Lottery

by Patricia Wood

  Keith does not sound at all bothered. “Yeah, great! No problem, Per. Yo will need some gas, but sure, I can take you. Let me tell Gary I gotta take off.” He sounds happy even though he is working. Keith is my friend. A friend is someone who does what you want without asking why. I think I have enough money for gas to get to Olympia, but I am not sure. I have written only three checks this week, one for sixteen dollars, one for twenty-seven dollars, and one for twelve ninety-five. Gram always made me use a calculator so I did not make a mistake. My balance is two hundred and forty-four dollars and five cents. This is true or echt because I used a calculator.

  Echt is a word Gram and I found in Reader’s Digest Word Power. It was answer C. True or genuine. I use it for important things. Like when I sailed by myself for the first time and when I first met Keith.

  Today I won the lottery. That is echt.

  I count twenty-three ones in my wallet. More dollar bills make me feel rich. Hey, I am rich, I think. I sing in my head and then out loud.

  “I am rich. I am rich. I am rich,” and bounce on the couch.

  13

  Gram and I have not had a car since before Gramp died. I hope gas is not more than twenty-three dollars. I hear a honk below my window. BLAAAAH! BLAAAAH! I run down to Keith’s truck, but have to run right back up again to get my jacket. Yo’s heater does not work and fall is cold in Everett.

  “I told Holsted it was an emergency.” Keith calls Gary by his last name when he is in a good mood. He turns on the radio to the oldies station.

  Keith used to be a hippie, then an army guy, then a ferry captain. Now he is a drunk. That is what he says. Gram used to call him a philosopher.

  “That’s a five-dollar word!” Keith told her. “A five-dollar word to describe someone who doesn’t have a red cent.”

  Gram just laughed at him. She liked Keith.

  We head south down the freeway. I am glad Keith knows which direction to go. Yo is heading south because Keith told me and that is what all the signs say as we whiz underneath. Keith drives extremely fast. Extremely is more than very and not as much as exceedingly. I feel for my lottery ticket through my shirt pocket. It is still there.

  “Why do you need to go to Olympia?” he asks.

  When I tell him he swerves into the other lane.

  “Holy fucking shit! You’re fucking kidding me! Right? Holy fuck!” He shakes his head and licks his lips like our collie, Reuben, used to do before we fed him and before he died.

  That reminds me. “Hey, I can get a dog!” I tell him.

  That is a good idea. I can get a dog again.

  Keith’s hands are shaking on the wheel.

  “Are you sure? Fuck! You need some help on this. Shit!” He gets very quiet. I have my wallet out and lay ten one-dollar bills on the seat.

  “Here is for gas. I hope it is enough,” I say.

  That is all it takes to make him go off again. “Jesus! Shit!”

  I hear Gram’s voice in my head. Careful.

  Keith’s gray hair is long, greasy, and tied in a ponytail. I think he looks like Willie Nelson from the back. From the front, he looks like an old fat white guy, but I do not tell him this. It would not be nice.

  “Where do we have to go?” His hands squeeze the wheel like a sponge.

  “PO Box two one six seven Olympia.” I read this slowly off the ticket.

  “That’s only a box number, we need the address. We’ll have to ask someone when we get to Olympia.” Keith is as smart as John, maybe smarter, even though he is not on my list.

  It takes three hours in traffic, plus we do not know exactly where we need to go. We stop at the Pancake House when we finally get to Olympia.

  “Everybody knows where the lottery office is! It’s just a few blocks over!” That is what Pamela, the cashier, says. We order something to drink and I bounce at the counter. She flutters her eyes at Keith and gives us free refills on our coffee. We are both grinning.

  “Did you win or something?” she asks. Her teeth are yellow.

  Keith gets quiet and looks at me. I stop bouncing. We push our lips straight.

  “No, we just need to find out where it is, just in case,” Keith says.

  “Yeah, in case,” I add.

  “That’ll be four ninety-eight.” She frowns and rings us up. I do not finish my third cup of coffee because it can make you pee and I do not know if the lottery office has a bathroom.

  The building we want is eight blocks away. I count. The outside is made of concrete painted light green. There is only a small sign above the door. I am surprised that it is not big and fancy, as they have all that money. The people at the lottery office are friendly and smile. They make me a giant cardboard check and take my picture while I hold it. They tell me I can take it home if I want.

  “Won’t this be cool to hang up on my wall?” I ask Keith.

  “Yeah, it’ll be cool all right,” he agrees.

  I get a copy of the picture right there from an instant camera. I am smiling, but my hair hangs over my eyes. I need a haircut. My ears stick out and my eyes look dark, like Gram’s. I think I look pretty good, but Keith pushes my hair off my forehead and says I look goofy. I laugh. Keith is my friend.

  He pulls my arm, bends down, whispers in my ear, and gets my neck wet. “You got to get some good financial advice, and not from those brothers of yours!”

  “They like me to call them cousins.” I feel important. Everybody is looking at me.

  “Trust me, they won’t after this. They’ll be your fucking blood brothers.” Keith’s eyes are narrow and he has white spit in the corner of his mouth. He looks like that cool jungle guy hunting on Animal Planet. That was when Gram and I could still afford cable and had a TV that worked. This gives me an idea.

  “Hey,” I say. “I can get Animal Planet now.” This makes me excited.

  “Hey!” I think of something else. I have a lot of good ideas today. “I can get a TV!”

  Margery from the lottery office wants to talk with me.

  “Do you have family? I mean someone who helps you,” she asks.

  I know what she really means. She thinks I am retarded. She thinks I cannot take care of myself. I hate that, and it upsets me.

  “Hey, he’s not retarded if that’s what you’re getting at!” Keith yells.

  I am glad Keith yelled because my words get jumbled and thick in my throat. I stop being angry and get embarrassed. I feel better when Margery apologizes. She leads us into another office when a bunch of people with cameras and microphones crowd into the main room.

  Keith stands behind me full of advice. “Don’t take the lump sum!” He hisses like a snake.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.

  “Take the payments!” he says.

  Winning the lottery is very complicated.

  First, they ask to see my ticket and a man checks all the numbers. Next, I have to sign the back of the ticket with my address and phone number. Then I show my Washington State Picture ID, Social Security card, and fill out another paper.

  I have to fill out lots of paperwork so that Uncle Sam gets his share. I do not have an Uncle Sam. People just say that when they mean taxes. Taxes are something you have to pay even though you do not want to. I ask the lottery people if they want to see anything else. They say no, that’s fine. Finally, they ask me what I want to do. They tell me I can get my money once a year for twenty-five years, or all at once. If I take my money all at once, I only get half.

  “It’s a rip-off, Per. If you take it all you’d only get six mill, plus all the taxes! You’d only end up with three mill at the end.”

  Three million dollars sounds good to me, but Keith says payments are the way to go.

  “You can take sixty days to decide,” Margery says. I tell her I do not need sixty days, I can decide right now. Keith is pulling my elbow and patting my back.

  “When does he get the money?” He sounds more excited than me. “Take the payments!” He yells this
directly into my ear. I have to wipe his wet off my cheek again.

  “I want the payments like Keith says so I can buy a TV,” I tell her.

  Margery looks like she does not think a TV is a good idea. She squeezes her lips tight like Gram used to as she gives me papers to sign. She tells me the amount I will get each year, but I am so excited I forget. Margery tells me to wait while they put a smaller check into an envelope.

  Keith remembers for me. “Nearly four hundred fucking thousand dollars a year for twenty-five years!” Keith lectures me about taxes and says, “The fucking government will get a bunch of your money.” He tells me I should invest. He says there will be a lot of people who will help me.

  I am glad.

  “You need to think about what you’ll do when you quit working at Holsted’s,” Keith says. “You can travel. Go to school. Do whatever you want.”

  That makes me sad. “I don’t want to quit my job. I don’t want to go to school. I like working at Holsted’s!” I say.

  I like working with Gary and Keith, but I do not know if they will make me stop working. Maybe there is a rule when you win the lottery you have to give your job away to someone who needs it. I hope not.

  Margery leads Keith and me out through a hidden door in the back, but all the men with cameras see us leave the parking lot. As we drive back home, they follow us from lane to lane in blue and silver cars. Keith is a great driver. We double back, make two very exciting turns, and run a red light. It is like a movie when guys are in a car getting away with money from a bank, then almost crashing. Just like that. Yo’s tires squeal.

  We would have escaped like those guys, except Keith forgets we need gas. We run out just after Tacoma. CHUG! CUNK! Yo went. The reporters from the newspapers and magazines are very nice. They give us a ride to the gas station and talk to me while Keith puts gas in an orange can.

  What are you going to do with the money?

  How will this change your life?

  Do you plan to give any to charity, to your family, to the church?

  Do you have brothers or sisters? A wife? A girlfriend?

  What does your family think?

  The questions come so fast all I can do is smile and nod.

  Keith yells while he pumps. “Don’t say anything, Per! They can turn what you say around until you don’t recognize it. Don’t say a word! No! Don’t let them take pictures!”

  Keith is a good boxer. He misses one reporter, but catches another full in the face and gives him a bloody nose. They don’t seem to mind and take us back to Yo anyway. When we get there, a policeman is standing next to Yo writing a ticket.

  “When’s the last time you registered your truck?” he asks Keith.

  I feel bad I got him into trouble. That ticket was probably a lot of money. Keith never told me how much.

  “I’m not going to be one of those bloodsuckers,” he said.

  I wrote him a check for five hundred dollars right there.

  “It’s a loan,” Keith said. “I consider it only a loan. I’ll pay you back.”

  A loan to a friend means you don’t have to pay it back. I know this.

  “That’s okay,” I say.

  And we get into Yo and drive away.

  14

  Finding the sun in Washington state is hard, because you have to be in just the right place. The sun hides a lot of the time. I hear the people from California complain to Gary or Keith about never seeing it. But I know the sun is there. You just have to know where to look. I can sit in my room above the Everett Marina and see it in the water like a mirror. When I see extra brightness through the gray clouds, I can tell exactly where it is. It reminds me of how I have to look for Gram now. I look in those places for her.

  The sun is red, orange, or maybe yellow and bounces through the sky when I look at it through Yo’s back window. It is Yo bouncing, but I pretend it is the sun. I like to bounce.

  It takes only two hours for us to get home from Olympia. There is not as much traffic. I look out Yo’s window at the sun peeking through holes in the sky, and think about being rich.

  I am rich. That is so cool.

  When we get back to my apartment, we stomp up the stairs together and Keith helps me nail my big check on the wall. We use long brass tacks and one of my heavy black dress shoes. POUND! POUND! POUND!

  I hear thumps outside.

  “Hey, someone’s running up the stairs,” Keith says.

  It is Gary.

  “What the hell are you guys doing up here? Sounds like a herd of elephants!” Gary’s voice is loud and he looks upset. His office is right underneath my living room. Maybe he thinks the new washer broke down.

  “The washer is fine and there are no elephants either,” I say, and then I add, “Hey, Gary, guess what? I won the lottery.”

  He smiles at me. “That’s very funny, Perry.” Then he stops speaking and his eyes get big. He walks over and touches the check nailed to the wall. His face turns white. Big drops of sweat roll off his forehead. I have to help him sit down on my chair by the door.

  His voice comes out hoarse. “Shit! You’re kidding, right? Shit! You know what to do? Shit! You have to get some financial advice. Is that the only check they gave you? I mean did they give you a smaller one? They did, didn’t they? Can I see it? You’d better put it right in the bank. Shit! We have to take him to the bank, Keith!” Gary has never said that many S-words in a row. His eyebrows are moving and he looks sick. Maybe he has indigestion or a heart attack. People can die from a heart attack.

  “You need a Tums, Gary? I got a Tums.” I always carried them for Gram. “You want Pepto-Bismol? I got Pepto-Bismol.” I have everything. Even Listerine and Ex-Lax. “You need Ex-Lax, Gary?”

  My big check is fixed high on the wall behind Gram’s couch. The little one that Margery gave me is folded up tight in my wallet. Gary puts his head between his knees and takes deep breaths. Keith has to help me fill out my deposit slip there are so many zeros. I write big, but very neatly. Gram taught me. I have to make the zeros skinny so all of them fit inside the lines.

  Gary refuses to ride in Yo, so we ride to Everett Federal in his Jeep Cherokee. Keith and Gary are in front and I sit by myself in the back. I feel important like I am a sports guy just like Tiger Woods, except I am not brown and I do not know how to play golf.

  I like going to the bank. I usually walk and it takes twenty minutes. It is cool to ride. They know me at my bank. Every second Tuesday I deposit my check from Holsted’s in Everett Federal. Judy, the teller, always smiles and gives me a red-and-white-striped mint along with my receipt. A receipt is a piece of paper that says the bank has your money. Gary gets a parking place right in front, which is very lucky. I watch cars circling around and around trying to find an empty space. Of course, if we had Yo, we could park in handicapped because Yo is a disabled vehicle. That is what Keith says.

  The lobby of my bank is crowded, but we do not have to stand in line. Gary whispers to a teller and we cut right to the front. A lady I do not know leads us through a door. I look for Judy behind the counter, but I do not see her.

  Maybe this is her day off.

  People talk to each other and point. The lady, whose chest tag says Norma, gives me five mints. She takes us into a big room with a brown leather couch. It is soft and fluffy, but I am too nervous to bounce. We wait only a few minutes for Mr. Jordan. He is the president of the bank and I am just a little bit afraid.

  I wonder if he is related to Michael Jordan.

  When he shakes my hand, I have to look up at his face. I think he is just like the basketball player. He is tall, but does not wear Nikes. He has a huge stomach and curly blond hair like Mrs. Callahan’s poodle Sparky. Mrs. Callahan lived next door to us before she went to a nursing home. After that, Gram died and I moved away. I do not know what happened to Sparky.

  “Well, Mr. Crandall.” Mr. Jordan sits down in his chair and leans back. He makes a steeple with his fingers and says, “Well . . . Well . . . Well . . .�
� over and over.

  I sit in a chair across, and Keith and Gary are on either side of me. They are like bodyguards from that movie with the gangsters. This is so cool. I try to decide whether the bank president looks more like a priest or a spider. He smiles like Father Jacob at St. Augustine’s. Like he knows me very well. It is spooky. He talks about what the bank can do with all my money. When he uncrosses his legs, I think he looks like a spider.

  “We have some excellent and fiscally responsible ideas that would be to your benefit. I can recommend that you—” he says, but does not get to finish because Keith stands up.

  “He’s not interested,” Keith interrupts.

  He tells Mr. Jordan that I am considering my options. I like the sound of that. I decide to say I am considering my options, if anybody else asks me about what I am going to do with my money. It sounds really smart.

  “Yeah, I’m considering my options,” I repeat under my breath so I will remember. I wish I had known those words when the reporters talked to me. Maybe I can call them.

  I deposit half of my money into my checking account and the other half into my savings account. That is what I do. Half in checking, half in savings. Gram told me always to use half and save half. Mr. Jordan does not quite look as happy when I leave as when I came. That is okay. I get one hundred dollars cash in ones, fives, and tens from the teller. This makes me feel rich. I have never had that much money at once. Mr. Jordan looks disappointed. He wanted me to buy CDs and T-bills, but I do not know what those are.

  Gram said, “If you don’t know what something is, don’t buy it. Look at this, Perry! All these fools losing their money!” She would laugh and point to the newspaper. “They deserve what they get buying what they don’t understand!”

  Keith will not tell me what to do. “It’s your call, Per, it’s your call. You’ll have plenty other people telling you what you should do with the money.” He shakes his head. “Better you than me, Per, better you than me. I’d just spend it on booze and Mexican babes.” Mexican babes cost a lot of dollars.