Rachel Wolcott, Fact & Fiction

Wayne drove past the dream house twice a day. Once late in the afternoon on his way to work and again in the morning on his way home. He counted the days until he could move in. He knew he would win it. He had a feeling, a sign. It was his time. He would have to buy a new truck, so it would look right in the driveway. He imagined his friends coming over. He would give them the nickel tour, tell them about the special bathroom tile, the three speed shower head and then they’d all sit on the deck, drink beer and talk about fish and cars.
Most of the guys at the E-Z Freeze plant bought a few chances “’cause you never know,” … “One day I could get lucky and it sure as hell hasn’t happened yet. Here I am knee-high in petty pwahs and I ain’t got one to eat.”
Some of the old time union guys had nice spreads down by the river, maybe a fishing boat and a late model pickup. Guys like Mack Henry, the foreman, they had it made and never had to pick a pea. He just looked down on everyone else, ruled the roost and told everyone how much paperwork there was to finish. Mack told the pea pickers and the cornsuckers that he envied them, because they didn’t have to mess with the paperwork. Guys like Mack didn’t deserve to win the dream house, even if they did buy a chance. On afternoon in the break room Mack saw Wayne’s ticket peeking out of his shirt pocket. “Lucky you didn’t have to write a damn slogan or nothin’ to win that house,” he said.
The Ashville chapter of the Eastern Star managed to convince a local vacation home developer to donate the house. The proceeds of the raffle would go to the various local charities they sponsored, like the soup kitchen in the courthouse basement and medical care for the county’s poor children.
The Eastern Star ladies did a lot of work in the area. Wayne remembered times in grade school when he would walk over to the courthouse after school. He helped serve food and wrap up food for the home bound people around town. Wayne received a free meal for his efforts. Usually he went towards the end of the week, when his mother tried to stretch the week’s grocery supply and meals weren’t as filling.
No one in his family knew that Wayne went down to the soup kitchen. No one noticed how late he came from school. His father worked in a machine shop, usually the late shift. He was always at work or asleep. His mother worked at a furniture plant in town. When she retired five years ago, she bought one of the grandfather clocks. It was so big, that it took up most of the space in the living room of their single storied bungalow. Wayne’s grandparents bought the house from Sears-Roebuck in the forties after they were married. Oddly, to Wayne, his father bragged that his father and a few friends assembled the place in one day. The house was his father’s inheritance: a four room box with a more recent plywood addition at the rear.
Nowadays when Wayne visited his parents, the house seemed like mansion. Its rooms which were dark, crowded and filled with crocheted afghans in his childhood, now were spacious and airy in his adult life. Wayne was used to his house which was little more than a glorified toolshed. After a Sunday dinner at his parents’ his home seemed as dreary and dank as it really was.
The boards on the outside of the house did not quite fit together, some of the knot holes had fallen out making it draughty in the winter. The white house paint was peeling, the window screens were torn and most of the storm windows were cracked. There were a few marks on the outside of the house, just under the eaves, where drunken teenagers had drunkenly pumped buck shot out of a truck window.
Last winter his girlfriend and their son moved out of Wayne’s house and back with her parents. He missed Tina and Jason, but hadn’t gotten around to getting them back. Tina said that the cold house made Jason sick, that the doctor at the clinic said he could get asthma or worse in these conditions. Wayne sat on the couch and watched Tina pack her and the baby’s things. Wayne remembered that he couldn’t think of a good reason why they shouldn’t leave, even though he would miss them. His family was breaking up and he sat on the couch, drinking a beer and watching, tracing the outlines of the faded ducks on the upholstery with his finger.
When his mother heard what happened, she sighed. Wayne could tell she was angry by the way she seemed to wither in frustration and then tense her body in a moment of rage. He pushed around the the driveway gravel with his foot and looked over his shoulder, hoping that someone would drive up. His mother tried to look him in the eye, but gave up and walked back into the house. Wayne leaned against his truck and stared at the road. Then he sat on the back step for a minute. Within a few a minutes he heard the noise of glass breaking. His mother had dropped a pickle jar and was cursing, God, Jesus, the Apostles and a few other people you hear about in church. Wayne thought about helping her pick up the glass, but he just left and went home. He called Tina.
“Maybe you, me and Jason can meet over at my parents’ house for Sunday dinners,” he said.
“Maybe we can,” she said. “But we’ll hafta see.”
“Hafta see what?” yelped Wayne.
“Listen, Wayne,” said Tina. “Meeting over your parents’ Sundays is not what I call having a family.”
“I know.” He hated her for a second. “I need to get back on my feet. Gimme a little time.”
“Don’t take too long.”
Wayne said he wouldn’t.
That all happened back in April, now it was almost Labor Day. He called her house a few weeks ago. He could hear Jason crying.
“She’s at the community college,” said Tina’s mom. “She got on welfare and’s taking classes three nights a week.”
Wayne was jealous. “She seeing anybody?”
“Naw, she’s working too hard.”
“I’ll come around next week and see her and Jason. I’m working double shift at the plant.”
“Come Tuesdays, Thursdays or Sundays,” said Tina’s mom.
Down at the plant it seemed like the trucks filled with corn never stopped coming. Every corn cob in America somehow made its way E-Z Freeze plant. In the winter work was slower, because corn came from South America or something. There were guys in the husking division who operated these machines that looked like spidery iron lungs. You’d think these machines were useless just by their looks, but somehow they whisked the husks right off. The corn just went in there and then came out without a husk. There were guys, the skimmers, who stood over huge boiling vats all day, removing the stray cornsilk and dead bugs from the huge crockpots. The rest of the guys at the plant called them the waterbugs.
Wayne worked in the de-cobbing area. He and four other guys used high powered vaccum powered tubes to rip the kernels off the cobs and into the gigantic boiling vats behind them. They were known as the cornsuckers. They wore clunky yellow goggles and earplugs to protect themselves from stray kernels which often flew about and had the tendency to become lethal projectiles. Wayne could not stand the sight of corn. Not even corn pops cereal.
Wayne knew some of the cornsuckers who came before him at the plant. Whenever there were layoffs at the plant, they’d come down to the court house basement for a meal. These were guy s who would rather go completely hungry than eat corn. They told Wayne, “We stand in this shit all day, ain’t going to eat it.”
Wayne stood in the cornsucking chamber for hours at a time. He couldn’t talk to anyone because it was too loud, plus he wore earplugs and he couldn’t hear a damn thing anyway, He just stood there sucking, trying to figure out how many cobs a minute he could strip. He tried to suck as many bugs into the vat as he could. The bugs crawled out of the cornhusks. There were plenty. Sometimes he’d suck something nasty off the floor into the vat. Sometimes he thought about Tina. He should really go and see her and Jason, but it was always something that he put off. Things would come up. Someone’s tractor would need fixing, someone else’s outboard would need new spark plugs. These little things, on top of work, added up to a lot.
Wayne found an old jar at home, a pretty blue one that someone left out in the back shed. He tried to put money into everyday until he would have enough to go to Home Depot and fix his house or to move elsewhere.
He took ten dollars out of the jar and used it to buy a raffle ticket for the dream house. Wayne thought of it as an investment, he could either move into the dream house or sell it and use the money to move to Florida with Tina and Jason.
The house stood in a field turned dusty from the summer’s heat. There were specks of dirt on the windows, especially in the garage, but still the house was very new. The dreamhouse had two floors, two baths, three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen with breakfast nook, a separate dining area and a small den. Everything in the house sparkles and was clean. There were actual shrubs by the front door some kind of small evergreens with red berries. The flagstones in the front walk fit together perfectly and beautifully like smooth stones on the bottom of a stream. The tiles in the hallway, in front of the closet where Wayne would hang his coat, were rustic, but new and the hardwood floors glowed like a roller skating rink or the floor in a gymnasium. Wayne could still smell the cut pine inside the house. Everything was clean just made and fresh. Wayne couldn’t put his old nasty, crumbling furniture in his dreamhouse. He thought about what his mother said about his sofa, that it was made from potato chips.
Wayne went to the ticket stand and bought two more tickets. The house had to belong to him and it wouldn’t hurt if he chose to up his chances of winning. Wayne deserved this house because it would be getting something for nothing, or practically nothing. As it stood now, his life that is, he could not suck enough corn to afford this house. He never won the lottery. Only jerks won the lottery. Like this guy down at the Lone Pine Manor Inn. He won and he didn’t even buy everyone drinks. The guy won something like a hundred grand for chrissakes. Not even a Budlight. The guy had no class.
Two weeks before the drawing Wayne had three tickets. He guessed there were a lot of summer people around buying tickets. That’s what people were saying. A lot of the guys at the plant and the Lone Pine talked about what they would do if they won the house. Still people wouldn’t admit to buying a ticket. Wayne wondered why they would talk about the dreamhouse, be so interested in it if they didn’t have a stake in it, if their futures didn’t depend on it. His mother told him it was just something for people to talk about.
On his way home one afternoon from the plant he saw five cars parked by the dream house. People were in there, walking around, making a mess. Wayne couldn’t bear to think of it, because the people in there, the competition, it raised doubts. His chances were diminishing. These people were interfering with his plans. Wayne slowed down his truck. He knew it, that was Foreman Al’s truck. What did that guy need a dreamhouse for? It wasn’t fair. Wayne drove into town and bought two more tickets. Now he had five. He sat in his truck for a few minutes, holding the tickets, feeling luckier, fantasizing about the jackpot. He felt the odds shifting in his favor. He refused to entertain the idea that he might not win.
The next day at the plant he saw Foreman Al. He’s doing this to spite me, thought Wayne. He wants to show me that I can’t win. I am going to win. That bastard is not going to make me look like a fool. Later that day Foreman Al walked past Wayne in the break room.
“Hey Wayne! How are things in decobbing?” said Foreman Al.
Wayne didn’t reply. He could not stand the sight of this man or the sound of his damn voice. “Wayne, I’m talkin’ to you,” said Foreman Al.
Wayne shrugged then, trembling, walked into the men’s room and kicked over a garbage can. When he was in eighth grade the popular kid in his homeroom stole Wayne’s tape recorder. Everyone knew this kid took it, most everyone saw him take it from Wayne. Still the kid had the balls to deny that he took it, refused to give it back. The kid said, in front of the teacher, that he didn’t take it and he wasn’t giving it back. The teacher didn’t do a damn thing. The kid was a thief and everyone knew it. Wayne looked at the overturned garbage can and thought of that damn kid and Foreman Al, the guy who won the lottery and what bastards they were.
Soon Wayne was mad at almost all the guys at the plant. He wished either death or disease on the guys he worked with in the cornsucking chamber. Wayne fantasized that Foreman Al would fall into the vat where the corn was quick frozen, each kernel individually. Foreman Al would roll out on the conveyor belt, encased in a block of ice.
One week before the drawing, Wayne had ten tickets. He sat in his truck after work and watched the other guys file out of the plant. He sized up each guy and tried to estimate how many tickets they may have bought. He wondered how many tickets he should buy. How many would clinch the house, make it a sure thing?
Three days before the drawing Wayne dropped by his parents house. He had just finished his third day straight day of double shifts in the cornsucking chamber. He didn’t hear anything all day, because of the earplugs, he only felt the vibration of the cornsucker. Outside of the plant everything was quiet. He heard the insects buzzing in the tall grass behind his parent’s place. He heard someone driving a tractor in the distance, he felt the sun and smell the air. In his head Wayne added up all his extra hours, converted them into dollars, deducted an approximate amount of tax and then translated the reduced amount into tickets. He now had enough to buy fifty more chances.
Wayne’s mom was in the kitchen making dinner, some kind of casserole, and watching Jeopardy!. He wanted to stay for dinner, but he wanted it to be as if he still lived at home. He didn’t want to be invited.
“Where’ve you been?” asked his mom. “Hiding in the woods? Living with the wild animals?”
“I’ve been working. Same as usual,” said Wayne.
“For three days?”
That’s right, three days. Been sucking a lot of corn.”
“Tina was around here looking for you. Said she hadn’t see your face in over a week.”
“I’ve been working. I told you.”
“Saving money? Going to fix your house? Going to move?”
“I’m hoping to move soon. I’m saving.”
Wayne’s mom let him stay for dinner. It was just the two of them, his father was at work. Wayne looked at his mother. She worked too hard. She was in the bakery at the grocery store now. Her clothes didn’t looked like ones mothers on TV wore. Her clothes looked like they had been washed a thousand times. Tonight she wore a t-shirt from their only family vacation to Florida ten years ago. It was faded, except for the outlines of palm trees and the suggestion of a colorful sunset. His mother’s hair needed a good styling he thought. She needed a rest.
“How’s Dad?” he asked.
“I’ll find out on Sunday when I see him,” she sighed.
Maybe Wayne thought, he would sell the dreamhouse and take everyone on vacation with the money. Then he’d use the leftover money to buy a smaller house for him, Tina and Jason. Maybe he’d get a place near his parents’ house so he could look in on them more often.
Wayne bought fifty tickets on the Friday morning before the rafffle. He gave the lady at the ticket table five, crisp one hundred dollar bills. She cooed. She called over some of the other Eastern Star ladies to meet him. They all said that they hoped he would win, he was so generous.
Wayne told the ladies that if he won the dreamhouse, he wouldn’t just keep it all for himself. He’d let wayward boys stay with him. They would all read from the Bible before supper and go to church on Sundays. The ladies smiled. Wayne told them he planned to teach the wayward boys to grow their own food and to gather berries and nuts like the Indians did. Once the wayward boys were transformed into self-sufficient men, Wayne said he’s send them on their way and bring in a new batch. The ladies told Wayne he was wonderful, that more of the young people today should be like him.
Back in his truck Wayne put all his tickets together. Sixty in all. He just had to wait a little over twenty four hours and his life would be fixed. Maybe if he sold the house, he could use part of the money to buy a Nascar. He could become a race car driver. Then he’d get a few sponsorships and he’d be on his way. He and Tina and Jason wouldn’t have a thing to worry about. Wayne’d take them on the road with him in a chauffeur driven mobile home. Jason would learn his school lesson from video tapes on the big screen TV. He would go to college and learn to design race cats for his dad. Tina would work out in the mobile gym and always be the same girl he loved in high school. Neither of them would get a lot of wrinkles or gray hair. Wayne and Tina would have a house to keep his trophies in, In Las Vegas. Later they’d retire in Vegas and eat out at the casinos everynight.
Wayne looked at himself in the rearview mirror. The logo on his cap was faded. He tucked his hair behind his ears and looked out in front of him. It was still early,it was day off and there was nothing to do. He had to do something to keep his mind off the house. He had to put the thought that he might not win out of his mind. Losing was not an option at this point. Wayne drove over to the dreamhouse and parked next to an out-of-state car. He laughed then walked into the woods, where he watched people come and go. There seemed to be a lot of out-of-staters. They can’t win, thought Wayne. They’re not even from here. That definitely would not be fair.
Around noon Wayne left his spot and went down to Shep’s shack for some supplies. There were a lot of people around buying nightcrawlers and fishing tackle. The only decent beer left in cooler was Michelob, so he grabbed a six pack. He browsed the food case, there were a few decent looking premade sandwiches and jello pudding packs which looked good too. Shep’s sandwiches were good. He took two, a pack of pudding, a can of bean dip and a bag of Fritos. In the check out line the new issue of Guns & Ammo looked good. He bought it too.
Back at the Dreamhouse people were coming faster than if the bank were giving away free toasters. Wayne walked back to his spot at the edge of the woods with his groceries. He found a mound of soft moss under a swamp maple. Leaning against the tree, he watched the house and the people coming and going all day. He ate a sandwich and drank one of his beers. It was fairly hot which made him feel the effect of the alcohol faster. He flipped through Guns & Ammo and then dozed off, wondering if he could shoot deer that came into his yard. If they were on his property, did they belong to him?
At dusk, Wayne awoke. The air had cooled and thickened with tiny black flies, together they generated a low hum. The dreamhouse vibrated behind the frenetic veneer of bugs. Wayne picked up his groceries and walked down the hill. He climbed the back stairs to the dreamhouse. The door must be locked, he thought. What about the windows? He decided to try the door first. Much to his relief, it was open.
Wayne walked into the kitchen and put his food in the fridge. It wasn’t plugged in or anything, but he wanted to keep things neat. Around him the moonlight gleamed on the shiny new appliances and plumbing fixtures. He went into the front room and imagined sitting in front of the fireplace on a cold night. Wayne lay down in front of the fireplace. He dreamt about what kind of furniture he would buy.