The Winning Ticket

 That son of a bitch brought it on himself. I swear to God he did. I even told Judge  Naugle I wasn’t in the least bit sorry for what I’d done. And if she thought for one second  I’d be spending my time in jail feeling bad about what had happened, she’d be dead wrong.  In fact, I told her I was gonna enjoy having a week off work, cause my nephew, Wayne  Junior, who works up there as a guard, told me the place is fully air-conditioned, and that  I was looking forward to sleeping like a spoiled rich kid at the Ritz. Judge Naugle gave  me an extra two days for that last comment for being what she called flippant and  disrespectful, whatever that means.

 For the last twenty-five years, I’ve driven a dump truck for the Department of  Transport. Now I know that driving a truck aint working down a coal mine, but still, that  amount of time behind the wheel’ll do a real number on you. A quarter century of too  much sitting, too much smoking, and too much fast food and crappy coffee will definitely  change a man, and not in a good way. Whenever I look at myself in the mirror, I hardly  recognize the guy staring back at me. When I got out of the Army, I was in real good  shape. I had a head of hair as thick as a beaver pelt and a reputation for doing a mean half sashay and the kind of do-si-do that set some single women on fire and sent the dance  floor up in flames. Now I’m just a three-time divorcee with a comb-over, a beer belly, a  full set of dentures, and a wicked case of sciatica that makes my ass-cheeks numb and my right foot fall asleep by mid-morning most days. And I know this next piece has got  nothing to do with why I’m so crazy-angry, but the last woman I danced with was my  sister, and that was at Aunt Louise’s funeral. But I don’t want to talk about that right now  on account of how the whole thing ended up. I’m still embarrassed about it, so I’m gonna  get back to telling you how I ended up in jail.

 Lloyd Nesbit and I had worked together for over two decades, thick as thieves, best of  friends. And sometimes, especially during June, July, and August, and even September  these last few years, it gets so hot down here it feels like we’re just filling in the potholes  on the highway to Hades. So, on most Friday afternoons after we get off work, we’d stop  at the 7-Eleven, both put in a couple of bucks, and buy a few cheap chances at what folks  around here like to call the redneck American dream. After that, we’d head over to Big  Richard’s and flush away the taste of all that hot oil and crushed rock with a few cold beers  and spend the rest of the evening looking at women, talking about football, and how  someday, when one of our tickets hit, we’d both quit our jobs and buy swimming pools.

 I think it was two Saturdays ago, Colleen from the depot called me up and asked me  what I’m gonna do with all my money. So I say to Colleen, what money are you talking about? She says your lottery money. Then she tells me Lloyd Nesbit’s been seen spending  all kinds of crazy cash down at Mega-Mart and telling everyone he’d won it playing the  lotto last night. So, I hang up with Colleen, and straight away call Lloyd and ask him just  what in the holy-heck’s going on. And you-know what he told me? He said he had won  the lotto, but the winning numbers were on one of the tickets he’d bought with his own  money. Can you believe that? After all those years of thinking we were a team and talking  about what we were gonna do with our prize money if one of our tickets ever hit—then  one of them does—and all of a sudden he don’t wanna share the winnings. It made me so  mad, I just about shit in my shorts.
 I’m ashamed to say I did not go to church on Sunday or turn up for work on Monday.  Tuesday, it was in the paper just how much he’d won. “Biggest lotto win ever in Sullivan  County”. Just seeing it in print like that made me feel sick to my stomach, so I didn’t go  to work on Wednesday or Thursday either. I didn’t even care if it was the week we were  supposed to resurface all the roads around the courthouse and the police department. I was  so pissed-off, I didn’t think I could control myself if I accidentally-on-purpose bumped  into old Lloyd.

 Friday morning, I woke up feeling all funky and out of sorts with myself. During the  night, I’d had a dreadful dream that the Lord Jesus had abandoned me in my hour of need  and let the Devil take control of my poor, sin-filled soul. So I figured the only way to stop  feeling down in the dumps was to get back to work.

 I arrived at the depot around ten minutes to seven. There was no sign of Lloyd.  Apparently, he’d called-out sick, which, cause it was a Friday, means he’d actually gone  fishing. Anyhow, all the boys were there and asked me if I was doing alright and feeling  okay and all that happy horse shit. Of course, I lied and told them I was fine and there was  nothing to worry about. Supervisor O’Keefe called me into his office and pretty much  asked me the same thing if I was gonna be okay. Like everyone else in town, he’d heard  the news and said he could understand how a fella could get upset about a situation like  that and need time to cool down so as they wouldn’t go’n do something dumb, something  they might regret later. Then he asked me if I was fit to get behind the wheel, and I said,  “Yes, sir, I am”.

 My assignment that day was to be part of the crew re-surfacing the roads leading in  and out of the Donald J. Trump sewage and wastewater treatment plant, right in between  the Transfer Station and the Landfill. After I walked out of supervisor O’Keefe’s office, I  picked up my keys from Lance over in the garage, got my truck loaded up with fourteen  cubic yards of blacktop, and then headed out to the job site. But as I pulled up to the four-way stop sign at the intersection of County Road and McCulloch, instead of taking a left,  like I shoulda-done, old Satan grabbed a hold of the steering wheel and made me turn  right. I was powerless. Dark forces had seized control of me and made me drive that big old dump truck full of smoldering-hot blacktop right over to the S. Daniels Mobile Home Park.

 Lloyd had definitely gone fishing cause his F-150 was nowhere to be seen. So I parked  in the street, climbed down out of the cab, and poked my head over the fence to see what  I could see. And let me tell-ya, what met my eyes near gave me a heart attack. Bang smack  in the middle of Lloyd’s front yard was an ‘Atlantis 5000’ Mega-Mart’s biggest, most  luxurious above-ground inflatable swimming pool. The very same pool we’d both recently  talked about getting if one of our tickets ever hit. And right there, floating around in the  middle of it at 7:45 in the AM was that fat, lazy wife of his, Monica. And you should have  seen her, squeezed into a black and white swimsuit designed for a woman half her age and  weight, and brought to mind that poor old Killer Whale they keep penned up in that fish tank down at Sea World.

 After I hauled myself back up into the cab—madder than a snake try’n to make love  to a garden hose—I slammed the door, put the rig into first gear, dropped the clutch, and  mounted the curb. As I hit second, I smashed through the white vinyl fence around the  Nesbits’ yard like a cane knife cutting through cornbread. I didn’t hear or feel a thing as I  drove clean across Lloyd’s garden gnome collection, cause I was too busy looking at  Monica, thinking, she sure is fast for a fat woman, as she pulled herself out of the pool and  ran screaming into the trailer. As I hit third, I gave the air horn a good, long blast and  ploughed the front-end of the rig right into the sidewall of the pool. I felt like Moses parting  the Red Sea. I’ve got no idea why, and I’ll ask the Lord for forgiveness next time I’m in  church, but as I slammed into that water-filled expression of greed and deceit I screamed “Let my people go!” out the open window of the cab, then I jammed on the brakes, hit the  tailgate-release-lever and emptied all twenty-eight tons of steaming hot blacktop right on  top of what was left of Lloyds Atlantis 5000. After that, I killed the engine, lit a cigarette,  turned up the radio, then sat back and relaxed. Molly Hatchet’s ‘Flirting with Disaster’  boomed through the speakers of the cab while the sounds of approaching sirens floated  through the warm morning air. But like I said right at the beginning, that son of a bitch got  what he deserved. Half of that five-thousand-dollar winning ticket should have been mine.