The Ticket
p. 47 · Read in the full issue
By Kitty Foster
MELI had been out of work for months since he was sacked from his job at the mill for stealing. He was lazy and indolent and nearly everyone despised him. He wandered around aimlessly from office to office. No luck.
The depression had set in—many were unemployed. The crime rate rose and the police had a rough time. Meli and his family could not go back to their village because they had no relatives there. Secondly they could not afford the fare back. They could have gone to his wife’s village but he had had several arguments with his mother-in-law and refused to go there again.
The single-roomed house in which they lived was crowded and dilapidated.
His children often had running noses, unkempt hair and dirty, torn clothes.
They were always squabbling over food.
To keep his large family going he began selling his possessions. The old chairs went, then the iron bed and then the small transistor radio, until he had nothing but a 20 cent sweepstake ticket. This he did not want to sell but one of his children fell dangerously ill and needed medicine. He sold the ticket to his next-door neighbour and bought the medicine.
The child died. The ticket he had sold won the sweepstake.