Instant Winner

  The reporter supplied the address and then poured Jason and his uncle each a handful of sunflower seeds. He told them that he would call his mother and give her heads-up about the lawn mower. He said he would do his best to get the article in the newspaper before his uncle spent Jason’s winnings.

  Chapter Six

  “How do I know it’s yours?” a woman in a robe asked from behind her screen door. Her hair was covered by a plastic shower cap. Beneath the cap, Jason made out a couple of red plastic curlers and black bobby pins. She was the reporter’s mother, and a stern mother, no one to play tricks on. She asked Uncle Mike to describe the lawn mower.

  “It’s about this tall.” With the flat of his palm, Uncle Mike indicated something around knee level. He said there was a handle to push it. The motor was red and real loud.

  “That ain’t good enough,” she spat. She kicked open the screen door with a fuzzy slipper, tightened the robe’s belt like a noose, and stepped on the porch. “All mowers got handles, unless they’re the kind you sit on and drive, like in the commercials. And every one I heard is loud, but not as loud as me when I’m angry.” She narrowed her eyes in anger.

  “But you got to remember me,” Uncle Mike argued. “Remember, I had to borrow a dollar to get gas.” He told her that she had given him a glass of cold water, no ice, and that they chatted about her roof in need of re-shingling—some of the shingles were curled like old leather shoes. He bobbled his head and said, “You got to remember when the mower chewed up a rubber flip-flop.”

  She beaded a stern eye at him and then swung her death ray gaze to Jason, which made him wither and take two steps back. She asked, “This your boy?”

  To relieve his uncle from the interrogation, Jason spoke up. “No, ma’am, I’m his nephew. I’m in sixth grade. I’m a B-plus student at Kings Canyon Junior High. I play basketball for the school, but I ain’t good at it.” He showed her his leg. “I sprained my ankle, but it’s all better now.”

  “Boy, you’re a parrot,” the woman said snidely. “You sure can talk.”

  “Oh, oh, I think I forgot my hat here too.” Uncle Mike picked up after Jason stopped. He described a baseball cap right down to the stains on the brim.

  “Yeah, I remember the cap, and I think I remember you now.” She shook a finger at him. “You play guitar.”

  “Yeah, that’s me,” he nearly shouted. He beamed as he strummed his invisible instrument.

  “You were cutting lawns because your guitar is in hock, am I right?”

  “Exactly!” he exclaimed, snapping his fingers. “You got a great memory! Can I get my mower back?”

  She ignored the question. “Yeah, and I remember you did a lousy job. I hope you can play guitar better than you can mow.”

  “I know I can,” Uncle Mike answered. “Yard work ain’t really my thing.” He began a yarn about the menial jobs that he had held during his teenage and adult years and the discovery of his innate musical talent when he was just about his nephew’s age. He told her that he liked The Cure, Queen, Dave Matthews Band, Green Day at their height, and a group out of Colorado that no one had ever heard about, Spewface Tomato Jam.

  The woman cut him off with a palm slice across her throat. She hooked a thumb to the side and said, “It’s in the bushes on the side of the house, right where you left it. Your baseball cap is there, too. Last time I saw it, a bird was living in it.”

  Uncle Mike saluted her and said, “Thanks.” They jumped from the porch, not bothering with the five wooden steps, and made their way to the side of the house. Gripping the handle, Uncle Mike struggled to free the mower, which was tangled in long strands of Bermuda grass. He yanked, pulled, and bullied it from the overgrown bush. He picked up the Red Sox baseball cap and smacked it against his thigh, loosening leaves, grass, and a spider web. Its brim was spotted with bird poop.

  “I didn’t know you liked ‘em?” Jason was referring to the Red Sox.

  “I don’t. I just found this cap at a laundromat.” He flicked off the bird poop and fitted the cap onto his head.

  Jason felt positive about the day. They had solved the problem of the missing lawn mower, even though they had missed an interview with the TV reporter. Still, it was November in desert Fresno—cold, but not freezing. He had a week off for Thanksgiving vacation before he would have to return to the rigors of getting mostly Bs and some Cs. Life was good!

  The two ventured up the street, with Jason pushing the mower. Jason had talked his uncle into giving the mower back to Eric, the gangster, as they couldn’t risk getting on his bad side. After that, they would cash in the lottery ticket.

  Earlier, before the face-off with the reporter’s mother, Jason had received a call from Blake, who had located an office in downtown Fresno where winners could cash lottery tickets.

  “By the way, Unc, who’s Spewface Tomato Jam?” Jason asked. “Are they a real group?”

  “Yeah, they are,” Uncle Mike said. He told Jason that the group was known for not playing in time and for creating a sound that was strangely confusing but way profound. “I could play with them fine and sound like I know what I’m doing.”

  Jason thought the same thing—he could learn a few chords on the guitar, grow his hair long, wear an eye patch like a pirate (that would make him way cool) and rock to a sound that would be loud but not angry. He would write strange lyrics—he already had one locked in his mind: “Aluminum cats up in the lavender sky/But for you, sugar babe, a lovely goodbye/On the forehead of reality/Tumbleweed in the valley.” Yeah, he could see himself on stage blinded by lights and flashing phones. He wondered whether he could catch up to Justin Bieber.

  They were strolling purposefully down a leafy street when a woman called, “Yoo-hoo!” They stopped and looked around until they found the source of this bird-like call. An old woman, dressed in two sweaters, was standing on the small patch of her front lawn and waving at them. They hurried over.

  “Is something wrong?” inquired Jason, who had been a Cub Scout and was brought up to be kind to the elderly. While he registered that the woman was not in danger, he knew enough to ask if there was a problem.

  “I see you have a mower,” remarked the woman. Beneath her sweaters, she was wearing a dress printed with flowers—out of season, as most flowers had been hammered by frost and a freaky October rain that had gone on for two days straight. Her cheeks were overly red with blush, and she exuded a perfume with tremendous, if not dizzying, scent. “I have a little job for you, if you have the time. You got the mower there.”

  Uncle Mike looked at Jason. He asked, “What do you think, sport?”

  Jason shrugged his shoulders. True, they were in possession of a mower and could probably whack at the grass—it didn’t look that scraggly—in ten brisk minutes.

  The woman chuckled and remarked, “You two look strong. I can barely open a can of chicken noodle soup, my hands being arthritic.” She petted one of her hands.

  At that, Jason inflated his chest slightly, touched that she had noticed his physique beneath his sweatshirt. It would be a cinch, he figured. He could push through the grassy growth in a flash and maybe earn a homemade cookie from this nice woman. He hadn’t, however, ever worked a power mower. His father was the one who guided the mower up and down their lawn, and he, the good son, followed along with a rake to gather up the clippings.

  She made her pitch again, dramatically. She told them that with her poor husband gone, there was no man of the house. She nervously twisted her wedding band and pleaded, “Won’t you help a little old lady like me?”

  “Why not?” Uncle Mike answered. “We got time to kill.”

  When she explained that it wasn’t the front lawn that didn’t need a trim but the backyard, Jason became suspicious. In his mind, he was returning that cookie with a, “Ah, no, thanks.” He didn’t like saying yes to a job he hadn’t seen first. Plus, would they work for free? True, he was in possession of the winning lottery ticket, thus soon to be richer than other kids, but he r
emembered his father’s doctrine that one should never work for free—unless, of course, his father was asking.

  “I live on a fixed income,” the woman claimed. “You know what a fixed income is?” She crushed the handkerchief in her hand and pulled her mouth down in the sorrowful pout of a hooked fish.

  “That’s better than me,” Uncle Mike retorted. “I ain’t got no income at all.”

  “Me too,” Jason joined in, though he felt guilty as he assumed that in an hour or less he would be the richest kid on his block, if not all of Fresno. The lottery ticket was in his front pocket. So he answered her plea: “Yes, ma’am, we can help.”

  “Really?” she whimpered hopefully. Her smile grew so much that her eyes nearly disappeared in wrinkles.

  “Yeah, really, but we gotta hurry—we got something real important to do.”

  “It’s just a little job,” she pleaded.

  Jason looked at Uncle Mike, who shrugged and said, “Let’s see.”

  When she led them to the backyard, they discovered a lawn only a bulldozer could tackle. It was tall, scraggly, swamp-smelling, and possibly dangerous. Jason could swear that he saw a snake slither into hiding. He had to wonder what was at its center—an alligator?

  “It got out of hand, I guess,” the woman admitted, with her fingers at her mouth. “Maybe I over fertilized the lawn.”

  “Out of hand! Over fertilized!” Uncle Mike roared. “Ma’am, it’s an Amazonian jungle. I bet you got rare species living inside it.”

  “Think so?” She said that it had been a while since she had cut it, but it wasn’t that tall. As for rare species, she did recall a salamander and its little ones, but they had moved on.

  “We should call the TV station,” Uncle Mike suggested in a near whisper to Jason. “They could take a picture and put it in the news.” He said that they liked this sort of feature—a story about the lawn that grew into a jungle and dispersed good oxygen into the neighborhood.

  Jason could tell that his uncle was angling for another way to connect with the female reporter. His uncle would call, make some claim about an alligator in the backyard, and get a reporter—Sylvia What’s-Her-Name—to come see for herself. Jason figured that was how rockers thought: always in search of publicity. In this case, his uncle was still holding out faith that he could get his high school heartthrob to do the interview.

  “Yeah, that’s a really tall lawn,” Uncle Mike claimed, then let out a whistle between his gapped teeth. “Heck, for all we know a rhino might appear out of nowhere.”

  The woman chuckled. “How you exaggerate!”

  “Or lots of frogs,” Jason added.

  “It was that fishmeal fertilizer,” she remarked sweetly. She stepped into the lawn until only her head could be seen. She looked back and waved at them. “Oh, I guess it is a little tall.” She waded out of that jungle and said, “Maybe I should call the fire department.”

  Jason was confused. “Why the fire department?”

  “They could burn it down,” she chuckled, “and we could toast marshmallows.”

  Jason and his uncle looked at each other. It was time to not walk, but run, from this situation. The elderly woman was nice but a little loony.

  “Well, we wish you the best,” Jason told the woman. “Maybe you should call someone with a small tractor.”

  They sped out of the backyard, and continued toward downtown, taking turns pushing the mower. They had a bigger mission than cutting a lawn. Jason was eager to make nosy neighbors understand that he had won the lottery, but it wasn’t for a million dollars—just a few thousand. Plus, he wanted to make peace with that shaved-head gangster.

  “Where does Eric live?” Jason asked.

  “We don’t have to worry about him. He’ll naturally come around.”

  The prediction became true when, five blocks from downtown Fresno, Eric the gangster appeared out of nowhere.

  “Hey, fool,” Eric barked from across the street.

  The two stopped, spun around on their heels, and stared at Eric as he pulled up the back of his pants, which were ready to fall off his butt. His shaved head was now domed with a black beanie pulled down nearly to his eyes. He crossed the street.

  “Hey, dawg,” Uncle Mike greeted. “I like your cap. It looks good on you.”

  Eric ignored the enthusiastic greeting. He sneered at Uncle Mike and yanked the mower from Jason’s grip.

  “I’ve been lookin’ for you,” Uncle Mike said. “You wouldn’t believe where it was.”

  “Yeah, right,” Eric snarled. He spit over his shoulder and said to Uncle Mike, “I don’t know how you stay alive! Look at you!”

  Jason had to admit that his uncle was at the bottom of his luck. He was dressed in other people’s clothes—Jason’s T-shirt and gym socks, for instance, and the out-of-date imitation leather vest—and he had no regular place to sleep. He was skinny, and he was dirty—at least around his neck. Still, he didn’t like the tone of Eric’s accusations. “Yeah, but my uncle plays guitar! He’s been on the road.”

  “Don’t give me that playing guitar stuff. Have you heard him? He don’t sound any better than this mower!” He pounded the crossbar handle of the mower.

  “Speaking of mowers, have you heard this band called Wrinkled Future? They used lawn mower sounds for one of their songs. It was totally rad.”

  “Shut up, fool,” Eric barked.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard my uncle play,” Jason snapped back in return. “He’s awesome!”

  “Hey, Jason,” Uncle Mike cut in. “I’m, like, good, but not awesome.” He squeezed his nephew’s shoulder. “But that’s real nice.”

  “Your uncle don’t even own a guitar. And that vest he’s wearing!”

  Jason looked at the vest.

  “That’s mine!” Eric jabbed a finger at Uncle Mike’s chest. “In fact, I want it back.” He then pointed an angry finger at Uncle Mike. “Take it off!”

  Jason rocked on his heels and could only manage, “Where’s all your love?”

  Eric growled.

  Uncle Mike stripped off the vest. “It’s cool by me. I was looking for a change, a new image, something like a cowboy look.”

  Eric grimaced as he took the vest between his thumb and index finger and held it far from his body. “It really stinks,” he remarked sourly. “I think my dog might howl if he sniffs it! When did you last take a shower, not counting that storm that hit us a couple of weeks ago?”

  Jason felt for his uncle and remarked, “Actually, he took a shower today—at my house.”

  Eric took off his beanie and wiped the sweat off his skull. He left, pushing the mower and pulling up his pants.

  “How did you meet him?” Jason asked when the gangster was out of hearing range.

  “You know, I don’t remember, but I think I used to date his sister.”

  The two continued in the direction of downtown. As it came into sight—pigeons were gathering in the gutter in front of the Bank of America, looking for handouts—his uncle snapped his fingers and said, “Let’s go look at my guitar through the window.”

  Uncle Mike led Jason toward the pawnshop on Tulare Street. In front of the window display case, the two stood in awe of all the merchandise up for sale—accordions and saxophones, watches and rings, sewing machines and computers.

  “There it is.” Uncle Mike tapped on the glass. “It’s the red one.”

  Jason nodded at the guitar. “It’s way cool.”

  “Yeah, it’s a good instrument both for beginners and veterans like me.” Uncle Mike then pointed out a Fender Stratocaster on its left. “Now, that’s like the Lexus of guitars. Jimmy Hendrix played that model. And that cat could really play.”

  “Like, wow, Uncle.”

  “Yeah, like wow for sure,” Uncle Mike said dreamily. He explained that his guitar had been in hock for three months. Now it was for sale. Anyone with little or no talent could come in and buy it, and that would be that—the guitar would belong to someone else.

  ??
?We better cash the lottery ticket, then,” Jason said.

  “Good idea,” he said, and blew a kiss to his guitar.

  * * *

  “What do you mean we can’t cash it?” Uncle Mike asked to a young woman behind the counter of a state building. The woman had a heart-shaped necklace and a heart-shaped ring on her index finger. Jason thought she was too pretty to have to face the public from nine to five.

  “You could, Mr. Hernandez, but according to the computer there are… warrants out for your arrest.” The last part of the sentence was issued in a whisper, and in an apologetic tone. She told him that a couple of her own relatives had warrants out too, but they were still good people.

  Jason stood on tiptoes and examined the confusing paperwork in front of Uncle Mike.

  “Yeah, but they’re for hardly anything. They’re just for not having a car registration and those…” He turned his head sideways and read, “And those are parking tickets. What’s the big deal? It’s not like I’m a thief.”

  At the word “thief” several people turned and glanced in his direction.

  “I’m sure you’re not, sir,” the young woman said brightly. “But you can’t cash this lottery ticket.” She leaned forward and whispered, “Maybe you should handle the warrants first and then come back.” She slid on her eyeglasses and bent over the papers. “Let’s see, according to this…”

  “I get it,” Uncle Mike mumbled and stepped away from the counter.

  “Let’s bounce, Unc,” suggested Jason, who could see now what his uncle meant about living the blues.

  “Can I have my lottery ticket back?” Uncle Mike asked the clerk.

  “Yes, you can. It’s yours,” the young woman replied. “It’s really none of my business, but you could ask someone else to claim the ticket.”

  Mom, Jason thought. But then the money would go right into his scholarship fund.

  They left the office with Uncle Mike in the lead. He had a smile on his face. The embarrassing moment didn’t faze him. The two squeezed themselves into an elevator—the ride down was a body-to-body experience, with almost no room to breathe. It was packed with poorly dressed citizens, some of whom Jason judged might have warrants out for them, too.