After Winning a Lottery and a Beauty Contest by Sante Matteo

He was waiting in yet another line, already becoming used to the Army’s “hurry up and wait” routine. 

Hurry up and wait . . . and sweat!  He was not yet used to so much heat and humidity in November.  Here he was sweating through his clothes, when two days before he had been shivering in the snow in downtown Cleveland, outside the Federal Building, waiting to be inducted into the Army.

The “hurry up and wait” pattern became familiar soon enough: the peremptory orders to move, without knowing where, or how, or why: “Fast! Now! Move! Get your ass in gear!”; followed by inexplicable inaction, again without knowing why or for how long.  He figured it was all a process of exposing new soldiers to novel, stressful situations and conditions and forcing them to learn to react mindlessly, automatically, without reflecting or questioning: Just follow orders! Don’t analyze!  Don’t hesitate!  Don’t question!  You’re in the Army now!

So here he was, sweating in Louisiana in November, waiting in line with the other new inductees to get their permanent Army files typed up. 

After all those anti-war protests in high school and college, he let himself be drafted.  In the end it didn’t seem right that it was mostly poor and Black young men, many still boys, who were being sent to Vietnam, “to serve as cannon fodder,” while the rich and privileged had the resources and found the means to avoid being drafted.  So, he ended up deciding not to seek a deferment for graduate school, nor to petition for exemption as a conscientious objector, nor flee to Canada, nor accept to go to prison as a draft dodger.

Nor did he hope that his number might not come up.  It was a very low number, and there was no doubt that those with that number would be called up.

He and his college buddies had gathered in their dorm’s lounge to watch the national draft lottery that the Selective Service System had devised to determine who would be called up to go “kill or be killed” in Vietnam.  They had devised a dorm lottery of their own: all those eligible for that year’s draft chipped in a dollar, and the pot was to go to the one who got the lowest number and was therefore the most liable to be drafted. 

He won.  His birth date came up on the thirteenth draw.  Number 13!  His lucky unlucky number!  He won $36, along with the certainty that he would be drafted after graduation, unless he took steps to avoid it.

He chose not to take any such steps and was drafted and sent to Fort Polk for boot camp, in Louisiana, where the still-summer-like heat was a shocking but welcome change from the snow and freezing winds blowing off Lake Erie.

Now, as he awaited his turn, he could hear chatter and the clicking of typewriters coming from the room ahead.  When he got to the front of the line he saw several rows of desks.  At each one sat a typist–all women–and an inductee sitting beside the desk answering questions.

One of the typists finally waved him over to a vacated chair.  He was surprised and a little unnerved when she smiled broadly at him as he approached, as if she recognized him.  He sat down and handed over his documents.  She looked them over and typed for several minutes, a smile still playing on her face.  Then she paused and told him to stand up and face to his left.

“Hey, Thelma, Sue Ellen, y’all,” she shouted over the din, “take a look, will you?”  Several typists looked over, with eyebrows raised, and nodded.

She then ordered him to turn around and face the other way.

“Girls,” she called out, “what do y’all think?”  The typists on the other side of the room, some already looking his way, nodded in apparent assent.

Puzzled, embarrassed to be the object of such scrutiny, he wondered what was going on.  Were they checking his hair length?  Objectionable sideburns?  Sizing him up for his uniform?  He hadn’t noticed any of the other inductees standing up, except to leave the room. 

But you’re in the Army now.  Just follow orders!  Don’t ask questions!  No need to know or to understand. 

But the typists were civilians, weren’t they?  She wasn’t going to order him to drop and give her 50 push-ups for asking her a question, was she?  So, he ventured to ask what that was all about, did it have to do with the uniforms to be issued at the next station.

“Oh, no, sweetheart,” she explained, her smile broadening, “you’ve just won me a steak dinner.  We have a contest here, a kind of lottery.  A bunch of us girls go out together at the end of the week, and the one who processes the best looking guy that week gets her meal paid for by the others.  And there just ain’t no way anyone is going to beat you, darlin’.  Oh, my!  Look, girls, he blushes, too!  Oh, did you know that your eyes are even bluer and prettier when your face is red!  Sweetie, you are just too cute for words!”

Seven months later, in May, on another unseasonably hot day on both sides of the globe, in Louisiana and in Vietnam, he was killed when his platoon buddy, who was walking in front of him, stepped on a mine.  His face, by then too tanned to show a blush, was blown off. 

That same evening, back in Leesville, Louisiana, she enjoyed another free meal that she had won that week—shrimp for a change.  She had lost count of how many dinners she had won, and she and the other typists never knew how many of their beauty contestants were sent to Vietnam or how many were wounded or killed.

# # #

Sante Matteo is a retired Professor of Italian Studies in Oxford, Ohio, home of Miami University.

Photo: Holly Mindrup

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Your Comments
  • This short short story drew me in. I kept reading because I wanted to know what would happen. I found several emotions competing in me, from delight at how she made him blush to sadness at how he lost his life. I found it interesting that the last two paragraphs were very different in tone. The preceding paragraphs read like a story, even including the thoughts of the young man. The last two read more like a newspaper article, though a somewhat poetic one. The style reminded me of many accounts I have read in The Washington Post Magazine. Perhaps this was purposeful, a sudden break from whimsy to real world tragedy. If so, it worked well. Regardless, it worked well even if accidental, though knowing the author, I suspect he knew exactly what he was doing in writing it that way.

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