Ragged Company (13 page)

He smiled. “Yes. That’s true. It just seems like a long shot.”

I laughed. “A long shot? I think we’re getting a handle on the long-shot thing. And besides, it’s what we’re left with.”

“Yes,” he said. “Well, good luck.”

They ushered us out of the office and walked us to the front of the building. Margo, to her credit, linked an arm through Digger’s, and Tim and Lisa tried vainly to make small talk with Timber and Dick. Vance told me brief stories about the winners whose pictures hung around the office. When we got to the sidewalk, they shook our hands warmly.

“I hope you find your friend fairly soon,” Vance said.

“Yeah, thanks,” Digger said, his arm still hooked in Margo’s.

“Is there anything I can do to help? Do you need any cash for now?”

“Cash?” Digger said, finally setting Margo free. “There’s always a place for cash.”

“Well, here,” Vance said, and handed Digger a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet. “I think you’ll be good for it.”

“Hoo-hoo! It’s a day for fucking miracles, boys. First we get into this mess and now I got a Square John handing me a half like it’s nothing.”

“A half?” Vance asked.

“Yeah,” Digger said with a wink at Margo. “Half a yard.”

“A yard?

“A hundred.”

“Oh.”

“Got a lot to learn about money, mister,” Digger said, pocketing the fifty. “Got a lot to learn about money.”

We headed off down the street.

I
STOOD ON MY BALCONY
in the moist spring air and looked out over the city. I had known this city since I came here after journalism school. I had covered it as a reporter and as a columnist but I had never, in truth, actually lived in it, seen its depths, its reaches. I’d merely been an occupant, inhabiting the spaces that were my reward for, as Digger would say, a Square John life. I had never really known this city, had missed its stories entirely. Beneath the pseudo-rational sheen of a contemporary life are other lives whose existences bear no resemblance to our own. Within that separation is the refraction of light that creates the shadowed ones on the corners and in the alleys or, most invisibly, on the very same streets I walked every day. I’d just never taken the time to see them. Time and money meant I didn’t have to. I began to realize that the displaced and dislocated ones are not simply the inhabitants of the shelters and missions, of the cardboard boxes and empty doorways, but condo dwellers like me looking out over the top of the city from a balcony far above it all. The ones who miss the collective heartbeat of the city in favour of the safe, the routine, and the familiar. I had confined myself. I had limited my experience. I had deprived myself of knowledge. I determined to see as much of my new friends’ world as they would allow me to. Not to change things for them. That would be far too presumptuous. But merely to see and to know and to understand—to correct my dislocation.

I smiled. I tried to imagine the selection process my new friends underwent in picking a movie. It would be word-driven. The movie would be something that stood out by virtue of the power of its beckoning, something mysterious, something poetic, alluring and indicative of a mystic journey, a story thrown up on beams
of light, illuminating the corners of another undiscovered world. According to the ads, it could be
Back to the Future, The Gods Must Be Crazy,
or
Field of Dreams.
I narrowed my search to the movie houses close to the inner city and those with afternoon matinees. Satisfied with my process, I headed out to
Field of Dreams.

“S
O JUST WHAT IN THE FUCK
are we gonna do now?” I go.

“Go to the movies, I guess,” Timber goes.

“Fuck that,” I go. “Let’s just head to the liquor store, score a couple of jugs, and head off down to Heave-Ho Charlie’s, sit around and suck it up for a change. Far as I’m concerned, we all been too friggin’ good for too friggin’ long.”

Heave-Ho Charlie is an old rounder. He was a stickup man back in the days when you could actually get away with that shit, and he was a good one. Well, good if you mean he always had the balls to do it. Not so good when you figure out the years he spent in the pen and the small amount of cash he got for his trouble. Charlie said it worked out to about a grand for every year he spent inside, and even then I gotta figure he was overpaying himself. But anyway, Heave-Ho was a good old rounder who’d been on the street forever. Fuckin’ guy musta been about eighty, maybe even ninety. Tough son of a bitch too, for his age. Charlie had shiftable digs. In other words, he camped out in empty buildings wherever he could find them. Sometimes he would be in a deserted warehouse, sometimes a boarded-up old house, one time he even set up in the basement of a church they were gonna tear down. Old Charlie knew everybody. I mean, every-fucking-body and that’s how we knew what he told us about himself was true because anyone who knew that many people had to be straight. One of the people he knew was Fill ’er Up Phil. Phil was a bootlegger and a moonshiner but he was also one of the biggest piss tanks you ever seen. He got his name from the plastic pop bottles he made you drink the booze from. Phil never wanted
anyone to get pinched carrying a bottle they scored from him, so he’d sell you a pop bottle full of hooch. You had to bring the bottle, though. Then you’d knock on his door, hand the bottle through the little hole in the door and say, “Fill ’er up, Phil.” How much you paid depended on how big the pop bottle was. It was always good moonshine and Phil made a lot of money. But he liked to taste-test the product, too. So he needed a place to keep the hooch safe and Heave-Ho Charlie was the perfect partner since he was moving around all the time. Heave-Ho would set up somewhere and Phil would stash a few crocks there. Then he’d drop by to taste-test and the party would be on. Heave-Ho got his name from the fact that he could drink pretty much anyone under the table, and when they got too loud, obnoxious, or just plain fucking stupid at one of Phil’s taste-test parties he’d be the one to give ’em the old heave-ho. Not too gently sometimes, either. Those old pen timers knew how to knuckle, and people pretty much behaved themselves at Heave-Ho’s. That’s why it was good place to piss ’er up at. Long as you were a rounder and solid, you were gonna be okay. I really needed a night with Heave-Ho and the boys.

“We can go to a movie any time,” I go. “Besides, I got the cash for a few bottles, maybe even some pickup food, smokes. Damn. Sounds like a hell of a good idea to me.”

“What about Granite?” the old lady goes. “I know you really want to kick up your heels now, Digger, but Granite’s the only one we know who can help with the ticket.”

“Ticket-schmicket. That’s just a fucking pipe dream. Guys like me don’t ever get that lucky. It’s a piece of paper. That’s all. A piece of paper that ain’t never gonna get cashed. Because I for one am not going to spend my time searching around the city for some Square John who more’n likely will just laugh anyway. This cash is real. This cash I can spend. This cash I can fucking drink and right now I wanna fucking drink. Screw this
Field of Dreams.
”

They all look at me like they know they’re up against the wall. It takes a shitload of will to move me once I get set on something,
and the more I think about this the more I feel like cutting out and just getting loaded. We’re still heading toward the Marquee and I can feel myself getting antsy.

“Look,” I go. “For months now we been doing this movie thing and never once did I try ’n scuttle the fucking ship. I liked it, sure, but I’m a fucking rounder. Always will be. Movies ain’t gonna change that, and every once in a while a rounder’s gotta act like a rounder and right now, that’s what I wanna do. I wanna hang with Fill ’er Up Phil and Heave-Ho and whoever’s hanging out there, tell some fucking stories, get pissed and do what I do.

“We never know when we’re gonna run into Granite. Could be months. Could be a whole frickin’ year and then we’re screwed anyhow. Let’s just go back and do what we used to do for a day. Remember?”

Timber nods. “Heave-Ho always does have some good get-togethers.”

“Damn straight,” I go.

“And Phil always talks to me about the old days when he was stickin’ up people an’ drivin’ them big cars. I like them stories,” Dick goes.

“See? See?” I go. “You guys been missing the action as much as me.”

“Well, I have to confess that Charlie’s place does have a charm to it,” Timber goes. “And a tad of moonshine’d be nice too.”

“But what if?” the old lady goes.

“What if what?” I go.

“What if we go to the movies and we meet Granite and he helps us with the ticket? What if he makes it so we can have that money? What if we don’t have to struggle to afford movies? What if we don’t have to struggle for anything anymore?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I go. “What if the sky falls? What if the fucking sun don’t rise tomorrow? What if, what if, what if. Life ain’t about
what if.
It’s about
what is.
”

“But what if we just try?” she goes.

“Just try?”

“Yes. What if we just try? We go to the movie and if we don’t find Granite we go to Heave-Ho’s anyway and you boys can sow your oats.”

“Still sounds like a stretch to me. Still sounds like we’re buying into a Square John dream that ain’t cut out for us. This is what we know. This is what we are. This is what we do.”

“I like the what-if game,” Dick goes.

“Yeah, you would,” I go.

We’re standing in front of the Marquee and there’s a few people moving up the steps and giving us curious glances.

“What if, Digger?” Dick goes. “What if we go to Charlie’s and Granite shows up here and we miss him?”

“Then we miss him.”

“But what if he wants to help us and we don’t get the chance to ask?”

“Then we don’t ask,” I go, getting frustrated at Dick’s excitement.

“But what if we do what One For The Dead says and go here, then go to Charlie’s if nothing happens?”

I look at them and shake my head. We really got a long way from where we used to be, and it kinda makes me sad somehow. In the good old days we never woulda talked about this. We’d have been on our way to Heave-Ho’s.

“All right,” I go. “I’ll play your silly little game. What if the next person out of the next cab that pulls up here is anyone else but Granite? If it’s someone else, we go to Charlie’s. What if we call it that way?”

I got them and they know it. One thing you can always trust a rounder for is that they know when they’re snookered and don’t make a big fuss about it.

“Okay,” the old lady goes.

“Sure,” Timber goes.

“Yeah, then,” Dick goes.

I smile and turn to face the traffic, and just about shit my fucking pants when Granite steps out of the next cab.

I
KNEW IT WAS GONNA BE HIM
. I knew it. I don’t know how come I knew it but I knew it anyhow. Much as a big part of me wanted to go to Heave-Ho Charlie’s, an even bigger part of me wanted him to come so I wouldn’t have to struggle no more. I wasn’t even sure of what that meant but it sounded real good to me on accounta sometimes it gets real hard out here an’ I don’t wanna do what I gotta do sometimes. So when he got out of that cab I was glad to see him.

Granite didn’t seem too surprised to see us neither. He just smiled at us as he reached through the window to give the driver his money, then walked over and slapped me on the back. “Dick. Good to see you,” he said.

“Digger found some money,” I said.

“Well, that’s good. Not a bad way to start the day, is it, Digger?”

“Better’n a swat in the balls with a frozen rabbit,” Digger said, takin’ a swallow from Timber’s bottle.

Granite just looked at him for a moment. “Well, I never really thought about it that way but, yes, I guess you’re right. It would feel better than that.”

“And he found some smokes, too,” I said, kinda wantin’ Digger to spill the beans about the ticket right away.

“Smokes? Well, it gets better, doesn’t it?”

“Tell him, Digger,” One For The Dead said.

“Tell me what?” Granite asked.

Digger just looked at him. Not hard or mean or anything like that. Just looked at him like the way he looked at an old bike he seen in an alley one time. Kinda like guessin’ about it.

“Well, there was a lottery ticket in the pack of smokes I found,” Digger said. “So I figured, what the fuck. Been a pretty lucky day already but I might as well get it looked at. So I went into a little store and, well, it was a winner.”

“A winner?” Granite said, smilin’. “Wow. What did you get?”

“Thirteen and a half.”

“Well, that’s pretty good for nothing. Thirteen dollars will always come in handy, I imagine.”

“Try thirteen and a half million, Rock.”

“Did you say
million
?”

“Yup.”

“Are you sure? Did you check?”

“We checked all right. The ticket’s good for thirteen and half mil.”

“Jesus,” Granite said an’ looked at all of us.

Digger told Granite all about us all goin’ down to the office where they kept the money. Granite got calmer the longer Digger told his story.

“So there was nothin’ left to do but get the fuck out of there,” Digger said.

“And look for you,” One For The Dead said.

“Me?” Granite asked. “What do you want me to do?”

“Well, none of us have any identification or a bank account and they say that we need that to get the money,” she told him.

“No ID?” Granite asked. “None of you have ID? How can that be?”

Digger snorted. “Fer fuck sake, Rock. Nobody gives a shit about that. Keeping a few pieces of paper together’s a small friggin’ thing to worry about out here. And we ain’t exactly regular folks who do the things that need us to be identified. I don’t gotta have a driver’s licence for my cart. I don’t gotta have a social insurance number ’cause I ain’t exactly pulling a friggin’ wage, and I sure as shit don’t need no birth certificate because most people don’t give a flying fuck when I was born or if I’m alive.”

Granite nodded while Digger spoke. “So what do you think I can do?”