Instant Winner

by Gary Soto

  “Huh?” his mother asked. She was bringing out her cell phone from her purse.

  “You know, the photos on the wall.”

  “Huh?” she repeated. She looked at her cell phone: no calls.

  “I think it was the bass player,” Jason remarked. He made the crab-like motions of a bass player running his fingers up the neck of his instrument.

  “What are you saying?”

  Jason explained that one of the guys—his name was Danny Something-or-Other—played in Los Blue Chones and may, in fact, have been the founding member of the group.

  “Great,” his mother replied. “The people my brother hangs with. Scientists, no! Business people, oh no! Teachers or nice priests, certainly not! Or girls with jobs! No, my silly brother has decided to hang with people who end up in jail!” She pinched at the sleeve of Jason’s brand new suit and brought away a white string. She let it float from her fingers to the ground.

  “Maybe they’re in jail together,” Jason remarked hopefully. He could see them on a bunk bed talking about old times when they were almost famous—except for the difficulty of the F chord. Maybe they were yakking it up as they recalled the good ole days of sleeping in their van as they went from town to valley town.

  Jason sighed at the image of Uncle Mike and Danny Something-or-Other playing air guitar under the dim lights of a ten-by-ten jail cell.

  * * *

  The next stop: the downtown office that dispersed checks for lottery winnings. They drove there, found free parking at a jammed meter, and rode the elevator to the fifth floor. His mother instructed Jason to be quiet, that she would do all the talking.

  They exited the elevator and were immediately greeted by Aunt Marta.

  “Marta, what are you doing here?” Jason’s mother smiled as they embraced, their arms not quite reaching around each other. They gave each other a smooch on each cheek.

  “I’m here with Billy,” Aunt Marta announced. She pointed toward the office area where workers did paperwork, answered phones, and gossiped.

  “Your husband-to-be?” Jason’s mother asked. She jumped up and down, and clapped her hands. “I want to meet him. We can’t believe it—a wedding!”

  Aunt Marta nodded her head. She was on the verge of tears and wiped her eyes. “I’m so lucky. He’s a fine man.”

  “And I heard that he won the lottery,” Jason’s mother uttered loudly, then whispered, “Oh, I should keep my voice down. What’s the matter with me?” Her attention was then drawn to the diamond on Marta’s finger.

  “Oh, my god,” his mother squealed. “It’s beautiful. I’m so happy for you.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Aunt Marta became embarrassed. She lowered her face and played with her engagement ring.

  “Let me see it, girl,” Jason’s mother asked. She brought Marta’s hand up to her face.

  Jason drifted away as the two women began to talk about wedding stuff. He made his way toward the photos on the wall—photos of those wanted by the law. Jason gulped. His uncle smiled from a black-and-white photo.

  “Oh, man…” Jason whispered. His uncle was a good guy. What had he done except maybe not pay his parking tickets for a dozen years? He never hurt a fly, or if he did, at least he deposited its smeared body in the toilet. Jason felt like crying. Sure, his family was smart, and possibly lucky—he had won money in the lottery, and Aunt Marta was about to say, “I do,” to a millionaire.”

  Then Jason spied Danny Something-or-Other two positions below his uncle’s photo. Danny’s last name was Rivera. According to the warrant, he was charged for stealing a tractor. A tractor? Jason thought. His aliases included Daniel, Dan the Man, Danny, and D.D. Rivera. Identifying tattoos: Raider Nation on both biceps and the names of his first two wives.

  When his mother called, he hurried over as best he could in his painful new shoes. They were purchased at half-off and were a size too small, because, his mother argued, he had already had his growth spurt. Plus, she argued, he could just walk in them until they stretched and fit his feet. If that didn’t work, she had a home cure: stuff the shoes with wet newspaper until the leather expanded.

  “He’s so darling,” Aunt Marta uttered. She ran a hand across Jason’s cheek, and gave him a hug.

  Jason didn’t like being hugged, especially by a woman with whiskers on her chin. But now that she was marrying “up,” he would let her hug him and deal later with the whisker jabs.

  After the hug, Marta’s future husband appeared from behind the counter with papers in his hands. He was smiling as he approached them. A large man, he had a gait that made him appear to be rocking from side to side.

  “What did they say?” Aunt Marta asked, her hands pressed together as if in prayer. “No, wait a minute. Let me introduce you to my sister, Rebecca.” She beamed down at Jason standing stiffly in his suit. “And this shining knight is my nephew, Jason.” She plucked at a piece of string on his new suit. “Isn’t he darling?”

  “Like an altar boy,” the gentleman remarked. He stuck out a meaty hand, and Jason clasped it and gave it a single shake.

  “Congratulations,” his mother gushed at Aunt Marta’s fiancé. “I know you’ll be happy.”

  “Thanks, honey,” the gentleman said.

  “No, Bill, you can’t call any woman ‘honey,’” Aunt Marta reprimanded him with a smile. “That’s reserved for…”

  “That’s right—for you, honey bun.” He gave her a peck on the cheek, which immediately reddened from embarrassment. He then turned to Jason’s mother. “What brings you here?”

  Jason’s mother swiveled her eyes left and right, brought the two lovebirds close in, and whispered, “We won the lottery.”

  “No way!” Aunt Marta’s fiancé nearly screamed, “Me, too!” He then grinned at Aunt Marta and corrected himself, “Us, too!” He looked cautiously around the room before he showed them the check: $648,000. He was about to complain about the taxes the state siphoned from the real amount of $967,000, but he read in Aunt Marta’s face that he should clam up.

  “We heard,” Jason’s mother said. “We saw you on TV.” She turned to Jason. “Actually, Jason saw you. Aren’t we blessed?”

  Bill asked, “How much did you get?” Just as the question spilled from his mouth, he could tell by Aunt Marta’s frown that it was a no-no to ask such a question of a person you had just met. He pulled his suspenders from his large body and snapped them against his chest. “Boy, I never learn, I tell you. I’m too nosy.” He chuckled and spanked his chest harder by stretching his suspenders and letting them really whack his chest. “I’m just the happiest man on earth.”

  “And I’m the happiest woman in the universe,” Aunt Marta countered. She fluttered her eyelashes, and the two brought their faces together to kiss.

  * * *

  Jason’s mother received the winnings right there on the spot, all $2,700 from the $3,700 winning ticket. They’d had to pay taxes, but his mother didn’t argue. His father would have pulled up his pants, hammered his fist against the countertop, and hollered at the staff that rich luxury-box season ticket holders of professional sports teams didn’t pay taxes. But working stiffs like himself, people who did real work, they had to pay through the nose! No, his mother discreetly slipped the check into her sleeve and moved along to the next window, where she signed over the check. This window was for paying outstanding tickets.

  “And who do I write the check to?” his mother asked. Uncle Mike’s outstanding tickets were more than the payout of the lottery ticket. She was ready to make up the difference with her own check.

  “The State of California,” answered the woman behind the counter. She was filing her fingernails, the dust of pulverized nails collecting like fine dust. A bottle of nail polish was sitting next to a stapler.

  Jason could tell that the woman, about his uncle’s age he figured, was bored. She took the check, ran it through a merry-go-round-like scanner, and handed it back. She then said, “Oh, I remember his name. Wasn’t he in a band? P
layed guitar?” Her large eyes shone with excitement. She became animated, as she patted her fingertips together in applause. Roses spread across her cheeks. “I think my sister went to school with him.”

  “Yeah, my uncle played in Los Blue Chones,” Jason said proudly. He was happy that someone had recognized his name and remembered the good times they brought to the people. “They broke up but they might get back together again once they…” He didn’t want to say, “Get out of jail.”

  “Cool,” the woman chirped. She jumped off her stool, exited the short fence-like partition through a swinging door, and clip-clopped in high heels to the wall, where the photos of fugitives were posted behind glass. She unlocked the case, plucked out the pushpins, and pulled away the photo of his uncle’s warrant arrest.

  For a second, Jason thought she was going to kiss the photo of his uncle—or press it to her thumping heart.

  “Are you going to see him when he gets out?” she asked.

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Great!” Could you get him to autograph this for me? My name is Ashley.” She pointed at the name tag on her blouse.

  “Sure thing, Ashley.” He took the leaflet from her. Up close, with the description of all those misdemeanors, his uncle did look like a bad guy.

  “Please ask him to do it in red,” Ashley begged. “Please, please, please.”

  “Why red?”

  “It’ll be a nice contrast to the black and white photo.” Ashley’s smile was so wide that Jason could see the piece of blue gum at the back of her white molars. He would relay this to his uncle right away. Somewhere in Fresno, he was making someone happy.

  Chapter Nine

  Jason’s sister Amber, a second-year college student in upstate New York, hadn’t come home for Thanksgiving. She had spent it at friend’s house in the country, kicking around in the snow. And instead of turkey, with pork tamales on the side, she had to eat a vegan casserole in a dining room lit by the wavering flames of homemade candles. This is what she gushed to Jason on the phone before he could go beyond, “Hey, it’s me.” She summed up the casserole as mainly soggy leaves, corn kernels, and yellow stuff that wasn’t cheese, because vegans sneered at dairy products, hamburger, chicken, pork, fish sticks, or anything else that tasted good.

  “More grub for us, huh?” he managed before she announced giddily that her new boyfriend was vegan. She told Jason that his guy didn’t even touch the yellow stuff in the casserole, just the green parts. He also ate tons of walnuts, she divulged, and gobbled almonds by the fistfuls. He drank water instead of quenching his thirst with soda, like Jason did.

  “Is he a squirrel?” Jason inquired and chuckled to himself. “He clearly likes nuts!”

  “No, he’s a Drysdale. He comes from a respectable family.” She informed her little brother that his family had voyaged over on the Mayflower and founded cities after they had moved the Native Americans out of the way.

  For a moment, Jason wondered if the Rodriguez clan was a respectable family. True, his uncle was in jail and, true, Aunt Marta was marrying a retired barber who wore suspenders. And Dad? He liked to water the lawn shirtless, a sight that scared little kids because of his beer belly. But he didn’t dwell long on the thought of their respectability because Amber went on to hint that she might be getting married.

  “Married!” Jason screamed. “You’re only twenty!”

  “But mom got married when she was nineteen,” she countered.

  “But that was in olden times,” Jason argued. “I mean, in the 90s, people did lots of stupid things.” He began to consider his own generation, not a promising bunch when you tallied the high school dropout rate. But he dismissed the thought; he had called his sister to ask what to get Aunt Marta as a wedding gift. “Guess what? Aunt Marta is getting married. What should I get her?”

  “She’s WHAT?’” Amber screamed. “Oh, my God!”

  “She’s getting married tomorrow,” Jason informed his sister. “Isn’t it weird?”

  “Weird? It might be against human nature, don’t you think?” She said she had taken biology—a respectable B—and learned that people got together not out of love but in order to have kids to holler at.

  This bit of information wasn’t news to Jason. Though he had yet to take biology, he had heard rumors that the purpose of marriage was to make babies and collect home mortgages. If so, why would Aunt Marta want to spend her last twenty or so years embracing an old man’s dirty clothes and taking them out to the washing machine in the garage? It had to be love! She was in her forties, certainly no spring chicken clucking for attention. Again, he asked, “What should I get her?”

  “Hold on,” Amber begged. “Who’s she marrying?”

  “Some guy.”

  “Like, duh. I mean, how old is he and is something wrong with him?” She begged Jason to fill in the picture for her.

  Jason could see why Amber was requesting the information. Aunt Marta was not super attractive, or even good to look at—she wore no lipstick, perfume, or fancy bling. Her shoes? She wore the kind Frankenstein’s bride might wear while scaring little kids. Their auntie was a plain cookie, and the guy she was marrying—he was no beauty either—must be desperate. But he was rich, too. Jason told Amber that he had won the lottery, and the amount.

  “Holy vegan casserole! He won nearly a million tamales!” Amber was beside herself with excitement. Jason could hear her jumping up and down in her socks. He assumed she was in her dorm room.

  “Yeah, so I guess Aunt Marta came out ahead,” Jason remarked. “She doesn’t have to worry about money or where to get her hair cut.”

  “Huh?”

  “He’s a retired barber,” Jason explained. “He wears suspenders. His name is Bill.” He breathed in the stale air in his bedroom and reported more news: “I also won the lottery.”

  “What the heck!”

  Jason realized that his sister hadn’t been updated on their family life. He knew that when he got to the point of having to explain where Uncle Mike was bedding down, she might have a real fit. Amber was a cheerleader type and liked to see everyone happy. The news of Uncle Mike being in jail might bring her to tears and ruin her makeup. So he held back this information. He pushed ahead. “Yeah, I won $3,700, but only got $2,700. Taxes, you know.”

  “Send me five hundred!” she pleaded, with a roar in her voice.

  Jason could feel his sister’s finger poking him in his ribs, like the snout of a handgun. She was sticking him up.

  “Then I can go on a ski trip with Robbie.”

  “Who’s Robbie?” Jason asked.

  “My boyfriend, Robbie Drysdale,” she answered. “Aren’t you listening? The one I might marry.”

  He told his sister directly, “My lottery money is already spent!”

  “Already spent!” she hollered. “What, did you and your stupid friend Blake buy a zillion skateboards? Jason, you’re so thoughtless!”

  “Sorry, Amber, but it’s gone,” he explained. He dreaded breaking the news that his winnings had gone to springing Uncle Mike from the county jail.

  “How can it be gone? You’re a cheapskate—that’s it. You don’t care if I have to eat soggy vegan casseroles!”

  “Yes, I do care about you. You were on my list to help out.”

  “Then what happened to the money?”

  “I had to bail Uncle Mike out of jail.” He wandered over to the window and heaved it up. His mom was right. The bedroom still stunk of old smelly clothes, though all his clothes were washed and put away. The smell lingered, like cheese.

  “WHAT?”

  Jason explained that their uncle had been in jail for two days. “But it’s not that bad. Uncle says the grub’s really good.”

  “And Mom wonders why I don’t want to come home!”

  Jason had to agree with his sister. Unexpected drama had invaded their lives. To change the topic, he said, “Hey, there’s this woman who has an alligator in her yard.”

  “Huh? What do you mean �
��alligator’?”

  Several times that afternoon, his mind had returned to the nice old woman with the overgrown backyard. She needed help. She needed that backyard of hers taken care of. Since his sister, a college student, was on the phone, he had the opportunity to ask whether an alligator could live in Bermuda grass.

  “It’s like a really tall lawn,” Jason described.

  “You’re such a little liar! An alligator ain’t in there unless it’s a stuffed one.”

  “Stuffed with what—people?” Jason had to tease his sister, the girl who, at first, intended to major in medicine but didn’t like the idea of cutting into bodies, dead or alive. She was now majoring in English, which confused Jason. Didn’t she already speak English?

  Amber mumbled threats and then asked, “OK, what’s really up? Why are you calling?”

  “Like I said, Amber. I need to get something for Aunt Marta.”

  “How much money do you have?”

  If Jason had plunged his hands into his pockets, he would have pulled out a comb, a pencil, cracked breath mints, a coupon for dollar burritos, and possibly a few pennies and a nickel, certainly not a dime or a quarter. He answered truthfully, “Nada.” What money he possessed he had spent on hamburgers and fries just before Uncle Mike was arrested.

  “You don’t have any money?”

  “Nothing that I would brag about,” he answered. Jason had returned to the window and lowered it slightly because the breeze had stirred up the stink of his bedroom and thrown it directly into his face.

  “Get her a plant,” Amber suggested. “Go to the backyard and dig one up that looks pretty. Put it in a pot. We got a bunch behind the garage.”

  That’s why he had turned to his sister. She was smart. He would have never thought of a potted plant.

  “Where’s the wedding?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m just going to get in the car and go with Mom and Dad.”

  “Jason, you’re too weird for your age. I’ve got to go. Tell mom ‘Hi’.” She hung up before Jason could ask if there should be a bow on the plant. Immediately, his cell phone began to ring: Blake.