Grandma’s Numbers on the Store Screen

That is my grandmother. She has worn that bonnet every spring of my life. It folds up into a little pleated strip the size of a stick of gum, and she keeps it in her coat pocket next to her rosary.

The gas station sits right on the highway at the edge of town, across from a row of old brick houses. It is the kind of place every small town in Iowa has, where the farmers stop for coffee at six and the school buses fill up at seven and the high school kids buy pizza at noon.

The big front windows were full of sun when we pulled in. I parked by the door so Grandma would not have far to walk.

Inside it smelled like coffee and breakfast pizza and floor wax. There were three or four men at the coffee counter in seed caps and canvas coats, talking about whether it was too wet to get in the fields.

One of them was Rollie, who farms hogs out east of town and has known Grandma since they were both in the church choir sixty years ago. He tipped his cap at her.

“Phil,” he said. “You’re out early.”

“Errands,” Grandma said, and went straight to the lottery counter.

Dorcas Wille was working. Dorcas is 61. She has worked the front counter at that store for longer than Tanner has been alive, and she wears her red store vest with a pin on it from every year of service.

She knows everybody. She knows who takes cream and who takes it black, and whose husband is sick, and whose kid made the honor roll. She has sold Grandma’s tickets, one way or another, for twenty years.

“Morning, Phil,” she said. “Morning, Jodie. What can I do for you ladies?”

I had already decided I would let Grandma do the talking. It was her ticket and her great-grandson.

But Grandma just stood there holding on to the edge of the counter, and she did not say anything at all, so I leaned in and kept my voice low.

“Dorcas, Grandma’s numbers came up Tuesday night. Tanner told her it lost. We just want to know if her ticket came through here.”

Dorcas looked at me. Then she looked at Grandma. Then she looked down at the counter and was quiet for a second, and I knew before she said a word.

“Oh, Phil,” she said softly.

“Just tell me,” Grandma said.

Dorcas pulled the lottery terminal around toward her and pressed a few keys. Those machines keep a record of every ticket that gets checked at the store, the time and the amount, and she scrolled back through yesterday morning’s list with her pen.

“He was in at 7:12 yesterday,” she said. “Before work, I’d guess. He handed me the ticket to check like he always does. And the machine played the winner song.”

She swallowed.

“I said, Tanner, that’s your grandma’s! I was so tickled. I told him anything over $600, I can’t pay here, he’d have to take it to the lottery office in Cedar Rapids. He said he’d drive it over on his lunch.”

She turned the screen around on its swivel so we could see it, and she pointed at the line with her finger.

There it was. Wednesday. 7:12 a.m. Prize amount, four thousand dollars. Status: claim at lottery office.