Ed punched his curiosity into the search.
“Winning the lottery and struck by lightning.”
One in 2.8 trillion? Funny, he’d have figured worse odds. The poor bastard it happened to in 1964 won a million. Ed’s winnings only got him a hundred grand.
He spent the day meditating on how this skewed his odds of getting struck down, wondering if tempting God’s wrath shot them all to hell. He’d taken up prayer on the flattened strip mines overlooking Crater Valley during thunderstorms, his voice screaming a few feet closer to God’s mercy.
How else would he save this shitty little town?
It’s probably just me, Larry–but I haven’t a clue what’s really going on in this story… Is the character trying to beat the odds for his own gain? or to save the town? or both? or what? Please clarify.
You’re not alone on that…
There’s a lot compressed in this story. I enjoyed unfolding it. Nice work.
I finally got it. God’s wrathful lightning would strike the poor town’s decrepit buildings. Its few remaining atheist residents would collect on their property insurance, and be able to rebuild. Hallelujah!! Jerry
Well, my take on it was that he won 100k in the lottery and now wonders if that means he’ll get struck by lightning or some equally unique disaster. Reflecting back to how he began “tempting” God, so to speak, with his prayers during his miserable mining experience, he’s doubly concerned about the other shoe falling but the town is dying and he feels it’s on him to save it with the 100k so he sort of sees it as not so much a gift from God to him as that he’s been dated with this endowment for a purpose. Whew. Pretty good for 101 words Larry (if that really was the story:-))
Not “dated” I meant “fated”