Bluck

“B-4!”

Suzy anxiously looked down at her spread of four bingo cards that were neatly arranged on the faded and food stained Bingo Hall table. The smell of half burnt coffee and something made out of bacon hung heavy in the air.

“Nothing again..shit,” she muttered to herself. “Four cards played over three hours and nothing.”

Suzy sighed impatiently. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her last lottery ticket. During the brief intermission between games, Suzy figured she would try her luck again. She had to win something…some time. She had to!! If she played long enough, and played enough games. She HAD to win...right?!

She fished around in her other coat pocket until she found a quarter. It was the last, lonely remains of her tips after an interminably long day of waiting tables at the Bluck, Nebraska truck stop. Before she started to whittle away at the waxy covering of the lotto ticket, she rubbed her feet. After decades of flitting from one trucker’s table to the next, her 60-year-old feet hurt, a lot. She blew the final bit of waxy dust off the now bare face of her lucky ticket and quickly scoured the numbers for any match. “Not a one…dammit.”

The last bingo game of the night got under way. The monotone voice of Betty Robles rang out the numbers and letters of each scuffed and worn little white ball. Suzy couldn’t believe her luck. Quickly, two of her cards nearly filled with possible combos, horizontal, vertical and even diagonal. Tonight, this final, and biggest jackpot would be hers. She only needed one more number, and this would finally be her lucky day!

“BINGO!!”

“FUCK!!” Suzy blurted as she looked over and saw Chuck jump up smiling as everyone around him groaned. “How the hell does he do that? That’s his third win tonight.” She gathered her bingo cards into a heap of lost hope and frustration. “Well, the night isn’t over yet.” She looked down into her purse and saw her little black book. Its worn, black leather cover felt as soft as an overly used Bible while its yellowing pages were filled with men’s phone numbers she had collected over the decades. Unfortunately, her old lovers were now all old. She had already blotted out half the names of men who had dropped dead or were now in nursing homes. She sighed again, “Can’t even get laid no more.”

Somewhere in the front of the little black book’s neatly penned names was the giant, messy scribble of Chuck Ratz, or as he preferred to call himself the “Bingo King.” The self-proclaimed “Bingo King” had such a long run of unbelievable luck every Thursday night that he was much sought after for any advice he would be willing to dole out to the less fortunate. One night, seemingly a 100 years ago, Suzy unexpectedly came across Chuck at a bar, a half bottle of gin into his Friday night. She took the opportunity to pry Chuck for his lucrative bingo secrets, but all she got was a bad hangover and Chuck scratching his name into her little black book just before he bolted out the hotel room door. Right before he left, he ran back into the room and snatched up his light brown, suede jacket. “Almost forgot my jacket. I love these deep pockets,” he nervously said as he exited the room again. The heavy, metal door slammed shut. Suzy’s skin smelled like Chuck’s body odor and bad sex…she hated that guy.

Suzy decided it was time to go. She buttoned up her coat and slung her purse over her shoulder. It was a damn cold night in Bluck. Everything was covered in ice. She looked up as Chuck collected another $1000. He stuffed it greedily into one of the disproportionately large pockets of his lucky, beige jacket. Hurriedly, he gave vigorous handshakes to the gaggle of balding men around him who all wished they had that thousand bucks in their empty pockets. Chuck rushed out the Bingo Hall’s back door and into the frigid blackness of a Nebraskan winter night.

Suzy was in no mood for the small town chit chat and gossip that ran rough shod at the Bingo Hall’s front door as everyone shuffled out, so she decided to follow Chuck’s lead and go out the back. She pushed her way through the old oak door. As it closed with a weighty thud behind her, she looked down and gasped.

“Holy shit!!” She was shocked.

Suzy couldn’t believe what she was seeing. A dark red line snaked its way from beneath Chuck’s head as it lay oddly twisted on the Bingo Hall’s cement step. His eyes were wide open. He didn’t blink. Suzy dropped to her knees in the snow. She grabbed Chuck’s shoulder and shook him, “Chuck! Chuck! Chuck!” She screamed, trying to will his broken head back together. Chuck didn’t move. Suzy started to cry. She hated the guy, but she didn’t want him dead. She turned to go back into the Bingo Hall for help when she caught site of the plastic, white tops of something very familiar to her. She reached into Chuck’s oversized pocket and pulled out a hand full of fake bingo cards. “That son of a bitch! He was cheatin’ this whole time!” Suzy’s face flushed as a wave of rage blasted its way through her. Chuck had won thousands, probably tens of thousands of dollars at the Bingo Hall over the last 30 years, and it was all a scam. There was never any luck or skill involved, he was just a rotten, scoundrel cheater. Within the city limits of Bluck, Nebraska, there was very little of any value outside of the Bingo Hall’s jackpots. Some of them could be upwards of $5000, and Chuck had won almost all of them for as long as anyone could remember.

Suzy’s tears evaporated into the heat of her anger. She didn’t know what to do. “What else could be in the mysterious depths of Chuck’s cavernous jacket pockets?” She decided to find out. She rummaged through them: first the left one, then the right. At the bottom of each pocket, she discovered huge rolls of cash, tightly wrapped by thick rubber bands that were nearly the same color as his jacket.

Suzy hastily unwound both tightly packed green rolls. There were more hundred dollar bills in her cracked and worn hands than she had ever seen in her life. “There has to be twenty thousand bucks here,” she whispered.

Suzy’s deeply engrained midwestern morality told her she should go get help and turn the money over to Chuck’s family. Except, she knew Chuck didn’t have any family, and the few friends he had, only remained in his orbit in order to get advice on winning bingo jackpots. Suzy slowly tucked the fist fulls of nearly innumerable hundred dollar bills into the most hidden reaches of her purse, right up against her little black notebook. She sighed again, but this sigh was different; there was something of relief in it. Her breath crystalized in the frozen air. She looked down at Chuck, who still stared off into a forever nowhere, his head framed by the fake bingo cards Suzy let fall around him. She stepped over his quickly cooling body and walked down the frozen alley. Each of her footsteps crunched and crackled on the icy ground beneath. Her pace quickened as she started running towards the street lights.