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Born and raised in Chicago, Jake La Botz spent his early days studying under the last of the city’s pre-war era bluesmen. He began releasing his own albums in 2000 and would go on to spend the next two decades amassing a litany of critical acclaim, sharing bills with luminaries like Ray Charles, Etta James and Dr. John. His songs, and sometimes acting, have been featured in film and television, including True Detective, Shameless, Rambo, Ghost World, and many others. La Botz’ fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Museum of Americana, Bear Paw Arts Journal, and Wrong Turn Lit. 

Work by J. La Botz is featured in the Fall 2023 issue of In Parentheses.

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“Isn’t this lovely,” Doris says, digging through her bulky brown purse, “those other girls always seemed so, I don’t know, stuck up. Let’s see… I’ve got some good ones here.”

It’s been difficult for Helen to attract new blood since beating top players Marcy and Adeline in a humiliating round of draw poker her third day living at Peaceful Gardens Inc. With pickings as slim as they are, Helen agrees to let “Coupon Lady,” as Doris is known by staff,  join her and Eunice at the weathered card table this afternoon.

Helen sets the terms and shuffles the deck. “Five card stud. Nothing wild. Ten cents of coupon to a penny. Low card bets first.” She deals a first hand of poker. Then a second. Then a third.

By the fourth hand Doris’ earnings are up a little and she’s feeling confident.

“Ok, I’m gonna do twenty cents… off Gold Bond foot powder that is,” she says.

The stacks of Sunday cutouts in front of her opponent remind Helen of a day, many years ago, when she visited her middle son, Rick, at his hovel in East Saint Paul – an apartment she paid for with money poached from her husband, Bob. The piles on top of piles crammed into Rick’s festering three-room flat were comforting to her son for reasons Helen would never understand.

“Let’s cut cards,” she said that day, “you win, I’ll buy you a fifth of Jim Beam. I win, you clean this lousy place up.”

“You’re a cheat ma. I’m not playing you.”

“Call your dear mama a cheat? I’m just lucky, that’s all.”

She recalls reaching for a bag of magazine clippings crammed in a corner – one of many he’d been collecting since he was a teenager.

“Don’t touch those ma,” he whispered, as if she were waking a baby. The bottom gave way when Helen pulled on the handles, dumping a load of discount vouchers at her feet. She picked one up from the sticky carpet and held it to the light.

“Let me see that,” Rick said, snatching the yellowed paper from her hand.

“It says ‘five dollars off’ ma,” he declared, hoping to appeal to Helen’s frugal side.

“Also says ‘expires August Nineteen Ninety Two’, guess you missed your chance on that Jazzercise class, kiddo.”

“Bond Goldfinger… do I know him?” Eunice asks, bringing Helen’s mind back.

“Foot powder, dear. It’s a twenty cent coupon to you,” Doris says kindly.

Eunice pushes one of her caramels into the pot, which is agreeable to the other players.

Helen deals the last one down all around, including a third king to Doris from under the deck. No one notices her smooth move. Doris peaks at her final hole card and says,

“It’s getting down and dirty now.”

Eunice blushes and smiles.

“I am feeling lucky to-day,” Doris sing-songs, dropping another clipping into the pot.  “Two dollars off Snyder’s Pretzels. That’s almost free.”

The mention of pretzels causes Helen to tear up a bit. There was a time when that’s all he would eat. Poor Little Ricky. Ricky the sicky. Everyone, including Helen, had called him that as a boy. Many, including Bob, continued to call him that as a man.

When Bob found out about the apartment he became enraged, stopped payment, and left his son to be evicted. “It’s about time he learns to be a man!” he had shouted at Helen. She went back later and gave her boy all the cash she could pull together – a little over five hundred dollars. Rick bought a beat up station wagon with his mom’s money and stuffed as many coupons, magazines, and knick-knacks as he could fit into it. Somehow he managed to sleep in it too.

Her son’s homelessness was distressing for Helen. She drove around looking for him most days, if only to bring a sandwich or a few dollars. Sometimes she found him, but even when she did, it didn’t feel like she’d found him. He became a stranger to her, not just in demeanor, but in physical appearance too. After a time Helen no longer saw any trace of family resemblance in Rick. It was as if her boy’s DNA had been evicted from his body the same way he had been evicted from his home. Towards the end she knew him only by his overfull and filthy car.

Helen brings her focus back to the game, fixing her grey-blue eyes on Doris’ face.

“Ten American against all you’ve got,” she says, pushing a roll of quarters into the pot.

In a rare flash of lucidity Eunice asks, “What would you do with all those coupons?”

Helen pictures the last time she saw him. He was parked by Lake Phalen feeding the geese. The leaves were mostly gone. She called to him repeatedly. He didn’t respond.

“Don’t feed it to the birds,” she said, leaving a roast beef sandwich on the hood of his wagon.

She imagines going back there now. Spotting his car. Walking over.

“I’ve got some good ones here,” she’d say.

He’d rummage through and find it right away.

“It says two dollars off, ma!”

A kerfuffle at the table snaps Helen out of her daydream.

“Is the game over?” Eunice asks.

“It is for me,” Doris says, packing her little piles back into her purse, “this game isn’t friendly. It just isn’t friendly.”

A while after Doris and Eunice have gone Helen pinches the pretzel coupon off the pot.
Slim pickings, she thinks.

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