The Daily Trope

Paregmenon (pa-reg’-men-on): A general term for the repetition of a word or its cognates in a short sentence. Often, but not always, polyptoton.

“Roll ‘em. Roll ‘em. Roll ‘em. Get those dice a’ rollin’. Shoot craps!” This was my jinx move. It worked nearly every time in the alley behind “Bucky’s Drugstore” down on our knees rollin’ the bones with a weird collection of people.

Bagger Larry had a real bad temper. He kept a .38 stuck in the waistband of his pants. He had pulled it a few times, but never shot anybody. That was, until Stupid Willy rolled a pair of loaded dice, pulling a seven four times in a row. Bagger went berserk, pulled his .38, and emptied it in Stupid’s head. Dovey, the proprietor of the cantina, looked out the back door to see what the noise was about. He saw the mess and ran inside to call the police. Bagger was away in a flash and was never caught. It was rumored he made it to Mexico where he’s in the marijuana smuggling business, making millions.

I needed a job, so I went looking for him. I found him in Vera Cruz. He wasn’t in the smuggling business. He was running a dice game in an alley behind a cantina named “The Cactus Needle.” We shook hands. He told me he would hire me as a monitor—looking out for loaded dice. He gave me a gun and told me to shoot anybody I caught cheating. Most of the players carried guns, so I had to be quick on the draw. I mail-ordered a “Quick Cowboy” fast draw holster. I practiced on tin cans until I became lightning fast, and accurate too.

The night came when a guy rolled bad bones. I started to draw. He already had his gun out! He shot me in the arm, picked up all the money and ran. Right there, Bagger fired me and walked away with the other players. I was alone, sitting on the cantina’s back steps holding my arm in agony. A señorita stuck her head out the door, saw me, and promptly slammed it shut. Then, a couple of minutes later a different señorita stuck her head out the door. She asked, “What the hell happened to you?” I told her. She drove me to the doctor’s in her old dented-up Volkswagen. The doctor removed the bullet, stitched me up, and I was good to go.

She asked me what I would do now. I told her I didn’t know, but I’d like to get the bastard who shot me and robbed my friend Bagger. “I know who he is,” she said. “He is my brother Jesus. You can’t kill him, but I permit you to badly wound him.” She told me where to find him. I went there right away. I got the dice money back and shot him three times in his left leg. He was screaming in agony on the floor when I left.

His sister and I became romantically involved. I got a job at “The Cactus Needle” as a bouncer/short order cook. Sometimes it was hard to keep up with both responsibilities, but Valentina would come to my aid. One night, about a year later, Valentina’s brother, the shooter, limped into the Cantina. The leg wound crippled him. He gave me and Valentina a thumbs up and went up to the bar and ordered us two beers.

I was a little worried, but not much. He was living under a blanket and working as a “wound model” limping across the stage at public police events as a display of what happens to you if you play with guns. He wasn’t bitter. He had an easy job and his blanket was made of Marino wool and had red stripes.

Jesus got drunk and I helped carry him out of the cantina. I pushed him off the porch and he fell into the gutter. That’s when Valentina told me she was going to have our baby! My life couldn’t be better. As a congratulations present, Jesus sent us a basket of avocados and a bottle of tequila.

We made guacamole, chips, and bean burritos. I had two shots of tequila.

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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