I found myself on a site that looked cleaner than I’d expected, less like the flashing neon thing I’d imagined and more like a place that was waiting for me to arrive. I stared at the
Vavada online casino screen for a long time, my fingers on the keyboard, my heart beating in a rhythm I hadn’t felt in years. I deposited fifty dollars, which was what I’d budgeted for food that week, and I told myself this was the last stupid thing I’d do, the last desperate act of a man who’d spent his life making axes for other people and was finally, finally ready to make an axe for himself.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d never gambled before, not in casinos, not on cards, not on anything that wasn’t the sure bet of an axe that would cut, a blade that would hold, a thing that would be there when you needed it to cut. I found a game that looked simple, something with a classic feel, three reels and a few lines, nothing that required me to learn a new language or understand a new world. I played the first spin and lost. The second spin, lost. The third spin, lost. I watched the balance tick down from fifty to forty to thirty, and I felt the familiar weight of things not working, the same weight I’d been carrying since I made my last axe, the same weight that had settled into my chest the day I put my father’s axe on the rack and knew I’d never make another. I was about to close the browser, to go back to the steel, to go back to the hammer, when the screen did something I wasn’t expecting. The reels kept spinning, longer than they should have, and then they stopped in a configuration that made the screen go quiet, the little symbols lining up in a way that seemed almost deliberate, like the moment when the steel is hot, when the hammer strikes, when the blade is shaped, when the edge is sharp, when the axe is done and you know that it’s right, that it’s true, that it will cut.
The numbers started climbing. Thirty dollars became a hundred. A hundred became five hundred. Five hundred became two thousand. I sat in the forge, the axes on the rack, the steel cold, and I watched the numbers climb like they were telling me a story I’d been waiting my whole life to hear. Two thousand became five thousand. Five thousand became ten thousand. I stopped breathing. I stopped thinking. I just watched, my whole world narrowed to the screen in front of me, the numbers that kept climbing, the impossible arithmetic of a night that was supposed to be just like every other night. Ten thousand became twenty-five thousand. Twenty-five thousand became fifty thousand. The screen stopped at fifty-two thousand, six hundred dollars. I stared at the number for so long that my laptop screen dimmed and then went dark. I tapped the spacebar, and there it was, still there, fifty-two thousand dollars, more money than I’d ever had at one time in my entire life. I sat in the forge, the axes on the rack, and I felt something crack open. Not the bad kind of crack, not the kind that breaks you. The kind that lets the light in, the kind that lets you breathe again after you’ve been holding your breath for so long you’d forgotten what it felt like to let go.
I tried to withdraw, and the site froze. I tried again. Nothing. I refreshed the page, and the screen went blank. I felt the panic rising, the old familiar despair, the voice that said this is what happens, this is what always happens, you don’t get to have the thing you want, you’re the axe maker who never made an axe for himself, that’s who you are, that’s all you’ll ever be. I was about to give up, to close the laptop and go back to the steel, when I remembered something I’d seen on the site’s help page. I searched around, my fingers shaking, my heart pounding, and I found a
Vavada online casino mirror that looked different, that felt more stable, that loaded in seconds. I logged in, and the money was there. The withdrawal went through on the first try. I stared at the confirmation screen, my hands shaking, my eyes burning, and I let out a sound that was half laugh and half something I didn’t have a name for. I sat in the forge for a long time, the axes on the rack, the steel cold, and I let myself feel something I hadn’t let myself feel in forty-five years. I let myself feel like maybe, just maybe, I could make an axe for myself. I could take the steel that had been in the forge for a hundred years, the steel my father had used, that his father had used, that had been waiting for me to use it for something of my own, and I could make an axe that would cut something for me, something that I’d been trying to cut through my whole life, something that was waiting to be cut.
