Ragged Company (3 page)

Hospital was best, they said. I was there a month drying out and learning to eat again. From there I went to a women’s program where I could have stayed as long as I wanted, but there was no one there I could really talk to. They were either really young and cocky or older and playing at being sophisticated. Those ones called their drinks “highballs,” “cocktails,” or other long names a galaxy away from the “rubby,” “crock,” or “juice” that I knew. And the walls drove me crazy. I felt penned up, frozen to the spot, and even though I knew they would have tried to help me, the street was in my bones and I went back to the only world I knew and understood. They were waiting for me—the shadowed ones. I’d have been about four months’ sober by then, so I knew that it wasn’t the booze or DT’s making me see them. No, death has a presence—thick and black and cold—and when you live so close
to it for so long you get so you can see it. Feel it. Accept it and not be afraid. Everyone has a mourning ground, a place where the course of a life turned, changed, altered, or disappeared forever. It could be a house, a park, or just a place on the pavement where the wrong words were said, the worst choice made, or fateful action taken. Our spirits are linked to these places forever and when our sorrow’s deep enough we return to them again and again to stand in our pain, reliving the memory, mumbling clumsy prayers that we might be offered a chance to change what happened, bend time so we could choose again. But it never happens. The shadowed ones just keep on doing that after death, returning to those places where their wounds are buried, hoping against hope that something in the walls or ground might emerge to save them. Mourning grounds. We all have them and it’s only in learning how to live with our hurts while we’re here that we’re set free of them. When I came to understand that at age forty-four, I knew where I had to be. Where I needed to be. For them, the shadowed ones on the street that no one ever sees, the living dead. The homeless.

So I went back and lived as one of them. But I never drank again. Instead, I’d make runs for them when they were sick, nurse them when they needed it, or just be around—a voice, an ear, a shoulder—and by doing that I eased my own pain. When a fresh bottle arrived I always asked to open it. See, there’s an old rounder ritual you hardly see anymore. When a bottle’s opened you pour a small bit on the ground and say “there’s one for the dead.” That’s what I would always do and that’s where I got my name. One For The Dead One Sky. I’ve been here for twenty years and Amelia, little Amelia, resides in a place of memory, standing at all her places of mourning, shedding tears that salve her bruises, offering prayers that set her free. And the river is just a river after all, neither tepid nor cold, with a long log on the other side where the sun shines down like a spotlight from heaven, enveloping my family, my Ben, keeping them warm for me.

D
YING COLD SUCKS
. Trust me. I know. I’ve come close enough to know. Stumbled out of more than a few alleys in my time shivering and shaking like a fucking booze seizure with the cold so deep in the bones your heart feels like it’s pumping ice. It takes a shitload more than a few slops of sherry to get the feeling back. Most times you spend the whole fucking day trying to shake it off: coffee at the Mission, hanging out in the doorways of malls until the rental bulls chase you off, knocking back some hard stuff. It’s a tough business.

So when they told me that they found three of us dead on the first night of the cold snap I almost felt sorry. Almost. See, there’s only two ways you die on the street. One is by being stupid. The other’s called unlucky. Ducky Dent was stupid. He was a binge drinker. One of those guys who’d pull it together long enough to score a job, grab a flop, and run the straight and narrow for a time. Then, boom. Goes off like a fucking cannon, loses it all, hits the bricks again, sucking back everything from Jim Beam at the high end to shaving lotion and Listerine at the bottom end. There’s a lot like Ducky Dent. But they never last. The street’s got an edge to it that’ll slice you like a fucking razor if you’re not tough enough. Besides, we all knew the cold was coming. The cops and the street patrols and the rest of the Square John do-gooders told us all about this arctic front—a killer cold, they said—and made all the usual moves to get us to move inside at night. Most did. But hard-core guys like me know how to cope. Ducky wasn’t hard-core. He wasn’t even what you’d call a rounder. Just a stupid fuck who couldn’t drink. He scored two bottles of sherry and a blanket, camped out in the doorway of some hair joint, and died. When they found him there was only one empty bottle beside him and the full one was curled against his chest. Passed out and froze. Sad? Sort of. Stupid? Big time.

Big Wolf McKay was unlucky. She’d been street for years and knew the ropes. Called her Big Wolf because she’d be in DT’s and running around babbling that there was a big wolf tracking her
down. She’d been drinking with one of her pals on the east side and was trying to make it back to the shelter for the night. Thin summer coat, too much booze, and real fucking cold was too much. She sat down to rest in a bus shelter, nodded off, and froze stiff as a board. A bus driver shook her shoulder to wake her up and she fell right over. We’ll miss her. She was one of the solid ones, always willing to share, always ready to do a run when you were sick, and never ever went south with your money. Unlucky.

It was the same with East Coast Willy. His dream was always to go home to the sea. He said that for years and for a while he’d even lived in a packing crate labelled
Newfoundland.
Willy was a rounder. Been around since anyone can remember but never got his dream. See, the street’s got claws, big, tough fucking claws that grip you once you been on it long enough, and shit like dreams stay dreams, coming and going like handfuls of change. Willy knew how to cope. He took his wraps and laid up on a warm air grate in an alley. But he lay down the wrong way. A delivery truck backed up that alley first thing in the morning and ran right over his head. Squashed his fucking melon flat. Turned the other way, he’d have been crippled at most but now he was dead. They say his body was warm when the cops and ambulance got there, so I knew he’d have made it through the cold except for being unlucky.

Three in one night. The Square Johns all tish-tosh over the stories in the news, say how sad and pitiful it is, how something should be done—but five minutes later they forget. Because they don’t really give a fuck, and they don’t have to. Shit, to tell the truth, a lot of us out here couldn’t give a fuck either. Because we don’t have to. Out here you got yourself and that’s that. You stretch out and start to give a part of yourself away to others and you set yourself up. Set yourself up to be used, drained, tossed away. Me, I keep to myself. That’s why I say I almost felt sorry about the three dead ones. I’ll never be one of those street people all weepy and crying over shit. You live on concrete long enough, you pick up the nature of it: cold, hard, and predictable. It’s called survival and every rounder knows it. Me, I’m a rounder. I’m concrete. Poured, formed, and set.

Being a rounder’s just what it sounds like. You go around and around the same old vicious fucking circle until you’ve seen and done and survived everything. At first, it’s just life screwing with you. Nobody comes here by choice. Life just fucks with you and you land here and once you do you find out real fast whether you have the stones to deal with it or not. Most don’t. Because it’s a hard go. I mean, you take anybody, plunk them down on the bricks with a handful of nothing but the clothes on their back and say “go.” The majority’ll run back to wherever it is they came from lickety-fucking-split. The stubborn ones, the ones with rebel bones, will try to hack it but it takes a shitload more than a handful of attitude to learn to live out here. So the rebels and the weepers disappear real quick. But a rounder, well, a rounder is a special fucking breed. See, the street wears people, breaks them down, but a rounder wears the street.

I choose to live how I live and I don’t need any Square John pity or do-gooder helping hands. Even in a bitter fucking cold like that I need nothing but my balls and my brains to see me through. That’s what makes me a rounder—balls and brains in equal measure. Any other balance, one way or the other, and you’re dead. Stone cold, stiff as a frozen fucking board dead. Just like them three.

I know what it takes to stay alive out here. Me, I’m a digger, and that’s what they call me. Digger. Dig for cans, bottles, metal, anything I can turn for cash. There’s a route I walked for years and I do it every day. Even in that cold. Takes me four hours and by ten in the morning I’ve always got enough cash for the day. Always got enough for me and the three out of all of them that I allow myself to be with. They pitch in, sure, and it’s pitiful even by our standards, but at least they always make the fucking reach and that’s what counts. They’re all rounders, too. That’s the other thing. No one but a rounder gets squat from me, and those three have proven themselves over time and that’s the fucking acid test. Time.

There’s no leader. Doesn’t need to be. A good fucking idea is a good fucking idea no matter who comes up with it. Now, granted
I ain’t what you’d call the best at follow-the-fuckin’-leader but I know that out here, one decision, one choice, one move is all it takes to change things for a fucking hour or a fucking day and this one, well, this one fucking changed everything. I remember. We hook up at the soup kitchen around noon like we always do and I can tell right off that I’m not the only one feeling the bite of this bastard. The three of them in their handout coats still bundled up while sittin’ at the table, wrapped around their coffee cups like they were pot-bellied stoves. The old lady just winks at me. Her face is all red and raw from wind.

“In-fucking-credible,” I go, plopping down beside her. “So damn cold out guys are smoking just so they can get their face close to the lit end.”

No one says word one, so I can tell they’re worried.

“What’re we gonna do?” Double Dick goes.

You gotta get a load of this guy. Double Dick Dumont. Gotta be one of the most all-time fucked-up street names I ever heard. Not because he has this huge dick or anything. No. It couldn’t be that simple. You see, Dick’s parents argued over his name when he was born. They both liked the name Richard. But it turns out his father, who was French, wanted his kid called in the French fashion. You know:
Ree-shard.
His mother, who was not French, wanted him called in the English way. So they fought tooth and nail. Not so much about the name itself but over how it sounded. There’d be a bottle over the head for
Richard
followed by a slap in the yap for
Ree-shard.
Well, I guess the neighbours were less than impressed and an old woman was called in to settle the issue. Her call, and this was one for the fucking ages, was to have him baptized Richard Richard Dumont. That way everyone could walk away happy. Well, everyone but Richard Richard, who, when he got to the street, was hung with the handle Double Dick. Unfortunately, so the word goes, that’s about all he was hung with.

So, anyway, no one answers his question right away. Instead, we settle for looking into our coffee cups like we’re expecting the solution to bob to the fucking surface and stun us with its brilliance. Turns out, it did.

“Well, you know,” the old lady goes, looking at us in turn, “there’s a place we could go where we could stay warm, sleep if we like, have a drink, and no one would bother us.”

“Indoors?” Timber, the other one, goes. They call him Timber because you never knew when the fucking curtain’s coming down on this guy. He’d drink all day and carry on like normal, give no sign of even being drunk, then stand up, take a few steps, and pass right the fuck out. Never a warning. The regulars in the old-man bar he hung out in would call out to each other every time he stood up: “Timber!” And everyone would grab their glasses and their jugs so they wouldn’t lose them when he knocked their table over on his way down. He was a street drinker by now but the name followed along.

“Yes. Indoors,” she goes.

“What is this place?” Dick goes, all worried-looking like he gets.

“The movies,” she goes.

“The movies? They’re not going to let us into the movies,” Timber goes.

“No shit,” I go. “Square Johns are pretty protective about their Square John hangouts and I doubt they’d let a herd of rounders into the flicks. At least not without a hassle.”

“There’s really no telling how long this cold is going to last, and while it does we need someplace to go where we’ll be out of it,” she goes. “We can’t go to a mall. We can’t stay here all day, and knowing how all of you need to be private, away from people, I figure there’s no better place than the movies.”

“Why’s that?” Dick goes.

“Well, at the movies you get to sit in the dark. No one can see you. It’s private that way. It’s warm there and if we behave ourselves and don’t get too carried away, a drink or two in a warm place like that would feel pretty good, I figure.” She looks around at us and somehow I feel myself nodding in agreement. I can tell Timber’s considering it too and Dick, well, Dick just eyeballs all of us waiting for someone to tell him what to do.

“Plus, you could nap there if you wanted. Or we might find that we really like watching the movie. They’re not that expensive
and we can all gather up enough to get ourselves in, probably enough in the mornings for two afternoon movies and a jug.”

“For as long as the cold spell lasts?” I go.

“Yes.”

“I haven’t been to the movies in years,” Timber goes. “I can’t remember what the last one I saw was.”

“Me neither,” Dick goes.

“Well, you know, I figure if we keep our eyes peeled, we can slop back a little sauce while we’re there. Hell, if we ain’t loaded they can’t kick us out if we’re payin’ and the idea of a warm, dark place to lay up for a few hours sounds damn good to me. Dark, I can’t see them and they can’t see me, I gotta like the sound of that,” I go.

“Then it’s a plan?” she goes.