Ragged Company

by Richard Wagamese

  The toughest was Digger. He’d been around as long as me so we knew each other by reputation. Digger was a fighter, strong and mean with drink. A rounder’s rounder, Digger stood by the code of the street through anything. Everyone was afraid of him and his unpredictable turns of anger. But in my dream I saw him building something upward into the sky. Something huge and metallic, something he handled with love, gently, with an assurance that spoke of a long familiarity. He was a dumpster diver, a digger for cans, bottles, and toss-offs, and he acted like it made him an aristocrat among the beggars and panhandlers. He bought a lot of company with the money his scavenging provided and he revelled in the control that the fear he created allowed him. When the three of us first approached him he chased us off with drunken rage, calling Dick an idiot, Timber a pussy, and me a nosy whore. The boys wanted to leave him alone but I knew the strength of dreams and was determined to pay attention to mine. He was tough. When we shared a bottle with him he’d guzzle his share and stomp off with a muttered “thanks” and that would be it. I bought him a new coat when winter came and he just looked at me hard for a moment or two.

  “What do ya want for it?” he growled at me.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Nothing?”

  “No. Not a thing.”

  He took it. “Nothin’s always something,” he said and walked away.

  It took us all that winter to get him to join us. By spring I knew that he’d been testing us, giving us every rounder ritual to prove we were worth his time. Just when we reached that point, we never knew. He was just suddenly there and never left. Surly, growly, raging, he became our protector, masking the concern he had for all of us behind the staunch front he held against the world. I knew, and I believe that he knew that I knew, but nothing was ever said between us. He appreciated that just as he appreciated the way we let him be the way he was. Timber and Dick grew used to his ways and a quiet, risk-free humour grew among them. We were four, as close to a definition of family as any of us had ever reached. The street prevents that mostly, but we were bonded by the power of dreams and the shadowed ones all about us. And it was the shadowed ones who bought us Granite. They surrounded him too that day in the movie house, and it was like they waved to me.

  Timber

  THAT BLOW SETTLED IN for a week. It was like it lay over top of the city and dug its fingers in all around it. Didn’t move. Lay there blowing its deep-freeze breath over everything, and I guess people learned how to cope. Least ways, most of them did. There were more deaths, more street people who made the wrong choice at the wrong time and paid the price for it, but mostly people coped. We never missed a day at the movies. Dick and me worked a corner for change every day and it seemed like those people knew we were as cold as them and it wasn’t hard to get a pocketful of dollars by the time we all got together at the Mission each day. When we didn’t have enough, Amelia always threw in from the bundle we had seen that first day.

  “So that’s a healthy little roll you carry around,” I said. “How did you manage to get hold of that? Been sneaking off to pull a few robberies, have ya?”

  She grinned. “No, these are my tips.”

  “Tips?”

  “Yes. Over the years I’ve been tipped for the runs I made for people. Nickel here, a dime there. It adds up.”

  “You mean to say you saved that money?”

  “Well, yes. I had nothing to spend it on and I knew there’d come a day when it was gonna come in handy.”

  “You never spent any of it?”

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “Every now and then there’d be an emergency. Someone’d need socks or shoes, someone’d be really sick and need a bottle. Those kinds of things. But mostly I just held on to it.”

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “All these years, all the winos you ever made a run for tipped you for the run and you just put it in your pocket for a rainy day?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s the big secret.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” she said, “I guess there was a part of me that knew that somewhere, sometime this money would come in more handy than it would have if I was going to spend it on something at the time. And there was nothing that I needed.”

  “Nothing that you needed? Look around you. There had to have been something?” I asked.

  “No,” she said slowly and looked at me kindly. “There wasn’t.”

  She was always a straight shooter, and hard as it might be for me to believe that any one of us with a mittful of loot wasn’t going to spend it on whatever, wherever, I gave her the benefit of my doubt. Still, it bugged the bejesus out of me.

  “Not even the smallest kinda thing?” I asked finally.

  She laughed then—a laugh like the tinkle of wind chimes. “Well, sometimes I’d think of something, a scarf maybe, some kind of thing that a girl would like and maybe I’d let myself think about how nice that might be. But I got over it.”

  “Got over it?”

  “Yes. See, Timber, money’s got nothing to do with my life one way or the other. I choose to be here. I choose to live the way I live. I don’t know how to be any other way than street. Tried it years ago but it just didn’t take. I guess it’s how it’s supposed to go for me and I don’t have an argument with it. This is my life—and money, well, money won’t make any difference. Ever.”

  “No room even, get off the bricks?”

  “No. Me ’n walls parted company a long time ago. You know how that is.”

  “Yeah. I know. But wouldn’t it have made things easier for you?”

  “Easier how?” she asked. “I don’t smoke. I don’t drink anymore. I don’t need to ride the buses because there’s no place for me to be at any particular time. And besides, it’s not enough. It’s a few dollars, that’s all.”

  “But it’s a roll!”

  She laughed again. “Yes, it’s a roll. But it’s a roll of ones. I think there’s a twenty or two in there somewhere, maybe three.”

  “Still.”

  “Still, what?”

  “Still … I don’t know.”

  So we settled into the movies. It was the feel of the place that got to me. Sure, the lights and the sound and the story were amazing after so long in a life where there ain’t no light and it’s just one long bleak tale, but the feel of it always made me wanna get back. Expectation. That’s the word I’m looking for. It’s all about expectation. From the time we picked which show we’d see during the walk in the cold to the paying for tickets, which got easier once we’d been a few times, to the stroll through the lobby, into the theatre, into our seats, to the settling in before the lights began to fade, I don’t think I even really breathed. Only then, only when those lights slid off did I allow myself to exhale. Only then. Then it was like the sound and light filled me, like I was hollow up till then—and I guess I was. Junkies know that feeling real good. Junkies know the rush, the flow of juice to the brain and then the smooth roll of comfort through the body that tells them that for this one moment in time, this one instant, everything’s got a chance to be okay, even for a little while. And they roll with it. So did I.

  But what goes up must come down. Junkies know that, too. When the movie ended and the lights came back up and the sound was just a fading tremor against my skin, I always crashed, always fell back to earth again and always found it the same as I had left it. Grey. Cold. Hollow. Now though, for the first time in longer than I can remember, there was a chance for something different in my days. Not enough to make it all go away. Not enough to change everything. But enough to make it seem like I could take it one more time. Like I could carry on. Like a dodge. Like escape. Like a drug. The movies became my fix, my need, and I couldn’t fucking wait for another one.

  Granite

  THE ONLY HEIRLOOM I kept was the story chair. My dad’s chair. The one he read from when I was still small enough to fit in his lap and later the one we fought over to rea
d in front of that huge old fireplace each evening. A big overstuffed leather chair with a welcoming depth that seemed to draw stories out and pull you in at the same time. I don’t know why it mattered that I keep it, only that it seemed right, only that it felt right to sit in it. Now it was the viewing chair. I invested in the biggest television I could find, a video player and home theatre system to enjoy the movies I began collecting. Browsing through the video collector books I’d purchased led me to fantastic films I’d never heard of and to slick and memorable Hollywood movies I’d either bypassed or ignored. It hadn’t taken long to fill a few shelves with titles I would watch over and over. I would gather the night around me and disappear into the chair and the world of the movies.

  I’d missed the education that film provides. For the three decades I’d been a journalist, film had been something you fled to on those evenings when the pace of work required escape. It hadn’t been elevated to a haven, as it was now, and I wondered how I’d managed to miss the point of it all. The point being, of course, that film is rapture. Film is romantic education. The romance of the senses. It could sweep me away, and I let it.

  Cinema Paradiso appeared to be one of those films. Based on what I had read, it pointed to a tale about denizens of a film house who retreated into the romantic whirl of story to elude the mundane, banal, and humdrum course of ordinary existence. The decades it revealed were the war years in Italy, a time of great tumult when loss was the common currency of being. That, I believed, was something I would have no trouble relating to.

  The evening promised to be a fine one. The arctic front that had made news across the continent had dissipated and been replaced by an ironic belt of warm southern air that melted the snow and ice, driving the city into an artificial springtime glee. I’d seldom taken the time to actually view my neighbourhood, and on this night it seemed inordinately alive.

  The theatre was called The Plaza and it was famed for its eclectic choice of fare. A heritage building, its owners had been careful to preserve the ornate fixtures of its 1920s decor. I had been there often and loved the charming ambience of its subtle art nouveau interior. Movies at The Plaza were a reconnection to the febrile heart of filmdom, and in its air was the very breath of DeMille, Capra, Fellini, and Truffault.

  There was a considerable line when I walked up. I stood there in the hushed light of evening and began the lifelong habit of observing the people I shared space with. They were, for the most part, a typical upscale neighbourhood collection of sorts: old-money college students, artistes, former radicals turned realtors, and moneyed elitists bent on maintaining a fey proletarian contact.

  The first indication that things were out of kilter was a heightened buzz in the conversation around me. I’d busied myself studying the architecture of the nearby buildings but brought my gaze to earth at the sudden tone of apprehension. The focus of attention was the four street people I’d met a few weeks prior. They were approaching slowly, heads down, eyes cast warily about. They seemed the epitome of the street urchin to such a degree that standing there I imagined myself in a scene from Dickens. All of them, with the exception of the old native woman, seemed perched on the edge of fight or flight. She was merely curious, looking about her and taking in the sights of this neighbourhood in much the same way I had on my stroll to the theatre. The closer they got to the lineup in front of The Plaza the more audible became the confusion of my compatriots.

  “Goodness,” exclaimed a pert young woman in a fur coat behind me, “they must be lost. We don’t get them in this area, especially at night.”

  “Well, we’ve got them now,” her companion said. “Hopefully they don’t put the touch on any of us. I’ll be damned if I’m being hit up for change tonight.”

  “Poor woman,” a rail-thin, hawk-nosed woman said. “I hope she’s safe with those three.”

  “You don’t think they could be heading over here do you?” asked a pretty young red-headed woman.

  “Here? This is The Plaza, not the Union Mission. What would they want here?” her bespectacled friend replied, slipping a protective arm around her waist.

  “Coming to the movies, I suspect,” I said, surprised at the blurt as much as those close to me who heard it.

  There were polite guffaws and chuckles that melted away into stunned silence as the four of them approached the line and surreptitiously joined it.

  “Hey, mister! Hey, hey, mister!” I heard suddenly.

  Everyone began looking about in something close to panic as the old native woman pleaded for attention from the back of the line. I could feel people pulling themselves inward, downshifting from judgment into a pretended ignorance and sudden deafness.

  “Hey, I thought it was you,” she said, approaching me and extending a hand rough and raw from wind and chill. “You remember me, don’t you?”

  I glanced about in embarrassment and then reached out to shake her hand. “Yes,” I said, “I remember. How have you been?”

  “Good. Me ’n the boys, we’ve been good. Been to quite a few movies since that cold spell,” she said and smiled.

  “Yes, it would seem a good place to go for warmth, I suppose.”

  “Well, it kinda started out that way but the more we went the more the boys seemed to enjoy it. Now, I guess, we’re hooked,” she said with a wink.

  “It’s a good thing to be hooked on,” I replied, scanning the crowd.

  “Better’n some things.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “So will you save us some seats?”

  “Pardon me?”

  She grinned. “Could you save us some seats? Something near the middle? We’d appreciate it.”

  Faces were turned toward us all along the line. I could feel myself getting warmer. “Yes. I’d be happy to. Something near the middle.”

  “With you,” she said.

  “With me?”

  “Well, yes. We got a date, remember?”

  I heard a few guffaws.

  “Surely you don’t think …” I began.

  “Wait a minute now,” she replied, with one hand held up palm forward. “A promise is a promise. You said the next time we met at the movies we were gonna go for a drink. Right?”

  Snickers now. I could see grins on people’s faces. “Yes, well, I never meant it seriously.”

  “How’d you mean it then? As a joke? You were joking with me? Playing with my affections?”

  I could see that people were really beginning to enjoy this.

  “No. I was not playing with your affections. I was merely being polite.”

  “Oh, yeah? Polite in your world means lying to people?” She winked at me again.

  “Look here,” I said sternly, “I was not lying, I was merely applying a deflection, an off-the-cuff, inconsequential politeness. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “In the habit of not meaning what you say to women. Bit of a player, are you?” I could hear open laughter around us now. “I’ve been around, mister, so this isn’t what you might call an out-of-the-world experience for me. I’ve been dumped by pros.”

  It was my turn to laugh.

  “You’re right, of course,” I said. “Only, let’s talk about this later.”

  “Later?”

  “Well, after the film.”

  “So you’ll save us seats?”

  “Yes. I’ll save you seats.”

  “With you?”

  “Ahem,” I said, scratching at my lapel and glancing around. “Yes. Of course.”

  “Good. Well, we’ll see ya in there.”

  “Fine.” I watched her walk back to her friends. Digger leaned out from the pack and glared at me.

  One For The Dead

  SOME STORIES become your blood. They move beyond the telling or the showing and come to rest inside you. Invade you. Inhabit you. Like there was a secret crevice in your being that it took the tale to fill. That’s what that movie was like. Cinema Paradiso. I liked how it sounded. A movie about heaven. Or, at least, that’s how
it sounded to me. And there’s always a part of you that knows about the big somethings long before they happen in your world. Always. For me, that night, it was the colour of the night itself. The cold had cleared and left behind it a freshness like the kind we’d get in Big River after a good, hard, cleansing rain. Like the earth was declaring itself one more time, saying, I am. I am. I am. I always liked that feeling, and that night while walking to the theatre there was a feeling to the air that made it seem like a colour: a blue kind of colour, all steel and shadow, water and woe, all at the same time. Walking through it, I could tell that this was a night to remember.

  The boys couldn’t feel it. Each of them was having a hard enough time keeping their feet moving in the direction we were heading. This was a difficult neighbourhood. This was a far step beyond where we normally went. This was one of those areas of the city that shone and glittered everywhere. For those boys it was stepping out of shadow and being seen, and none of them liked it much. But for me it was following a beacon. It was the pull of some strange magnetic force like yearning or coming home or love even, and while that scared me some, it thrilled me too and I walked lighter than I had for years. There were no shadowed ones here, or at least they had no need to tell me of their presence that night.