The Dollar on the Legion Bar

She told them in that flat, careful voice she uses when she reads the prayer list at church, like if she let it go up or down she would not be able to finish.

Rod had been gambling. It started three years ago with pull-tabs and the electronic ones at the bars in Fairmont, and then it was the casino at Jackpot Junction, and then it was the phone.

He had sold the bass boat in the spring to cover what he owed. Then he took out a loan against the house that she did not know about until the bank letters started coming.

“We were three months behind on that loan,” Tammy said.

“The letter came in August. It said if we didn’t pay it off by the first of the year, they would start foreclosure. Twenty-nine thousand dollars. On the house Rod’s grandpa built. On the house Tyler grew up in.”

She looked at me then, finally, for the first time in a week. Her eyes were swimming.

“I didn’t tell you,” she said. “I didn’t tell anybody. I couldn’t stand for you to know. You and Mike, you pay your bills. Your mom raised you right. I was so ashamed I couldn’t get out of bed some mornings.”

“Tam,” I said.

“And then I scratched that ticket and it was fifty thousand dollars,” she said, “and I sat there and I did the math, and our half wasn’t enough. Seventeen thousand wasn’t enough to save the house. All of it was barely enough.”

She held the folded dollar against her mouth for a second. “And I thought, if I split it, we lose the house anyway. So I took my coat and I walked out the door. I didn’t even look for you.”

She wiped her face with the heel of her hand.

“And then everybody knew, because I called my sister screaming, and the whole town knew by morning,” she said.

She shook her head. “And everybody kept asking what I was going to buy. I couldn’t say I was going to pay the bank because my husband gambled our house away. So I drove to Fairmont and I put six thousand dollars down on a pontoon. So people would think it was fun money. So nobody would ask.”

“That boat,” Tammy said, and laughed, an awful little laugh. “I’ve never even been on it. It’s been sitting in the driveway all week looking at me.”

The door to the parking lot opened then, and the cold came in, and it was Rod. I don’t know who called him.

I found out later it was Lenny, from the phone behind the register, while Tammy was talking. Rod stood just inside the door in his Carhartt jacket with his hands at his sides.

Rod Kranz is a big man, a welder, with forearms like fence posts. I have known him since he was a skinny kid with a mullet.

He looked smaller standing there than I had ever seen him. Every head in the place turned to look at him, and he let them look.

“She’s telling it right,” Rod said. His voice was rough.

“All of it’s mine. Tammy never placed a bet in her life. I’ve been going to the meeting in Mankato on Tuesday nights. Forty-one days now. That’s not much, but it’s what I’ve got.”

He looked at me. Rod has never been a man who said much to me. I always figured he thought Tammy and I were a little silly with our Fridays.