The next morning, when Uncle Tuo came to take over the shift, after the two workers changed their clothes and left, he said something to me.
To this day, I still remember it clearly.
"Xiangzi, the board has been sealed! Da Jianming and Jin Kang, those two bastards, are in cahoots."
(Sealed: A technique in gambling, common with playing cards and mahjong. Most sealing techniques use ornaments, fingernails, etc., to draw different marks on the cards to distinguish different pips.)
At the time, I didn't know what "sealed" meant.
Because I had stayed up all night at work and lost money, my mind was preoccupied with how to recoup my losses. So, I paid no attention to Uncle Tuo's words. Instead, I directly asked him to borrow money, planning to continue gambling after my shift.
Frankly speaking, this kind of gambler's behavior, of being blinded by losses and desperately seeking to borrow money to win it back, is a major taboo in daily life and in dealing with people.
It's fine to do it once in a while, but if it happens repeatedly, twice, thrice, four times...
In the end, you'll find that you have no friends left!
Fortunately, the first person I asked for money was Uncle Tuo.
Not only did he agree to lend me money, but he also told me to notify him before the next game so he could arrange for someone to cover his shift and accompany me to witness it.
Without the slightest hesitation, I readily agreed.
It was from this moment on that my fate and life's trajectory... were completely changed by Uncle Tuo!
The second time I played cards with Da Jianming and the others was at a small inn in town.
The thousand yuan I borrowed from Uncle Tuo was lost in less than two hours.
After losing all thousand yuan, I no longer cared about the money. I was completely in a state of frantic desperation, ready to ask Uncle Tuo for more money to win it back.
However, to my surprise, Uncle Tuo flatly refused my second request for a loan.
Not only that, after refusing me, Uncle Tuo actually took out a stack of red bills from his pocket and said he wanted to join in for a couple of hands.
What was even harder for me to accept was that while speaking, Uncle Tuo obsequiously offered a cigarette to each of those two scoundrels, Da Jianming and Jin Kang.
Since they were all familiar colleagues, and Uncle Tuo had revealed his wealth, Da Jianming and Jin Kang nodded their heads like groveling grandsons, their mouths grinning like gibbons!
However, two hours later, those two scoundrels couldn't smile anymore.
Because they not only returned the thousand yuan they had won from me, but they also lost all their own stake money.
The two of them just stared blankly at Uncle Tuo, speechless.
Uncle Tuo, on the other hand, revealed his set of yellow teeth and smiled sheepishly, collecting the money while distributing cigarettes.
In fact, not only Da Jianming and Jin Kang couldn't figure it out, but even I, who had been watching the game from the side, didn't understand how Uncle Tuo had won.
Because Uncle Tuo was missing three fingers on his left hand, his shuffling was awkward and stiff.
Even dealing cards with one hand was slow and jerky.
Judging solely by his shuffling and dealing, Uncle Tuo seemed flawless.
However, there was one detail I noticed.
It was that every time he dealt, Uncle Tuo dealt one card stacked on top of another.
The bottom card was always tightly covered by the two cards above it.
Other than that, Uncle Tuo never looked at his cards. He basically played them face down, waiting for others to reveal theirs or for him to reveal others...
Completely baffled, Da Jianming and Jin Kang could only attribute everything to luck.
Finally, the two of them left, grumbling.
It was on that day that Uncle Tuo told me he was a professional gambler, a top-tier professional gambler.
He said he lost the three fingers on his left hand and his right leg when he was tricked by another group of top-tier gamblers during a confrontation.
Unfortunately, his rather impressive self-introduction didn't make me think he was cool or impressive.
Instead, I thought he deserved it and was somewhat low-class, not presentable. Like Da Jianming and Jin Kang, he was a bad person with no integrity in gambling!
Only bad people would try to cheat and scheme while playing cards!
Uncle Tuo didn't refute my opinion, just smiled noncommittally.
Then, as he handed me the twelve hundred yuan I had lost, he slowly replied, "At least a bad person like me can win back every penny you lost!"
At that time, I didn't take the twelve hundred yuan. Instead, like a fool, I pushed the money back to him, unchanged, and retorted, "Then can you win back your lost fingers and leg?"
I remember that the moment my foolish remark left my lips, Uncle Tuo's eyes widened in anger. His demeanor, as if he wanted to devour me alive, sent an inexplicable chill through me from head to toe.
Fortunately, he restrained himself and didn't do anything to me, only saying one thing.
"A stubborn, resentful youth like you, who doesn't know good from bad or how to deal with people, would definitely be beaten to death with clubs if you went out into society!"