Ragged Company (43 page)

He nodded and rolled a small spring between his thumb and two fingers. When he placed it on the table, he kept his hand there a moment unmoving, then looked up at me again. “Okay,” he said. “Guess there’s some things that need saying.”

“Guess,” I said.

We walked over to where Amelia was nipping dead leaves and buds from her plants. She heard us coming, and when she looked at us there was a strange little smile on her face. She reached down and put the handful of pickings in a small pile in the dirt, patted it softly, held her hand there a second, and stood to look at us. “It’s good to see you side by side again,” she said. “It’s the normal thing. The best thing.”

Digger and I exchanged a look. It did feel good. “Yes.” I said. “The others are here. They want us in the kitchen.”

“Yes,” she said. “Can I show you something first?”

“Sure.”

She motioned for us to kneel beside her and pointed to a plant growing at her feet. It wasn’t much. It was a raggedy little thing, really, and I wondered why she had it in the garden that she took such pride in and cared for so diligently. Her fingers caressed the underside of its pale green leaves and she smiled as she touched it.

“See this little thing?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Digger said, wincing at the unfamiliar crunch of kneeling in the garden. “It’s a plant. In a garden.”

“Yes, but it’s very special,” she said.

“How come?” he asked, and I could feel the distance the argument had built between us melt away. “Don’t look like much to me.”

“No. I suppose it doesn’t. Not compared to the tomato plants and the potatoes and the corn. They’re so regal. So full of purpose. This little guy is just a plant. I don’t think he does anything special.”

“So why have it here?” I asked.

“Because he needed a place to grow.”

“Huh?” Digger grunted.

“I found him laying in the grass over by the fence. I suspect he was a clipping from the neighbours trimming their hedges. He was just laying there, all helpless and lost, and I took him to my room, put him in a glass of water, set him in the sunshine of the windowsill, and watched over him.”

“And?” Digger asked.

“And he grew roots. He wanted to live. When he was strong enough, I brought him out here and planted him with the rest of the growing things. Now, he’s starting to reach upward again.”

“So?” Digger asked.

She looked at both of us and smiled. “Oh, nothing,” she said. “I just wanted you to see it, that’s all.”

Amelia looked at me then and I felt seen, recognized, known, and understood. Digger watched us, and as our gaze shifted to him he met it, pressed his lips together and nodded.

“Let’s go,” she said.

We walked to the back door silently but together. It felt right except for the notable absence. When we walked through the door into the kitchen, the other three were sitting silently at the table. Something in the air told me to sit, and I pulled out a chair for Amelia while Digger went to lean on the counter. I sat down across from Granite, who looked at his hands folded in front of him.

James cleared his throat. We all looked at him. He swallowed and rubbed his jaw with one hand. Then he exhaled long and slow.

“Don’t friggin’ say it,” Digger said. “Don’t you friggin’ say it, you son of a bitch. Don’t you friggin’ say it!”

His face was contorted, red with anger, and his eyes blazed. At his sides, his hands clenched and unclenched and he swept his gaze around the ceiling of the room for some place to fix it on.

“Digger,” Amelia said quietly. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

He looked at her and his face shook like his chin would tumble to the floor at any second. He swallowed hard and then looked at James. They met each other’s gaze before James dropped his to the table.

“Son of a fucking bitch!” Digger yelled, and slammed a hand down on the counter. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”

Margo cried quietly, tears rolling down her face like rain on a window. Granite looked at Digger, who had turned and was bending over the counter clenching his fists hard against its surface and groaning. His face was loose with grief and his hands shook on the table. Amelia sat silently, calmly. I just sat there
numb, not shocked, not surprised, not caught totally off guard, just frozen in place, in time.

“They found him at the Hilton,” James said quietly. “There were some pills and a bottle of vodka beside him.”

Digger turned to look at him. “If you try to tell me that he offed himself, I will walk right over and smack you in the fucking head, you fucking shyster bastard.”

“No. He didn’t,” James said. “The police say it was an accidental overdose. He was reading and he fell asleep.”

“Dick couldn’t fucking read, dipshit,” Digger said. “Or didn’t you ever pay enough attention to know that?”

“Well, he was looking at a map. An atlas.”

“An atlas?” Amelia asked.

“Yes. There was a town circled on it. Tucumcary. Tucumcary, New Mexico. Does that mean anything to anyone?”

We all shook our heads.

“Maybe he heard it in a movie,” I said. “It has a kind of ring to it that Dick would like. He liked the sound of words.”

Margo smiled at me.

“Where’d he get the pills?” Digger asked.

“There’s no way to know,” James said. “Probably from a street dealer. A friend, maybe.”

“We’re his friends,” Digger said. “We wouldn’t give him no pills.”

“Other friends, then,” James said. “Ones he met while he was gone.”

Digger glared. Looking at him, I knew that I would not want to be the person guilty of handing Dick a bottle of pills. “I’m going over there,” he said.

“Digger, I don’t know if …,” James began.

“You don’t have to know nothing. Nothing. All you have to know is that I’m going over there. He’s my pal. I want to see him.”

“They moved him, Digger. He’s at the morgue.”

“There’s nothing in his room? No stuff? No nothing?”

“Well, according to the police there are some personal effects but nothing big. Clothes, I suppose. Toiletries.”

“I wanna see him.”

“Well, someone needs to make a positive identification but I thought I would do that,” James said.

“You? Why you?” Digger asked.

“To spare you all the hardship.”

“Spare me nothing. I’m his fucking family. His fucking family.”

“Okay,” James said. “Okay.”

“I’m going too,” Amelia said.

“Me too,” I said.

Digger looked at us and nodded. “Fucking rights,” he said. “Family.”

I
NEVER FELT NOTHING
like that ever. I stood there looking down at the face of my winger and it was like he shoulda moved, shoulda winked at me, shoulda let me know it was all a big fucking gaffe. But he never did. He just lay there all cold and quiet. He just lay there like a little kid, sleeping. It tore the heart right the fuck out of me to see that. The others didn’t stay long. The old lady touched his cheek with her fingertips and said his name all quiet and sad, Timber reached out to touch his hand, and me, I just stood there. Just stood there. Looking. Thinking. When they left, I kept right on standing there looking at Double Dick Dumont. My winger. My pal. My brother.

“Digger,” Rock goes, peeping into the room. “Are you coming? We’re finished here.”

“Well, fuck off then,” I go. “I ain’t done here.”

“We’ll wait.”

“Whatever.”

He closed the door. It was chilly in there and I pulled my coat closer around me, then reached down and tucked the sheet snug around D. It didn’t seem like enough so I walked over and got a few more from a pile on a table and covered him up good. Nestled him in on accounta he never did like being cold, hated it, really, but put
up with it without bitching like any good rounder would. Slept in a fucking doorway when I met him. A doorway. No warm air grate, no empty warehouse yet. Just a doorway. A hard-core rounder getting by. I pulled a metal stool over to the side of the gurney he was on, put my feet up on the rungs of it, and looked at him.

“Amazing fucking thing, ain’t it, D? We spend all that time learning how to move around with people and we still end up all alone in a cold fucking room. Hardly seems worth the fucking trip, you know what I mean? No. No. You wouldn’t know that. You was always the one that wanted people around you. You was always the one that talked me into letting anybody near me. Why’d you do that, D? How come you did that? How come? I was doing good. I was getting by. I didn’t need nobody. Fuck, I even told you to take a hike at first, you fucking loogan. No. I don’t mean that. I never meant that. Not never, D. I never thought you was a loogan. You were just a little short on the upstroke but you were always stroking. Always. Fuck, I admired that. I flat out admired that you never gave up even when the stuff was too fucking deep even for a whiz-bang guy like me. You never gave up. I looked up to you for that. Did you know that? I looked up to you. I never told you, though. Never told you on accounta it was soft, the warm and fuzzy kinda shit that drove me crazy. I never told you until now, and now it’s kinda late. Guess I’m the loogan now, eh? Keep that to yourself, though, D. I still got a reputation down here.

“What the fuck am I gonna do, D? I ain’t got no one to watch over no more. I ain’t go no little brother, and you was always my little brother. Always. Them others, they don’t need me. Not now. It ain’t no tough life we’re living. Not like then. Not like when we hooked up. Remember that, D? Remember? Remember how we’d be shivering like a dog shitting razor blades, all huddled up in the alley by the Mission, and we’d suck back a few swallows of hooch and carry the fuck on? Or around old Fill ’er Up Phil’s oil drum fire with the hot dogs on the stick that one of the boosters grabbed from the market? Steak on a fucking stick. Right, D? Steak on a fucking stick. Or remember the rain trick? You liked that one. Remember? How the rain’d run over a lip on the gazebo
in Berry Park and we’d all get a free shower? Fuck, that was funny. You thought we meant like a real shower and they caught you all naked with a bar of soap in the rain. Jesus, I laughed. That was a good one. You even laughed like hell whenever we reminded you. I liked that about you, D. You could always take a joke, a trick. Who the fuck am I gonna joke with now, D? Who?

“It don’t matter. I remember how to operate alone. I guess I could go back to that. Yeah. I guess I could go back to that. But you know what, D? You know what I fucking wish? You know what I wish more than anything? I wish our life hadn’t fucking changed. I wish we’da never won that fucking money on accounta I’d still have to look out for you and you’d still be here. You’d still be here, ’cause I looked after you good, D. Best I could. No one ever got on your case with me around. Never. I don’t know what you had inside you that made you kinda crazy but I’da looked after you through it. I woulda. But the fucking money changed everything and it took my attention away. I wish we’da never won.

“But you know what else? You know what else, D? I wish I could fucking fly. I wish I could fucking fly, and I know that sounds crazy coming from me, but if I could fly I’d take off right now and fly to wherever you are and be your winger again.

“Guess I can’t, though. Guess you’ll just have to wait while I finish up here, however long that takes. Stubborn son of a bitch like me’ll probably live to be a hundred and fucking fifty just out of pure cussedness. But you’ll wait, won’t ya, D? I know you’ll wait. Can I tell you something, D? I’m pissed at them. Not all of them. Just the Square Johns. Just the ones who never really tried to see us. The ones who figured we lived somewhere else. The ones who thought we were trespassers, that we weren’t supposed to be here. I was never big on the Square Johns anyway, was I? But I’m pissed ’cause I think they coulda done more for you. Shoulda done more on accounta it’s their friggin’ world and they’re supposed to take care of the ones that ain’t got the tools. They’re supposed to look out for the weak ones, the ones who need a hand making it around the world. Like me. Like I did looking after you. I’m pissed and I don’t know if I’ll get over it. Is that okay, D? Is that okay?

“I guess I gotta go. See you, buddy. You let me know if you need anything. Anything and it’s yours. It’s yours, pal.”

That’s what I said to him as close as I can remember. Then I reached down and kissed him. Kissed him and said goodbye.

D
IGGER WALKED OUT
of the room where Dick lay and right past all of us. He didn’t wait for us. Instead, he walked down the street and I watched him hail a cab, get into it, and disappear. There are distances you can feel. They say that the middle of the ocean and any spot in space are similar. They say that the view is the same in all directions. Isotropic. Everywhere you look is water, horizon, and sky or else stars, planets, and space. I knew then, as I watched the tail lights of the taxi ease around the corner, that the world becomes an isotropic place when pain and sorrow and hurt define the topography of things. It’s all you can see. Everywhere you look. I didn’t know what power was needed to alter that. My experiences in life had never granted me that education, but I did know that people are like stars or continents sometimes: distant, removed, unreachable, the holes between them as deep as space or seas sometimes, and cold as emptiness can be.

“Where do you think he’s gone?” Timber asked me.

“I don’t know.”

“Will he be all right?”

“Digger? Yes. That’s one guy I wouldn’t worry about.”

We climbed into the car. There didn’t seem to be anything to say, so we drove in silence, James guiding the car slowly and easily down the street. Everyone seemed to want to watch the street flow by. I know I did. The city felt emptier somehow, and I kept looking at the people on the street, wondering about their stories, where they came from, how they managed a day, a life, a history, how they felt walking along sidewalks filled with strangers and untold tales. Continental drift. It’s a phenomenon
that happens unsuspectingly, minute fractions at a time, the polar opposite of the Hubble constant, the rate of expansion of the universe. People drift apart like that. Minutely, fractionally, or else accelerated to light speed and beyond. But the universe was compacted matter once, and the earth was Pangaea; one continent, one world. Separation was the nature of things, it seemed. But it was the coming together of things that amazed me right then. Watching all of those people moving, orbiting each other, I marvelled at the randomness of colliding worlds. When Double Dick Dumont came into my life, it was outrageous fortune. Improbable. Unbelievable. But the more we edged closer, the more magical it became. Every movie we saw together was a joining. Every wandering conversation was a tie. Every joke, every story, every sight was another entrance we made together into a land that had never existed before, a land you learn to travel without maps, conversation your only compass to shores edging closer and closer, seamlessly, becoming Pangaea. I knew about it then. Understood. Knew for dead, absolute certain that some people are a country you come to inhabit gradually, their shores and yours touching, merging, unifying, and their departures dislodge you.