Instant Winner

by Gary Soto

  “Hey,” Jason greeted.

  “Hey, back,” Blake answered. His voice was pumped. “I got it, dude!”

  “Got what?”

  “A Sony video camera, old-school technology. We can make a music video or something.” He told Jason that his mother had given him his birthday money early—fifty dollars—and with what he had stashed away he was able to buy a video camera for seventy-five dollars on Craigslist.

  “Cool,” Jason responded. He didn’t wish to dampen his friend’s enthusiasm, but he blurted out, “But we don’t know how to play an instrument, or sing, or even dance.”

  “No problem,” Blake fired back. “Most rockers don’t either.” He mentioned a couple of groups that knew only three chords on their expensive guitars. Still, they were record-smashing groups that toured and got to sleep until noon, sometimes later. And if they were hungry, they just picked up the telephone and said, “Feed me.”

  The conversation moved in another direction as Jason thought of his decision to give up sports. He asked Blake, “Hey, did I tell you I quit the basketball team?”

  “Man, you didn’t quit,” Blake argued. “You’re a lying sack of pinto beans—all farty.”

  “I did—really! Coach Bacon and I had a heart-to-heart, and he said, more or less, that I stink.” Jason wasn’t hurt by the admission.

  “But that doesn’t mean you had to quit.” Blake warned his friend that people would think that he quit mid-season because the team was already burnt toast. They would think he was acting like he was too good for the team.

  “I had to, and I don’t care what people think. I’m going to become a rocker. Like you said, most rockers can’t sing or play guitar real good. And as for dancing, most of them just move around like they got to go to the bathroom and someone’s in there.”

  Jason reached for a half-eaten Baby Ruth on his chest of drawers. With his front teeth, he pulled back the wrapping and took a bite. He chomped and assessed that the candy wasn’t too old.

  “If you really want to know, yeah, you weren’t very good,” Blake answered truthfully. “I’m sorry to say that, but it’s true.”

  “That settles it,” Jason said sternly. “I’m going learn guitar.”

  “If you do, I’m taking up drums,” Blake announced.

  Jason could hear Blake pounding something hard—his table, his bedpost, the side of the refrigerator? When he asked what that sound was, Blake answered, “I’m drumming on the top of my head.”

  In that instant, Jason doubted that he and Blake would ever make it to college. Were they really dumb boys after all? No doubt Blake got better grades, but his grades, Jason felt, were given because he was well-mannered in class. Teachers liked that sort of polite student who, if he chewed gum, at least kept his mouth closed.

  Jason suggested another angle to break into the film world: “Hey, why don’t you videotape the wedding?”

  “Cool idea,” he responded. “Where’s it happening?”

  “I don’t know,” Jason answered. He told him that he would get back to him. He hung up, but not before telling his friend that he should wear a clean shirt, or at least his father’s cologne.

  Jason trudged down the back steps and into the backyard. His sister was smart. He would search for a plant, stuff it into one of the pots behind the garage and wrap it with aluminum foil—he liked the look of shiny metal and he assumed the bride and groom would too.

  But he discovered all the plants in the yard were sagging, colorless, leafless, or plain dead. The tomato plants were haggard from frost. The roses along the garage were spiky as spurs. Jason sighed. He couldn’t possibly stick a couple of dry, humpbacked sticks in a pot and call it a wedding gift.

  Then an idea ballooned in his head, and got bigger to the point of exploding. The nice old lady with the overgrown yard! She had to have something growing. He would bargain with her. He would cut her lawn or maybe rake the leaves off her roof—he liked climbing roofs—or wash her front windows so that she could better see her neighbors getting robbed. He would provide her with a couple hours of work.

  He left the backyard along the side of the house and was walking to the front when his mom clip-clopped down the steps.

  “Where are you going?” she asked. In the approaching dusk, her mouth was red as a flower. Her hair was done up and the bangs cascaded like a black, crashing wave.

  “I was going to get Aunt Marta and her squeeze a present.”

  “Bill,” she corrected. “He’s not ‘her squeeze.’ His name is Bill.”

  “OK, Bill and Aunt Marta,” he said. He then added, “Mom, Blake wants to videotape the wedding.” He figured that his mother would love the memory of the couple, old as they were, smooching after they said, “I do.”

  “Blake?” she asked, confused. She was searching her purse for her car keys.

  “Blake bought this neat video camera,” Jason explained. He didn’t know if it was “neat” or not. He asked: “Can he come? He won’t eat anything and if he does he’ll eat from my plate. He’ll just do the taping.”

  “Not a bad idea,” his mother said. She agreed that the moment should be captured, and that kids knew a lot about things like video cameras, text messaging, iPods and such. Her generation was out of the loop, and there was no arguing this. Indeed, her generation was still struggling with the directions for how to set up the message machine. She told him that the wedding was going to be held at a room in the Rodeo Bar & Grill on Tulare Street.

  “The one with a wagon wheel outside?” he asked.

  “Used to be,” she answered. “Some fool stole it. But, yeah, that’s the place.” His mother then started toward the car in the driveway.

  Jason followed on her footsteps.

  Jason’s mother swung open the car door and got in. She rolled down the window. “But I want you home for dinner.”

  “What’s for dinner?” he asked.

  “You know that carcass of a turkey?” she asked, a smile spreading across her face and revealing teeth splotched with lipstick. “It’s bones. We’re going to suck those things until they look like toothpicks.”

  * * *

  “You’ll mow my lawn?” the nice old lady asked cheerfully from her driveway. “That’s so sweet. But how much will it cost?”

  Jason saw how old she really was. Her eyes were cloudy and dim, the skin on her face papery thin. Her legs were heavily veined and bruised. She had a hearing aid in one ear.

  “Hardly anything,” Jason answered.

  “Oh, good, because that’s all I have—‘hardly anything’.”

  The two started toward the backyard when Jason spotted a flowering plant. He stopped, and she stopped. He asked, “I’ll help you for free if I can have that plant.” He pointed.

  “You mean the chrysanthemum?”

  Jason nodded his head. He had heard the name chrysanthemum before, and now he knew what they looked like. “Yes, ma’am, that plant. You see…” He explained that his aunt was getting married and that he had no money for a proper gift. He would work for that plant, she told him, and would bring along his uncle. His uncle would be the main muscle for the overgrown lawn.

  “That skinny fellow with the beard?” she asked.

  “That’s him.”

  “Is he well enough? I think he was coughing.”

  “He’s strong as an ox.”

  “How ‘bout if I throw in one of my late husband’s suits? Your uncle’s clothes…” she began, then hesitated.

  “They suck, huh?” Jason completed for her. “He would love anything you gave him. He likes retro. And he likes you.” He told the nice old lady that it was a done deal—the suit and the plant.

  Dang, Jason thought when the lawn came into view. It was tall and scraggly, and roots that looked like chow mein grew over the cement path.

  “It is a little overgrown,” the woman murmured.

  “Yeah, but me and uncle,” Jason said, “we can do it! We like exercise.” He reminded the nice old lady that he wa
s twelve and that he was strong, and that his uncle was in his thirties and was even stronger, especially if you fed him a bologna sandwich before he got to work.

  “Sure, I’ll make sandwiches,” she suggested. “It will be like a work party!”

  “Throw in chips and soda, and we’ll work like mules.”

  The nice old lady giggled. She said that she would be right back with the suit, turned, and ventured into the garage.

  While she was there, Jason decided to take the hoe leaning against the back fence and whack away at the growth. He figured that he could build up an appetite for that ladder of turkey bones his mother was concocting into a soup. And while he was whacking away, he found a deflated beach ball, barbecue tongs, water bottles in which spiders were making a nest, a sprinkler, and a Gremlin toy stripped of its color.

  “Dang,” Jason muttered to himself. “This place is a junkyard.”

  When the woman appeared from the garage with a rust-colored suit, she was all smiles. “Do you think it’ll fit your uncle?”

  Uncle Mike was a skeleton, all stained teeth and bones, and the suit was huge. Still, Jason answered, “Yeah, ma’am, my mom can make it fit. And don’t worry. I’ll be back in a couple of days with my uncle. We’ll take care of that lawn.”

  They shook hands, and Jason left with the suit and the chrysanthemum. He walked slowly, as he didn’t want a single flower to fall.

  Chapter Ten

  On Tuesday morning, a cold fog blanketed Fresno, but the county jail was bustling. Jason watched more people enter the foyer than leave. Some were dressed in orange suits and possessed eyes that, oddly, looked orange as well. One unlucky fellow, escorted by two cops, had a lollipop stuck in the corner of his mouth—his last taste of sweet freedom before being locked away? Another prisoner, strapped into a wheelchair, was guided smoothly down a hallway. Even the sick or disabled, it occurred to Jason, were not above the law.

  “Mom,” Jason whispered to his mother. He was troubled by the atmosphere rife with prisoners and cops near a metal detector. He didn’t like this place.

  His mother was seated in an orange plastic chair doing a Sudoku puzzle. She had a pencil poised over a column and was concentrating so completely that her brow furrowed. “What?” she asked, not bothering to look up.

  “Mom,” Jason repeated. “I’m never gonna break the law.” He made a promise to himself then and there to only do good in the world.

  “That’s nice,” she replied as she began to fill in the blank boxes. “If you do break the law, I’ll make you stay in your room forever. Don’t forget that.” She licked the lead of her pencil and got back to work on her puzzle.

  Jason and his mother were anticipating Uncle Mike’s release. They had taken care of his unpaid tickets, but had learned that he still had to see a judge the following week. The judge, his mother told Jason, would assign Uncle Mike to community service. Jason imagined his uncle picking up litter along the freeway. Then he laughed to himself as he pictured his uncle playing air guitar to preschoolers. Yes, this would be the best sentence—making little kids clap their hands sticky with candy.

  A man approached and asked, “You people got change for a dollar?”

  Jason felt in his pockets, and his mother rifled through her coin purse. Together, they had just enough—three quarters, and the rest in dimes and pennies.

  “Parking meter,” he explained with the sad look of a down-and-out clown. “I’m here to take care of some parking tickets, and I don’t want to get another one.” He shuffled away.

  “See,” his mother said. “Now that is a responsible citizen.”

  “Yeah, Mom, I’m beginning to see.” Jason was thinking about how the city was always looking for ways to get money, so why not pester its citizens with parking fines?

  Finally, Uncle Mike approached, his head held high. He was dressed in his regular duds—the faded sweatshirt, the hem of the Spiderman T-shirt peeking out below, the scuffed sneakers, and pants faded at the thighs.

  Jason swallowed. His uncle was poorly dressed, but he had a big smile on his face. He waved and hollered, “Hey, guys.” In his free hand, he was holding a jelly donut.

  “Hey, Uncle,” Jason greeted with a fist bump.

  “Glad to be out,” Uncle remarked, and hugged his sister, careful not to squirt any of the donut’s jelly center onto her shoulder. “But, hey, look.” He pointed at the donut. “They feed you good. Last night we had killer arrozo con pollo. Very ethnic cuisine, know what I mean?”

  Jason also noticed that his uncle had had his hair cut and washed, his beard trimmed, and his fingernails shoveled free of grime. The dirt ring around his neck was gone, and his yellowish teeth were now a shade whiter. His uncle had really cleaned up. Now if he could only clean up his act!

  That’s what his mother scolded as they left the foyer. “Are you going to learn your lesson, Mike?” She handed him a parka—a green one belonging to Jason’s dad that had been jabbed with a couple of fishing lures on its chest.

  The donut was now a mere morsel pinched between Uncle Mike’s thumb and index finger. He was chewing wildly. “Oh, yeah, I learned my lesson. Whenever I need a little vacation, I should just go in there.” He hooked a thumb at the jail, and then slipped into the parka.

  “That’s not funny,” Jason’s mother scolded. “Do you think you’re a good example for your nephew?” She clucked her tongue at her brother.

  Uncle Mike nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah, guess not. Jason, don’t be like me.” Out in the brisk November air, he stopped, stretched, and sighed, “Ah, clean cold air. Glad to be free.”

  At the parked car, Jason’s mother pulled a tape measure from the glove compartment. She told Uncle Mike to extend his arms.

  “What for?” Uncle Mike asked. “Is this another pat down?” He chuckled as he clamped his elbows to his body.

  “I need to take in this suit that Jason snagged for you,” she explained.

  “Really?” Uncle Mike turned to Jason. “Where did you find me a suit?”

  Jason told his uncle about the deal he had made with the nice old lady and how they could clean her yard when they got the time.

  “Oh, her,” Uncle Mike said. “I remember her. She had the yard that was like a jungle.” He also remembered Aunt Marta’s impending wedding to the millionaire and decided to cooperate with his sister as she measured him. He giggled when she worked the tape measure high up into his armpits.

  “That tickles,” he laughed.

  “Mike, stand still,” Jason’s mother ordered, “or I’m going to stick you accidentally with one of these pins.” Then she joked that she might just stick him for fun!

  A few passersby stared at them, unfazed. The world was strange. Why shouldn’t a large woman be taking measurements of a skinny man in front of the county jail? For all they knew, this scraggly fellow might be getting a custom-made orange jumpsuit.

  “Here,” his mother said after she wrote his measurements on the back of a used envelope. She held out three twenties.

  “What’s this for?” Uncle Mike asked as he took the money. He looked at the greenbacks as if he had never seen that much loot all at one time before.

  “I can’t have you going to the wedding in those.” She pointed at Uncle Mike’s torn sneakers. “Get some new shoes, or see what’s at Goodwill.”

  “I got a new pair too,” Jason volunteered. “Man, they hurt my feet.” After his mother had shoved the wads of wet newspaper into them they’d gotten slightly larger, but they still pinched Jason’s toes. He would just have to live with them—at least for one night.

  Jason’s mother hopped into the car and rolled down the window. “I want you both home by three—no later. I have things to do.” She drove away, but Jason recognized the look she gave him in the rearview mirror. It said, “You better not mess up.”

  Jason and his uncle stood at the curb, their hands in their pockets. They leaned against a car.

  “Man, it was a trip in there,” Uncle Mike s
aid. “I knew two dudes from high school.”

  “What were they in there for?” Jason asked. He had plucked a leaflet from behind a windshield wiper. The leaflet announced rug cleaning starting at $19.95. He let it float from his grip.

  “Petty thieves, breaking and entering, street fights, urinating in public, stuff like that,” Uncle Mike answered. He gave a thumbs-up sign. “Otherwise, they’re really good people.”

  They were joined by a pigeon in search of a handout. The pigeon’s cooing brought two more pigeons, both fat from their street diet of dropped French fries, ice cream cones, and other fast food.

  “Sorry, amigos,” Uncle Mike said to the street-hustling birds. “The donut is, like, history.”

  Uncle Mike suggested that they stroll on over to the pawnshop, where his guitar hung in the window. At a quarter to ten, the shop was still closed, though there were a couple of people waiting in front. One had an accordion to pawn, and the other carried two bowling balls. Up the street, a man was pushing a shopping cart that held an antique sewing machine. Times were hard in Fresno, and people were ready to hock whatever they owned—or stole.

  “Hey,” Uncle Mike chirped. “I got a great idea.”

  Jason was immediately suspicious. His uncle’s previous ideas usually led to trouble and family conflict. Nevertheless, he asked, “What?”

  “I met a buddy in jail,” his uncle began. It turned out that the buddy owed him a hundred dollars, and paid up! Uncle showed Jason a hundred dollar bill.

  “Wow, Unc,” Jason remarked. But he was a little disturbed that the bill was defaced. Benjamin Franklin’s eyes had been inked with sunglasses.

  “Here’s my plan—we’re gonna to get my guitar back.” His uncle explained that with his hundred dollars, plus the sixty dollars his sister had given him, they were close to redeeming his guitar.

  “But what about your shoes?” Jason asked. He feared his mother’s wrath.

  “Oh, I’ll just…” Uncle stroked his beard. “I’ll just wash these sneakers and put on some clean socks. That’ll be good enough.”

  His uncle’s plan was a grave mistake. He told his uncle as much, and then asked, “Where’s the extra money to get your guitar gonna come from?”