This was the moment Jackson had been waiting for. His voice continued to rise. “So Lisa grows up in a filthy trailer in the woods. Your little girl will be extraordinarily beautiful if she takes after her mother. She reaches a certain age, the young men start to get interested, she drops out of school, a baby perhaps comes along, the cycle starts anew. Like your mother?” He paused. “Like you?” Jackson added very quietly.
LuAnn turned slowly around, her eyes wide and glimmering.
Jackson eyed her sympathetically. “It’s inevitable, LuAnn. I’m speaking the truth, you know I am. What future do you and Lisa have with him? And if not him, another Duane and then another and another. You’ll live in poverty and you’ll die in poverty and your little girl will do the same. There’s no changing that. It’s not fair of course, but that doesn’t make it any less certain. Oh, people who have never been in your situation would say that you should just pack up and go. Take your daughter and just leave. Only they never tell you how you’re supposed to do that. Where will the money for bus fare and motel rooms and food come from? Who’ll watch your child, first while you look for work, and then when you find it, if you ever do.” Jackson shook his head in sympathy and slid the back of one hand under his chin as he eyed her. “Of course, you can go to the police if you want. But by the time you get back, there will be no one here. And do you think they’ll really believe you?” An expression of condescension played across his features. “And then what will you have accomplished? You’ll have missed the opportunity of a lifetime. Your only shot at getting out. Gone.” He shook his head sadly at her, as if to say, “Please don’t be that stupid.”
LuAnn tightened her grip on the baby carrier. An agitated Lisa was starting to struggle to get out and her mother automatically started rocking the little girl back and forth. “You talking about dreams, Mr. Jackson, I got me my own dreams. Big ones. Damn big ones.” Her voice was trembling though. LuAnn Tyler had a very tough exterior built up over long, hard years of scrapping for an existence and never getting anywhere; however, Jackson’s words had hurt LuAnn, or rather the truth in those words.
“I know you do. I said you were bright and you’ve done nothing at this meeting but reinforce that opinion. You deserve far better than what you have now. However, rarely do people get what they deserve in life. I’m offering you a way to achieve your big dreams.” He abruptly snapped his fingers for effect. “Like that.”
She suddenly looked wary. “How do I know you’re not the police trying to set me up? I ain’t going to no prison over money.”
“Because it would be a clear case of entrapment, that’s why. It would never hold up in court. And why in the world would the police target you for such an elaborate scheme?”
LuAnn leaned up against the door. Under her dress she felt her heart beating erratically between her breasts.
Jackson stood up. “I know you don’t know me, but I take my business very, very seriously. I never do anything without a very good reason. I would not be here wasting your time with some joke, and I most certainly never waste my time.” Jackson’s voice carried an unmistakable ring of authority and his eyes bored into LuAnn with an intensity that was impossible to ignore.
“Why me? Out of all the people in the whole friggin’ world, why’d you come knocking on my door?” She was almost pleading.
“Fair question; however, it’s not one I’m prepared to answer, nor is it particularly pertinent.”
“How can you know I’m going to win?”
He looked at the TV. “Unless you think I was incredibly lucky with that drawing, then you shouldn’t doubt the outcome.”
“Huh! Right now, I doubt everything I’m hearing. So what if I play along and I still don’t win?”
“Then what have you lost?”
“The two bucks it costs to play, that’s what! It might not sound like much money to you, but that’s bus fare for almost a whole week!”