The Digger's Game

by George V. Higgins

“You never would’ve thought of that, would you, Greek?” Torrey said.

  “No,” the Greek said. “Just the same as you didn’t think how I was gonna get twenty-eight out of guys down in Dorchester there. Just like Mister Schabb there, got himself all steamed up, he’s gonna have some empty seats on the plane and he’s gonna lose, maybe fifteen thousand, so him and you get together and now as a result we got a pretty good chance of losing twenty-eight, instead. See, there was something you guys didn’t think of in a million years, and another thing you didn’t think of was to ask me if maybe I thought of something. I’m different than you, Richie,” the Greek said, “I always known, I known ever since I got out, and that was a long time ago, I’m the kind of guy that’s got to think about things, you know? Because there’s certain things I can do and certain things that if I do them, I’m gonna get inna shit. You, I done all right, see? You, you don’t.”

  THE DIGGER GOT UP at eleven and asked his wife for ten dollars.

  “How come I got to give you ten dollars out of the house money?” Agatha Doherty said. She was thirty-nine years old. She was five feet, three inches tall and she had a trim figure. She wore a nine-dollar tan dress. “You don’t give me enough as it is, and then you’re always coming back and dipping into it. I’ve been saving up to get my hair done. I got to have it frosted again.”

  “I thought you were gonna quit having that,” the Digger said. “You’re always telling me, how it hurts. And it costs, what?”

  “Thirty dollars,” she said. “It does hurt, it hurts a lot. They take a crochet hook and they pull your hair out through this cap that’s got holes in it. I do it because I thought you liked it. You told me you liked it, you didn’t care about the thirty dollars. Now I suppose you’re more interested in what you can do with the thirty dollars’n you care how I look any more.”

  “Oh boy,” the Digger said. He was eating four fried eggs, blood pudding and toast. “It does look good. I don’t care about the thirty. You’re a good-looking woman. You take care of yourself. I appreciate it. There’s very few women I ever see, raised four kids by themselves and look as good as you do. I said that lots of times.”

  “It’s nice to hear,” she said. “I don’t know as it’s worth ten dollars to me, but it is nice to hear. You shouldn’t eat so much, you know. That stuff’s all full of cholesterol. You’re going to get yourself a nice heart attack if you don’t stop stuffing yourself all the time.”

  “Look,” the Digger said, “I quit smoking, right? You remember that? I got off the butts. Well, that don’t do the weight no good, you know? You’re so worried, how much I weigh, why the hell is it I couldn’t get a minute’s peace around this house every time I light up a cigarette?”

  “I’m not likely to forget you quit,” she said. “It was like living with a regular bear. No, I know that helps. And I thought, Well, let him put the blubber on, he’ll take it off later. Only, you didn’t. You just keep on, getting bigger and bigger. I bet you weigh two hundred and fifty pounds.”

  “I don’t,” the Digger said. “You want to think so, okay. But I don’t.”

  “You don’t,” she said, “it’s because you weigh more. You’re probably up to two-seventy-five. You damned near crushed me, the last time.”

  “Hey,” the Digger said, “quit that kind of talk. What if the kids hear you?”

  “If you got up in the morning,” she said, “you know, you’d know where they are. They all went over to the pool. Anyway, Anthony’s fourteen.”

  “So what?” the Digger said.

  “I don’t think he thinks the stork brings them any more,” she said.

  “Of course he don’t,” the Digger said. “He’s known different since he was six. I think they give him a copy of Playboy when he makes his First Communion there. He’s the horniest little bastard I ever seen. That still don’t mean, he oughta hear his mother talking like a longshoreman.”

  “I don’t see what difference it makes,” she said. “He can hear the bed squeaking, you know. As much as you weigh, the whole house probably moves around. He knows about sex and he knows we do it.”

  “How,” the Digger said, “how do you know?”

  “Never mind,” she said.

  “The sheets, probably,” the Digger said. “Good. Better he’s having wet dreams’n he’s going out knocking up some eighth-grader, I could have that on my mind too.”

  “Now who’s talking like a longshoreman?” she said.

  “You told me, the kids’re out,” the Digger said.

  “I don’t matter of course,” she said. “No reason to watch your language around me.”

  “Look,” the Digger said, “are you having your period or something? I ask you for ten bucks, you give me nothing but grief. You don’t want to loan it to me, say so, I’ll go cash a check.”

  Aggie Doherty took her handbag from the cupboard. “I’ll loan you ten dollars,” she said. “That means I get it back.”

  “Tonight,” the Digger said. “When I close up tonight, I’ll take it out of the deposit. You’ll have it tomorrow morning.”

  “How come you didn’t take it Saturday?” she said, handing him the money. “You should’ve taken some money when you closed up Saturday, the way you usually do so I don’t know how much money you’re spending.”

  “I did,” the Digger said.

  “Uh huh,” she said, “that’s what I figured. Then last night after everybody else went to bed, all of a sudden you went out. Now today you need ten more dollars. Who’d you spend all your money on, Sunday night when it’s the only night you can spend home with your family and all of a sudden you’ve got to go out? What can she do for you that I can’t do?”

  “Look,” the Digger said, “you went to bed, nine thirty. Matthew and Patricia went to bed before you. Paul right afterwards. Tony come in about ten thirty and he went to bed. See, I’m such a good father, I take my family the beach on Sunday, it’s my day off. The traffic down and the traffic back, I buy practically every kind of hot dog there is in the world, everybody takes rides at Paragon Park, I even give Tony five, so he can go off and see what’s female and breathing he can try to get in trouble. I come home with ten or eleven bucks left out of twenty-five I take Saturday night, everybody craps out on the old man by eleven. So I sit and I think and I watch the news, I’m still wide awake. I’m not used to your kind of hours. It’s my one night off, for Christ sake, I’m supposed to spend it looking at the newspaper or something? So I go down the Saratoga, see what’s going on.”

  “That’s what I asked you,” she said, “who was she?”

  “I spent four bucks on some drinks,” the Digger said. “I meet Marty Jay down there and we talk and I had the four drinks. A guy I know comes along, he’s stiff, my big mouth, I told him, he oughta take a cab home. No dough. So I lend him five. I was there a long time, I didn’t leave till after two, me and Marty we each leave the kid a buck, we take up the table all that time. So I got a buck and change on me now. I had four lousy drinks and I lend a guy five and now I been out all night in a whorehouse. You better get some fresh news, sweetheart: you can’t make out nowhere on ten bucks any more. All I did was have four drinks.”

  “Martinis, I suppose,” she said. “You drink too much, too. That isn’t good for the heart. I could smell it on you when I woke up.”

  “You oughta get your nose frosted instead of your hair,” the Digger said. “I was drinking bourbon.”

  “It’s no better for the heart,” she said. “Just for my information, what’s this ten for? You got another friend who needs a cab?”

  “Gas for the car,” the Digger said.

  “Haven’t you got enough gas to get to work?” she said. “You could go to work and take it out of the till.”

  “I’m not going to work,” the Digger said. “What I mean is, first I gotta see a guy. Then I’m going to work.”

  “Where’s the guy live, you need ten dollars’ worth of gas,” she said, “New York City?”

 
“The tank’s almost empty,” the Digger said. He pushed the plate away. “I’ll have some coffee if it won’t do my heart any harm.”

  “It won’t help it,” she said, pouring the coffee. “Of course I keep forgetting, the way that car uses gas you probably couldn’t go more’n twenty miles on a tank anyway.”

  “You know,” the Digger said, “I could get ten dollars easier, I was to go over the Poor Clares and beat them out of it. And they haven’t even got ten dollars, to hear them talk, although I see they probably got a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of real estate. Jesus Christ, are you gonna start in on the car again?”

  The Digger drove a 1968 Olds Ninety-eight convertible. It was dark grey and had a red leather interior. It had factory air conditioning.

  “I’m just being practical,” she said, “I don’t think you need such an expensive car.”

  “I had that car two years,” the Digger said. “For two years you’ve been being practical about it. Two years and I haven’t spent a dime on it except for tires and gas and stuff. Not one dime. I think that’s pretty good. That’s a good car. It’s well built, just like you. No repair bills.”

  “It’s still a great big car,” she said. “It burns a lot of gas and you have to buy high-test. I drive it, the one day a year I’m lucky enough to get the car, it’s very hard for me to drive. If you’d drive a smaller car, I could have a Volkswagen.”

  “It is a great big car,” the Digger said. “As you just remind me for a couple hours, I’m a great big man. I need a big car. I can’t get in one of them puddle-jumpers. I get in, I can’t move. They’re not built for a man my size. I’d break the seat down in a week. Friday night, I was in one of them Jaguars. I couldn’t move. I thought to God, I’m going to die before I get out of this thing and they’ll have to bury me in it.”

  “Who do you know, owns a Jaguar?” she said. “You told me you were working Friday night.”

  “I did and I was,” the Digger said. “I went out, after.”

  “For what?” she said.

  “To see a guy,” the Digger said. “I went down the Saratoga and this guy I know, he wanted to show me his new car, is all.”

  “Jerry,” she said, “you worry me. The weight’s going to kill you. You spend way too much money. You drink too much. You got friends I never see, I don’t know their names, this guy with a Jaguar. What’ll I do, Jerry, with four kids in school? What’ll I do if something happens to you?”

  “Ride around in a big car every day and enjoy yourself,” the Digger said. “How the hell do I know what you’re gonna do, be doing when I’m dead. I’ll be dead. Won’t be nobody dipping in the house money, at least, which I notice is up around sixty bucks a week. I’m always dipping into my dough for twenty more around Thursday, after I go and give you the forty Monday. And do I give you a load of shit about that? I do not.”

  “Don’t you talk to me about what it costs to run this house,” she said. “If I spend forty-five dollars a week on food, most of it goes down your gullet. The kids go off to school on ten cents’ worth of Wheaties, wearing cheap shoes I can get for them in the Basement, and if Paul ever sees a pair of pants Tony didn’t wear for a year first, he won’t know what to do with them.”

  “Well,” the Digger said, “at least he won’t have to scrape the come offa them.”

  “Jerry!” she said.

  “Okay,” the Digger said, “okay.”

  “He’s your son,” she said.

  “He’s your son too,” the Digger said.

  “I don’t think it’s a mother’s place to talk to a boy about sex,” she said.

  “I didn’t say it was,” the Digger said. “No point in it anyway, it’d be like telling a priest about the Apostle’s Creed.”

  “It would be now,” she said. “I told you a long time ago, the time’d come to talk to him.”

  “About six months ago,” the Digger said. “He’s been coming in fast every night for about a year or so, ‘Hi Mum, Hi Dad,’ don’t stop to talk to you, runs right upstairs just like he did last night, if he comes down he’s wearing different pants. Spends about two hours a day in the flush. Why you think he does that, does them things, huh?”

  “It’s your fault,” she said, “if he is, it’s your fault. You just remember that.”

  “Fault?” the Digger said. “What’s this, fault? I’ll take the credit, that’s what you mean, although I got to say, I don’t think I deserve it all, you know what I mean. He takes after his mother a little bit too.” She did not answer him. She took the plate off the table and got up and went to the sink. “How come you get embarrassed when I say something like that, there isn’t anybody else around?” the Digger said.

  Her shoulders sagged. For a while she did not answer. Then without facing him she said, “Jerry, I do the best I can, I really do. I hunt around until I can get things on sale. But you come down here, you’ve got to have the eggs and the blood pudding I have to shop for special at the delicatessen, two-fifty-six a pound and it’s really terrible for you, and you eat three pounds a week. You’ve got the French Shriners that you pay the full price for. Off you go whenever you like in your air-conditioned convertible big car. Can you understand, does that maybe make some sense to you? The trouble is that I’d do anything to make you happy. I love you. And you know it. That’s what the trouble is.”

  “Lemme try it for the four hundredth time,” the Digger said. “Let’s see if you can get it through your head this time. I bought the car used. The air conditioning was in it. I agree with you, it’s silly. You put the top down, what good’s the air? You leave the top up all the time, what do you want a convertible for? The guy had the car before me, he didn’t. He wanted the air for rainy days and the top for nice days. Okay, he was buying, it, he could have it the way he liked. I didn’t put it in. You take it the way you find it. I wouldn’t’ve saved no money, I had the air taken out. It would’ve cost me money. So I leave it in. Although I think now, I knew how much music it was gonna cost me, I would’ve paid the extra dough to take it out.

  “The shoes,” he said. “It’s the same with everything I wear. I got trouble getting fitted. I don’t go the King-Size Shop, I have to scrounge around for hours, trying to find something I can get into, doesn’t look like it was to wear for going out to get shot. Okay, you go down the Basement, you get the deals. I haven’t got the time. I got to go to work and get the dough you spend onna deals.”

  “You could do it,” she said. “Unusual sizes’re very easy to find. Easier’n the stuff I’m looking for, that, everybody’s got kids. It’s just the same thing as the car, that’s all. You don’t want to. Money to spend on Jerry’s just money, and Jerry’s got it. Something his family needs, Jerry wants to know right off, how come and how much?”

  “Where’d you learn this?” the Digger said. “You didn’t know all these songs, I married you. I looked you over pretty good. I didn’t hear nothing like this. Now you got that trap of yours working every minute. I wished I knew what the hell happened to you, made you different.”

  “Some things about you,” she said, “changed a little in sixteen years. I used to be able to go to Confession.”

  “You still can,” the Digger said. “Two blocks down, three over. It’s a church thing, you’ll recognize it right off. Course it don’t sound the same, there’s likely to be some hairy-looking bastard running around talking English like a Protestant, but it’s right there. Every Saturday, Confessions three to five and seven to eight thirty, unless Father Alioto’s got tickets to the ball game. Then seven to seven fifteen.”

  “I can’t go to Confession,” she said. “I can’t tell them what we been doing.”

  “Oh for Christ sake,” the Digger said, “wake up or something. Things’ve changed. Nobody pays any attention, that birth control thing. That’s just the ghinny Pope raving around. Them guys, they must feel like they’re running a drugstore, everybody coming in, one way or the other. They’re used to hearing it.”

 
“I’m not used to saying it,” she said. “It’ll bother me. What if he asks me, Jerry, what do I say?”

  “Look him straight inna screen,” the Digger said. “Tell him, ‘The foam.’ Then you say, ‘What difference it make? My husband don’t like the rubber boots, you take the Pill you’re liable to grow a tail or something, and I ain’t letting them put one of them things inside me.’ Then ask him, ‘This how you get your cookies, Father? Asking people?’ That’ll slow him down.”

  “Of course I’ll also be telling him,” she said, “my great Catholic husband don’t want any more children. Doesn’t believe in sex for that any more. Just something he likes to do, like bowling or something.”

  “You can tell him that too,” the Digger said. “Matter of fact, tell him I tried both and I think it over, I hadda give up one or the other, it’d be bowling. I see the ghinny Pope coming around with a couple hundred a week, the next kid to eat and wear and go to school on, and some more for a bigger house so I can do what I like to do without the whole goddamned world looking on, well then I’ll say, ‘Thanks, Pope,’ and maybe we’ll think about having another kid. Otherwise, my way.”

  “If you didn’t spend every cent on yourself,” she said, “we wouldn’t need the extra. I know lots of families that haven’t got anywhere near what you make, and they live much better. Their kids’re swimming in the ocean this week. Our kids’re over the MDC pool. They go to the Cape, the kids go to camp, and my friends’re all nicely dressed. I never have an extra dime, and when I do, you come back and take it. You and your wonderful friends, that’s where the money goes. You’ve got the big convertible. You’re going to the track. You’re going to New York, to see the Giants. We can’t afford twelve hundred dollars for three weeks at the Cape, but you’ve got a thousand dollars to go to Las Vegas. How much did you lose out there, Jerry, in four days by yourself?”

  “All of it,” the Digger said. “Just like you said.”

  “How much more did you lose?” she said.

  “We been through all of this before,” the Digger said. “I told you, I was taking a hundred bucks extra. I didn’t bring no checks with me. That’s all I took. So all right, I’m a bastard. Get off my back.”