Ride the Lucky

by Kendric Neal

“Mom, it can't hurt you to hear it. He's still our dad.”

  “I know what it is to have ambition and energy and nowhere to put it,” Neely continued. “You turn to drink, or drugs, or a dozen other vices. You can't build, so you destroy. Before you're done, you take everything good in your life and rip it to shreds. The things you love most. And for some reason I'll never understand, you'll enjoy doing it. You regret it, you hate yourself, but you enjoy doing it. You want nothing more than to hit bottom just to see what'll happen. Just to feel something. And the thing is, life usually lets you. But there's no guarantee you'll ever get up again, and for some reason you accept that risk.”

  “I'm a gambling addict,” he went on. “Because of my addiction, I lost everything. I have a wonderful teenage daughter, she's 17 now, almost a grown woman, and doesn't need her dad much anymore. I have a smart and capable son, and he's independent as well. I guess kids grow up fast these days, maybe that's just the way it is. We raise them to be that way, but we're not always prepared when it happens. Heck, my son's 14 and he doesn't even come to me for computer help now and I'm a damn computer whiz! I'm not complaining, it's great, it's awesome, I don't think I'll have to worry about them in life and that makes me happy, but it's a sobering moment when your kids don't need you anymore, all of a sudden you start wondering who does. People say take up a hobby or return to an old one. Well, I did and I got bored. Hell, I'm no artist, I don't have a great book in me and you can only spend so much time playing golf or out on the boat. So what do you do? Anybody else have the rug pulled out from them and maybe hit the bottle a little too hard?”

  He waited and a dozen hands were raised.

  “Booze, meth, pills, coke, there's always a way out, isn't there? Anybody hit the slots a little too much?”

  About twice as many hands went up.

  “My people. That's what I did, only on an epic scale. It wasn't just the gambling either, I did my best to tear my family apart. I alienated my kids, I drove a good woman out of my life and I thumbed my nose at God. Why? Imagine trading God's grace and your family's admiration, even if it was eerily silent sometimes, for a random run of cards. Ridiculous. Well, I'm here to turn it around. Come with me and I'll turn this company into a winner, I'm going to throw everything I've got into it, and if that means 18 hour days, seven days a week, so be it. I have a client, one of the biggest trucking companies in the country, they've signed off on a new logistics system, going to be implemented in 14 months. That's $11 million in billing alone, I need to be up and running by then. Does that deadline sound tight? Because it is. Well it's going to happen. Be a part of it or there's the door. You want your life easy? You want things to stay the way they are, here's $100, there's the door. The casino's a two minute walk, get yourself a drink, sit down, start playing. I'm serious, $100 for any of you that wants it. The sooner you make that call, the better. If you want to work, stay. I've got a job for you.”

  “You'll give me $100?” a man said from the fourth row.

  “I will. Cash. Out of my own pocket. If you're going to quit, I'd rather you do it now. Anybody…”

  A handful of the attendees walked toward the front to take him up on it. He peeled off hundreds and handed them out with a “Good luck” to each. The gambit worked— it galvanized the rest of the crowd to see real money being handed out and they began listening to him more closely.

  “You think I'm crazy? You think there's a catch? There's no catch. I started as a coder, I moved up to network management, account rep, admin. I want you to meet Falk Mathias, the best coder I've ever known and I've known them all. He and I decided to strike out on our own. We've got three more clients just signed and four more circling. They know we're good, now we have to deliver.”

  “Why us?” an older woman asked from the front row.

  “You know what it'd cost me to go out and hire veteran coders? I'd have to lure them away from Austin, Seattle, Silicon Valley, I'd have to pay them 40% more than base rate just to get them here, and then I'd have bend over backwards to try to keep them. That's what everyone else does these days, that's the way the business is, it's cutthroat. That's why it's so expensive, these people are in high demand and there's not enough of them. The thing is, it didn't always used to be this way. There didn't used to be student loans and technical schools and industries that cannibalized other companies' workers. You know how things used to be done? Apprenticeships. You bring someone in and train them. In return they work for you for less until they're up to speed. Win-win. I get a ready workforce right here on the reservation, you get job skills you can convert to cash.”

  “You just to want to exploit us,” yelled a man from the back of the crowd.

  “HELL YEAH, I want to exploit you! Exploit me back. It's called business. Someone shows up telling you they want to help you out of the goodness of their heart, they're the ones you got to watch. Falk and I just lost our jobs, there's no going back, this is our baby and we're going to make it work. We're going to succeed because we don't have a choice. You're either part of it or you're not.”

  “How do we know you'll do what you say?” yelled out a young woman.

  “We'll both sign a contract. You commit, I'll put money in your pocket. I'll train you and I'm betting you'll stay, but that's up to you. You'll have marketable skills, you'll be in demand, you'll have options, but I'm betting you don't want to leave family, that you'll like the flexibility of working close by. I'm betting this is a perfect fit and I won't have to worry about Amazon or Apple hiring you out from under me for more money because you're here and your family's here. How many times has Apple contacted you, Falk?”

  “About a dozen.”

  “Exactly. They would have paid him more, but he's got family here and he likes working with me. I'm betting you'll say the same.”

  Neely pushed a button on the podium and a curtain rose, revealing a corporate logo cut into a huge block of wood. “Wakyza Solutions. Most of you knew him,” Neely said, as the logo incorporated a stylized image of Jack Wakyza into the silhouettes of trees. “He tried to better his life, but had no one to help him. It's hard to learn this stuff in a classroom. It's hard to learn it out of a book. You learn by doing, and you learn by having someone standing next to you showing it to you. Someone who really knows their stuff and has a stake in you learning it too. I'm betting I can show you better than a school can. I'm betting you can learn.”

  “How did you know Jack?”

  “I was there when he died… I'm the last one who saw him,” Neely said, waiting to let the audience absorb the shock of his statement.

  “In fact,” he continued. “That block of wood's cut from the tree that killed him. Old-growth yellow poplar, standing since the days of Columbus. Broke 18 saw blades cutting that logo, I'm told. Harder than steel. That night is what sent me into that downward spiral. Well, I want to honor him now, not mourn him. I want something good to come out of his death. Maybe it seems a gruesome reminder to you, but not me— I think it's good to be reminded. If you're drinking, if you're gambling, if you're fighting, cheating, stealing, maybe you're a bad person, or maybe you're just a good person who's slipped off course. Maybe you don't know what to do with yourself. You've given up making a difference, you don't think enough of yourself to try. If that's true, I can't help you. But if you're ready to try, I can.

  He pointed to a young guy near the front and said, “How about you? Are you that person? Are you going to show up? Get it done? Don't make a lot of fuss, don't make excuses, don't knock off at 5 if the job isn't done yet? Is that you or is that some other guy? What do I want from you? I want you to work harder at this than you've ever worked at anything in your life. If coding or networking or IT isn't it, I'll find something that is. We're going to have to train the people to use our software, there'll be jobs in design, technical writing, graphics, media. If you want it and you're willing to work for it, I'll get it for you. I'll find you whatever is best suited to you. Over there, I want you to meet my personnel manage
r, Hope Thomas—” He motioned to where Hope was standing.

  Maybe it was a trick of the light, or maybe it'd been there all along, but for a moment, she looked like the Dark Queen far more than the old woman had. It threw him off his game for a second, but he quickly recovered. “One of the smartest people I've ever known. Any problems you have, Hope's there to listen. She's CFO as well. She's also that wife I mentioned to you earlier. You make your own luck, she once told me. You should listen to her.”

  “What kind of deal did you make with the tribe?” asked a man in the fifth row.

  “A sweet one. One that reduces my start-up costs by half. What does the tribe get? A percent and a precedent. I don't have to tell you, there's no industry on your lands, the casino pays for everything and it's not enough. They have to give job preference to tribemembers, only tribemembers don't want the jobs. They want the free checks, any votes for free money get passed, no matter what, only it's just enough to keep you poor.”

  Neely looked up and saw a familiar face at the back of the room, the janitor he talked to outside the casino, still grinning.

  “Out of work, nothing to do, can't get ahead, drug and alcohol abuse everywhere. A man once told me, you want to ruin someone's life, give them free money. It's true, isn't it? If Jack Wakyza had come to me, I think I could have helped him. He fell behind in his classes, he didn't understand what they were teaching him, he couldn't or didn't ask questions, and after a while it was over. He was lost. He stopped going, he started drinking and he was stuck with all his student loan debt and no job.”

  “I was too late to help Jack,” Neely continued. “But maybe I can help you. Anyone can learn this. I guarantee it. You have to want it, you have to say you're going to do it. For most of you, it'll be the hardest thing you've ever done in your lives. You'll want to give up, it won't make sense, you'll get mad, you'll just see numbers and a bunch of gibberish, you'll feel lost and you'll just want to go home and forget it, it was a stupid idea anyway. Well, I'm going to pull you back from that edge. I'm going to make you sign a contract, and I'll sign one in return. Every damn one of you will be producing in a year, every one, and when you are I'll give you stock options. What would that do for your families? What would that do for your reservation? You could build schools, you could teach kids, you could do anything you want. Money can be a curse, but it can also buy you freedom. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Don't blame money. Money's not the devil.”

  “What's in it for you?” a kid barely out of his teens yelled out.

  “You tell me. I've told you who I am, how I got here. What's in it for me?” He waited but the man didn't answer.

  “Money,” someone finally shot out.

  “Sure, but that's now what I want now. I'm missing something else in my life. One thing I desperately need and you can give it to me. I need to bite off more than I can chew… Now that's not for anyone but me. I don't need to show off, I've done that, I don't need a house that can sleep 25, what's the point of that? I just need to know, in my quietest moments, at night before I go to sleep, that I'm pushing myself as hard as I can. That's my vice. I'm an accomplishment junkie. Before I die, I want to know I've done something. And, no, I wouldn't mind making some money at it along the way.”

  A woman stepped forward, still holding her hundred, and asked, “Can I change my mind?”

  “You sure can.” Neely reached out and took the hundred back. “You want to think about it, the offer's open. You ready to sign a contract, line up at the tables.”

  Neely came down off the podium and was immediately swarmed by the crowd peppering him with questions. He pointed to Falk and two women at a sign-up table to give them the rest of the answers, as he made a beeline for Hope and the kids.

  Neely had to push his way through, but there was only one thing he cared about now. He stopped and took both Hope's hands in his.

  “What do you say, Hope? I'm praying you'll take the job,” he said, looking in her eyes.

  “It's not going to be that easy, Neely.”

  “I know.”

  “There's too much done to undo in a speech.”

  “I know that too.”

  She had more to say, but didn't say it. She was feeling old feelings and didn't want to, in fact she resented him for it.

  “What I did will take a lifetime to undo. Just let me try.”

  He grabbed her arms and pulled her close, cupping her face with one hand as he whispered with an urgency that surprised her, “None of this means anything if you're not with me. I forgot that, I know—I don't know how I could. You're my life, Hope. Since the first night we kissed, you're the only one I ever wanted. If the light dimmed in my eyes, it was a mistake, I was seeing things that weren't there. My eyes are wide open now.”

  She didn't say anything, too angry and upset still to speak.

  Cullen finally broke the silence, “Hey, dad—”

  “Yeah, son?” Neely said.

  “Did a motorcycle gang really trash our house?”

  “Yes, they did.”

  “And did you really shoot out our front window with a .357?”

  “I sure did.”

  Cullen chuckled, “That's diseased.”

  “Mrs. Klingman said if you move back, she's selling,” Jess said.

  “Great. What are we waiting for?” he said. He drew Hope in to kiss her she put a hand up to stop him.

  “I'm not stupid, Neely. You haven't stopped gambling, you just found a bigger game.”

  He grinned, a mad gleam twinkling in his eyes. “Busted…” He pulled her close and kissed her.