandrew keeps topping up my lemonade. After I’m done, we share a moment of silence.

“I guess I just,” I hesitate, unsure why I came. It was a feeling, an urge, not a plan. “You’re the last people that saw it. I want some closure, some explanation for why my life turned out the way it did. I don’t know.”

Some unsaid conversation passes between them. “Would you,” Rosalind says, her words creeping mischievously, “like to see it?”

My heart skips a beat. “What?”

“Would you like to see it?” Mandrew says.

“What!?”

They grin, and then Rosalind pulls at a silver chain around her neck, a necklace hidden within her blouse. When she pulls it out, I see it’s threaded through two-and-a-half human finger bones: the phalanges of the fourth finger.

I think I scream.

“We call him Wesley,” Mandrew says, as he pets the bones.

“That’s my finger!”

“Wesley’s a part of our family,” Rosalind says, unperturbed by my tone.

“Why do you have my finger!?”

“Corey,” Mandrew says, his voice warm and welcoming. “Listen. Our lives changed when we found that finger in our ice pop.”

He tells me they sued Tender Dairy and could have walked away with a cool hundred grand, but instead they settled for $5,000 and keeping the finger. Why?

“Because we just knew it was good luck,” he says. “There was a sign – some crappy little ring on it. Got a couple hundred for that.”

He goes on. When they used the date of the incident to pick lotto numbers, they won. Not the jackpot, but a decent windfall. When they dropped the bones on the sports page, they picked the Super Bowl winner – every year, without fail. They were football bones, that was for sure. They used to have terrible plumbing issues in the house, but all those disappeared after they got the finger. Their indoor plants stopped dying. Their dogs never had fleas. And old bed-ridden Aunt Bernice, on hearing of the miraculous bones, sprung out of bed and recovered the use of her legs.

“So you see, Corey,” Mandrew says, cradling the bones – my bones – in his hands, “these are lucky bones. This is a lucky finger. We call him Wesley, and he’s a part of our family.”

“But that’s my finger!”

“Well, dear,” says Rosalind, “if you count the days, Wesley has actually been in our family longer than he has been with you.”

It’s true. I’ve spent more of my life without the finger than with. But it’s still mine, isn’t it?

Anyway, that’s not important. This just proves what I’ve known all along. My luck was in that finger, and my whole life went to hell as soon as I lost it. My sister was wrong. No amount of hard work, or determination, or whatever, would have changed anything. My life was totally in the hands of my finger.

“Please,” I say, “my life is miserable. I need that – my – finger back.”

“Corey,” says Mandrew. “Do you really think having these bones back will turn your life around?”

“It’s a lucky finger! You said so yourself.”

“Well,” says Rosalind, “the thing is, Wesley chose to live with us. It’s not enough to just have luck, is it? It’s all in your attitude. How you use it.”

I have no idea what that means. All I know is I need my finger back.

“Please. I’ll do anything! I need it back.”

They share another look, like they’ve been expecting this. Rosalind silently gets up, hands the finger-chain to Mandrew, and walks out of the living room.

“Luck’s a weird thing,” Mandrew says. “It’s a bit like money or health. You can never have enough of it.” He laughs himself hoarse. “Okay, Corey. I’ll tell you what. It’s true we’ve lived a blessed life since we found that finger. We’re getting old and our plan was to have our kids inherit it. But maybe you’re right. Maybe it belongs back with you.”

“Thank you!”

“Uh uh uh.” He raises a hand. “Not so fast. It’s not for me to decide.”

“It’s not?”

“How about this.” He lays a coin on his coffee table. “It’s an old Spanish doubloon, from the time we lost Wesley in the garden.” He goes on about how they dug up half of it, and found a buried pile of hidden Spanish treasure. Just one more stroke of luck. “We’ll flip for it.”

“So if I win, you’ll give me my finger back?”

“That’s right,” Mandrew says. “It’s only fair. If that’s the way luck goes, we’ll part with it.”

“And if I lose?”

“Well,” says Mandrew. “As I said, you can never have too much luck.” I hear Rosalind coming back, and I see she’s carrying another tray.

“It seems we’re wagering a finger,” Mandrew continues, “so it’s only fair that you do as well.”

Rosalind sets down her tray. On it is a bowl filled with ice and water, some white towels, disinfectant, gauze, and a butcher knife.

“What do you say, Corey? Ring finger for ring finger?” I can’t breathe.

He picks up the coin, walks it between his fingers. My skin is crawling with ants.

“Heads or tails?” he says. “Or maybe you don’t want to flip. Maybe you’d prefer to just go back home, happy in the knowledge that Wesley has a good home? No problem with that. After all, luck’s not a real thing, is it?”

The silence drags. My heart hammers with every beat. Mandrew stops twirling the coin and moves to put it down again, but then stops when I speak.

“Heads.”