Winning Big

Lyndsey’s RV space was towards the front of the RV park, where the manager also had her old RV up on bricks. The manager’s name was Donnamarie. Her hair hung around her face and down to her midsection in greying waves that obscured her face. Donnamarie seemed to have bloomed out of the 1960s. She wore tie-dye 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. 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 do anything illegal 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 who she worked for. 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.

“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 a 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 and flipping through the days and weeks ahead, waiting to be filled in with memories.

“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.

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 street. They sell 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 a very walkable city. 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 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. 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 $20,000, 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! 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. She 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’s 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 rules.,” 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 that 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 had never had any favorable fortune at all. To have this win thrust upon her seemed ominous in a way that would be hard to explain to anyone who has 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!”

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, 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, then hand over Lyndsey’s paperwork so I can get her 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 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 from the Arco. Lyndsey thought to herself that perhaps this was what her new life could look, smell, and feel like.

Donnamarie leaned back against the Arco building and looked at the sky, “Lyndsey, you got that little black event planner today when you bought 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. 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. 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 potential that blossomed in her. That feeling of expectation was as vibrant and as passionate in 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.