''Look Who I Won in a Poker Game!'': A Love Story

By Mark Druck

Visit these links: http://www.bixandbones.com/ and http://www.lookpokergame.com/
This novel is based on a rumor. The author was among the very first combat officers to arrive on the island of Kyushu, one of the islands of Japan, immediately following the signing of the peace aboard the USS Missouri on 9/3/45. The Japanese civilians had been propagandized for years what monsters Americans were. This story went around the Air Base about a very innocent pilot too young to get a drivers license back home in a poker game had won a Geisha House. If, indeed, he were to fall in love with one of the adorable, feminine young ladies, trained to tend to a mans every wish, what effect that would have on him which, in turn, would have influence on her. Also, what would the officers in that command do about all this an American officer owning a geisha house? Add to that, the Stateside Commanders, officers who spent the whole war in the Training Command back home, who were sent overseas to relieve men with combat points, who were ready to get back home. Also, add to relaxed, free-wheeling combat troops, these spit & polish commanders who wanted to run their new commands by the book. This story is all about mixing those two sets of complete opposites and this is one result.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9781469115139

Mark Druck

Mark Druck is a playwright produced Off-Off-Broadway, author of four novels, film scriptwriter, director for stage and camera Established MARK DRUCK PRODUCTIONS, 1969, producing Industrial films/videos & TV commercials. Listed in ‘Who’s Who In Entertainment,’ ‘Who’s Who In America,’ & ‘Who’s Who In The World.’ Flew with 38th Bomb Group, in B25s, coming in on missions at altitudes as low as 20 feet over targets at 350 mph. He served in the Air Force Reserve through Korea and Viet Nam, retiring as a Major. One of the first officers to land on Kyushu following the surrender to find Japanese civilians terrified, for they had been propagandized for years that US troops were monsters. He was arguably one of the first Americans to visit the original Geisha Houses in Fukuoka. The characters in this story are based on his experiences, & upon a story he heard at that time, which was probably not true, but fascinated by the revealing relationships between the two peoples in those earliest days of American soldiers in Japan.

Book preview

Look Who I Won In a Poker Game!

A Love Story

32782-DRUC-layout.pdf

MARK DRUCK

MAJOR, USAF RES. (RET.)

Copyright © 2006 by Mark Druck.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Mark Druck

300 East 40th Street

Apt. 32e

New York, N.Y. 10016

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

32782

Contents

PRE-FLIGHT

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XLI

CHAPTER XLII

Based loosely on what I was told

could have been a true tale, most

of which unfolded in Ashiya &

Fukuoka, Japan, in the fall of 1945.

A story of victory among the ruins,

a yarn about a very young U.S.

co-pilot who found true love, & how

difficult he found true love to be.

A very young American flyer,

A very young Geisha,

An Army, restless after the war,

A lousy Major,

A good Major,

And that’s what love is all about.

PRE-FLIGHT

WAR IS THE mischief of

arrogant politicians, a numbers game for generals – and more to the point: the flicking of the fickle finger of fate for those fearless few facing the fierce fighting!

The young gladiator is thrown into a world of chaos that he does not comprehend, required to cope with forces he can only respond to, faced with circumstances far beyond his control. His world is the tiniest corner of the widespread conflict. His days are full of waiting – waiting to be told what and how and when to do as ordered.

This story is not about some huge battle, nor the bravery of some special sort of fighting man, nor the emotional and military facts concerning a mission to destroy a vital target – what it is about is one each young second lieutenant who did merely what comes naturally. Moreover, what he did do, and how he did it almost derailed one each U.S. Army Air Force Command Unit, bouncing it off the smooth track generally covered by general orders and military regulations.

Also, it knocked the brass onto their collective butts.

It didn’t do much for the young lieutenant’s military career, either.

A Most Unlikely Hero

This most youthful American fly-boy would, at first glance remind one of that young World War II hot-shot pilot in the wartime cartoon strip in the daily newspapers, "Terry And The Pirates."

Very young and terribly innocent, Alden Quick was proffered, in the most unusual fashion, something extraordinary which even the man who has everything would find totally exceptional. He would welcome it with open arms, of course. And with uninhibited cries of victorious exaltation!

How this young man reacted to this rare and precious gift reflects his innocent background, his appetites and the extent of his experience with women. It tells much about him, his country, and how he learned to regard his delicate prize.

CHAPTER I

HE HAD THE uncomplicated

honest look of a rather innocent college sophomore. About 5-9, about 165 pounds, soaking wet, with straight sandy hair, a smile that his mother called ‘sweet,’ which was so decent that no one argued the point with her. Also, he was bright, and possessed a sort of half-smile that seemed to upturn the corners of his mouth and crinkle the young skin around his eyes, revealing that he was ever ready to show his straight, white teeth.

He had been in combat – combat can age a person very swiftly – but he was truly youthful. Plucked from college after that sophomore year, he volunteered for Aviation Cadets, and ten months later he was co-pilot on a Mitchell 25J twin-engine, twin-tail bomber, in the 38th Bomb Group, 5th Army Air Force. The aircraft sported eight 50-calibre machineguns mounted in its nose in two vertical lines, plus two machineguns in the engineer-gunner’s top turret, a movable machinegun in the waist for the radioman, and one for the tail-gunner; it flew over targets at less than 15 feet altitude, pulling up for trees or buildings for ground targets, or skimming over the water at air speed in excess of 300 mph, and dropped bombs, with parachutes which were needed to delay the explosions for that blink of time required for the 6-man crew to escape their own bomb blast! These missions were run against Japanese coastal targets and shipping.

This information is useful only in order to serve as background for our story. The men who people this tale just happened to have flown such missions.

And they had not been with a woman in months.

As our tale begins, it is fall, 1945. The war had ended about a month before, and some officers and men of the 829rd Squadron of the 38th Bomb Group, had recently been transferred to Ashiya, which was a former training base for the Jap Air Force, in the northwest corner of the Island of Kyushu. It had a wide runway that had been built by the toil and sweat of American Prisoners of War as slave labor. Fukuoka, a large manufacturing city in this southern island of homeland Japan, lay 30 miles SW of the base.

We fade in on a very upscale, comfortable home of a Japanese businessman, who had apparently fared quite well during the war.

This Japanese gentleman had been introduced only a few weeks earlier to the American flyers, with whom he sought to do business. In that regard, he was like businessmen the world over, he was interested in whomever he could create some industry with.

This night, seated on plump pillows on the floor of his very posh straw-matted living room, he was host to a poker game. There were seven players – three Japanese men and four young American officers.

At that moment, our most youthful hero – in his stocking feet, sans shoes – was squinting at his hand. He captured cards as they were dealt. Most players wait until all five cards are lying face down before them, prior to picking them up. This allows the veteran player to lay back and observe how opponents around the table are reacting or trying not to react to cards they’d drawn.

Alden Quick – Alden was his mother’s maiden name – stuck each card as dealt into his hand and eagerly squeezed it into view. The first three cards did not please him. The whole damn game – now more than three hours old – did not please him. He’d already lost 86 bucks. Add to that, this overall setting, the whole damn drama in which he was a guest of a man who only a few months ago would have been pleased to shoot him on sight.

However, instead of shooting the chubby middle-aged bastard with the Colt .45 automatic pistol that the youthful officer wore on his hip like a cowboy, Quick had deserted his shoes just inside the front door, and was sipping his host’s saki, and smoking his cigars.

Subtracting that 86 bucks from the $131 his evening began with, added to his general dismay. What gave him the most angst was the question he kept asking himself: ‘What the hell am I doing here?’

All because Jeff Philpot, his tent-mate from Okinawa, had hustled him.

Look, Quick, Jeff had said that afternoon, Bonzo Billings told me to collect two guys to come along to this guy’s house in Fukuoka for poker.

What guy? Quick said.

Some Jap businessman who was on the inside in the Jap government, I guess.

Was he a general, or something?

He is a businessman.

Quick’s glance indicated that he knew all about how businessmen the world over function; which, of course, he did not have a clue.

You know Bonzo, Philpot said. You can’t escape.

Why does Bonzo want to go to his house?

Why not? Look, I got one guy. Dewey. You know him. Bonzo is waiting at the officers club, ready to take us to pick up the Jap translator. The other guys at the club are too drunk to take out in public. You’re the only one sober, so you’re ‘it.’ You’re the lucky pilgrim.

I don’t want to, Quick told Philpot.

"I hear it’s a big house. Like a friggin’ palace. The guy is obviously loaded. Probably made munitions during the war. Probably has some very cute babes. Look, don’t you want to get a look at some of the good-looking Japanese babes that this guy probably has working for him? And, who knows what kind of work they do? Philpot grinned, eagerly. He knew Bonzo, so he had to do what he was doing. Bonzo wants us to take his yen."

Tell Bonzo you couldn’t find me.

Sorry, Quick. He will know.

How do you know he will know?

Bonzo knows everything, Philpot said.

I don’t like poker, Quick said. I like bridge.

Everybody plays poker, pal. It’s unamerican not to play poker.

Naw, I don’t want to.

"You do know how, don’t you?"

I get lousy cards.

Doesn’t matter. You just volunteered.

Tell him I’ve got dysentery.

You know how Billings is. They don’t call him Bonzo for nothin’.

Captain Bonzo Billings was a big man, late 20s, with a thick body, full head of black curly hair, large feet and a voice to match. He was also an angry man – he had been passed over for Squadron Commander when Major Jacobssen had enough combat points to get to go home. Promotions would be few and far between, now that the shooting war was over, but Billings had earned his; and he was pisst and didn’t care who knew it. Especially when they brought in a Stateside Commando who was already a Major to be the new squadron CO.

Stateside Commando was what combat veterans called the guys who had remained in the States, as instructors, and were being sent overseas now that the shooting was done, to relieve the guys with the combat points.

Billings wants us to meet at the mess hall at 5:00 p.m. Er – 1700 hour. He’s the one that said this big businessman’s ripe for the plucking. And we’ll get to see the guy’s palace. ‘Like a movie star’s,’ he said.

I have just two words to say, Quick said. Balls!

Billings hustled a staff car. Said he doesn’t want to pull up to this rich turkey’s palace in a friggin’ jeep. Might encourage the Japs’ impression that they thought they actually won the war – like they’ve been explaining how they never did attack Pearl Harbor – not really – it had to do with something we did to provoke them. So, I guess, we’re supposed to be apologizing to them for putting Pearl Harbor in the exact spot they had planned to practice dropping bombs on December 7th, 1941.

Quick had been on his way to the Base BX to buy some toothpaste. Gee, I don’t know, Jeff. I need some toothpaste.

Ten minutes to five o’clock, pal. 1650 Army time. Wear your confirmation suit.

Shit, Quick had said.

And wear your fruit salad.

When am I going to get to get toothpaste?

Yeah, Jeff Philpot said, And brush your teeth.

That’s why I want to get toothpaste.

And wear clean socks.

So here was Alden Quick, picking up another card, slipping it into his fist, squeezing the three already there. He had assumed, earlier – as he was getting into his Class A uniform – that the game would probably be far over his head. He’d heard Captain Billings’ reputation of getting into big poker games. Billings had been in the building trade back home – drove big trucks, directed big gangs working on big projects. At this moment, Bonzo sat beside Quick, puffing on what remained of a long cigar, looking like a man who’s probably out a couple hundred bucks. Bonzo was the sort of player who sat back like a sniper watching for the opportunity to pick off the enemy, beginning with studying them as they organized their cards, watching what they did with their mouth, or eyes, or fingers. Or what they did when they puff on a cigar. Or sipped saki… But this night the ducats were not his friends.

As any neophyte was apt to do, Quick’s glance shifted to his modest pile of money displayed neatly before him; like checking to see if he hadn’t lost it all, yet. He recalled – it seemed like a long time ago, actually about six hours ago – how he had reached down to the bottom of his foot locker, which he kept secure with his large Yale lock, to recover the cash secreted in the upper sleeve of a clean shirt stashed there. This included his last dollar – his very last! – which he felt bound to wager for the simple reason he did not want to make Bonzo Billings angry. Bonzo did not handle anger very well.

Quick slowly unearthed his fourth card. Added it – the four of clubs – to the three already there: five of hearts, seven of spades, king of diamonds. They were certainly nothing to write home about.

‘Don’t make a face,’ he told himself, ‘don’t give anything away.’ He’d been saying that to himself all game long. Don’t let them read anything in your eyes – like a scowl or a frown or anything negative!

Of course the collection of disconnected cards he’d been getting all evening did not inspire any reaction that could even be described as worth reading!

The dealer was Jeff Philpot, first lieutenant, navigator, lean, tall, dark, whose squinty eyes seemed always focused on something a long distance away.

While the fifth card was being picked up around the square curved wood black table, Bonzo studied the enemy, which meant all the other players, regardless of age, creed or nationality. Most particularly, he watched his Japanese host. Bonzo had flown 29 missions against the Japs – how could he not be remembering buddies who’d been lost on missions against these people?

For no good reason, Alden Quick paused to stare at his fifth card, which was face down on the black surface before him, and made a fist and, below the table, quietly punched his thigh, repeating to himself: ‘King king king.’ Why did he do that? Well, it did happen in card games, he found that if he ‘wished’ for a card, it sometimes came up. How often is ‘sometime?’ Often enough to impress him!

He recalled doing it in a bridge game back in his campus frat house – wish for a certain card – and surprise of surprises: he got it! Then it happened again – then again! – and even again! Strange as hell, but often enough to make him think about its evasive magic!

‘Wish for a king in this time and place,’ he wished, ‘who knows, I might actually get one!’

Or, if he wished for a five-spot to go for a low straight – there is something pitiful about going for a low straight, he opined, ‘A low straight is nothing to get bent out of shape about.’

Never draw to an inside straight, of course, that was the old poker warning, but drawing to an outside straight – hey, the odds were not that awful – six chances out of 52 cards, minus the seven he already had seen. 45-to-one, with three remaining threes and three remaining eights out there. Acceptable odds for a big gambler like him. Big gambler – that thought made him smile. Even though he was out all that money and might confound the other players if they were to see him crack a smile, recalling that he had only won three good hands in all this time.

Bonzo snorted. Quick heard his low growl, How can a red-blooded American be expected to get folded into a friggin’ position like this? Captain Billings unburdened himself; he was on the mat on the floor, jack-knifed virtually doubled over into double-jointed discomfort, and getting angrier and angrier. Not even the various cups of saki seemed to help his dour mood.

Also he had not won a pot in almost an hour.

All of which made his backache worse. So bad that it made him believe he was doing unthinkable things to his spine!

Quick, upon overhearing that groan from the Captain beside him, felt his own spine giving off dull sharp discomfort and pain.

The big captain motioned to one of the three young girls in ceremonial kimonos standing against the wall, watching, waiting to be summoned. He held up his cup. The tallest one, about 5-4 in her stocking feet, hurried to him as quickly as her short steps would allow – hindered by the tight kimono – bowed low, picked up his cup, very earnestly. Her hands shook – she was, after all, facing the invader!

She was frightened! Whatever she knew of the Americans came from horrible tales that were promulgated by the Jap government regarding the enemy all during the war years – of how evil Americans were, what monsters, especially when cities of the girl’s country were bombed. And here was this huge captain! He certainly could indeed look like a monster to her! He was the very first of these American monsters she had ever seen – close up! She was half-expecting him to rise up impetuously from those pillows and do something awful to her. Or to the other two young girls standing back there against the wall, also trembling. Better be on her very best deportment, lest Mr. Saguta be displeased.

Her trembling hand held and filled the cup. She carefully placed it on the carved table, judiciously, near his left hand – not a man’s right hand, which was for holding the cards. She bowed deeply, and withdrew.

Alden Quick’s fifth card. Still face down. He slowly lifted it from the table, slowly eased it to the back of his closed ducats. He squeezed open the first – the seven, then the four, and the six, then the king – no strangers there – then his thumb shoved the corner of number five. Wow! The heart king! A pair of kings! That’s very nice. Maybe too nice. This might just be one more hand that is good enough to bet, but not good enough to win."

Poker face! Keep a poker face!

Now the decision! Should he go for the straight – with the four, six, seven – or go for a third king?

‘Go with the odds, play the odds; drawing to a low straight is for losers.’

Unceremoniously, Quick held the kings, discarded the three small cards. Looked around, at the faces – question: what was he going up against?

Three, he said.

Most of the requests were for two cards; the host called for just one. Hmm, Quick mused, maybe he’s a guy who draws to a straight?

The dealer quietly went about dealing himself three. What chance has a guy got, who needs three cards? Three cards: the max! Probably no better than mine.

Quick shuffled the three strangers, fitted them into his closed hand behind the two kings. Then he paused, trying to look as if he knew what the hell he was doing.

‘Watch the others around the table. Hey, stay nonchalant. Two kings has possibilities!’

A third king would beat two pair, which had been the sort of hands that had been winning during the evening. He’d seen Clark Gable shuffle his hand in this situation in a movie with Spencer Tracy. Tyrone Power did it in his 1850’s costume in a Mississippi River Steamboat drama. And Gary Cooper in a period film about horses.

‘I’m going to be shufflin’ and lookin’ around like I’m Tyrone or Clark and make ’em think I know what the hell I’m doing here!

He brought his cards close to the vest – ‘That’s the way to play ’em, ‘close to the vest!’ He squeezed out the first card of the pack; it was the heart king. One of the originals. Second card emerged: diamond king. ‘Okay, these are the two kings I’ve got! Hey, maybe I’ll get a second pair – even a small pair – that would be lovely.’ Two pairs to a pair of kings would be a very nice, indeed. There was one winner, about an hour ago, with only a pair of jacks.

Third card: eight of hearts. Let’s wish for another eight – for an eight pair would be fine! Forth card?

Surprise – king of spades!

‘Poker face! Poker face!’

Three kings, wow! ‘What if I pair up the eights?’ Three kings and a pair of eights! There hasn’t been even one full house all evening!

Held his breath, reminded himself: ‘Poker face! Poker face! You’ve got a winner – unless, of course, somebody has something a little better full house – like three aces!’

Of course, that’s always possible!