Winning Big

  The transaction was complete. Lloyd, the erstwhile owner of Lloyd's Custom Desert RV Sales, stood up and congratulated her on her wise decision. Lloyd had already sent out a message for them to come pick up her new home and put it on her "custom" site across wind-blown Highway 83 and a bare two-hundred-yards away. After all, he owned the park across the way, too. This was a small town in the Desert where people knew one another and jobs were scarce. It might be hot but it was surely beautiful--and it was okay to do things like buy a RV that didn't work and live in it because people were doing much stranger things than that.  People went to the desert to be lost.

     Lyndsey found out that she liked her new home. The lot was clean. They had a coin laundry, bathrooms, and showers, BBQs and grillers, with plenty of outside seating for lounging around. This RV Park didn't have a general store, it was just a place where people lived. Maybe people passed on through and set up their rigs for a night or two but there were plenty of other places in Yucca to buy clutter. Donnamarie made sure that her domain wasn't one of them. Her domain had beautiful views of the sky and just enough space between the rigs to make a young lady with a history of bad luck feel comfortable but not confined.

      Lyndsey’s space was towards the front of The RV park, where the manager also had an old RV  up on bricks, just like they had set her's up. The manager’s name was Donnamarie. She was Lloyd's daughter. She was middle-aged. However, she was nothing like him in terms of temperament, or personal style. Her hair hung around her face and down to her midsection in greying waves that obscured her face and that hid her emotional life from others. Donnamarie seemed to have bloomed out of the 1960’s. She wore tie dye, frilly scarves and jeans; and from the management office a cloud of aromatic pot smoke followed her outside like a trail of personalized perfume.

“I’ll be short about this. You’ve already signed everything up with Daddy, but I have a few more things to add on. Most everything is in the paperwork in front of you. If you agree to it, just sign. If not, then we will move you out by tomorrow night at the latest.”

Lyndsey sat down at a small plasticine ‘wood’ table and signed the usual agreements to keep up her space, mind her manners, and not perpetrate anything to do with illegality while parking on her spot.

She’d just handed over the pages to Donnamarie, when Donnamarie got a perplexed look on her face and turned back to her office. “Shoot! Daddy's going to kill me if I forget to give you your something extra!”

While Lyndsey waited for Donnamarie, she pondered what it would be like to be a woman Donnamarie age and have a Father like Lloyd who she worked with. ‘She must be close to Lloyd to be still able to call him Daddy, all the way into her midlife. It's decent that they live so close to each other, too.’ Lyndsey never felt compelled to call her own Father “Daddy,” nor any of her foster fathers.

Lyndsey had no emotional  family connections like that. For a while, she had her grandmother raising her. That was the happiest time of her life. Everything else was just foster care. Not all of the parents were bad, but they weren't all that good either. She took a few seconds to laugh at herself for her initial impression of Lloyd. He was a nice man. If Donnamarie was trying to give her the something extra, too, she wasn't being put in any kind of lousy, or perhaps pervy, situation.

“This is it! Here you go, girlfriend!” Donnamarie rushed out of the little RV Park Office’s exclaiming, waving a little black book over her head and bobbing with the excitement of finding the right token that her Daddy had indeed given her a stack of to pass out to each new customer at The RV Park.

When Donnamarie passed the little black  book into Lyndsey’s hands, she was taken by how nice it was. An eighteen-month weekly pocket planner with “Customer of Lloyd’s RV's, Trucks, and Rv Park in Yucca, CA, USA, 2021, “ was emblazoned across the front in gold. Lyndsey opened up the small book. She had never had a day planner. Lyndsey didn't know if anyone had thought that her days were worth planning ahead of time. She started looking through all of the blank, horizontal cream  pages in wonder. Flipping through the days and weeks ahead waiting  to be filled in and tapping her feet with excitement.

“You dropped something,” Donnamarie stated, already having moved away from Lyndsey to a patio area and sitting on a lawn chair to light up a smoke.

“Huh?” Lyndsey looked around, all she saw were endless blue skies, creamy mountains, and Joshua Trees. “No, I haven't.”

“Look down. On the ground, ” Donnamarie said on an exhalation of cigarette smoke.

Indeed, on the dirt, there was a slip of paper. Lyndsey’s beat-up Ked was on it. She bent down and picked it up. Her foot had been on top of a lottery ticket. The ticket had already been filled out.

“This Isn't mine, Donnamarie. I have never bought a lottery ticket in Yucca before. It's not yours?”

“All I buy at the gas station is my cigarettes, candy, and gas for my truck. Daddy says we give too much money to the dang government anyway; he doesn't believe in the lottery, our family is doing fine with what we have. Plus, my Grandmama always said that if you step on something, it's yours. I don't know what kind of fool urban legend that is because I stepped in lots of stuff all the time, and I don't want it to be mine. But I think that's yours, Miss Lyndsey.  ” 

Donnamarie gestured with the butt of her cigarette towards Lyndsey’s hand holding the lottery ticket, before throwing the cigarette inside the ashcan next to her.  “There’s an Arco gas station half a block down on the right-hand side of the streer. They sell those lottery tickets. You can walk there with me now if you want to, but first, you gotta sign that ticket.”

Donnamarie was already up and walking towards the street exit when Lyndsey ran after her after finishing signing the ticket. Yucca was one of the most walkable cities in San Bernadino. The heat might have been oppressive, but the residents still walked distances to get places, especially when going places in the central downtown area.

Donnamarie was quiet and just paused for the lighting of another cigarette while she was walking, with a faster stride than Lyndsey thought a woman of her height was capable of. She was at least a head taller than Donnamarie and had to hurry to keep up with her as she was making her way across the street. Lyndsey had only just finally caught up to Donnamarie when she had reached the glass doors of the Arco.

Donnamarie had already grabbed a large bag of M&M's  and made her way up to the cash register. She then got a package of American Spirits. She told the lady at the register that she was cutting down on the cigarettes and buying more candy to help her out of the quitting “meannies.”  Donnamarie then nudged Lyndsey forward towards the counter with a determination that broadcast  an underlying strength to her small frame.

“Tanya, this is my new friend and renter, Miss Lyndsey. She's got herself a lottery ticket,” Donnamarie announced.

Lyndsey gave Tanya, a slim Asian-American woman, who had a purple mohawk and a nose ring,  her ticket. Tanya then asked to see her ID, as well.

Tanya ran the ticket, wherein she first started smacking the register with her palm. Then, she began muttering, “crappie.”

Donnamarie asked her several times what was wrong, but Tanya only continued to fool with the register. Finally, Tanya shrieked, “Well, crappie, nothing is wrong! You have a $20,000 winning lottery ticket! I don't know if that's even happened here before! It's certainly not happened with me on the register!” Tanya let out a small yip again, making her look like a pampered, oddly-decorated, long-haired lap-dog.

“Did you say that ticket was worth twenty thousand dollars, Tanya?” Donnamarie questioned.

“Yup. Now you say Miss Lyndsey here is a a renter at your RV Park?” Tanya tried to ask Donnamarie, but now Donnamarie was shrieking in excitement, too. She was hugging Lyndsey. Lyndsey continued to stand motionless, staring at Tanya with a look of consternation on her face.

When Lyndsey didn't answer Tanya’s question, Donnamarie physically turned Lyndsey toward her, and she took her hands in hers, while looking at her square in the eyes, “Girl, aren't you happy? You just won 20,000 dollars! I know that you still have to pay  California taxes, but you still have a winning ticket!”

Lyndsey had a hard time replying to Donnamarie. She was only being kind to her, after all. Since she had gotten to Yucca, everyone had been very considerate of her in a way that almost made her feel apprehensive.

Lyndsey held back her tears and mumbled, “That's not my ticket. It's someone else's. I just found it. And I just moved here. I don't even have a bank account in Yucca yet. I think that this win all a mistake.”

Now Tanya came out from the back of the counter.

“Shoot. I’m not supposed to do this, but if there is ever a time to break the rule...,” she handed Lyndsey a box of kleenex that she’d brought out with her from behind the counter. “Listen, this might sound weird, but, look at me, I breath weird, and I know some factoids about the lottery and lots of stuff, but right now, the stuff that I know about the lottery might help you out. You want to hear about it?”

Lyndsey bobbed her head in agreement. 

Tanya began to speak, and with each point that she brought about, she checked off an invisible box in the air, and seemed to be more and more pleased with herself for being prepared with the information.

“One: You don't have to worry about being a California resident. Even non-residents can win our Lottery. Two: You brought in the ticket before the cut-off date, and you signed it, so whether you bought it or not, don't matter unless the purchaser has some pretty good evidence and can contest your win in the courts,”

At this point, Lyndsey tearfully cut Tanya off. She had never won anything in her life and pretty much had never had any favorable fortune at all, and to have this win thrust upon her seemed ominous in a way that would be hard to explain to anyone who had an easy life.

“All these strange rules! I stepped on it, so it must be mine! I signed it, so it's mine! You people are crazy!”

Neither woman who lived in Yucca commented on how Lyndsey was the only one yelling at the top of her lungs and refusing to acknowledge her win of $20,000.

It was silent for a while, but then Tanya continued to talk as if she hadn’t been interrupted.

“Three: well, you won over $599.00, so instead of cash, I need to give you an Authorized Winning Claim Form Receipt. You need to make copies of that and your ticket here, and send that by certified mail to the CA State Lottery offices. I’m sure that Donnamarie will help you with finding a place to get copies and the certified mail. For the address, you can get on the website California Lottery.”

Donnamarie went and put her arm around Lyndsey’s shoulder, obviously not a woman who was afraid of putting her hand into an angry Lions cage. She declared:

“Yeah, you better believe that I am going to help this here girl, Tanya. Still, I think it doesn't need to be today because I believe this Chickie needs to address winning that money. So, why not do the paperwork for Lyndsey that she needs. Then,  we'll be able to get out of your hair.”

Tanya smiled, telling Donnamarie, “What do you think I’ve been working on while you were talking about yourself?”  

“Okay, Okay, then hand over Lyndsey’s paperwork so I can get this girl to all of the right places tomorrow morning. Otherwise, how can we expect ever to get the money out of her winnings?” Donnamarie smiled as big as if she was going to eat a banana sideways and punched Lyndsey on the arm to show her that she was just joking, not knowing how sensitive she was yet, then addressed her friend again with a grin,”Nice seeing you, Tanya.”

“Yeah. Goodnight, Ladies. I'm never going to forget about this evening, Lyndsey. I sure hope that you can get happy about it. I sure as heck am happy for you! I feel like I won myself,” Tanya gushed, “I’m sure that I will see you again soon, seeing as Donnamarie has already adopted you, and you live so close by.” she finished blushing.

They both said their “Thank You’s” and “Goodnight’s” to Tanya before heading out Into the street. To Lyndsey’s eyes, it seemed like the world had developed a new identity, yet the only thing that physically changed was that it had blossomed roseate in hue from the awesome Yucca sunset  during the time that was spent in the Arco. The desert evening  smelled like sagebrush, exhaust fumes, and coffee making outside the Arco. Lyndsey thought to herself that perhaps this was what her new life could look, smell, and feel like.

“It’s beautiful, huh? This is why I'm in this spot still.” Donnamarie leaned back against the Arco building and looked at the sky, “Cat still got your tongue, huh? I know that you’re intimidated  because you just won that money, Occasionally people win. Occasionally people’ve good luck. Lyndsey, you got that little black event planner today when you bought your home and your lot in the park, and now you've gone and won all of this cash. I think that it just means that no matter what you’ve done, or been, or gone through before, that this is your moment. ‘Cause of my Grandma, I know how they say Little Black Books are considered to be malicious things. Still,  I  think that those planners we give out lead to nothing but possibility for the people we give them to. Lyndsey, your life is an open book right now, just ready for you to write your life story in it. You can take your life and create whatever you want out of it. You have lots of pages to plan your adventure out in. Now you have a little bit of cash, some friends, some beauty, and some peace to do with it what you will.” Donnamarie sighed and launched herself off of the wall, stretching. She looked around at the last gleamings of the sunset and confessed: “But, I'm just an old hippie who talks too much and lives in the desert. What do I know? Let's go home. We've got a lot to do tomorrow.”

She started crossing the street before Lyndsey could even comprehend the possibility that blossomed in her. That feeling of expectation was as vibrant and as passionate a reversal  to her as the sunset had been to the Wasteland skies of this Desert. With that hope in her heart, she started running across the street towards her future.