As the
tournament officials wrapped up the first round, a rather monstrous,
mangled-looking man waddled in Joaquin’s direction. When he arrived in front of
Joaquin about 3 minutes later, he told the boy something that he would never
forget, perhaps for the wrong reasons.
“Now listen
here ya dirt-sniffer, I don’t care how much guts ya think ya got, it’s how many
guts ya can put forth on that there marbles table. Ya comprend?” Joaquin took a
minute to try to understand exactly what
the hell the old guy was trying to say, and gave up after running the
sentence through his head about ten times.
“So I don’t
know how that sounded in your head, but it made no sense, at all. I’m pretty good
with words, and I know for a fact that the mangled mess of letters that just
came out of your mouth wouldn’t have made sense to a schizophrenic guy. Wanna
try again?”
The man
looked at him, somewhat surprised by the kid’s fighting spirit. “Just…be ready.
Asshole-punk.” He waddled away, taking roughly 3 minutes to return to his group
of veteran friends.
Joaquin
paid him no mind; as intimidating as the man seemed, he knew that marbles was
not a game of physicality, but rather one of wit, and marble size. Besides, he
was fairly confident that his prior strategy of triggering PTSD flashbacks
would stay faithful through him throughout the tournament. There was nothing to
worry about, the plucky adolescent concluded.
“Contestants
‘Joaquin’ and ‘Georgio the Goblin’, please make your way to the marbles table
for round two!”
“Georgio
the Goblin…an interesting name. Wonder how he got it.”, Joaquin mumbled to himself.
“Maybe he plays World of Warcraft, I hear there’s goblins in that game.
Sometimes.” He kept these thoughts to himself as he walked towards the table,
curious and ready to face his new opponent.
If the name
“Georgio the Goblin” evoked any images for Joaquin, then every single one of
them was wrong. The man who stood before Joaquin resembled not a single image
that Joaquin would have imagined. What was in front of him instead, was a
relatively small person, roughly 5’4, slim physique with short curly black hair
and a thin goatee. On his head was a sweat band that looked to have not seen
any action whatsoever. He wore a t-shirt with the sides cut off, and on the
t-shirt read the words “Ain’t gonna get none till you work son”, clearly meant
to intimidate the larger members of the pack.
Georgio
calmly stepped towards Joaquin until they could smell each other’s breaths. The
man opened his mouth, and almost inaudibly, three words came out: “You don’t win.”
In response, Joaquin whispered at a similar volume, “Why do you and your
friends have such a problem with the English language?” In lieu of a come-back,
Georgio took his place at the marbles table, and Joaquin followed suit.
They both
chose their marbles methodically, attempting to seem as if they cared very much
which marbles to use for this round (they didn’t). Finally, once all the
marbles were set up, the tournament official took his place in front of the
arena.
“Are both
contestants ready?” The responding “Yes” was unanimous. “We will now flip a
coin to determine who will go first. Georgio will call.” The coin flipped, and
Georgio called heads, only to have his call favored.
“This might
not be good…”, Joaquin decided. “The first strike in a marbles game can easily
determine the victor depending on how good the player doing the striking is…I
better be ready.”
Joaquin
glanced at Georgio, and a smug smile rested the man’s lips.
