Ragged Company

by Richard Wagamese

  The lobby was impressive. All deep red carpet with pictures of smiling people holding cheques with big numbers on them, lots of plants and bright, bright lights. There were a lot of people working there, all seemingly very busy, talking on telephones and moving papers back and forth, but with an atmosphere of cheerfulness that made me feel a little more at ease. We stood there just inside the doors, uncertain where to go or what to do. Finally, a woman behind the counter noticed us and moved across the room.

  “May I help you?” she asked. She had one of those open faces that told you that whatever she said you could take for gospel and that her particular gospel was one of kindness and respect.

  “Don’t know,” Digger said. “I got this ticket.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Did you want me to check it for you? Normally you just go to the vendor but I can run it through for you.”

  “I guess,” Digger said. “The guy at the store said it was a winner.”

  “A winner? Well, that must be very nice for you.”

  “I guess,” Digger said again.

  “Come with me and I’ll just do a quick check on it, then we’ll get you your money.” She gestured for us to move up to the counter.

  She took the ticket and went back to a machine, typed in the numbers and waited. People began noticing us. Workers looked up from their desks and the ones moving around craned their necks to get a better look. The boys shifted nervously from foot to foot while we stood at the counter. I just looked back at people and gave small nods. It seemed like forever.

  The woman gave a small gasp and it seemed like everyone in that office looked over at her. She had her hand up to her mouth and sat there staring at the screen in front of her. Finally, she got up, looked at us, and walked into an office at the back. She was gone a long time.

  A man came out with her and began pulling on his suit jacket while he walked. They both seemed very excited. The woman leaned her head toward him, covered her mouth with one hand and pointed at Digger with the other.

  “Well, hello there,” he said, reaching out a pinkish-looking hand across the counter to Digger.

  Digger just stared at it.

  “Ahem,” the man said. “Margo tells me that you are a winner. A big winner, it seems.”

  “I guess,” Digger said.

  “Do you know how much you’ve won?” he asked.

  “Thirteen something?” Digger asked, looking up at the man finally.

  “Yes. That’s right. Thirteen million, five hundred thousand dollars in fact, Mr…. ?” He looked at Digger, his hand still stretched out over the counter.

  “Digger.”

  “Mr. Digger. Well, Mr. Digger, I’m Sol Vance. I’m in charge of prize allocation and if you and your friends will just—”

  “Not Mr. Digger. Just Digger. That’s my name. Digger.”

  “Oh, well, er, Digger, will you please come with me?”

  “Where?” Digger asked with a nervous look over at me.

  “I’d like to take you to our VIP lounge where you can have a coffee or tea, or whatever you like, while we get ready,” Vance said.

  “Get ready for what? I thought we just pick up the loot and take off.”

  “The loot?” Vance laughed. “No. No. There’s some process involved, Digger. It won’t take that long. Please come with me.”

  Margo stepped around the counter and over to Digger. “It’s okay,” she said kindly. “It’s what everyone has to do when they win. We just want to treat you special, that’s all.”

  “Special?” Digger asked. “Whatta ya mean, special?”

  “Well, you’re a millionaire now. You’re special.”

  Digger looked at her hard. “Just like that?”

  She smiled. “Just like that.”

  “Well, fuck me,” Digger said, looking at us. “Let’s go and get treated special.”

  We walked through the office.

  “Tim. Lisa. VIP lounge right now,” Vance said as he walked, and two people leaped from their desks and joined the small parade.

  The VIP lounge was a huge room with a bar, a couple of leather couches, two armchairs, and a fireplace. Vance gestured to the seats but we were all too nervous to sit. We stood there, waiting.

  “Would you like a drink?” Vance asked.

  “Does a bear shit in the woods?” Digger said. “Whatta ya got?”

  “You can have whatever you like.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Our pleasure.”

  “Oh yeah. You drinkin’ too?”

  Vance laughed. “Oh no, Digger. I mean it’s our pleasure to offer you whatever you’d like.”

  “Whisky,” Digger said. “Boys?”

  Timber and Dick kept looking at the floor.

  “Them too,” Digger said, and the man named Tim went to the bar. He returned with three glasses. The boys all drained them in one gulp. Vance cleared his throat and Margo pursed her lips and looked out the window.

  “Tim here is our media guy. All of our winners need to meet the media and he’ll make the arrangements. Lisa is our public relations officer and she’ll help you make arrangements to get to a bank, make travel arrangements, whatever you need,” Vance said. “Now, I’ll need to see your identification. All of our winners need to be identified properly.”

  “Say what?” Digger asked.

  “Identification,” Vance said. “It’s one of the rules. It’s spelled out on the back of your ticket.”

  “Don’t have any.”

  “You don’t have any? What happened to your ID?”

  “Well, fucked if I know. Guess if I knew that, I’d have it. Never mattered before. I always knew who I was.”

  Vance, Margo, Tim, and Lisa exchanged puzzled glances. Vance hitched his head to one side and they moved toward the fireplace where they had a short talk, heads close together, gesturing helplessly with their hands. Finally, they came back to us at the bar.

  “Digger, are you sure you have nothing? No driver’s licence, no card of any sort?” Vance asked.

  “Nothin’.”

  “What about your friends? Maybe one of them can claim the prize for you?”

  We looked at each other.

  “I don’t have any either,” Timber said. “Haven’t thought about it for years.”

  “Me neither,” Dick said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We’re not your regular kind of people, I guess. None of us has any papers. It’s not the kind of thing that usually matters.”

  Vance looked troubled. “Well, I’m afraid that without proper identification we can’t issue you the prize money. It’s a rule.”

  “Let me get this straight there, bud,” Digger said. “You’re trying to tell me that I got a winning ticket here but that there’s nothing I can do about it?”

  “Not without identification.”

  “So I’m standing here with thirteen million nothing?”

  “Well, no. The ticket is a winner but unless you can provide me with the necessary information I can’t process it.”

  Digger shook his head. “Fucking Square John bullshit,” he said. “A moment ago we were ‘special.’ Now we’re just a buncha fucking loogans with a useless piece of paper.”

  “What happens if we can’t get papers?” I asked.

  “Well, you have a year,” Vance said. “There’s a period of one calendar year from the draw date to process the ticket. After that, the unclaimed money goes back into the prize pool.”

  “Wait just a freaking fucking minute here, pal,” Digger said. “Now you’re saying if we don’t get our act together somebody else has dibs on our money?”

  “If a prize is unclaimed it’s available for other winners, yes.”

  “Jesus. How fucking perfect. Just another set-up for the regulars, eh? Just another Square John waltz around the fucking block.”

  “Is there anyone you can call? A lawyer, maybe? Someone who works with you? Anybody?”

  “Do I look like the kind of guy that’s got a, wh
atta ya call it? A Rolodex? There ain’t anybody.”

  “There’s Granite,” Dick said softly.

  “What’s that there, pal?” Digger asked.

  Dick looked up. “Granite,” he said. “We know Granite. He looks like he’d have the right kind of stuff we need.”

  “No offence there, D,” Digger said. “But tossing another fucking Square John into the mix ain’t exactly the kind of solution I’m looking for here. These guys already wanna keep our dough.”

  “We don’t want to keep your money, Digger,” Vance said. “We’d like nothing more than to see you walk out of here with the ability to change your life, to make your dreams come true.”

  “But not enough to just give up the cash.”

  “Even if we did, how would you cash the cheque? I’m assuming you don’t have a bank account?”

  “Correct.”

  “What about this person your friend here mentioned?”

  “Fuck. We don’t even know how to get hold of this guy. He’s just a guy we meet now and then at the movies.”

  “You have to do something.”

  “How about you? Why don’t I give it to you and you cash it for us and just slip us the bucks? I’ll even tip ya.”

  “Oh, no,” Vance said with a chuckle. “That would be totally unethical.”

  “Unethical?” Digger said. “Thirteen million and change is enough grease to buy a whole lot of unethical, pal. How about you, honey?”

  Margo blushed. “I can’t.”

  “There’s Granite,” Dick said again.

  “Yes,” I said. “There’s Granite.”

  Digger shook his head. “Even if I did wanna trust that guy, how’re we gonna get hold of him?”

  I looked at him and there were shadowed ones hovering close by. The room was suddenly filled with them. “We’ll just find him,” I said. “There’s no rush. We’ve got a year.”

  “Sitting on a pile of dough for a year will drive me fucking nuts,” Digger said.

  “Then I guess we’d better get busy,” I said.

  “Busy doing what?” Vance asked.

  “Going to the movies,” I said.

  “Movies?”

  “Yes. That’s how we know our friend. That’s where we always meet.”

  “But there’s a lot of movie houses in this city,” Vance replied.

  I smiled. “Yes. Yes, there is. But I have a feeling we won’t be looking very long.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “What can you be sure of, Mr. Vance? We were sure this morning that this was going to be a day like any other day in our lives and look where we are now.”

  He smiled. “Yes. That’s true. It just seems like a long shot.”

  I laughed. “A long shot? I think we’re getting a handle on the long-shot thing. And besides, it’s what we’re left with.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Well, good luck.”

  They ushered us out of the office and walked us to the front of the building. Margo, to her credit, linked an arm through Digger’s, and Tim and Lisa tried vainly to make small talk with Timber and Dick. Vance told me brief stories about the winners whose pictures hung around the office. When we got to the sidewalk, they shook our hands warmly.

  “I hope you find your friend fairly soon,” Vance said.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Digger said, his arm still hooked in Margo’s.

  “Is there anything I can do to help? Do you need any cash for now?”

  “Cash?” Digger said, finally setting Margo free. “There’s always a place for cash.”

  “Well, here,” Vance said, and handed Digger a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet. “I think you’ll be good for it.”

  “Hoo-hoo! It’s a day for fucking miracles, boys. First we get into this mess and now I got a Square John handing me a half like it’s nothing.”

  “A half?” Vance asked.

  “Yeah,” Digger said with a wink at Margo. “Half a yard.”

  “A yard?

  “A hundred.”

  “Oh.”

  “Got a lot to learn about money, mister,” Digger said, pocketing the fifty. “Got a lot to learn about money.”

  We headed off down the street.

  Granite

  I STOOD ON MY BALCONY in the moist spring air and looked out over the city. I had known this city since I came here after journalism school. I had covered it as a reporter and as a columnist but I had never, in truth, actually lived in it, seen its depths, its reaches. I’d merely been an occupant, inhabiting the spaces that were my reward for, as Digger would say, a Square John life. I had never really known this city, had missed its stories entirely. Beneath the pseudo-rational sheen of a contemporary life are other lives whose existences bear no resemblance to our own. Within that separation is the refraction of light that creates the shadowed ones on the corners and in the alleys or, most invisibly, on the very same streets I walked every day. I’d just never taken the time to see them. Time and money meant I didn’t have to. I began to realize that the displaced and dislocated ones are not simply the inhabitants of the shelters and missions, of the cardboard boxes and empty doorways, but condo dwellers like me looking out over the top of the city from a balcony far above it all. The ones who miss the collective heartbeat of the city in favour of the safe, the routine, and the familiar. I had confined myself. I had limited my experience. I had deprived myself of knowledge. I determined to see as much of my new friends’ world as they would allow me to. Not to change things for them. That would be far too presumptuous. But merely to see and to know and to understand—to correct my dislocation.

  I smiled. I tried to imagine the selection process my new friends underwent in picking a movie. It would be word-driven. The movie would be something that stood out by virtue of the power of its beckoning, something mysterious, something poetic, alluring and indicative of a mystic journey, a story thrown up on beams of light, illuminating the corners of another undiscovered world. According to the ads, it could be Back to the Future, The Gods Must Be Crazy, or Field of Dreams. I narrowed my search to the movie houses close to the inner city and those with afternoon matinees. Satisfied with my process, I headed out to Field of Dreams.

  Digger

  “SO JUST WHAT IN THE FUCK are we gonna do now?” I go.

  “Go to the movies, I guess,” Timber goes.

  “Fuck that,” I go. “Let’s just head to the liquor store, score a couple of jugs, and head off down to Heave-Ho Charlie’s, sit around and suck it up for a change. Far as I’m concerned, we all been too friggin’ good for too friggin’ long.”

  Heave-Ho Charlie is an old rounder. He was a stickup man back in the days when you could actually get away with that shit, and he was a good one. Well, good if you mean he always had the balls to do it. Not so good when you figure out the years he spent in the pen and the small amount of cash he got for his trouble. Charlie said it worked out to about a grand for every year he spent inside, and even then I gotta figure he was overpaying himself. But anyway, Heave-Ho was a good old rounder who’d been on the street forever. Fuckin’ guy musta been about eighty, maybe even ninety. Tough son of a bitch too, for his age. Charlie had shiftable digs. In other words, he camped out in empty buildings wherever he could find them. Sometimes he would be in a deserted warehouse, sometimes a boarded-up old house, one time he even set up in the basement of a church they were gonna tear down. Old Charlie knew everybody. I mean, every-fucking-body and that’s how we knew what he told us about himself was true because anyone who knew that many people had to be straight. One of the people he knew was Fill ’er Up Phil. Phil was a bootlegger and a moonshiner but he was also one of the biggest piss tanks you ever seen. He got his name from the plastic pop bottles he made you drink the booze from. Phil never wanted anyone to get pinched carrying a bottle they scored from him, so he’d sell you a pop bottle full of hooch. You had to bring the bottle, though. Then you’d knock on his door, hand the bottle through the little hole in the door and say, “Fill
’er up, Phil.” How much you paid depended on how big the pop bottle was. It was always good moonshine and Phil made a lot of money. But he liked to taste-test the product, too. So he needed a place to keep the hooch safe and Heave-Ho Charlie was the perfect partner since he was moving around all the time. Heave-Ho would set up somewhere and Phil would stash a few crocks there. Then he’d drop by to taste-test and the party would be on. Heave-Ho got his name from the fact that he could drink pretty much anyone under the table, and when they got too loud, obnoxious, or just plain fucking stupid at one of Phil’s taste-test parties he’d be the one to give ’em the old heave-ho. Not too gently sometimes, either. Those old pen timers knew how to knuckle, and people pretty much behaved themselves at Heave-Ho’s. That’s why it was good place to piss ’er up at. Long as you were a rounder and solid, you were gonna be okay. I really needed a night with Heave-Ho and the boys.

  “We can go to a movie any time,” I go. “Besides, I got the cash for a few bottles, maybe even some pickup food, smokes. Damn. Sounds like a hell of a good idea to me.”

  “What about Granite?” the old lady goes. “I know you really want to kick up your heels now, Digger, but Granite’s the only one we know who can help with the ticket.”

  “Ticket-schmicket. That’s just a fucking pipe dream. Guys like me don’t ever get that lucky. It’s a piece of paper. That’s all. A piece of paper that ain’t never gonna get cashed. Because I for one am not going to spend my time searching around the city for some Square John who more’n likely will just laugh anyway. This cash is real. This cash I can spend. This cash I can fucking drink and right now I wanna fucking drink. Screw this Field of Dreams.”

  They all look at me like they know they’re up against the wall. It takes a shitload of will to move me once I get set on something, and the more I think about this the more I feel like cutting out and just getting loaded. We’re still heading toward the Marquee and I can feel myself getting antsy.