Lotto Luck

beginning paragraphs of an as-yet-unfinished character-based "problem story"

Shelby blinked. One dollar would have been fine. Perhaps he'd hoped to win one hundred dollars, tops. He could have gotten away with that, sure. But, as he sat in his father's recliner, Lay's Potato Chip crumbs strewn from his lap to the corner of his lips (his right hand still clutching that shiny little card), he knew he'd won much more than a Benjamin.

The lopsided woman's face on the small, glowing screen repeated the winning numbers: "8-22-41-16-3-12-37."

Shelby sat in stunned silence as the announcer signed off and commercials flashed before his widening eyes. Oh, shoot.

Lisa inhaled an old maid.

Ping-pong balls turned up on the silent tube: August twenty-second, forty-one; Ma's birthday. Keeping her watering eyes transfixed, Lisa tried hacking the kernel out of her throat. Sloshing her Michelob, her next number, the age she threw away her cherry--16--popped up. Dad's birthday, March twelfth, thirty-seven, was Lisa's last three. A "3" fell up.

The popcorn flew out of Lisa's neck. She checked her ticket quickly and began to breathe like she was running up a hill. "12" snapped into place. Other patrons of The Pillar were beginning to take notice of her as "37" finished up and Lisa pissed her panties. Fuckin eh.

"Well, Shelby," Reverend Ingersoll sighed over the phone, "you certainly have gotten yourself into a pickle now haven't you."

"Yes, Reverend," Shelby replied with drama in his voice. "But, how was I to know that I'd win? I mean, come on! What are the chances?"

"If it were anyone else, I'd say God had smiled on you. But, Shelby...if you aren't old enough to gamble you shouldn't have bought the ticket. After all, someone had to win sometime. You should have calculated the consequences."

"But Reverend, what will they do to me?"

"Who, the lottery people?"

"No, Reverend..." Stacy paused. "...my folks. You know how my father gets. I'm not sure I can keep this from him. Could you take the ticket to the lottery for me?"

The reverend began to make noises of refusal over the phone as his mind began to convince him that a percentage of the money could be his--maybe even a large percentage--and he could put that money to very good use within his parish. After all, Jack Rawley would just take it away from his son and then throw it away on sins of the flesh. It wasn't greed. Reverend Ingersoll tapped his unsharpened pencil on his stapler and counted his blessings.

"All right, Shelby, I'll take the ticket," Then he sighed heavily, as if it were really a burden. He had already sketched a few mental plans for expansion and improvement within the few seconds it took to accept.

"Great Reverend. You don't know how much this means to me." The phone clicked without anything more from Shelby and Reverend Ingersoll leaned back in his comfortable leather office chair without removing the phone from his ear. "No, thank YOU, Shelby."

"I greased a cat last week, for not payin up. Why I not leave you in this alley, with no blood, ya shit spangled basstad?"

These words should have started Stuart Johnson begging. When the two butt-boys holding his arms began to giggle, Stuart should have gone from begging to babbling. Instead he said calmly, "Jerry." No one called Mr. Stolkes that, it was rumored he killed his mother for using the familiar. "I won the lotto."

Stuart and Stolkes both smiled.

"WE won, I mean." Stuart said.

"How much?" Stokes whispered, his eyes greedy-bright in the moonlight.

"The total pucker is two point seven."

"Ticket?" Stokes asked.

"In my wallet." Stuart replied. twisting his right hip forward.