3-Card Wagon Wheel

5 min readDec 2, 2020

When I was a young teenager, I knew a boy from Bolivar, Tennessee, a small town which lies due east of Memphis along the long stretch of the southern Tennessee border…between there and nowhere.

As you might guess, he was a country boy and he had a big smile, but he could really shoot a basketball. He and I would play H-O-R-S-E and Twenty-One against kids on the playground for a dollar a game and we’d generally make a few bucks during the course of an afternoon.

His grandmother had moved to the city, as well, and she had a little apartment in Orange Mound, a Memphis community created for Black folks at the end of the nineteenth century. Big Mama had a heart for larceny, a head for business, and a chip on her shoulder around those she deemed her social betters. And whenever I saw her, and as charming and friendly as I tried to be, she let me know that she’d tolerate me…but grudgingly.

Once she got settled into the neighborhood, she quickly established herself as the candy lady. You could knock on her door just about any time of the day or night and buy candy, soda, or beer by the can.

Big Mama also brought something else to the big city …her moonshine business. I’ll never forget the day I found out.

One day, the boy said he wanted to drop by his Big Mama’s to borrow a few dollars from her. He also asked if I’d ever had what he called, Wagon Wheel. I told him that I didn’t think so, but what was it? He said, with his big smile, “You’ll see.”

When we arrived at Big Mama’s, we entered her dark apartment, the only light coming from the flickering blue screen of the console TV. Big Mama never missed her stories. She smiled at my friend and grunted at me.

“I see you brought your little high-yella friend with you,” she mumbled .

We followed her into the kitchen where a man sat at a formica-topped kitchen table, shuffling three, bowed cards that were kind of tented down the middle. Two red aces and a black deuce. As we followed the small deck with our eyes, the man showed the cards, flopped the cards, and moved them rhythmically, over and around each other, always revealing the black deuce.

My buddy had seen the routine before. I hadn’t.

By that time, Big Mama handed each of us a Dixie cup with a yellowish-amber liquid. My friend quickly gulped his down. Following his lead, I also took a big gulp from my cup, its sweetness in sharp contrast to the burn that scorched my throat as it hit my gullet. The sensation seemed to ricochet when it pooled in the pit of my stomach and then catapulted right back up to the top of my head.

“Can you follow the black deuce, young buck?” he asked me as he shuffled and began the smooth hand jive with the three cards.

“Sure, it’s right there. On the right.”

He turned the card over to show that I was correct. And we went through the routine a couple more times and, sure enough, I tracked that deuce amid the shuffle and flurry of his hands and found it every time.

By that time, we were on our second cup of wagon wheel…and a third.

And then…the denouement.

He said, “I bet you a dollar, you can’t find that deuce this time.” He never took his eyes off the table and his cards, but you can bet he was watching my reaction via a third eye developed by those who fleece suckers for a living.

“Yes, I can,” I said with hooch-inspired confidence.

Well, I guess you can just about figure out how this story ends. My friend had a big laugh as I left with my tail between my legs. Big Mama looked smug, sucking her teeth as the screen door banged behind me. Of course, I lost every one of the few dollars I had in my pocket, escaping while I still had my shirt and shoes. Between the fleecing and the moonshine, I felt like I’d been hit by a Mack truck. But as with most of life’s face slaps, there was a lesson. In this case, there were two. On that day, I found out the hard way — wagon wheels will run you over if you get in the way. And never, ever, say “yes” to anyone who watches your reaction without looking at you.

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