Instant Winner

by Gary Soto

  But they had to stop the air guitar lesson when customers began to eye them. These customers, with their lattes and hot chocolates, had their noses in iPads and laptops. A few couples had their faces close to one another. They spoke in whispers, but their stares were often directed at Uncle Mike, who had begun humming the classic song “Louie Louie” louder than the piped music from the ceiling speakers.

  Sensing that they might be booted from Starbucks, nephew and uncle knocked it off. They waited with old magazines in their hands. Jason thumbed through a Sunset, the delicious-looking ads for culinary delights making his stomach rumble. He ate a Tootsie roll, handed a second one to his uncle, and the two chewed the mud-like, gummy chocolate. After ten minutes, he put the magazine aside.

  “This is boring. I thought you knew her,” Jason said, staring at the screen of his phone. No one had called in an hour, not even Blake. Only a few hours ago he had been a celebrity in his inner dreams—the kid with the winning lottery ticket. Now his life was boring again because Blake’s mother had put the word out that she had been wrong—big time.

  “I swear I know the girl. We were almost an item in high school. She said she was going to meet us here.” Uncle Mike had been examining the hole on the bottom of his left shoe but now was giving his nephew his full, undivided attention. “You know, there are a thousand-and-one Starbucks. Maybe she’s at another one.”

  “Uncle, she stood you up,” Jason retorted. “She stood us up.” He was a little angry at his uncle.

  “There was probably some important thing that came up.”

  “Like what?” Jason challenged.

  Ruffled, Uncle Mike said, “Maybe there was a fender-bender that she had to report before she got to us. Or maybe she had to interview a 4-H girl about her prize pig. And didn’t we smell smoke on our way to Starbucks? Maybe a warehouse is on fire.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jason said. Suddenly, he gripped the arms of his chair as a shock went through him like electricity. His jaw opened slowly like a Venus fly trap. On the television mounted on the wall, he saw his uncle’s would-be girlfriend on the screen. She was pointing a microphone at an older man with Aunt Marta had his side. “Look!” Jason exclaimed.

  “Look where? What you talkin’ about?” his uncle asked. His attention swiveled to the door, then to the barista firing up a steamy latte.

  “On television,” Jason pointed at the TV. “It’s Aunt Marta with your girlfriend!”

  The two rose and approached the television, staring up at the plasma screen as if it were a religious altar. It was Sylvia Garcia. She was reporting on the mystery million-dollar lottery winner, a portly fellow wearing suspenders and standing in front of the liquor store where he had purchased the ticket. He was smiling one moment, and jumping around the next, one hand on his straw hat.

  “How do you feel?” The reporter had pressed the microphone almost into his mouth.

  “Like a million bucks—well, almost a million bucks. Pretty good, I would say.” He giggled and coughed. “Holy-moly, nine hundred and sixty-seven thousand dollars! That’s a lot a haircuts I’d have to do, I tell you, something like fifteen thousand heads, maybe more.” He giggled and coughed again, with his head slightly bowed. He took off his straw hat and fanned himself from the heat of his excitement—his own hair was thinning. He turned and hugged Jason’s aunt. Jason rubbed his eyes as he tried to make sense of the situation. What was his Aunt Marta doing there?

  Jason gathered that the man was a retired barber from his haircut comments. Plus, his shoulders were hunched from leaning over people and listening to their boring stories. With a cough like that, he was probably a smoker. And as for his depleted hair, it had waved goodbye over the years.

  “Mr. Barker, we have another mystery winner this week in Fresno.”

  The retired barber, Mr. Barker, lifted his eyebrows. He didn’t comment. He patted his stomach, which cascaded generously over his belt.

  “This other person might have won a million, too, but that winner is not coming forth like you have.”

  “It makes sense to keep your trap shut. People pester you for handouts. Like my sweetie here,” he said as he playfully elbowed Aunt Marta. “We’re just excited. We want to tell the world not to give up hope. There’s a chance that you can win too, even if you’re a loser!” he proclaimed, pointing at the television viewer.

  While the retired barber babbled on about peoples’ right to privacy, Jason recognized the location of the liquor store. It was less than a mile away. He told his uncle as much.

  “Let’s go, dude,” his uncle suggested.

  They hurried out of Starbucks, his uncle giving a wink to the wait staff behind the counter. As there was no time to lose, they hurried down the street. Jason wanted to find out for sure if that was his Aunt Marta.

  “Do you think it was her?” Jason panted.

  “Who?” Uncle Mike asked. “You mean Marta? I’m surprised that she lassoed such a lucky hillbilly. It goes to show: you don’t know when love will strike.”

  Jason blinked. It seemed impossible, his aunt falling in love, and with a retired barber! Then again, like his uncle said, there was no telling when Cupid was going to pull back his bow and plug you good. Love was a complicated thing.

  Secretly, Jason had his doubts about his uncle wooing that television reporter. He’d once seen his uncle trying to woo a woman with no front teeth. How would it be with a pretty woman with all her teeth in place, and such ultra white ones at that? Also, she was well-dressed and professional, while his uncle was sporting a Spiderman T-shirt beneath an old sweatshirt. And his cologne for the day? Bouquet d’Funk.

  They were a block from the liquor store when someone barked, “Hey, ugly!”

  Both of them stopped. During the past year, Jason had responded often to such taunts, sometimes with whole sentences made up of bad words. This sort of outburst was not out of the ordinary now that he was in sixth grade.

  Uncle Mike, hand over his brow, peered at the man across the street. He began to smile, but the smile collapsed as he suddenly remembered how he knew the man.

  The man crossed the street.

  “Hey, bro,” Uncle greeted, his palms out for a high-five.

  “Don’t ‘hey bro’ me,” the man huffed. His breath smelled like onion rings. “What happened to my lawn mower?”

  “Your lawn mower,” Uncle Mike repeated softly. He touched his chin and scrubbed its hairy patch. He searched the sky, as if somehow the lawn mower had gone to heaven. “The lawn mower. Hmm.”

  Jason remembered the lawn mower. This past July—Jason quickly counted the months on his fingers—his uncle was so down-and-out that he, former guitarist for Los Blue Chones, was cutting lawns, first with a rusty push mower and then with a gas-powered mower that threw up more smoke than three clunkers combined.

  “Yeah, my lawn mower, fool,” the man snarled. Threads of steam rose from the smooth surface of his shaved head.

  “Eric, this is my nephew.” Uncle Mike introduced Jason, who was alert enough to recognize trouble. He smiled back and said cheerfully, “Hi. Nice to meet you, sir.”

  Eric shot a stinging glare at Jason. He wasn’t tricked into playing nice to a kid dumb enough to run with an adult who couldn’t keep track of a lawn mower. Eric turned back to Uncle Mike. “So where is it?”

  “You know, it could be, like, gone,” his uncle began to explain. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Like vanished. Amazing how these things happen, things we can never explain. It’s a total mystery.” He shrugged his shoulders again, but this time frowned.

  Eric didn’t like the vague explanation. “What do you mean?”

  “You know how crime has risen lately in Fresno?”

  “Yeah, that’s because you’re creating it, sucka!”

  Uncle Mike chuckled and said, “That’s a good one.” He slapped Eric’s back, but Eric wouldn’t have any of his friendliness. His eyes were smoldering.

  “And you can’t even play guitar,�
� Eric growled. “You’re, like, worster than any slime dog I know! Get what I mean, sucka! You’re no good, you’re lousy!” His shoulder muscles rippled as he roared the series of insults, finishing with how he didn’t like his gapped teeth either.

  These were fighting words, but Uncle Mike played diplomat. “Oh, then you haven’t heard Little Juan play guitar. He’s worse than me, or worster, like you say.” He smiled at Jason, chuckled, and, hooking a thumb at Eric, said, “He’s such a kidder.”

  “You piece of…” Eric was going to complete his sentence when he caught sight of a low-riding car approaching that spelled danger. The occupants weren’t cruising for the fun of it—they were out searching for someone in particular. Eric quickly moved behind Jason and his uncle, his hands on their shoulders like they were getting ready to take a picture—three buddies on a littered street. He lowered himself and crouched behind the two of them, as the car passed as slowly as a tanker on the ocean. One of the vatos in the car turned a dull gaze at them. He wasn’t too dull, however, not to notice Eric crouching there. His mouth, pulled down like a pouting fish, formed a kiss-like pucker, and spit. When the car stopped in the middle of the road, its engine purring softly, Eric sprang to his feet and took off. Nephew and uncle watched Eric disappear between cars, then high hurdle a low fence.

  “Once you get to know him, he’s really a nice guy,” Uncle Mike said as he knelt to tie a shoe. “He just has this temper thing to work out. Something about a mean mom…”

  Jason wondered if his uncle was disconnected from reality. The situation was potentially dangerous. This guy Eric was a certified gangster—Jason had noticed the tattoos up and down his arms, along his throbbing throat, and across his skull-like knuckles. He wasn’t big, but he was like a bulldog, short, strong and with a bark. Yeah, Jason figured, Eric was dog through and through.

  “Hey, do you think we should go and talk to your girlfriend?” Jason asked. He sensed danger. The idling car rumbled in the street. Like Eric, the passengers had shaved heads and small, beady eyes—and their brains were probably the size of walnuts.

  “Good idea,” Uncle Mike agreed as he waved at the guys in the car. “For health reasons, I think it’s better for us to move on.”

  The two hoofed it across the street, with Jason a few steps ahead. He didn’t like that dog Eric or the other bulldogs in the car. Then Jason saw the television van beginning to drive away. Sylvia was seated in the passenger’s seat, applying lipstick—or was she talking into a microphone?

  “They’re leaving, Uncle,” Jason cried. “She didn’t wait!”

  “Sylvia,” Uncle Mike called, both hands waving. “Sylvia, it’s me, your darling from high school.” He waved his arms like a drowning swimmer. But it appeared that neither she nor anyone else was going to save him.

  * * *

  Jason decided that his uncle should try to cash the lottery ticket. They returned home, begged the ticket from his mother, and, in unison, played the air guitar chords Jason had mastered. His uncle had convinced Jason that the first step to playing guitar was looking like you could handle such an instrument.

  “How sad,” his mother remarked. “Here’s your uncle, my little brother, playing air guitar because his real one is in the pawnshop.” She would cry, she said, but didn’t want to ruin the makeup she had just applied over every inch of her face.

  “But Mom, Uncle says I know enough chords to join a band.”

  “A band my you-know-what! You’re staying in school, even if you only get Cs.” Her anger had suddenly begun to glow beneath her powdered face. Nevertheless, she opened her purse and handed Jason the lottery ticket. “Bring all the money back. I don’t want you to spend a dime!” She turned a hot eye on Uncle Mike. “Especially not to get his guitar from the pawnshop!”

  “No problema, hermana,” Uncle Mike answered. “Guitar playing is a lifetime journey. There is a time and place for everything. Like right now. We exist for a better outlook on life and its complex realities. Feel me?”

  “Mike, the older you get, the sillier you talk.” Then she made other remarks—Jason thought they were totally unfair—about his long, greasy hair and his hairy chin. To Jason, that’s how guitar players should look, like they’ve experienced a terrible and burdened life. He promised himself that one day he would sleep with his feet up on the dash. Then he would know what his uncle had gone through to end up wearing a Spiderman T-shirt at his mature age.

  Before leaving the house, they ate a couple of peanut butter sandwiches. Uncle Mike called the 7-Eleven to tell Mr. Singh, the bearded owner, that he had in his possession a winning lottery ticket. When he told him the amount, Mr. Singh sighed and said, “OK, come by, but lottery tickets over a hundred dollars I can’t cash.”

  “But call the television station,” his uncle asked. “You can do that for a good ole’ customer like me.”

  “Can’t do it, amigo. I have three customers right now.”

  Jason could hear Mr. Singh say to one of the customers, “That’s a dollar-seventy-five.” He pictured a boy his age purchasing a soda and a bag of chips.

  Uncle Mike hung up and called the television station to report a second big winner in the California lottery. When the receptionist asked the amount, he said smugly, “Why don’t we just say that this winner won’t have to work for an entire year, possibly longer.”

  Uncle Mike hung up and scrubbed his hands together like a fly. They left singing lyrics of the Beatles’ classic hit “Money.”

  * * *

  “That’s right,” Jason told an overweight reporter, who was wearing a sweatshirt with a splotch of ketchup on the front. His belly showed from under the hem of the sweatshirt. “I have a winning ticket. My uncle gave it to me for my birthday—I’m twelve.”

  The television crew hadn’t bothered to show up. Only a part-time reporter from a rag of a newspaper Jason had never heard of, courtesy of Mr. Singh, who thought it best to call a newspaper. It couldn’t hurt business. So he called a reporter who happened to be one of his best customers, who was addicted to the burritos under the heat lamp. He lived in a trailer not far from the 7-Eleven.

  They held the interview at the 7-Eleven under the judging eye of Mr. Singh and the mirrors mounted in three of the four corners—people were always lifting goodies into their mouths before making an actual purchase.

  “Come on,” the reporter begged. “I got to know the amount. How am I going to write the article?” The three of them stood in front of a Ferris wheel of hot dogs turning on a rotisserie. The wieners were so dehydrated that in a day or two the ends might curl and meet each other.

  “Just tease your readers. Get them thinking that maybe I won the Power Ball, a zillion dollars or something way wild.”

  “Tease my readers? Something way wild?” The reporter clucked his tongue. “My readers can barely read, and when they do read, they don’t like to be teased!” The reporter suggested that Uncle Mike was teasing him. He didn’t like that one bit. He asked, “Was it fifty dollars?”

  Jason was insulted at the low-balling reporter. “Way more!”

  “A hundred dollars?”

  “Higher,” Jason cried. He gave the thumbs-up gesture.

  “Two hundred?” the reporter asked as he appraised the hot dogs.

  “Let’s get real,” Uncle Mike said, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t have bothered you if it wasn’t something high.”

  “Ten million?” the reporter asked.

  “That’s more like it,” Uncle Mike said. “But you’re wrong by several million.”

  “Listen, I don’t have time for guessing games.” The reporter was impatient to grab a hot dog.

  Uncle Mike relented as the reporter began to pocket his notepad. “All right, all right, I’ll tell you. It’s for $3,700.”

  The reporter made a face. He replied, “Is that all? I thought it might be at least half a million—or a million like the barber guy earlier this week.”

  To Jason, his lottery ticket was hella lot of mo
ney. It could have bought all the candy and potato chips in the store—and put those dogs on the rotisserie out of their misery.

  “Yes, that’s all. But it’s more than I got.” Uncle Mike pulled up his pants and ran his hands through his hair, clues that he was insulted that the reporter didn’t consider the figure impressive.

  “And more than I got,” Jason added.

  The reporter grimaced at the floor sticky with spilled soda and said, “Yeah, it’s more than I got, too.” He picked at the ketchup on his sweatshirt.

  The three remained glum for a minute. But the reporter took a deep breath, took a cursory glance at the hot dogs on the Ferris wheel, and said, “Just a few more questions.”

  They continued the interview. Before leaving, the reporter bought himself a Big Gulp and a bag of sunflower seeds. He smacked his lips, perfumed the air with a burp, and said to Uncle Mike, “Now I remember you.”

  “From my days with Los Blue Chones?” Uncle Mike asked. He was holding open the door for his nephew and the reporter.

  “Nah, I don’t know this thing called Los Blue Chones. I’m referring to when you left your lawn mower at my mom’s place. You never came back.” He lowered his face again to his Big Gulp, and slurped heartily.

  “Huh?” Uncle Mike squeaked.

  The reporter explained that his mother had hired him to cut the lawn and pull weeds, but he had never completed the job. He never even collected his money—thirty dollars.

  Jason was beginning to worry about his uncle. Was something wrong upstairs where his brains were coiled? How could he forget to collect thirty dollars?

  “Ah, yeah, now I remember.” He explained that he had been hired to play guitar for a group in Santa Cruz and the weekend gig was extended to a month—that is, until he was thrown out the band for continually messing up the F chord. (Uncle Mike swore that the F chord was a challenge even for the pros.)

  “You want to get it?” the reporter asked. “The lawn mower?”

  Jason answered for him. “Yeah, just give us the address.”