Lottery (22 page)

“I just know I’m not.” She looks at Keith like she expects him to help.

“Hey, don’t look at me. He’s got a point. I have no idea what my number is. Shit! I let myself be drafted. I could very well be retarded. ” Keith bends down to light another smoke.

Marleen writes down everything I say and some other things that I don’t. I look over her shoulder at her notebook.

Keith knows I am still mad and mouths
I’m sorry.

Even though Keith seems disappointed that Marleen likes girls, they get along pretty well. They are laughing and drinking. Marleen keeps a cooler full of beer in the bed of her truck. They are bottles, not cans. She offers one to me.

“Nope, Perry doesn’t drink any alcohol at all.
Nada!
He’s an honest-to-God teetotaler,” Keith says.

That means I do not drink beer.

“Look at that quad cab, Per! With duallys too!” He points to where Marleen’s green truck is parked. “God, I love a good truck!” Keith says.

“So do I!” agrees Marleen, and she takes another swig of beer.

It does not look like she will be leaving anytime soon. My stomach is growling like Gigi. It is almost dinnertime. Keith looks like he has forgotten all about giving Marleen the Holsted’s pen and key chain or anything about work. I think hard about what to tell her next so she will leave.

“That guy in prison. His number was only sixty-nine,” I say.

“Who are you talking about?” Marleen stops writing and looks up.

“Russell. His name was Russell,” I say. “His friends probably called him Rusty for short. That’s what Keith and I decided.”

“Russell James Cook. That was his name. There are more of them. A bunch more. Look them up in your paper,” Keith told her. “It happens a lot. Especially in Texas.”

“What do you mean?”

While Keith explained about Rusty to Marleen, I remember back to when he and I first found out about it. Ten years ago. He was reading the paper to me at work. He thought I would be interested to hear about Russell.

“Hey, Per! Look at this. Here’s a guy on death row. His IQ is sixty-nine. He won’t admit to being retarded. If he did, he’d probably just get life in prison. Instead, he’s going to fry. What do you think about that?” Keith thought it was stupid and told me so. Russell lived in Texas. If you do murder in Texas, you fry.

“I can’t understand why a guy would go to prison and rather be on death row than admit he’s retarded!” he said.

Marleen is now saying the same thing that Keith said.

“I don’t understand why he would do that,” she says. “I mean he would be executed, right?”

People can be dumb sometimes.

“Russell would rather die than say he was retarded and so would I.”

The sound of my voice flies up to
Diamond Girl
’s sails as I talk to Keith and Marleen.

I still remember the headlines. It made the front page of the newspaper every day for two weeks. And then they killed him.

35

People would ask Gram questions.

Gram would get angry. “So you’d kill him just because he’s slow? You’d do that?”

My first IQ number test was not good. It came out a bad number and both Gram and Gramp were upset. Gram asked me about it and I told her. Two things. First, I was scared. I thought I was in trouble. And second I had to pee really, really bad. I was worried that I would wet my pants and the other kids would laugh. I could not concentrate. Concentrate means do your best job. I could not do my best job. When my IQ number was not good, I could not be in class with Kenny and the other kids. Gram helped me with my homework.

“You’re slow, Perry! There’s not a goddamned thing wrong with you that time won’t fix.” When Gram clicked her tongue this time, it sounded like the sprinkler at school. She tried to make my teacher give me the number test again, but she said no.

The IQ score will not change appreciably from one test to another. There’s a range of about ten percent.
My teacher did not want to give me another test.

Gram was mad. “You mean to tell me you could be wrong? His test could be ten points higher?”

“That is unlikely.” People say this when they are wrong and they don’t want to argue anymore.

It was different with my next teacher, Miss Elk. She helped me take a new number test. She told me I could be anything I wanted. She said if I did not want to be retarded, then I did not have to be. I stayed after school and practiced doing tests until I was not scared. She told me how important IQ number tests are. I tried hard to do my best job. My number came out 76. It was bigger than 75. It was a good number, Gram said. The best number, and she and Gramp cheered.

We were happy, but the school did not care. They said the second test did not count, and took me out of Miss Elk’s class and put me in
inclusion
. I cried every day. Then Gram said I didn’t have to go to school anymore.

I told this to Keith when he asked. We talked about lots of things. About school. About what I like to eat. About sailing. He is my friend. Friends want to know all about you.

“Gram was a good teacher. She didn’t mind that I was slow, but lots of people do.” I name each one. I know them all by heart.

“First, there is the bus driver. He gets cranky if you do not get your bus pass out fast enough or have the right change. Then there is the grocery store lady at checkout in the fifteen-things-or-less line.” I have to take deep breaths because it is hard to talk about being slow.

“If you are in that line and lose track of how many things you have, maybe you have extra milks or orange juice, and people think you are retarded, they stare at you and say mean things. If you have twenty things and go in the fifteen-things-or-less line and you are in a suit and talking on your cell phone and look very important, then you are just rude. That is okay. It is better to be rude than retarded,” I tell him.

I explain things to Keith that he did not know. He did not know there are many numbers that mean retarded. Retarded is lower than 70 or it can be lower than 75.

But it is not 76. It is never 76.

36

I like the walk to Marina Handy Mart. It calms me down. I can think. Sometimes I hum. There is a sidewalk the whole way and it is easy to get to anytime of the day or night. It is close to the water. I sometimes go there to get Chef Boyardee ravioli for dinner. Ravioli are little meat pieces in dough covered with spaghetti sauce. They taste good, are easy to fix, and are better than SpaghettiOs. You just put them in a pan and heat them up until you see little tiny bubbles. It is important to not look too close because they explode and hit your face and hurt. Kind of like backwards pimples. When I walk in the Marina Handy Mart door, the bell tinkles.

“Hey, Cherry!” I call.

Cherry can make anybody feel better. She is so pretty. I want to ask her if she is my girlfriend today, but I stop when I see her. Something is very wrong. She is slumped behind the cash counter crying. I can tell because her eyes are red and there is snot hanging from her nose ring. She has a Kleenex and is blowing, which is good.

“Hey, Perry.” When she wipes her face, I can see she has purple and blue all around one eye and a long scrape on her cheek. It looks like my arm after I got beat up.

“Cherry. Wow! Did you get in an accident?” Maybe she was in a car wreck. If she was in a car wreck, she would be lucky to be alive. Car wrecks can be very bad. You can die in a car wreck.

“No. Well. Yeah. Yeah, I guess you could say that.” She blows her nose again and sounds like a duck, or maybe a goose like at Woodland Park Zoo. “My life is a car wreck,” and she starts crying again hard.

“Please don’t cry, Cherry.” I pat her hand and her shoulder. She wipes her nose.

Boyfriends help girlfriends when they are in trouble but I do not know what to do.

I decide to buy lunch sandwiches from Marina Handy Mart instead of Gilly’s so I can talk to Cherry longer. Cherry walks with me to the back and helps me find the right sandwiches.

“Manny likes cheese. Do you have cheese?” I know they don’t have fake crab. They have tuna, which is okay. I like tuna. When I am done choosing sandwiches Cherry looks a little happier except for her black eye. She touches my hand when she gives me back my change.

“Thanks, Perry,” she says. “Thanks a lot.”

I walk back to work and wonder what kind of accident she had.

Keith is out of Gary’s office and standing talking to a customer when I carry the lunches into the back room. Manny is leaning against the wall reading the paper.

“Marina Handy Mart? I hate their sandwiches,” Manny complains. He always complains about Marina Handy Mart sandwiches, but he always eats his, even the crusts.

I can hear a man talking to Keith through the office door. His voice is loud and flat. Like the announcer guy on TV. I stand by the opening. I want to tell Keith about his sandwich, but I do not want to interrupt. It is not polite.

“So you know him?” the man says. He rolls an empty cart back and forth over the floor. The wheels go THWUNK. THWUNK. I wonder who the man is talking about.

“Yeah,” says Keith, “I know him.”

“Are you good friends?” The man looks over at me, then back at his cart, and then at Keith. He looks like Manny except he has silver hair and bigger feet.

“Yeah, we’ve known each other for a long time.” Keith waves me over.

“It must be nice to have a friend who’s a millionaire,” the man says.

I get it. They are talking about me. I am embarrassed.

“Here, meet Perry Crandall. Perry, this is Ernie. Ernie, Perry.” Keith puts a hand on my shoulder.

“Nice to meet you, Ernie.” I hold out my hand.

Ernie looks from Keith to me. “Interesting. So . . . are you sharing your winnings with your family and friends?”

“Yeah, sure,” I say. Sharing is a good idea and it is a nice thing to do.

Keith sweeps the air with his hand. “Hey, he does what he wants.”

“I bet he does, I bet he does. Lucky you.” Ernie gives a sharp barking laugh. He walks to the door and shoves the cart with one hand. It crashes into the wall and bounces back.

“Hot damn!” says Keith. “Not only do people get excited to meet a lottery winner, they get excited to meet the friend of one. And jealous too.” He follows me into the back room to get his sandwich.

That is another thing. People are jealous of the lottery.

I did not buy Keith a beer. I only bought Cokes, but he did not seem to notice.

When I take a bite of my sandwich I remember to tell Keith something.

“Cherry has a black eye and scratched cheek,” I say.

“What? How?” Keith sits straight up.

“An accident,” I answer.

“Shit! God
damn
him!” Keith growls. He rips his sandwich apart and shoves it into the trash. “I’ll be back!”

He sounds like Terminator. That is cool. I get up to follow. Maybe Keith has diarrhea. People leave a place real quick when they have the trots.

“Keith, you need Pepto-Bismol?” I ask. “I got Pepto-Bismol.”

But he does not say a word. He does not go into the bathroom.

Instead, he grabs his jacket off the wall and rushes out the front door.

37

When a dad beats up his daughter, he does not necessarily go to jail. But when a guy beats a dad up for beating up his daughter, they both go to jail. It is very confusing. A person only gets to make one phone call when they are arrested. I learned this from Keith. He was able to make one right away because Officer Ray Mallory recognized him at the station. Keith called me.

“I need to be bailed out. You need to pick me up. Yo’s over at Marina Handy Mart,” Keith says.

“I do not have a driver’s license,” I tell him.

“I know that. Cherry should be on her way. I need five hundred bucks. Bring your checkbook.”

Bail can be what you do to water that gets in your boat or it can be money to get out of jail. After I hang up the phone, there is a knock at my door. It is Cherry carrying a backpack.

“Perry. We have to get Keith out of jail.” She is panting from running up my stairs.

“I know. He called me,” I tell her. “I wonder what jail is like. It would be scary. I wonder if Keith is scared.”

“Nah! I don’t think Keith is scared of anything,” she says.

I am surprised Cherry knows where I live, but then I remember the time I got hurt at her store and she helped Keith bring me home. Her shirt is ripped on the bottom and her jeans drag on the floor. Her stomach hangs over her belt. It looks soft and white. There is a gold ring hooked through her belly button. She is so beautiful I can only just stare into her eyes. They are brown, red, and wet.

“I need to take Keith some money for bail,” I say.

“I can drive. We can take Yo. Keith threw his keys to me just before the cops took him.” Cherry sniffs and wipes her eyes with her sleeve. I think she should use a Kleenex because her black makeup is all over her shirt.

“I need someplace to stay,” she says. “I can’t go back home now. I can never go back.” She takes a breath like it is hard for her to talk. “I could only think of you or Keith. I have no one else I can ask. There is no one else.” She says this low, soft, and really fast. Her face is pointed down like she is sad, or like she expects me to say no.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, you can stay here.”

Why would anyone say no, I wonder. I could never say no to Cherry.

She is shorter than me and looks like a kitten that needs to be held. Her foot scuffs my floor. Her toenails are painted purple. I think it is too cold to have feet showing through shoes, but Cherry looks like she does not mind.