Instant Winner

  Gary Soto

  INSTANT WINNERS

  INSTANT WINNERS

  INSTANT WINNERS

  by Gary Soto

  Copyright © 2013 by Gary Soto. All rights reserved.

  First ebook copyright © 2013 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.

  Trade ISBN: 978-1-4821-0196-6

  Library ISBN: 978-1-62460-684-7

  Cover photograph © iStock.com.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter One

  In his bedroom, Jason Rodriguez opened up a drawer, stared at its contents—old batteries and printer cartridges, a herd of marbles, pens and chewed pencils, report cards, baby photos from when he was still toothless, a birthday card—and closed the drawer. Frantically, he opened another drawer, then another. He was searching for the small envelope where he kept his money, three dollars of mostly quarters, possibly more. Plus, there was a Buster Posey baseball card worth twenty-seven dollars. He was desperate to raise forty-seven dollars for the pair of shoes he knew would make him a better basketball player.

  Jason was twelve, the seventh best player on the sixth-grade team, which wasn’t saying much. His team, the Grizzlies, had yet to win a game this season—they were a gasping squad stuck at the bottom with a 0-5 record. They had little chance to win their next game against the Sierra Falcons, who had a worthy 4-1 record, because the Grizzlies best star player—Enrique Gomez—was out with a sprained ankle. And even if Enrique hadn’t sprained his ankle, Jason wasn’t sure if he could help the team.

  Because of Enrique’s hurt ankle, Jason had moved up a rung and became the sixth best player, certain to get more playing time. He loved to bang shoulders with the opponents—provided they weren’t too rough. And now he would sometimes clock more than just three minutes on the court, usually when it was a blowout. Last week, Coach Bacon had barked for him to get ready when they were losing 32—12, with four minutes to go. Still, Jason jumped from the folding chair, peeled off his sweatshirt and ran onto the court, his shoes squeaking like tiny little mice. Immediately, he scored a layup and clapped for his own effort because none of his teammates on the bench had done so. It wasn’t that he was unpopular. In fact, everyone at school liked him, even the bullies. But one good effort wasn’t enough. The team, heads bowed, had given up. A single bucket didn’t begin to close the gap.

  They lost 41—17.

  But now it was Saturday. He had been kicking around during the Thanksgiving vacation—“ski week,” the school called it, even though there was no snow for a hundred miles. Enrique Gomez would have ages to heal his ankle. But what if their star player didn’t bounce back? Jason felt the responsibility to step up his game, and he needed those shoes to bring greater spring to his legs. Plus, they were cool looking, with a neon stripe on the side.

  “Dang,” Jason muttered. He couldn’t find the envelope. He shoved the drawer closed. He turned and assessed his bedroom: it was a mess. The envelope could be anywhere.

  “Jason,” he heard his mother shout from the living room. He stiffened, like he did when religious people with pamphlets rang the doorbell. His family had learned that when those people called, nobody was to move. If you were walking from the living room to the bathroom, you stopped, cooled your engines, and waited for the second and third rings. After one full minute of silence, then you could resume activity.

  Jason held himself as still as a statue. If his mother heard a footstep, he was certain that he would be sentenced to the boring chore of raking the leaves. He waited. He felt his heart beating beneath his Fresno City College sweatshirt, a hand-me-down from his dad after it had shrunk in the wash.

  His door opened suddenly.

  “Mom, you’re supposed to knock first!” he bellowed. His mother always barged into his bedroom when he was lounging on his bed chewing candy bars, or on his cell phone talking stuff with his friend, Blake—mostly about who liked who that week, like Grace liked Robert, but Robert liked Sonia.

  “Oh, really?” his mother said. “Are you the President? The Pope in stinky gym clothes?” She sniffed the air and her face soured. “This bedroom smells.”

  Jason couldn’t argue there. Underneath his bed and in all four corners lay unwashed socks, the worst being the cheesy-smelling gym socks that he wore repeatedly for good luck.

  “Your uncle’s here,” she announced. “He wants to talk with you.”

  That would be Uncle Mike, a former guitarist in a group that went nowhere. His uncle was thirty-three, long-haired, tattooed on his unimpressive biceps, leather-vested, and as smelly as those gym socks because he sometimes lived out of his car.

  “You’re a true musical artist,” his uncle had once argued, “when you’re forced to sleep with your feet on the dash. Feel me?”

  Jason jumped into his shoes and trod outside.

  Jason loved Uncle Mike. He told solid but beautiful lies, like about the time he played guitar for Justin Bieber.

  “The boy’s got decent pipes,” he’d said as he fingered an air guitar, then burst into a solo that had made him close his eyes. “Generous, too,” he’d added as he came out of his exhausting riff. “He once flew me and a buddy of mine to Hawaii, just because.”

  “You’re making it up,” Jason had laughed at the time.

  Uncle Mike had just offered a smile and let his arms fall to his sides. He’d admitted he had never really played for Bieber, nor did he play guitar on one of his CDs as he’d once bragged. But he had recorded a CD back in 2008. At the time he’d been the lead guitarist with a group called Los Blue Chones. But his guitar playing was sketchy and full of errors. One night, he’d been asked to step away from the limelight and let someone else replace him as lead guitarist. But he realized his mistake when shortly thereafter he’d been asked to leave the band completely, to leave town and move to the country, where he could play his lousy guitar to howling coyotes!

  Today, Uncle Mike needed his nephew’s help. He was standing in front of his car with the hood up. The engine block ticked and the carburetor breathed like Darth Vader.

  “Hey, Uncle,” Jason greeted.

  “Hey, little man,” he greeted in return. They bumped fists.

  “What’s what, Unc?” Jason asked. He stared at the engine compartment and backed away when steam suddenly rose from the radiator.

  “What’s what?” his uncle asked with a smile. “Bad luck on such a nice day.” He lowered the hood. He mumbled about the reliability of American cars—his get-around vehicle was a Ford Tempo that he had picked up from an old lady with blue hair, a bargain at the time, when the odometer had read only seventeen thousand miles. But for his uncle, the car drove as if it had seventeen million miles—it would chug along for three miles, roll to a stop, shiver, heave up toxic-smelling smoke, and after a few minutes start again. It took a long time to get anywhere.

  Uncle Mike wiped his hands on his jeans, looked up and down the block as if there was a better place to go, then turned to Jason. He smiled and said, “Let’s do lunch.” They went into the house.

  Lunch was a sandwich with a monstrous pile of chips, plus tomato juice, courtesy of Jason’s mom, who sat with them in the kitchen. Always on a diet, she was drinking tea flavored with artificial sweetener.

  “Mike, you got to get a regular job,” she told him. She stirred her tea and looked at the weak brew. “You’re not getting any younger.”

  “Nah, I can’t do that. I’m an artist. We don’t work.” He winked at Jason. He brought the sandwich to his face, and bit o
ff a mighty chunk.

  “I’m serious. You got nothing—no job, no house. Really, you look like a mess.”

  He chewed and chewed before he countered, “Who needs a house when you got the loving temple of music?” He raised his arms into a guitar position and did a riff.

  “You’re thirty-four. It’s time you settled down.”

  “In music, at my age is when you get started. And anyway, I’m thirty-three. My birthday is next month and don’t you forget it, Sis. Maybe you can make me a spice cake.” He chuckled, sipped his tomato juice, and said, “Hey, Jason, wasn’t your birthday last week?” He picked up another chip, the last whole one. The others on the plate were flakes. “You have fun?”

  Yeah, right! He had turned twelve, and been spanked playfully that number of times—in front of two friends who had come like starving dogs just to eat cake! His birthday presents included a backpack and a packet of gym socks, plus forty dollars. Unfortunately, he had to use the forty dollars to pay for insurance to play on the basketball team. Jason felt that it was a rip-off—insurance for what? How was he going to get hurt if he never got to play?

  “Yeah, I did,” Jason answered and stuck a hand inside the empty potato chip bag. When he licked his fingers, he was able to glue a few flakes to his fingertips and savor the salt.

  Uncle Mike swallowed the last whole chip, cleared his throat, and said as he stood up, “I got a present for you.” He pulled out of his pocket what Jason thought at first might be a ticket to a concert. But he was wrong. It was a lottery ticket.

  “You might be the big winner,” Uncle Mike said. “We can go to Hawaii.”

  “That would be cool. I could miss school. We could eat shrimp on the beach and wrestle a shark!”

  Jason’s mother interrupted their plans. “In your dreams, son. That’s not about to happen, and, Mike, I don’t want to you put any silly ideas in his head. He’s already silly enough.” She stood up and gathered the plates.

  Jason thumbed the lottery ticket. Although he was antsy to see if he was an instant winner, he put the lottery ticket in his back pocket. He would scratch off the silver-colored squares when he saw his friend, Blake—it would give them something to be excited about at a time in their lives when all they had to look forward to was lunch and dinner. He got up, scooting the chair back noisily.

  “Hey, dude, you want to hear my new song? I almost got the chords down.”

  Jason had heard his uncle play before in Los Blue Chones, and before that in six other bands, including one that toured valley towns. His uncle, Jason knew, played air guitar better than a real guitar. He sang a little better than a frog. Still, he looked like a musician, unkempt in appearance—was that a dirt ring on his neck? But Jason had somewhere to go. He had made plans to shoot hoop with his friend Blake.

  “Ah, Unc, I’m sorry but I got to hook up with a friend.” Jason could see that indeed the dark circle around his uncle’s neck was dirt. Was he living out of his car again? Sleeping on a length of cardboard? Was he one of the best customers at the Mission Rescue Center in West Fresno? He sort of felt sorry for him.

  “A girl?” his uncle asked, lifting his eyebrows.

  “Nah, basketball practice,” Jason answered. He raised his hands, feigned right and shot a pretend basket just above the kitchen clock. Even pretending, Jason knew he had missed.

  * * *

  Blake had been his buddy since second grade. They were alike—decent grades, nice parents, older sisters in college, and pets buried in the backyard. Jason’s dead pet was Monster, a Chihuahua. Monster had been a barker, and was responsible for at least three cops trudging up the steps to complain about the noise at all hours of the day. Blake’s dog, Little Dude, had been a Saint Bernard, a dog so heavy and thick with fur that he could warm a small town. His dog succumbed to a bad heart.

  The boys met at the playground, approaching each other in their hoodies. Each had his hands in the pouch in front from the cold.

  “Did you bring the rock?” Blake asked.

  “Dude, you were supposed to,” Jason replied. His breath was fist-shaped as it hung briefly in front of his face before it broke apart.

  The two stood on the court, under a bent rim without a net. Jason sighed and shook his head. “This is stupid.”

  “What are we going to do?” He breathed into his hands to warm them up.

  The answer was walking toward them. Coming in their direction were smaller boys—fourth-graders, Jason judged, as they were stupidly eating cold Popsicles on a cold day. In this weather, he figured, they should be stuffing their mouths with candy bars. One of the boys had a basketball under his arm.

  “Hey, you guys wanna play?” Jason hollered.

  The two younger boys looked at each other and then back at Jason and Blake. They shrugged their shoulders, said, “OK,” and finished their Popsicles, the stains like vampire blood at the corners of their mouths.

  “You two against us two,” Blake suggested as the one with the ball bounced it to him. Blake took the ball and tossed it to Jason, who examined it: it was a cheap Wilson, nearly bald from too much street play.

  “You guys take out,” Jason suggested, bouncing the ball to the smallest kid. He couldn’t help but think that since the boys were just little kids, he and Blake were going to spank them good.

  “That’s nice of you,” the larger of the two boys said. He flicked the Popsicle stick that had been jammed in the corner of his mouth onto the ground.

  Jason didn’t like the boy’s tone. He had been planning to show the kids a little mercy but now he’d changed his mind!

  Suddenly, the game was more than a playground game; it was a war. Plus, he didn’t like the kid wearing a Lakers jersey. Jason was a Warriors fan, in spite of the fact that the Warriors hadn’t gone anywhere since he was born.

  “Check the ball,” Blake said.

  The smaller of the two boys bounced it sharply to Blake, who spun it in his hands, and bounced it back. The game began and then it ended. Jason and Blake got thrashed, 24-15, and were on the way to getting thrashed a second time when Jason twisted his ankle on a drive to the basket.

  “Ow!” Jason yelled and dropped to the ground. His jaw opened, and his eyes closed as they squeezed out tears.

  The three of them watched Jason roll on the ground, clutching his ankle.

  “Does it hurt?” one of the boys asked innocently.

  “Nah, my friend is play acting,” Blake snapped. “You tripped him!”

  “I didn’t trip him,” the boy in the Lakers jersey answered. “He just fell.”

  Jason sat up, both hands still around his ankle. He took one hand and wiped away his tears. He wiped his nose, too, and wiped a string of snot on his pants.

  The younger boys looked at each other.

  “We got to go,” the bigger of the two said.

  They walked away, pulling candy bars from their pockets. Neither looked back or said he was sorry.

  “You should ice it,” Blake said as he helped his friend to his feet.

  “It’s not that bad.” Jason took a step, then another step. He was able to walk on his own, but slowly. He rolled up his pant leg and examined the swelling. When he touched it, it was hot. “I’ll be OK in a little bit.”

  Blake bent down and picked up something that had fallen from Jason’s pocket. “What’s this?” He turned it over in his hand.

  Through his watery eyes, Jason saw that Blake was holding the lottery ticket. “A gift from my Uncle Mike,” he answered. “Dang, my ankle hella hurts.”

  “Cool,” Blake said. “My aunt won $200 once. Ain’t you going to scratch it?”

  Jason hobbled a few steps and said through gritted teeth, “You do it,” before he proceeded to dance, hip-hop style, on one leg. He could feel the pain begin to recede to wherever pain went when it was all over.

  Blake scratched at the silver squares. He stared at the small card.

  “Like, wow,” Blake muttered. “Dude, you, like, won!”

 
But Jason didn’t hear him—he was still hobbling on one leg and thinking that maybe the basketball insurance he’d been forced to buy would cover his sprained ankle, if, in fact, it was sprained. After all, he reasoned, he was playing basketball.

  “What?” Jason asked.

  “You won!” Blake held the ticket out and Jason jumped toward his friend—he was so pumped that the pain in his ankle almost disappeared. He took the ticket and read: Instant Winner: $3,700. It took a long time to register, but once he did he saw himself in the front row of a Warriors game with buddy Blake, with his mother and father, with Uncle Mike, with—what the heck—the whole school basketball team. And all the overpriced sodas were on him!

  Chapter Two

  “Boy-o-boy,” Jason’s father chanted from his La-Z-Boy recliner. He was staring down at the lottery ticket, his hands trembling like large brown leaves. His lips, chapped from his job as a foreman on a roofing crew, muttered, “Son, that’s a lot of money.” He whistled through the noticeable gap between his front teeth. “Boy-o-boy,” he sang again, his face lit by the glow of the muted television.

  “Like, yeah, Dad,” remarked Jason, who was on the couch gobbling up a rolled-up tortilla smeared with peanut butter. “Like you and me and mom and sis are going to Cancun.” At first, he’d thought of taking his basketball team to see the Warriors play, but he discarded that idea—the team was pitiful. Anyway, he figured that family should come first, so he had settled on a vacation. “You been to Cancun?”

  His father wagged his head and held out the lottery ticket to Jason, who got up and retrieved it. His dad said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “What? Cancun? You got to be kidding! The water is really blue and they got these killer snow cones!” Jason licked his fingers and considered firing up another tortilla, but wanted to hear his father’s opinion about how they could splurge big time if Cancun was out of the question. He had never had $3,700. He felt invincible. True, his ankle hurt from the spill on the basketball court, but what of it? It was getting better by the minute. He pasted a smile to his face. He recalled how, hurt ankle and all, he’d jumped around like a rabbit when he found out that Blake wasn’t messing with him. He had hit the jackpot!