This is a story based on a news account of a man who habitually played the same lottery numbers, bought at the same store, at approximately the same time for years. The numbers came in on a ticket sold at that store at that time. The man and the ticket were never seen again; a year later the winnings reverted back to the lottery.
Most writers look at this story as a mystery to be solved: Where'd he go? Why? Is he dead? That's the normal way, but as those who know me have already figured out, there is not a normal bone in my body. I wanted to know how the people around him felt.
I mentally outlined the main characters, used Google Maps to find a workable location, and then traveled via my very warped imagination to the Arkansas side of the Louisiana-Arkansas border to meet the people and get to know their attitudes and life styles.
My first encounter was an oldtimer sitting on a bench near a small square. I am glad I stopped to talk with him.
You Can't Lose What You Never Had
Jimmy's been gone a whole year now, last Thursday. Some people reckon he's dead. I don't reckon; I know. If he was alive, we'd have heard from him, or
about him by now. You don't just
disappear with a lottery ticket worth nearly fifty million dollars and not show
up for the money. I don't know how or
when or why, but he's dead. He ain't
coming back. Yeah, he's dead.
If I’m going to tell you this story, you got to forgive me
if it sounds a bit like gossip, but around here, everybody knows just about everything
about everybody. It ain’t gossip; it’s
only common knowledge.
There ain't a soul in the three county area that don't
know all about Jimmy, 'cept ain't no one that knows where he is. We all knowed about Jimmy buying that ticket
down at JT's. We all knowed about him
fooling around with that woman Anita Jarvis.
We all knowed she’s the one that gave him the money to pay for it. And we all knowed that with him gone, his
wife and his boy are worse off than they was before. But what nobody seems to know, is what
happened to Jimmy after he bought that ticket and why he ain’t never claimed
his winnings.
Tain't no one I know ever tried to tie all of this story
together end to end, but I figure since I know most of these people best, I'll
try and tell y'all like it happened.
I first got to know Jimmy was back when he was playing
ball over to Junction City High School.
He was their tight-end, and a right fine one too. He had good hands. He wasn't no superstar-pro or nothing, but he
did all right for the Titans. He had
talked about maybe going to college and playing ball on a scholarship, but that
wasn't about happen. Like I said, he
wasn't no superstar.
His daddy is Bud Johnson.
He's got a small dirt farm up north of Blanchard Springs. He don't work it though; not anymore. He leases it out to one of those cotton
co-ops. Bud and I've been speaking
friends for most of forty years, mostly down at the Agway and 'round the diner
at breakfast time. I remember a few
years back, Bud was skimping to put some money aside for Jimmy to go up to the
community college, up near Little Rock.
Football or not, he wanted his boy to be some kind of architect or
engineer or something like that. You
always want something more for your kids.
Well anyway, in his senior year, Jimmy started seeing that
Margie girl. That's the one that’s his
wife. Her folks having that place,
Conner's Bar-B-Que up by New Caledonia.
They might have met there, I don't know, but they started seeing each
other regular. It wasn't long ‘fore she
ended up pregnant, and she and Jimmy got hitched; that was the end of that
whole college thing.
Well, let me see, it must a been four, maybe five years
ago, no wait, it was before Hank died, had to be six years ago, Jimmy come over
the mill looking for work. He'd been
working in a tire shop up by Hillsboro and they was barely making ends
meet. He and Margie had that kid, a
bruiser of a boy. They call him
Junior. Someone said he was near eleven
pounds when he was born. It don't seem
right, a baby that big, but Jimmy isn’t any sapling, and Margie's a big girl,
if’n you know what I mean.
Jimmy said his Margie had put on a hundred pounds or so
when she was pregnant, and a few more after that kid came. I didn't know her when she was young, but Jimmy
swears she was a looker with a right smart body. Now, if you been up t' the Conner's, you've
seen her folks; they big people. Maybe
just ‘n Jimmy likes people to believe something nice ‘bout Margie that explains
his knocking her up. Or maybe he likes
his girls that way and don't like sayin’ why.
I don’t wanna be contrary, but I doubt she was ever anything but a big
girl.
But all-in-all, he didn't do so bad by hisself. She's a good country woman. Pleasant to talk to, if you’d go by my
impression. Their place, as often as I
seen it, was always a clean and tidy. So
was she. Every time I ever saw her,
'cept that last time a few weeks ago, she was always the same, big as house,
plain as oatmeal, but with a right pleasant smile. Margie ain’t never wore none o’ that drug
store make-up, and her hair? That hair
hain't never seen a beauty parlor but maybe for her wedding day. Most of the women are like that 'round here,
and it don't make for much complaining among the men.
A country wife is got to be her man's partner. She keeps the house clean and tends to the
children and garden and the cooking. And
she makes her husband feel loved at the end of the day. None of that needs no makeup or beauty parlor
hair. And most these women 'round here
are happy like that. Maybe Margie wasn't
too happy. Jimmy was always going on
that she was a mean one. He said she was
all the time complaining about everything from living out in the country, to
not having no money, to the sweatin’ kinda heat in the summer and the bitin’
cold in the winter. I got pretty good
reckon to believe Jimmy ‘bout her being mean and all, but I ain’t never seen it
personally. She was always pleasant by
me.
I guess you’d gotta know ‘bout Margie if’n you going to
understand why Jimmy took up with Anita.
Her folks is set pretty good with their Bar-B-Que place. They got a nice house, a good car and a truck
that runs; they wear good clothes, and they don't appear to ever worry about
paying the light bill, if you know what I mean.
Jimmy, on the other hand, grew up on a dirt farm, living on credit till
the crops come in, piecing two or three old Fords together just to keep one on
the road. Hell, I doubt that Bud's ever
had more than two pair 'o overalls at one time in his whole life. Them plus his church clothes is all he’s
got. Don't need much more, living in the
country, but I reckon Margie never understood that.
Well, when Jimmy and Margie got hitched, they rented a
trailer up on the Thompson place. You
might had heard about that widow lady that was married t' that black man from
Florida; it's the place she used to stay in when he passed away. It was in good condition, the lot was dry and
the well was still sweet. But they say
that Margie weren’t happy right from the start.
She didn’t want to live in no trailer-house. She wanted a proper-house as she call it and
a piece of land. Guessin’ she figured
that she and Jimmy was gonna be livin’ like her folks. But neither one of 'em had spit for talent,
just out o' high school and already raising a kid.
Jimmy used to say she was all piss ‘n vinegar about not
having no money and only ‘t one car.
Said they was living like white-trash.
Jimmy tried, you know. He was
bouncing around between jobs always trying to do better for her and the boy. He worked on a couple of farms; he stocked
shelves on the overnight shift down t' A&P.
He learned to drive big equipment and got job working for the parish
o'er the State line, but they busted him for sleeping on the job and he got
fired. According to Jimmy, the whole
time, Margie kept puttin' on weight and bitchin' 'bout the way they lived.
When Jimmy got fired down in Louisiana, he got another
good job up in Hillsboro at the tire shop out on the highway. He did all right for himself up there. I didn’t see him much around then, but from
what I hear, he was working all kind of hours: weekends, evenings, whenever
they'd let him. He never said so, but it
was probably a combination of needing the extra money and not wanting t’ be
round Margie. Anyway, he ended up pretty
good ‘n got t' be manager. “Cordin’ t’
him, he was making pretty good money. He
told me that they was paying him hourly plus commissions on his sales.
It got them out of that trailer and they rented a regular
apartment up off US 82 somewhere. I was
never there, I hear the rent’s really high in those places. They only stayed up there for 'bout a year or
so before they rented that tenant house over t’ Pleasant Grove. That's the place they're in now, well I
guess, Margie's still in there, when she ain't dodging the landlord over back
rent. I ain’t sure how she’s making it
right now.
Do you know the Baskin's boy, Aaron? Drives that loud, black Camero? Always barreling up the road like he's late
for his own funeral? He's pretty good friends
with Jimmy and was back then too. He
told Bud that Margie was the one that got Jimmy to start playing the
lottery. Aaron said she was always
writing out a plan on how they were going to spend the money. They were going buy a big farm with a two story
house; build their own Bar-B-Que place o'er 't Junction City to make money
off’n those longhaul truckers. And she
wanted them to own a Cadillac car. I
wonder what she'd do now if she had all those millions.
Aaron told me himself that Margie wasn't having wifely
relations with Jimmy. Hadn't for years,
he said. She told Jimmy that she
couldn’t feel sexy cause they were so poor, and besides they couldn't afford it
if she got pregnant again. So here's
poor Jimmy working 'round the clock to make money, and his wife not sleepin’
with him cause he ain't got enough. If
I'd a been him, I would’ve left. That
ain't right for a wife to act that way.
Don't know why he didn't leave her and get hisself a new wife.
Well, then again, maybe he did. Maybe that’s what he did; took his chances
and headed out. But that still don't
explain why he didn't take the lottery money, unless, like I said, he's dead
afterall. With all a’that money jus
waitin’ fer him, yeah, he’s gotta be dead.
Right after Louisiana started selling them Power Ball
tickets, Aaron said Margie started in on him.
She figured the lottery was going to be the answer to all her
troubles. Now, I don't subscribe to that
kind of foolishness, getting millions of dollars off a dollar bet, but I guess if
I needed the money bad enough, I'd give it a try.
From what that Baskin’s boy tells me, the numbers that
Jimmy played was Margie's pickings. She
got them out of a National Inquirer
piece on what the winningest lottery numbers were. Seems kind of stupid, don't you think. If they knew what the winning numbers were
going to be, why would they still be writing in the newspaper? But that's where them numbers came from. She wrote ‘em down: three sets of numbers on
a piece of paper. And every week for as
long as Louisiana's been selling tickets, Jimmy's drove down south 'o Junction
City to JT's and bought his tickets.
Now. like I said, a few years back Jimmy come over to the
plant looking for work. The tire store
got bought out by Firestone. We needed help
‘cause some of the boys that work there had run into trouble with the law and
got themselves thrown in jail. So they
started Jimmy right off on the fork lift, seeing as how he had experience with
equipment. He fitted in right away, even
with all of the new-boy pranks everybody pulls.
He gave it back as soon as he got it.
We all had some good laughs and Jimmy ended up being a real go-to
boy. There wasn't nothing that the boss
wanted that Jimmy couldn't do.
Things were going along pretty good. Jimmy liked the work and all us boys liked
Jimmy. He seemed real happy until it was
time to knock off and go home. Jimmy
used to tell me that he wished they'd let him work sixteen hours a day. Mostly he said that it was he needed the
money, but once he had some beers in him, he would start going on about how
miserable it was at home with his wife.
It was a Friday afternoon when we was all at Pete's Place,
that Jimmy first met Anita. I guess you
could say we all met her at the same time.
I had seen her that week up at the offices. I had to turn in a maintenance report and
noticed her right away. It's easy to
spot new faces, but Anita is the kind of woman that most men would notice
anyway.
She come into the bar with that tie that runs the payroll
department. I think his name is Barker
or Bunker. I don't know him and its
right unusual for a tie to be stopping at Pete's. They mostly keep to themselves over at one of
the motel lounges. Anyway, Mr. Barker or
Bunker introduces Anita 'round to the boys.
He didn't know any of our names, so we mostly just introduced
ourselves. When it came ‘round to Jimmy,
I could tell right off that he was sorta struck.
Anita is a fine looking woman. She's a might tall for my taste, probably
five-ten, maybe five-eleven. She has
thick dark hair that makes her skin seem almost like sweet cream. She ain’t never going be considered skinny,
but she’s proportioned. She got all the
right kind of curves, if you know what I mean.
For a country boy like Jimmy, or like me even, she's the closest thing
to glamorous that we is likely to meet, face-to-face.
After we all said our hellos and how-ya-doin’s, she went
off with the tie and sat at the bar. I
couldn't help but notice that Jimmy had shifted his chair so that he had a
better view of her sittin’ there. I
could tell Anita had noticed too, and she adjusted her bar stool to make the
view a little better for Jimmy.
After about twenty minutes or so, the tie and Anita
stopped by our table and said their good-byes before leaving. The way she looked at Jimmy and shook his
hand, I'd swear that she was already planning on something with him. He told me once that he knew he was going to
sleep with her the first time he saw her.
I'd bet if she were honest, she'd say it was the same for her too.
Now I can't say when it was that those two first got
together or who made the first move, but it wasn't long before they were a
carrying on. It was pretty damn obvious
to everybody. They was always findin’
excuses to be where the other one was, always gigglin’ ’n smiling at one
another, and always sneaking some way t’ touch.
Jimmy stopped hanging around Pete's, but I hear he weren’t getting home
no earlier. Half the time they stayed
late at the plant and half the time they was seen o’er to her house t’
Spearsville Road. Can’t say as whether
Margie knew what was going on back then or not.
Those two weren't hiding anything, facts is, they ‘bout as noticeable as
an iceberg floating in the Mississippi.
For most of a year, ‘cause we were still short handed,
everyone that wanted was getting good overtime hours. This helped out Jimmy at home. The extra money in his paycheck was keeping
Margie quiet and since he was getting some on the side, Jimmy was happy. Then some of the plant's orders got canceled and
word came down that there wasn’t going to be no more overtime for anybody at
all. Well, straight time forty hours
wasn't gonna to cut it with Margie. She
started yakking ‘bout either his getting t’ overtime back or they was gonna
have to give him a raise t’ make up the difference. He told me that he wasn't goin’ t’ work all
week long for to have to listen to Margie all weekend long. After about two weeks with nothing different,
he a told the foreman he’d had enough, and off he went; storming up the steps
to the offices, hotter than a welder’s wand.
Anita must have seen him coming. She caught him out in the hall before he
could make a fool of himself and end up fired or something. He told me later that she had it all planned
out ahead of time how he was going to keep making the same money. He said she was busy putting her plans
together the whole time he was griping to us.
She had it figured out so that he could make even more money than he’d
been making with overtime and he wouldn't have to tell Margie about all of
it. That way, he'd have some money
leftover that they could spend together.
I don't pretend to understand exactly how she did it, but
Anita had changed around the plant's whole finance department. She split all of the shifts into sections and
each section had its own expenses, including payroll. This way, the suits and ties could figure out
which sections were making money and which ones weren’t. We all still worked together, but we were
paid like we worked for different companies.
Like, I am in the assembly section, John over there, is in shipping and
receiving, and Jimmy was in material handling.
We all have different bosses.
At first I didn't get what she was doing. We all just figured it was some new, fancy,
college way of doing things. She set up
all the sections and then had a different tie put in charge of each one. And not one of 'em knew who was in any other
section, or what they was supposed to be doing.
All they were supposed to do is supervise their own section and ignore
everything else.
Well, I don't know if Anita set this whole thing up just
for Jimmy or whether he just fit into her plan by accident. She got Jimmy hired for part time work for in
two other sections. Now here's her
little catch. She got him three employee
numbers had each section pay him like he was only working for them. He was getting three different
paychecks. This way he was making more
than with his overtime, but he didn't have to give all the money to
Margie. He was still working his eight
hours in material handling. At the end
of his shift, he punched in as housekeeping, and he was on call the whole
second and third shift for engineering and maintenance. The engineering part was on account that he
had worked in a mechanic shop and could repair the forklifts and some of the
other equipment. And since he was on
call, Anita had him issued a company cell phone. That way while he was on call, she could talk
to him at home whenever she wanted, and he always had a good excuse to run out
and meet with her.
Jimmy kept things going rather smooth for a couple of
years. Everyone knew pretty much what
was going on. He kept the housekeeping
check as play money fer hisself and Anita.
He had Pete cash it behind the bar so there was no bank records. Them other two checks he gave to Margie to
keep her happy. For all that sinful
living, Jimmy had it pretty good. I
imagine that there was times when it got a little sticky, juggling two women
and a boy who is old enough to start asking questions, but Jimmy never let on
that any of that was getting to him. He
was about as happy as I ever knew him to be, 'cept maybe when he was young and
still playing ball.
Well, as you know from the papers, Jimmy hit the lottery;
forty-six million dollars. And you also
know he never claimed it. Last Wednesday
that money just went back in the kitty and nobody’s gonna to get a dime of it;
not Jimmy, not Anita, not Margie. I
guess they'll use it for the schools or something.
Now this part of the story is pretty much pieced together
from the talk around town, and maybe a little from Margie. Anita ain't talked to none of us boys since
it happened, but we can read about her and all her lawsuits and testimony in
the paper.
Seems Jimmy and Anita had had a little tiff about going or
not going to some party with the suits from the office. Jimmy was feeling bad ‘bout getting Anita mad
at him, so when he finished up work, he went by some flower shop and bought her
carnations as a makeup gift. He spent
the last ten dollars he had on them flowers.
The secret money was all gone until the next payday. Being flat broke is hard at any time, but
when you are keeping two women, it can also
be dangerous. But it was
Wednesday and he would’ve been paid ag’in on Friday. It should've been all right. He had called home and told Margie that he
was going to be busy for a couple of hours fixing some machine, and he wouldn't
be home until after supper. So with only
his time and some fresh flowers, Jimmy went to Anita's house to smooth things out
and do whatever else those two did when they were alone.
The flowers must have worked because Anita said in the
papers that she and Jimmy were in bed when Margie called on the cell
phone. Margie wanted him to buy milk and
cereal for Junior's breakfast. She knew
he was going down to JT's for the lottery tickets after work, and told him to
buy the milk and stuff right there.
I guess old Jimmy probably panicked when he realized that
he didn't have no money. Margie said he
that he tried several excuses before he told her he didn't have any money. She said she got pissed off and told him to
use the ten that was hidden under the flap in his wallet. She had checked to make sure it was still
there before he had left that morning.
Jimmy was trapped. He agreed to
buy the milk even though the ten wasn't there anymore. Margie threw him one last curve ball. She told Jimmy to leave the lottery tickets
at home in the morning. Because the
jackpot was so high, she wanted to check the numbers herself. Jimmy needed the tickets; he needed some milk
and cereal; and he didn't have a dime in his pocket.
Anita said in court that Jimmy hadn't asked for the money
until after they were done makin’ it and he was getting dressed to leave. She said she wasn't very happy about having
to give her man money, but she gave him a twenty anyway.
A clerk named Jerome was on the counter that night at
JT's. He don't know Jimmy, but he did
tell police that he remembered a man fitting Jimmy's description coming in and
buying some lottery tickets and a few other things. Now, you have to understand that Jimmy always
played those same three sets of numbers and he always bought them at JT's. The lottery people say that the only ticket
that had all the winning numbers was sold at JT's. And the winning numbers was Jimmy's
numbers. That's why everybody knows that
Jimmy won that jackpot. But Jimmy ain't
never been seen again and ain't nobody ever tried to cash that winning ticket.
For the first couple of days, we all just figured he was
off getting a good drunk. Margie was
calling everybody she knew and every place she could think of. Anita was playing it cool. She didn't even talk about it. It wasn't till the police got involved that
everyone started talking. Most people
figured that either Margie or Anita had killed him for the money, and maybe
they did, but if so, they sure put up a good show. And neither one of them ever claimed the
ticket either.
It wasn't long before those two women started calling each
other in the open about Jimmy's disappearance.
It got pretty ugly. I could never
tell whether they were more upset about the missing ticket or the missing
man. Both of them got lawyers, the kind
that takes part of the winnings. Anita
quit her job, and Margie about starved to death for not eating.
I never did have much to do with Anita. Most of what I know I read in the
papers. They say she’s down in Baton
Rouge somewhere looking for another lawyer.
She wants someone to prove that even though she hain't got that ticket,
since it won and was bought with her money, she's entitled to the
winnings. I doubt she's ever given one
thought of poor old Jimmy that wasn't a curse since the day they discovered him
missing.
Now Margie, she still lives over in Pleasant Grove
although she’s mostly been staying up at her parent's place, seeing as how she
hasn't got the money for the rent. Her
and the boy stop around every bar and diner in the area still looking for
Jimmy. She came in here not but a
couple of weeks ago. She was all slimmed
down, had her hair done up nice, and was even wearing makeup. She looked pretty good, t’ be honest. We chatted awhile ‘bout her and Jimmy and
some ‘bout Jimmy and Anita. She told me
that she didn't care at all about the money anymore. She said if they found that ticket, Anita
could keep it all. The only thing she
wanted was for her Jimmy to come home and love her again. Ya know, I really think she meant it.
I run into her boy Junior last week down at JT's. He was fixing to play his daddy's
numbers. I asked him how he got down
across the state line; I didn't see his momma's car. He told me his girlfriend drove him. She was standing behind him. A might pretty girl with her youth and all,
but already righteously pregnant. And
ain't neither one of them seventeen yet.
Seems everybody today is looking for some way to make
their life easy. Then when it don't work
out that way, they feel like they’ve been cheated. People think some fancy car and a fat wallet
or maybe a pretty woman is what’ll make ‘em happy, but living out here you
learn happiness comes from the way
you live, not how you live. It comes
from the inside; from the soul. It don’t
got nothin’ to do with no money. These
kids these days are forgetting the good country way of living. You work hard, love your family, and ya make
the best of what you got. Enjoy the good Lord’s blessings.
These young people, they’s all tryin’ to grow
up fast and t’ get rich quick. They shoot for the moon and when they miss, they
act like they've lost something important.
Nobody ever told them that you can't lose what you never had.