Instant Winner

by Gary Soto

  “Cancun? We can go out to Avocado Lake and then out for Mexican seafood—same thing.” His father continued, “Save the money for college, or a rainy day.”

  “But Dad, it hardly ever rains in Fresno.”

  “That’s just an expression,” his father retorted as he began a lecture about saving for the future. “It means…”

  Jason tuned his father out. He was aware of the expression, and knew in his heart that maybe it wasn’t a bright idea to fly his family to Cancun. But they could celebrate somewhere close: Santa Cruz, where he could ride the Big Dipper roller coaster until he was sick and throwing up into a trash can. That would be fun.

  “Mom’s home,” Jason announced. Although his mother had not yet arrived, he could hear her car—the transmission whined distinctively like a gnat—coming up the street. He rose from the couch, peeled back the curtains, and peered out the front window in time to see a breeze stir brown-tinged leaves from the limbs of their two-year-old sycamore. Within seconds, his mother’s car blasted up the driveway and skidded to a halt.

  “Dang,” Jason muttered. “Dad, mom was doing ‘bout eighty.”

  “Don’t exaggerate,” his father said and took off his reading glasses—he had picked up the sports page, which was already wrinkled from his pawing. He lived for the Raiders, but the stinking Raiders were at the bottom.

  “OK, maybe it was like 70.” Jason watched his mother, a large sturdy woman, shoulder open the car door and climb out. She came hustling up the steps.

  I wonder if she has to go to the bathroom, Jason thought. He knew the feeling and recognized the gait.

  The front door opened. She had a wild look on her face. “I heard!”

  “Heard what?” Jason asked. He was wrong about the call of nature. He was wrong about considering his mother a slow mover. In her youth, perhaps she could have played for the Raiders—they couldn’t be any worse off.

  “That you won a million dollars!”

  “A million dollars?” Jason asked. The devoured tortilla did a somersault in his stomach. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Never mind,” she answered, out of breath. Her hand was on her heart. “Is it true?”

  “No, it’s not true. I won $3,700. What do you think of Cancun?”

  “What?” his mother asked, her hand now on top of her head as she plied a curl back into place. “But I heard from Blake’s mom.”

  “You heard it directly from her? Mrs. Lewis?”

  “No, from Blake’s mother’s best friend, Laura Rocha, who heard it from the mail carrier, I think. She told me.” She placed her purse on the coffee table and looked at herself in the mirror. “God, my hair.” She turned to her husband, who lowered the sports page from the front of his face. “Rudy, what should we do?”

  “The boy wants to go to Cancun,” he said with a frown. “I tole’ him to save for college.”

  “We could settle on Santa Cruz,” Jason proposed. “It’s not far.”

  “It’s winter,” his father argued. “It’s too cold.”

  His father was right about the weather, and his mother was wrong about the figure. She had heard a million dollars. Jason could imagine it: first, Blake told his mother, who told her best friend, who then flapped her lips and spread a rumor to the mail carrier? Now the rumor was growing right before their eyes, as suddenly on the five o’clock news, a female newscaster was saying, “Good evening. This Saturday we have learned of a local lottery player who has reportedly won a million dollars. The identity of the winner is a mystery, but when we find out who it is, you, the viewer, will also find out. We have a lucky Fresnan, but who is he—or she?” She smiled, and showed a set of really large, white teeth.

  The Rodriguez family stared at the television with their jaws open like lunch boxes. Jason’s father picked up the lottery ticket and muttered, “Thirty-seven hundred dollars. I wonder if they left off a couple of zeros. This isn’t a million.” He ran a hand over his jaw, disappointed.

  “But you heard her,” Jason said, pointing at the television screen, which now featured a square-dancing chicken in a stupid commercial about a new restaurant in North Fresno.

  The news returned. The anchor reported about the war in Syria, a monsoon in Ceylon, and a chimp in Thailand with his own driver’s permit before there were a slew of commercials. Then it was local mayhem, the weather report, the story of a record-breaking pumpkin from Iowa City, Iowa, and finally the female newscaster reporting, “The lottery ticket holder, we have learned, is from Southeast Fresno, but he wants to remain anonymous for the moment. What a lucky fellow. If only we all could be so lucky.” She laughed and then waved goodbye with her fingertips to the viewers.

  Jason’s father thumbed the remote control and the newscaster’s face disappeared in an egg of white light. “What now?”

  Jason picked up the lottery ticket and examined it. Math was not his best subject, but he could read numbers: it said clearly $3,700.

  At that moment, there was a knock at the front door, a weak tap-tap.

  “Don’t answer it,” his mother warned as she automatically got down to her knees, as if in prayer. She crouched behind the recliner and whispered, “Freeze mode.”

  At first, Jason assumed a religious flock with pamphlets had come to their door to pester them for some of his winnings. But when he sneaked a view from behind the curtain, he spied Aunt Marta facing the door. She knows, he thought.

  Aunt Marta was his mother’s half-sister, half because his mother’s father had had a relationship with another woman. Jason’s mother had never known about this half-sister; her mother, who had passed away three years ago, and her father, who passed away ten years ago, had never mentioned this relationship. Now, Aunt Marta had come into their lives. The woman—old by Jason’s estimation—was forty-seven, and lonely. Her favorite color was black, and her second favorite color was gray. Bird-thin, she often wore two sweaters, even in summer. She had worked twenty years in a pencil factory, and now mostly just stayed at home sipping weak tea brewed from twice-dipped teabags. She lived on a fixed income.

  Jason looked at his father, who had closed his eyes and feigned sleep. His mother stared down at a snag on her pants and pulled at a loose thread. She looked up at Jason. Her mouth formed the question, “Who is it?”

  “Aunt Marta, who else?” he answered in the lowest of voices. His mother rolled her eyes and returned to plucking at the loose thread.

  The knock sounded again, this time with a louder urgency. “Is anyone home?” she asked in a pleading voice. “It’s only me. I need to talk to someone.”

  “All of us,” Jason mumbled and giggled. Then he felt a shadow over the front window—the curtains were slightly parted. With her hands cupped around her face, she peered in with roving eyeballs. He was certain that she could make out his dad in the recliner, but he figured that Aunt Marta would think that he was asleep and dead to the world. His dad let his mouth hang open and his chest was rising and falling in an exaggerated fashion. He even saw his father’s hand twitch and jump into the air!

  “Bad acting,” Jason giggled. His fake sleeping was so unreal. Still, he felt for his aunt. Was she that lonely?

  “Are you in there?” Aunt Marta called. Her breath clung to the window. She repeated the question and another splotch of breath fogged the glass and almost immediately began to drip. “I need to talk to you.” She rapped on the window, but none of them moved.

  Jason did his best to keep from laughing when his dad smacked his lips and turned his shoulder away from her. He cuddled himself, like a hibernating bear. Sweet, Jason thought. Years of watching bad sitcoms on television were finally paying off. Dad rocks! His father was a cool actor after all. He even produced a snore that nearly had Jason rolling with laughter.

  Finally, Aunt Marta left.

  “That was close,” Jason’s mother remarked as she stood up with Jason’s help. Her face lit up as she hugged her son. “My little millionaire.” She pecked his forehead with a smooch. “I w
onder what Marta wanted.”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “And Mom, I won thirty-seven hundred big ones, not a million.”

  “That’s true.” His mother sat on the couch. “Shoot, and I was going to redo the kitchen. But what was that about the million dollar lottery?” She was pointing at the television.

  “Ah, Mom, you know how television exaggerates.” He told his mother that they could get a couple of buckets of paint and brighten up the kitchen all by themselves. He even suggested drawer pulls in shape of the Raiders pirate emblem. “It would be sweet, Mom.”

  “No, I mean get a new refrigerator and dishwasher—the whole enchilada. And steam off that ugly wallpaper.” She pouted. “And the rest…”

  “The rest what?” Jason asked.

  “The rest was going into your college fund.”

  “That’s nice, Mom,” Jason said. He was touched that his mother was thinking beyond sixth grade. “How much is in my college fund now?”

  “Eighty-two dollars.”

  Eighty-two dollars, Jason grumbled silently. Is that all?

  “Plus, we were going to sell the old car to add to the fund.”

  The old car was a 1957 Chevy stored in the garage. The car, in fact, was not a car, but mostly parts—it had no engine or transmission, no chrome bumpers, no front fenders, no steering wheel. The headliner hung like a parachute. The radio in the dash was gone.

  Jason’s father had gotten the Chevy from a bankrupt walnut farmer. His father had had great plans when he first pushed it into the garage, but his dream had come to nothing. The car was now powdered with dust and home to a host of insects and the occasional bird. Rats had also eaten the wiring in the dash. In Jason’s estimation, the clunker wasn’t worth more than eighty-seven dollars. He did his math quickly: it looked like his parents had saved something like a hundred and seventy dollars for his education. From what he heard from his sister, he might be able to buy two books.

  The phone rang. The three stared at each other.

  “Don’t answer it,” his mother advised. “Let it take a message.”

  They held their breaths as, after a bit of music from Mana, the machine said, “This is the Rodriguez family. We’re not here, as you probably know. Leave a message if you like. Have a good day.” Finally, a voice on the other end came on. “Hello, this is Father Juan. I’m calling to invite you to a special luncheon this coming week. I hope you didn’t eat too much turkey. I would be happy to see you in the basement.” He chuckled and said, “Long time no see. God bless.”

  “Yeah, he heard ‘bout me winning,” Jason said snidely. He pictured old ladies with bingo cards in the basement, and bowls of popcorn scattered on the floor.

  The phone rang again.

  “Hey, this is Luis,” his dad’s older brother began. “I heard my nephew won big time. I was wondering if we could kick it down to 7-Eleven so he could pick out a batch of lottery tickets. He’s got the lucky touch.” He hung up laughing and chanting, “Boy-o-boy, what a lucky nephew I got.”

  Three more phone calls followed, one of which was anonymous and crudely demanded, “Gimme some money.” Toward evening, the message machine was full. By then, they had closed the front curtains, turned off the television so that the flash of moving shadows wouldn’t suggest that they were home, and huddled on the couch, where they thumbed through magazines by the light of a single lamp.

  His father set down the magazine—Road and Track—and stood up, hitching up his pants. “Jason,” he said. “Let’s change the message on the machine.”

  “A most marvelous idea, Dad,” Jason said, leaping to his feet and tossing aside his Mad magazine.

  Father and son stood in the hallway. His father erased the old message. He turned to Jason and asked, “Are you ready?”

  “Yeah, I’m ready.”

  “What are you doing to say?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I’m ready.”

  With a work-thickened thumb, his father pressed the record button and Jason said in a near whisper, “This is the Rodriguez family. We didn’t win a million dollars, not even close! We’re out of town. Adios.”

  “That’s really good, son,” his father praised. “I like it. It’s to the point.”

  They played it back. They bobbed their heads, happy with the result. That should keep the beggars from pestering them.

  “I like how it’s a whisper, like you’re telling them a secret.” He hitched up his pants and returned to his recliner.

  * * *

  “Hey, how come you told everyone?” Jason scolded into his cell phone. He was in his bedroom, the single lamp casting a yellowish light against the wall. He was scared that any second, someone would tap his bedroom window and ask for a handout.

  In fact, just then, there was a bird-like tap. He feared that Aunt Marta had returned. But when he peeked out the window, he saw that it was Blake with his cell phone to his ear.

  “I didn’t tell everyone!” Blake yelled into his phone. “I just told my mom.”

  Jason hung up and opened the window. “Get in here, dude,” he ordered his best friend.

  Blake shimmied inside the bedroom, sniffed the air and immediately said, “Something smells. What died?”

  “Dirty clothes.” He swept an arm to the three corners where the piled up clothes reeked. If they had picked up any one of the T-shirts and sniffed, they would leap out the window for clean, breathable oxygen.

  “Oh,” Blake remarked after he sized up the mess. He then said, “I didn’t know my mom was going to call her friend. Cross my heart.” He crossed his heart.

  “That’s what parents do, dude. They spread rumors. Now everyone thinks I’m a millionaire—I wish.”

  “I know what to do.”

  “What?”

  “Take a picture of the lottery ticket and send it to our friends. Then people will know that you’re not a millionaire.”

  “Sweet idea,” Jason said and brought his phone from his pocket. “No wonder you’re getting Bs in all your classes.”

  They took a close-up picture of the lottery ticket and texted the image to the few girls they knew. Immediately, they got two responses. One was from Sonia, a girl that he liked in third grade, sort of liked in fourth grade, didn’t like at all in fifth grade, and now considered a math buddy with all the answers. The text from Sonia read: “Hey, fool, how come you didn’t tell me?”

  “Don’t answer it,” Blake advised. “And don’t answer the other one either.”

  Sonia’s best friend had text messaged him, saying, “Buy me a Hello Kitty purse. Pretty please, you ugly thing!”

  Jason fumed. “That was stupid. Now everyone knows I’m not a millionaire, but a rich kid. Can you imagine all the Cheetos I gotta buy them now?”

  The two sat on the bed. They could hear the phone ringing in the living room. They could hear the muffled answering machine kicking in, “This is the Rodriguez family. We didn’t win a million dollars. We’re out of town…”

  Jason never considered being rich a problem and, for a brief moment, had sympathy for Bill Gates of Microsoft—how ordinary folks must hound him for his dollars. Then he considered another problem.

  “Do you think I should share the money with my uncle?” Jason asked. He pictured his uncle asleep in a car with his feet on the dash.

  Blake was tossing his phone like a hand grenade from palm to palm. “That’s a good question. That’s a question for your dad.”

  Jason munched his lower lip. “But Dad doesn’t really like Uncle Mike. Says he’s a lazy bum.”

  “Yeah, but he plays guitar.” He pocketed his cell phone. “You’re facing a dilemma.”

  “A what? Sounds like diarrhea.”

  “Nah, homes, it’s like when you got a problem.”

  “In that case, I do have a problem. I got dilemma diarrhea.”

  They rolled on the bed in laughter, sat up, high-fived, and let out squeals when a rap sounded on the bedroom window. They fell into a crouch behind the bed. Bl
ake gestured for Jason to take a peek. Jason duck-walked to the window. His head rose like a periscope.

  It was Uncle Mike, in a leather vest but no shirt. His hair was tossed about, as if an ex-girlfriend had been pulling it. He was smiling a pair of big, yellowish teeth.

  Chapter Three

  That night, Uncle Mike bunked on Jason’s blow-up mattress wearing the cleanest T-shirt from Jason’s dirty pile. But before they fell asleep, Uncle Mike said, “The lottery ticket is yours, homeboy.”

  “Let me share it with you.” Jason felt sorry for his uncle, who had never made it as a musician. He had been playing guitar since he was eleven and had run through so many bands that there were none left to turn him down. He had tried San Francisco and Los Angeles and Las Vegas. But there were too many rocking guitar players, some of whom could play eight chords in succession without messing up! How they did it, his uncle didn’t know.

  “Nah, it was your birthday present,” his uncle argued. “Anyhow, money doesn’t mean nada to me. It’s my art, little homie.” He strummed an air guitar.

  Jason remembered the time that he had seen his uncle playing in front of a boarded-up storefront at the downtown Fulton Mall. He spotted him from a distance and had to turn away. His uncle, dressed in a ragged T-shirt and pants dirty at the thighs, was playing guitar to a couple of pigeons that had climbed out of the gutter. One pigeon, Jason remembered, had a potato chip in his mouth and had dropped it at his uncle’s feet—the bird’s gift for his uncle’s clumsy guitar riffs?

  “Come on, let’s share the winnings,” Jason offered. “It’s only fair.”

  “Just take a picture of the ticket and me,” his uncle suggested. He held up the winning lottery ticket like a police placard pressed to a criminal’s chest for a mug shot.

  Jason caught an image of his uncle holding up the ticket. He was all smiles.

  “Now let’s get some sleep,” his uncle ordered. He lay back, a single bed sheet on his body, his hands on his chest. His uncle was as pale as a cadaver.