01 –$2.53

One dollar bill waited in darkness. Once there was $12.47. It was to be his final splurge of eggs or fresh greens or peaches from a can or some ground round to make something special. Then a bank fee of $15 showed up and wiped all that out. He kept too little money in the bank was the reason and this was the result. Now he owed $2.53 to his own checking account which he could not pay, even with a dollar bill.

In fairness, with cash dwindling he ran a tidy sum on a small charge card issued by the very same bank. Stockpiling supplies for the end adds up and the monthly minimum payment of $38 came and went ages ago. Now the card was frozen in time though little did the bank know it would not see a single penny for he had no pennies.

Maybe that makes us even, he thought to himself.

Once there was even more than $12.47 such that $12.47 was the remnant of everything spent down and otherwise exhausted. What little savings was gone. Unemployment a distant memory. After six months they stamped him hopeless and went their separate ways.

With everything depleted minus the one dollar bill waiting in darkness he took stock once again. Most bills were paid in full one last time for one more month that he was already a long way into.

Power? Check.

Water? Done.

Gas? Roger that.

Phone? 10-4 over and out, though he called no one and no one — or almost no one — called him.

Each was tided over for now but the countdown was well underway. He pictured a wall of clocks racing backward with arms spinning ever more wildly until one after another they each arrive at zero hour.

Weekly garbage was already a little awkward. He kept setting out the gray trash bin and the big blue dinosaur kept picking it up. But Tuesday mornings had become a time of high suspense. He heard the roar and he peered out the window. Would it still stop at the house, extend that hideous arm, and gobble up what he had to offer?

So far the dinosaur still stopped and when it lurched away in triumph he felt triumphant too for one day a different monster with a long trailer will stop at the house to carry his bin away and that would be that. This he knew for certain for he had seen it prowling the streets before, looking for other bins to repossess. It could happen at any business hour of any business day of the week. It pained him to watch the scene unfold in his mind’s eye, though it also pained him to picture looking outside only to see the gray trash bin already gone for good. He didn’t know which will feel worse. All he could do is wait to find out.

The real matter was the small house he lived in. He expected some kind of crossing over at which point thing start their pumkinification.

April was surely a misunderstanding or oversight. Did you forget to mail the check?

May was becoming concerning. We detect an emerging pattern. This does not bode well.

June would have said it all. Now we understand.

July is when they move in earnest.

The months had been curiously quiet on most fronts. Surprisingly so. Mercifully so. Just a few letters arriving in the mail. He didn’t need to read them. He didn’t even open them. He knew what they said. He tossed them in the gray trash bin. There were probably email notices and reminders and pleadings and warnings, all escalating and documenting the very same, but he stopped looking if only to maintain a level of overall calm.

The real drumbeat was the phone calls, usually just after 9 o’clock in the morning, Mondays thru Fridays, though never on weekends though they were now starting on Saturdays too. It was them, he knew, for no one else calls. His ringtone was set to a light ting-a-ling so even if the call was threatening the sound of the calling was still pleasant. And of course he never answered.

In fairness they never left a message either, And if you don’t leave a message how can I know what you want?, he said to himself.

The small house that was long overdue toward eviction or foreclosure or destitution or whatever it is formally called was the big clock in the middle of the wall counting down by spinning out of control while all the little clocks around the big clock spun uncontrollably too, each according to its own keeping of time, with all time more or less in sync for what’s to come.

He seldom watched the clocks. He didn’t need to. He felt time running out deep inside.

* *

02 Grocery Shopping

With no money left stockpiling was now concluded. “Stockpiling” is maybe the wrong word, however. It gives the wrong impression. He wasn’t looking to weather social anarchy or endure nuclear winter. He also wasn’t busy canning fruits and vegetables or hunting and smoking meats. He had no garden to produce produce and so no produce to can and the only game in the area was cats and dogs and squirrels and a large family of raccoons and he wouldn’t know where to begin with any of them.

What mattered was lasting a few weeks, maybe a month, maybe a squeak more, to get to the end with enough good food to eat before all the clocks reached zero hour in a din of chiming that will not stop ever after. But because he thought in terms of stockpiling then “stockpiling” is also the right word for what he did. What stockpiling amounted to, he discovered, was mostly just getting extra or replenishing or topping off what he usually got on his weekly trips to the grocery story, which was a highlight of each week.

Grocery shopping was fun because it meant getting what he thought of as good basic foods starting with all-purpose flour and bread flour, whole wheat flour and corn meal, white rice of the Oriental variety, and dried beans of three main sorts: garbanzo, pinto and lentil. Stockpiling was fun because grocery shopping was fun and stockpiling just meant more of it.

While he enjoyed the whole of the trip the best part of grocery shopping and thus stockpiling was Phase 2: Bulk Foods among all phases of shopping for groceries.

This meant that Phase 2 was not a ranking of phases by favorites, best to least or least to best. Phase 2 corresponded to the composition of the weekly shopping list consisting of six sections and thus phases. In the days leading up to the trip to the grocery store, which usually took place on a Wednesday morning, he composed a list in dark blue ink on a plain white note card measuring 4” x 6” with an orientation of “portrait.”

First he drew a median line down the card, usually free hand though sometimes with a ruler if one was close, but freehand if one was not. He then drew two lines across so the note card was divided into six more or less equal sections, one for each phase.

Phase 1, at the top left of the note card, was Produce. He did not title the sections of the card, however, nor did he title the card as a whole because he knew what they all were in his heart of hearts where the heart needs no title in order to beat.

For Phase 1: Produce, the starting point was potatoes and onions, cloves of garlic and a few shallots. At home onions along with loose garlic and shallots went into a large bowl at the end of the kitchen counter. Potatoes when into a separate bowl stored in the pantry. He learned the hard way that you never store potatoes and onions close to each other. They will literally wage total war on each other. So they are kept separate but always close at hand and ready for cooking and then they are a perfect union of roasted potatoes and onions chopped roughly with herbs and spices, lightly coated in vegetable oil (Phase 5) and baked in the oven. Vegetarian curry or beef (Phase 3) stew also bring potatoes and onions together it complete friendship and harmony.

Each also does well on its own with other basic ingredients to make good food. Crushed tomatoes from a can (Phase 4) combined with onions and garlic and a few choice herbs bought in bulk (Phase 2) make a simple pasta sauce to which he sometimes adds spicy Italian sausage (Phase 3). Potatoes with cream and butter, salt and pepper, are heavenly. You don’t even need gravy. Add a side salad and you have a simple whole meal already.

With basic roots and aromatics the meal possibilities were endless, though he especially liked just a few dishes and mostly stuck with them.

After the first phase of Phase 1, as it were, for there were indeed phases within phases, he turned to the more perishable produce. Loose carrots and stocks of celery. A few zucchinis, also for pasta sauce but this time vegetarian. A head of green cabbage, which would last more than a week if he was being honest. Bananas, of course. What bananas he didn’t eat that week would go into the refrigerator to blacken to take back out for banana pancakes, which were reserved for weekend breakfasts, or a warm and nutty banana bread.

A more recent addition to his grocery list was Serrano peppers, slender and green, washed and sliced into rounds. Fill a glass jar. Add 1 tsp of salt or even a touch more. Drop in 1 clove of garlic or a hunk of shallot, lightly smashed to release the essential oils. Top off with white vinegar (Phase 5). Seal lid.

Now, leave on counter, he instructed himself. Do nothing. Forget about it. Erase what you just did from all memory.

He paused.

Then, suddenly, remember it again!

Now he has a jar of crunchy pickled peppers of a hot and smoky nature that can go on eggs or sandwiches or homemade pizza. Cheap, easy, and delicious!

*

At the top-right section of the grocery list you arrive at Phase 2: Bulk Foods, which is geographically next to produce in the grocery store. Finishing with he produce phase of the rip he always felt a thrill at the sight of those rows and aisles of industrial bins with their clear, half-opening lids and metal scoops holstered at the side. Compared to all that prepackaged food stuffed with additives and preservatives and dressed up in fancy wrappers telling you how good what’s inside is, bins of bulk foods are modest and simple. Just a printed label with the name and a bin number and that tells you what’s truly inside.

At the end of one aisle of big bins are shelves with large plastic jars labeled and arranged in alphabetical order. This is the mini-bulk section of the bulk foods section consisting of herbs and spices. Checking his list he took down select jars. Unscrewing the lid he spooned out heaps of oregano or paprika or thyme, cumin or chili powder, garlic powder and even savory for the special occasion of Thanksgiving dressing made from slow-dried cubes of homemade bread.

These baggies of herbs and spices, which he carefully labeled by writing the the bin # on the bulk foods twist tie they give you for checkout, were so much cheaper and better than what you get in the regular aisle where you are basically paying for the bottle more than what’s in it. Plus, with bulk food there are no fillers or additives so you know what you’re getting which was just this and nothing else.

At the end of another aisle of bulk foods are two rows of whole coffee beans in large vertical dispensers. Long ago he combined by accident a dark blend of French Roast and Double Vision, all ground himself at the coffee grinder using the “coarse” setting, which is best for a French press. The accident was he was filling his coffee bag with French Roast to grind up but the beans ran out with his bag only halfway full. To get enough coffee to last what usually amounted to a few weeks he took a half step to the right and proceeded to finish filling the bag with whatever coffee bean fate introduced him to. That coffee bean was Double Vision and the combination was delicious and he never looked back.

Phase 2: Bulk Food was always quick and efficient. He darted from one bin to the next with very little waste of effort or movement. But sometimes after all the items were crossed off with the ballpoint pen he carried with him, which was not the same dark blue ink pen wrote out the list with, it was instead a cheap pen he got from his bank, funnily, whose sole purpose was to cross off items on his grocery shopping list, he would linger for a while longer just to gaze at all the kinds of flours and grains of rice and dried beans like navy or butter or cannellini, and herbs and spices he never got and never even tried.

He felt bad for it even though he liked what he got and knew just how to use it and what he cooked was good enough for him but still he took pleasure in looking at what else there was.

Even salts needed their own whole section of bins, he marveled, though he had no idea what each was supposed to be good for or why one salt costed 58¢ per pound and another was $4.00, so he stuck with two basic kinds, table salt with iodine and coarse sea salt for finishing, especially on baked goods like focaccia or pretzel bites, as well as the odd sprinkle on a salad.

*

At middle-left of the note card was Phase 3:Meats and Cheeses, though a better title for this section of the card would be Cheeses and Meats. Cheese was indispensable. The not without which of food. Cheese consisted primarily of blocks of sharp cheddar and low-moisture mozzarella. There is almost nothing that cheddar cheese and hunks of mozzarella are not good for, individually and collectively.

Every few weeks he also added a container of shredded Parmesan cheese or crumbled Gorgonzola. The former went on pastas and both went on salads, though never together, along with a homemade vinaigrette of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, bounded together surprisingly by a healthy spoonful of strawberry jam (Phase 5, all), a sprinkle of thyme or tarragon, and salt to taste.

Salads did not need to include lettuce or any green for that matter, of course. His favorite salad was made with garbanzo beans and canned sliced beets. Garbanzo beans and beets mixed with the tang of vinaigrette and pungent Gorgonzola crumbles was beyond description in his modest view.

If he was feeling fancy he even sliced homemade bread into cubes and fried them in a panned with select seasonings to make croutons, which could go on any salad he made. But that was reserved for when he really felt like it or when he wanted the salad to be completely filling as a whole meal.

Sometimes, for Phase 3 he just wrote “Cheeses of the World” on the note card and he knew exactly what this meant.

In contrast to cheese he did not eat much meat, which is why the title of Phase 3 should emphasize cheeses over meats despite the custom of placing meat before cheese. He did not know if there was some food logic to the ordering of meats before cheeses or if the phrase was supposed to be more poetic or pleasing to the ear or whether it all came down to happenstance that just stuck. In any case, for him Phase 3 on the note card always emphasized cheeses first and meats whenever needed which was often, to be sure, but not always.

Meat mainly meant sausage, either ground or in casings, usually spicy Italian. Similar to cheese sausage was all-purpose and went with everything. A spruced up pasta sauce, as already noted. Soup with sausage that makes a rich hearty broth. A crock pot of sausage with potatoes and onions, carrots and celery as a rustic staple. A pound of sausage lasted a whole week and went into at least two and sometimes even three dishes.

Sometime, though very seldomly, he also picked up a pound of ground beef for a hamburger burger, or, if he was being entirely honest with himself, for the sole the purpose of making tatertot casserole, which is the greatest of all casseroles.

One meat item he could not do without was pepperoni slices. He always got the plastic container of pepperoni slices from the deli instead of those bags of pepperoni you get from big companies like Armour or Hormel. Maybe it was all the same but it just seemed better and more delicious coming from the deli section which still fell into Phase 3: Meats and Cheeses by geography in the grocery store.

Pepperoni slices had one and only one purpose. They were the centerpiece of the centerpiece dinner each week which was pizza with dough made from scratch with homemade pizza sauce and thick slices of mozzarella cheese and a sometimes extravagant layer of pepperoni, baked at 420 F for 18 minutes.

In the morning of the appointed day he prepared the pizza dough using one and one-half cups of flour, all-purpose or bread, it didn’t really matter he found, with active dry yeast and a touch of sugar, salt and olive oil. With periodic kneading the dough develops slowly throughout the day so by late afternoon the ball of dough now dusted with flour is pillow soft and pliable to be stretched out willingly on a round pizza pan.

His preference for pizza was a thin crust pizza that’s more tavern-style than New York. He estimated the size of what he made to be a medium-large. It was the perfect amount so he was always full and still had leftovers for lunch the next day. Standard practice was to eat the pizza pizza part of the pizza, meaning the area with sauce and cheese and toppings, leaving the crusts for lunch. Warmed in a pan, what was only uneaten crust the night before becomes a bowl full of delicious breadsticks the next day!

Once in a while he added an extra toppings like black olives or green peppers or mushrooms and this was always good but he felt that it was never entirely justified by being two or three times as good by having two or three more toppings, and he just liked what he got with pepperoni pizza and so he usually stuck to that.

Besides, he said to himself, I have rounds of hot smokey pickled peppers to add to the pizza I already love making and baking and eating.

*

Phase 4, at middle-right on the note card, was Dairy. From one refrigerated part of the store for cheeses and meats you travel to the next part of the store consisting of all things dairy, except cheeses. In Phase 4 you find what he called the Magic Five consisting of eggs, milk, cream cheese, yogurt, and butter. Two eggs with two pieces of toast from homemade bread was his standard breakfast on weekdays. The first piece of toast was heavily buttered while the second piece is smeared with strawberry jam. The eggs are beaten then poured into a hot pan with a light coating of cooking oil. As the eggs bubble he draws them clockwise around the pan to form a rose or tornado configuration, depending on your ethnic orientation. The result is eggs that are tender and creamy and lovely to behold.

Weekend breakfast was reserved for pancakes made from basic ingredients. All-purpose flour, sugar, baking powder and salt are combined with one egg and a cup of milk. Each pancake is heavily buttered and smeared with strawberry jam. Variations include adding corn meal or whole wheat flour for a country or a nutty cake, plus overripe bananas if available.

*

Phase 5, at bottom-left, was for Dry and Canned and Bottled Goods. Though he did know how to make his own pasta he just really liked the convenience and the taste that comes from a box of thin spaghetti. During the summer he added in bow tie pasta for a seasonal salad of fresh tomatoes, green peppers, olives or artichoke hearts, and Parmesan cheese.

Large cans of crushed tomatoes were always on his list and even before stockpiling he tended to stockpile canned tomatoes because he used them for everything from pizza sauce and pasta sauces to soups and stews and salsa. Given how often he used canned tomatoes, primarily crushed and though sometimes diced but almost never whole, he knew there were those expensive brands of fancy tomatoes that costed up to four times as much but he tried them and was left unimpressed. It felt like a complete waste of money to feel fancy without any real extra tomato fanciness and he was happy with the store brand at a fraction of the cost.

For oils he used with two main types. Vegetable oil, with a high smoke point and a neutral taste, was used for eggs and grilled cheese sandwiches, soup with dumplings, and stir fries. Olive oil was reserved for salad dressings, pizza dough and special occasions.

Phase 5 also consisted of varying mixes of canned beets and corn, peanut butter and strawberry jam, a bottle of balsamic vinegar (of Modena, of course), and a jug of white vinegar.

At the bottom of Phase 5 he would often find written in tiny script the unspeakable yet irresistible. This dirty secret was poptarts (generic brand thus cheaper), and always blueberry flavor. He was not proud of it. How smug and important he felt parading around bulk foods only to sneak a box of poptarts in the end? He felt the weight of genuine shame at the time and he acknowledges this even while adding poptarts to his shopping cart, though later in the week when he tore open that thin silver wrapper to discover not one but two frosted poptarts with their intoxicating artificial blueberry scent he knew he had done the right thing after all.

*

Phase 6 was the Whatever Else phase of grocery shopping. It was the place for the occasional, the unusual, the unexpected, the extra-special. By law, even if an item in Phase 6 easily fell into a previous phase according to its food nature it was not shopped for until Phase 6 according to its elseness.

Classic case in point: tatertots (generic brand). Just like poptarts he had a fatal weakness for tatertots, mainly in tatertot casserole but also with a juicy hamburger or a grilled cheese sandwich made from homemade bread. Tatertots still left over from the night before (if there even is such a thing) were dropped into a hot pan with fried eggs for a special breakfast on birthdays or Christmas morning.

The frozen food section is one aisle over from milk and eggs (Phase 4), and by the time you finished with canned goods (Phase 5) and turn to Phase 6 you are clear across the store from tatertots almost coming full circle back to the produce section. Between you and tatertots was household goods and drinks like soda pop and bottled water and an entire bakery section all of which you already passed. But back you go to get tatertots according to the rule of Phase 6 and because they’re so good.

Tatertot casserole also illustrated complexities of phases of grocery shopping since what is a casserole of tatertots without cream of mushroom soup? But where is any can of soup if not in Phase 5: Dry and Canned and Bottled Goods This truth raised basic questions about proper phasing since when it comes time to turn to Phase 6 you are still, by definition, in the canned foods area of the store including soups.

Should cream of mushroom soup appear in Phase 5, where you already are, or Phase 6, where you are going, where where you are going and where you are are pretty much the same place?

Tatertot casserole raised another question in regards to the ground beef. Customarily, he would pick up ground beef in Phase 3 along with any other meats and since ground beef had many uses and he didn’t always plan for tatertot casserole when he bought ground beef. Should he then pick up the ground beef in Phase 3 regardless of its use that week, or should he assign ground beef to a phase based on its use, either for or not for tatertot casserole? What if the ground beef was to be used both for and not for tatertot casserole?

He constantly wrestled with the proper way to handle phasing of a complex nature, even according to the simple laws that should help to clarify them. This is what made Phase 6 fun. Phase 6 was messy and inefficient. He knew that. But it also was not absurd nor lawless nor without any semblance of order.

The first five phases passed through sections of the store counterclockwise according to a familiar route. Phase 6 was some something else entirely. It was a free-for-all to and a spider’s web to get caught in and get out of again. It was the very waste of time figuring out and running around that was so fun for him. It felt like your shopping cart was finally untethered and unleashed, pulled this way and that. Only now are you free to roam and run wild, yet with purpose, sometimes hidden or buried deep down, and always turning out right in the end. Phase 6 was his second favorite part of grocery shopping.

*

With standard ingredients and the fun extras of grocery shopping completed, the official New Grocery Week began that evening by being anchored by pizza at least once and maybe twice for dinner as well as some kind of soup almost always with dumplings. From there it was an unpredictable rotation of favorites like spaghetti, roasted potatoes, rice and stir fried vegetables, or a nice salad with hunks of warm bread dipped in olive oil.

Extra Oriental sticky rice would be refrigerated and then mixed with eggs and seasoned with soy sauce for a nice breakfast as a change of pace. Bread was baked weekly, most often in a country loaf, white or whole wheat, made for toast and sandwiches and croutons and quick snacks with a spread of cream cheese. Bread in loaf form was supplemented by baguettes or focaccia or flat bread using a pita recipe and baked as one large round on the pizza pan, then cut into irregular chip-sized pieces with a pizza wheel.

Lunch was either leftovers or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, maybe some yogurt, and even a bowl of oatmeal with milk, brown sugar, and a banana as breakfast for lunch! He tried to keep lunch quick and just filling enough to not over stuff himself. He saved the real fireworks for dinner.

In all, everything was simple, nothing was measured because he knew what he was doing from practice and he wasn’t cooking to please a crowd. It was all just for him and each meal could be whipped up without even thinking about it.

* *

03 Stockpiling

When the time came to stockpile he bought what he needed for the coming week and then folded into his list certain notations on how much more to buy on top of that. For instance, in Phase 3 the list read, “Cheddar (x3),” meaning three blocks of cheddar cheese.

Just how much more of anything he added was informed by competing schools of thought.

Stockpile enough to get to when time’s up.

Or,

Time’s up when there’s nothing left from the stockpile.

Either way the clocks on the wall kept spinning backwards and winding down as the third school of thought such that he never really settled on one school or the other in relation to the third, and so he did his best at stockpiling according to both and neither and sort of left it to chance to decide which school would be proved correct. Plus, the money ran out so stockpiling ended so that was all the food he was going to get anyway so school’s out on that debate anyway.

He did find that stockpiling required a few adjustments to phasing. The biggest shift was in bulk foods. Normally he tore off a large plastic bag at the bag and twist tie labeling station and filled up what he needed. But now he needed much more flour and rice and beans than he could fill even a large so he moved those items from Phase 2 to Phase 5.

This allowed him to pick up four 5 lb bags of unbleached all-purpose flour in the baking aisle. He already made the decision to build his flour stockpile solely from all-purpose flour to keep it simple, so when the bread flour and the whole wheat flour he already had ran out he would simply substitute or go without in the sense of a country loaf of whole wheat bread now being just white bread in a country loaf . This made it easier to buy in quantity as single, self-contained bags of flour, which were also much easier to store in the pantry.

Similarly, he picked up one 5 lb bag of Calrose rice in the Oriental section, again Phase 5, rather than using a plastic bag in the bulk section, which would not give him 5 lbs even with a large bag . Plus he was afraid that so much rice in the thin plastic would break under the strain with rice spilling out all over the store with everybody looking at him as he stood there looking at the mess he’d made on the floor.

These adjustments were not made in the heat of the moment. They were anticipated and planned for and built into a modified phasing of grocery shopping under the heading of stockpiling.

As high sounding as stockpiling seemed, stockpiling turned out to take very little time and effort at all. After two or three rounds of stockpiling that the built into weekly trips to the grocery store stockpiling was pretty much completed meaning he had most of what he wanted to get.

Truth be told he could have stood for maybe one more round to shore up staples and add a few items he realized forgot about, like tahini for hummus and sauces and an exotic Oriental/Middle Eastern salad dressing. But, the money was gone by that time anyway.

One chance discovery, which he did pick up on a lark was canned peaches. Fresh fruit perishes quickly. This was his biggest concern. Plus it’s very expensive so he almost never gets fresh fruit anyway except a few items.

But thinking in terms of stockpiling and not getting scurvy, for instance, fresh fruit was hard to keep just that. While staples and shelf-stable foods went happily into the pantry or down in the basement, such as bags of potatoes and onions now in special food-safe buckets to store in larger quantities, and some foods would keep in the refrigerator for a long time, others were not so lucky.

Certain vegetables faced the same problem. Even after a week a carrot got limp, zucchini started to wrinkle, and stalks of celery began to shrivel. The problem was not insurmountable. The answer to the prolonged life of produce was simply better storage practices to keep something dry or moist, air-tight or well-ventilated, depending on what that thing needed. But still, their time was always up. And compared to vegetables fresh fruit was the absolute worst.

Canned peaches were thus a revelation. Stacked in the cool dry basement they would outlive both you and me. Chilled in the refrigerator they were delightful. Bright and juicy, tart with a touch of sweetness.

Why had he not known about canned peaches before?, he begged himself to answer.

The answer, he remembered, was that he did. The memory was simply locked away, deep down inside, of a crowded school cafeteria with warm wiggling peaches and gravelly pears spooned into the dessert compartment of his plastic lunch tray. The peaches felt like slugs squirming in his mouth and the pears were gritty and mushy and tasted like lumps of wet sawdust.

In time he came to love fresh peaches, which is why he never bought canned, though he seldom bought fresh either because they were so expensive, although the horror of eating pears stayed with him and never went away and he never touched a pear again no matter the price. This meant that he had been deprived of the cool tang of chilled canned peaches for a lifetime.

For some reason that day something told him to pick up one regular-sized can of peaches during a Phase 5 of grocery shopping under the double headings of Might Be Good For Stockpiling and Why Not? and boy was he in for a surprise. Then something else told him to chill before eating. Now he couldn’t get enough of canned peaches chilled.

A small, properly rationed bowl of cold peaches topping a rational amount of vanilla yogurt was to die for, was a motto he adopted around his newfound love of canned peaches.

Accordingly, the stockpiling of canned peaches commenced in earnest on subsequent grocery trips until the money ran out.

* *

04 A Day in the Life

The weekly trip to the grocery store that was now no longer possible to take weekly or ever again was the centerpiece of a routine for the entire week consisting of standard activities with minor variations which were more or less regular to the routine.

Each morning he awoke without fail at about 5:30 a.m. It was never precisely that time. Maybe it was 5:27 a.m. Maybe he slept until 5:36 a.m. There was no alarm clock. He simply woke up at whether in the darkness of winter or to the full light of daybreak.

By 6:00 a.m. any dirty dishes left from dinner were washed, the counter was cleaned, and coffee was brewing in his French press the color of frog green with clear glass and stainless steel innards. Many items he had were frog green, including his bath mat and toothbrush and the plush chair he sat in to watch television in the living room, though it was wholly coincidental and he couldn’t really explain it and the living room chair was more of a sea green than a frog green.

It was in the early morning, usually with his first cup of hot coffee, that he prepared any dough needed for bread or pizza or other baked goods. Pizza dough sat on the counter and rose all day for dinner that night. The same for focaccia since focaccia was simply pizza dough only wetter with a higher hydration where water was never measured and always only eyeballed. Wet dough gave focaccia that that airy bubbly crumb during baking and olive oil squished into the dough gives it a light and tender crispiness. Focaccia was a nice change of pace on pizza night but he always came to the conclusion that he liked his tavern-style pepperoni pizza the best and was happy when that night rolled around again.

Dough for a country loaf rose throughout the day with kneadings every few hours to build structure while giving the dough space to grow on its own. Then, just before bed he popped the dough into the refrigerator in an airtight plastic container to sit and think about itself for two or even three days for a long cold fermentation. Some would say this is too long, but it’s what gives the bread its rustic flavor that is then drawn out by nothing better than butter on a hot and steaming slice cut from the loaf too soon because he just can’t wait any longer and this is what makes it so good in the end.

Baking bread usually happened on a Saturday or Sunday morning with the loaf lasting the whole week so he planned his dough-making and fermenting accordingly and usually pizza and bread doughs were made on different mornings though not always.

With the bed made (as a kind of fancy camp cot with a foldable metal frame and a covered foam mattress that he got for mere pennies from the very back of a mattress store when the salesman was leading him to this and that big, expensive bed for hundreds or even a thousand dollars. In fairness, though, after finding the little cot in the very back of the store he mentioned to the salesman that he knew he was trying to sell a more expensive bed and if he worked on commission he wouldn’t end up getting much for his troubles and without missing a beat the salesman asked, “Are you happy with the bed you’re getting?” “Yes,” he said. “It’s exactly what I was looking for. It will work perfect for what I need, in fact.” “Then that makes me happy,” said the salesman, and there was genuineness to it. It was dark outside and rain was pouring when the metal frame and mattress were loaded into his car. The salesman went outside to help him, getting soaking wet in the process, which he didn’t have to do. He always remembered the answer and the gesture and loved the simple bed he got. It really was absolutely perfect.), the kitchen cleaned, and a thermos of hot coffee waiting, he retired to the basement to continue work on the secret undertaking he was working on that was no secret to him but completely unknown to everyone else.

He worked on the long workbench he built with his own hands when he first moved into the house so he could build coffee tables and end tables and a table for his television that all looked suspiciously like the workbench in materials and design only with differences in scale and measurements.

The workbench was now repurposed for his 4″ x 6″ note cards, some with scattered around the workbench with scribbles on them, others more neatly printed and arranged into groups or groups of groups , all in dark blue ink. The workbench faced the far wall of the basement with a large mounted corkboard on it. To the corkboard were arranged more 4″ x 6″ note, pinned, scrutinized, moved around, almost always eventually taken down to rework or throw away, to be replaced by new note cards, always white and always without lines or rules, written in dark blue ink.

This was the sum total of his secret undertaking scattered and arranged and pinned to the wall and around and around he went with, struggling to find the right shape and direction to his undertaking as the right answers to his simple question so he could see it as a whole and read it back to himself and know it to be true.

After working in the basement for a few hours and at about 8:00 am he climbed the stairs to the kitchen. He made breakfast, quickly ate his plate of eggs and toast, and returned to the basement to get back to work.

Just before 10:30 am work stopped and he prepared for his daily walk. These days he first peered out the curtains to scan the street before opening the door.

Was anyone lurking and waiting outside to kick him out of the house?

He knew that pumpkinification could come from any direction. A new face or an unfamiliar car will be easy to spot. He just had to be vigilant and make sure today was not the day for the big clock to strike zero hour while outside the safety of his home.

Slipping out of the house he locked the front door while still monitoring the street. Whoever might be waiting would be practiced at hiding and jumping out, he knew, so he needed to stay alert.

His modest house was located in a small neighborhood that ran four short blocks up and down and four average residential blocks side to side. The neighborhood was surrounded on all sides by arteries of the town. When he first moved into his house he tried just walking in his own neighborhood but that wasn’t very satisfying. Walk just one or two blocks in any direction and the roar of traffic rises up before you even see it, and a walk of four square blocks is over before it starts in any case.

He preferred traveling a few blocks north to reach Grimbsby Avenue, so named for one of the town’s founding fathers named Plim Grimbsby VI. Grimbsby VI descended from one of the original pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, simply named Plim Grimbsby. Legend has it that Grimbsby VI lead a wagon train of settlers through Indian territory to reach the promised land, which is here, only to continue west in search of even more promise and land. He is said to have brought with him the bones of his famous pilgrim ancestor as magic charms to protect and guide him while crossing savage lands and left them in town to protect the settlers from being scalped. They now reside in a glass display case in the town’s elementary school, Leaper Elementary, Home of the Leaps!

Once he arrived at Grimbsby Avenue he crossed over into a much bigger and quieter neighborhood where he could wander and get lost for an hour or more. To get there, however, he first had to cross Grimbsby Avenue which was its own ordeal.

*

Grimbsby Avenue was four lanes of heavy traffic running through all parts of town east to west. It was the way you got anywhere going side to side. There were no lights or crosswalks for people to get from his neighborhood to the one just across from it since that would impede drivers wanting to go side to side.

Grimbsby Avenue was an urban freeway and drivers clearly despised anyone on foot including a mother pushing a baby carriage, an old lady with a walker, or a flock of school children trying to get an education. All these people crossing the road did was disrupt the flow of traffic and that made the traffic mad.

Nobody bothered to stop to let anyone cross. Most drivers pretended not to even see people waiting to cross, as if they were concentrating too hard on driving to see anything but the road.

He watched people having to dodge traffic to get across in the manner of that intrepid little Frogger of video game lore. Other people stepped straight into the road in defiance just daring drivers to hit them. Seeing this drivers always sped up to show what little regard they had for stupid people without the brains to drive to get somewhere. The moment of crossing Grimbsby Avenue was always a desperate act and he winced whenever he watched the drama unfold.

He preferred a different approach. When he arrived at Grimbsby Avenue he stopped on the corner next to the parking lot of a Quick Mart. In addition to cars and trucks racing back and forth, many of them dove in and out of the parking lot of the corner market with people flowing in and out from everywhichway while some loitered and laid out on the sidewalk outside the store.

Waiting at Grimbsby Avenue he stayed several steps back from the curb and several steps away from the entrance to the parking lot. The parking lot added a wrinkle to the crossing with vehicles diving into the lot from both directions often with no notice or signal at all and others bolting into the road to pick up speed before they’re hit by traffic that refuses to slow down, even for people who do have the brains to drive a car.

To cross at the corner with all that going on most people amp up to fever pitch with all the fast twitch instincts of both fight and flight activated. He did just the opposite. Waiting on the corner he relaxed his whole body letting his arms go slack. He slouched or slumped a little letting his nervous system power down rather than gearing up for a mad dash. His head turned slowly to the left and then to the right and back and forth and in so doing he watched and waited. There would be a break. A lull in traffic. Maybe not now. Maybe not soon. But eventually. This was not wishful thinking. The crush of trucks and cars never went on like this forever. Sometimes it felt like it, but this was never true.

Along with powering down he had also learned how not to feel dumb just standing there. There is the internal process of getting ready and then the internal check to see if you are ready and when the check sees that you are just standing there like an idiot with no effort to tense up to spring into action this check also suspects that everyone else sees the very same thing within and all around you and you are made to feel dumb about it and almost shamed into dashing recklessly into the street just to prove you weren’t just standing there with no situational awareness or dignity at all.

To get over feeling dumb just standing there is half the battle, he said to himself as he chuckled.

In this powered down state he knew that when the break happened and there was a lull in traffic he would be ready, but ready differently. With his slow-moving head he tracked the final cars just before it was time to go forth. In so doing he powered up again stepping to the curb but not in preparation for a mad dash. He simply powered up to the level of embarking on a pleasant walk. When the coast was clear he stepped off the curb leaving the Quik Mart behind. He then walked unhurriedly across the street just as you would pass through a field of flowers. Now on the other side of Grimbsby Avenue he never broke stride and continued on with his walk.

*

A few blocks farther into the neighboring neighborhood and the craze of traffic became a distant memory. He entered a land of schools and churches and parks and houses everywhichway with trees and fences and gardens and neatly cut lawns and toys scattered here and there with colorful chalk scribbled on the sidewalks.

He saw signs of life everywhere but the streets were always all but deserted at this time of day. This meant he walked alone, privately almost, circling and winding and crisscrossing and weaving in well-traveled routes that he repeated or reversed or linked together in familiar ways without leaving the neighborhood.

Over time he picked out landmarks that he liked to visit that told him where was along the way. A black Labrador named Pancake that he became friends with was an early stop. A plump but grumpy cat often napping under a big oak tree was toward the end.

There was also the Yard of Things as he called it, which he considered exceptional to the neighborhood in almost every way. The Yard of Things was where every thing was left, almost abandoned or deserted, on the front lawn where each thing never moved and where new things appeared from time to time and grass grew up and all around. A big blue ice chest tipped on its side with lid laying next to. The anchor for a small watercraft. PVC pipe. A broken down trampoline. Pallets. One lacquered dressing table with swiveling oval mirror. Tupperware filled with what looked like chili. Two car batteries bounded together by jumper cables. He decided that one was jumping the other while the other jumping the one. Or both were now dead from the impossible jumping task. A large kettle or cooking pot like you would find in the army. A large mop. A small bucket. Tires, of course. A brown recliner with purple seat cushion. A rotary dial telephone, if you can believe it, with cord but no receiver. Kids bikes with flat tires and rusted chains. The cabinet for a bathroom sink. A bathroom sink. A pile of dirty socks as a single fused mass by being soaked in a heavy rain then baked under the hot sun. A wood sculpture of two bear cubs climbing all over each other, now covered in moss so both looked decrepit and ravaged by time.

These and other things he saw in the Yard of Things each time he passed by. It was almost too much to take in as a whole and all at once so he tried to focus on just a few different specific things in the brief windows he had to look while not seeming to look while passing by, for he always kept moving and never stopped or fully turned his head for fear of being caught staring by whoever lived in the House of the Yard of Things since he was sure they were probably watching.

Other landmarks included the Mystery Plant Lady and her gigantic planter pots you could fit whole people into, the Family of Loud Voices coming from deep inside the house, the Red Brick Forlorn House up for sale forever, the Protesting Lawn crowded with signs protesting against thus and such, and the Protesting Lawn across the street protesting for what the lawn across the street was protesting against.

He also often passed by a small, modest, non-protesting, more cheerful sign in the flower bed of a lovely house with a large porch with a swing on it. “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow,” read the sign in a curly font and his eyes always fell to the sign almost in spite of himself so he read it in his head out of habit though he always already knew what it said.

Such was the scenery on his walks around the neighborhood. With one of many routes running its course and his walk nearing the end he arrived back at Grimbsby Avenue to cross the angry road and pass by the Quik Mart to return home at about 11:45 am.

*

As he approached his house he took on the appearance of not living in the neighborhood since he was just passing through while carefully scanning the street for any unusual activity. Then, at the very last moment he darted into his yard and up a few steps to the front door, quickly unlocking the door, slipping inside, shutting the door, and locking it with a final check outside. Check complete he’s back home, safe and secure, where they would have to use a battering ram to get in now and that would activate the final protocol without even having to think about it.

He took his shoes off and placed them on the rack just inside the door. He never wore shoes in the house and was baffled by people who did given everything you step in outside.

All you do is bring all the outside inside until there’s really no difference at all and how unpleasant is that?, he often said to himself.

First a shower and then a light lunch at the kitchen table he made to sit and eat at. Mostly he just ate and looked at the wall in front of him and was content just sitting there doing little else.

Early afternoon was spent reading a book he had already read which always turned into a nap which the best part of the day where he got the heaviest and deepest sleep. By late afternoon he was busy puttering and tidying up and staging for dinner. Cooking was always simple in both ingredients and steps. There were no elaborate recipes or techniques, but time and effort were still required since he made his meals from scratch and almost never ate leftovers except for lunch. One example might stand for his practice as a whole.

The night before he soaked pinto beans in cold water and in the morning the soaked and softened beans went into the slow cooker to simmer for four hours. At lunch time the slow cooker is turned off and the beans just hang out for a while still soaking in the brown bean water. Now it is late afternoon and the beans are drained and staged. An onion is diced and various other vegetables and aromatics and the odd jalapenos pepper are added to the mix. All are sauteed together in a medium-sized cooking pot until soft and succulent and translucent. A small bowl with spices including chili powder and paprika and cumin is set out and then added to the pot with the vegetable mix. This wakes up the spices and tells them they best be ready. Now warm pinto beans are spooned into the pot along with a splash of beef stock. Salt is only now added since beans cooked slowly in salt will become tough and rubbery instead of luscious and creamy.

The beans start to bubble. The beans are mashed. The mash bubbles with beans in it. The heat is lowered and the pot simmers.

That’s right, cry the beans in unison. We’re being refried!, which is to say, fried for this first time, since “refried beans” are not actually fried and then fried again. Whoever thought that and named it accordingly probably never fried any bean of any kind. He was sure of this. Plus, the beans are not actually fried as much as they are stewed.

What a crazy world we live in, he thought to himself.

Also that morning a ball of dough for flat bread is prepared to sit on the counter all day in a closed plastic container to keep from drying out. Now the pita dough is floured and rolled onto parchment paper to be baked on the pizza pan. There it will remain. Everything is now staged, ready to become truly ready to eat after just a few final steps.

In a few hours, when dinner time rolls around, the pita dough is brushed with a light coating of oil, cut into pieces with a round pizza roller, and baked, while the refried beans are brought to back to a simmer.

Dinner will be simple, just pita chips with refried bean dip. There might also be a green salad tossed in there. Nothing fancy. Everything is easy to make. Dinner as such is almost always delicious and satisfying.

Evening is spent reading more of a book already read or doodling on note cards for the next morning’s undertaking or watching a television show that first aired on one of only three available channels ages ago that he first watched on a black and white television. Now they are reruns of reruns running over and over on any of forty obscure channels you can pick up with a basic antenna. He was amazed when he first discovered what the television world had become without him knowing about it for who knows how long.

The shows are fun and comforting. They bring back memories of curling up on the big beige couch or stretching out on shaggy green carpet to watch TV. Back then the shows were all new and familiar to the time. Now they reminded him of what life was like back then, what people looked like, how they talked, and what it all felt like that is now gone for good except through these make believe windows into what the world once was growing up.

He was not a night owl. A few episodes of a show were enough for him and the memories he got were plenty and almost too much to bear. He turned off the television and began his nightly ritual. He brushed his teeth. He turned out the lights. He crawled into bed. He seldom laid there for long. Soon he was fast asleep.

Sleep is when he thought about suicide the most, or maybe just the most intensely since he thought about suicide all the time woven into everything he did throughout the day, day in and day out, but the suicide during sleep was always more intense and real, though maybe not while sleeping as much as in waking up in the darkness to lay there in the state of in-between.

Being in the between state if he laid on his back and tilted his head to the right so pressure built up in his neck from blood trying to pump into his head and blood swirling around in his brain in search of a way out then the pressure point sparked a chain reaction resulting in the earthquake of knowing suicide exploding into every part of his being.

There he would lay suiciding in everything of him, not moving a muscle, absorbing it, leaning into it even while being in terror at the sheer magnitude of the suicide until that was enough. He turned his head back to center so he faced up at the ceiling. Then he rolled over to the left and curled up into a ball not to cower but to settle in and get comfortable again. Sometimes he fell asleep fast. Other times he laid that way until daybreak before finally drifting off for just a few minutes more.

* *

05 Second

Thinking about suicide during the day meant running through the choreography of it.

Suicide will be in three parts since good things come in threes, he thought to himself, and then he listed primary colors and little pigs and blind mice.

The noose, as the second of three, hung in the middle of the basement attached to the central beam running the width of the house. The basement ceiling was low and exposed and he liked looking up to see the beams and the old floor boards seasoned for who knows how long until their age showed complete indifference to however old you are and however much you’ve seen in life and however long you’ve been here. It made him feel like being in the warm dry belly of an ancient beast.

The noose was made from 5′ 3″ of double braided black nylon rope with a thickness of 3/8 of an inch. He purchased the rope at Home Depot in the early hours of a dark and rainy Sunday morning just before fall passed over into winter. Get there early, he told himself. The store will be deserted, he reasoned. I’ll be in and out as quick as possible.

The trip will be quick because he knew that rope was the only item on his list. He needed about four feet. That should be enough, he said to himself.

He did not make an actually shopping list for the rope by writing “rope” on a 4″ x 6″ note card in dark blue ink. He just kept the words rope and about four feet in his head. He did not have a specific kind of rope in mind either. From past trips to Home Depot he remembered a bank of ropes in an aisle somewhere near the back. He just needed to make a beeline back there and find the right aisle and from all the ropes he had to choose from he figured the right rope would show itself.

Entering Home Depot the store was dead except for employees in orange aprons milling about the front singly or huddling in small clusters. They had not yet pushed into the depths of the store to help customers probably partly because there were no customers to help and partly probably because they couldn’t yet bring themselves to do so.

Seeing this he ducked into the aisles to go unnoticed. He pushed farther and farther back into the forest of orange shelves. He felt enveloped and all alone and it was comforting. A far cry from the bedlam of Home Depot on a summer Saturday with people everywhere with oversized carts and utility trolleys and electric lifters honking everywhichway.

In the stillness of the store it was easy work to find his way to Aisle 32, Bay 014. The entirety of Bay 014 in Aisle 32 was devoted to rope-by-the-foot on big wooden spools displayed on long steel rods spanning the length of the bay. It’s just like he remembered. This is exactly what I’m looking for, he said to himself with a measure of satisfaction at how his plan was going so far.

He scanned the large spools from left to right, top to bottom, and almost instantly he saw the rope he was looking for. Black. Nylon. Thick but not too.

Color doesn’t matter, he said to himself. It could be pink polka dot for all he cared and in fact he liked both the color pink and polka dots for that matter. But imagine a rope with polka dots!, he chuckled.

Getting back to business he reminded himself that what matters is it just needs to hold a swinging body for at least a little while. But black does seems kind of fitting, he admitted, though navy or a twine color would work too, he quickly added.

The job seemed to be all but over before it even started, except looking at his rope on its spool and then at all the other spools of rope-by-the-foot in Bay 014 of Aisle 32 he noticed something curious. None of the spools of rope was labeled. Since this was effectively the bulk rope section of the store he assumed there would be basic information about each rope. A name or description of the rope, including what the rope’s made of. The rope’s measurement by diameter. A load limit, probably by dead weight. Answers to these and other questions about ropes seemed vital to buying rope yet all were silent on everything about themselves.

Speaking of which, he didn’t see any prices either. I guess they’re free, he chuckled to himself, picturing himself trudging out the front door with arms filled with spools of miles of rope.

After this momentary levity he spied another problem. There was no ruler anywhere in sight. How do you measure feet of rope in the rope-by-the-foot section of the store without a ruler? This was getting ridiculous. It was as if someone mounted all those spools of rope and declared that it was good and broke for lunch and nobody bothered to give it any more thought or attention and so it has remained ever since.

The obvious solution is a ruler in bright orange marked off in feet and inches that’s printed directly into the length of the shelving of bay 014, which spanned at least ten feet. A ready-made ten foot ruler, in other words. Simple and straightforward. Obvious and ease to use. Pull the rope from the spool you want. Measure it. Mark it. Cut it.

Speaking of which …

He looked around. What are you supposed to cut the rope with once you haven’t measured it? Looking around there was no scissors or utility knife hanging from the bay.

What’s someone supposed to do?, he asked from the thick of the forest in the back of the store. Gnaw through the rope like a mouse with your teeth?

In asking the question he remembered the lion who was caught in a net. The lion raged and wrestled with the net until he was exhausted. Then he languished under the hot sun, unable to break free.

“Is this how I am to die?,” demanded the lion. “I am king of all I survey and now I am ensnared and helpless as the lowliest creature in my domain.”

Then from a small hole in the ground a mouse emerged. The mouse observed the situation carefully and cautiously from the shadow of the hole.

The lion spied the mouse peering out from his house.

“Mouse friend,” said the lion, “won’t you please help me? I am trapped in this infernal net and cannot escape.”

“I am,” sighed the lion, “in your power to save me.”

“But what can I do?,” asked the mouse in his meek squeaky voice. “I am just a mouse.”

“This makes you all the more able to help,” pronounced the lion. “You can gnaw through the rope with your sharp mouse teeth. This will make you great and worthy in mine eyes”

Is that what Home Depot wants me to do?, he asked the store. Must I gnaw through the rope with my teeth to be great and worthy in their eyes? He pictured himself gnawing away at the black nylon rope for who knows how long it would take while the store fills up with people passing by pointing and watching him on display.

There has to be a better way, he told himself. He looked around in earnest. Just then he spied a little cage attached to the right column of Bay 014 in Aisle 32. He walked up to the cage to inspect it. Inside the cage he saw what looked like a metal fixture of some kind. It wasn’t an electrical outlet. What was it?

He jiggled the cage and the face lifted up to reveal a dull blade. Now it all made sense! This was a hot knife to cut the rope. When you flip a switch — and sure enough there was the switch to flip, and so he flipped it — the hot knife switches on. The dull blade grows infernal.

He raced back to the spool of black nylon rope and using his honest best he ran off four feet, pinching the rope to mark it with his fingers. He then pulled the rope to the hot knife, re-marked his length by pinching either side of the mark he pinched, and pressed the rope into the red hot blade. The rope melted through and smoked and smelled and the hot knife cauterized each fresh new end and it was all so very satisfying to him.

He flipped off the switch and closed the cage. The red hot blade faded to gun metal grey. He rolled the spare rope back into its spool for the next customer who needs black nylon rope. Then he exhaled.

Well, that was an adventure, he said to himself. Time to pay and get the heck out of here.

Carrying the loosely coiled length of black nylon rope he walked to the self-checkout area. It was empty except for a cashier manning all the terminals for self-checking out while staring into the middle distance.

“Hello,” she said in a return to Home Depot.

“Hello,” he said. Already this is the most conversation he’d had in forever. It’s harder than it looks, he thought to himself.

“Did you find everything you were looking for?” she asked.

“Yes, he said, lifting the rope. “Just this,” he added, while picturing how he will use it.

The rope will be attached to the center beam in the basement of his house, but not directly. The beam is exposed, sides and bottom, but the top supports floor boards. This means you can’t just wrap the rope around the beam to make a noose from it. But he had a solution. He will use a special screw with a smooth metal loop at one end and a threaded shank with a sharp point at the other. He will drive the sharp screwing end into the beam until just the metal loop sticks out. He will then thread one end of the rope through the loop, tying it securely with a knot to be determined, for he was not good at knots. The other end of the rope, which is all the rest, will form a noose he will have to figure out how to tie, from which to hang, and Shazam!.

Simple steps make for a good plan, he always said to himself.

He already had the smooth metal loop, left over from a self-fix-it project that never came to be only to become the solution to his problem of rope to big center beam. Now he just needed a good length of rope, which is why he was at Home Depot on a Sunday morning on brink of another cold and rainy winter.

“Actually,” he said, “I’m not quite sure how to ring this up. There was no name or price where I got it, and I wanted four feet but I had to guess because I couldn’t find any way to measure it.”

That was a lot to lay on the cashier and it was not intended to be a list of grievances. It was just the truth.

The cashier stepped over to the screen of the self-checkout station and started pressing digital buttons. Then she swiped her identification card to arrive at places that only store employees can go and pressed more and different buttons on the screen. He felt like he was in good hands.

Then her look of concentration melted into concern. Her face scrunched up and her busy hands went slack.

“I’m not sure what to do,” she said.

Before he could say a word to the effect that maybe it’s in some kind of bulk section of your inventory and you need to type rope and you’ll get a whole menu of ropes-by-the-foot with pictures and prices which is exactly what he does at the grocery store when he’s self-checking out with loose mushrooms, for instance, and why didn’t he think of that himself?, the cashier was on her headset broadcasting into the cavernous silence of The Home Depot that she needed a price check for self-checking out. From every walkie-talkie on every employee squawked the call for help and he could feel the store rumble to life. Then he detected movement. Employees poured in from every direction, converging on his position at the self-checkout area. Not just one or even a few of them, but pretty much everybody from what he could tell.

He did not like crowds. Even when he was in the background he felt conspicuous and it made him uneasy. More important, it made him sweat. Not under his armpits. Interestingly, they remained bone dry. But at the first twinge of panic his forehead sweated large heavy beads and the entire top of his head grew soaking wet in the blink of an eye so beads of sweat started streaming down his face.

Knowing this all too well, when he knew he was going to be around people he always wore a hat or stocking cap to hide the sweat and soak it up. Case in point: grocery shopping. It was one thing to panic at being around people. He could suffer that in silence. It was another entirely to show panicking in how drenched he was with sweat and this made him panic even more so more sweat poured out and rolled down his face for everyone to see.

A hat at least hid the sweating from view and this helped to calm him down and even helped him to stay calm and not break into panic when he would otherwise be afraid of panicking which would make him panic since now it was the panic of being seen sweating that often set off the panic even if he knew he was anonymous and in the background and not conspicuous at all.

Now all the store employees gathered around him at the self-checkout area of Home Depot and their sole concern became him standing there painfully conspicuous holding a length of rope he wants to buy.

The first order of business was for the cashier to brief everyone on what the problem was. To help illustrate she pointed to him as he held the rope for all to see. He held it out a little bit to give everyone a better look to try to draw some attention away from him while they looked at the rope.

They all stared intently at the rope and at him. He felt the heat of their eyes. That was all it took. Sweat already bubbling down below boiled over and burst forth as the world around became loud and blurry.

He remembered pulling into the Home Depot parking lot and getting out of his car. A hat always sat in the passenger’s seat ready to pop on where ever he went anywhere. But this will be a quick trip in a sleepy store, he reasoned. The empty parking lot said there’s no one inside to be afraid of. He’ll get the rope. Use self-checkout. And be out before anyone knows he’s there. He won’t need a hat this time, he told himself confidently.

The memory stung as he stood in the middle of a semi-circle of Home Depot employees all loudly discussing what to do about this customer holding that piece of rope. The discussion broke into groups. One group, staffed by the cashier, pressed tighter into the self-checking out area to tackle the system on how to ring up rope. Another group formed a field team where one Home Depot employee dashed off in the direction of Aisle 32 while the remaining team members stood by to provide backup or support, while waiting on their walkie-talkies for news.

Despite his panic he could not help but be gratified by all their help. He just wished it didn’t have to be everyone that was helping him. So there he stood there holding the length of rope, sweating in his head and down his face so the collar of his jacket became wet and stained and surely they all saw it even while they were occupied with the self-checkout system and standing around to be at the ready.

The first group made no progress even though several employees stepped in so they took turns not figuring it out. Meanwhile a long period of radio silence was observed with no word from the employee somewhere in the back of the store. Everyone in the second group grew restless.

This will never end, he said to himself as the world around screamed at the sweat flowing freely from the panic inside. He thought about just dropping the rope and walking out of the store.

“Hey mister,” they would called, “what about your rope?”

“Keep it!,” he would say to his immediate and eternal relief. But he remembered why he was there and what he needed the rope for and there was really no turning back. But he did have an idea born of self-protection and practice.

He stepped up to the self-checkout terminal and set the rope down on the flat surface next to the screen. This was entirely reasonable since he was buying the rope and the rope still needed to be rung up and that’s precisely where you set things while ringing.

He pretended that this was the sole reason for setting the rope down. Everyone had only seen the rope from a short distance with him holding it. Nobody had a chance to look at the rope up close and setting the rope down next to the self-checkout terminal simply let them have that closer look. It also allowed him to step back from the crowd and shrink into the shadows of the self-checkout area to get as far away from everyone as possible. The distance made him feel a little better because he didn’t feel like the center of attention anymore, but his face was still soaked and glistening with sweat even under those yellow-grey lights of the Home Depot warehouse.

He wiped his brow and scratched his head as if perplexed by the rope checkout problem, but really it was to wipe away as much sweat as he could without looking like that’s what he was doing.

It kind of worked and he felt relieved by the dry areas. But it was still really hot and he really did need to get out as soon as possible.

Just then the runner came running back. He blew right by his own team and dove straight into the midst of the first group. The logjam seemed to break as the cashier now had clear direction and deftly pressed digital buttons until a new screen popped up. Everyone gave a subdued but hearty cheer.

Relief washed over him, and now he expected everyone but the cashier to drift away. They did not. Nobody moved. They all waited. The reason was clear. After so much effort by so many they were invested now and wanted to see the self-checking out to completion. His panic not withstanding he appreciate this. Even respected it.

The cashier picked up the rope to size it up. She looked for him and found him standing way back in the farthest boundaries of the self-checkout area.

“Four feet?,” she asked to confirm.

“Four feet,”, he said, giving the cashier a thumbs up while thanking the heavens that this had not launched a new phase of the official measuring of the rope.

The cashier punched a few more digital buttons and stepped back.

“Ready when you are,” she said, stepping back to invite him to the self-checkout station. She was very polite and helpful and not menacing at all. Of course she wasn’t. In fact, everyone was just fine and not mean or threatening. That not why he spiraled into panic and why this was an invitation to torture. The problem was, they were all still standing around where he would have to step in to pay for the rope and now they will really see all his sweat up close and he started to panic even more just after he calmed down a bit.

There was no other option. He decided to just dive in. He stepped forward and swiped his card that would eventually be turned off and frozen, though he didn’t know this yet. The payment went through without a hitch. A receipt spitted out. He grabbed the receipt and the rope. Everybody felt a sense of great accomplishment, working together to overcome the problem and seeing it to end.

“Thank you for all your help”, he said meekly, gesturing to the entire gathering of Home Depot employees. “Sorry for all the trouble.”

“It’s our pleasure,” said the cashier. “That’s what we’re here for.” It was sincere and that made him feel good about all of them. It’s not their fault, after all.

With that he turned and made a seemingly unhurried dignified beeline to the big sliding doors at the exit. The doors rolled opened and finally he stepped into the cold wet parking lot which felt like the greatest escape he ever made. He walked through the empty lot relieved and sad and tired. It was a familiar aftermath once he got to a safe place away from people where he could breath again and wipe away sweat in private without being ashamed.

* *

06 Two and One and Three

When he got home he went straight to the basement. There was no reason to delay. Let’s put it up and make sure it’s what we wanted. Plus, after that trip to Home Depot he wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t just hang himself right there and then.

The smooth metal loop waited on the workbench. Before he left for Home Depot he inspected the size of the loop so he could find rope that fits through. He could have taken the metal loop with him, but the eye seemed wide enough for just about any good-sized rope so he decided to take his chances and rely on memory and good judgement.

Now that he was back home, safe and sound, with all he needed in the way of rope and metal loop he could put the noose up. But first he looked at the receipt to see what exactly he got. It read:

Rope. Double Braided. Nylon. Black. 3/8”
4’ 00” @ 1.13/ft. …………………………… Total: $4.52

A pretty good price for suicide, he thought to himself.

He laid the rope straight on the workbench and measured it with a tape measure.

“Five feet, three inches,” he said aloud and whistled.

He had over-guessed by a lot, which didn’t make him happy. He only paid for four feet and he got much more rope than he wanted. He felt bad about that. It’s not like he was trying to scam Home Depot or deceive those helpful employees. He tried his best. If they had some kind of ruler he would have measured the rope at exactly four feet and there would be no question about it. They just didn’t have a ruler to measure feet of rope-by-a-foot so he had to make his best guess. It just wasn’t very good and he ended up getting — and here he had to do some quick math — about $1.40 worth of black nylon rope for free.

There was a cost, he reminded himself, thinking back to the self-checkout area. But in fairness, he said to himself, it could have gone the other way too. He could have ended up with less than four feet of rope by that same guessing of his while paying exactly what he paid, plus now he probably wouldn’t have enough rope after all that heartache and he’d have to go back to get more rope.

He could also go back to pay the difference just to be honest about it since he got more rope than he paid for, although this time he’d be wearing a hat! He thought about it for a moment. Then he decided.

No, thank you!, he said to himself. I prefer not to. And with that, the matter was closed. It was time to bring the rope and the metal loop together.

He pushed one end of the rope through the loop and drew it back and forth, in and out, in and out. The rope slipped through the loop with easy with plenty of room to spare but without being too loose. It was, for all intents and purposes, the perfect metal loop for the perfect rope and vice-versa, with only a few more steps to be completed to know what he truly had.

Standing on the same collapsible stool he will use on the day of, he raised a power drill to drill a pilot hole into the beam. He would then screw the loop into the beam by hand with a nice head start to make the screwing easier and to ensure the line of the screw was straight into the beam.

Driving the drill bit into the heavy beam was harder than he expected. The wood was iron from a lifetime of bearing the full weight of the house. After drilling and drilling and pressing harder into the drill he stopped to inspect. There was nothing but a shallow dimple with a pinhole in the middle. He tried again. The bit just spun round and round on the surface of the iron wood and produced nothing more than the same shallow dimple. Finally he gave up and decided to do it by hand. He expected this to be a nightmare.

He lined up the screw so the point poked into the pinhole and he turned the screw with his fingers wrapped around the loop for leverage. Surprisingly, this manual effort that should have seen no success gained purchase at once and slowly the screw wound its way into the beam. Turn after turn, with each turn becoming harder and harder, the screw ate into more and deeper wood until the threading disappeared and only the loop remained.

He tested the screw eye by pressing down on the loop with one hand and pretending dead weight by sagging his whole body while standing on the stool. The loop felt solid like it wasn’t going anywhere no matter how much weight it had to bear.

He stepped down from the stool and stepped back up with the rope. He threaded one end through the loop and tied the approximate of a double hitch knot. He then tugged on the rope to test the weight again. It held firm. Then he eyeballed a measurement for the noose. He didn’t know how to tie a noose-proper. He thought he would just wing it and see what he came up with.

After a few experiments going around and through, over and around, around and underneath, around and through and around, and so on, he got what looked like a genuine legitimate noose. He tested the slip action to see if the knot would run up and down the rope. Like butter, he said to himself, remembering when he first heard that phrase as a kid and it had always stuck with him.

Now the moment of truth. He stepped down from the stool and repositioned the stool to right below the noose. Then he stepped back up so he was directly underneath the loop and the rope. To slip the noose over his head he had to hunch down a little since the ceiling of the basement was low and standing on the stool he actually stood eye level to the knot of the noose, which brushed up against his head. He drew the noose around his neck and lined himself back up. Pulling tight but not too tight to cinch the noose because he never liked tight things around his neck, such as turtlenecks, he gauged everything to his satisfaction. This should work perfectly, he said. After the gunshot his body will slump and his feet will probably hit the ground or scatter or drag on the stood but that part didn’t matter. His dead weight will do all the rest of the work that’s needed.

Fortunately, the gun did not require a trip to Home Depot. He already had it. He’d had it for years. It was a revolver. A .38 special made by Smith & Wesson in nickel with a black rubber grip. The handgun was hefty and well-balanced. It was a real pleasure to fire. And now it was loaded and waiting for him at the other end of the basement in a metal box screwed down through the bottom and into a small wooden bench looking a lot like the long wooden workbench at the opposite side of the room. The box was locked and secured with a padlock. The key was hidden close by. The first step of the choreography, after going down to the basement, was getting the key. The steps after that were self-evident, almost intuitive. That was the point.

Nevertheless, he practiced many times to make sure he knew where everything was and had the order and movements just right so he didn’t even need to think about it. Key in secret place. Key to metal lockbox on small wooden bench. Collapsible stool leaning against. Get revolver. All to center of basement. Stool popped open. He climbs up revolver in hand. Head through noose. Noose tightened but not too. Cocks hammer. Gun to head. Pulls trigger.

It takes an average of 48 seconds of deliberate but unhurried action, which he did not time with a stopwatch and instead estimated according to all those minutes he experienced in the passing in his life and what they felt like and practice always felt like less than a minute by that measure but not by much but by at least a little bit and 48 seconds seemed about right.

The third part of the suicide was still to be determined because he wasn’t sure what made the most sense. This will add to the overall time and number of steps, he knew, but what that will entail was still a question to be answered.

Poison was considered but most poison is not instantaneous meaning a long lead up time, which may or may not make any sense along with parts one and two, which would then become parts two and three, of course. What if poison caused him to spasm or slump over in pain or become unconscious so he can’t complete the other parts? Plus, what poison should he use?

You really need to know what you are doing there, he said to himself, unlike the other parts that require very little expertise.

He thought about fire and then ruled out fire after considering it and then not considering by absolutely rejecting it. He loved his home even if it wasn’t quite his anymore. It was old and had seen so much and didn’t need to be destroyed for the sake of his having a third part.

He could trek deep into the forest or wade far into the ocean instead, though try hanging yourself in the ocean, he chuckled. He also pictured the branch breaking and him laying on the forest floor in a daze.

No, he said. Here is home. This is where I belong.

Thus, two after one while three remained undecided and time was running out though he still had no leading candidates.

* *

07 Deadlines

By the time he started to stockpile time had run out long ago and he knew this well.

The original date was to be on or before December 31, which really meant sometime between Christmas and the close of New Years’ Eve. With the holiday season upon him there was even a series of lead up to meals. Thanksgiving dinner consisted of dressing and only dressing, made from dried cubes of homemade bread of the white, wheat, and white-cornmeal varieties, along with apple-maple sausages from a local shop on the edge of town where you can look outside and see pigs basking in the bright autumn sun.

There was nothing to even consider making for Thanksgiving dinner since dressing, or stuffing as we called it, was always his favorite part of the meal. He was always forced to spoon green bean casserole on his plate, which he hated, along with yam and marshmallow casserole, which he felt sorry for. Now he could skip the farce entirely. Now there would be no Jello with grapes and pears pieces suspended in it. He was having dressing and all he wanted of it and nothing else, thank you very much.

Turkey would have been a nice bonus, he had to admit, and there’s nothing wrong with turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce and stuffing for after the regular Thanksgiving Dinner and all into next week, but he was just one person and making a whole turkey felt like overkill to a simple, solitary dinner for just himself so he skipped that too. He was more than happy with homemade stuffing. This is what made the meal special anyway.

Christmas supper was not ham or even a stuffing redo as you might suppose. Supper on Christmas Eve was, you guessed it!, tatertot casserole, because he could and tatertot casserole is exactly what he wanted. It was also a kind of last big special meal. The secret undertaking will surely be done by then and the timing also meant all bills were still current and paid for with money in the bank and that seemed just about right. Thus, he set December 31 as his deadline.

December came and went, however, and the undertaking was almost done but not completely with the last part taking longer than expected and the new timeline was the end of January and then the end of February and finally March 31 when the money will be all but gone, just enough to pay small bills and cover basic expenses but for only so long with paying for the house being another story entirely. The was the time bomb and everything else explodes with it, he figured.

March 31 came and went. The undertaking was in fact done and dusted. He got no joy from that. That was not the point. In fact, he expected to feel nothing in the sense that this would not be a moment to cheer or celebrate or run around showing everyone. When he finished and all was torn up and scattered to the wind and burned away and buried for good he simply went for his walk and didn’t think much about it ever again.

Now he puttered through the days and weeks slipping into one month and then the next. His undertaking organized his time and energies even when he wasn’t working on it so he did have to get used to the absence, but it actually came fairly easily so he almost didn’t notice. Now he shuffled around in the morning tidying up and reading books he already read and he went for his walk and napped and cooked and baked and ate good food and watched old television shows and in between he sat at his workbench and tinkered with different new ideas on note cards he would never go anywhere but it was something to do that he enjoyed.

Deciding to stockpile was therefore a boon to his time, a welcome addition to the weekly routine not only of getting to grocery shop with added purpose but also in thinking about it and planning for it and figuring amounts out and writing everything in early versions on note cards to be finalized the night before the trip to the grocery store.

The change of pace was short lived, of course. There wasn’t really all that much to do. Plus, soon then there was no more money. Then he owed $2.53 to his own checking account plus everything else he was in the deep for with no digging out.

In this way April turned to May and before he knew it we were into the latter part of June with all the clocks spinning backwards and wildly out of control with zero hour looming large. July 4th was what he called his “drop dead deadline.” The line in the sand. The day had no particular meaning like declaring independence from life. It was simply good for a masking a gunshot with fireworks popping off in all directions throughout the day and long into the night. Coming from the basement, sunk deep in the ground and surrounded by thick concrete, the shot will be muffled anyway but July 4th was the day of all days for a bang that nobody even notices.

He also prepared for what might come in days leading up to the date. Instead of a quiet walk down to the basement, the end could be sudden and desperate with a banging at the door and that battering ram to burst in and get him out of the house for good. When this happens he knows what to do no matter what day it is or even hour. He looked forward to it, in fact.

He felt bad about all the delays so many times. He found that this made him feel already dead since at least December 31 and in effect this was mostly true. This truth allowed him see what his death looked like to the world since December 31 in the sense of the world noticing pretty much nothing about it, one way or the other.

Cars and trucks still roared along Grimbsby Avenue. Traffic was not silenced or diverted. He still walked by the small sign in the yard in the neighborhing neighborhood and it still said the very same thing whether he was there to read it or not. The world went on not knowing he was effectively absent from it. Especially when he was at home, safe and secure, there was really no difference between him being home and being dead. He did not mourn this truth since it is what he knew all along.

And what of all those other suicides since December 31, he asked himself. How did they affect you?

Not at all, was the obvious answer. I don’t even know who they were. This told him all he needed to know about himself.

This was not the reason for his suicide, of course. To be noticed or not noticed, remembered or forgotten, mourned or ignored, these were not the point of it. It was just an observation he made since he thought about suicide one way or another most all the time and with so much time to think about it his thoughts traveled far and wide even as he stayed close to home, locked away safe and sound.

After all the delays it was a curious final hour indeed, he admitted, with mundane days one after another that were the most happy of his life mixed with the expectation of great violence until dead while the very same home he’s safe and sound in crumbles all around him. There were no lessons to learn or to share with others in any of this, certainly not about living and not about dying either. He was simply blessed, he felt, with not being known or knowing anyone else. He was silent in life, leaving no lasting mark, and now being silent in death gave him great comfort and pleasure and he was grateful. This is how he felt that he felt deep down and this game him great pleasure too.

* *

08 Strawberry Jam

Being well past the display of fireworks with no deadline met the bounty of the stockpile that once was had dwindled.

At first, so long ago, house and home was bursting with food. The refrigerator never saw so much cheese and milk and fresh produce to keep cool. The bottom shelves of the pantry were laden with flour and rice and bags of beans while the top couldn’t believe the industrial amounts of crushed tomatoes and cooking oil and canned peaches and white vinegar just like you’d find in a restaurant even though he was only eating for one.

Down below, in the cool dry basement he stored pounds of potatoes in a food-safe bucket tucked away in one corner. In the opposite corner was an identical food-safe bucket filled with onions sprinkled with cloves of garlic and a few shallots.

The buckets stayed in separate corners glaring one another and you could feel the tension. Sometimes after plucking from each bucket for soup or rice with curry he imagined both buckets sprouting arms and legs to go at it in the center of the ring. That’s how much the onions and potatoes didn’t like even being in the same room.

In the early days of having the stockpile he didn’t know where to start. There were so many good things to eat and so much of it. So he made a point of sticking to the usual routine. In this way he cooked and baked and ate what he liked in regular variations and when something ran out he replenished it as usual with the only difference being it was already on hand and he no longer needed to grocery shop for the week. It was exactly how stockpiling was supposed to work.

This went on just fine until he started to notice something increasingly alarming. By the middle of June his stock started to feel picked over and a shadow of its former self. It wasn’t necessarily sooner than he expected. But enough time had passed with clocks winding down with the usual meals still on the menu and this dug into his stores. Holes started to appear where food once was. Everywhere in the refrigerator and the pantry and the buckets in basement the holes deepened so there was more and more empty space for storing food and less and less space where was food being stored. Fullness had become the verge of emptiness and he felt it deeply.

Almost instinctively he became extra-careful about what he used and how much he used of it and what was left and about how much longer it would last in a sort of overlapping accounting of dwindling ingredients and meals and time. The urge to ration food made perfect sense.

Why be extravagant or wasteful, even in moderation?, he asked himself.

Do you really need two potatoes when one will do? Or, bake two and save one for lunch. Try eating half a potato for lunch and use the rest for dinner in a small potato side salad with a dash of oil and vinegar.

Who knew you could make pancakes without milk or eggs!

Then again, he reasoned, a pancake is just fancy flatbread with sweet toppings. Somebody somewhere with spare milk and an egg added them to the bare bones recipe and the rest was history. But they aren’t necessary. Not by a long shot!

Making a weekly pizza was a major shift that he took great satisfaction in with slices of pepperoni going fast and soon to be gone.

Cheese pizza is just fine, he declared with conviction. Maybe even a little less cheese. Light on the sauce to save on tomatoes. Once in a while try two or three rounds of pepperoni for a special weekly pie instead of a pizza full of them. Place the pepperoni meaningfully on the pizza instead of being scattered around and piled up thoughtlessly.

Be intentional about your pizza and you will appreciate it even more, he advised.

Now you’re making a rustic pie reminiscent of lean times in the old world, he added.

And true to his word he did enjoy the treat of those few pepperoni slices far more than if they covered every inch of the pie.

Rationing just made sense and sometime it made food even better, was the general rule he agreed on.

But what exactly I am rationing for?, he asked himself. This went back to the two schools of thought on stockpiling that he went back and forth on while never truly deciding. Was the food supposed to get him to the end or was he at the end when food ran out?

Now that food was running out the questions were heightened even more. Should he conserve what he had to get to a determined date, a deadline, or should he live it up, modestly speaking, toward an end that happens when everything is all gone?

Nothing said the problem like strawberry jam. For reasons he could never fully fathom he did not stockpile this staple of pancakes and sandwiches for lunch and his universal salad dressing good on everything at dinner. More baffling was the image real as life itself that stuck in his mind where he swore he saw himself buying a family-sized jar of strawberry jam and storing it in the pantry.

Every time he spooned strawberry jam out of the regular-sized jar he had from before stockpiling he returned the jar of jam to the refrigerator with the certain knowledge of that big jar of jam waiting in the pantry. This gave him the confidence of someone in no immediate danger of running out with reinforcements only seconds away.

Then, with just one lump of jam left in the glass jar plus the scrapings on the sides he figured it was time to call up the new jar of strawberry jam to get ready for duty.

It wasn’t there.

He moved items around to see what’s behind. He peered into the back corners of shelves.

How could it be hidden?, he asked himself.

It’s a big glass jar of jam after all, he said, chuckling at when he finally finds it, and where were you all this time?, he would scold the jam lightheartedly.

After shuffling everything around and around on the top shelves of the pantry, making sure to touch every jar and can and bottle to make sure the strawberry jam jar was not it he moved to the bottom shelves and shifted around bags of flour and rice and sacks of beans. He was more ready for the great discovery of the glass jar of jam.

There was no jam to be found. This isn’t possible, he insisted to himself.

To prove it he emptied the pantry, top to bottom, with everything laid out on the kitchen counter so every inch of the shelves in the pantry was exposed for a thorough inspection, shelf by shelf.

Still no jam.

He inspected everything from the pantry now displayed on the kitchen counter. To inspect he touched each item while confirming in his head what it was by saying its word to see if what he thought he was touching he was saying wrong so that what he touched but didn’t say was really strawberry jam, or in case he was touching it wrong when what he was really saying was the family-sized jar of strawberry jam.

To his dismay, everything checked out as only being itself and not strawberry jam, though he felt a boost of confidence in his powers of correctly matching words to things, and vice versa, even if he now had trouble matching memory to what really happened.

Where could it be?, he wondered, still picturing the family-sized jar of jam as clear as day. It boggled his mind so he almost couldn’t stand it.

He restocked the pantry, reinspecting and announcing each item as he went, especially any container made of glass or looking like glass such as plastic, to see if it actually contained jam.

Surely the jam is somewhere, he assured himself.

“How could you be no where?” he asked the jar of strawberry jam aloud so it could hear him calling.

The search widened.

Reusable grocery bags hung loose and light on a hook at the back of the kitchen. There’s no way a heavy glass jar of jam is in there, he said of the bags. But just to be sure he took down each bag and looked inside and stuck his hand all he way down and swirled it around feeling for a heavy glass jar. Then he turned each bag inside out to make sure nothing was hiding somewhere inside.

The refrigerator came next.

“Did I put you in there and forgot about it?” he asked the jar of jam.

That would make sense, he replied in relief at only being absentminded.

“But how could I not have noticed you then?”

He threw open the doors of the refrigerator half-expecting that there it would be, all smiles and mischief, as if to say, “You finally found me.” What he saw instead was the regular-sized jar of almost used up jam that started the search in the first place. He removed the regular jar of jam from the refrigerator and started began looking above and below and behind the few remaining items in the empty white space of the refrigerator

It should be easy to spot a large brand new jar of jam, he said to himself, even though I kept missing you all this time, he added.

He was tempted to empty the refrigerator of its few contents to make sure.

No, he said to himself to impose calm and restraint. That won’t be necessary. I can see from here.

Then he emptied the refrigerator putting everything left inside out on the counter, checking each item by saying it aloud as he went. Once emptied of everything not the new jar of jam he looked into the refrigerator once again now fully expecting a brand new jam jar to be there. He remembered watching the Price is Right in the morning on a sick day from school where Bob Barker asks Johnny what we’re playing for this time.

There is a pause. Suspense grips the contestant and the audience.

“A new car!” Johnny explodes and everybody goes wild.

He didn’t want a new car. He had no money to put gas in it. He just wanted his family-sized jar of strawberry jam.

“What are we playing for this time?,” he said aloud to build the suspense. He was truly ready to go wild.

He stuck his head into the refrigerator. The cold white space stared back. They looked at each other in blankness.

You’re right, he said to the cold white space. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.

He did feel a little embarrassment at the show he just put on, and was he was baffled beyond belief.

But this is no time for bafflement, he rallied himself. The jar of jam still needs to be found.

The next most obvious place was his car where the jar now had to be. It somehow rolled out of the grocery bag, which tipped over on the ride home, and the jam never even make it into the house.

“It was there all along!” he cried.

He felt hopeful at this new development yet troubled by the vivid picture he still had of the jam jar being in the pantry that’s in the car.

Maybe he knew he bought the jar, he figured, and then he assumed he stored it in the pantry like he always does. He just added those two things together to have one complete memory when he was only half right.

But it was the right half, he noted, since having jam and not knowing where it is is far better than not having jam while knowing exactly where you put it.

He couldn’t argue with that.

With that he grabbed his keys and a flashlight and headed to the car. A layer of dust covered the hood and the windshield and the side windows and the sides of his car and the back too.

How quickly nature recovers its own, he observed brushing some away.

He didn’t drive much any more. He had gas in the car, half-full half-empty if he remembered correctly, but no more gas money when that gas was gone. Plus, he didn’t really have anywhere to go. So there the car sat since the end of stockpiling. Hopefully guarding the family-sized jar of strawberry jam, he added.

“Maybe I’ll even find other food that fell out along with the jam,” he proposed and this brightened him a little.

“Hopefully it’s not a bunch of rotting bananas,” he added.

His mind started to drift to other items he might find along with the jar of jam, but he quickly pulled himself back to the task at hand.

The search of the car commenced. It started with what’s in plain sight. Soon ancient Oriental contortions were needed to get into a position down inside the car to shine a light into the nooks and crannies underneath the seats where the jar could have rolled. It’s actually kind of cozy down here, he thought to himself, accidentally shining the light in his eyes blinding himself temporarily.

No jar of jam.

He recovered outside the car to get blood and feeling back into his legs. He looked again in case he missed it. He wanted to check underneath the hood for the jar of jam, but by exercising just enough restraint he decided not to.

The car was a dead end, but he didn’t dwell too long.

Maybe it’s in the basement, he said to himself.

Why would it be in the basement?, he asked himself.

Because it’s no where else, was the obvious answer.

Most obvious answer within the answer was that the jam was in one or the other food-safe buckets squaring off from opposite corners of the room. There was nowhere else for the jam to hide in the basement and he would have seen it by now. So if it’s in the basement it’s in a bucket. It just made sense. Somehow the jar got dropped into a bucket in all the commotion of stocking. Then bags of potatoes or sacks of onions were dumped over it. There it remained, wondering what odd twist of fate led it there. I’m not a potato!, it quietly cries out. Who are all these onions?, it pleads. But nobody’s hears. No one’s there to listen.

I hear you now!, he calls out. I’m coming!, he assures taking the basement steps two by two.

He rifles through the bucket of potatoes to get to the bottom of it. He strides over to the onion bucket. Bulbs and roots fly everywhichway.

Where are you?, he demands.

The buckets are empty while onions and potatoes and the odd glove of garlic roll around on the concrete. He slumps and sits down on the hard floor. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s out of places to look.

Thus begins a room-to-room search of the main floor of the house.

Won’t that be a sight to see?, he hums to himself in his systematic search. The jam jar rolling around, filled with mirth at being at the very back of the sock drawer. We’ll have a good laugh and celebrate with a sandwich with peanut butter and extra jam. No skimping on either this time!

But it was not in the sock drawer.

Nor was it in the medicine cabinet.

Was it taking a bath in the bathtub?

Was it eating lunch at the kitchen table? Maybe enjoying some leftover rice?

Was it perched on the homemade bench next to the television set?

Was it sitting in the chair where he sat to watch television?

Was it underneath the bed? No …

Wait! What’s this? A shoe box?

“I don’t remember you being there,” he said to the shoebox.

The shoebox was light with no weight to suggest that what he was looking for was inside. He shook the box. The box rattled with no thudding of a heavy glass jar like you’d want it hear. He set the shoebox on the bed. He lifted the lid hoping beyond hope to come face-to-face with a jar of strawberry jam.

What he saw instead was just a bunch of odds and ends and a crumpled up one dollar bill. He chomped his teeth at this useless lot as if to eat it all up in place of jam. Then he put the lid back on the box and shoved the box back underneath the bed.

The process of acceptance was painful. He was reluctant but he knew he was defeated in any case. There really was no family-sized jar of strawberry jam to begin with. What there was was a regular-sized jar in the refrigerator containing one spoonful of jam along with scrapings on the side. That was it. That was all the jam he had or would ever have. Whatever else the thought he had, well, he simply didn’t. Simple as that.

He sat with that for a while until it the new problem struck him. What to do with what jam he had left?

Do I keep the jam to have jam while not being able to use it, or do I use the jam up which is what it’s there for but then I won’t have any more?

Keep it or use it? Use it for what? There was barely enough for a thin layer on one small pancake. Or he could keep the jam and not have to use it all up so he had nothing left.

Take your pick. Pick your poison. You only get one.

In one sense the Strawberry Jam Incident, as he called it, was the exact opposite of stockpiling. It was the cautionary tale. It was why he stockpiled in the first place and a stark reminder not to stockpile at your peril. It was therefore an accident and an oversight that he deeply regretted, but it was the exception and no the rule since he most certainly stockpiled just about everything else he could want or need as long as it didn’t run out.

In another sense, however, the Strawberry Jam Predicament, as he also called it, was exactly what happens when you stockpile but the stock eventually does dwindles as it will inevitably if it was stocked to be used in the first place. Once there was abundance but no longer with nothing much remaining and here we are. This was the moral of the Strawberry Jam Story as he told it to himself.

How he handled the Strawberry Jam Predicament & Story became how he handled most everything else, which was, in a sense the real story of the situation.

What he did was he did nothing because he didn’t know what to do. Of course doing nothing meant he did both at once or at least in order of actuality. He kept the jam and didn’t use it so he could use it precisely because he kept it. But it was never used so as to be able to be used. And in doing nothing because he didn’t know what to do he came to do what he did intentionally as standard practice and so he still had a little of a lot of what was left thought that wasn’t much but it was something.

So the last of the jam went unused, pushed farther and farther back into the white emptiness of the refrigerator.

In case of emergency break glass, he thought grimly.

The same went for just about everything else that almost ran out. It entered the Strawberry Jam Zone, as he liked to call it. There it remained, stuck in limbo, entirely gone except for just a little bit, kept for one last amount, one last bite that he never wanted to take.

Soon the refrigerator and the pantry were populated by jars and bottles and container taking up space with almost nothing inside amid the growing lack of food stores that he could not refill. This he felt deep down and it was painful to watch.

* *

09 Shoebox

With less and less food he had to adapt and sometimes in clever ways that surprised him. All his cooking got simpler. Less ingredients. Fewer amounts. Substitutions and workarounds. The precious juice from canned peaches, sugared and thickened over the stove, became a syrupy jam. This pleased him greatly while still recovering from the shock of strawberry jam.

He felt inventive and resourceful each time he skinned a cat in a new way. After several rounds of workarounds, however, and with stores depleted everywhere he found that what he was making was less what he used to make and now something else entirely. The spaghetti dinner with a rich pasta sauce was now what noodles he had left with a measured splash of vegetable oil and a pinch of salt.

He wasn’t exactly eating air, he would say with a mouthful of oily noodles. Until he started doing just that.

Why have three meals a day when two will do just fine? Have a late, light breakfast and then dinner at the regular time. Maybe even eat one standard meal divided into two parts to cover most of the day or one less than standard meal stretched as far as possible with a little saved for the next day.

So he ate less of everything and less often each day. Then he started skipping days. “Staggering days,” he called it, on top of staggering meals with lunch today and no lunch tomorrow.

It’s not so bad, he told himself.

A peasant’s life, he declared proudly. He felt somewhat noble about it, except when found himself chewing and swishing food around in his mouth and back over his tongue to get the most taste and flavor out of before swallowing until his saliva made the food so mushy he could strain it through his teeth. And except now he was hungry most of the time with pangs and longings gnawing at him day in and day out. And except it will only get worse with zero hour any time now, which he never forgot about and always expected when he least expected it as conditions only worsened.

He pictured himself sitting in the dark, with electricity turned off, eating wet dough to tide him over. He imagined stuffing flour into his mouth without even water any more, retching and coughing out a cloud of white dust. He might even suffocate on it, he joked to himself. This could be the third part of the suicide he was looking for.

Death by Unbleached, All-Purpose Flour

To keep food off his mind he stuck to his daily routine other than cooking, but walking and reading and even sleeping were riddled with thoughts and then cravings and finally dizzy fantasies about food.

“If only there was a way to get a little more of just one thing to make one more great meal” he wished aloud one morning while eating a breakfast of watery oatmeal with 1/4 teaspoon of white sugar as the most minimal wish he could wish for under the circumstances.

“If only …”

Just then he remembered crumpled up one dollar bill, the one stuffed in the shoebox under his bed. A thrill ran through him amplified by the lightheadedness of being hungry all the time even while eating.

Could it be that I still have money?, he asked himself. In my frantic search for the strawberry jam I didn’t even see what was right in front of me. How silly and for shame!

But was it really real, he wondered.

Wouldn’t that be a cruel trick of the mind?

It would indeed.

So let’s not get excited, he counseled. Keep your expectations low. Be calm. Be measured. Agreed?

Agreed, he agreed.

He checked to see if he really was in agreement and he seemed to be.

Satisfied he got up from the kitchen table leaving his oatmeal soup behind and retrieved the shoebox from under his bed. Rather than open it there he retired to the basement, descending the steps without rush or hurry. He set the box down on the workbench and took a seat. He squared up the box to the bench and himself to the box. Then, slowly, he lifted the lid and peered inside.

There it was, crumpled up and still a one dollar bill, just as he remembered it. He scanned the box as a whole. Still no jar of strawberry jam, he joked to himself. He started to grab at the one dollar bill like a greedy street urchin but thought better of it.

Be patient, he reminded himself. Take your time.

I am taking my time.

So take it.

It’s taken.

Okay, then.

With that he tuned out the one dollar bill right in front of him and focused on everything else in the box. Carefully and deliberately he reached in and picked them out one item at a time.

“One golf ball,” he said. “Now, what was this for?”

He didn’t golf. He didn’t know anybody who golfed. He didn’t know anybody, period. Where did this have come from?

“No idea,” he said placing the ball into an empty knot hole of the plywood surface of the workbench so it wouldn’t roll around.

“Two rechargeable batteries. Triple A. Badly corroded,” lifting out one and then the other.

This one was easy. He used rechargeable batteries for flashlights and a portable AM/FM radio and a few other electronic devices. They’re so convenient and economical. But eventually a battery no longer takes a charge. This is when he officially retires it. There is no elaborate ceremony. Just a sincere thank you. Then he places the battery, or batteries, in a safe place where they can live out the rest of their days in relative comfort where they sometimes also badly corrode; in a shoebox, for instance, though he knew dead batteries were scattered around the house in various other places though he couldn’t remember where just then.

He laid the batteries next to the golf ball. They started to roll so he pressed down firmly but gently to get them to stay. That did the trick.

“Moving on,” he said.

“A nub of white chalk.” Hmmm, he thought to himself. A nub of white chalk. “A nub of white chalk.”

“You win,” he said to the nub, setting it alongside the batteries with a firm hand. “A lot of things that roll,” he observed.

“A spool of black thread with needle poking out the end.” Darning wool socks and repairing small tears in clothing. Easy peasy. Sadly, not needed any more.

“Chapstick,” he announced. He took the cap off to see and smell the familiar fleshy pink of the original lip balm. The surface was recessed into the stick, forming a tiny smooth cup. He turned the dial at the bottom to push out any lip balm still inside with no new lip balm to show for it.

He raised the stick to his lips and smeared hard to get at the cup of remaining pink flesh. The chapstick was dry and the plastic rim grated and tore at his chapped lips. He barely felt any soothing from it and even felt a little worse after.

He aimed the chapstick at the small trash can next to the workbench. The stick bounced around and settled at the bottom. “Sorry,” he said, returning to the shoebox.

“One fresh pack of playing cards. Blue. Still in the wrapper.” He set those to the side. Everybody has a deck of cards somewhere, even if you don’t play poker or rummy or even solitaire. It’s just the law, he acknowledged.

“One container, 100 push pins in assorted colors. Unopened.” The pins were familiar. All he had to do was look up to the corkboard on the wall to picture 4″ x 6″ note cards pinned in all sorts of arrangements to tell the story of his secret undertakings at the moment and these were the very pins he used. He wasn’t sure how they ended up in the shoebox, but some mysteries just aren’t meant to be solved, he figured. He set the pins off to the side.

Finally, he stirred the remaining items around in the manner of making a soup. Ink pens of many colors and kinds, all looking worn out from a life of hard work or neglect. Paperclips. Two clothespins. Pebbles. And, yes, one dollar bill.

He stopped stirring and surveyed the whole lot as one. Satisfied, he returned all items laying on the workbench to the box. Only then did he retrieve the one dollar bill from among them.

He closed the lid as if sealing it forever. Then he laid the one dollar bill on the lid of the shoe box and spread it out smooth and flat.

“Now what shall we do with you?,” he asked the one dollar bill.

The dollar bill lay motionless atop the shoebox. He read the dollar bill’s mind.

“Very well,” he said. “What should I with you?”

In the first instance, he reckoned, absolutely nothing.

“There is nothing worth getting that still costs a dollar.”

“Or less,” he added realistically.

He paused to think, and to give the dollar bill time to think, too.

“You certainly aren’t enough for everything I owe that’s counting down even as we speak,” he informed the dollar bill. “I can tell you that much …”

One dollar bill simply isn’t enough for that, he said to himself.

“So what are you good for these days?”

He remembered riding his BMX bike with yellow mags and a yellow pad on the crossbar of the handlebars to the corner market far away from here and leaving his bike laying outside the store because real BMX bikes didn’t have kickstands.

A dollar was almost too much for what he needed back then. A box of Lemonheads or Charlie Chan Cherry Candy, with that Oriental man on the box, was 15¢. Same for Boston Baked Beans. In order from best to least he liked Boston Baked Beans the best with Cherry Chan and Lemonheads a tie for second, although he liked Lemonheads a little bit better but he was fascinated by the dark red box with that Oriental man on it, which made it a tie.

He could get all three boxes for 45¢ and still have more than half his money left if he walked in with that one dollar bill. In reality, however, he seldom went in with any bill of any amount. It was always nickels and dimes, and, if he was lucky, he could reach for a quarter.

Back then a quarter had serious buying power. A quarter could get you one box of candy your choice plus a few extras like Bazooka gum or a Chick-O-Stick at a nickel each.

Or you could splurge and for all your quarter you bought a spicy pepperoni stick that you got to pick yourself from the plastic canister next to the register. This was fun because you unscrewed the lid and pull out the pepperoni stick you wanted, which required discernment on what stick was the most pepperoni since they all looked a little different.

He liked getting a pepperoni stick but only on special occasions. Most of the time he stuck with candy. But when he did get a pepperoni stick he rode around the neighborhood on his BMX bike with the pepperoni stick sticking out of his mouth like a cigar so everyone could see his bike with the yellow mags and the pepperoni stick he had just bought.

“I don’t think candy would do me much good now,” he admitted. “But I could go for a pepperoni stick,” he added. “Just for old times.”

“Then again, I have no idea how much they cost any more. Probably more than I have at the moment,” he said, looking down at his one dollar bill.

This reminded him of what else a dollar bill was good for. A dollar got you four quarters, or up to six tokens, depending on the arcade you were at. The arcade was his place of worship. Stepping into the dark dank wonderland was sweet red wine to his little soul.

Even six games was never enough but it was all he got when he finally came up with a dollar bill. His favorite video game was Tron. His next favorite was Galaxian. His third favorite depended and he liked try new games to see what else he liked so there was a tie for third place between he didn’t know how many video games.

The tokens were always gone too fast but then he stood around watching real pros rack up the score. This gave him tips so he could get better and play longer, so it really helped. Plus he just liked being there. Plus, he usually made the rounds, poking his finger into Eject Coin slots around the arcade and once in a while he actually found a loose token. This meant a bonus game, which he cherished more than all the others.

He never had an Atari at home. Specifically, he never got an Atari 2600 in black with wood grain and a joy stick with the big red Fire! button. He knew kids who did. They got to play games at home hour after hour on their color TVs. They would bring all their game cartridges into school to show off. Space games. Jungle games. War games. Maze games. Racing games. All with cartoon pictures of fun characters on great adventures on the front.

He wished he had an Atari but he knew even the games were more money than he ever had. So an Atari was always pure fantasy. Plus, there was only the small black and white television to play on. But he would still be happy if he could just have an Atari and just one game to play even if it wasn’t on a color TV. That he was sure of.

Often he sat in his room and pictured the Atari and then tried to decide which one game he would get. He thought hard about this one question because so much depended on it and there were so many factors to consider. At various times of the year he made certain lists and wishes and bold but sincere promises but he never got an Atari or the one game he really wanted.

He looked out at the one dollar bill laying flat on the shoebox.

“What can I get with you nowadays?” he asked again.

“Must I get anything with you,” he replied. “Why shouldn’t I slip you back in the box and leave you be? Before I found you you were doing just fine doing nobody any harm with all your friends. Maybe you’d be better off back in the box. It’s not like you’re worth much outside it anyway, no offense …”

“Maybe that’s even what you want which is why you didn’t suggest doing anything with yourself at first.”

“Maybe you knew I would realize how worthless you are, monetarily, so you could go back in the box where you do have friends and real value to them and they to you.”

“I understand,” he said.

He gazed at the one dollar bill, almost resolved to lift the lid.

“Then again,” he said, “maybe you want to be used for something. Maybe you’ve been hoping and praying for who knows how long to be found and spent.”

“To put you back in the box would be to consign you to a terrible fate, never to be back into circulation, never to do what you were made to do which is buy sometime.” He could hardly bear the thought of not being able to do what you’re born to do.

With that he unsealed the lid of the box and set the dollar bill inside but only for a moment so everybody could say their proper farewells.

Goodbye, they all said to the one dollar bill.

So long, said the dollar. I will miss you dearly.

He gave them a moment. Then he resealed the box and slid it to the far end of the workbench. Now it was just him and the one dollar bill.

He remained silent for a moment out of respect and to let the dollar bill prepare mentally for its sudden new horizons.

“In the first place, the way I see it,” he leveled with the one dollar bill, “there’s nothing you can do for me. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just the truth.”

He let that sink in.

“So I’m going to put you back into the world,” he informed the dollar bill, “but not for me.”

“What does this mean?, your probably wondering.”

“Well, let me tell you. It means we have to find some way for you to help someone else.”

The dollar bill stared blankly at him but in a way that suggested it was very interested in what he was about to say.

“The question is not what can I buy with you,” he continued, “but what you can get for someone else who really needs you?”

“Who that person is and how I can get you in their hands is what concerns us now.”

He thought a moment, inviting the one dollar bill to think and make suggests too. The dollar bill remained silent but was not unhelpful either.

“I know,” he shouted. “I’ll give you to someone outside the Quik Mart!”

There was always somebody sitting or laying or camped out on the sidewalk in front of the store. They never bothered him and he was always powering down and watching traffic and never bothered them either and then he was off and on his way. This meant the two worlds never really crossed paths even if they almost always nearly brushed up against each other.

“Today we shall,” he declared. “Before I cross the street I will cross paths with you and we shall brush up against one another by which I mean I will hand you to the first person I see sitting out on the sidewalk.”

“If there’s more than one person out there, as there often is, it’s still the first person I see.”

“This isn’t a beauty pageant,” he explained to the one dollar bill.

“And I’m certainly not the one to decide who looks the best,” he added while taking honest stock of himself.

“I’ll walk up to who ever I see with you in my front pocket,” he explained. “Then silently, without a word, I will hand you to them. Then I will walk away.”

“They won’t know it’s my last dollar. My only dollar. Probably, they’ll assume I have many more where that came from and I’m just given them this one.”

“They also won’t know that now they now have more money than me. Maybe they had more to begin with and this just adds to the difference between their money and the no money I have again.”

“They’ll never know. And it doesn’t matter. That’s not the point. The dollar’s theirs now to do with what they want. I wash my hands of it.” At that he demonstrated washing his hands of it, so the dollar bill could see his seriousness.

“That’s what I will do!,” he repeated to himself. “I will wash my hands of it.”

He paused, thinking, then he turned to the one dollar bill.

“What do you think of that?,” he asked. “How would you like to go back into the world? Back in circulation? Back in business!”

The dollar bill looked on.

That settled it. His morning walk was coming up. No better time to share the wealth. It’s almost too perfect.

* *

010 Sharing the Wealth

The morning was hot. He wore his usual outfit that got sweaty when he walked, but not too. A loose-fitting t-shirt in the light color of blue bleaching under the sun. Dark blue gym shorts made of mesh with front pockets and a cinch string to keep them snug. Sneakers and socks. He always stuffed a white paisley bandana into the left pocket of his shorts to wipe sweat away.

He never took a hat with him because he never panicked on his walks because there were never really people around except at the crossing of Glimbsby Avenue and he was always focused on crossing the road and never really thought about panicking in that moment.

By the end of the walk the bandana was certainly damp but not soaked through. It was just hot out and he sweated normally. After every walk he hung his clothes and the banana on a rack in the bathroom to dry for the next day. At the end of the week everything got washed.

Today was to be the same old walk except it was also going to be a little different. This time there was a passenger tagging along, at least for the first leg of the journey, and they had a special stop to make. For into the other pocket of his mesh shorts he stuffed the one dollar bill.

Traffic at the corner of Grimbsby Avenue by the Quik Mart was angry as usual. The brutal sun made cars and trucks and buses and tractortrailers lash out at everything within and all around.

Usually, this was the cue to power way way doing amid the uproar but now he was on high alert and ready for action. He scanned the sidewalk in front the Quik Mart. Sure enough an old man lay propped up on a cardboard mat with his head turned down while looking around. The rest of the sidewalk was empty. It was just the old man on his cardboard mat.

This will make it easy, he said to himself. His hand reached in and clutched the one dollar, not to hold on to it but so he was ready to pull it out and hand it to the man in one unbroken motion. Then he would return to his corner on this side of Grimbsby Avenue, really power down, cross, and go on his way, forgetting all about it, job well done.

As he approached the old man on the cardboard mat he glanced up to the storefront windows with advertisements plastered over every inch top to bottom side to side. The sign just above the old man caught his eye. It stood out. It screamed at him in fact. The sign was simple. Just big printed words that read:

Pepperoni Sticks
HOT!
98¢
BEST PRICE

He stopped in his tracks and stood there staring. What does this mean?, he wondered at the sign for pepperoni sticks so soon after remembering them fondly from so long ago.

Why this sign right here and right now of all times?

Now questions raced through his head.

Is a spicy pepperoni stick for 98¢ what I really want? Really need?

Is that what I should be doing with my one dollar bill?

He stared at the sign while trying to slam on the brakes for now his original purpose was sliding headlong into a pepperoni stick. He looked down at the old man who had noticed him standing there looking up at the window and back down at him. Their eyes fixed and he was embarrassed to be caught staring while looking so confused and unsure for no apparent reason just standing there outside the Quik Mart.

This is not what he planned at all. He became flustered and had no protocol to get out of it. He pretended to scanning the rest of the advertisements on the windows as if that’s exactly what he meant to do to decide about which beer and cigarettes he will buy.

His eyes dashed and darted, looking for something to grab on to. Another sign caught his eye. This one was wedged into the bottom corner of the window next to the sliding doors. It was not a big printed sign. It was a small electronic sign with a black background. The sign had printed words on it but also numbers lit up in bright red. He recognized the sign as a miniature version of the billboard he saw along the freeway. At top it read:

Win the Lottery!

Below were three lines and then a promise and then an exhortation:

           Powerball            $303 million

           Megapay              $1.2 million

           Scratch Off          up to $25,000

$$$ Dollars Get You Thousands … or Millions $$$
PLAY TODAY!

Almost in spite of himself, and perhaps because he was thrown off already, he read the sign by repeating it back to himself.

Win the lottery, he said to himself.

Win the lottery …

The lottery was something he absolutely never thought about playing except to know he would never play the lottery if he ever thought about it. It just didn’t make sense.

Somebody always does eventually win which means everybody else, by definition, is a loser. A nobody. This is the hard truth. And he wasn’t a nobody. He never had much money. He wasn’t an educated man or a big success. He drifted from job to job until there was nowhere left to go. But he never wanted much either. Mostly just to be left alone. Not to be around people anymore. Not to be yelled at or humiliated. But he wasn’t a nobody.

Except of course he was nobody by basically being dead already. That was the point. He got to this very spot because he burned his ship to not venture forth but to leave the world behind. Now here he was face to face with a sign telling him to play the lottery!

Be somebody! it says. Be someone, it promises. Play today!

For a lark, he did the math.

He looked at the first lottery. Powerball, he said to himself. $303 million.

Three-hundred-and-three million dollars is way too much, he decided right away.

Everybody says love of money is the root of evil. And with $303 million how can you not be in love with the money and probably in love with yourself for having it?

But everyone says it won’t change them. “I’ll be different” they say aloud as a secret whisper to let the world know that $303 million dollars is safe with them.

I’m not better than any of them, he said to himself. I’m probably even a little worse. The difference is I admit I’m not a very good person and look how much — or little — money I have.

Anyway, he concluded, I doubt a Powerball ticket costs just one dollar. He looked at the bottom of the sign and focused on the phrase “dollars gets you …. millions” to confirm his suspicions at how much a Powerball ticket, of all tickets, probably is.

As for scratch games he knew you got a ticket with rubbery silver blocks or circles and that’s the game part. It probably looks like a slot machine or a bingo card or some fun way to play the same silver boxes. In fact he remembered seeing rows and rows of different scratch games in markets usually toward the front of the store. There were so many different games they needed their own glass case to tempt you while keeping you from stealing them.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin or what I was playing for, he admitted.

I’d probably scratch off too many silver boxes or not enough or in the wrong order and ruin the whole ticket.

Plus, what would $25,000 do for me anyway?

A lot more than one dollar bill, he replied, squeezing the note. It would stop the clocks, for one. Time would reset at least for a while. And that’s not nothing.

The clocks will start again, of course.

But he’d have a head start. It would give him time.

Time for what? To get right back here again, maybe with a new last one dollar bill with those clocks racing backward to zero hour all over again, and him needing to play for another shot at just a few more months?

He didn’t like the sound of that. It was only another delay after so many of new and improved deadlines where the lead-up only got worse and worse.

And remember, he said looking at the sign, you can win up to $25,000, meaning more like $50 or $100 or maybe $1000 with almost no one ever winning the full amount.

Still, that much is nothing to sneeze at, he scolded himself. You really could have that one last splurge, or even a splurge of splurges, which is what you wished for in the first place. Remember what you said?

“If only there was a way to get a little more of just one thing.”

How sad and weepy you were. Now you could actually get your want. There’d be cheese and flour for days and weeks and even months on end. You could buy an industrial jar of strawberry jam and swim in it. Do the backstroke. Float on a blowup mattress and drink your jam straight from the pool.

He didn’t like where this conversation was going so he abruptly put an end to it and turned to the Megapay game with $1.2 million in bright red lights. The amount seemed to flash at him. Or blink. Or wink. He couldn’t tell which. It was really hot outside and he was always a little dizzy from being so hungry.

One-point-two-million-dollars, he read to himself.

One million, two hundred thousand, dollars. And zero cents.

Zero cents.

But two hundred thousand dollars.

Plus, one million dollars.

Now that’s a number I could live with, he whistled to himself after adding it all up. It’s a good solid number. A round number. Not too much and not to little.

It’s not even a lot a lot by today’s standards, he reminded himself.

It’s more like a little a lot.

Unlike that ungodly sum, he added, no longer looking at the big red number at the top of the sign having been ruled out on principle alone.

You can’t become a really bad person with one-point-two-million-dollars. It’s just not enough. But it’s still plenty to do good with.

He much preferred the tenor and tone of this discussion. It was constructive without being insulting. Then he thought about the trail of breadcrumbs from finding the one dollar bill to remembering riding to the corner market in a small town far away on his BMX bike. He remembered remembering those spicy pepperoni sticks on the way to figuring out what to do with his one dollar bill to then wanting to do good for someone else who turned out to this old man outside the Quik Mart. This made him look up to at advertisements to see the really good deal on pepperoni sticks, which seemed like some kind of message, except that it led to the awkward stare between him and the old man forcing him to look away which led him to arrive at the sign for winning the lottery. From there he came to terms with his values as well as his shortcomings, which showed he had a good head on his shoulders no matter how bad of a person he was, and this brought him to the lottery game called Megapay and the tidy but not extravagant or corrupting sum of $1.2 million in bright red lights that seemed to be blinking or winking at him, as if to say, Play It Today!

Then he thought about whether he shouldn’t just get a Megapay lottery ticket.

Is that what I’m supposed to do with this one dollar bill?, he asked himself in earnest.

But what if a ticket costs more than a dollar?, he wondered.

Well, then you have your answer, he replied matter a factly.

Let’s find out, he urged himself.

But what about the pepperoni stick for 98¢?

That ship sailed long ago, he admitted to himself.

What about the old man on the cardboard mat?

He glanced over to the old man still staring at him. His debate with himself felt like it lasted forever but you can also have those kinds of thoughts in the blink of an eye so he didn’t know how long the old man had been watching him stand there with his hand in his pocket looking at the lottery sign.

If I win, he said to the old man in an oath he took to himself, you will get far more than one dollar bill.

The old man started at him blankly as if to say, What are you staring it?

I promise, he added.

He clutched the one dollar bill tight enough to almost squeeze all the money out of it. He stepped forward. The glass doors slid open and he walked into the Quik Mart.

* *

011 Playing

The store was cool and clean with a tiled white floor and tidy shelves. The outside was chipped and worn and he always assumed the inside looked the same.

It really is pleasant in here, he said to himself as a light sweat started to lift from his body.

He scanned the store, almost by instinct now, though who would be waiting for him in there? It was not crowded, again not what he expected. Just a few people in the back near the cold drinks.

At the front of the store was a long counter with the register in the middle and banks of temptations on either side. There was no line at the counter. Mercifully, he thought to himself. Imagine trying to buy a lottery ticket for the first time with all sorts of people standing around and listening and watching. How nerve wracking that would be. And he had no hat to put on just in case …

Stepping forward he had to tilt his head to look up for the counter was slightly elevated. Probably to keep people from jumping over to rob the store, he reasoned.

A man appeared from above and behind the register. He was a truly magnificent man. His skin was toffee of a pure, unblemished quality. His raven hair was neatly trimmed and oiled and slicked back giving the impression of a sultan far from home but freed from the cares of a turbulent land. From each of his perfect toffee ears hung a thick gold earring. He wore a simple white shirt of shimmering fabric with ivory embroidery around the neck that dipped into a ‘V’ with the same pattern of fine needlework running down the front.

The magnificent man looked down from the counter.

“May I help you?” asked the magnificent man.

“Um, how much is a Megapay ticket? I’ve never played before.” He fumbled with his words, partly because he was nervous at not knowing what he was doing, and partly because he was in the presence of this magnificent man, and partly in that once again he realized he hadn’t actually talked to anyone in weeks or even months. It’s harder than it looks, he protested.

His first instinct was to pretend he knew what he was doing. He almost couldn’t help himself out of fear of looking foolish. But he was sure the magnificent man would see right through it and that would only make him look more foolish in the end. So he stuck with being honest even if it still made him look a little silly and he liked that approach better. He was also glad there wasn’t a long line behind him.

“Certainly,” said the magnificent man. “Megapay is one dollar per ticket. For that you get two tries meaning two sets of numbers. Match all six on either set and you win. Simple.”

He appreciated the explanation. It would be easy not to care about explaining anything to anyone anymore especially after probably the millionth time.

“Could I have one Megapay ticket please?”

The magnificent man smiled at him with brilliant white teeth. “Of course.”

The man turned to a flat monitor near the cash register and pressed a series of buttons on the screen.

“Do you have the numbers or do you want Quickpicks? Quickpicks are where the computers chooses for you.”

“Um, Quickpick please,” he stuttered. He was going to go into an explanation about how he didn’t plan to play and saw the sign and so he didn’t have any numbers in mind and that picking your own numbers probably gives you no better chance to win, and maybe ever worse, but who knows, but then he thought better of it. The magnificent man was being very nice to him. Why put him through that in return? So he stood there quietly.

The machine spitted out a ticket which the magnificent man pulled from the ticket slot.

“One dollar, please,” said the magnificent man.

“Yes,” he said, acknowledging his part of the bargain.

He pulled out the one dollar bill. He flattened it clean on the counter. The magnificent man handed down the Megapay ticket and picked up the one dollar bill.

“Thank you,” he said.

“My pleasure,” replied the magnificent toffee man.

“Oh, when is the drawing?”

“Tomorrow evening at 6:29 pm. You can watch it on TV, channel 12 I believe. And good luck!”

“Thank you,” he said to the magnificent man. “Have a nice day,” he added and he really meant it.

Without looking at the ticket he folded it up and put it in the pocket of his mesh shorts where the one dollar bill once was.

Exiting that cool clean oasis he walked back into the furious oven outside. Thoughts of the toffee man lingered in his mind. He really was magnificent, he said himself.

He looked down at the sidewalk in front of the corner market. The old man was curled up on his cardboard mat facing the store so the sun baked his back while the little shade he made covered his front.

I’m sorry, he said to the old man, apologizing once again. If I win I really will make it up to you, he said reaffirming his promise so it was now a double-oath to be taken very seriously.

He returned to his spot on the corner of Grimbsby Avenue and he started to power down to wait for the coast to be clear. But powering down was harder than usual. He was too riled up by all that happened. Plus, he just felt lighter. Not lightheaded so much as brighter. More buoyant. He was floating but not in a pool of strawberry jam. He didn’t know what it was or what to make of it. He felt for the ticket in the pocket of his mesh shorts. The traffic cleared. He walked across the avenue effortless as you would glide through a field of flowers.

* *

012 A Day in the Life

The television was on and turned to Channel 12. The picture was clear with a solid signal just like yesterday when he double-checked for the first time. This was the second thing he did when he burst through the door with his Megapay lottery ticket in the front pocket of his mesh shorts. Now, just minutes from the Megapay drawing at 6:29 p.m. on Channel 12 there was nothing left to do but settle into the Megapay Command Station ready to win that one.point.two.million.dollars! 

He was more than ready, in fact.

The Megapay Command Station consisted of the chair he sat in while he watched old programs on TV and the coffee table he put his dinner on while he sat there and ate. There was no food (or drink) on the table tonight, however. Instead, a single 4” x 6” note card in “landscape” orientation occupied the place of honor.   

Written neatly in dark blue ink the note card displayed both sets of Megapay numbers with each set having all six numbers written out in numerical order.  One set resided in the top half of the card.  The other set remained in the bottom half of the card.  The two sets of numbers were separated by a neat blue line running through the middle.  At the very top of the note card was the title, in bold letters, that read:  

Working Copy 

FINAL  

To the right of the note card was a dark blue ink pen with the ballpoint pointing toward the television. The ink level in the pen had been checked and rechecked, visually, to make sure the reservoir was supplied with enough for what was to come. The odds of the pen running out were very low, of course, but not zero.  Plenty of times in the best moments of his special undertaking when he set pen to note card with an idea he couldn’t believe he was having the pen ran dry.     

The threat of the pen running out of ink at the worst possible moment tonight was doubly averted by a second dark blue ink pen positioned at the top right corner of the table so as to be both out of the way and easily retrievable at a moment’s notice, with its ballpoint also facing the television and its reservoir of ink also checked and re-checked, visually. 

He practiced the switch of pens by pretending to run out of ink only to quickly and coolly switch pens. It took an average of 5 seconds based on his standard reckoning of time. He also practiced keeping one eye on the television and the numbered ball being drawn to not miss a beat with the redundancy built in of saying the number out loud to confirm what he was seeing on television while switching pens.  

It was not ideal in the sense that Ideal would be not running out of ink, he murmured to himself.  But it was acceptable and workable and he was ready just in case.     

To the left of the note card was the television remote control. The remote was to control the volume on the television mainly because he could not decide if he wanted the sound on or off during the drawing.  He knew how these drawings worked from seeing them by accident when he watched a program on Channel 12. 

Channel 12 was a local station that ran re-runs and syndicated talk shows during the week and hosted movie marathons on the weekend, such as War is Hell and Cowboy Theater, which usually had a mix of so-so movies with one or two classic thrown in. The marquee usually aired at 5 p.m. on Sunday just as people were sitting down for dinner.

Channel 12 was one of his favorite television stations he could get with a basic antenna. So he had seen the drawings before. He just never paid much attention except he knew it all happens very fast.  An announcer comes on with some kind of standard, “Welcome to Megapay! Let’s get ready to play!” Almost immediately all the balls with numbers on them are displayed so you can see it’s a complete set. A lovely lady steps forward and presses a big lever and the balls tumble into a standard-sized aquarium with air shooting from below so the balls dance and collide everywhichway.  Another lovely lady steps forward on the other side of the aquarium and depresses a smaller lever to suck exactly one numbered ball into a see through ball-sized tube. Out comes the first number. Then the second.  On it goes in quick succession until all the numbers are drawn. Then a graphic appears at the bottom of the screen displaying the same numbers in a now close up of the numbers on the balls with the two ladies smiling and clapping and the announcer saying the numbers out loud so you see the balls with numbers on them and you see the numbers themselves and you hear the announcer say the word for each number.  And that’s it. And by 6:30 p.m. it’s all over. Now back to our regular programming.

Part of him wanted no volume.  All he needed was the six numbers, which he would see printed on the balls and at the bottom of the screen. Sound would be too distracting, he felt.  All he wouldn’t hear is the announcer saying the numbers, but he felt there would be enough on the screen to know what was happening.    

Another part of him felt like he should get the full Megapay experience with the festive sound of the balls tumbling into the tank and bouncing off each other and being sucked into the tube with the announcer reading off the numbers with some kind of carnival music playing in the background. That would make it extra official, he felt, and, maybe more importantly, it might make it feel more real. The pretty ladies would still be muted, of course, but that was because they had no speaking parts and his remote control could do nothing about that.

Being undecided, with strong arguments for and against, his plan was to settle into his chair at 6:20 p.m. and bring up the volume at 6:27 so the Megapay drawing begins with full sound. Then if the sound is too distracting he’ll press the MUTE button on the remote control. He practiced this operation many times with the remote positioned exactly where it will be so he knew how far he needed to reach to press the MUTE button with only one finger and he could find it fast and press it easily without having to pick up the remote or put his ink pen down.  

He liked this decision because it also allowed him to change his mind back from no sound to sound again if he felt like he wasn’t getting the full Megapay experience. He tried this double operation many times by muting and unmuting and even remuting the television and each time it went off without hitch. He also remembered, almost too late, to change the rechargeable batteries in the remote control, because wouldn’t that be his luck on this of all nights?

Taken together the Megapay Command Station was simple but highly functional in its simplicity. The chair. The coffee table. The pen and pen and remote control with the 4″ x 6″ note card taking center stage.

The note card with the two sets of numbers, separated by the center line, all below the title in emboldened letters, did not start off that way and required considerable effort to get it just right before it was ready for duty. This is the first thing he got to working on when he burst through the front door with the Megapay ticket in his pocket.

First and foremost, having a note card with the two sets of numbers on them was designed to protect the original Megapay ticket he got from the magnificent man at the Quik Mart. In fact, the first thing he did when exploded through the door the day before was to take the ticket out of the pocket of his mesh shorts, place it directly into a ziploc bag, and seal it tight to shield it from liquid and smudges and stains and any unforeseen ways to damage or even invalidate it. With the Megapay ticket protected he stuck the ziploc bag to the refrigerator with a magnet so he would know where it was with the plan being that he would not take it down again until after the drawing. 

He immediately thought better of it and so he took down the clear plastic bag with the Megapay ticket in it and placed the ziploc bag into a second ziploc bag. Then he stuck the ticket in the plastic bag in the plastic bag back to the refrigerator door with four magnets, one for each corner, to keep it from sliding down and slipping underneath the refrigerator. Now the ticket was safe and secure.

Next he selected a dark blue ink pen and a small stack of 4” x 6” note cards for a very special task he was sure neither expected to be called upon to help with. He positioned himself in front of the kitchen counter next to the refrigerator and lifted one note card from the top of the stack. At the top of the note card, oriented in “landscape,” he wrote the words MASTER COPY in a heavy but neat script by writing over each letter again and again to give it its careful boldness. 

With the MASTER COPY at the ready he side-stepped one big step over to read the ticket through the double layer of clear plastic. He focused solely on the first set of numbers.  In a loud voice he read each number, enunciating slowly and clearly.  With each number said aloud he side-stepped one bit step back to the kitchen counter where wrote the very same number on the top half of the MASTER COPY.  The numbers on the ticket were not in numerical order, which was no surprise since they were picked at random by the mind inside the Megapay machine at the Quik Mart.  He copied them one by one, each one in exactly this way exactly as they appeared.  

Next he raised the note card to the Megapay lottery ticket and visually checked the accuracy of his MASTER COPY against the ticket through the layers of plastic.  Everything checked out for the first set of numbers and he was satisfied with the one-to-one match.

He completed the same steps for the second set of numbers, writing them on the bottom half of the MASTER COPY in the order they appeared on the Megapay ticket. Then he verified the accuracy of his copying using the same steps he took to verify the first set.  

Once he believed his MASTER COPY to be entirely correct for both sets of numbers he placed a hand on the outer ziploc bag and pressed into it meaningfully to make sure the outer plastic bag was not wrinkled or wrinkling the inner ziploc bag or wrinkling the ticket inside both of them. Now that he had the MASTER COPY to work from he promised he would not look at the Megapay ticket again until after the drawing tomorrow at 6:29 p.m. on Channel 12, except of course to re-verify accuracy in what he called unannounced spot checks, but only for peace of mind.  

Leaving the MASTER COPY unattended on the kitchen counter, which felt a little thrilling, he went into the living room to make sure he got Channel 12 on the television, which he was sure he did because he always watched programs on that channel, but he just wanted to check to make sure.  Once he saw he could, with an episode of Little House on the Prairie playing, the one where Mr. Edwards gets hurt and can’t walk any more and so he tries to kill himself with his rifle after he drags himself into the forest where no one can see, he turned the television off and set the remote control down on the small table in front of the chair where he sat to watch TV. 

The Megapay Command Station was not yet conceived or fully formulated as that point but even then he was already starting to wonder about volume or no volume and keeping the remote close, but he decided to save that decision for later.  His priority was now to transfer the two sets of numbers on his MASTER COPY to a Working Copy note card he could use during the drawing. This was easier said than done.

When he returned to the kitchen the MASTER COPY was still on the kitchen counter and did not appear to have moved and he would be lying if he said he wasn’t just a little relieved. To continue his work he physically transferred the MASTER COPY, the dark blue ink pen, and his stack of blank note cards, along with a ruler he picked up on the way back, to the kitchen table where he usually ate lunch.  He was hungry as usual but this was the off day of his staggering of lunch so he would have to wait for dinner to eat again.

For once this was okay, he thought to himself, because he had other things on his mind and hunger could wait.

To get the MASTER COPY into working shape the most obvious change was to rearrange each set of numbers into numerical order.  Right now both sets of numbers were all over the place with the MASTER COPY looking something like this:

MASTER COPY  

XX XX XX XX XX XX

XX XX XX XX XX XX

His plan was to devise a Working Copy for the drawing tomorrow night so he could circle each of the matching numbers with a dark blue ink pen as it’s drawn into the ball-sized tube.  He knew that finding each corresponding number on his Working Copy would require quickness and easiness and for that the numbers needed to be in order.  The plan also envisioned that once all the numbers of one set or the other were circled he planned to circle the whole set of encircled numbers to signify he won. This would be his grand exclamation to a suspenseful few days. He tested this out.  

Writing both sets of numbers on a blank note card in numerical order, top half and bottom half, with no title at the very top because this was just practice, he called out the top set of winning numbers, circling each as he went.  Then he circled all the encircled numbers in one big circle, or oval, and found it to be very messy.  He applied the same test to the bottom set of numbers and the result was the numbers getting lost in all those dark blue circles going round and over and on top of each other, which distracted from what really mattered.  

When the circles become more important than the numbers, he said to himself, then I don’t know what.

For the next series of tests he tried using an orange highlighter so when he called out a winning number he made a bright orange ball around the number, which seemed fitting since the numbers on the screen will also be in balls, although those will be white and not orange.  Then, only after all the numbers of one set are highlighted in orange will he use the blue ink pen to circle the entire winning set to signify he won.  

He liked this better than the mess of blue circles, except in testing he found that the blue ink started to bleed into the orange highlight making a different kind of mess. It also took a long time to swirl the orange highlighter around and around to make a big enough ball to surround the number to make it look nice and he felt that there just wasn’t enough time for this.  In his test runs he spent more time making an orange ball than paying attention to the drawing he was pretending to watch on television and he quickly realized that if he was watching the Megapay drawing with no sound with his head down making an orange ball he couldn’t see or hear the numbers being drawn.    

When highlighting become more important than the numbers then I don’t know what, he reiterated.

In the end, he compromised on his original plan.  He would circle each number in blue ink when it appeared in the clear ball-sized tube but he would not circle the whole set of circled numbers to show he won. It just wasn’t necessary.  He would already know that without needing another circle. So he was back to where he started and maybe even a little farther back, which was not a bad thing.  

One surprise insight was the importance of proper spacing between numbers.  At first he wrote the numbers out in what he called usual spacing, which turned out to be too close by the time they were all circled with circles overlapped and everything looking crowded and messy as a result.  He then erred on the side of writing the numbers too far apart and discovered that the distance between them stretched his thoughts too far apart and he kept getting lost somewhere in between.

After many trials and tribulations he came up with just the right spacing that wasn’t too close so he could circle each number cleanly but wasn’t too far apart either so the numbers drifted into their own time zones, he chuckled.  

He also made sure the sets of numbers were center-aligned with equal space on the left and right margins, and that each of the six numbers in each set was aligned with its sequential counterpart above or below. The dividing line between the two sets of numbers was the final touch and it made sense as a good way to divide the sets and give the note card added structure amid all the blank white space.   

With all the pieces in place he set to work making his real, final Working Copy, the version he would use the night of the drawing. To do this he first made a copy of the MASTER COPY, which he called the MASTER COPY (copy) with each set of numbers still in the random order as it appears on his Megapay ticket and on the MASTER COPY.  

Next he copied the numbers from each set of numbers on the MASTER COPY (copy) onto the Working Copy, but in numerical order.  In his practices and trials he had done this many times, but only with the casualness of someone not concerned with absolute accuracy.  Now accuracy absolutely mattered.  

To ensure this, when he copied a number onto the Working Copy, he tried circling its likeness on the MASTER COPY (copy) to show it was copied, and he also put a line through the number to really strike it off but he found that this obscured the number so it was harder to read when he went back to verify that all the numbers he copied from the MASTER COPY (copy) onto his Working Copy were copied correctly.  

In the second attempt he only circled a number on the MASTER COPY (copy 2) without also striking through it, when copying the number onto what became known as Working Copy (version 2), which replaced Working Copy as a fresh try since he wanted to complete the whole process start to finish. 

The problem he discovered was that when reading numbers back from the Working Copy (version 2) to the MASTER COPY (copy 2) he wanted to know which numbers he had just verified and so he struck through them to show this only to realize he duplicated the basic problem he began with only at a different stage.  

The solution became MASTER COPY (copy 3), which placed a tasteful dash over the circled number when read back to verify the accuracy against what was now Working Copy (version 3).  The approach worked like a charm and he was very satisfied with it.  

In this way, Working Copy (version 3) became the version for the Working Copy he would use tomorrow night, copied into a final copy that looked like this:

Working Copy

FINAL    

XX   XX   XX   XX   XX   XX

————————————————————

XX   XX   XX   XX   XX   XX

What he had when work was finally completed was a pile of scratched out note cards with discarded tests and trials and practices and lessons learned, along with the MASTER COPY he made first of all, and the Working Copy FINAL, not to mention the original Megapay lottery ticket, safe and secure on his refrigerator. 

Good things really do come in threes, he observed.

He pushed the ruler and the highlighter over to the pile of used note cards.  Then he completed the first visual check of ink in the reservoir of the blue pen.  It was still half full which was excellent, he said to himself.    

He stood and walked to the refrigerator with the MASTER COPY resting in both hands as one might carry an open book with the utmost care. Using four magnets he stuck the MASTER COPY to the refrigerator next to the Megapay ticket.  Returning with the Working Copy FINAL in similar caring fashion he stuck that to the door with magnets next to the MASTER COPY. 

Then, thinking better of it he placed each in a ziploc bag and returned them to the refrigerator door.  Then he announced his plan for them.

The MASTER COPY will remain on the refrigerator door for the duration. 

The Working Copy FINAL will be transferred to the living room (and the not yet formulated Megapay Command Station, to be precise) minus the ziploc bag, at approximately 6:00 p.m. the following evening.

And you, my friend, he said looking at the Megapay lottery ticket. What shall we say to you?

* *

013 The Walk xy

As soon as he finished preparing for preparing for the drawing, for there was still work to be done and real work at that, he caught his breath but in catching his breath the ache of hunger crept back in.

Silence you beast of the belly!, he growled almost in spite of himself as he stamped out the pangs and marched down to the basement. Getting to the basement was why he bursted in in the first place. He hadn’t forgotten. He just held the true bursting at bay until he could bring some order to the drawing portion of the Megapay drawing for one.point.two.million.dollars.  

With basic order imposed he could now raise himself to a fever pitch with the real question at hand.  He didn’t plan it this way, of course.  He didn’t walk out of the house into the hot summer sun expecting such a jolt to the system. He walked outside in his usual manner to both expend and conserve energy except for this time with a little more pep and purpose with the one dollar bill in the pocket of his mesh shorts.  

Traveling the few blocks to the corner of Plimbsby Avenue he rehearsed his plan to hand the dollar bill to the first person he saw. By that he meant someone who looked like they could use a dollar. Not someone getting out of their car to go in to buy beer or cigarettes or someone coming out with a hot dog and chips and a drink in their hands. They obviously didn’t need his one dollar bill. Plus, he didn’t feel he needed to clarify. He knew what he meant.  

His hand clutched the one dollar bill not to hold onto it forever but to give it over with a firmness that comes with knowing his own mind.  He was truly ready.  But things had not gone as pictured and by the time he walked out of the Quik Mart and stepped to the corner of Plimbsby Avenue to cross over into the neighboring neighborhood for his morning walk the one dollar bill was certainly gone but in its place he patted a Megapay lottery ticket worth not big money or little money but goodly money in his estimation that he tucked into the mesh pocket of his shorts for safekeeping while he tracked traffic to begin his crossing.

Looking back now from the basement he had to agree that when he walked out of the Quik Mart and crossed the road he did feel lighter even without knowing why at first. He felt slightly abuzz with the power to flit and fly with less of the weight always on him that he simply called gravity plus some kind of downward pressure.  Often on walks he felt crushed and squeezed out so he drained away and he only wanted to lay down on the concrete and close his eyes.  This is not the way, he always reminded himself.  It’s not the plan. And so he trudged onward along the usual routes and circuits without needing to think much about it.  

Today was different and he wasn’t sure he liked it since it felt so foreign and unnatural although it did feel kind of nice. He reached into his pocket and touched the Megapay ticket, expecting simple confirmation on how nice it felt. Instead of finding some sort of mild comfort the ticket shocked him with what seemed like a megawatt of power so he literally jumped out of his socks.  Now energy flowed freely into his fingers and up his arm to flood his heart and rush down to his toes and rise up to the very top of his head so he was swimming in it, or rather it was swimming in him, and all he could see everywhere within and all around was that little sign at the Quik Mart with  Megapay in bright bold letters and $1.2 million in blinking red lights.

He released the ticket to cut off the source and thus the shock but energy still flowed unbroken with the little sign looming large as all he could see in his mind’s eye. He knew the question he wanted to ask. But under no circumstance was he to ask it, he ordered himself.  Ye shall not ask the question!, he commanded to make his mind crystal clear.

He walked the neighborhood noticing very little around him. His true task was to recover his crushing gravity against the question buzzing all around and stinging everywhere within.

Stay grounded, he admonished himself, swatting as he walked. 

He tried to harness the newfound energy surging through him to overpower the energy shocking him, struggling mightily even as flashes of answers he refused to name spun up freely so that darkness began to sparkle . 

Stay with me!, he cried as he held on to himself to keep from floating away.

On he wandered going round and round past who knows what for how long he could not even begin to say. Then, almost in spite of himself he stopped dead in his tracks. His blurry eyes focused on what was before him to gather his bearings. It took a moment to realize where he stood, for there he stood in front of a familiar yard he had never stopped at before. He had no reason to. He always passed by, keeping walking but only after almost always glancing down at the little sign planted in a bed of daisies.  

The sign was written in curly letters that spoke of cheerfulness even without reading the words they spelled out. Ripened fruit and vegetables danced around the borders, which he hadn’t noticed before. Were they always there, he wondered to himself, or just now because it’s harvest time?

Now come face to face with the little sign he had almost no choice but to read just as he had read many times before except this time he read differently. Always before his reading meant nothing to him, which is in a way the reason he read it. For it meant the opposite of nothing. But that something was precisely the opposite of what the sign thought it said. So he read it knowing it didn’t speak to him.

Now he read it for the umpteenth time except while standing still instead of walking right by and except today the sign said something else entirely to him.

“To plant a garden,” he whispered to himself.

“To plant a garden”, he repeated a little louder to see how he liked the volume of it.  

“To plant … a garden … is to believe … in tomorrow.”

He paused.  Then he read it again, fully this time.

“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”

He paused.  Then he read it differently.

“To believe in tomorrow is to plant a garden.”

A fresh jolt of energy hit him head on but this time from the world around and he was absolutely electrified. Better yet he was being electrocuted. He sizzled just standing there.  He held on as long as he could while his teeth chattered and he began to smoke.  

Amid the frenzy of being shocked everywhichway within and all around he looked down to the little sign for help. The sigh stared up at him. Then it spoke.

“It’s okay to ask the question,” said the sign. “This is what it means to plant a garden. And there’s nothing wrong with a garden.”

“A garden is good,” the sign continued.  “How can it be bad?” 

“Ask the question,” said the sign. “All you need is to ask the question.”  

Still he sizzled just standing there, but he listened too and he was more than receptive to what the sign was saying amid the shocking.

“Channel the energy,” the sign counseled. “Plant your garden. Plug your electricity straight into the ground and see what grows.”

His head nodded furiously, though it also shook uncontrollably.

“Now what is the question you need to ask?” asked the sign.

“What … would I do … with all … that money?” he stuttered.

“Very good. Again.”    

“What would I do … with one million … two hundred thousand  … dollars?” he said a bit more steadily for he could feel the energy flow and circulate more than electrocute.

“Now for good measure?”

“What would I do with the one point two million dollar Megapay lottery?”  

“What would I do with this winning ticket here in my pocket?”  

“How would I spend all that Megapay money?”

“Excellent,” said the sign approvingly.  And with that electrocution became ecstatic embrace of all those flashes of what he would do with all that Megapay lottery money.  All one.point.two.million.dollars of it.  

He walked on with real power now, leaving the little sign behind, letting the question run wild with answers that he gave words and even phrases to though he used both sparingly. He liked simply conjuring images of house and home and bills and peace of mind and food and safety and carefree walks and restful sleep and tireless work on new undertakings and who knows what else was in store, all leaping and bounding and colliding and sticking together to grow bigger and better for what he’d do with all that money. He reveled in it. He prodded them on. He loved ideas buzzing about within and all around, landing and pollinating and then lifting off to find yet another flowering fruit or vegetable. He refused to pin them down. He crammed a wet spring and the hot summer sun into this very moment. 

Don’t prune too soon, he counseled. A garden overrun is better than barren land.

Let ripen, he added. Picking comes later. Wait truly for the feast to come.   

When he finally arrived back at Plimbsby Avenue with fruits and vegetables dancing in his head he skipped the powering down for it would be useless even to try. He spied the old man on his cardboard mat, now propped up against the front of the Quik Mart.

I haven’t forgotten about you, he said to himself saying it to the old man while the old man seemed not to notice him passing by.

That’s okay, he said to the old man. Our paths will cross again and next time it will be different.

He glanced up at the little sign in the corner of the window. All I need to do is win, he said to himself. All I need to do is win you, Megapay lottery. You and your one.point.two.million.dollars.

That’s all I need to do, he said as he burst into the house and threw off his shoes ready to get to work, for there was much work to be done for tomorrow night at 6:29 pm, for the Megapay drawing on Channel 12, for when everything changes.

* *

014

Getting ready to be more than ready for the Megapay drawing by translating the Megapay lottery ticket into a MASTER COPY to have a Working Copy for when he wins required bottling up what was ready to burst inside for him to concentrate on the matter at hand.  

All the better, he said to himself. They’ll ripen even more. 

Maybe even they ferment, he chuckled just thinking about it. 

Imagine that!, he declared. Real spirits bubbling up from within. A chilled bottle of sparkling wine of the finest vintage, which he pretended to partake of though he didn’t drink much in real life but this was cause for celebration if there ever was one.  So sitting at his workbench in front of the blank corkboard on the wall he finally got to uncork himself.  

To uncork the answers inside of what he’d do with one.point.two.million. dollars he set a thick stack of 4” x 6” note cards to one side and next to the stack he aligned a dark blue ink pen. He placed a teacup with colorful pushpins up against the wall beneath the corkboard for when the time was right.  

Not yet, he cautioned, but soon.  

For now he needed to work out his thoughts on paper on the workbench. This is how he always did it. He started by scribbling out a vague but compelling or sometimes troubling sense that floated around in his head unformed and untethered. He seldom had the right words for it so he’d scratch out whatever he could manage to scratch, rework on it, scratch that out, and start scratching again.  

As the floating sense took shape as a real thought he transferred what was good about it to another note card in increasingly neat handwriting while leaving behind what was permanently slashed and stricken as being not what he was really thinking or wanted to think.  

At intervals he arranged a growing number of note cards with better and clearer thoughts on them on the workbench to see how they flowed and fitted together. Then he rearranged.  Filled gaps. Scribbled and scratched out. Kept the good stuff. Threw away. On and on this laboring went with fresh note cards stepping for note cards who could say no more or speak no better or go no farther.

This is why he liked note cards.  At first he tried writing on a big yellow pad of lined paper like he thought he was supposed to do, but there was so much space to fill and his tender thoughts came in spots and trickles instead of torrents of words, page after page, and he struggled inside his head to get them big enough and ready enough to write out in an orderly fashion on a big sheet of paper and he only became paralyzed by the vastness of yellow before him.    

He was of course inspired to write little thoughts by a big thought that never left him that he did indeed think but that big thought was ever so vague so as to be unspeakable and thus unwriteable and barely even thinkable, which is why he had to get at it in small rough chunks pieced together and smoothed over bit by bit toward some semblance of completeness and order.  

With so much to manage and so little idea what he was doing he knew that the large sheets of paper mocked him in their largeness and yellowness and he admitted the hopelessness of filling one whole sheet with anything like a continuous flow of connected words.  

His immediate solution was to write his small separate thoughts in dark blue ink on separate sheets of yellow paper in no particular order.  Then he arranged these disjointed thoughts to fill his workbench with yellow sheets laid out almost like a cartoon in the funny papers.  

It seemed like a good idea but trouble started immediately. With only the slightest puff of air, probably from him moving, sheets blew this way and that, piling up or drifting off the side and onto the concrete floor.

When he finally got the sheets of yellow paper sorted out and arranged again he became still as a mouse using only his eyeballs with no other bodily movement to stir the air.  Then for the first time he gazed upon all the sheets at once and as a whole only to witness his tiny blue scribbles vanish amid the sheer blankness of yellow surrounding them. After all that work his thoughts boiled down to nothing and less than nothing against yellow emptiness.  

Then from the pages he heard muffled laughter. A snicker rose up as yellow sheets pointed at the tiny blue markings, squinting to read what they even said.  

Are they even there?, wondered the yellow sheets.  

The thoughts are so small, they tittered, and there are so few of them.  

He stood there listening to the laughing, knowing it was true, while any confidence he had drained away. He let out a cry of anguish sending the sheets scattering everywhichway.

It was only through trial and error born of despair and determination that he came to write on his beloved 4” x 6” note cards. It didn’t happen all at once. His big break was the dramatic and somewhat violent switch from a large yellow pad of paper to yellow post-it notes. The small size was a big relief and to his surprise his thoughts filled the blank area with ease and even spilled over so he found himself linking post-it notes together to capture all of what he was trying to think. Their stickiness was a bonus, allowing him arrange and rearrange post-it notes on the workbench without having them blow away. He also liked that the post-it notes were yellow so he didn’t develop an unfair hangup about the color.

Soon he found himself wanting more space to write on. Thus, he came to your standard sized 3”x 5” note cards, in white and not yellow, with rules on the front and blankness on the back. He found that he liked the blankness better than having to write on lines since he was writing, in a manner of speaking, but not in what you would think of as using the written word, word after word. His writing consisted more of important words that stood out in a complete thought without all the other words that would make the thought complete, for he often found he didn’t have near enough or the right kind of words and so instead he resorted to stick figures and squiggles and boxes with arrows pointing this way and that, with more figures such as an eyeball or lightning or a circle with a line through it or over it or under it.

Over time a complete thought consisting of an important word with several figurines and squiggles became a single letter, such as L and D for Life and Death, S meaning suicide, and NV for neverness, which was his own word that he was working on to figure it out. There were many more letters like these, and he discovered that once he had letters for complete thoughts he could enter them back into bigger and more complete thinking with letters and stick figures and the everpresent big seeing eye and other important words and new figurines like the sun and moon and more squiggly lines and always there were boxes and arrows to cordon off and thread together.

He called it his Egyptian writing, like the ancient pharaohs used, as a secret language that was his and his alone. Anyone else who tried to read it, including those yellow sheets of paper, would be lost in an ocean of meaningless blue ink and he took great pride in this.

The blankness of the back of the note card made this writing possible by not needing to write on lines, left to right. Instead he started at the center, spiraling outward to the edges, or he moved in columns running top to bottom and then bottom to the top and top to bottom as an inchworm moves in thought. Or he just threw down whatever came to mind anywhere on the note card and connected the dots in his head without needing an obvious order.

Soon he started pinning the 3” x 5” note cards to the big corkboard on the wall with a sense of confidence and even semi-permanence of what he thought such that he could also easily take down again for rethinking. This was what he was looking for all along to help him scratch and claw his way from vague sense to first scribblings to complete thoughts to a real story taking shape before his very eyes, except maybe if the note card had just a little more blank space.

It was therefore a proud moment when he graduated to 4” x 6” note cards, blank on both sides without line or rule. He remembered with pained fondness how lost he was in the sea of yellow and how far he’d come to need more and bigger empty space to fill. He clicked the plunger of his trusty dark blue ink pen three times to mark the occasion, for trusty it was.

Unlike the paper he wrote on, which changed drastically over time, the dark blue ink pen had been with him all along and was indeed worthy of trust. It happened by accident where the sole virtue of the dark blue ink pen was being both a pen and near when he first started writing. But unlike that yellow pad of paper which was nothing but trouble he liked the dark blue ink pen with the plunger from the very beginning.

The dark blue color of the ink was comforting yet commanding and the retractable ballpoint was a bonus so he could click it while thinking, plus he wouldn’t write on himself as much since he could retract the ink tip when not writing. He liked the pen so much that when the first of them all dried up he experienced a small panic and only after searching high and low did he track down a place to buy boxes of them.

Saying goodbye to the original dark blue ink pen was bittersweet and it only got a little easier each time another pen bled dry and could write no more. The same went for note cards that so eagerly absorbed the ink and reflected back his thoughts only to be scratched out or transferred over to a fresh card. They were not all used up now, in his mind. They were simply spent and for that he was grateful.

He always observed a moment of silence when they were laid to rest in the small trash can next to the workbench. In this regard he felt he became the undertaker of paper and pen that had nothing left to give but only in that they gave everything they had for his undertaking. So it became that his secret writing became their shared undertaking in life and in death.

These regular burials pointed to what he needed to do when he finally finished the secret undertaking and could read his private Egyptian story all the way through so he didn’t need to write anymore because it was now written back inside him. He needed to lay it to rest, all of it, only more so, to where the note cards were torn to the pieces and scattered and burned away so the secret was safe with him, and that was precisely what he did when the story came to an end and it was done.

It was with this substantial, if he did say so himself, experience that he sat in a familiar spot in the middle of the workbench, cleared his mind of all other thoughts and cares, and reached for the dark blue ink pen and the first of what he knew would be many 4” x 6” note cards.

To begin, he formally asked the question just so he was clear. 

“What will I do with the money?”  

“The one.point.two.million.dollars I win with my Megapay lottery ticket.”

Thus he began to write the story of what he would do with all that money.  That $1.2 million. 

Scribbled note card after scratched out note card piled up with newer and better and more neatly written answers. He worked at a fever pitch late into the night. He only paused to take a light dinner, for this was his day to have dinner and a light was all there was anyway, but in this case it felt more like there was no time to spare and he was on a deadline, which he was. This urgency felt very satisfying to him. 

Hour after hour he sat at the workbench as thoughts bounded out from everywhichway and it was all he could do to settle them down before others sprang up to bowl them over.  Now he arrayed what he had on the workbench. Then he broke them apart to start over with a better sense for what he wants to say. 

When he hit a roadblock or a crossroads he paced the basement starting at the center, then spiraling out until he reached a far corner with either an almost empty bucket of potatoes or an almost empty bucket of onions that were hurtling toward the Strawberry Jam Zone. Spiralizing became a game to guess which food-safe bucket he would arrive at this time. Once he reached a bucket he inspected the contents, which is actually what you want to do when storing both for long periods of time to prevent the spread of rot or sprouting which can damage the whole lot. Then he spiraled back while weaving his way to the workbench to resume writing. 

Tentatively he pinned note cards to the corkboard, then moved them to different positions, then didn’t like what he was seeing, so he took them down again.  Slowly but surely, however, what was pinned stayed up there as the big picture began to take real shape. He pinned a final note card to the wall. He spiraled the basement twice and then a third time arriving at onions twice and potatoes only once.  

At last he stood before the corkboard scanning up and down, side to side, from the center radiating outward, from the very outside back to the center.    

This is it, he said to himself.  Not in final final form of course, but the bones of it.  The beating heart, as it were, with real blood flowing through.  There’s more work to do.  

Of course there is, he affirmed to himself.  

Most answers to what he’ll do with one.point.two.million.dollars asked their own questions that he still needed to find out. But these were the right answers that begat the right new questions.  

With that he proceeded to tell himself the story of what he will do with all that money.

* *

014 The Story

The story started on a note card way down at the far left corner of the corkboard.  The note card seemed to be an outcast, unwanted and unrelated to the happy family of other note cards gathered together.  

In truth, he said to the note card, you are the most important one of all. For you are taxes.

Sure enough, the title of the note card said it all. That’s the first thing they do, he knew, meaning the Megapay people. Right off the top. Even before I get my hands on any of it. That’s just the way it is …   

He figured at least 30%.  Maybe even half.  

Wouldn’t that be something, he lamented.  Only getting half of what I win.  But that thought was too terrible to bear so he stuck with 30% as being a painful but not too painful for the story he was telling.  

Next he did the math. He was actually pretty good at math until you get to math where there’s more letters than numbers.  At that point he’s completely lost.  But numbers he could do, even in his head, often using shortcuts. He thought of it as quick math or daily math as in math you’d use in an average day though he seldom had big numbers to calculate on a daily basis.  This is where shortcuts come in handy.  

$1.2 million become 12 when you take off all the zeros and all you’re left with is a number you can handle.  

So what’s 30% of 12?  

The answer is 4, he said to himself, since 4 x 3 is 12.  

Now add back the zeros you took off.  That’s 400,000.  

So taxes is $400,000.  

This was all done in his head.  

“Four-hundred-thousand-dollars in taxes,” he concluded, whistling while he said it.

What does that leave me?, he asked. 

He did a few more operations. Then double-checked himself.  $800,000 is what he came up with. 

“Eight hundred thousand and no hundreds of dollars, and zero tens or one dollars, with no pennies but 800 of thousands of dollars. That’s what I have left.”  

Now he whistled approvingly.  He could still do a lot with $800,000.  A lot more than than with that one dollar bill, he said to himself. 

Thus, the first note card, in landscape orientation read as follows:

Taxes (30%)

 $1,200,000 – $400,000

 = $800,000

He wanted to circle the $800,000 and in early versions he did, sometimes more than once, but in the end he left the circle off thinking $800,000 pretty much speaks for itself though he did embolden it by writing the amount over and over in the same place, pressing firmly but with neat penmanship.     

The note card at the far bottom left of the corkboard was his anchor. It was the reality check. It allowed him to revise the formal question to the real question and this is partly why he didn’t let himself fully answer the question and especially not with dollar amounts while he walked the neighboring neighborhood because he didn’t really know what the real question would be until he could sit down and figure it out so it and why get ahead of yourself?

Of course the answer was its own question, meaning the 30% was a good solid guess but the actual amount of taxes remained to be seen and he knew it really could be 50% which made all the rest of the note cards up on the corkboard both depend on the note card that will replace it to one degree or another.

“That’s why you’re so important in two ways,” he said to the Taxes note card.

Now he asked the real question, which he knew may not be the real real question, but it was real enough so he could really answer it. And so he asked it. 

“How will I spend $800,000 from winning the Megapay lottery, after taxes?”

This is when the fun began as if a season of rain and a summer of sun came all at once so everything deep down came straight out of the ground ready for picking.  

*

The next note card occupied the center of the corkboard and this is what his eyes traveled to next.  House and Home, the note card read as the title. He was so far behind on what he owed every month so it wasn’t even a question that he needed to make up for it.  

“But more than that I think I’d really like to make you mine for all and good,” he said to the house looking up at the floorboards and all around the basement. “100% bought and paid for. One-hundred percent!.  How would you like that?”  

“Plus, you do need a little work,” he added. “And now I can afford it. And you deserve a pretty  penny to keep you in tip top shape.” It was, after all, his home.

Accordingly, the House and Home note card consisted of a bulleted list beginning with “Buy you free and clear” along with adding a fresh coat of paint, for the paint was indeed peeling so this was not a question either, and new plumbing. All he needed to do was look up to see exposed pipes running to rooms above while gently rusting just below the floorboards.  

He also added what he called a luxury item or a splurge in the way of a small cast iron stove for the fireplace.  He had a fireplace but he never used it and the house grew cold and drafty during the winter. Imagine a nice cozy fire with a kettle whistling on the stove for a nice cup of tea or hot cocoa?  He pictured himself sitting in a big chair pushed up close with a novel or a history of the Vikings spread across his lap. Maybe he dozes off only to awaken late in the afternoon with red embers glowing and the house still warm and snug. For that picture alone he chose to circle cast iron stove to say that it would be a special purchase.   

Next to each item on the list he placed an amount and at bottom he totaled them up.  It was a goodly sum, easily the most he would spend on anything, but not so big really, and everything else would be much less and he did some quick math and knew he had plenty left to work with, so he felt he was off to a good start.

*

Just under House and Home was Bills Bills Bills and he wrote it just like that, for there were certainly bills galore to deal with and fast. The joke was him sitting in the dark with the power turned off while all that money was on the way since he figured it would take time for the Megapay people to  actually transfer the winnings, after taxes. Once that happened he would take care of everything right away and pay extra money into water and power and all of it so he doesn’t even have to think about bills for a long long time.     

He also needed to make good on the stockpiling money he spent but couldn’t pay back on his credit card. Looking back he would have spent even more to stockpile twice as much to last much longer so now he’d owe even more so the the last few months would not have been so desperate for food.  Oh well, he said. Live and learn. In any case the bill was long overdue so he needed to pay it.  

He also remembered the -$2.53 balance on his bank account.  With so many more months going by he was sure they kept charging him another $15 each and every one of them just to keep track of his growing negative balance of all the fifteen dollars they charged him for not having any money.

Maybe I don’t bank with them any more, he declared. Maybe I walk into a brand new bank and say I want to open an account and when they ask how much my first deposit will be I will tell them and maybe they won’t treat me like a criminal month after month.  

Thusly, “Open new bank account ” appeared at the very top of Bills Bills Bills and this too was circled.  Right below, the next item read:  “Close current bank account” and this was heavily underlined.  

Next to the rest of the items on the note card he placed the dollar amount of what he thought he owed plus a healthy amount for future bills.  Even with that extra gesture the total at the bottom only amounted to a few thousand dollars out of all the money he still had left. 

“What fun!,” he exclaimed to himself. 

*

To the left on the corkboard was an elaborate arrangement of note cards in its own right that told a whole story within the story requiring nine note cards total, with that story being Grocery Shopping.  It was all that the note card at the top, in landscape orientation, could do to contain those two magical words in gigantic lettering.  

Below the title note card, were six note cards, in portrait orientation, in two columns, one for each phase of grocery shopping.  This time he did place the title atop each card, such as Phase 3:  Meats and Cheeses, and emboldened it, for this was to be the mother of all grocery shopping. Grocery shopping to have food to eat of course. But grocery shopping to stockpile with a vengeance too, not because he needed to any more but because it was burned into his very being, born of needing and not having.  Each time he opens the refrigerator produce will tumble out and spill onto the floor.  Bulk foods needs no explanation, except now a bulk of them will truly be bought and he really will try all those different rices and beans and spices.  In each phase of grocery shopping, in fact, he would want for nothing.  

He pictured needing fancy wire racks for the basement to expand his food storage as a pantry for his pantry, including one whole rack dedicated to canned peaches!,  He added this expansion of capacity to stockpile as a new note card, in portrait orientation, and titled it Non-Food Food Items, starting with wire racks and including more food-safe buckets for storing larger and larger amounts of flour and rice and beans, as well as added plastic bottles for spices and maybe nice wooden carousel for them, because now he was buying to stock up for months and months and months, maybe even years. He pictured himself still anchored at port, wheeling up barrels of salted beef and hard tack and fresh water and dark rum for a long voyage across the ocean and provisions in a new world. 

Most important, however, he stayed grounded in what he listed. Stick to what you already love cooking and baking and eating with fun but modest extras. “No caviar or fancy steaks or expensive cheeses for me,” he promised himself and he felt good about this resolution.  

He cherished writing down each and every item. They were all like old friends reunited. But one item he wrote was extra special. This was in Phase 5:  Dried and Canned Goods. Halfway down the note card, between vegetable oil and peanut butter was a very special purchase. It simply read, “Strawberry Jam.” Standing in front of the corkboard, reading through his grocery shopping extravaganza, he stopped and stared at those two words. He remembered and he welled up in spite of himself.  

He didn’t bother pricing each and every grocery item.  He just placed a big fat number on a note card at the very bottom, in landscape orientation, and in all the note cards looked something like this:

Grocery Shopping

Phase 1   Phase 2

Phase 3   Phase 4

Phase 5   Phase 6

Non-Food Food Items

$2,000

The grand total was a crazy amount as far as grocery shopping is concerned. Still, the amount was only a few thousand dollars including non-food food items where he snuck in kitchen upgrades like a new set of pots and pans and a really good chef’s knife that cuts through tomatoes and onions like butter. When he reached the end of Grocery Shopping he liked what he saw and he congratulated himself on being frugal even when going a little crazy.

*

At the top of the right side of the corkboard was the note card that he struggled with most of all, not because he didn’t want it up there but because the more he thought about it the less he was sure what to do.  The title read:

Old Man

Looking at the note card he pictured the old man laying on his cardboard mat with nowhere to hide under the hot sun. Then he saw himself reading by the fire while cold rain poured on the old man outside the Quik Mart. He winced.

He’s the reason I have all this money, he acknowledged. And a promise is a promise.  But more than that, I want to help him even if I don’t know who he really is. 

Maybe he’s not even a very good person, he continued. I’m not either. So what? 

But what should I do?

The first thought was to give him one thousand dollars. Just walk up and hand him the money.  Or the money in an envelop.  Should it be in all hundreds or smaller bills?, he wondered. Probably the latter.  Smaller bills will be easier to spend on a lot of little things, plus some places are suspicious when you hand them a big bill and won’t even take it, especially if you look like someone who shouldn’t even have a real one-hundred dollar bill.    

What do you think he’ll spend it on?  

That’s none of my business. The point is, now he has money, even a lot of it, to spend on whatever he wants.

Just like you, he added.

That settled it.  Then again, maybe not. He did some quick math and realized how almost meaningless $1,000 was compared to all the money he had. Not even 1%. More like 1% of 1%.  How’s that generous in the big scheme of things?

Try 10%, he directed.  After taxes, of course. Now that’s a figure that really means something.  

But I can’t just hand him $80,000. What would that even look like?  Here’s a brown paper bag filled with money. How about a suitcase?  What a target that would make him carrying around so much cash.  

More important, how he’d spend it does become a real question.  You can’t just hand someone $80,000  no questions asked. Or can you?  

I’m not the money police, he said to himself, and I don’t want to be.  

I wouldn’t even know how to be, he added.

Then he thought of food banks and shelters for homeless people and all those charities that help people like the old man. They’re the money police. Maybe he should just give all the money to them. They’ll know what to do with it.  Plus, he was sure $80,000 could go a long way helping more than just one old man.  

This made him think about why he was giving in the first place.  It was fulfilling a promise, of course, but what did he want for the old man by doing it? Probably about the same as he wanted for himself.  House and home. Food and peace of mind.  Now giving the money to charities seemed like the best way to go.  That way it won’t be wasted.

But that wouldn’t help the old man.  He’s not in one of their shelters, after all. He’s in front of the Quik Mart. Who knows where he gets his food to eat. And I can’t very show up out of the blue and order him to go to all the places I gave money to so I can help him. What kind of bad good person would that make me?

So maybe I give the old man $1,000 as planned.  Just go up and hand it to him to do with whatever he wants. Then, I give $79,000 to places that can help more old men, or young men, or women, or kids especially who are hungry and have no place to stay.

That seemed like an excellent plan, although he was still troubled by how little he knew about how to help people even with a lot of money.  And it wasn’t clear which charities there even were in town and who would get the money and how much each of them would get. So many questions to answer, he said to himself.  And so the note card looked like this:

Old Man

Fulfilling a promise

Old Man: $1,000 cash

Charities: $79,000 

????????     

*

The next note card on the right side of the corkboard was titled School.  He wasn’t an educated man by any measurement and didn’t want to start now by getting a fancy degree. But there was a community college in town and he thought he might get some sort of training or certificate for a brand new rewarding occupation.  

To this point work meant mowing lawns or sweeping floors or filing or answering phones and always answering to someone who bossed him around. His biggest job was working in a processing plant for green beans mostly, but also corn and sugarbeets.  In they came in a dumptruck, dumped into a holding area, then fed onto conveyer belts where we stood for hours sorting them. Good beans. Bad beans. Field mouse.  Hour after hour amid the roar of the plant.  Eventually he got promoted to shift supervisor which paid a pretty good wage, but he hated being the one bossing other people around.  In short, he never found anywhere he liked and that liked him.  

But maybe there really is something out there for me, he said to himself. 

I don’t need to make a lot of money.  Just something I love doing. Something I can do on my own.  Something that does some good for someone, since maybe that’s how I learn, but where there’s not a lot of people.  Preferrably none, he added, since now he had the luxury of choosing.  

That being said, he had no idea what that would be.

The first thing that came to mind was a some sort of criminal investigator, like a homicide detective.   Except you do have to talk to a lot of people while investigating, even if the main person isn’t talking much any more. He chuckled.  

And you probably have to be at a trial with lots of people in a packed a room that’s hot and loud, and you may even have to take the stand with everyone looking right at you with no where to hide.  

The thought sent a shiver through him.  

Maybe I could just be a 911 operator. He really did like talking to people but not when he had to be around them.  He remembered answering phones in a small office and how he never panicked talking to someone that way.  

This might be perfect, he said to himself.  A dark room with a phone and some monitors to tell police and firemen where to go but no body watching you.  He added “911 Operator Training or Certificate,” he didn’t know which, to the list he was making.

He thought some more and tried to come up with whole new ideas.  What did he like to do at home?  That’s a good place to start.

He loved to bake bread and make pizza and soups and stews.  Maybe he gets formal training at the community college or a cooking school somewhere.  Maybe he learns to really cook and then he opens his own shop.  A bakery or a small cafe with soups and sandwiches.

What about a restaurant that serves only tatertot casserole??  All tatertot casserole all the time, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, especially for people who want tatertot casserole for Christmas dinner.  He loved it!  

“Cooking School” went on the list too.

Looking around for more ideas he only had too look before him.  His sturdy workbench was very sturdy looking, meaning big and bulky and not especially elegant, though he loved it dearly.  But all his homemade furniture looked sturdy and bulky and not too refined.

What if I learned to make furniture the right way.  I’m sure there are places where you can learn carpentry.  And they can actually earn a lot of money for nice pieces.  This too went on the list.

He felt like he could do anything now.  The list got longer. It started to get a little ridiculous.  Early versions were in landscape orientation but now he had to switch to portrait.  He didn’t care.  The note card looked like this:

School

911 Operator Training or Certificate

Cooking School

Becoming a Carpenter

Learn to make cheese

Farmer (Peaches maybe)

Private Investigator

Truck driver

Accountant

Building inspector (code violations)

Landscaping (own your own business)

Other Business

Learn how to run a business

Scholarship for me:  

$10,000

He had no idea how much school costs, but since it was just a community college or something along those lines it couldn’t be that expensive. He read horror stories of schools costing hundreds of thousands of dollars but those were for doctors and lawyers. All he wanted was to make cheese or answer the phone when a crime’s being committed.  How expensive could that be?  So he wrote down the biggest number he could think of that was still not terribly expensive to get a certificate or training of some sort.

There was still much to do including finding out what he could actually get at the community college or what other schools were around that he didn’t know about.  That would pretty much decide what he was really dealing with, he told himself.  So for now it was a bunch of answers that begged the question.  

He was also a little worried about going back to school. It had been such a long time since high school and he wasn’t very good at that.  How would he do in a classroom now, especially with so many people and it getting so hot and cramped in there?  

One thing’s for sure, he would wear a hat every day of school and because he’s a student that’s the kind of thing students wear so everybody would be none the wiser. This made him feel a little better.  And he got excited because now he could find something he really loved to do.

*

The last two note cards on the right answered what he was getting to all along. The first note card, in portrait orientation, tallied what he’d spent of the $800,000 to see what was left. That note card looked like this:

What I’ve Spent 

                                            Started With:                800,000

                                            House and Home:       300,000

                                            Bills Bills Bills:                 4,650

                                          Grocery Shopping           2,000

                                             Old Man                        80,000

                                             School                            10,000

                                             Total                        $396,650

                                             Rounding up         $400,000

                                             What’s Left             $400,000

Reading this note card while reading all the cards that came before made him whistle in two ways, at how fast money goes out the door, but just how much remained even after all that.  In his mind, it wasn’t just a lot. It was a lot a lot. And with what was left he already knew what he would do.  He wouldn’t spend it.  Ever.  He’d invest.  

He had all he needed already and by investing he’d have even more with whatever he gets for his investments going to cover his modest expenses. If he learns a new trade on top of that he’ll be just fine. He can take walks and eat good food and read books he’s never read before and maybe undertake other vague ideas rattling around in his head that he never got off the ground because there just wasn’t time and how nice would that be? All this was written into the last note card, in portrait orientation, that read:

Investments

Start: $400,000

+5% per year (interest)

=$20,000 for expenses

+$35,000 New Job

Total to live on:  

$55,000 per year, before taxes

He could do that! He really could. With house and home paid off, and now more than enough money for food and bills and small expenses each month, plus one-time big emergencies like a leaky roof, this was all he needed. This was the story. He liked it because it was simple and basic with nothing extravagant.  Every part of the story is what he already did with almost no money at all, and anything new was sensible and had meaning, like the cast iron stove and going to school and of course money for the old man and charities around town. 

He didn’t need to travel the world or buy a luxury automobile. He didn’t try to be wasteful because he could.  All he did was keep to what he already knew or did and build off that. He felt good about the corkboard and about himself for not turning into a bad person with so much money.  Just the same old him. Maybe not especially good to begin with, but still someone who’s at least fairly decent at heart.

Of course he knew nothing about investing so this note card was just a reminder to find out.  Everybody knew there were stocks and bonds and you get both since the phrase is not “stocks or bonds” and he assumed they were both risky so he needed to invest carefully. Maybe he just leaves the money in a savings account in the beginning so he doesn’t rush headlong into some dangerous scheme. That seemed safest. 

There were so many questions that the only real answer he came up with was the 5% only because it seemed like a goodly amount that doesn’t get too greedy.  Low risk, modest amounts back was all he wanted or needed.  

*

Thusly he read the wall. It was late. He was thrilled but exhausted.  

Tomorrow’s a big day, he announced to himself.  

The biggest, he added.  

He took a final look at the corkboard with the carefully aligned arrangement of 4” x 6” note cards, in landscape and portrait orientations, each filled with dark blue ink in neat handwriting. At the very very top was a note card in landscape orientation. It was the title of the story.  It read:

Winning the Megapay Lottery

He raised a hand to the entire board and let it travel along the route from start to finish.  Then he walked up stairs and brushed his teeth and climbed into bed and slept the whole night without waking.

* *

015 Drawing

He bolted up.  

5:30 a.m. on the dot, he said to himself. Daylight’s burning and there’s lots to do. 

There was in fact not much to do, but it still felt like a lot to him. More accurately, whatever there was to do felt important so he wanted to devote all his time and energy to getting ready for it, and by it he meant the Megapay drawing tonight at 6:29 p.m. on Channel 12, which he could most definitely pick up using only a basic TV antenna with a strong signal to boot. 

This was skip breakfast day in favor of lunch and no dinner so he wasn’t concerned about what to eat at the moment and to his surprise he wasn’t all that hungry anyway.  

After making his bed and brushing his teeth and drinking a tall glass of water in place of coffee or tea he sat down at the kitchen table to make a list. He knew he was going to be running around all day preparing for tonight but running needs purpose and a plan even if you’re only going in circles. He also needed structure in a big way.  He was amped up from the moment of waking.  

And I don’t need you frantickly racing around like a chicken with your head cut off, he said to himself.  

I don’t need you just sitting there and staring at the clock, either, he added.

Before he started his list he already knew two things he wouldn’t be doing.  He absolutely forbade himself from venturing down to the basement until after the drawing.  No matter what he told himself about needing a potato the real reason was obvious and there was no need for it. He wrote the story. He read it. It was good. There was nothing more to be done for now. 

The problem, of course, was that he woke up with all sorts of ideas that never even crossed his mind last night that must have bubbled up while he slept.  Now there really was much more to do with certain note cards needing to be taken down and revised substantially.

By that he didn’t mean getting rid of any of the big complete thoughts of what he’ll do with $1.2 million. He liked all of them and honestly he couldn’t imagine dropping any while still having a story that’s complete. He also didn’t have a big revelation about a part of his life he forgot to address, like going out and having kids and starting a family now that he has money.  

Yikes, he shuddered.   

But there were pressing new thoughts toward more complete thoughts. For instance, he started to worry about whether his scholarship to himself was enough. Maybe it needs to be $15,000 or even more.  This was no time to shortchange his education.

He also remembered how he never bought much fresh fruit because it’s so expensive. He usually stuck to bananas and the cheapest apples you could get. He liked bananas for the most part, but cheap apples are cheap for a reason. They were dry and mealy and tasteless and it reminded him of eating those grainy pears in the cafeteria so he eventually just ate bananas which were usually 49¢ per pound, give or take, and a banana is a banana so you know what you’re getting, for the most part.  

Now with so much money he could have any fresh fruit he wanted and however much he could eat, within reason.  He loved pineapples and nectarines so they were definitely on the list.  Grapes were delicious too if they didn’t have seeds. If they did have seeds then each and every grape was a battle in his mouth to tear the seed away from the flesh with his teeth and tongue and these kinds of grapes were usually more expensive anyway when you’re supposed to do all the work.

No, thank you, he said.  Grapes with seeded are definitely not on the list.    

Then there were those exotic fruits like the one shaped like a star the color of a dragon.  Were they any good? They’re expensive, that’s for sure. Now he could try them at least.  Maybe he hates them.  Maybe he loves them and they become his new favorite fresh fruit. Who knows? Maybe there were other exotic fruits he didn’t know he was missing.  He might even go to the fancy boutiquet grocery store where everyone feels important for shopping there and everything, including flour and carrots, are three times the money, but he imagined they would have special fruits that the big grocery store never carried. 

In short, he was rethinking fruit. And if fruit then why not vegetables? 

“What do you actually do with a fennel?,” he wondered aloud.  “What even is a rutabaga?”  

He also applied the Bulk Bean and Rice Principle, as he called it, to squash.  Butternut was his go-to squash for butternut soup with garlic and cream and chicken stock, along with diced carrots and potatoes for fun, but butternut was all he ever went to and there are so many other squashes he never tried. The upshot is that Phase 1: Produce needed substantial rethinking, possibly requiring multiple note cards even corresponding to different grocery store destinations.

He also got to thinking that maybe a gas stove might be nice to cook on. His electric stove worked  fine enough, but from what he saw on television real chefs cooked on beautiful gas stoves with finely wrought cast iron burners. “With gas,” one famous chef informed him, “your stove is instantly hot and while cooking you can control the heat to perfection.” 

The tradeoff, of course, is that a gas oven is just the opposite. It takes longer to heat up and it’s much harder to hold the temperature for baking bread especially. So maybe there’s a combo, he said to himself, one that looks just as classic as what real chefs use. How fun will that be to cook good food on something so nice and classic looking?  

It’s also worth remembering that he was thinking of becoming a chef so this wasn’t just a flight of fancy. There might be professional applications to consider.   

But that will be expensive, he cautioned. And look what happens with one bright idea and your Non-Food Food Items note card goes from wire racks and plastic containers to a major appliance purchase. 

He also awoke thinking maybe he should plant a real garden. Right now his little house had a small patch of dry grass. With work and sweat he could grow his own tomatoes and zucchinis and herbs like thyme and basil in the very same space. At first this fell under House and Home. Then again, maybe growing food really is a whole new thought that needs completion under a note card titled Garden.  He’ll need tools and seeds and probably some pots and a hose and maybe he’ll make nice wooden boxes for raised garden beds.  He already see in his mind’s eye how to build them since it was not unlike drilling together planks and boards to make workbenches only now the workbench part of the workbench is flipped over with legs sprouting in the opposite direction down to the ground.  

He wanted so badly to get to the basement to start work. But he knew this was no small undertaking. It could easily consume the whole day since he wasn’t simply scribbling here and there on a few note cards. He was changing the whole shape of the note card arrangement and even the story to where each separate new idea travels all the way through to the end and how much he spent and how much is left for investment and what kind of interest he’ll get now and what he now has to live on.   

He expected all this to happen but only after he wins the Megapay drawing and not on the day of when there is so much else to do. In the end he reached a compromise with himself.  He will sit at the kitchen table for an agreed upon amount of time where he is allowed to jot his ideas down on one and only one note card, front and back.  He will make one big combined list to be sorted out later; though maybe he can use up to two note cards, again front and back, maximum.  

This way he won’t forget the thoughts but he also wouldn’t lose himself in rewriting the whole story since who knows what else he’ll think of and there will be no end to it and he really did need to focus on getting ready for the drawing and there’s plenty of time after to rewrite to his heart’s content since that’s what he planned to do anyway.    

Once you have your precious note cards written out at the kitchen table, then do nothing, he instructed himself. Stop thinking about it. Forget about it. Erase what you wrote from all memory.  

He paused.

Then, after the Megapay drawing, he assured himself, suddenly, you can remember it again!  

He was very satisfied with this arrangement and now he was absolutely sure he wouldn’t set foot in the basement until after the drawing. 

He was also 100% sure he wasn’t going for a walk today.  There’s no way I’m setting foot out of this house, he declared.  It would be just his luck that today’s the day when they show up and block the door so he can’t get back in and they kick him out on the street.  Instead of sitting in his chair in front of the television he’d find himself camped out on a cardboard mat with the Megapay ticket numbers trapped inside the house and the drawing happening without him. 

No sir, he said. Today, we are in full lockdown. No one gets in or out.  

This meant his territory was the kitchen and the living room and the bedroom, along with the bathroom of course.

No problem, he said to himself with a shrug. 

He was used to spending hours and even days puttering around inside so being confined to his small house, even minus the basement, didn’t scare him. This was his house and home, after all, and he liked being here.

He set to work on his list for the day.  The list appeared in schedule form so he can pace himself.  It was here that he formalized the Megapay Command Station, naming it right there and then. The Megapay Command Station (MCS) was both an organizing principle for scheduling vital activities and not missing all the little details, as well as the centerpiece of the evening, along with television. The list was also helpful to not get so focused on the Megapay Command Stations (MCS) that he forgets about everything else he needs to do.  

The schedule reads as follows, front and back of note card, in portrait orientation:   

Megapay Drawing

Schedule of Activities

Morning

6:30 a.m. Check #1: Ticket/Master Copy/Working Copy

7:00 What will I do with $1.2 million?

(New thoughts)

(kitchen table only)

8:30 Assemble Megapay Command Station (MCS)

-Dark blue ink pens

-Check ink levels

-Remote Control

-Channel 12 reception:  2^nd confirmation

  -(does not include Working Copy)

10:00 Walking circuit

Kitchen/living room/bedroom

11:00 Shower  

Noon Lunch  

Then nap (if you can even get to sleep)

(over)

Afternoon/Evening

2:00 Final check: Ticket/Master Copy/Working Copy

4:00 Final check:  MCS

4:03 Turn TV on. Channel 12. Volume way down. 

5:30 Set out snacks

6:00 Transfer Working Copy to MCS

6:20 Take Position:  Megapay Command Station

6:25 TV volume up

6:29 Megapay drawing

6:30 !!!!!!!

With the schedule completed he got to work with a confidence that promised both energy and calm throughout the day leading up to the events of this evening.

* *

016 Drawing

By 5:30 p.m. the fever pitch he had been at since just after 7:00 a.m. still had 59 minutes to amp up even more before for winning the Megapay lottery and all that money.

He hurriedly emptied the last can of chilled peaches, meaning every slice and most of the juice, into a glass bowl. The bowl was then shoved into the refrigerator amid a cavern of white space to continue to chill. The rest of the juice he drank from the can right there and then.

He dumped all the lightly salted roasted almonds he had into a little dish on the counter. They tinkled and scattered with a few bouncing out and spilling onto the floor.  He picked them up and tossed them back into the dish.  

He couldn’t think of a third food to set out so this was to be the post-drawing feast.  Underwhelming, he thought gloomily.  

Then again, he added, the last of the food is also the first of what’s to come.  At this he brightened. 

By rule, no food or drink was allowed near the Megapay Command Station or in the living room at all leading up to and during the drawing for fear of mishap so everything stayed in the kitchen until the appointed hour.  

He ran his finger down the Schedule crossing out snacks with a specially designated schedule pen so as not to have an official Megapay drawing pen traveling around the house with him all day getting used up or lost in the process.  

Then he stood around the kitchen for an eternity not knowing what to do now.   

At about 5:37 p.m, well before schedule but because he couldn’t wait any longer, the formal transfer of the Working Copy took place without hitch. Already inspected and arranged blue ink pens were inspected then arranged again.  The remote control was neat and square to the Working Copy.  He picked up. Then put it down. Then squared it back with the the Working Copy.  

The television was on and locked to Channel 12 while remaining muted for now.  He picked up the remote and hit the mute button to unmute the television. Bonanza was on. It was a Hop Sing Marathon as per the graphic appearing at the commercial break, plus there on the screen was Hop Sing himself featuring prominently in the episode and not just showing up to serve dinner or take luggage up to the guest room to then be seen or heard from no more.

He was not a big fan of Bonanza.  Or maybe he had mixed feelings about the show, so he seldom watched it unless nothing else was on.  For the longest time he didn’t exactly know why, but gradually it dawned on him.  Unlike Little House on the Prairie where the Ingalls family was just humble hardworking farmers sometime barely making it, the Cartwrights were supposed to be the good guys but they also more or less ruled Carson City because they were rich and powerful and lived in a log mansion on a ranch, the Ponderosa Ranch, the size of a small state with all their horses and guns and fancy clothes and that servant, Hop Sing, and there were those three strapping sons combining brains and muscle and a hairpin trigger and Ben Cartwright who could bring them all to bear on anyone he wanted to. 

What kind of underdogs are they supposed to be?, he thought to himself.

For his money he liked rooting for the Ingalls family more, especially when a hail storm ruins the crop or deep snow traps them in their little house with supplies running out and they have to come together just to get through. Plus, who doesn’t love Half Pint and all the trouble she gets into and the lessons she learns and how you see the world through her eyes?

He stood there watching Bonanza for a few minutes, but then it went to commercial break, which is where he saw the Hop Sing Bonanza Marathon graphic on the screen. This is actually a pretty good episode where Hop Sing shows everyone the ancient Chinese secret of fingerprinting to prove that that hot head, Little Joe, didn’t actually go off and murder a man in cold blood. But this was no time for a Hop Sing Marathon, so he muted the TV again and squared the remote with the Working Copy.  

All that remained was for him to wait until 6:20 p.m. to sit down in his chair with remote in hand ready to unmute the television and then take up the dark blue ink pen and lean into his Working Copy of the winning lottery numbers so as the win the Megapay lottery. He wanted to sit in his chair so bad. He want the drawing to be now.  He knew he couldn’t sit still and there was still so much time to wait even as time counted down.  So he buzzed around the house doing a lot of nothing to kill time.

While buzzing he thought back to the early morning and how calm it started out. Actually he did not start out calm. He awoke jolted and ready for action. But he calmed himself down by scheduling his time and therefore his energies. It worked, at first. He verified the accuracy of the MASTER COPY and the Working Copy against his Megapay lottery ticket. This required a measured allotment of energy as he took each item down from the refrigerator and transferred everything to the kitchen table. Then there was taking them out of the plastic bag(s) step where he set the empty plastic bags to one side while preserving the order they were in so each bag and double bag could receive back its original contents to return them to the refrigerator door. Then he meticulously verified the numbers:  ticket to MASTER COPY, then MASTER COPY to Working Copy, then Working Copy to ticket.  Then he reverified but in reverse order of verification.  

This really did take 30 minutes and even a squeak more and he was energetic but calm and it was good to go over on the scheduled amount of time since he knew that what he had to do would not by any stretch of the imagination require a full 12 hours.

So far so good, he said to himself calmly yet energetically at a little after 7:00 a.m. 

Then, at a little after 7:00 a.m. he went off the rails. In hindsight he never should have let himself get back to thinking about what he’ll do with $1.2 million.  It was the day to win all that money, not spend it in his head.  But he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Not for the next scheduled 90 minutes.  Not for hours and hours after that. He remembered his 7^th birthday when he got to go to the drugstore to pick out the watch he wanted, his very first, from under the glass case filled with mostly Casios and Timexes. He had money in his pocket he’d saved up for months and could have picked out an expensive digital watch with a calculator on it but he chose a watch with a second hand and a brown leather strap and he wore it all day and never wanted to take it off. He loved that watch. It felt so weighty and grown up on his wrist and he wanted everyone to see him wearing it. He remembered how impatient the man behind the counter grew because he stood at that case and pored over each and every watch with unbroken concentration for at least a full year until he finally decided.  

Today was exactly like that except now he struggled to concentrate and contain the excitement building inside, feeding into itself and feeding on itself, because he wasn’t just deciding on a single watch but on everything $1.2 million could buy him. He remembered that the Casio watch he finally chose costed $8 and this explained it since now he had 150,000 times as much money to spend and how can you stay calm at a time like that?  Champagne bottled exploded inside and all around him. His garden went totally wild and became a jungle. He became mad for that money and all he will do with it. Not in an extravagant way like timeshares or yachts or a gold watch now that he can afford it but in a frenzy of modest thoughts in an untamed tangle such that he got lost in the jungle and never really got out the rest of the day.

At noon he staggered into a clearing for a lunch of two slices of bread and chicken broth from his next to last bouillon cube. He could hardly eat at being sick at still having to wait so long for the drawing.  Plus, he couldn’t help but look down on the lunch he had while thinking about all the good food he’ll eat in what will surely be a completely new Phase 1: Produce.  The sight of themeager meal embarrased him and he blushed with shame even as he brightened at what will surely be a better tomorrow.   

Shame or no shame he was also famished. He gobbled up the bread and washed it down with a mug of warm broth eager to march back into the jungle of looking for new ways to spend $1.2 million.  He tried to forced himself as per the schedule to lay in bed to nap, hopefully out of being so exhausted from being ecstatic all day long. He stared at the ceiling. He rolled onto his left side.  He turned to the right, tilting his head to find the right pressure point to slow down the flow of blood thinking maybe that will calm him down.  He got up from tossing and turning and paced the house now in a fury of wanting the drawing to be now and thinking about spending the money and maybe he did need a new house with a bigger yard for a full garden and a place for fruit trees with exotic fruit and a built-in combo gas stove/electric oven so he was spending more money on a new house but saving on an appliance and now he didn’t need to go to that fancy grocery store for his fresh fruit.

The saving grace to the afternoon was the realization he made, peeking out from between thoughts of maybe becoming a lawyer or a lumberjack to harvest his own wood for carpentry, which was, What if the batteries in the television remote die mid-drawing so he can’t mute or unmute the television as needed?  

He sprung into action. The two AAA batteries in the remote were obviously rechargeable so he needed to check their charge. He got out the charger from the shoebox marked Batteries which also contained spare AAA and AA batteries rolling around in the bottom. At one point he imagined, chuckle, that a family-size jar of strawberry jam might be hiding in the shoebox amongst the charger and batteries. It was not.  

He first needed to test the batteries to check their charge. The light indicator on the charger showed a green dot for charged and red dot for not totally charged. He snapped both AAA batteries into the recharger and plugged it in.  The indicator light showed red dots for both batteries, which, in retrospect, was foregone since they had been in the remote changing channels on the television since he didn’t know when and thus slowly but surely losing their charge.  The problem was, he didn’t have a fancy recharger that showed charging levels in a stack of red bars where one bar would mean a badly charged battery and four red bars meant almost charged. Instead he just saw two red dots staring back at him blankly. 

Mockingly. 

Even menacingly.

“Who knows how long these cursed batteries will take to charge,” he said to no one in particular.  

Under normal circumstances it didn’t really matter.  He simply plugged in the recharger and went away forgetting all about it. Eventually the batteries were charged and he remembered to check on them and that was it.  Today was different and time was of the essence to have fully charged batteries and to know they’re charged.  

“This will not do,” he said ripping out the AAA batteries.  He tried two from the shoebox.  Snake eyes. Red again. He tried two more and two after that shoving them in, ripping them out, and tossing them to the side until he couldn’t tell which came from the remote and which from the shoebox and all he knew was they were all red dotted batteries not fully charged but by how much who’s to say?  He wanted to throw the whole lot out and run to the store and buy fresh new batteries, maybe down at the Quik Mart.  

But you have no money, he reminded himself.

Plus, that’s a good way to get yourself locked out of the house, he added.

He had no choice but to plug in two batteries chosen at random from his loose pile of AAA batteries and hope for the best. The lights went dot red. He sat there staring for the longest time. It wasn’t happening fast enough.  He tore the batteries out and plugged in two more. Everyone one of didn’t charge fast enough and got torn out with others plugged in in increasing mixes of this and that AAA battery while his rage grew at needing green dots and needing fully charged batteries and not having them and not being able to just buy them and sitting here helpless, waiting for the batteries to charge, plus why didn’t he think of this before so he started berating himself for that for a while while the red dos stared blankly back from charger plugged into the wall.

The upside was he sat there eating up time for much of the middle of the afternoon so he did in fact stop thinking about how he’d spend all that money and time did pass almost without his knowing about it even while it dragged on while he watched the batteries charge.   

When the indicator lights finally switched from red to green dots he had not moved a muscle while raging in his head.  In a flash he tore the charger from the wall, ripped out the batteries, and forced them into the remote control. He shoved the plastic cover into its slot and aimed the remote at the television. He turned the TV off and then on and then off and then on and then flipped through all the channels and turned the volume way up and way down and up again and then muted it, finally turning to Channel 12.

Satisfied at the results he started to return the charger to the shoebox but thought better of it.  He plugged two AAA batteries into the charger and plugged the charger back into the wall. Two red dots appeared but instead of infuriating him they were somewhat reassuring now knowing he had a fully charged television remote control plus two backup batteries charging off to the side.  Even if they weren’t fully charged at the time of the drawing with those wicked snake eyes showing they would at least have a partial charge just in case the AAA batteries in the remote went bad at the worst possible time.

The Great Battery Treachery, as he called it, though they didn’t really betray or rise up against him and were simply not charged all the way, if he was being honest, was truly heaven sent for now it was late in the afternoon with so much time passing and he could start thinking about setting out snacks.  

The setting out of the snacks and how meager they were, however, reminded him of his sad lunch of bread and broth that he could barely stomach and this only stoked the fire once more about winning and spending all that money and he was back to a fever pitch in no time as he dumped peaches into the bowl and drank the rest of the juice without even tasting it.

To his credit, which he paused for a moment to give himself, he never once during the day tried to go down to the basement on some flimsy excuse just so he can look at his corkboard with House and Home and School and Groceries and Peace of Mind up in bright lights or maybe add a scribble to a note card here and there. 

That will make the procession even more triumphant after I win, he said to himself.

* *

017 Drawing