No one in the town ever believed Harold would actually win anything. He was the sort of man who treated sweepstakes entries like scripture, clipping coupons from newspapers, carefully filling out each form, and mailing them off with the diligence of a clerk who never missed a deadline.

His retirement had given him more time than he knew what to do with, and so he filled it, envelope by envelope, as though order itself could fend off the ache of idle hours.

“They’re just bait, Harold,” his neighbour Marjorie said once, leaning over the fence as she watched him lick an envelope.

Harold only smiled, with an unshakable glint in his eye.

“Somebody has to win. Why not me?”

At first, the townsfolk humoured him.

Offering advice, teasing gently, and warning that he was wasting stamps. Eventually, they grew bored with the ritual. They stopped commenting, stopped asking.

Harold didn’t. He kept sending them in.

Week after week

Month after month.

Sometimes a crisp five-dollar bill arrived in the mail, or a voucher for a diner two towns over. More often, nothing at all.

Still, Harold never wavered. It wasn’t just the prizes.

It was the act, the quiet belief that if you kept putting something into the world, one day the world might give something back.

People shook their heads, saying, Well, it’s a retirement hobby. Better than moping around. Better than drinking at the bar every night.

Harold didn’t argue. He just kept mailing those entries, one prize at a time.

And then, one morning, a truck pulled up and unloaded cans of beans. Three thousand of them, bright yellow labels, all lined in neat towers like an army staring in the same direction. Marjorie nearly choked on her tea while watching from the porch.

Harold stacked them in the garage, whistling like he’d just struck oil.

“What are you going to do with so many?” she exclaimed, half-horrified, half-amused.

“Depends,” Harold said, patting a tower of beans. “Might open a diner. Might build a fort. World’s wide open, Marjorie.”

She rolled her eyes, muttering something about lunacy with a mailing address, but Harold only piled higher.

The next month brought a solar-powered radio, all buttons and dials.

“Who even has time to listen to the radio these days?” Marjorie teased, arms crossed.

Harold just grinned. “Who has time to read these days?” he shot back, flicking it on for a burst of static before shutting it off again. Strangely enough, Marjorie never once saw him actually use it.

Then came the lifetime supply of long stick wax candles. They arrived in crates like some medieval dowry, enough to light every church in three counties.

The town council, when they heard, groaned aloud. Harold didn’t bother explaining anymore. He just stored, smiled, and clipped his next bounty.

But just as summer broke into heat, a massive power cut hit. The streets went dark. The town was shrouded in silence and darkness. The refrigerators went warm. Food spoiled. The grocery store was emptied in hours, shelves stripped bare. The nights grew long, dark, restless.

But Harold?

He opened his garage. He began lining cans of beans along the sidewalk, doors wide, the labels gleaming like sunshine. Neighbours came in waves. Some carried away a tin or two, others left their own leftovers.

Half pies, bags of chips, garden vegetables. Kids darted in for cold sodas that someone had tossed into a cooler of ice.

At one point, someone even tucked a stray kitten in a box between the bean towers, as if Harold’s garage had become a safehouse for both people and strays.

When evening fell, Harold passed out candles. Dozens of them glowed along porches, kitchen tables, and sidewalks. The town looked like it had slipped back a century, with every corner flickering with waxlight, conversations carrying through open windows in the dark.

The outage lasted only a week. But in that week, Harold’s so-called “useless” prizes carried the town—beans for bellies, candles for nights, a solar hum of voices on the radio reminding them they weren’t alone. What had once made him the town eccentric now made him its quiet provider.

When the lights finally buzzed back on, people clapped, cheered, and scattered.

Harold, however, returned to his kitchen table. The radio hummed low, static and soft music in the background. He browsed the newspaper with the same patience as before.

Marjorie came over one afternoon, curiosity finally outweighing disbelief. She watched him tuck forms into neat piles, envelopes stacked like soldiers ready to march.

“Harold,” she said softly, “do you ever think you’re… unlucky lucky?”

Harold shrugged, smiling without looking up.

“Luck’s not what you win,” he said. “It’s what everyone does with it.”