Nothing to Lose by Kim Suhr

Author:Kim Suhr [Suhr, Kim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cornerstone Press
Published: 2020-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

You Can’t Win If You Don’t Enter

Well, I did it. My hands are shaking so much I can hear my charm bracelet jingling and my heart’s beating in my ears. Out of the bottom of my eyes, I can see my chest heaving, but really my eyes are focused on the ticket in front of my face. I drag my them back to the black and white Magnavox to make sure I haven’t just imagined the whole thing, but the lottery numbers have disappeared from the screen.

They’ve been replaced by the regular ten o’clock news commercials. American Family Insurance agents smile from inside their forest green leisure suits and plaid sport jackets. “Let us take care of all your insurance needs under one roof,” they say. They’re followed by a Lasso herbicide commercial, which I watch like a hawk even though I know in my right mind that the MegaMoney numbers won’t show up in an ag commercial. But I’m alone and afraid my mind has been playing tricks on me. At least if the young, handsome farmer in his tidy barn starts announcing lottery numbers, then I’ll know for sure I have one foot in the funny farm and the other on a banana peel.

But the man with the perfect teeth and clean seed cap doesn’t announce my numbers. I have at least fifteen more minutes to wait before Cynthia Smith announces the winning numbers again. I pace back and forth in front of the TV, stopping for a second by the phone. Maybe I should call Ma and Pa to see if they stayed up to find out the numbers. Unfortunately, winning the lottery isn’t as important to them as it is to me. They just go to bed at nine o’clock and find out the winning numbers in the paper the next day. Pa says he wants to get a good night’s sleep before he wakes up to find out he’s a millionaire.

The fates being what they are, my old man really will wake up one day to see his own face on the front page of the Dodgeville Gazette smiling out from behind a giant cardboard check made out to himself. That’s the kind of luck he has. Not me.

While I wait for Cynthia Smith to announce the winning numbers again, my mind starts to wander something fierce, thinking about what I could do with the money. “Whatcha gonna do now?” I chuckle to myself imitating Len Junior’s inflection when I say it.

Well, first off, I’ll quit my job at Piggly Wiggly. No one-last-shift. Just a quick stop in personnel to pick up my last paycheck, then Sa-yo-narra.

And won’t my kids be surprised? Whenever I entered the Sweepstakes—and I have entered them all—they would tease me “Do you have stock in the post office or what? You know they’re the only ones who make any money off that stuff.”

“You can’t win if you don’t enter!” I pictured the faces of previous winners, people just like me

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