The "Big Win"

It had been years since “The Big Win”. The publicity, the excitement, they had all long gone. Even the memory of it had been lost on the minds of the youngest of us. Yet, what remained was this world. Cold, dark, and dreary. Do we dare to bring to the forefront of our minds the fact that it could have all turned out differently? This was not really our fault. How could we have known, even suspected, such things would happen? Who among us could have looked at that gift horse in the mouth, assessing any value other than everything? Yet, someone could have. Someone should have.

It began like so many other games of chance. But it appears Faust must have dealt these cards. A casino here, a scratch-off there, the hoofbeat of horses running out of the starting gate, just a lottery. Each wanting something for nothing or as close to that exchange rate as one could get. And of course, the “Big Win” was like no other. Imagine a contestation in which none could lose. Each one a winner. Of course, we had all heard that before, but it seemed to be presented with such sincerity and honesty. He reeled us in like the ancient salesmen of days past who had the perfect elixir of life, poured as it were from Ponce De Leon’s eternal fountain of youth.

I remember the day when I got my own coin. At first, it seemed just a marker in a semblance of gold with the usual “heads” and “tails” for each respective side. But when you cast it, and it landed, twirling upon the floor or the table or wherever you thought to place it as it spun, it became something else indeed. On the one side, gradually coming in focus, out of the shadow of the androgyny there before was your own smiling visage. On the other, something you had dared not dream. Of course, you had but only in the darkest, deepest recesses of your mind. It could be forbidden desire or an object beyond your wealth. It was different for everyone. I would tell you what mine revealed, but that is so irrelevant now, after all this.

And so, we had been told, if you witnessed such a marvelous transformation, you were a winner. You had only to come to the town square and claim your prize. We came, yes, we did. As fast as our legs or cars or bikes or whatever conveyance could take us. I thought I had beat the rush, but when I arrived, I saw there the whole of the town. All my neighbors and friends, and even those I considered or who considered themselves, rightly or wrongly, my enemies. We all had won the day. Each with the golden coin with our virtual twin on the one side and our “prize” on the other. It was then that we heard his voice. He said “Congratulations! Everyone’s a winner!” And we went about in a celebratory way, anticipating the fulfillment of a promise. How many times I have mused since then on the wisdom of the ancients, “be careful what you wish for.”

It was then that we noticed the fire and the flames issuing from it, alternatively writhing, reaching up for the sky, and then seeming to abate and return to the ground from whence it came. He said to cast the coins unto the fire, and we did so with reckless abandon. I am not sure what we expected at that point. Just coins melting amidst the blaze? I am, however, sure of what we did not expect. For at that moment, the coins while indeed using their singularity and form, began to congeal and combine into a new shape. Initially, it was unrecognizable to all of us but gradually it became familiar. Many of us had been farmers then and so we knew. What stood before us in the middle of the fires was a golden calf, yet not a statue, a living creature.

The head of the calf was such that it spun on an axis with no stopping point as if it had no bones or other physical impediment to its revolution. And then, to our shock and surprise, IT spoke. IT said “Every man has his price. So now you have been purchased with no chance of ransom. You have come face to face with your deepest desire which you worshipped. That desire and that worship is now incarnated in me. You shall serve me unto death. Fail and you shall taste of the fires that forged me, which you yourself kindled.” And so did the Golden Calf take his seat on the throne and next to it, stood the man who had offered to us the Big Win. I could not then read whether it was a smile of accomplishment or a smirk of disdain that resting upon his face.

And so began our wretched toil, day in and day out. Each house compelled to present its offering. The greatest quantity of food, the finest of the wine, the best of the wood, all must be gathered and reared by us and taken to the appointed place, at the appointed time, to be presented to Them. You wonder why we lack courage. Surely one must stand amongst the many against a calf. There were those brave …and dead. Horrid was the casting of them into the still raging fires of the calf’s nativity. The smell of burning flesh, the screams of pain, and the coarse labor of those of us charged with dispensing with the ashes. There is no discrimination here. Rich and poor, “white” and “black”, male and female, adult, and child, these, and other differences which we thought meant so much before are rendered immaterial before THEM. Soon the embers of their immolation blotted out even the light of the sun itself, plunging us into a darkness of environment that matched the state of our hearts.

So how I am left here to tell this tale, as we begin again? We were all toiling in the fields to make our daily quota when a child laborer called out. We sought to silence her immediately, lest she bear the whip or the lash of our affliction. She found, laying in the ground, a small silver locket, shaped in the form of a heart. We thought it particularly a trifling thing in the context of all one could survey in our misery, yet she seemed particularly animated by it. We tarried for a moment more, and then returned to our drudgery.

But this little one, took the locket, and slid it on a chain she wore about her neck. She admired it as she continued her work, periodically rubbing it and noting its external shape and beauty. And that is what I remember most. It shone. As if it somehow had its own autonomous light source, it shone. Amidst the backdrop of so much darkness, it shone and would not be vanquished.

Having donned the locket, she seemed different. She no longer seemed paralyzed with the look of fear we bore. We suspected that she had been somehow changed, but we were to be made certain when the hour came for our presentation. We came before the altar of the Golden Calf and He of the “Big Win” and made our offerings. In the course of time, the family of the girl did come, but when it came her time, she paused. She laid neither gold, nor wheat, nor wine, nor any of the great bounty of the town before it and it was not amused. “Whither the offering that is required, young girl? Do you not understand that your age and your innocence is no salvation from what must be given? Do you wish to taste the fire, I have prepared for such as you, and join those who live among the ashes dispersed?”

Her family was terrified, not wanting the girl to die and her father and mother stepped forward insisting that they would make offering on her behalf. They were declined by the one who sat upon the throne who thundered “Each one has won. Each has offered up themselves and their lusts. Therefore, each must pay their own their own way.” He ordered them taken away and turned his attention again to the resistant child. She said to it, “All that you have has been taken by force, but that which is love is freely given. I have no offering, but I do have a gift for you.” The Calf and He of the “Big Win” seemed both shaken and perplexed by this turn of events, by this offer. He who sat on the throne said “What, pray tell, could you offer me that I do not have, for all I survey is mine?” She took the locket from the chain about her neck and presented it to that one, saying, this is my gift of my heart from my heart to you. Given not as offering, but truly as a gift of love.” The Calf received the locket and had it placed about his neck. It boasted, “Look upon me, subjects. Am I not most beautiful and my power most complete? For here I am a being incarnated of the finest goal now adorned with this locket of silver. What could be more valuable, than silver and gold?”

The moment those words were spoken, the spell broke. The Calf, you see, was our yoke, the bondage we had to our fleshy desires and wishes. Each different for a person, but true in the heart of all. The gold was the price we paid in pursuit of these. Of these was IT composed. And He who presented the “Big Win” was but the father of deception, fed and brought forth by our temptation and our greed. But the gift was not out of self-desire, but a bestowing of love onto another, even one’s enemy. And right before our eyes, the Calf began to cry out, as if in pain. It began to ascend partially into the sky, and then suddenly exploded in a blinding light. There was a silence for a moment and then we began to hear it. A plink here and then another, striking the ground around us. There were gold coins falling from the sky. A chance to rebuild what we had lost. He of the “Big Win” also began to fade. But before disappearing he spoke in anger, stating, “As surely as Men shall seek their luck, I shall remain.”

We heard another voice, new, yet familiar in some way which said “Each of you have won back, by a single act of love and sacrifice your own hearts, as symbolized by the locket. This is the only true “Big Win”. Seek no other.” As we turned and began to reflect on all that we had been through and seen, we noticed the little girl, who had broken the curse. She pointed and said, “Look.” And not far away in the distance we saw three trees, the one in the middle slightly taller, standing side by side in the now beaming sunset. Right in the middle of the tallest tree, where a man’s heart might be, was impaled the locket, still shining.