Slapping Sacagawea

My older brother hated slapping Sacagawea and Little Pompy.

That’s what he called it: slapping.
His years of religiously carrying the big gold coin had strengthened his thumb, enabling it to send the dollar somersaulting magnificently. It was a great flipping coin, equally weighted and easy to catch, not that got to send it flying, let alone touch it.
Our grandmother had given Raphael the 2001 gold dollar on the day Mom had signed him up for afterschool help on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Mom was fed up with having to pick out Raff’s clothes and choose his ice cream flavors for him. Until age eleven my brother was incapable of making a decision, no matter how trivial. He was able to limit the possibilities; he’d narrow the menu down to mac and cheese and chicken potpie and would then sit in silence, making the waiter wait until someone ordered him something. Raphael couldn’t ever take the plunge into a choice.
“This is for you,” Grandma said to Raff as our mother vented to our aunts about having found her eldest sitting on his bed, staring at a wall because he couldn’t resolve whether to play with his trains or go on the computer. I was there in the living room when she presented the coin. Raphael’s face lit up as if he had found pirate treasure.
“Trim the fat, then flip the coin,” our grandma ordered. “Go through some elimination rounds if you have to; I don’t care. Just flip the coin, as many times as you need, and move on with your day.”
I suppose that’s when my brother’s life really started. He went to arcade birthday parties without worrying about the myriad of games, and decided against signing up for t-ball, opting for soccer. In some ways, he really did fall in love with the Sacagawea dollar coin, expressed through a multitude of tan skinned, brunette girlfriends. He worshipped it for curing him, although I’m sure Mrs. Jessen, the school counselor, deserves some of the credit.
I watch Raphael close his eyes and open his hand.
“You slapped her, Raffle,” our little brother, Gabriel, reports as he looks over Raff’s shoulder. The coin has landed on tails; Sacagawea and her son are face down in Raff’s palm. My brother adored flipping his coin, but hated to get tails. He hated hurting her.
Raphael makes his a-deal’s-a-deal face and puts more money into the slot machine. Gabe pulls the lever, and the machine rolls its mocking eyes at us. It plays its loser’s anthem as it glares at us with a bell, a cherry, and an orange.
Raff curses, Gabe scolds, Raff swats the back of Gabe’s head, Gabe whines, and I go check the pay telephones for forgotten change again.
It might sound odd, but I blame the eagle for our being here. If the Shoshone squaw had batted her big brown eyes when my brother had opened his palm, then maybe he wouldn’t have put us on a Greyhound bus and taken us away from our little, isolated corner of the Nevada sand to the outskirts of Vegas. Raising three boys alone must be trying for any woman, but, even worse, Mom recently landed in the hospital. With no money coming in, besides for my meager stock-boy’s wage and Raff’s cashier’s salary, Raphael decided to do something. We had run out of food by the third week away from Mom, besides for the saltines and the canned corn. Raphael dubbed himself the man of the house and convinced me to spend the dwindling grocery money on bus tickets.
“How much money did we come with, Emanle?” Gabe asks me as he watches Raff count our last singles.
“Three hundred dollars and forty-nine cents,” I answer.
“That was a lot of money, wasn't it, Emanle?” Gabe questions further. There is a two-year gap between me and Raff, and a ten-year gap between Gabe and me. He still asks the question because he genuinely wants to know the answer, but it’s just salt in Raff’s wound, so he goes to whack the six-year-old again. Gabe leaps behind me, demanding for “Raffle” to stop it.
Gabe too is signed up for afterschool help, but it’s merely speech therapy. I don’t think he needs it; he says almost all his words fine except for three he says every day: Raphael, Emanuel, and Gabriel. Apparently, being able to pronounce your own name is a requirement for passing kindergarten, but, honestly, the only reason mom didn’t fight his teacher a little harder was because our insurance covers ST but not aftercare.
Gabriel also can’t pronounce Sacagawea, but that doesn’t seem to have come up in class.
The coin’s gymnastics aren’t up to their normal, few-second-long grandeur. They are quick, cut short by my brother’s impatient hand. Sometimes he merely cups the coin in his hands and jingles it like dice. I’m starting to think that the two options are no longer to bet or not to bet but have changed to how much.
I’d be lying if I shook my fist and damningly said that I hadn’t wanted to come here in the first place. Raff knew that Gabe would be more than safe at home with me; I’ve watched him everyday since he could walk. I wanted to go to Vegas. Since Raff only wanted to find a little Indian run place with a few one-dollar, one-armed bandits, and had no intentions of going to the main strip and I decided to bring Gabe along. I had envisioned Raff sitting down at helm of the machine, Gabe eating cherries from a Shirley Temple, and myself by Raff’s side, cheering. Raphael wanted to blame me when our first stop’s puny bouncer informed us that we were too young to enter, but apparently slots are like liquid courage: you have to be twenty-one, not eighteen.
Raff and I decided to lick our wounds at home, spending even more money on the taxi ride back to the bus station. The next bus that stopped anywhere near our apartment arrived in over two hours, and Gabe was already complaining, so we decided to take refuge in the gas station across the street.
After buying Gabe a cupcake that was probably older than him and settling my stomach with a ginger ale, Raff paced up and down the store’s hedges of chips and trees of magazines. He was the one who noticed the beat up slot machine next to the filthy, quarter candy machines. Gabe and I didn’t see it until he had spent twenty and won ten.
Raff ended up finding what he was looking for. The gas station was Indian run, just not the type of Indian Raff had expected. The turbaned clerk averted his eyes from us, happy to be receiving money and not caring from where it came from.
The aforementioned bus left forty-five minutes ago.
“Raffle!” Gabe cries. I lunge for my older brother’s hands. However, it’s to late; the gluttonous machine swallows our last bills.
“That was our way home!”
“We already didn’t have enough!” My older brother glares at me as his hand finds the slot machine’s trigger and pulls it. At first, I think his locked stare is out of anger, but really he just doesn’t have the heart to watch the machine loll so carelessly.
The loser’s music plays.
I thought Raphael would attack the machine, rip it from the wall and stomp our money out of it, but he just meets the gaze of the BAR, the orange, and the red seven, defeated.
Gabriel starts to cry. I don’t think he knows exactly what happened, but he knows it isn’t what was supposed to. All three of us wallow in the silence of the four o’clock news humming on the gas station’s TV and the murmur of a man buying lotto tickets at the counter.
With a sigh, I go to beg for a little phone money. I start to pry Gabe from my side when I see the gold flitter once again, a beautiful three-second arch. There is nothing left to decide, but Sacagawea’s face radiates comfort from my brother’s hand.
Raphael swallows hard and puts his gold dollar into the machine’s silver slit.
“Pull it, Gabe.”
Gabe complies, and the slot machine starts to flip. Raphael closes his eyes and holds a kiss to the back of Gabe’s head.
Fifty dollars in quarters trinkle out.
This time we both swallow hard, and Gabriel starts to cry again. I don’t think he knows exactly what happened, but he knows it isn’t what was supposed to.
“She really was worth her weight in gold,” I muse.
“Go call someone.” Raff gives me a handful of coins, turns me towards the payphones and turns himself back to the slot machine. He blinks at the treasure, unsure of what to do. Gabe hops back on his lap and puts the coins in the machine himself. Raphael pulls the lever and becomes hypnotized, watching the slot’s eyes somersault.