Ragged Company (30 page)

James sat making notes at the window, too used to jets and travel to be impressed. Margo held my hand in hers and leaned her head on my shoulder. She was a surprise. As we rose higher and higher and began a long, slow, angled pass over the city to engage our westward flight path, I marvelled at this wonderful occurrence. Love? I didn’t know. I only knew that touch and closeness felt freeing. I only knew that our togetherness had begun at the lottery office with an easy, offhand banter, and progressed casually through shared concern for our friends, joy at their newfound home, to this arena of gentleness we found ourselves in now. Our moves measured, graceful, calm like wings beating currents of air, moving us further from the shore of yearning where we’d stood flightless, alone, hungry for the sky.
Flap, flap, flap.
The sun at an appropriate distance.

I
T WAS A SHINING CITY
by the sea. The plane arced out over the ocean and banked back toward land with the sun behind us like it was gently pushing us downward, and beneath us I could see the city shining in the light of sunset. Everything shone in various shades of orange against an approaching purple sky. Those are spirit colours. Orange the colour of old teachings and purple the colour of spirituality, the spirit way, the ancient path, the path of the soul. He was down there. And if he didn’t know that those spirit colours shone on him too right then, he would. They were a sign of a great teaching, a great coming together of the energy of Creation, and it didn’t scare me so much as it comforted me; a simple knowing that this journey had been the right one. We landed and made our way to the hotel that wasn’t all that different from the Sutton where we’d stayed that first night off the street. The boys were anxious, antsy for their friend, worried about his aloneness on streets he no longer knew. The others were quietly firm, making considered moves and gathering themselves for a focused search. Me, I wanted a good meal, tea, and a movie—a story to ease me into the night and prepare me for a fresh start in the morning.

We met in James’s room to plan our night.

“According to my sources at the newspaper who’ve been able to track down information on Sylvan Parrish-Hohnstein, she’s still alive. Or at least, there’s no record of her death in this city,” James said. “People can live with the brain damage Timber said she suffered. There is no record of her at any of the extended care facilities or at the hospitals, so she is out of care if she’s alive or in the city.”

“Where does that leave us?” Granite asked.

“In the same place as Timber. We don’t know where she is. We only know the name of the hospital where she was taken after the accident and the name of the extended care hospital she was moved to.”

“So whatta we do, then?” Digger asked.

“We go to the extended care hospital and wait,” James said. “That’s where Timber will go.”

“When?” Dick asked.

“First thing in the morning,” James said. “The sooner the better, I’d imagine. We don’t know when Timber might make it there and we don’t want to miss him.”

“That’s right,” Digger said. “I’m ready to go now.”

“Well, they’ll be closed now. We’ll rest and get a very early start tomorrow.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“There’s just something we need to sort out first.”

“What’s that?” Margo asked.

“Well, it concerns Granite, actually,” James said.

“Me? What is it?” Granite asked.

“It’s about the story, Granite. My sources want the story. They saw the television coverage when he went missing and of course they know all about the lottery win and where he came from. So they want the story.”

“And that matters to me because why?”

“Because you already have it.”

“Have what?”

“The story.”

“The story? You want
me
to do the story? You know I’m retired?”

“Yes. But I also know that no one else could give this story the justice it deserves. If you let it go and turn it over to them, we have no idea how it’ll spin. At least with you writing it there’s some measure of integrity built into how it’s handled.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I’m not kidding. Former homeless person now a millionaire comes back to find the wife he deserted twenty years ago. Who’s not going to want to do that story?”

“But I’m retired.”

“You’re never retired, Granite. Not guys like you. Not born-in-the-blood storytellers. Not lifelong journalists. Stories just walk right up and beg you to be told, and when they do there’s nothing you can do but tell them.”

“I don’t feel much like a storyteller anymore.”

I moved over to him and took his hand. When he bent his head shyly, I played with his hair. They were like little boys. All of them. I felt grateful that I’d been given the chance to be with them, to watch them come together and begin teaching each other.

“We’re all storytellers, Granite,” I said. “From the moment we’re graced with the beginnings of language, we become storytellers. Kids, the first thing they do when they learn to talk is tell you all about what they’re doing, what they’re seeing. They tell you stories about their little lives. Us, too. When we get together after not seeing each other for a while, the first thing we do is tell each other a story about what we’ve been up to. What we’ve seen, what we did, what we felt and went through. Guess we kinda can’t help ourselves that way. It’s who we are.”

“It doesn’t feel too much like who I am anymore.”

“That’s because you haven’t told a story in a while. Not on paper, anyway. With us, you tell lots. Stories don’t have to have a formal education, you know. Sometimes they’re better when they’re simple, a little rough around the edges, kinda tumbling out into the daylight all owl-eyed and talking crazy.”

“I got tired of it. I wrote for a long time and it never seemed to change anything. Not in my life. Not in a lot of the lives I saw.”

“That’s because you made your stories for a reason other than what they were supposed to be made for.”

“Pardon?”

“The only reason to tell a story is for the story itself. My people taught that. You got paid money to write stories. Funny thing is, the story’s always gonna be what it is anyway, no matter how you try to deal with it. That’s how stories work. They’re tricksters. They tell you how they wanna be told.”

“No spin,” he said.

“That’s right. It’ll be better for us if you write this story because there won’t be any spin. It’ll just be the story for the story’s sake.”

“I might not have what it takes anymore.”

“You’ll find that out.”

“What if I don’t have it?”

“Then you don’t. But at least you’ll know. At least you’ll have tried. At least you won’t have just walked away.”

“Like Timber?”

“Yes. Maybe he’s teaching you that you don’t have to wait twenty years to reclaim yourself. You don’t have to make a long journey to continue your story.”

“Is that what he’s doing?”

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to see how the story turns out before we know,” I said, and squeezed his hand.

He looked at me for the longest time. Then he smiled, slow and sweet like a little boy. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

H
E DIDN’T EVEN SEEM SURPRISED
to see us standin’ there when he come out. We got to the hospital place early an’ we was all just gettin’ ready to move inside to wait for him to show up when he come walkin’ out the door. Just like that. Just like he didn’t go nowhere. Just like we never seen him for a week. Like it was only a few hours. He just kinda shook his head an’ walked over to us. He looked tired an’ kinda sad but he didn’t look bad, really.

“I’m sorry,” was all he said.

“We know,” One For The Dead told him.

“I shouldn’t have made you worry.”

“Price of admission, pal,” Digger said.

“Guess it wasn’t hard to figure, was it?”

“Well, yes. We thought you were somewhere on the street at home. We thought you were holed up somewhere. We looked everywhere. Dick figured it out,” One For The Dead said.

“E.T.,” I said.

“What’s that, bud?” he asked me.

“E.T.,” I said again. “He had to go home an’ leave his friends. That’s how come I knew where you was goin’ on accounta it was like E.T.”

“Movie?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Digger said. “Don’t get him friggin’ started.”

“You know about all this?”

We all nodded. He pointed to some picnic tables on a patio an’ we moved over to them. Digger handed out some smokes an’ we sat down. Timber pulled a mickey from his coat an’ passed it around after he had a drink. I was surprised on accounta Granite and even Mr. James had a swig too.

“She’s alive,” he said. “After all this time, she’s alive.”

“Do you know where?” Mr. James asked.

Timber nodded an’ had another drink.

“Here,” he said. “In the city.”

“What do you want to do, Jonas?” Miss Margo asked him.

“I don’t know. I guess a big part of me wanted her to be gone. I guess I wanted to be able to go to her gravesite and say what I had to say and be done with it. But this changes it all. She’s alive.”

“Can you use the same words?” I asked.

He looked at me an’ grinned all sad-looking. “I don’t know, bud. I don’t know. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say now.”

“But you want to see her?” Granite asked.

“I don’t know. I think so. I think I need to. I think I need to get some things said. I just don’t know what they are, really, now that she’s still here.”

“Love will tell you,” One For The Dead said.

“What’s that, Amelia?” he asked.

“Love. Love will tell you what you need to say. It always does in the end. I think maybe you need to go back, revisit that love in all the places it grew, and let it come back to you. Then you’ll know what to say.”

“Go back?”

“Yes. To where you met, to the places you went together, to where you lived. All these years you’ve been haunting those places in your mind anyways, looking for the words to make it all make sense, to make it all come out right for you. Now’s your chance to let those places go.”

“I’m not sure I can,” he said.

“Bull-fucking-shit,” Digger said. “You came all the way out here, all alone, leaving your wingers behind because you friggin’ wanted to. Because you friggin’ needed to. You made that trip and spent all that friggin’ time on the way out here thinking and thinking and thinking, hoping that maybe she could free you from it all. That you could stand somewhere and say all the words you been wanting to say all these years. But she can’t fucking do that, pal. She can’t cut you loose from this. You gotta. Nobody else. So if you gotta cab it around for three fucking days going back to all them places, then you gotta do it. There ain’t no fucking
can’t
here.
Won’t
, maybe. You won’t ’cause you’re scared. You won’t ’cause you don’t wanna feel fucking guilty all over again. You won’t ’cause you’ll remember how much you lost and it’ll feel like shit again. Well, we’re here now. I’m here now and if you need me to walk you through this motherfucker that’s what I’ll do. You owe me that. You owe me the ending to this friggin’ story because you really pissed me off, Timber. You really pissed me off.”

“I did?”

“Oh, yeah. I been pissed before, but this time you really did it.”

“I should have talked to you before I made a move. I’m sorry.”

“That’s not what pissed me off.”

“What then?”

“You’re a millionaire, for fuck sake. Take the jet, don’t ride the fucking bus. It’s faster and makes a better fucking story,” Digger said with a grin. “What a friggin’ loogan.”

He slapped Timber between the shoulders an’ they grinned at each other.

“Thanks,” Timber said.

“Fuck it,” Digger said. “Let’s get it done.”

“Let’s get it done,” Timber said. “Finally.”

We all walked together to the limousine.

I
T WAS A HOUSE
. That’s all it was. A house. It sat near the curve of a quiet little street in a neighbourhood of trees and lawn, set back thirty feet at the head of a curving cobblestone walk with three steps leading to its door. There were decorative bushes along the front that hadn’t been there in our time and a pair of old-fashioned-looking gas light standards at either end of the driveway. It remained pale green. The shadows of the pine and elm trees still played along its roof and eaves and there was a row of cedar shrubs along the edge of the property line. Quiet. Thoughtful, almost. Serene and placid as the face on a cameo, untroubled by the depth of loss that had occurred here, it sat sturdy and plump with years. A house. After all this time, just a house.

I sat in the limo and looked at it. Just looked and tried to remember to breathe.

“Thirty-two steps,” I said quietly.

“What’s that, pal?” Digger asked.

“Thirty-two steps. That’s how many it took to get from the sidewalk to the door. I counted them the first time I got back here after being out on my own one day. Thirty-two steps to home and to her. Funny what you recall.”

“I guess,” Digger said.

We sat there. It was a late morning like many I had seen on this street. Nothing moved. But there was a vibration everywhere. A quickening, the trembling pulse of lives—mysterious, enchanted, unseen—going on behind the walls of houses. I always imagined the fronts folding down like a doll’s house, revealing the lives there in all the busy rooms, the day-to-day motions of home displayed for all to see. She gave me that vision one night on a stroll just after we’d moved here. It never happened, of course, but the street was charmed forever by that imagining. I smiled at the recollection.

I opened the door without thinking. For the first time in twenty years I stood on the street where I had lived as a young man. The memories scampered along the lawns and sidewalks
and I felt a lump of compacted time forming in my throat. Air. The air still felt the same here, fresher somehow, cooler by a degree or two, and laden with the promise of the coastal rain to come. Who remembers air? Who, after all the time away, recalls how the air felt in the lungs and against the skin of the face, on the hands? I shook my head and looked at the house again. It was like the very first day when we’d stood near this spot, arms around each other, looking disbelievingly at the structure that would soon enfold us, wrap us in possibility and dreams. Our home.