The Winner Read online

  show you. It’s not very difficult.”

  “That’d be real nice. Thank you.”

  They entered the room, which was vacant and dark. The woman turned on the overhead light, seated LuAnn at one of the terminals, and picked out a microfilm spool from one of the files. It only took a minute to insert the spool, and information appeared on the lit screen. The woman worked the controls and lines of text flashed across the screen. LuAnn watched her carefully as she removed the spool and turned the machine off. “Now, you try it,” the woman said.

  LuAnn expertly inserted the spool and manipulated the controls as the film advanced.

  “That’s very good. You learn quickly. Most people don’t get the hang of it right away.”

  “I’ve always been good with my hands.”

  “The catalogue files are clearly marked. We carry the local paper, of course, and some of the national ones. The publication dates are printed on the outside of the file drawers.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  As soon as the woman left, LuAnn carried Lisa, who was still slurping on the bottle, and started exploring the rows of file cabinets. She set Lisa down and watched in amusement as the little girl rolled to a cabinet, put down the bottle, and tried to pull herself up. LuAnn located a major newspaper in one of the cabinets and proceeded to check the boxes housing the spools until she found the dates corresponding to the last six months. She took a minute to change and burp Lisa and then inserted the first spool into the microfilm machine. With Lisa perched on her lap and pointing excitedly and jabbering on about the sights on the screen, LuAnn’s eyes scanned the front page. It didn’t take long to locate the story and the accompanying two-inch headline. “Lottery Winner Nets Forty-five Million Dollars.” LuAnn quickly read the story. Outside, the sound of a sudden rainstorm assailed her ears. Spring brought a lot of rain to the area, usually in the form of thunderstorms. As if in response to her thoughts, thunder boomed and the entire building seemed to shake. LuAnn glanced anxiously over at Lisa, but the little girl was oblivious to the sounds. LuAnn pulled a blanket from her bag, set it down on the floor with some toys, and put Lisa down. LuAnn turned back to the headline. She pulled the steno pad and pen out of her handbag and started scribbling notes. She flipped to the next month. The U.S. Lotto drawing was held on the fifteenth of each month. The dates she was looking at were for the sixteenth through the twentieth. Two hours later she had completed her review of the past six winners. She unwound the last spool and replaced it in the file drawer. She sat back and looked at her notes. Her head was pounding and she wanted a cup of coffee. The rain was still coming down hard. Carrying Lisa, she went back into the library, pulled some childrens’ books down, and showed Lisa the pictures in them and read to the little girl. Within twenty minutes, Lisa had fallen asleep and LuAnn put her in the baby carrier and set it on the table next to her. The room was quiet and warm. As LuAnn felt herself starting to doze she put one arm protectively across Lisa and gripped the little girl’s leg in a gentle squeeze. The next thing she knew she was startled awake when a hand touched her shoulder. She looked up into the eyes of the librarian.

  “I’m sorry to wake you, but we’re closing up.”

  LuAnn looked around bewildered for a moment. “Good Lord, what time is it?”

  “A little after six, dear.”

  LuAnn quickly packed up. “I’m sorry for falling asleep in here like that.”

  “Didn’t bother me a bit. I’m just sorry I had to wake you, you looked so peaceful there with your daughter and all.”

  “Thanks again for all your help.” LuAnn cocked her head as she listened to the rain pounding on the roof.

  The woman looked at her. “I wish I could offer you a ride somewhere, but I take the bus.”

  “That’s okay. The bus and me know each other real good.”

  LuAnn draped her coat over Lisa and left. She sprinted to the bus stop and waited until the bus pulled up a half hour later with a squeal of brakes and a deep sigh of its air-powered door. She was ten cents short on the fare, but the driver, a heavyset black man whom she knew by sight, waved her on after dropping in the rest from his own pocket.

  “We all of us need help every now and again,” he said. She thanked him with a smile. Twenty minutes later, LuAnn walked into the Number One Truck Stop several hours before her shift.

  “Hey, girl, what you doing here so soon?” asked Beth, LuAnn’s fiftyish and very matronly coworker, as she wiped a wet cloth across the Formica counter.

  A three-hundred-pound truck driver appraised LuAnn over the rim of his coffee cup and, even soaked as she was from her jaunt in the rain, he came away dutifully impressed. As always. “She come early so she wouldn’t miss big old Frankie here,” he said with a grin that threatened to swallow up his whole wide face. “She knew I got on the earlier shift and couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing me no more.”

  “You’re right, Frankie, it’d just break her heart if LuAnn didn’t see your big old hairy mug on a regular basis,” Beth rejoined, while prying between her teeth with a swizzle stick.

  “Hi, Frankie, how you?” LuAnn said.

  “Just fine, now,” Frankie replied, the smile still cemented on his features.

  “Beth, can you watch Lisa for a minute while I change into my uniform?” LuAnn asked as she wiped her face and arms down with a towel. She checked Lisa and was relieved to find her dry and hungry. “I’m going to make her up a bottle in just a minute and mix up some of that oatmeal. Then she should be ready to go down for the night even though she had a pretty big nap not too long ago.”

  “You bet I can take that beautiful little child into my arms. Come here, darling.” Beth hoisted up Lisa and settled her against her chest, where Lisa proceeded to make all manner of noises and pull at the pen stuck behind Beth’s ear. “Really, now, LuAnn, you ain’t got to be here for hours. What’s up?”

  “I got soaked and my uniform’s the only clean thing I got. Besides, I felt bad about missing last night. Hey, is there anything left over from lunch? I sorta can’t remember eating yet today.”

  Beth gave LuAnn a disapproving look and planted one hand on a very full hip. “If you took half as good care of yourself as you do this baby. My Lord, child, it is almost eight o’clock.”

  “Don’t nag, Beth. I just forgot, that’s all.”

  Beth grunted. “Right, Duane drank your money away again, didn’t he?”

  “You oughta drop that little sumbitch, LuAnn,” Frankie grumbled. “But let me kick his ass first for you. You deserve better than that crap.”

  Beth raised an eyebrow that clearly signaled her agreement with Frankie.

  LuAnn scowled at them. “Thank you both for your vote on my life, now if you’ll excuse me?”

  Later that evening, LuAnn sat at the far corner booth finishing a plate of food Beth had rounded up for her. She finally pushed the dinner away and sipped a cup of fresh coffee. The rain had started again and the clattering sound against the diner’s tin roof was comforting. She pulled a thin sweater tighter around her shoulders and checked the clock behind the counter. She still had two hours before she went on duty. Normally, when she got to the diner early she’d try to catch a little overtime, but the manager wasn’t letting her do that anymore. Hurt the bottom line, he had told LuAnn. Well, you don’t want to know about my bottom line, she had told him right back, but to no avail. But that was okay, he let her bring Lisa in. Without that, there’d be no way she could work at all. And he paid her in cash. She knew he was avoiding payroll taxes that way, but she made little enough money as it was without the government taking any. She had never filed a tax return; she had lived her entire life well below the poverty line and rightly figured she didn’t owe any taxes.

  Lisa was in her carrier across from her. LuAnn tucked the blanket more snugly around her sleeping daughter. LuAnn had fed Lisa parts of her meal; her daughter was taking to solid food real well, but she hadn’t made it through the mushed carrots before falling
asleep again. LuAnn worried that her daughter wasn’t getting the right kind of sleep. And she wondered, Was putting her baby under the counter of a noisy, smoky truck stop every night going to mess up Lisa’s head years from now? Lower her self-esteem and do other damage LuAnn had read about in the magazines or seen on TV. That nightmarish thought had cost LuAnn more sleep than she could remember. And that wasn’t all. When Lisa turned to solid food for good would there always be enough? Not having a car, always scrounging change for the bus, walking, or running through the rain. What if Lisa caught something? What if LuAnn did? What if she were laid up for a while? Who would take care of Lisa? She had no insurance. She took Lisa to the free county clinic for her shots and checkups, but LuAnn hadn’t been to a doctor in over ten years. She was young, strong, and healthy, but that could change quickly. You never knew. She almost laughed when she thought of Duane trying to navigate the endless details of Lisa’s daily requirements. The boy would run screaming into the woods after a few minutes. But it really wasn’t a laughing matter.

  While she looked at the tiny mouth opening and closing, LuAnn’s heart suddenly felt as heavy as the semis parked in the diner’s parking lot. Her daughter depended on her for everything and the truth was LuAnn had nothing. One step from the edge every day of her life and getting closer all the time. A fall was inevitable; it was only a matter of time. She thought back to Jackson’s words. A cycle. Her mother. Then LuAnn. Duane resembled Benny Tyler in more ways than she cared to think about. Next up was Lisa, her darling little girl for whom she would kill, or be killed, whatever it took to protect her. America was full of opportunity, everybody said. You just had to unlock it. Only they forgot to give out keys for LuAnn’s kind. Or maybe they didn’t forget at all. Maybe it was intentional. At least that’s how she usually saw things when she was more than a little depressed, like now.

  She shook her head clear and squeezed her hands together. That kind of thinking wasn’t going to help her now. LuAnn pulled her handbag over and slid out the steno pad. What she had found at the library had greatly intrigued her.

  Six lottery winners. She had started with the ones last fall and continued up to the present. She had written down their names and backgrounds. The articles had carried a photo of each winner; their smiles had seemed to stretch across the width of the page. In reverse order of winning they were: Judy Davis, age twenty-seven, a welfare mother with three young children; Herman Rudy, age fifty-eight, a former truck driver on disability with massive medical bills from an injury on the job; Wanda Tripp, sixty-six, widowed and subsisting on Social Security’s “safety net” of four hundred dollars a month; Randy Stith, thirty-one, a recent widower with a young child, who had recently been laid off from his assembly line job; Bobbie Jo Reynolds, thirty-three, a waitress in New York who after winning the article said had given up her dream of starring on Broadway to take up painting in the south of France. Finally, there was Raymond Powell, forty-four, a recent bankrupt who had moved into a homeless shelter.

  LuAnn slumped back in her seat. And LuAnn Tyler, twenty years old, single mother, dirt poor, uneducated, no prospects, no future. She would fit in perfectly with this desperate group.

  She had only gone back six months. How many more of them were there? It made for great stories, she had to admit. People in dire straits hit the jackpot. Old people with newfound wealth. Young children with a suddenly bright future. All their dreams coming true. Jackson’s face appeared in her thoughts. Someone has to win. Why not you, LuAnn? His calm, cool tones beckoned to her. In fact, those two sentences reverberated over and over in her head. She felt herself beginning to slide over the top of an imaginary dam. What was awaiting her in the deep waters below, she was not sure. The unknown both scared her and drew her, fiercely. She looked at Lisa. She could not shake the image of her little girl growing into a woman in a trailer with no way to escape while the young wolves circled.

  “What’cha doing, sweetie?”

  LuAnn jerked around and stared into Beth’s face. The older woman expertly juggled plates full of food in both hands.

  “Nothing much, just counting up all my fortune,” LuAnn said.

  Beth grinned and looked at the steno pad, which LuAnn quickly closed. “Well, don’t forget the little people when you hit the big time, Miss LuAnn Tyler.” Beth cackled and then carried the food orders to the waiting customers.

  LuAnn smiled uneasily. “I won’t, Beth. I swear,” she said quietly.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was eight o’clock in the morning on the day. LuAnn stepped off the bus with Lisa. This was not her usual stop, but it was close enough to the trailer that she could walk it in half an hour or so, which was nothing to her. The rain had passed and left the sky a brilliant blue and the earth a lush green. Small clusters of birds sang the praises of the changing season and the exit of another tedious winter. Everywhere LuAnn turned as she tramped along under the newly risen sun there was fresh growth. She liked this time of the day. It was calm, soothing, and she tended to feel hopeful about things.

  LuAnn looked ahead to the gently rolling fields and her manner grew both somber and expectant. She walked slowly through the arched gateway and past the patinated sign proclaiming her entrance into the Heavenly Meadows Cemetery. Her long, slender feet carried her automatically to Section 14, Lot 21, Plot 6; it occupied a space on a small knoll in the shadow of a mature dogwood that would soon begin showing its unique wares. She laid Lisa’s carrier down on the stone bench near her mother’s grave and lifted out the little girl. Kneeling in the dewy grass, she brushed some twigs and dirt off the bronze marker. Her mother, Joy, had not lived all that long: thirty-seven years. It had seemed both brief and an eternity for Joy Tyler, that LuAnn knew. The years with Benny had not been pleasant, and had, LuAnn firmly believed now, hastened her mother’s exit from the living.

  “Remember? This is where your grandma is, Lisa. We haven’t been for a while because the weather was so bad. But now that it’s spring it’s time to visit again.” LuAnn held up her daughter and pointed with her finger at the recessed ground. “Right there. She’s sleeping right now, but whenever we come by, she sort of wakes up. She can’t really talk back to us but if you close your eyes tight as a baby bird’s, and listen real, real hard, you can kinda hear her. She’s letting you know what she thinks about things.”

  After saying this, LuAnn rose up and sat on the bench with Lisa on her lap, bundled against the chill of the early morning. Lisa was still sleepy; it usually took her a while to wake up, but once she did, the little girl wouldn’t stop moving or talking for several hours. The cemetery was deserted except for a workman LuAnn could see far in the distance, cutting grass on a riding mower. The sounds of the mower’s engine didn’t reach her and there were few cars on the roadway. The silence was peaceful and she closed her eyes tight as a baby bird’s and listened as hard as she could.

  At the diner she had made up her mind to call Jackson right after she got off work. He had said anytime and she figured he would answer the phone on the first ring regardless of the time. Saying yes had seemed like the easiest thing in the world to do. And the smartest. It was her turn. After twenty years filled with grief, disappointment, and depths of despair that seemed to have endless elasticity, the gods had smiled upon her. Out of the masses of billions, LuAnn Tyler’s name had turned the hat trick on the slot machine. It would never happen again, of that she was dead certain. She was also sure that the other people she had read about in the paper had made a similar phone call. She hadn’t read anything about them getting in trouble. That sort of news would have been all over, certainly in as poor an area as she lived in, where everyone played the lottery in a frantic effort to throw off the bitter hopelessness of being a have-not. Somewhere between leaving the diner and stepping on the bus, however, she had felt something very deep inside of her prompting her to not pick up the phone but, instead, to seek counsel other than her own. She came here often, to talk, to lay flowers she had picked, or to spruce up he
r mother’s final resting place. In the past, she had often thought she actually did communicate with her mother. She had never heard voices; it was more levels of feelings, of senses. Euphoria or deep sadness sometimes overtook her here, and she had finally put it down to her mother reaching out to her, letting her opinion on things having to do with LuAnn seep into her child’s body, into her mind. Doctors would probably call her crazy, she knew, but that didn’t take away from what she felt.

  Right now she hoped for something to speak to her, to let her know what to do. Her mother had raised her right. LuAnn had never told a lie until she had started living with Duane. Then the fabrications seemed to just happen; they seemed to be an inextricable part of simply surviving. But she had never stolen anything in her life, never really done anything wrong that she knew of. She had kept her dignity and self-respect through a lot over the years and it felt good. It helped her get up and face the toil of another day when that day contained little in the way of hope that the next day and the next would be any different, any better.

  But today, nothing was happening. The noisy lawn mower was drawing closer and the traffic on the road had picked up. She opened her eyes and sighed. Things were not right. Her mother apparently was not going to be available today of all days. She stood up and was preparing to leave when a feeling came over her. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before. Her eyes were automatically drawn to another section of the cemetery, to another plot that lay about five hundred yards away. Something was pulling her there, and she had no doubt what it was. Eyes wide, and her legs moving of their own accord, LuAnn made her way down the narrow, winding asphalt walkway. Something made her clutch Lisa tightly to her bosom, as though if she didn’t the little girl would be snatched away by the unseen force compelling LuAnn to its epicenter. As she drew nearer to the spot, the sky seemed to turn a terrible dark. The sounds of the mowing were gone, the cars had stopped coming down the road. The only sound was the wind whistling over the flat grass and around the weathered testaments to the dead. Her hair blowing straight back, LuAnn finally stopped and looked down. The bronze marker was similar in style to her mother’s, and the last name on it was identical: Benjamin Herbert Tyler. She had not been to this spot since her father had died. She had tightly clutched her mother’s hand at his funeral, neither woman feeling the least bit saddened and yet having to display appropriate emotions for the many friends and family of the departed. In the strange way the world sometimes worked, Benny Tyler had been immensely popular with just about everyone except his own family because he had been generous and cordial with everyone except his own family. Seeing his formal name etched in the metal made her suck in her breath. It was as though the letters were stenciled over an office door and she would soon be ushered in to see the man himself. She started to draw back from the sunken earth, to retreat from the sharp jabs that seemed to sink in deeper with each step she had taken toward his remains. Then the intense feeling she had not realized beside her mother’s grave suddenly overtook her. Of all places. She could almost see wisps of gauzy membrane swirling above the grave like a spiderweb picked up by the wind. She turned and ran. Even with Lisa, she hit an all-out sprint three steps into a run that would have made many an Olympian bristle with envy. Without missing a step and gripping Lisa to her chest, LuAnn snatched up Lisa’s baby carrier and flew past the gates of the cemetery. She had not closed her eyes tight like a baby bird. She had not even been listening particularly hard. And yet the immortal speech of Benny Tyler had risen from depths so far down she could not contemplate them, and had made its way ferociously into the tender ear canals of his only child.

  Take the money, little girl. Daddy says take it and damn everyone and everything else. Listen to me. Use what little brain