Ragged Company (23 page)

“We get what we’re owed or we bust heads,” number one said.

“Stumblebums?” Digger asked. “
Stumblebums?
”

“How much are we talking about here?” James asked.

“Well, two hours of the girls’ time, times six, two hours of our time, times three. Let’s call it even at five,” number two said.

“Five hunnerd? What about all this?” Digger asked, pointing at the money on the ground.

“That’s tips. And it ain’t five hundred, stumblebum. It’s five thousand,” number three said.

“There’s that fuckin’ word again,” Digger said. “I didn’t much like it the first time, pal. Jimbo, we gotta pay these fuckin’ guys?”

“No,” James said flatly. “No, we don’t.”

“You better,” number one said.

“Or?” Digger asked.

“Or you’ll be in a shitstorm like you never seen.”

Digger looked at me and grinned. I could see the rounder in him then, see it through the booze, and I knew he’d stepped beyond the drunkenness. “Gee,” he said playfully. “I’m not sure I like your tone, pal.”

“What?” the third man said.

“You heard me. You want five grand from me, you gotta ask nice.”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s not asking nice.” Digger stepped toward him. James and Granite moved with him, keeping their eyes on the other two men. “Come here, man. I got it in my pocket.”

The man stepped over to Digger, who reached into the pocket of his wet pants. He was taller than Digger by three or four inches and a lot heavier, and he sneered at him. He crossed his arms and rocked a little on the balls of his feet, which he spread while he waited. I knew what was coming. Digger rummaged around in his pocket, stepping closer to the big man while he did so. Then,
when he’d gotten close enough, he dropped quickly to one knee and drove a fist straight into the man’s crotch. Hard. Hard enough to lift him an inch or so off his feet. It was called the Mashed Potato on the street. The man screamed and dropped to his knees in front of Digger, who slapped his hands over the man’s ears and then pulled the man’s head hard into his bent knee. After that, the man lay on the ground unmoving.

“Next?” Digger said.

The other two men suddenly realized they were outnumbered. “Hey, hey, Digger. No need to get nasty. We were just joking around. It’s a party, right?” number one said.

Digger shook his head slowly. Then, as he moved closer to them, he tilted his head back and sniffed the air. “Smell that?” he asked.

“Smell what?” the second man replied.

“Smells kinda like a shitstorm to me. Or maybe that’s just you.”

“Digger, that’s enough,” James said. “Now I think you guys should take your women friends, drag your buddy out of here, and get lost. Or my associate Ms. Keane will call 911 on her cellular phone and you can maybe explain the pimping, the assault, and the threats to the police.”

“Okay, okay, we’re out of here. But he still owes us,” number one said.

“Pick it up,” Digger said.

“What?” the man asked.

“Pick it up. The loot. On the ground. All of you. Get down on your fucking knees and pick it up. Take it with you. It’s yours, but you gotta pick it up.”

They scrambled about for a minute or two grabbing handfuls of bills off the ground. When they’d gotten all of it they picked up the third man, who was conscious but groaning, and headed out of the warehouse. Digger collapsed onto the pile of pallets.

“Fuck me,” was all he said before passing out.

D
ICK WOULDN’T WAKE UP
. He just wouldn’t fucking come out of it. The four of them that wasn’t into the party thing that night got us back to the hotel. Me, I got it together after a few minutes. Drunker’n a bastard, but I walked out. Timber came to enough to make it to the car if he leaned on Granite. But they had to carry Dick out. Toted him out and propped him in the back of Granite’s car between Margo and the old lady. He never friggin’ moved all the way back. When we got to the hotel the guys at the door helped get Dick to his room, and even when Margo wiped his face with a cold cloth he never friggin’ moved. It was like he was dead. Dead. That sobered me up fast.

He never came out of it that night. We took him to the hospital in the morning and he never came out of it most of the next day. The doctor told us he was in some kind of coma from drinking too much too fast. We belted ’em back pretty good at the Palace. All the music and the excitement, the girls, made it easy to just roar into partying, and I never seen how much anyone was drinking. Never watched before. Never mattered. Then when we got to the warehouse with those three goons who offered us the girls and the private party, I knew we was drinking it up real good but it never mattered to me then. Fuck. The three of us have been on some wild friggin’ binges in our time and Dick could always keep it up for a good while just like us. He was a rounder, for Christ’s sake. He wasn’t no stumblebum drunk like the fucking goon called us. We drank, sure, but we knew when was enough, we knew when we needed to lay out, get off the street, sleep it off, just like we knew that we was gonna need a slurp or two when we woke up to take the shakes and the sick away. We knew all that and we took care of it. We took care of each other. When one of us didn’t have it in the morning and we was sick, the other’d give us what we needed to keep on going. But this? This was something fucking weird. Far as I could see we didn’t have more’n we had other times when we was partying with Fill ’er Up Phil.

Dick poisoned himself. He wasn’t used to drinking so much anymore, and when we partied like we used to he drank too much too fast and his brain and his body couldn’t hold up.
I
did that to him. Me. If I hadn’t gone all fucking crazy and got the party going at the Palace he wouldn’t have been laid up in that hospital bed with tubes in his mouth and some fucking machine beep-beeping away with green lights showing his fucking heartbeats. If I had just walked out and away like they wanted me to when they showed up at the Palace, we’da been okay. But no. Me, I hadta make them stay. Me, I hadta challenge ’em. Call ’em pussies, Square Johns in training, loogans. Me. Fuck.

All that night he was out. No one could tell us when he’d wake up, if ever. Alcoholic coma, they said. No way to tell. If ever. Fuck me. If ever. Two little words but they were huge motherfuckers. Huge. I stood around his bed with the rest of them, looking at him and feeling helpless. Helpless and guilty. I felt like they could see it on my face. Like they could feel it coming off my friggin’ body and I hadta get out of there. Couldn’t stand looking at the people I called my friends. Couldn’t stand looking at Dick. My winger. My backup. My pal.

I wound up sitting in the chapel all alone. Well, except for the bottle in my pocket. I sat there drinking, looking up at the little cross on the front wall, wondering how the fuck any kind of God could let this happen to a guy like Dick. He was slow, and that bugged me at times, but he never had a hard word for anyone. Never did nothing to me but be there. Always. Tall, skinny fucker with the biggest friggin’ feet I ever seen. Fuck. I sat there a long time, thinking about all the days and nights we prowled the street together. There was some hard times. Tough times. Times that no one but a rounder coulda seen his way through, and Dick seen ’em through. Seen ’em through and never once whined or snivelled like a lot of them do. He was a rounder. A good rounder.

I never heard Rock until he slid into the pew beside me.

“That holy water looks a little brown there, Digger,” he goes.

“Yeah,” I go. “Diff ’rent kinda religion.”

“I suppose,” he goes. “Got a little?”

“Yeah.” I hand him the bottle. He takes a little sip and hands it back.

“He okay?” I go.

“He’s stable.”

I nod. “Nothing new, then?”

“No.”

“I gotta smoke.”

“Okay. I’ll go with you.”

We go downstairs and find a small patio with benches. It’s mid-afternoon by then and people are moving around all over. I fire up a tailor-made with my new lighter and stand there looking at it. Rock eyeballs me all the while.

“I feel fucking bad,” I go. “Real bad.”

“Like it’s your fault?” he goes. “Like you did this to him?”

“Yeah,” I go, glad for the understanding.

“Good,” he goes.

“Good? Fuck me, Rock. If this is some kind of a pep talk, you’re really fucking it up, man.”

“It’s not a pep talk,” he goes. “You need to hear the truth.”

“Jesus,” I go. “I don’t need this.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“I do? Why?”

“Because you’re fucking everything up. Or, at least, you will.”

“I will? How?”

“You don’t realize what you have here.”

“I fucking know what I have.”

“Yeah? What do you have?”

“I got four and a half friggin’ million dollars. That what’s I got.”

“No. That’s not what you have. That’s only part of it.”

“Part of it? That’s fucking all of it, Rock.”

He moves right in front of me and looks me in the eye. We stand there for a moment gunning each other off and I’m thinking that this Square John’s gotta lotta friggin’ balls. I like that about him. So I listen.

“You have what millions of other people don’t have, Digger. You have what every one of us carries around inside ourselves all
our lives but hardly any of us ever get to see. You have the power to change your life. You can become anything you want to become now. Anything. You can choose.

“But if you keep on doing what you’re doing, if you keep on partying and throwing money on the ground for all the stooges, loogans, boobs, losers, and stumblebums to pick up just because you can, you’ll throw all of it away. You’ll piss it all away, and when you do there won’t be anyone in this world that will feel sorry for you, because you squandered the chance that everyone wants. To just
be.

“Dick’s lying up there because of choice. You chose to party. He chose to join you. He chose to drink like he used to drink. You didn’t cause that. You might feel like you did, but you didn’t do this to him. You’re not that friggin’ big and powerful, Digger. Dick chose. He made a choice. You’re guilty only of setting a bad example, of making your own choice—and I have to say it was a pretty piss-poor one. But you can end all that right here. You can choose to make that money work for you and go out there and be. Be whomever you want.

“And the others will follow you. They’ll follow you because you’re their protector. They’ll follow you because you’re the rounder’s rounder. So this money gives you two big friggin’ gifts, Digger. It gives you the power to choose to be whomever the fuck you want to be, and it gives you the power to help the others become whomever they want to be. But if you keep on going the way you’re going, you’re only going to be one thing in the end.”

“What’s that?” I go.

He looked at me as hard as I let anyone look at me for as long as I can remember. “You’ll be a loser—a boob, a stooge, a loogan, a stumblebum. And if you take the others with you, you won’t even be a rounder anymore because rounders don’t do that to each other. Rounders watch each other’s back, and it’s time, Digger. It’s time for you to watch their backs like they’ve been watching yours all this time. Especially Double Dick Dumont.”

“Why him especially?” I go.

“On accounta he doesn’t have a filter,” he goes. “Not like you and me. You do things out of anger—rage, really. Rage that your body failed you, rage that time went by too fast, and rage that there’s no place left for the best friggin’ wheelman in the world. You filter the world and your choices through that rage, that anger.”

“And you?” I go.

“I filter it through anger too,” he goes, and we look at each other for a moment or two. “But Dick doesn’t filter it through anything. He just respects you. He just believes in you. He just follows you—and he just watches your back in his own small way. He’s pure that way, Double Dick is. He’s innocent.”

I nod. “Lot to think about.”

“I hope so,” Rock goes.

I reach out and shake his hand. Just as we’re doing that I catch a glimpse of the old lady hotfooting it across the patio. Something in my heart pauses.

“He’s awake,” she goes. “And he’s asking for Digger.”

T
HEY PUT THEIR HEADS TOGETHER
like little boys trading secrets. I don’t know what they said to each other, but as we stood at the far end of the room and watched Digger and Dick talk, I looked at the rest of us and saw how tied together we had become. There couldn’t be anything wrong with that. No matter how scary this had been, no matter how close we might have come to losing Dick to drink, it brought us even closer—all of us, not just us rounders, but the whole lot of us. I knew he wasn’t going anywhere. You been around death as long as me, you get to know its feel, its weight, even before it gets here, and I knew it wasn’t time for Dick. There wasn’t anything I could say, though. There’s times when you have to keep a deep knowing to yourself so others around you can find the teachings in a thing. Those of us who can see know that, but the hard part is letting others go through it. While it hurts to watch them deal with hurt, you
know that you still have to let them, that it’s a gift, that it’s a teaching way. So I bided my time until Dick came out of the deep darkness that the booze had put him in and tried to offer the comfort that I could. I was glad to see that Granite and Digger had talked. I wouldn’t have changed that for anything.

Dick waved his hand to invite us to his bedside.

“Me ’n Digger got a plan,” he said.

“That’s good,” I said. “What’s your plan?”

“Well, first we’re gonna get me the frig out of here, then we’re gonna go see
Field of Dreams
like we meant to all along, then we’re buyin’ everybody dinner.”

“Sounds like a really good plan to me,” Margo said. “I’d like to go to the movies with you, Dick.”

“Yeah, an’ you could sit with Granite on accounta I think he kinda likes you, Miss Margo,” Dick said with a grin.

“Well, that sounds like a nice plan too,” she said.

“The doctor says you need to rest another couple of days, Dick. To get the alcohol out of your system,” James said. “But we can get you a TV in your room and a VCR hooked up to it so you can watch movies.”