A Winning Ticket

by J. Michael Stewart

  Benjamin plopped down in his chair and extended the footrest. Harrison was dozing in front of an episode of Wheel of Fortune.

  This was their standard routine. Get up before sunrise, work all day, have dinner together, watch some TV before going to bed, then wake up and start all over again the next day. The repetition was enough to drive some men to extreme boredom and others to the brink of insanity.

  But it was the only life Benjamin had ever known—and he loved it.

  And despite their differences, he loved his brother, too. Harrison was the only family Benjamin had left. Their mother and father had both been killed in a car accident when the brothers were in their early twenties. Benjamin and Harrison inherited the entire farm—and all the responsibility, too. Each one received fifty-percent of the land, buildings, and other furnishings. Their parents’ will had contained one interesting stipulation though. The farm could only be sold if both brothers agreed and sold all of their combined interests at once. Benjamin had often wondered if that stipulation were not present if Harrison would still be living on the farm with him. Perhaps he felt trapped. Harrison knew Benjamin would never agree to sell his share of the farm, so maybe that was the reason he had never even attempted to do anything else with his life.

  Harrison could have had his choice of women in their small Nebraska farming community. He had dated several women off and on over the years, never getting serious with any of them. There was no secret why Benjamin had never married. He was so shy around women that he could hardly put a coherent sentence together while talking to them. The exact opposite of his brother, who could charm the pants off almost any woman…literally.

  So they had remained on the farm since their parents’ death—twenty-two years ago this past September. Benjamin couldn’t imagine living in the old farmhouse alone. He didn’t always see eye-to-eye with Harrison, but they were a team and had been so ever since they were toddlers. No, he couldn’t imagine not having his brother around. Sure, sometimes they argued and pissed each other off, but didn’t everyone?

  Of course.

  Maybe Harrison was right. Maybe everything would work out. There had been tough times before, and they had always managed to come through on the other side stronger and, most importantly, together.

  Benjamin prayed that would happen again this time.

  As the credits began rolling for Wheel of Fortune, Harrison flipped the channel. A few minutes later, a sitcom came on, and Benjamin let his attention shift to the small wooden stand between the two recliners. Unlike Harrison, he didn’t care for sitcoms, so he took the time to pay bills and catch up on their accounts. He had taken on the responsibility right after their parents’ death. At times, he resented being responsible for all the finances—perhaps that was why he worried so often—but Harrison wanted nothing to do with managing the administrative aspects of the family business. It seemed lately that Harrison was doing as little as possible around the Zimmerman farm.

  The stack of mail staring back at him was larger than usual, and he felt slightly ill. Too much stew? But he knew it wasn’t that. He’d been putting off paying the bills as long as possible, and some of them were now long overdue. Benjamin sighed heavily, got out the checkbook, and opened the first envelope.

  He worked for an hour, pausing occasionally to look at the television when he heard the local weatherman break into the regular programming to give an update on the storm forecast. He was still predicting twelve to fourteen inches of new snow accumulation, along with thirty to fifty mile an hour wind gusts.

  Benjamin placed the last check in the envelope that contained the electric bill and ran his tongue along the glue strip before sealing it. He wondered if the check would bounce like a rubber ball or if by the time it made it to the electric company he would have figured something out to keep the lights on.

  Something.

  He got up and walked toward the living room window. With the help of a dim porch light, he could see specks of white getting blown in all different directions. Their erratic, swirling movements reminded him of gnats swarming around this same porch light on a warm, July evening. Already, four inches of fresh powder covered the porch.

  Harrison flipped the channel again, this time to his favorite crime drama.

  Benjamin stared out the window for another minute, then grabbed a Louis L’Amour paperback and returned to the recliner. He preferred reading to watching television. He had always been that way, at least as far back as he could remember. He sank into the foam cushion and opened the novel to the first page.

  By ten o’clock, Benjamin was fighting to keep his eyelids open when he heard the intro music for the Channel 6 News on the television. He forced his eyes open and readjusted in the recliner. He wanted to stay awake long enough to get an update on the storm before he went to bed.

  The camera panned to the news desk where Melissa Black and John Jackson were sitting. Benjamin thought John was an idiot and could barely stand to watch him. Melissa was a different story though. He had admired her black hair and green eyes ever since she had first been hired at the station—five years and three months ago this last Saturday. But women like her were to be admired from a distance. He would never have the courage to approach her in person.

  Harrison, who had been dozing off and on all night, perked up to watch.

  As expected, coverage of the snowstorm dominated the top of the newscast. Melissa and John quickly threw to a field reporter who was wrapped tightly in a North Face coat and struggling to keep her balance in the wind gusts. Behind her was an intersection where a traffic accident had already occurred.

  After a couple more reporters braved the elements on-screen, the focus shifted to the weatherman in the studio, Cap Henderson.

  Benjamin wondered why weathermen always had stupid names.

  Cap gave a rundown of the current area snow totals and an updated forecast. It was still looking like a severe winter storm, and it was supposed to continue through most of the day tomorrow. After Cap finished running through his satellite and radar images, the camera moved back to Melissa and John, who were getting ready to go to the first commercial break.

  Benjamin got up from the recliner and walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water before bed. As he was walking, he heard Melissa say, “Before we go to break, here are tonight’s winning Super Millions lottery numbers.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the familiar lottery graphic flash on the television. Five white balls, followed by one red, bounced across the screen.

  He heard Harrison mutter drowsily, “Oh, I almost forgot. I picked up our ticket today at the gas station.”

  Buying lottery tickets was Harrison’s idea, although they both went in on them together. Harrison bought a ticket on Wednesday, and Benjamin would pick one up on Saturday. They had been buying two lottery tickets a week for the past ten years or so. They had never won more than seven dollars off a single ticket. By Benjamin’s calculations, that meant they had spent more than two-thousand dollars on a pipe dream—money they desperately needed right now.

  Benjamin grabbed a glass from the cupboard and turned on the faucet. He could hear the wind howling outside the kitchen window. The snow was continuing to fall with increasing fury. He filled the glass with water and walked back through the living room, toward the hallway that led to his bedroom. “Good night, Harr—”

  “We won.” Benjamin heard his brother say in a monotone, unexcited voice.

  “I wish. See you in the morning,” Benjamin replied as he continued down the hallway.

  “No, I’m serious. We won.” Harrison still kept the cadence of his voice even. Not showing any excitement.

  Something about this made Benjamin turn around and walk back into the living room. Harrison looked as though he was about to pass out. His eyes were glazed, and his face was as white as the snow now falling outside. He wasn’t joking around.

  “We won,” he repeated again, now looking up from the television screen to meet Benjamin’s eyes. A sligh
t smile began to slowly spread over his face.

  Without saying a word, Benjamin grabbed the ticket from Harrison’s hand and looked at it, then at the television. Harrison had stopped the DVR, and the series of winning numbers were now frozen on the screen. The estimated jackpot was seventy million dollars.

  Benjamin swallowed hard and again began to examine the ticket—just to make sure Harrison was not screwing around with him. He had seen something similar happen to some poor guy once on YouTube. His buddies had recorded the drawing and then bought a ticket with the matching numbers the next day. When the guy came home from work, they handed him the ticket and pressed Play on the recorded drawing. The guy never checked the date on the ticket, so when the matching numbers came up on the screen, he ran around the house screaming, thinking he had won the jackpot. Idiot.

  It wasn’t a joke—everything about Harrison’s ticket was correct.

  Next, he began to match each of the numbers on the screen to the ones on the ticket.

  26…Got it.

  30…Yep.

  49…51…54…All here.

  Benjamin saved the Superball for last. He looked back at the television to the big red ball at the end of the sequence of numbers.

  25.

  He slowly looked back at the ticket and checked the last number.

  25.

  “We won.” He looked at his brother.

  “We won,” Harrison repeated, very low.

  “We won!” both brothers screamed simultaneously.

  Benjamin embraced his brother in a giant bear hug.

  Both screamed again.

  They held each other and jumped around the living room for a solid minute, yelling exuberantly.

  “I can’t believe it! I just can’t believe it! We really won!” Benjamin cried as he released his grasp on Harrison.

  “Me either. I would never have dreamed it in a million years. It’s just unbelievable!”

  “Wow! How much you think we will get if we take the lump sum?”

  “Not sure. If the jackpot is seventy million, we will probably get around forty million.” Harrison took the ticket back from Benjamin and stared at it again.

  Benjamin slumped back into the recliner, his legs like wet noodles. “Then we will have to pay taxes on that. So we will be left with twenty, maybe twenty-five million.”

  “Who cares? That’s more money than we’ve ever seen.”

  “Right. This is such a blessing. I still can’t believe it…we can finally pay off all the bills and take care of the delinquent taxes on the farm. Don’t you see, Harrison? We can live on the farm for the rest of our lives and never have to worry about money again. And to think, just a few minutes ago I was trying to figure out if we would even make it through next year. Now it’s all over. Everything is going to be fine.” He looked up at his brother who was still standing next to the television, still holding the winning ticket in his hand.

  “Yeah.” Harrison paused. “I suppose we could stay here on the farm.”

  Benjamin stiffened. “What do you mean ‘you suppose we could stay here’?”

  Harrison glanced at his brother, but remained silent.

  “What did you mean, Harrison?” Benjamin persisted.

  “I’m just not sure…I want to stay here on the farm, Benji.”

  Harrison often called Benjamin Benji when he was excited or about to deliver bad news. Benjamin had never really liked the nickname, but usually let it slide. Not this time though. “Please don’t call me that.”

  “Sorry.” He paused. “Look, Benjamin, I’ve been thinking for a long time now that if I had the opportunity to go and do something else with my life, I was going to take it.” Harrison waved the ticket in the air. “And this lottery ticket is my ticket out of here.”

  “I thought the whole reason we struggled all these years was to keep the farm in the family. You know…keep Mom and Dad’s legacy alive. Now that we’ve won some money you want to just up and leave?”

  “What family, Benjamin?” Harrison’s voice rose. “Look around. We’re just two middle-aged men trying to scrape by. We have no one else to keep this farm going once we are gone. Face it, the Zimmerman family tree stops with us.”

  “That’s not the point,” Benjamin shot back.

  “Look,” Harrison’s tone became more conciliatory, “I have stayed with you all these years since Mom and Dad passed away, kept this dying farm on life-support, don’t you think it’s my turn to go do what I want for a change? Why don’t we sell the farm, move somewhere warm, find a couple lovely ladies, and live it up for a while?”

  Benjamin couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had always known that Harrison would rather be running a surf shop on the Florida coast than be a farmer in Nebraska, but this felt like a total betrayal. “No…no way,” he replied.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want to, that’s why.”

  Harrison began to pace in front of the television.

  Benjamin continued, “And don’t forget that you can’t sell the farm without my agreeing to it.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, Benji, I haven’t forgotten,” Harrison said, but his tone was almost dismissive now.

  “I asked you not to call me that.”

  No apology was forthcoming from Harrison this time. The two glared at each other—the tension slowly building—both at a loss for words.

  Benjamin finally broke the silence and said, “Look, Harrison, this is all I have in life…this farm…and you. Please don’t take that from me. I’m begging you. I…I’m not like you. You know…socially. I can’t compete with you. I don’t think I would like it very much in the big city.”

  Harrison’s initial burst of anger assuaged, and he looked Benjamin in the eye, put his hand on his shoulder, and gave him a comforting squeeze. “You’ll be fine, Benjamin. I will always be here for you…you know that…but I think it’s time we moved off the farm and started a new life. I want to travel some and see new things. I want to buy an ocean-front mansion, find a nice wife and settle down…maybe have a kid or two. I’m not getting any younger, you know.” He paused. “I want to get away from this farm and out of this small town that has been smothering me and holding me back all my life. No more waking up before sunrise to feed livestock or plow fields. No more endless hours sitting on a half-broken-down tractor.” Harrison laughed softly, then continued, “And last, but certainly not least, no more winters that are so cold you feel like your bones are going to freeze solid.”

  “But you don’t understand, Harrison…I can’t leave this place. It’s my home…always has been. And you are the only family I have left. I thought we would stay here together…you know…forever…and keep the farm going…for Mom and Dad’s sake.”

  Harrison took his hand off Benjamin’s shoulder, “Benjamin…Mom and Dad are dead. They’ve been dead for over twenty years now…and they’re not coming back. I’m sorry, but that is just the truth, and as much as you want to change that fact…you can’t.” Harrison stared at the floor.

  “Harrison, please…please…don’t do this. I’m begging you. I need this place…and you, too.”

  “Benjamin, I know you don’t want to hear this…” Harrison sighed and looked Benjamin in the eyes. “And you don’t know how sorry I am to have to be the one to tell you, but I think it is time you leave, too. You need to move away and experience something else, at least for a while. We could pump a couple million dollars into this farm, buy all new equipment, rebuild the barn, fix this house up, and we would still be losing money, and you would still be stressed out. No…it has to end.”

  Benjamin spun around and put his back to his brother. “You’re wrong, Harrison.” Anger started to build inside him. After several seconds, he turned back around and tried a different tactic. “So, what are you saying…you going to make me leave?”

  “Look…I’m just asking you to think about it. Sleep on it. I believe after you’ve considered it for a couple of days, you’ll realize I’m rig
ht. This money is our chance, Benjamin…we can do whatever we want for the rest of our lives. We’ve been trapped on this farm since we were born, and now we’re finally free. We don’t have to go to Florida…maybe we could go to California and rub shoulders with some of those movie stars. With this much money we will be very popular people, wherever we end up.” Harrison patted Benjamin on his left shoulder and smiled. “Just do me a favor and think about it, Benjamin. You’ll see it’s the right decision. Will you do that for me…please?”

  Benjamin forced a fake smile and looked Harrison in the eyes. “Sure, I’ll think about it.”

  “Promise?” Harrison asked again.

  “Promise,” Benjamin replied, letting his smile spread across his face until most of his teeth were showing.

  “Good. I think this is all going to work out great, Benjamin. I really do.”

  “Yeah, me too.” Benjamin shook his head affirmatively.

  Harrison grasped Benjamin in a hug. “I love you, brother.”

  “Love you, too,” Benjamin said. After pulling away from Harrison’s grasp, he asked, “I’m going to the kitchen to get a drink of water, want anything?”

  “No thanks, I’m fine.”

  As Benjamin started toward the kitchen, he heard Harrison continue, “I still can’t believe our luck. I was just dreaming about something like this happening today while I was doing the chores…and now it’s a reality.”

  “I know, it’s amazing,” Benjamin said over his shoulder as he reached the kitchen sink, at the same time almost choking on the anger he felt boiling up from his stomach and into his throat. He felt as if his head were about to blow off.

  Benjamin couldn’t believe the change that had taken place in his life in the past ten minutes. What at first seemed like a marvelous piece of good luck, had, instead, turned into his own private hell. He had always known Harrison really didn’t like living here, but he would have never thought his own flesh and blood would screw him out of everything he loved in life. It was a complete and total betrayal.

  They were family.