Richard undressed, peeling the sweaty clothes from his body, and stepped into the shower. He stood under the warm stream of water and began to think of how he could get his hands on his twenty grand.
The things Richard could do with that money! He could fix up his little Nissan pickup. New clothes. A down payment on a house. Winston Selects instead of GCP generics. Quality women, no more barflies . His mind raced with possibilities.
Twenty thousand dollars really wasn't enough to do all that Richard wanted, but that was more than what he made in a year, having to work odd jobs whenever he could find them. Free money sure as hell beats loading lumber at the local hardware store or digging up ruptured sewer lines, that's for sure. He wouldn't see all that money, anyway, not after Uncle Sam and the state came and took their dues. Assuming they wouldn't put him away...
Okay. One thing at a time here. Get the dough first, then I'll figure out how to spend it.
If Richard were somebody else, he could waltz right in there and claim his prize. Doing a little name switch crossed Richard's mind, but he realized quickly that wouldn't work. All his buddies who were into making fake IDs were back in Florida, and he wasn't going back there. Besides, a photo of him with a phony name on a piece of plastic wasn't going to cut it. He would need fake tax records, a Social Security number � an entirely new identity. That type of identity-rewriting took time, time that Richard didn't have (there was a one month deadline to turn in winning tickets), and it would probably cost him most of the twenty thou to get that done anyway.
"Fuckin great..." Richard muttered, shaking his head. All of a sudden he wanted to get drunk. He forced the impulse away, trying to concentrate on the situation at hand.
He considered getting someone to turn it in for him, but quickly abandoned that idea. He didn't know many people, and he couldn't trust the ones he did know. The closest thing to a friend Richard had was his landlord, a curmudgeonly old man by the unlikely name of Mr. Grace. He kept to himself and didn't ask questions as long as he got his three hundred a month, and Richard appreciated and respected that. But Richard knew the taint of larceny when he smelled it, and Grace had the scent of a man who would skewer his own mother for a buck. If he handed the ticket over to Mr. Grace, Richard knew he would never see a dime of that money. Crooked old bastard, thought Richard with a half smile. Maybe that'll be me in a couple of decades.
And as far as intimidating somebody into doing it, well, Richard didn't do strongarm tactics. He was a crook, true, but Richard didn't believe in hurting anyone. Ripping off radios was one thing, but bullying folks was a whole other ball game.
Richard got out of the shower, dried off with his threadbare towel and got dressed. For about fifteen minutes he paced the room, wiping perspiration that was already forming on his furrowed brow. To anyone who would have seen him an hour ago, before his windfall, and then seen him now, it might have seemed he aged ten years. His gray-blue eyes were dull and blank, focused on distant thoughts. His dark brown hair, wet with water and sweat, looked black and grey and was plastered to his skull. His pale face was lined with creases and wrinkles, made into a crisscross network of plow divots by worry and frustration. An obviously nervous Chess eyed Richard's movements across the room.
Richard looked at Chess. "Well, what'll I do, Chess?" he asked the cat. "Got a twenty thousand dollar meal ticket here that I can't do jack with. What would you do, boy?"
The cat looked up at him, feigning interest in the question. Then the facade dropped, and Chess licked himself.
"Do you want it, Chess? Might as well give it away, huh?"
Chess continued licking, declining to comment.
Give the ticket away. Now there was a thought! That's what Richard would do, just wash his hands of it completely. There was no way in hell for him to cash it himself, so he'd give it to some deserving soul, maybe somebody who would be grateful enough to share some of the wealth.
It took Richard a few minutes to come to the conclusion he had absolutely no one to give the ticket to. He had no friends, no one he really liked or that liked him. He had no family to speak of since dear old momma's heart gave out eight years back; dad ran off when Richard was three and was reportedly in a Nevada prison for stabbing a man. And his sister Bernice didn't deserve one penny of that prize money, having gambled away most of Mother's inheritance on the riverboats. Knowing her, she would probably turn him in without even a word of thanks.
He couldn't cash the money himself, didn't even have anyone to give it to. Richard never felt so alone as he did right then. He reached over and scratched Chess's head behind the ears, reveling in the warmth of the fur and the soothing rumbling purr, grateful that at least one living creature wanted Richard's company.
He studied the ecstatic expression on Chess's face. He gave the animal a lopsided grin. Maybe I should relax, too.
The more Richard though about the idea, the better it sounded. Relax, calm down. This had been a shitstorm day for Richard, and he was exhausted. He was tired of thinking and tired of feeling. He had a whole month to figure this out, what the hell to do with the ticket. He would deal with this another time.
Richard walked to the living room, turned on the television, plopped down on the couch, and proceeded to not give a damn about anything. The news was all there was that was on (as he only picked up the local stations out here), and Richard resigned himself to watching it as opposed to nothing at all. He needed to get his mind off things, and seeing how the rest of the world suffered somehow made his life seem more bearable. Besides, he was too lazy to get up and change the channel himself, having only a cheap hundred dollar Emerson sans remote.
The young, pretty newscaster reported that police believed that it was gang members who shot a seventeen-year old black male in Jackson, likely a gang member himself. Richard didn't care.
Newt Gingrich was being accused of ethics violations in selling his autobiography by top Democrats, the newscaster went on to say. Is that so? Richard thought, and he discovered that he didn't care about that, either. He was beginning to feel his old curmudgeonly self.
Investigators traced the burning of a black Baptist church in Clinton to some white supremacists with ties to the Klan. lt has only been a week since the church was burned," said an official-looking man into the microphone held by the off-camera correspondent. "We don't have any solid leads on the actual arsonists at this time."
Richard smirked and shrugged his shoulders. He had no reason to care. Right? He hadn't put one foot inside a church since he went to Earl's ill-advised wedding six years ago. Richard had fond memories of Cypress Grove Methodist church he used to go to with momma as a child, but from his teen years on he always found more important things to do than going to service. Until she passed away, momma would ask Richard to go to Cypress Grove with her every now and then, but he didn't. It took her funeral for him to finally be in church with her. But without momma around anymore, there was no reason to go to service. The best times of his life were sitting with momma in church as a child, listing to Brother John talk about Jesus. If only life always could be so simple again.
Richard figured out that it was after momma died, with nothing good in his life anymore, that his life took a turn for the worst. Not that he blamed her at all. His bad life was his own damned fault. But Richard figured he had always been a momma's boy deep down, and he didn't do very well without her.
Feeling even more down, Richard figured a beer would do a lot to shake his blues. He forced aside his reverie, got up and went to the fridge.

Chapter Three ->