Blizzard Ball (11 page)

Carlos, a friend of Alita’s mother, was aware of her struggle in the migrant camp as a single parent. She would often flee with Alita to the city in search of other work but, her pension for bad company put Alita in the middle of abusive relationships. Carlos recognizing the unsafe environment convinced Alita’s mother to let the little girl stay with his family year round and attend the local school.

“Alita!” Chantico, a pear-shaped woman, wrapped her in a smothering hug. “Carlos, it’s Alita,” she yelled into the kitchen.

“Look at you!” Carlos emerged from the kitchen flapping an empty shirtsleeve pinned at the shoulder. “You’re skin and bones.” He eyed her backside. “Come sit. First you eat, then we talk.”

Alita slid into a booth near the window. Concerned about her dog, she rubbed off a patch of frost from the glass. She spotted the Camry with the dog’s nose protruding through the cracked right rear window. Before she could open a menu, Chantico dropped juevos rancheros, tortillas, and a pot of coffee on the table. Alita tucked a loose strand of hair back into her barrette for an unobstructed view of the breakfast at hand. The smell of familiar food suddenly released an appetite that had been bound up in stress the past two days.

Carlos stripped off his apron, pulled into the booth, and watched her eat.

Alita set down her fork and looked around to make sure Chantico was out of hearing range. Carlos’s wife was the town crier. She once had seen the face of Jesus in a taco salad on Good Friday and called everybody she knew plus the local newspaper. People stood in line for hours to see salsa bleeding from the shredded cheese crown of thorns. No telling what she would do if she got a whiff of the BlizzardBall tickets Alita was sitting on. Plus, gambling and Chantico struck a raw nerve at the restaurant. Every Tuesday she had hopped on the Indian casino bus that rolled through town scooping up the locals and transporting them out to Jackpot Junction. The ferocious appetite of the slots, with little appreciation for pay out, left Chantico a dejected passenger on the bus, waiting many hours for the return trip home. To extend her playing time she began skimming the restaurant till. Carlos quickly caught on and forbade her to get on the bus, if it ever rolled through town again. Seems the bus avoided Albert Lea after having mysteriously suffered a series of flat tires.

“I got trouble, Carlos.”

“Of course you do. Why else would you show up unannounced in the dead of winter? You need money?” Carlos raised his hand, palm up, in a gesture of giving. “Just ask. No problem. Business is okay. Not great, but okay.”

“No, not money.” Maybe it was the endless cup of coffee, or the lack of sleep, but Alita felt more like a witness to events than a teller of her own story. She spilled the details of the stolen tickets, the accident with the Irish intruder, the reported death of the convenience store operator, the telephone threat, and finally, her flight to Albert Lea.

“Do you think the jackpot is among the tickets?” Carlos asked.

“There was a computer printout in one of the FedEx boxes with the winning ticket listed.”

“Then it must be there.” Carlos adeptly opened a sugar pack with one hand and poured the crystals into his coffee.

“I don’t know, I haven’t found it. The tickets have had a pretty rough go of it. Some were destroyed in the shooting with the Irishman, some blew out the door after I hit the deer, and I got a phone message from Rafie—apparently he and Eduardo kept some of the tickets and were cashing them in. The call got cut off. I don’t know how much the tickets were worth or where they’re at.”

“Not good. This is big money.” Carlos’s face became a stern mask. “There will be more people coming, very angry people. Are you asking for my help?

Alita knew firsthand of Carlos’s generosity but was also aware he could be brutally swift in his response to threats to his family and friends. “I don’t want to put this on you.” Alita pressed a flat palm into her forehead. “But I just don’t know what to do!”

“There’s only one thing to do! Give them back.”

“Yes, of course, but without the winner?”

“I know someone who can help.”

“Who?”

Carlos turned over a Dos Equis cardboard drink coaster,

penned a name along with directions, and handed it to her. “But first, we fix the headlight.”

The road from Albert Lea rolled past a hillside where a hardwood stand of maple, oak, and ash once stood. Wind turbines on towering columns waved their hypnotic arms. Soybeans for plastic, corn to ethanol. Doesn’t anybody grow food anymore? Alita juggled the handwritten map with Carlos’s directions to Brian Hutton’s place.

Brian had hung out at Carlos’s restaurant during high school. He was a year older than Alita. She remembered him as a sensitive boy, out of step with her macho culture and that of the roughneck farm kids in the area. They chatted and flirted and hung out one summer. She’d had a crush on him, but the prospect of a local boy hooking up with a migrant girl was daunting at best.

Carlos had said Brian went on to the Art Institute in Minneapolis and eventually on to New York. He worked there as an illustrator for a marquee advertising agency and was on the promotion fast track. But the New York grind and living in a $3,500 shoebox apartment with no green space in sight burned him out. A nervous breakdown of sorts sent him back to Albert Lea. “He pretty much lived at the restaurant drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Kid was in bad shape until he started back into the art work,” Carlos had said, pointing toward a series of vegetable paintings—avocados, chili peppers, tomatoes—on the restaurant wall. “Get lots of compliments on ’em.”

Nine miles from town, she spotted the small Windy Hill Studio sign. The driveway was an icy chute with snowbanks on both sides. Alita held to the brakes and bounced the car along like a bobsled driver, at last spilling out into a farmstead clearing. Dragon-tooth icicles hung from the eaves of a white two-story clapboard house. Beyond the house sat a big red barn with a gambrel roof and a haymow door in the gable. Next to it stood a stone silo bound with iron hoops. Stubby cornstalk bristles stuck out of the frozen fields like porcupine quills. On the horizon, giant white pines were knit together in an impenetrable windrow.

Alita’s dog barked enthusiastically as a tall, loose-hinged man with a ponytail sticking out of a leather newsboy cap approached the Camry. The man’s sad eyes, straight thin nose, and soft beard reminded her of DaVinci’s Christ at the Last Supper. A puff of snow powdered Alita’s face as she lowered the car window. “Brian?”

“Hey, well, you’ve changed too.” Brian revealed a sweet, slightly gap-toothed smile through his moustache.

“Thought Chicanos were invisible in white-bread country,” Alita taunted.

“We’ll, you’re certainly in focus now,” Brian said, opening the car door. Alita’s glossy dark hair was pulled back over a perfectly round head and held by a silver barrette. The furry collar of a short-waisted jacket hugged her neck. Her skirt had hiked up to mid-thigh. Brian followed the line of her slender leg down to an ankle bracelet and a pair of high-heeled shoes, all too inappropriate for the weather. Brian extended a hand to steady her out of the car.

“I’ve got it,” Alita said, exiting the car on her own, eager to understand the nature of the promised help.

“Let the dog play,” Brian said. “I’ve got some coffee on. Carlos warned me you were on the way.”

The front room was bare of furnishings, with the exception of a braided rug set on a polished pine-plank floor. Overhead track lighting trained upon the artwork gave the space the feel of a serious gallery. Alita sidestepped slowly, taking in the compositions. The big brown eyes of a Jersey cow upon a stretched oil canvas followed her around the room. She studied a pen-and-ink drawing of an old Mexican couple bent at the waist picking berries, and she could feel the heat and hear the buzz of flies. A floral watercolor still-life took her on a wondrous botanical journey.

“Do you actually sell any paintings? They’re beautiful, of course.” Alita accepted the cup of coffee from Brian. “It’s just that this isn’t what you’d call a high-traffic area.”

“Visitors in the winter are just about nonexistent, but I am on the map as part of the summer community art crawl. I sell a few pieces, but most of my work is sold over the Internet. I have a niche following from the East Coast. City dwellers in need of a nature fix.”

“Do you live alone?” Alita said, somewhat cautious in the remote setting.

“Yep, just me and the barn cat,” he said. “This was my folks’ place. They passed on and left it to me. I rent the land out, fixed the barn up for a studio. Would you like to see it?”

Alita face scrunched into a question. “I’m a bit confused,” she said. “Carlos said you might be able to assist me. But unless you can paint me out of my situation, there must be some mistake.”

The phone rang. Brian held up the “one moment” finger and disappeared. Alita wandered out of the gallery room in a self-guided tour of the farm house. The study was crammed with art books wedged into shelves and piled on top of the upright piano. In the dining room, a layer of dust coated a long oak-grained table. A matching hutch held a collection of spoons and rose-colored Depression glass mixed in with fine china. Alita paused to examine family photos set in oval frames with bubble glass. She could feel the haunting presence of Brian’s parents, as though they refused to leave. All she had of her mother was a couple of faded snapshots. The thought of the small black-and-white images with the serrated borders made her feel sad. She deserved better.

A faint smell of lemon soap mixed with fresh-brewed coffee drew her to the kitchen. It was clean without being tidy. Dishes were stacked on open shelves.

A gun rack filled with rifles and boxes of ammo near the back door caught Alita by surprise. The memory of the Irishman’s shotgun death filled her with a rush of fear. She took a hurried step back and stumbled on a cat dish, broadcasting kibbles across the linoleum floor. “Damn!” Alita dropped to her knees to gather up the cat chow and came in contact with Brian’s shoes. “Aah!” She gave a startled gasp.

“How about I let the cat in to clean this up.” Brian extended a hand, pulling Alita to her feet.

“I’m sorry and clumsy. Your guns frightened me. I’m really on edge.”

“The guns came with the house.” Brian gave Alita’s forearm a soft, reassuring stroke and handed her a pair of Sorel boots. “They were my mom’s. The path to the barn is a little snowed in.”

The winter day quickly gave way to a bitter cold night. A light snow danced and whirled in the golden yard light. Brian slid open the barn door entrance into the studio. The air was heavy with the intoxicating smells of paint, linseed oil, and thinners. Easels of various sizes cradled works in progress. Artist’s paints in small jars and tubes in every imaginable color were neatly arranged by value, along with brushes and colored pencils. Alita examined a tube of Blockx Cerulean Blue oil paint and made a nervous clucking sound with her tongue.

Brian, sensing her growing impatience, pointed at the ceiling and pulled on a dangling chain. A folding stairway dropped down. He motioned Alita to follow. She stood frozen in place, her neck craned toward the opening in the ceiling.

“I can’t go up there. I have a thing with heights.”

“Look, just start up one step at a time, I’ll be right behind you, no way will I let you fall. It’s safe.”

They ascended into the buzz and glow of electronic equipment. Brian flipped on an overhead light. Computers, a scanner, a copy machine, a light table, photographic equipment, an HP six-color security card printer, rolls of paper stock, plastic sheeting, and software made up a small print operation. Wire cable snaked off the floor and crisscrossed the ceiling.

Alita moved from station to station, stopping at a table with stacks of identification documents. She thumbed through Permanent Resident cards, Social Security blanks, voter registration cards, and passport-sized photos.

“So you’re a counterfeiter?”

“I like to think of it more as a ‘new life enterprise,’” he said. “At least that’s what it’s become for me and hopefully for the clients.”

“You on some religious trip?”

“Maybe, if you want to call Carlos’s restaurant a church.” Brian’s voice was soft and steady. “I chased my dream and got run over by it. When I came back to Albert Lea, I was steeped in depression and self-pity. I hung out at the restaurant; no Wi-Fi, no New York Times or expensive latte, just Carlos, Chantico, their kids, the regulars,” he said. “Pure joy. That one-armed man exudes more happiness than the richest people I knew in Manhattan, and he’s had the toughest journey. I hung out in that light and got stronger, got my life back, and learned something about the migrant workers, the struggle, the abuse.” Brian waved a hand toward the equipment. “So,” he said. “I thought I’d help.”

“Touching, but I have my citizenship papers,” Alita said, her voice taut as piano string.

Brian let her confusion hang in the air. “The paper I have for you,” he said as he pulled a case of fifty-pound offset paper from a shelf and plunked it on a work table, “will be printed with a pink pantograph of wildlife and the BlizzardBall Lottery logo, then thermal-imaged with select lottery ticket numbers and a retailer bar code.” Without looking at her, he sat down at a computer, giving some time for the plan to sink in and Alita’s sarcasm to fade.

Alita heaved a sigh and felt the tears break from her eyes. She was emotionally and physically exhausted. “They’re in the car,” was all she could muster by way of an apology, and she headed cautiously down the stairs to retrieve the bags of lottery tickets and the computer printout.

Brian began an immediate inventory of tickets and set the replication process in motion. He scanned the ticket numbers off the computer sheet into a database and directed Alita to sort the winning tickets by prize value.

“Sure would love to know the logic behind these picks. Somebody knew what they were doing. There are thousands of winning tickets listed,” Brian said, studying the highly focused numeric pattern of the ticket number combinations. “You’re sure the Pick Six winner is not somewhere in those bags? It’s definitely part of this batch of tickets.”