The Dollar on the Legion Bar

My feet were gone. My hair had fallen out of the ponytail twice.

Tammy came in at half past five, like always, and took her stool, third from the end, next to the taps. Rod wasn’t with her.

I noticed that, and then I didn’t think about it again, because Rod had been missing a lot of Fridays that year.

I was carrying three plates of walleye and a basket of rye bread when I went past her.

I didn’t have a free hand to say hello properly. I bumped her shoulder with my hip, which is how we say hello on busy nights.

On my next trip I pulled a dollar out of my tip pocket and tucked it under her coaster, the way I have done more busy Fridays than I could count.

She was talking to Lenny about the Vikings. She didn’t look down, but she didn’t have to. That was where my dollar always went.

That is the part I keep going back to. I didn’t hand it to her. I tucked it under a coaster and walked away with my arms full.

I have had a long time to think about how easy that was to miss, or to say you missed.

I did not come out of the back again until almost ten. When I did, her stool was empty, and her coaster was gone, and the bar was wiped.

I figured she went home tired. I wasn’t even disappointed. I figured if we had won two dollars, she would tell me tomorrow.

Saturday I slept until nine, which I never do, and then I drove to Casey’s for milk and gas.

The girl at the counter, Ashley, a sweet thing who graduated with Tammy’s niece, rang me up and said, “Isn’t that something about Tammy?”

“What about Tammy?” I said.

“She hit on a scratch-off last night. At the Legion. Fifty thousand dollars,” Ashley said. “Everybody’s talking about it. My mom said she called her sister screaming.”

I stood there holding a gallon of two percent. I remember the cold of it through my glove. I remember that the radio behind the counter was playing the farm report, soybeans down two cents.

“Fifty thousand,” I said.

“Isn’t it wild?” Ashley said, and smiled at me, because she thought I already knew. Because why wouldn’t Tammy Kranz’s best friend already know?

I sat in my truck in the Casey’s lot and called Tammy.

It rang through to her voicemail, which still has her grandson on it saying “Grandma can’t come to the phone.” I hung up. I called again an hour later from my kitchen. Voicemail.

I told myself she was overwhelmed. I told myself she was waiting to tell me in person, at the bar, on our stools, the way we had done everything for thirty years.

I made a pan of bars to bring over, the scotcheroos she likes, and I set them on the counter and waited.

Sunday I called once more, after church. Nothing. Rod’s truck was gone from the driveway when I drove past, and the shades were down in the front room.

Monday morning, Joanie from the post office told Mike at the co-op that Tammy had driven up to Roseville to claim it.

Roseville is where the Minnesota Lottery has its main office, a little over two hours north. Anything over six hundred dollars, you claim there or at a regional office.