He leaned closer to read: five sets of numbers for April 7, the Wednesday after Easter. Hell, he thought, why not? He shoved the tickets into his pants pocket.
As he left the kitchen he looked down the hall to their bedroom. The door was shut. It’s like those movies, he thought, where you want to yell “Don’t open the door!” at the dumb babysitter but you want her to open the door, too, because you can’t turn back, you have to know. Dudek wanted to see where it happened. It’d make a good story later on. So he set the six-pack on the seat of an easy chair and stepped down the dark hall.
Idiot, he thought even as he knocked. Embarrassed, he twisted the glass knob and shoved the door so it banged against the wall. Then he switched on the ceiling light, looking suddenly on an unmade bed, sheets blotchy and stiff, an explosion of blood against the yellow vinyl headboard, and more in two smears across the planks of the floor. The dogs. Mattress stuffing drifted from the stir of air that followed Dudek’s hard push of the door. He shut his eyes, felt afraid, so looked again. Some blood had started to dry and it was brown on the wall, dark purple on the headboard, but still red where it soaked into the sheets and where it pooled thickest on the floor. He backed away, having seen enough, but stopped when he noticed cardboard boxes stacked along the nearest bedroom wall, so many boxes they covered the wall itself. There was a desk, too, and when he stepped closer, careful to avoid the smears on the floor, he saw above the desk a bulletin board with a chart tacked to it, high enough and far enough that it had stayed clean, untouched by the splattered blood. On the chart, in handwriting perfect and small like it came from a machine, Dudek read numbers, listed in series of six, no number over forty-five. Each series was marked with dates, some highlighted in yellow marker, others circled with red. Lottery numbers.
The clear packing tape — yellowed with age — shrieked as he peeled open a box. Shaking his head, he lifted out bundles of lottery tickets that he thumbed at the corners. Each bore that same picky script as on the bulletin board chart. Thousands of tickets, hundreds of thousands of numbers repeated over and over, twelves and twos, sixteens and thirty-sevens, loser after loser after loser, most with Xs through them but some circled, the ink long faded from red to pink. He tore open a second box dated on top “Aug. 76-Nov. 79,” it too stuffed with lottery tickets, numbers circled or crossed out. Then another box — “Feb. 92-May 95” — and another. Dudek laughed. He felt sick, lightheaded, and he backed away from the boxes, wanting space between him and them as if the craziness that rattled the Tuckers had started with those boxes and could spread to him, too.
Shit! He remembered. Quick out. He grabbed the beer. Lights off, he locked the door, slid the key beneath the mat, and wrapped the yellow tape around the nails.
~ * ~
The Tuckers drank out of bottles. They bought fancy beers, dark like molasses, more bitter than Dudek liked, but beggars and choosers and all that crap. He shed his shoes and socks, turned out the lights, raised the blinds, and sat by the window to drink. Across the street, the colors on the rabbit banner washed gray in the dark, so Bunny’s never-ending grin shined too bright, too happy. Dudek knew the rabbit couldn’t mean it.
Between sips, Dudek heard now and then the lonely, panicked siren of a cop car, saw red lights flash and speed over the walls of buildings as far away as downtown. All those lights in all those rooms. He wondered if in one of them, or even two, someone was killing somebody. Odds were good.
He pulled the tickets from his pocket, creased them, then smoothed the fold. He read the numbers by the glow of a nearby street lamp, though he had to squint; the beer fuzzed his focus. Such bizarre patterns: a stray 12 among 31, 33, 36, 38, and 39. Another with 01, 02, 04, 05, 07, 08. Probably worthless, every last one. Dudek reminded himself to check them against the winning numbers in Thursday’s newspaper, then slipped them into his wallet.
He opened another beer, then another, flipping the bottle caps toward his trash can and missing so the caps clattered across the floor. He tried to think, but he couldn’t fit the boxes, the numbers, the charts with everything else he knew — or thought he had known — about the Tuckers. Then he remembered that guy shaking Tommy Lasorda’s hand. Poor sap. Now every painted egg would remind the guy how his dad shot his mom. It was like Easter backwards, what the old man did, passing around his pain and confusion like burned toast at the breakfast table, with Tucker junior swallowing the biggest slice. Dudek imagined him on the plane, pictured him in black with sunglasses on, thought of him landing at Bradley International the next day and picking up a paper, looking for an obituary or something and seeing the reporter’s story. He’d read what Dudek had said. He’d read that his parents were drunks, fighting all the time. Probably wouldn’t be news to the kid, but Tucker junior would know that everyone else in Hartford was reading it, too.
And Tucker junior would be the new landlord.
Dudek chugged a mouthful, betting on eviction. Flush the security deposit. And what could he say? He could already imagine the kid downstairs putting his parents’ stuff in boxes. Dudek could see himself sitting on the couch listening, not daring to walk downstairs, not even willing to flush the toilet, wanting just to disappear. His stomach felt sour. That fancy beer. Too damn bitter.
His head felt mushy, so he leaned way back in his chair. Even in the dark, he could make out the watermark that spread across his ceiling. He remembered the torn screens on the back porch. Dumps like this all over the city. Plenty of places to live. So it wasn’t the eviction that bothered him. And it wasn’t the security deposit. He’d never gotten one back anyway.
He set the beer down. Lousy sludge. He wondered if Tucker junior drank that stuff, too. Jesus, the kid would need something. Dudek wondered if the reporter right now was writing what Tucker junior would read, what Dudek had said, and he pictured her at her desk. Long legs, heels, fake pearls.
Switching on a light, he found her business card. Maybe she’d think he was being a nice guy. Concern for fellow man, you know? She answered on the first ring. That hot fudge voice. Over the phone, he liked it more.
He hesitated saying his name, then asked, “Would you mind not using what I told you? It, well — it makes them look bad. Like kicking dirt on them, you know? Haven’t they had enough trouble?”
He bit the tough skin along his thumbnail while waiting for her reply. He thought he could hear her breathe in, about to say something, but then she didn’t. He pictured her smoking. Tapping the cigarette against an ashtray. Didn’t all reporters smoke? He liked that about her.
“I can’t do that,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I told you who I was, and you agreed to talk. Once you agree, what you say I can put in the paper. That’s how it works.”
“But think how this makes them look. What if they’ve got kids?”
“I can’t worry about that, Mr. Dudek. Listen, there won’t be a lot of what you said in the story, but I can’t say I won’t use any of it.”
“That’s shitty.”
“You might have thought about that before you talked. “
Dudek had turned in slow circles until the phone cord had wound around him. Now he circled the other way, unwinding. All wrong. He’d gone about this all wrong. Not the nice guy stuff. He remembered how her throat had flushed red. She liked the creepiness. Sure. What reporter likes sunshine and light?
“Okay,” he said. “Look. There’s stuff I didn’t tell you. Stuff you wouldn’t believe.”
“Mr. Dudek, I’m on deadline.”
“Wait. Let me tell you this. Lottery tickets. Boxes of them downstairs. They even kept track of the numbers. Wrote on every ticket. When I say boxes, I mean boxes. Like a warehouse. You should come by again. Check it out.”
“Jesus. I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I’m done being part of it.”
She hung up. Dudek kicked the table so the telephone spilled, the receiver flying from its cradle across the floor. “Bitch!” he said. What did she mean she didn’t know the game? She knew th
e damn game! She’d played it, too, with her legs, her voice, her pen between her teeth. And she’d got what she wanted, hadn’t she? And what about him? He could see himself again in his bedroom with that reporter, using the Tuckers as a pick-up line, and he wanted to reach out and squeeze his own throat.
Dudek grabbed another beer, the last one. He needed air, a walk, something.
The neighbors across the way had turned out their porch light, so Dudek couldn’t see the rabbit banner anymore. Maybe they’d even taken it down. Easter was over. He stepped off the porch for a walk, but rain hit the back of his neck, so he turned around, finished the beer while sitting on the porch, and then chucked the bottle into the street just to hear it smash. That settled him a little, or maybe he was just buzzed. He couldn’t tell. He just knew he felt better.
Dudek reached for his wallet. When he found the tickets, he flipped them over to the rules in fine print, then flipped them back to the numbers. All that mattered were the numbers. Maybe they weren’t losers, after all. Hadn’t the Tuckers studied this stuff?
Rainwater poured out of the gutters around the porch. Dudek’s bare feet were cold, and he shivered. He wondered what time the Tuckers’ paper would hit the doorstep. Maybe he could stay up that late, see what that bitch wrote hot off the presses. If he won the lottery, she’d call then, wouldn’t she? Coo at him with that voice. He’d be generous. He could afford to be, a few million in a bank account. Start small with her, right? Dinner at Carbone’s, some place ritzy like that. Get her interested. Then the day-long drives in his red Porsche, but only if she wore short skirts. “I’ve got standards,” he’d tell her. Next thing you know, a strip of sand on some Caribbean island. He’d buy the reporter a string bikini, smear tanning oil on her back, and she’d get brown, brown, brown. They’d eat oysters and shrimp, and get blitzed on drinks with names bright as sunshine, and he’d fuck her till she hurt. Pretty soon word would get around the island that he was somebody, because he’d tip big. Ten bucks on a five dollar beer. That’d bring the women. He’d have his pick. The blonde with the full lips? The redhead with the silver hoop through her coppery belly button? The native girl? Oh yeah. The native girl. He’d drop that reporter’s ass. Pay your way back, babe. That’s shitty, she’d say. And he’d laugh and laugh.
A car flashed from the dark, splashing water over the sidewalk. Dudek’s fists were clenched, squeezed so tight his fingertips had turned white. When he let them go, he saw that he had crumpled the tickets, each one a ragged ball in the palm of his hand.
Panicked, he unwrapped them, one by one, and with the flats of his fingers smoothed them against his thigh until he could read the numbers again.
<
~ * ~
BRENDAN DUBOIS
A Family Game
from Murderers’ Row
The june day was surprisingly muggy and hot, especially out in the baseball field behind the Morton Regional High School, where there was no shade and the sun beat down so hard that Richard Dow could feel its strength through the baseball cap he was wearing. The cap was yellow with a blue “P” in the center, just like the caps of the dozen boys who were on the field or in the dugout this day who played for the Pine Tree Rotary youth team. He stood by first base, the team’s assistant coach, and he looked over at the scoreboard, kept current by a young girl using a piece of chalk almost the size of her fist. Pine Tree Rotary, 1; Glen’s Plumbing & Heating, o. Two out, the bottom of the sixth. The game was almost over. Just one more out.
He rubbed his hands together. A boy from Glen’s Plumbing 8c Heating was on third base. He didn’t know his name. But he certainly knew the name of the boy pitching this afternoon’s game: Sam Dow, age twelve, who was one out away from earning Pine Tree’s first victory this season. They were 1 and 5, but nobody on the team counted that solitary victory: it had been a forfeit, when the other team —Jerry’s Lumberyard — didn’t make it to the game because the coach’s van had struck a moose on Route Four.
“C’mon, Sam!” he called out, slapping his hands together. “One more out, you can do it! Just one more out! “
Sam ignored him. Good boy. Focus on the hitter, standing there with his helmet and blue and white uniform, bat looking so large in his small hands. The attendance was good for a warm summer day in Vermont, with a smattering of parents and friends and relatives in the stands behind home plate. Someone in the stands was smoking a large cigar, and a brief breeze brought the scent over, and Richard was surprised at the hunger he felt at smelling it. God, how long had it been since he had a really good cigar . . .
Richard looked over in the stands again, saw his ten-year-old daughter, Olivia, carefully keeping score in a large looseleaf binder. He waved at her but she, too, was ignoring her father, keeping focused on the job at hand. And that’s what their mother Carla was doing this early afternoon as well, working at the local travel agency.
Sam wound up and the ball flew fast for a throw from such a young boy, and the batter swung just as Richard heard the satisfying thump! as the ball landed in the catcher’s glove. The umpire did his sideways dance and said, “Strike!” and there were a few cheers and groans, but no jeers. The umpire today was Denny Thompson, the town’s fire chief, and he had a good eye and for an umpire was pretty reasonable.
“C’mon, Sam,” he whispered, “one more strike. You can do it.” He rubbed his hands again, looked over at the few boys of Pine Tree who weren’t on the field, now leaning forward on the badly painted green bench in the dugout. He could sense their anticipation, their youthful hunger, to feel —just once — what it would be like to win. That’s all, pretty simple stuff, but for an eleven- or twelve-year-old boy, getting that first win meant everything. It had been a long time since Richard had been this young, but he remembered. He always remembered.
There. Another windup from his boy, the blur of the ball, and — Crack!
Richard snapped his head, tracking the flying ball, it was well hit, pretty well hit, but wait, it’s arcing over, it’s just a pop-up fly, great, a pop-up fly, that’s it, it’s going to happen, we’re going to win, it’s going to happen . . .
Then Richard noticed the slow-moving legs of the Pine Tree Rotary boy backing up in right field, one hand shading his eyes, the other hand holding up the open glove, his arm now wavering, trembling, moving back and forth like a semaphore signaler. Leo Winn. The youngest player on the team. Richard just whispered again, “C’mon, Leo, you can do it, buddy, just catch the ball, just like practice, nothing to it, nothing at all.”
The ball plopped into his glove, and before the cheers could get any louder from the Pine Tree players and fans, young Leo, still moving backwards, tripped and fell on his back, the ball flying free into the freshly mown grass, the cheers and shouts now coming from the other team, as Pine Tree players and fans, including Richard, fell silent, as they lost once again.
~ * ~
After the ceremonial end-of-the-game lineup, when the players stood in line in the field and shook each other’s hands, murmuring “good game, good game,” Richard was in the parking lot of the school, one arm over Olivia’s shoulder, the other over Sam’s. Olivia was carrying the score book under her arm and said, “Sam, that was your best game ever. Three strikeouts and only one hit. And that was scored as an error.”
“Yeah, I know, I know. I was there, okay?” Sam replied. “What difference does it make? We still lost.”
Richard hugged his boy’s shoulder. “You did well, Sam. Even Leo.”
“Dad, he’s no good,” Sam complained.
“He’s not as good as you, but he’s still out there, practicing and playing,” Richard said. “That counts for a lot. He could have given up a long time ago. But he didn’t.”
Sam didn’t say a word, and Richard knew the poor guy was struggling over showing emotion at having lost yet again but determined not to say anything that could lead to dreaded tears pouring out. For twelve-year-old boys, sometimes showing tears was worse than anything else.
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Olivia spoke up. “Look, there’s the other team. Going out for ice cream.”
“Well, we can go, too,” Richard said, seeing the smiles and happy faces of the other boys, trooping into open car and minivan doors.
“Dad . . .” Sam said. “No, let’s just go home. It doesn’t count. They’re going for ice cream ‘cause they won. Losers don’t get ice cream after a game like ours.”
Richard was going to say something, but he noticed something going on over near the school’s dumpster. He pulled out his car keys and passed them over to Sam. “Here, go in and get the car opened up. I’ll be right along.”
Sam said, his voice now not so despondent, “Can I start it up?”
“Yes, but move it out of park and I’ll ground you till you’re thirty. “
The Best American Mystery Stories 3 Page 12
