Ragged Company (35 page)

“Y
OU’RE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE
what he wants me to do,” James said over coffee the morning after Timber had returned.

“Likely not. But tell me anyway,” I said.

“He wants to sign over everything to her.”

“All of it?”

“All of it. Except for what he needs to live.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What can I do? It’s his wish.”

“What about him? What’s he going to do?”

“He’s going to carve. Digger’s going to give him space at the back of his store.”

“Jesus.”

“Well, I don’t know about Jesus but somebody’s watching over things. Somebody with a very particular sense of humour.”

“Hell of a story.”

James smiled. “You’re right, Granite. It
is
a hell of a story. How are you doing on that?”

“Well, I’m making notes. That might not seem like much but at least I find myself doing it. And the strange thing is, they were right. I
am
the only one that can tell it properly.”

“Not surprising. You’ve been on the inside all along. There’s nothing in any of this that you missed. Except maybe the life, maybe the details of surviving like they did all those years. But you have the feel of it.”

“Yes. It bamboozles me sometimes. I mean, just the understanding. I actually understand how something could drive you to the street, how you could survive there, how you could want to survive there.”

“Certainly gives an irreverent twist to the old ‘all the comforts of home’ idea.”

“A fire, a crock, and a wrap.”

“A few smokes, a laugh.”

“It’s a whopper of a tale.”

“Make a hell of a movie.”

“Yes. But you know, James, I’m flummoxed to say why I met these people. I mean, I figured I’d hid out pretty well. Then the cold front comes along, we meet in the theatre, next thing you know these ragged people have become my life. Mystical as all fuck, wouldn’t you say there, pal?” I said with an appropriate Digger-like growl.

James laughed. “Yes. Yes. And then there’s Margo.”

“Margo,” I said. “It’s amazing really.”

“Amazing?”

“Yes. It’s like a carving, I suppose. You hold it in your hands at first and you know there’s something there. Something calling you to whittle and nick and shape the wood but you’re not really certain what it is. But you can’t halt the process. So you slice away a little more and a little more and it starts to assume a shape and form almost on its own. Next thing you know, you’re seeing something special begin to materialize in your hands. Special because you took the time to discover where it wanted you to go. It’s like that.”

“You’re becoming quite the romantic.”

“Hard not to with this crowd.”

“I know. But there’s a more important question, Granite.”

“There is?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Are you getting laid yet?”

I laughed. It felt good, this camaraderie in a café. This banter. This old-boy chuck-on-the-shoulder kind of conversation. “Yes,” I said. “Yes.”

W
E’RE SITTING
at the Palace tossing back a couple pints. Me ’n the boys. Well, the old lady’s there too, but she ain’t drinking. We never said squat to Timber when he walked back through the door. Didn’t need to. You hung through together as long as we hung through, there ain’t no need for speeches. The most that happened was the old lady gave him a big hug and they held on to each other for a long time right there in the living room. Dick and Margo and Rock give him a hug too, and Merton just shook his hand and clapped him on the shoulder. Me? Frig. I just grinned at him and nodded. He knocked on my door late that night and we
sat there while he told me about it. Brothers. No fuss, no friggin’ muss. Just brothers telling tales. He knew. So did I. He made that same knock on each of our doors that night and the next morning we just carried the fuck on like rounders do. Carried the fuck on.

“We need a good movie tonight,” Dick goes. “We ain’t been out to one for a while now an’ I miss goin’.”

“Yer right, pal,” I go. “We do need a flick.”

“
Mountains of the Moon
,” Timber goes.

“What?”

“
Mountains of the Moon
,” he goes again.

“That don’t sound too bad,” I go. “Adventure?”

“Friendship, really,” Timber goes.

“Well, that’s a friggin’ adventure,” I go, and we all laugh like hell.

Rock, Merton, and Margo swing through the doors just then and I figure this is turning into a real party.

“Digger, you’re looking particularly fine today,” Margo goes.

“Yeah? Well, come here and give me hug and a peck on the cheek there, lady.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she goes. “I might swoon getting so close to a manly man like yourself.”

“Yeah, well. Life is risk,” I go, and we all laugh again.

Pretty soon we’re all leaning across the bar and telling tales. Rounders. All of us. Rounders. In our own way, every one of us sitting there in that old scrub of a bar had lived a rounder’s life, had survived. I was never gonna figure how it all worked out the way it had, so I didn’t even friggin’ try. Didn’t even want to, really, if the truth was told. Didn’t even friggin’ want to. The thing was, we were solid. Solid. On the street it means you’re dependable, trustworthy, strong in the face of bullshit and never tellin’ other people’s tales, never gonna buckle under questioning. Here it means carrying the fuck on. No fuss, no muss, no worry over choices, just hanging at your winger’s shoulder helping with the load. I liked that. Here there were no Square Johns, no us and them, no have and have-nots, no ups no downs, no rich or poor because we had been all of that. All of that. Rounders. So we sat in that bar all through that afternoon, laughing together, telling
stories, arguing some like old friends do, and getting kinda looped. Then we went to the movies.
Mountains of the Moon
. An adventure. An adventure about friendship. Now that was something I could believe.

T
HEY FOUND THEIR WAY
through famine, drought, hunger, attacks by both human and beast, and made their way to the Mountains of the Moon. They fought. They disagreed. They disappeared on each other. But they were friends. I sat in the theatre and watched this incredible story of hardship and friendship, the two forever intertwined in the lives of two explorers, and I was amazed at how easily art copies life. We’re all explorers, really. We’re all seeking the source of something like Burton and Speke sought the source of the Nile River. We’re all of us engaged in the process of finding our way. And it’s a hard go. So easy to become lost, confused, befuddled by territories you’ve never seen before, never expected to find, never knew existed or would become so important to you, so much a part of the tale you’d tell.

I walked again that night. Left the house in the early hours and walked the neighbourhood surrounding Indian Road and looked at the houses that comprised it. There were histories there. Incredible histories framed by the walls containing them, and I thought about the house that had once held mine. It sat on a street of trees in a city by the sea. It occupied space. It occupied time. It contained me. It contained her. In a tiny space at the back of that house, a plant would grow. It would grow and become something more. It would change the space it occupied by virtue of its purpose: to live, to thrive, to be. That was all I needed from that tiny house now. The knowledge that I had left something of myself behind. Something soulful and precious. Something that might sing of history to those who would see it, nurture it, urge it to grow. It was the same with the money. All I needed was the knowledge that I had left something behind that mattered. Not
to me. I had no need of it. But it made life easier for Sylvan. I was taking care of her. Finally. After twenty years of famine, drought, and desperation, I’d found my Mountains of the Moon. The source of my magic river. And I gave it all to her. It was the only choice I had. Love told me that just as it told me that I would carve again.

I would carve again. I would bring wood to life. I would make it breathe. I would infuse it with spirit because life had taught me how to do that for myself and for the people I shared my life with. My friends.

When I went and told the story of my wanderings to Amelia, she told me one back. She told me of the Ojibway people and the ceremony they went through to become man and wife.

“They go and sit with the Old Ones,” she told me. “They go and sit and listen to the wise old men and women tell them about life and how we gotta live it.

“They do that because the Old Ones have seen it all. They know what these people are going to encounter on their path together. So the young ones sit and listen and get told some very important things. They get told about the need for prudence, acceptance, and honesty. But above all, they get told about the need for loyalty and for kindness. Without them two things there can be no togetherness, loyalty and kindness. It takes a lifetime to really get to know what those two things mean, but it’s the willingness to keep on learning to find that out that makes a coming together so sacred.

“The people call that relationship
weedjee-wahgun
. It means companion, fellow traveller. Being a good companion means being willing to always learn more about loyalty and kindness. Your path with Sylvan taught you lots, and if you think about it long enough you’ll know what you need to do to learn from it all.”

Weedjee-wahgun
. A trail blazed in the darkness. Hewn from the stark forest by the axe of principle and marking the pathway to a lifetime of learning. It taught me lots. And as I walked, I considered that ancient word and its meaning.
Weedjee-wahgun
. In those
purely tribal times it stood for the relationship between a man and a woman, but as I walked and I looked at the homes around my own, homes guided and made possible by that same set of principles, I understood it to mean any coming together. Any joining of spirit.

For the first time, I didn’t hear the concrete call to me that night. Felt no need to reach down and place my palm on its grained surface, to consider its winding progression downward to a place I had lived for far too long. Instead, I felt a need to enter the house I called a home. Felt the need to rest and rise refreshed, take a piece of wood into my hands and open myself to the immense possibility of Creation. Felt the need to honour love with an act of love itself.
Weedjee-wahgun
.

I was no longer a millionaire, but I didn’t need to be. I had reached the Mountains of the Moon and found them beautiful.

T
WO TINY FEET
stuck out of a five-gallon lard pail. That’s what I see. That’s what I see in my dream. Two tiny feet stuck out of a five-gallon lard pail. My nephew. Earl. Three months old. Drowned. Drowned in my vomit. Drowned in my puke. Drowned in the pail I puked into on accounta I was sick from all the drinkin’ me ’n Tom Bruce was doin’ back then. I can see it all like it was a movie.

I wake up sick. Sick an’ shakin’ an’ tremblin’ an’ I know there’s a seizure comin’ on accounta I got that nowhere feelin’ in my head that says the big black is gonna fall over me again. Terror. That’s what it is. Terror. An’ the only thing that makes that big black dog of terror run away is another drink. A big drink. A real big drink. I’m so scared I jump up off that couch an’ I don’t feel the bump. The bump that’s little Earl asleep beside me. Asleep beside me on accounta my brother an’ his girl is gone to a country dance down the way an’ told me to look after him. I don’t feel the bump on accounta I’m so scared the big black’s comin’ that I run to the kitchen where I know there’s a bottle under the sink. Then I throw it down me. Throw it. There’s twitchin’ going on in my muscles an’ nerves an’ I just know that if I don’t get it into me I’m gone. Down into the hole. I feel the burn in my gut an’ I close my eyes an’ breathe real hard. Deep. Holdin’ it in. Deep again. Then I feel the wash of warm at the sides of my head an’ I know I’m not gonna fall
over, I’m not gonna lay on the floor all buckin’ an’ sawin’ away. Doing the chicken. That’s what Tom Bruce called it. Doing the chicken like when its head’s chopped off. I breathe. After a few minutes of leaning on the counter I feel like I can move again. My muscles is still weak an’ shaky but I know I’m gonna make it.