Writings / Fiction: David Tasker

Luck of the Draw

Old Robert Harris walked into the Lucky Dollar convenience store on Main Street to buy his weekly lottery ticket. To be accurate, he didn’t so much walk into the store as hobble. He was 83 years old, and he needed a cane to get around, which slowed him down considerably. Luck had not been with him most of his life, but on this sunny Saturday afternoon Robert Harris felt lucky. He hobbled up to the lottery station, hooked his hickory cane over his forearm, and played the same lottery numbers he had been playing for the last 25 years. He hobbled over to the counter where Curtis Jackson greeted him with a gap filled grin.

“Hey there, Robert. You got the winning numbers this week?” Curtis asked.

“You bet I do,” Old Robert replied as Curtis took his money and handed him his change. “By this time next week I’ll be a millionaire and buy one of them scooters to haul my old bones around”

Old Robert Harris left the store, looking at his prized lottery ticket proudly, as if it had already won him millions. He even kissed it, and that’s when the luck that had not been with him all of his life caught up with him, as it always did. A strong gust of wind blew across the store front at that moment, and Robert’s old, worn hands, stricken with a severe case of arthritis, couldn’t cling to the glossy yellow lottery ticket. The winds strong breath ripped the ticket from Robert’s hand and danced it across the sidewalk towards to street. He let out a gasp and hobbled after it, his tired old legs working harder than they had in twenty years, but he was no match for Mother Nature and the luck that avoided him. The ticket was swept onto the road and found its way into the window of a passing pickup truck, leaving Old Robert Harris on the sidewalk, doubled over, huffing and puffing.

The pickup truck was being driven by a man named Gary Flaherty, and as he raced past the Lucky Dollar convenience store the glossy yellow lottery ticket blew in through the window and smacked him square in the forehead.

“What in the – !” Gary screamed, startled to such an extent that his truck jerked left, then right, before his regained control. He reached up and peeled the lottery ticket from his forehead. He began to crumple the paper in his palm, and then he realized what he was holding, and he couldn’t help but smile.

As luck would have it, Gary was a superstitious man. He said God Bless You when someone sneezed, he never walked under a ladder, and in his whole life he had avoided breaking a single mirror. He knew that the odds were slim to none that a lottery ticket would blow in through someone’s window when they were driving along minding their own business, and he knew this was a hundred times better than finding a shiny penny on the ground. Lady luck had kissed him square on the forehead, and this ticket was going to change everything for him.

Gary pulled his pickup truck into the driveway of his bungalow and ran inside to show his girlfriend, Sarah Hayes, what had just struck him on the forehead. Sarah, however, was less than enthusiastic about Gary’s new treasured possession. He had forgotten to pick up dinner, as promised, and now she would have to cook, as was what usually happened when Gary would promise to pick something up.

While Sarah cooked, Gary had a beer, and retold the story of the lottery ticket. He claimed it would be worth one million dollars. After that, he had another beer, and proceeded to tell the story again, although this time much more enthusiastically. Seven beers later, the story had been told seven more times, and on the seventh telling the ticket was supposedly worth seven million dollars.

“This is the ticket that will solve all of our problems baby,” Gary slurred as he slumped across his old worn couch and he then fell into a drunken sleep.

Unfortunately for Gary, something quite the opposite happened. As Sarah sat at her kitchen table and ate the dinner that she had prepared, she decided to do something that she had been considering for a few weeks. She went into Gary’s room, packed up her things, and left the drunken Gary snoring on the couch. Before leaving, she dug her hand deep into Gary’s pocket and extracted the glossy yellow lottery ticket. Pay back, she thought, for the months of drunkenness and neglect that she had tolerated.

Sarah Hayes walked into town and headed towards Lisa Gibbons’ house, who after hearing about the break up, had agreed to put her up for a few days while she sorted things out. She walked past the Lucky Dollar convenience store, and headed down Main Street. She passed the Bag Lady, the town’s one and only homeless woman who pushed a rusty old shopping cart filled with plastic bags, the contents of which was anyone’s guess. The Bag Lady held out her hand as Sarah passed, and Sarah reached into her pockets absent mindedly, searching for a few coins. Her pockets were empty, however, and contained nothing but the lottery ticket. Seeing as how it was Gary’s and had been somewhat responsible for her abrupt departure, she decided to give the ticket to the Bag Lady.

“Oh thank you miss, thank you,” The Bag Lady said, thinking that she had been given a crisp bill.

Sarah only smiled and continued down Main Street.

The Bag Lady couldn’t believe her luck. The old man with the cane who usually offered her a few dollars a day, only grumbled as he walked by her today. It was very uncharacteristic of him and since he had not offered her any money, she had gone without food that night. The Bag Lady smiled, marveling at her luck, until she discovered that what she held in her hands was not money, but a lottery ticket for tomorrow’s draw. Disgruntled, the Bag Lady crumpled the ticket and put in into the pocket of her worn brown sport jacket. She lay down on some dirt encrusted blankets and tried to figure out how she could turn the lottery ticket into food as she fell asleep, her stomach grumbling noisily.

The following day, the sun woke the Bag Lady. She groggily got up, stretched, and pushed her shopping cart full of the bags down Main Street to Paula’s Diner. She parked the cart beside a newspaper box – her usual spot – and went inside.

The diner was tiny and had a capacity of twenty people; it was half full on this particular morning. Everyone inside was a regular, and they were very used to the Bag Lady taking her table in the back corner by the bathrooms each morning, so no one paid much attention to her. ‘She don’t bother them and they don’t bother her’ was the general consensus. She sat down and the waitress, a petite blonde named Kathy Stapleton brought her a jelly doughnut and a tall cup of herbal tea. As the Bag Lady took her first sip, she remembered that she did not have any money on her. The money that usually paid for the breakfast, earned and left over from the previous day, had never come the day before. The Bag Lady dwelled on this as she bit into her doughnut.

Katie Harris walked back behind the front counter and picked up a celebrity gossip magazine. She flipped through the glossy pages, her thoughts not on the painted Hollywood stars but on the exams she was taking the following week, the boy that she had just started seeing, and her grandfathers birthday party which she was attending after her shift finished. The latter issue pressed to the front of her mind, as it was the most urgent. Her grandfather was turning 84, and she had yet to get him a gift.

What on earth do you get an 84 year old man, Katie wondered, new false teeth? This made her giggle. She closed the magazine and walked her regular route through the customers with her coffee pot, filling up the Bag Lady’s cup last and then returned to her magazine and her dilemmas.

Moments later the Bag Lady sauntered out of the restaurant, a sheepish look on her face, which none of the patrons noticed. Katie Harris sighed and headed over to the table in the corner by the bathroom. She picked up the plate that had held the doughnut, the cup that had held the coffee, and then froze. There wasn’t a penny on the table.

“You have got to be kidding me!” Katie scoffed. “Just my down right rotten luck.” Kathy knew she needed every tipped cent that the patrons could muster in order to buy her Grandfather a gift, and even though the Bag Lady was by no means a generous tipper, she always left something, and she had never stiffed on a meal. Katie contemplated racing after the Bag Lady, but thought better of it on the grounds that the latter probably didn’t have a cent on her. She was about to head back to the counter when the glossy yellow paper on the table caught her eye. Curious, she picked it up, and smiled when she saw the draw date. Problem solved; the perfect gift from Granddaughter to Grandfather.

After her shift, Katie Harris bought a birthday card at the Lucky Dollar convenience store and then walked over to her Grandfather’s house. The party was well under way, and through the crowd of relatives milling about Katie spotted her Grandfather. He sat in a wooden chair by the living room bay window, his cane laying across his thighs, gazing out onto the street, his face drawn and bitter. Katie shared a few pleasantries with a few aunts, uncles and cousins, and then slid up next to him. He failed to notice her, his eyes were distant, so she decided to surprise him by slipping the birthday card into his lap. He looked up at Katie, surprised indeed, and forced a smile as he opened the card. Katie waited eagerly to be thanked for the sweet words which she had written, but the thanks never came. The card was never read. Her Grandfathers hand shook as he held the glossy yellow lottery ticket between his fingers, his eyes scanning the numbers again and again.

* * * *

The following day Old Robert Harris half walked, half hobbled, into the Lucky Dollar convenience store, and slapped the lottery ticket on the counter.

“Got a winner there, Robert?” Curtis asked, grinning stupidly.

“Got a winner here, Cutis,” Old Robert Harris replied, eyeing an advertisement for the lottery behind the counter which read TRY YOUR LUCK.

Curtis scanned the ticket. Music erupted from the lottery machine. Curtis looked at the prize amount on the screen, and looked up at Old Robert excitedly. “Golly, Robert. Ain’t no way I can pay out something this big. You sure were right about that ticket, that’s for darn sure.”

“Luckiest day of my life, Curtis,” Old Robert Harris said, choking back tears, “by far, the luckiest day of my life.”

He leaned heavily on his wooden cane and hobbled out of the Lucky Dollar convenience store, planning on making a major contribution to the Bag Lady on his way to the lottery office.