Blizzard Ball (3 page)

Today she’d nail all her calls in a short spiky blonde bob, swept behind her ears. The edges of a unicorn tattoo peeked out from her shirt just below the neckline. “Heard it’s practically balmy in St. Petersburg. Must be the global warming? No snow in Vancouver either. Just maddening rain.” She recorded each conversation and spent her off-hours listening to the tapes to gain an intimate understanding of her customer’s emotional drivers: the fear, greed, or loneliness that would lead them to buy. The professor was a flirt, an easy mark. Gisele was setting him up for a big buy.

“How’s university life?” she asked. “I’d love to go back to school. I speak six languages, maybe try and wrap a useful degree around that. Learned a couple of them from my ex-husbands. Married twice but neither could communicate worth a damn.”

Gisele got a laugh of recognition out of the professor.

“On my own now,” she continued. “So far so good. Sometimes a girl has to take charge.” Gisele’s eyes fell on the photograph on her desk of her six-year-old daughter. “I shouldn’t be so chatty today. I got a lot of friends to call. Don’t want to leave anyone out of this one. I am going crazy trying to fill the orders for the BlizzardBall. The jackpot’s $750 million. Can you believe it? A mid-dle-of-nowhere state like Minnesota offering up the prize we could only dream about. If there was ever one to load up on, this is it.”

Gisele could hardly contain herself when the professor informed her of the number of tickets he wished to purchase. “I got a good feeling about your picks, Professor. You’re not going to forget this working girl when you hit, are you, sweetheart? Wow! That’s very generous of you. I’m going to pass you along to Claude. He’ll get your exact numbers, verify the order and payment information. Hang on and good luck.”

She punched a button on her keyboard and said, “Claude, I have a live one on the line.”

“Vous remercie, ma chère,” the French Canadian lottery ticket sales manager replied. At sixty-one, he was considered the company curmudgeon. Gisele was a frequent target of his Francophile rants and fatherly advice. But with this call he was strictly business. Claude recorded the professor’s curious number picks and calculated the inflated purchase price on 53,103 tickets.

Earl Swanson debated whether the long wait in line at the Short Stop would be worth the static he’d receive for getting home late for Christmas dinner. From outside the convenience store, he ran a quick mental inventory of his most critical possessions: the dated bungalow fast becoming the neighborhood eyesore, the six-ty-five-horsepower Johnson motor with a broken prop shaft hanging from the transom of a dented eighteen-foot Lund fishing boat, the rusted Arctic Cat snowmobile missing the right front ski. There were other places in town to purchase a lottery ticket, but that would be tempting fate. The Short Stop in Hibbing, Minnesota, had been the source of over $30 million in lottery prize money and was considered a honey-hole of mystical proportions. One of the winners, a geologist from a nearby taconite mine, claimed the Short Stop sat on top a point of intense magnetism. He professed that this was the same energy ancient diviners believed brought well-being and prosperity and had marked with standing stones, à la Stonehenge.

Earl hated waiting. He considered it an obstacle. As a certified mining blaster, removing obstacles was his trade. But there was no budging this line. He squeezed into the Short Stop and had begun filling in his BlizzardBall picks when a bump from behind skittered his pencil across the form. “Jesus Christ.”

“Sorry, pal,” said a familiar voice.

Nelson was a former coworker. They had been laid off from the taconite mine at the same time.

“A little jumpy?” Nelson said.

“Doing nothing is getting to me,” Earl said. “Any word on a callback?”

“Ain’t heard squat and I’m not counting on it.” Nelson doffed his dusty billed cap and pointed to the hat’s crown with the name of his new ceramic tile business stenciled on it.

“Suppose I should move on too, but I’d like to get another crack at it,” Earl said, pulling a fresh BlizzardBall Lottery form out of the rack. “Just so I’d have a chance to put a blasting cap up management’s ass.” He quickly ticked off the numbers on the form.

“That’s a loser, pal,” Nelson said, looking over Earl’s shoulder

“What, you picking the balls now?”

“No, but a tile guy can spot a pattern a mile away.” Nelson pointed out the diagonal line formed by Earl’s number picks. “Every stargazing moron out there uses a pattern to plot their lottery numbers: diagonals, corners, columns, rows, zigzags, blocks, and circles.”

Earl crumpled the form and started again, feeling uncomfortable under Nelson’s watchful eye.

“Stop!” Nelson leaned his chin over Earl’s shoulder. “Progressions are a statistical long shot.”

“Progressions?”

“You know, like multiples: 5, 10, 15; or last digits, like 3, 13, 23; or consecutive numbers. And miracle of miracles, if a common number combination or pattern play hits, the pot would be sliced and diced to the point where you’d be lucky to come out of it with enough money to buy a cheeseburger.”

“What makes you a lottery genius?”

“Hey, don’t get testy. Just trying to help out. And, as a matter of fact, I have hit on a few small payouts here and there.”

“Screw it. I’m just going to grab a Quick Pick and hit the road.” Earl tossed the form into a receptacle and made a move toward the checkout counter.

“Whoa, partner,” Nelson said. “We’re talking $750 million here. Quick Picks are a lazy man’s approach.” He steered Earl to the form rack.

“You’re wearing me out,” Earl said, but Nelson had slipped off down the beer aisle.

Christmas dinner had always been Earl’s time to regale his family with stories of the fall hunt. He rested his thick forearms on the snowman-themed tablecloth. His family and in-laws squeezed tightly around him. The savory dinner—venison steaks, grouse, and pheas-ant—gave off a hint of musky forest that practically begged for Earl’s fall hunt chronicles. He waited for the right opening in the chatter as wild rice harvested from the Red Lake Indian Reservation and cranberries from nearby Wisconsin were passed from person to person. But when the conversation turned to the lottery, he realized he’d been trumped. His brother and sister in-law lived for gambling as well as harassing each other.

“Florence, did you get a senior citizen discount when you played your birthday numbers in the BlizzardBall?” Floyd snorted out a laugh.

“For your information,” Florence said, touching her orange manicured nails lightly to her salon-colored persimmon hair. “I’m playing a palindrome.”

Earl straightened the antler candleholder centerpiece in an attempt to steer the conversation back towards the hunt, but after several attempts he let it go.

“What’s a palindrome, Auntie Florence?” asked Jessica, Earl’s eleven-year-old daughter.

“Here, I’ll show you.” Florence took a piece of paper and a pen from her purse and jotted down numbers. “Oprah just had a numerologist on her show. He was amazing,” she said. “Predicted last year’s Super Bowl score and showed all these tricks with numbers, like this.” Florence tapped the pen on the paper to draw attention to the numbers 2, 4, 9, 19, 42. “You see how the individual numbers read the same forward and backward? That’s what you call a palindrome. Now, if you add the numbers 2, 4, 9, 1, 9, 4, and 2 together they equal 31, which is my BlizzardBall number. Pretty neat, huh?”

“Auntie Florence, what would you do with the money if you won?” Jessica asked.

“Why, I’d get me a pool boy, maybe even a pool,” Florence said with a “Ha!” directed toward her husband.

“How about you, Uncle Floyd?” Jessica tugged on the sleeve of his plaid flannel shirt. “What would you do if you won?”

“Well, besides shoving the job, I’d buy a deluxe Gulf Stream Coach RV and take us all on a trip to Baja where we’d fish for yellowtail and drink Dos Equis cerveza.”

“Don’t forget to put hair on your list,” Florence cackled, and Floyd’s bald head turned red.

Earl had to admit, patting the lottery ticket in his breast pocket, he rather enjoyed the wishful conversation. It reminded him of his early boyhood when he had spent hours paging through the Sears catalog, immersed in the magical wonder of Christmas dreams.

But a glance over at his wife short-circuited Earl’s nostalgia trip. Maureen hadn’t said a word since dinner began and sat stiffly, clutching her fork tines up. The Swanson family’s Christmas traditionally started with dinner, followed by dessert, and concluded with Christmas mass. He knew what Maureen was thinking: the damn lottery was going to screw things up.

“Hey, everybody. Santa brought you all a little stocking stuffer.” Floyd handed out scratch-off game cards. “If you match three Christmas trees, you could win a thousand bucks. What a hoot.”

“Uncle Floyd, I got two elves. What did I win?” Jessica waved the game card over her head.

“For goodness sake,” Maureen said, standing, “I don’t need that scratch-off mess all over my table.” Her hair, styled for the holiday with glitter accents, bobbed like an angry disco ball. “Everybody wants something for nothing. Everyone’s looking to be saved. If it’s not the lottery, it’s unlimited credit card debt, alimony, or some frivolous lawsuit. Well, I don’t need it, not in my house.” Maureen’s gray eyes squinted to a laser focus, ready to scorch anyone who had the nerve to look at her. Even the reindeer on her cable-knit sweater seemed to be looking for a way out. Earl held the silence along with everyone else until Maureen went into the kitchen, leaving bowed heads in her wake.

“Wow,” Floyd exhaled. “Buzzkill or what?”

Earl jabbed a calloused finger at Floyd. “Leave it alone.”

“Look at the time, will ya? Five minutes until the lottery drawing.” Floyd slid off the kitchen chair and dashed toward the living room, claiming the brown Naugahyde recliner. Florence and Jessica quickly followed and threw the accent pillows from the Early American print sofa onto the floor.

Earl stayed behind and cleared dirty dishes. “This will be over in a few minutes,” he said, looking past Maureen toward the TV as he attempted to kiss her on the cheek.

“It’s just not right.” Maureen pulled away and slammed a serving bowl with what was left of the cranberries onto the counter. Red juice splashed Earl’s shirt. “What kind of pagans have we turned into? Gambling on Christmas. Nobody gives a damn about anything but money.”

“Hey, where’s the remote?” Floyd shouted from the living room, sounding desperate.

“You better find it or there’s going to be a riot,” Maureen said, irritated, as she shoved Earl out of the kitchen.

“Welcome to tonight’s drawing. The one and only BlizzardBall Lottery is on the air. Hi, I’m Mike Frawley. Hope you’re holding the winning Bliz zardBall jackpot ticket. It’ll make your holiday a whole lot brighter. Tonight’s jackpot is worth an estimated $750 million dollars—the biggest jackpot ever.”

Jessica’s caged African Gray parrot, tucked in the corner of the living room, picked up on the announcer’s elongated consonants and mimicked, “Blizzzzzzzardball, hey Blizzzzzzzardball, hey …”

“Kiddo, quiet that squawk box down.” Florence motioned to Jessica to cover the bird’s cage.

“Shut up, goddamnit,” Floyd snapped, his eyes glued to the TV, “or we’ll miss the numbers.”

“Behind me is the BlizzardBall drawing machine. As you can see, it has two chambers. One with red balls numbered 1 through 59; and one with white balls numbered 1 through 39.”

“Hey, get on with it. We know how it works, for Christ’s sake,” Floyd yelled at the television as he pulled a cigarette and book of matches from his shirt pocket.

“Here we go. The first number’s a 10.”

“I got a ten!” Earl shouted. Maureen stopped washing dishes and turned a sharp ear toward the TV.

“Even a blind squirrel finds a nut here and there,” Floyd taunted.

Suddenly, the TV seemed to emit a giant exhale. Balls fell out of suspension and dropped dead to the bottom of the clear acrylic chambers. The tuxedoed Mike Frawley squinted into the camera. Sweat was visible on his brow as he paused awkwardly in what was normally a nonstop, rapid-fire monologue. Frawley touched his ear piece.

“I have just been informed that there will be a slight delay in the drawing. As soon as the technical difficulties are resolved, we will resume with the one and only BlizzardBall Lottery. Hold on to your tickets. I now turn you back to your scheduled program.”

“What was that happy horseshit?” Floyd asked. “I’m getting a drink. Someone holler when it comes back on.”

“Build me one, too,” Florence called after him.

Earl sat with the lottery ticket squeezed into the vice grip of his large work-callused hand. “Come on, come on,” he mumbled to himself through clenched teeth, staring at the TV.

“Earl, it’s time for church,” his wife called out.”

“Go on without me.”

“Earl, don’t be a pain. It’s Christmas.”

Earl exploded off the chair. “What, so I can embarrass myself, and this family when the collection plates pass by, and they skip over the poor Swansons. Bullshit!” He turned from his wife and daughter and dropped hard into his TV chair.

Floyd and Florence fell in silently behind a furious Maureen and left for church.

Earl sat and waited for the drawing to return, and thought about the financial abyss he was in. He’d get even with those cheap bastards who sold out his mining job to the Chinese. A crack of a smile appeared on Earl’s face as he remembered the dynamite he had smuggled from the mine, secured in a metal box in the basement. He wouldn’t be screwed over again.

Rafie and Eduardo slipped through the door of the Cash and Dash on a snowy draft and scampered down the grocery aisle like cockroaches under a bright light.

The clerk looked up to the convex security mirror mounted in a nearby corner and returned to his column of numbers.

A shotgun blast brought a hiss and a shower of water from overhead.

“Rafie, what you doing, man?”

“Taking out the camera.”

“That’s a goddamn sprinkler head.” Eduardo raised his hand to shield against the torrent of water flooding the store.