Ragged Company (15 page)

“Yes.”

“Street people?”

“Yes. Well, homeless, really. There’s a difference.”

“And they want you to look after the transfer of the money?”

“Yes. They trust me.”

“Because none of them have identification enough to pick up the cheque or to cash it if they did?”

“Right.”

“In-fucking-credible,” he said.

“Fucking right,” I replied with a grin.

We talked awhile about the most expedient way to handle getting the money for them and how to set up the necessary banking. James was quick and earnest and it wasn’t long before we had a viable option to present to my new friends.

“So when will you see them again?” he asked.

“In a few minutes,” I said. “They’re right here.”

“In your home?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve got four street people sitting in your home? Unsupervised?”

“Yes. But they’re homeless, James. They’re not street people and they’re not unsupervised. They’re watching a movie.”

“A movie? They’re watching a movie?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s how we met.”

“At the movies?”

“Yes.”

“In-fucking-credible,” he said again.

“Fucking right,” I said, grinning even more broadly.

“You know there’s going to be one hell of a lot of media on this. Once the press gets wind of it, those people are going to be
under all kinds of scrutiny and pressure. It’ll make living on the street look like a holiday.”

“I know.”

“Can they handle that? Well, basically it’s not even a question because the lottery rules say that winners need to meet the media when they pick up their prizes. So really it’s a matter of minimizing the effect on them, I would guess.”

“If they retain you, many of the questions can be handled by you. Money questions and such.”

“Yes. I can do that. But they’ll still have to face up to some pretty personal, probing questions. Well, you know the drill.”

“Yeah, unfortunately I do. I’ll tell them what to expect. If they go for this I’ll call you back and we can arrange to meet with you before we do the pickup tomorrow.”

“Okay. Are you sure you want to do this? You have no obligation here, after all. Me, personally, I think I’d avoid the headache because it’ll be a big one, brother.”

“No. I’m sure. I don’t know why, really, but I’m sure.”

“Okay then. I’m with you. Call me and let me know as soon as you can.”

“Yes. Later, James.”

I sat in the den and listened to the sounds from the other room. James was right. This was the kind of story the media lived for. The impossible, improbable, unbelievable tale of the nobody suddenly undergoing life-altering circumstances. They’d love it, and they’d milk it for everything they could. The four people sitting in my living room watching Anthony Quinn struggle to retain his dignity and find redemption had no idea how close they were to Quinn’s Mountain Rivera at this precise moment. I moved to the doorway that led to the viewing room and saw children at a matinee; children swept up in the Lumiere brothers’ grand vision and carried forward by every filmmaker and visionary since, children rapt by the fascination born of dreams, effortless and flowing, cast outward onto a screen and captivating in their telling, children transported to a world far beyond the humble borders of their lives, and children ensnared in the hope of
imagined worlds made real, worlds that hope itself brought closer and closer to becoming real through the vehicle of imagination. They were all far too engrossed in story to realize I was there, and when I crossed to the empty armchair no one made a move. We sat in the flickering light of a dream made in 1962, breathless and silent as awe can engender, and lost ourselves in story one more time. Only Digger moved. He tapped my knee with a knuckle and handed me the mickey in the darkness. I drank and handed it back to him, our eyes shining in the refracted light of the television like the eyes of miners in the depths, solidarity plumbed from the cracks, fissures, and tunnels of our world.

“S
O THIS GUY
will be our money manager?” I asked while we were busy eating the pizza Granite ordered once the movie ended.

“Yes,” Granite said. “He’ll have you sign papers allowing him to take care of your portions of the money. Then, whenever you need to make a purchase or just need some money for anything, he’ll get it for you. It works out well because he can arrange all the accounting, taxation, and investing business you want to do or need to do. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“And this guy’s a straight shooter, Rock?” Digger asked.

“As straight as they come, Digger. He handles my business. Has for years. I trust him entirely.”

Granite leaned forward in his chair. For the next while he told us about the radio, television, and newspaper people that would be at the lottery office in the morning. He told us about how they’d want to know all kinds of things about us and what we were going to do with the money. He said that they had a right to ask those questions because it was a public lottery. He said that because of where we came from there was going to be a lot more interest in us tomorrow and for a lot of days after. He said there was no way we could avoid it.

“But you know, James can handle as many of the questions as you like. Any time you don’t want to answer, just look at him and he can take it,” Granite said.

“Take ’em all,” Digger said. “I ain’t talking to no one about nothing.”

“I’m not comfortable with answering questions either,” I said.

“I don’t think I wanna neither,” Dick said.

“Well, let’s just wait and not worry about it,” Amelia said. “We’ve got Granite and his lawyer to look after us now. I say we just enjoy each other’s company. Shall we watch another movie?”

“Can we, Granite?” Dick asked.

“If you like. Or we still didn’t get to see
Field of Dreams
.”

“That’s right,” I said. “All of this got in our way.”

“By the time we get there it’s gonna be packed. Night movies, ya know?” Digger said. “I kinda hate night movies. Way too many people and the way Rock here tells it there’s gonna be way too many people around us tomorrow.”

“That’s right, too,” I said. “It works good here, though. There’s just the five of us. Are you sure it’s okay, Granite?”

“It’s okay,” he said.

“Can I pick, then?” Dick asked.

“No,” Digger said. “Not this time, pal. I think we should let Amelia choose this one. She’s the one got us watching movies in the first place. We wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t come up with that plan.”

“Why, Digger,” she said, “that’s the first time I ever heard you call me by my real name.”

Digger scratched at his collar. “Yeah, well, been the fucking day for surprises. You wanna know what my name is?”

I was shocked and I knew Amelia and Dick were, too. One of the things that a rounder respects about other rounders is the wish to keep the other life away. We all have other lives. We all have lives we lived before we became what we became and it’s no one’s business to know unless we want to tell them. I never wanted to tell, and I knew that Digger was far more hard-core than me about it. Being called by your real name brings up things
you don’t necessarily want to remember. Things that make it harder to be what you became. But I still wanted to know what his real name was.

“What is it?” Granite asked.

Digger scratched at his collar again. Then he took a swallow from the mickey. There wasn’t much there and he finished it. When he put the empty on the floor in front of him, Granite picked it up, crossed over to the bar, and came back with a half-bottle of vodka. Digger nodded at him and took a healthy gulp before he spoke again.

“Mark,” he said. “Go fucking figure. Mark. Me. Fucking Mark. You know what a mark is, Rock?”

“Sort of,” Granite said. “But likely not in the way you know.”

“A mark is a stooge, a lackey, a loogan, a fall guy, a boob. In the carnival, whenever someone would drop a bunch of cash at a game joint, the tout would slap him on the back before he walked away. There’d be chalk on his hand. So the boob’s walking down the midway with a big mark on his back letting the rest of the hucksters know he’s a soft touch. A stooge, a boob. And they fucking called me Mark.”

“You’re no mark, Digger,” Granite said.

“Always going to be Digger to me,” I said. “But why’re you telling us now?”

“Cause there’s a shitstorm coming when we cash this ticket. A shitstorm that’ll change everything. You know it. I know it. Every one knows it. So I guess I just wanted you to know about me before it all goes to hell. That and the fucking movie we just seen. Between the two of them they got me to talking or wanting to talk, I guess,” Digger said, leaning back in his seat.

“You don’t gotta,” Dick said.

“I know, pal,” Digger said. “But you’re the only friends I had for a long friggin’ time, and before this cash fucks it all up I want you to know who your friend has been all this time. So before Amelia here picks the next flick, I wanna tell ya.”

“Tell us what?” I asked.

“Tell you about Mark Haskett,” Digger said. “The other life.
The other life I lived before I was Digger. I wanna tell you that. So you know.”

All the time we’d been together on the street he’d never offered word one about the other life, and he was way too mean and hard to risk asking. Even Granite was impressed by this sudden willingness to open up the vault and let that other life see the light of day after who knows how many years. None of us knew what to do so we just sat back in our seats and let Digger tell his tale.

M
OUNTAIN
R
IVERA
was just like me. I only ever knew how to do one thing. I only ever knew how to do one thing better’n anyone else ever done it. I did it for a long time, too. A long time. But that time has been gone for just as many years now, and thinkin’ about it makes me sad to realize how long I been without the one thing I loved more’n anything else in this world.

Didn’t start out that way. In fact it didn’t start out looking like very much was in store for me at all. My folks weren’t what you call the industrious sort. We lived on a scrabble-assed patch of farmland we got from this farmer who let us stay there out of pity more’n anything. It wasn’t good for nothing. So him letting us squat there meant that he could at least see some use of that low-lying, marshy, mosquito-filled half a fucking bog that it was. Guess the other reason was that my mother was Metis. Or at least her grandparents were. They come out of that Manitoba rebellion when the half-breeds tried to set up their own kind of government, then got their asses handed to them by the military. My mother’s mother got tired of the half-breed label and married white. My mother carried that on when she married Clint Haskett, a white guy workin’ on the railroad. So somewhere in me is a thinned-out fraction of rebel blood. Don’t make me Metis, don’t make me half-breed, don’t make me Indian. It don’t make me nothing but the only son of a lazy son of a bitch who’d sooner pocket the fucking nine ball than pocket a paycheque. That’s how I started out.

Didn’t help that my mother was a chickenshit. She just let him run all over and never said word one. Oh, she was okay with me if you buy the absence making the heart grow fonder gaff. Guess after she’d gone through all her schemes at getting him to stay home or go to fucking work, she figured her duty was to go party with him. That left me with the farmer. He was okay. Right off, he kinda knew the score and put me to work on the farm in exchange for food and the cast-off clothes his own kids grew outta. I liked it. Least I was eating and staying busy after school was out. I don’t even think my parents knew. I think they were thinking they were doing pretty good. The kid was in school. The kid was wearing clean clothes. The kid looked like he was eating. So they musta been doing a good job. Never occurred to them to think about how the fuck all that was getting accomplished. They kept on slogging through on the welfare cheque and dear old dad’s pool-hall winnings. Turns out he was good at something after all.

Couple things happened when I was fourteen. First, school got to be just too friggin’ much of a bother. I was strong and tough from the farm work and the farmer was starting to hand me wages for the work I done. I dug that, man. Loot. My first loot and I kept it to myself. So working got to be more of a draw than school and I eventually just drifted out. Lots of farm kids wound up doing that and the truant officers didn’t really give a flying fuck after a while so there was no hassle over me leaving. Wasn’t anyone for them to complain to anyhow, so what the hell.

Second thing that happened was I discovered the barn roof.

After a long day of working I wanted somewhere that I could be alone and kinda gather my thoughts. Didn’t want to walk the fields, I was always too tired for that. But one night I climbed up to the top of the haymow and out the gable window onto the roof. It was amazing. I could see everywhere. It was a clear summer night that first time. Clear like how it gets when the air makes everything brighter and closer like looking through a friggin’ telescope or something. I sat there and had a smoke, looking at the land. I could see the town where Ma and Pa were hustling
pool and drinking. I could see the other farms where we went to lend a hand at harvest time. I could see horizon in all directions. Kinda like being on the fucking ocean, I guess. Nothing but sky ’n horizon all around you.

Anyway, I kept on going up there every night. Even when it rained. I kept telling myself stories about what was over the horizon in each direction and how someday when I saved enough money I’d go there. That’s what I wanted. To be away. Gone. But as long as I had the barn roof I was okay. I could handle shit. As long as I could go out there and sit and watch the world, I could deal with it. So I sat on the roof and planned the great escape while I worked and saved and tried to choose a direction to set off for when the time was right.

Turns out that the time was right when I was fifteen. The carnival came to town and I went over with a bunch of other guys to watch them pull in and set up. I liked it. The carnies seemed like good guys, all cussing, joking, and hard-working. That night we were all standing there when this guy comes walking over. Big guy. Tall. Wide. Ugly motherfucker. He’s smoking a big stogie and he comes over and stands right in front of us, staring, sizing us up.