Instant Winner

by Gary Soto

  “What, did you pee again?” Blake asked.

  “Nah, it’s worse,” Jason answered. “The lottery ticket is gone.”

  “GONE?” Blake shouted. “What do you mean? Someone steal it?”

  “My mom washed it.” He wiped at his eyes, surprised at the lack of tears. They were brewing like a storm and he knew they would burst and flow down his face at any moment.

  “Huh?”

  Jason explained.

  “Ah, man, that’s even worse. I’ll be over in a little bit.” He told Jason that he was in trouble with his own mom. He had absentmindedly sent a fork down the garbage disposal, but that was nothing compared to what his friend faced—a lottery ticket down the drain.

  Jason sat dejectedly at the edge of his bed. He touched his pile of clothes, all soft and clean and smelling better than all the roses in the world. Oh, how he was going to use some of his lottery winnings on bumpers for his dad’s Chevy! And, oh, how he was going to treat his mother to a Santa Cruz vacation. And, oh, how he was going to help his sister, whom he pictured eating crackers like a parrot in her college dorm room. Plus, he was going to demand that his uncle take some of the money and get his life together. The leftover sum—a couple hundred dollars, he assumed—was to be used to get himself educated, so that in the future he would have a better place to put a winning lottery ticket than in a dirty sock.

  “Hey!” boomed his mother’s voice.

  Jason jumped and swiveled around. His mother, still in her jogging suit, filled the doorway. She was smiling. “I found this.” She held up the lottery ticket between her pudgy digits.

  “Ah, Mom, you saved me!” Jason cried as he bounced from the bed. With his eyes closed, he hugged his mother—his arms couldn’t quite reach around. But he loved her, loved her, loved her! “I thought…”

  “I know what you thought, silly boy. You thought it went through the wash.” She told him that she was going to keep it for him. “You might lose it.”

  There was no arguing there. In his twelve years, he had lost a lot of things, including his shoes in third grade. He had taken them off to play kickball in his bare feet, and when recess was over they were gone. At the time, he figured that they were either stolen or hidden by stupid Luis Lopez, the class clown. That day—luckily it was the afternoon—he had had to walk around the school grounds in some rubber flip-flops the janitor had lent him.

  His mother looked around the bedroom. She sniffed. “It smells so much better. I don’t have to wear an oxygen mask. Now put your clothes away.” Before she left, she handed Jason six dollar bills and forty-two cents. It was money found in the pockets of his dirty clothes.

  He did what he was ordered, placing his clean clothes in his drawers. After that, he called Blake and told him that his mother had rescued the lottery ticket.

  “You think I’ll become popular?” Jason asked. He envisioned school chums hanging around him, almost blocking his entrance to the classroom. “It seems like everyone knows that I won the lottery.”

  “I don’t think so,” Blake answered. “There ain’t no crowds in front of your house.”

  “But I’m, like, rich. Rich people are famous.”

  “You’re not rich yet. How are you going to cash in the lottery ticket?”

  This was true. His father didn’t want anything to do with the lottery ticket—something about boosting himself into another tax bracket. His mother could cash it, but then it would go right into his college fund. That would be no fun at all—the money in the bank until he was eighteen years old. He was twelve and that was—he used his fingers to count—six years from now.

  “Hey, my mom spread the word, not me,” Blake said. “That’s how they are!” His mother—and a world of other mothers—were known to gossip.

  With his phone to his ear, Jason made his way to the kitchen to bolster his energy by raiding the refrigerator. Instead of hitching a ride in his uncle’s Ford Tempo—the vehicle had been unwilling to start at Peter’s garage—he had had to gallop nearly two miles home. He was tired, thirsty, and hungry as a pirate. He caught sight of leftover Thanksgiving tamales wrapped in crinkled aluminum. He unfolded the aluminum, took out the biggest tamale, and started zapping it in the microwave.

  “But you could become famous,” Blake began. “You could get on YouTube. Maybe we could do a video of you walking down the street and then, oh wow, you like find the lottery ticket.” He smiled widely at his own suggestion.

  “We ain’t got a camera anymore,” Jason argued. Their old video camera, a clunker when he was in diapers, had been stolen from the back seat of the car. And he was secretly glad about this; the camera still held an image of him running through the sprinklers in his diaper.

  “Easy, we’ll borrow one,” Blake suggested. “Or buy one—I got a little money.”

  Jason was taking the tamale from the microwave when he heard a knock on the front door, a knock that sounded serious and not like a kid prankster. He and Blake used to knock on front doors and run away giggling—fun when they were nine, but immature, he now realized.

  “I’ll call you back, Blake,” Jason said, and hung up.

  His mother’s footsteps padded to the door. She asked none too quietly, “Who is it? We’re Catholic when we decide to go to church.”

  “State investigators,” the official-sounding voice announced through the door.

  At that, Jason closed the refrigerator and joined his mother in the living room. His heart began to thump.

  “WHAT?” Jason’s mom yelled. “Is that you, Mike? It’s not funny.”

  Uncle Mike, aside from playing guitar, was an occasional comedian. He had once appeared on a local TV channel strumming his guitar and entertaining the audience with a funny song about an octopus who liked peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But the voice at the door didn’t sound like him.

  “This is Investigator Digas,” the baritone-voiced official answered back.

  “Give me a break,” Jason’s mom laughed. She had changed from her jogging outfit into a pair of slacks pulled high over her tummy. “You got to do better than that. Tell me a real joke.”

  Crouching ninja-style, Jason peeked out the front window. He spied two men in pigeon-gray suits on the porch. Any other time he would have thought that they were religious types passing out pamphlets, but this time he sensed they were government officials. He gulped.

  “Freeze mode,” Jason whispered, and waved for his mother to hit the floor.

  They froze. Jason’s heart beat faster and sweat gushed from his face. He searched his memory. What had the Rodriguezes done wrong? They were law-abiding citizens, weren’t they? He recalled that his father had gotten in some sort of trouble when one of his roofers fell and hurt his back. But that was two years ago, and his father was just an eyewitness to the accident—he had reported that the worker had his face buried in a bag of potato chips as he was climbing the ladder, so it was his own fault that he had fallen.

  The men waited and waited, but finally left.

  Jason rose from his crouch. “Who were they, Mom?” His heart was now leaping like a trout in a fisherman’s grip. He felt weak.

  “My guess is that they’re looking for your uncle.” She rose from her knees, touched her heart, and muttered, “What am I going to do with him?” She took a few paces in her fuzzy pink slippers and faced the mirror. At the mirror, she puckered her lips and began to apply lipstick.

  “Yeah, I saw something on the side of their car.” Jason had seen an emblem on the side of their official-looking car as it drove away.

  When she turned, her lips looked like a bloody gash. “He’s probably been writing bad checks. Who do we know who wears suits, unless they’re going to a funeral?”

  Jason was more determined than ever to help out his uncle, a modern-day minstrel who had taken his music to the people whether they liked it or not. The phone in his pocket began to sing—Blake.

  “Yeah,” he said, as he watched his mother, hand on her forehead, a sign tha
t she had a headache. She left for her bedroom.

  “What’s going on?” Blake asked. “How come you hung up?”

  “Stuff happening,” Jason remarked vaguely.

  “Anyhow, I got an idea,” Blake started. “After we do your video on finding the lottery ticket, we can make a movie.”

  “A movie? ‘Bout what?” He asked this question while heading to the kitchen, nearly running back to his tamale. He was starving.

  “I don’t know. How ‘bout cars? Everyone’s got one.”

  Jason reflected. In fourth grade, he and Blake had made a short video about the creepy lives of spiders. Blake had held the camera and Jason had done the narrative. He remembered the beginning. Blake had directed him to venture from the garage, look directly into the camera, and say, “At one time in our lives we will all ask, ‘Hey, I wonder where spiders live when we humans are not around to bother them?’ I asked this question, and I found out. Let me show you, people.” He then waved for the viewer to follow him to an already leaky faucet where mint grew in abundance.

  “Like the one we did when we were little?” Jason asked.

  “Nah, man,” Blake screamed. He was obviously embarrassed by his directorial beginnings. “That was way stupid!”

  “But you put it on Facebook.”

  “Man, I did it as a joke!” He laughed facetiously at their innocent years, when they believed in Santa Claus and made ridiculous school projects.

  Jason wasn’t sure how to respond. A full-length video? The prospect of entering the film world would have to wait. He was thirsty and hungry, two sensations that needed to be satisfied pronto.

  “Can I eat and think about it?” Jason asked.

  “Sure, I’m eating potato salad as we speak. We could multi-task.”

  When Jason got to the kitchen, he discovered the steaming tamale was gone. He had only been in the living room for a few minutes!

  “Blake, I’ll call you back,” Jason said. He hung up, cast a few glances around the kitchen, and sensed a chill run up and down his back like a zipper. “Someone was here,” he whispered to himself. Had an intruder climbed in through an open window? Was a pair of gloved hands about to strangle him? He took a careful step across the kitchen floor, which gave a miniscule squeak, and he thought of his mom. He had only taken two months of Taekwondo, but he remembered a kick and an eye poke that could reduce an attacker to a crawling slug. Cautiously, he took another step in the direction of his bedroom. He heard movement, and the zipper of fear ran up and down his back again.

  “Oh, no,” he whimpered. Still, he felt it was his duty to protect his mother. His father was at work, so for the moment he was the man of the house. He slowly tiptoed over and reached for the doorknob. He quietly opened the door to discover his uncle reading an old issue of Mad magazine. The tamale husk sat on his bed.

  “Hey, Unc,” Jason greeted with relief. “How did you get here?”

  “With these,” he answered, and curled back the toes of his dirty tennis shoes. “Hey, I see your mom washed your clothes. Lend me a pair of socks.”

  “Sure thing,” Jason said as he closed the door behind him. He opened up a drawer and brought out a pair of mismatched socks that were close in color and appearance—one was blue, the other black, and both thick and almost new because Jason preferred wearing gym socks. He tossed the socks at his uncle, who had stepped out of his shoes and was peeling off socks with large holes at the heels.

  “These could go,” his uncle said. “They got too much mileage on them.” Jason disappeared into the kitchen and returned immediately. “Hey, guess what?”

  “What?” his uncle asked.

  “You know that reporter? The one you liked in high school?”

  “Wrong, homeboy—the one who liked me. We were almost an item back then.” He revisited his high school years in a dreamy voice—in front of the mirror over the chest of drawers—and how she liked him but he didn’t like her because he was too busy getting bad grades. “But, you know, I was stupid back then.” He made this remark into the mirror over the dress, while attempting to scrape out the food lodged between his front teeth.

  “Are girls smarter than us guys?” Jason asked. He had always wondered about that philosophical question, how girls seemed to get better grades and just know stuff. And on a social front, they smelled better. He had yet to encounter a girl funking up the world.

  “That’s a profound question,” Uncle Mike said as he turned away from the mirror and wiped on his pants whatever gob of ugliness he had scraped from his teeth. “I’m not sure if we guys can answer it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we just ain’t smart enough. We males basically know things like cold and hot, and hunger and thirst, this tastes good, that doesn’t taste good. We’re animals, really. That’s why we’re hairy and like to beat each other up. We’re cavemen.” He smacked his fist into an open palm.

  Jason reflected. He didn’t know what his uncle meant, but he knew it must be something since Uncle Mike was older, streetwise, and a musician despite knowing only five chords on a guitar. What was he but a second string basketball player on a losing team?

  Uncle Mike produced a piece of scrap paper from his back pocket. He explained that he had called the station and got her number—her direct line. He smiled and said, “Let me use your cell phone. It’s time she and I touch base.”

  * * *

  Uncle Mike made the call and offered an exclusive interview with the lottery winner, his nephew. Still, he played the cards close to his chest. He wouldn’t tell the reporter—Sylvia Garcia, his girl from high school—the amount of the winning lottery ticket. He teased her, though. He said that he could live off the interest for about four years—go figure, he laughed. But he didn’t say that his annual income was mostly from crushed aluminum cans.

  They decided to meet at a Starbucks at four. He tossed the cell phone back to Jason. While he went to take a shower, Jason sat in the shadows of his bedroom, worrying. His uncle had the cinched waist of a humble ant, but certainly not the proportional strength of that creature. He knew this for a fact. He had done research in fourth grade and learned that an ant, if blown up to human size, could lift up a house in its jaws. As far as Jason could judge, his uncle’s biceps were as soft as a loaf of white bread. Jason figured that his uncle might be able to pick up a plastic doghouse but probably would have to set it right back down.

  His uncle returned with hair like a wet dog and borrowed another T-shirt, this time with a Spider Man image

  “Do I have to go?” Jason asked. He explained that Blake’s mom put out the word that they were not the winners of the million-dollar lottery. Why would the news reporter want to interview him?

  “Well, Sylvia doesn’t run in the same crowd as Blake’s mom. For all she knows, you’re still the big winner.” His uncle said that would really be the topic, anyway, how a twelve-year-old boy wins a lottery ticket worth only thousands but is still charitable to the core—or something like that. “Plus, you got to help me reintroduce myself to her. I admit I made a mistake in high school. But I know she’ll still like me.” His uncle added that he would claim the lottery ticket but give all the money to his nephew. He brightened. “Just think, you’ll be on television.”

  “But I’ve never been on television. What if I don’t know what to say?”

  “Jason, it’s a piece of cake.” He touched his heart. “Just say what’s in here.”

  Jason wondered what was in there—the heart, but what else? It was a transfer station for blood and stuff, and maybe some romantic chemicals that occasionally made him like girls. He was wondering about this when the bedroom door swung open.

  “Oh, it’s my little brother,” Jason’s mother greeted them with a false smile. She looked at the tamale husk. “Oh, is your tummy all nice and full?”

  “As a matter of fact, it is, Sis,” he answered with a smile and by rubbing his belly.

  Her voice became rough. “Mike, this has to stop. You
got to get a job.”

  “Mom,” Jason said in defense. “Uncle came up with this great idea.”

  His mother looked at him. The light in her eyes was blazing, but she was ready to listen. “What? Your uncle possesses an idea? An idea that’ll bring the world peace and love?”

  “I’m going to be interviewed.” Jason explained that he was going to say that he won $3,700, not a million bucks. “People will think we’re just lower-middle class, not like super rich. They’ll know the truth because everyone believes what’s on TV.” He poked his uncle with an elbow.

  “Right on,” his uncle agreed. “We have it all covered. Man, that tamale was good.”

  “You been hanging around your uncle too long!” Jason’s mother roared. She placed her hands on her hips, a bad sign as far as Jason could tell, and tapped a toe against the carpeted floor. “What am I going to do with you two?”

  “Feed us,” Uncle Mike suggested.

  “Sweet idea,” Jason added.

  “It’s hopeless,” she cried. She wrung her hands. She shook her head and the three of them went into the kitchen. There she assembled the leftovers on one big platter. That night, the spread was an all-you-can-eat dining experience.

  Chapter Five

  They had been lounging at Starbucks for half an hour before the assistant manager came to a nearby table to pick up used napkins and empty coffee cups. He gave them a look that said, “Move on if you’re not going to buy anything!”

  They ignored him. Instead, Uncle Mike carried on, teaching Jason the A, D, C, and F chords on air guitar. They were filling time, just killing a few minutes of an uneventful November day. Jason had asked his uncle whether learning guitar was challenging. He tried the chords that his uncle had demonstrated.

  “You’re good,” his uncle praised. “In fact…” He laughed and scratched the bristles on his chin. “In fact, you’re better than me. One day, I’ll teach you on my real guitar.” Again, he laughed and slapped his knee. “When I get it out of hock!” His guitar, he informed Jason, was at a pawnshop on Tulare Street.