The Scratch Ticket

By Neill Gorman, Tyngsboro High School

Malcolm Harris had walked nearly half a mile to the variety store the night he bought his last scratch ticket, and he was swearing under his breath. Outside, the air was heartlessly cold and the city was an empty, frozen world. Rarely, the stillness was broken by the lights of a passing car, or the piercing bark of a dog in some other part of the world, but mostly as Malcolm walked he found the night to be dormant, and the streets barren. Darkness surrounded the uncaring light of the corner store.

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Inside, the old man bought cigarettes and a scratch ticket from the tired-looking woman behind the counter, who watched him as he produced a single penny from a worn pocket and began to try his luck. It was his usual gamble, the green scratch ticket called Lucky Shot, on which he had twice in his life won $35. Having revealed half of his ticket on that night, Malcolm found himself in simultaneous doubt and wonder. He laid his ticket on the counter with cold trembling hands and stood thoughtfully over it. 

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“Two cherries,” said the woman behind the counter, looking down upon the half-scratched card. “Guy, if you’ve got two more of those, you’ll be a rich man.”   The cherry, as she knew, was the fruit of all fruits in the Lucky Slot game- and four meant the jackpot. Malcolm himself could not remember the last time, if ever, he had seen two on his ticket, or when he last had held a ticket with as much promise.

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As Malcolm stood silently, a teenage boy of dark appearance emerged from the rear of the store, where he had been quietly shoplifting, and fixated an inconspicuous gaze upon the event unfolding at the counter. Man and boy regarded each other as strangers, but the old man became uncomfortable with the feeling that the boy was staring coldly at his ticket. The boy remarked absently that the man had no reason to get his hopes up; two cherries was only half the slot game and only with four could he win the $100,000 prize. He offered the old man ten dollars for the ticket, suddenly grinning, devious, careful. 

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The man picked up his penny and scratched the third slot instead, finding the gleam of a third cherry underneath. At this, the boy laughed, but he produced $47 from his pockets and put it on the counter next to the ticket, which Malcolm was sure was drug money. He grunted, looking at the bills next to his ticket and staring at the untouched slot on the ticket. In those long minutes, the old man could see an orange or a banana in the fourth slot. A cherry would mean his salvation, but the odds, the chances- things never worked out. He cursed the boy, and hated him, but said nothing. 

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Leaving the ticket behind, Malcolm took $47 dollars off the counter and walked out of the store, and into the cold winter night.

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