Ragged Company (39 page)

And he got up from his chair, walked out the door, and disappeared into the night.

T
HE MAN KILLED HIS SON
. He was drunk an’ dropped him on his head an’ killed him. He killed his baby son. Then he tried to go home again an’ he couldn’t on accounta he couldn’t take it back. Ever. He couldn’t take it back. He couldn’t make nothin’ right on accounta that’s the biggest thing you can do is make someone die. He was a drunk like me. He was a street guy like me. It’s where he was supposed to be on accounta when you make someone go away you gotta go away yourself. You gotta go away yourself. I didn’t know where I was gonna go when I walked out the door but I knew I had to go. I had to go away. I walked. I walked a long time an’ I didn’t worry about nothin’, not my friends waitin’ for me back at the house, not the time, not nothin’ except the fact that my mickey went dry an’ I needed another. It was real late so I flagged down a cab an’ went on down to Fill ’er Up Phil’s. I got a pop from a corner store, poured it out on the street as I walked up to his door, knocked, an’ held it through the little slidin’ window when it opened and said, “Fill ’er up, Phil,” like we gotta.

“That you, Dick?” Phil’s voice asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s me.”

“What the fuck are you doing down here?”

“Walkin’,” I said. “Thinkin’.”

“Jesus, man. You couldn’t get a bottle of Scotch or something?”

“Nah, I just run out. You was the first one I thought of.”

“Well, thanks. But for fuck sake, you don’t need my hooch. Let me give you a nice whisky I been saving.”

“Hey, okay. That’d be nice.”

“Anything for you, Dickey. Here.”

He handed the bottle through the window. “How much?” I asked.

“For you? Nothing. It’s on me. But do you think you could lend me something?”

“Sure.”

“Fifty?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

I shoved the money through the window.

“Thanks, Dick. You take care now, man,” Phil said.

“I will.”

After that I just walked more. I thought about the man in the movie an’ how he got where he got. He was a baseball player an’ then he dropped his son. I was never no baseball player. I wasn’t no nothin’. On accounta my dad was a half-breed we never had no land or nothin’. We just kinda lived on the land that no one else cared for an’ we put up the only kinda house we could from scraps offa the sawmill piles. Once the moose milk got goin’ we could afford other stuff but mostly we just lived in a shack. A shack. I remember walkin’ in there some winter days an’ it’d be real cold outside an’ steppin’ through the door was like bein’ burnt in the face on accounta we only had the one big fat stove in the middle an’ it was hot. There was seven of us. My mom an’ dad an’ five kids, an’ we all kinda slept together in the same big bed, us kids.

Tom Bruce kinda had the same life. His dad got work more on accounta he knew how to run a chainsaw real good but they still didn’t have much neither. When we walked around draggin’ that wagon or sled fulla moose milk we talked lots an’ we liked each other pretty good. We talked about lotsa things. About what we was gonna do when we got big, where we was gonna go, what kinda adventures we could have. That sorta talk. Tom Bruce was the only friend I had. Least until I met One For The Dead.

Tom Bruce always said, “Us guys always gonna have to hump. No other way.”

So humpin’ that wagon or sled around was like startin’ to make our dreams come true on accounta Tom Bruce said that’s how it was always gonna have to be. I believed him. I never seen nobody around there go nowheres. Me ’n Tom dug a hole in our hideout. We put a moose milk jar down there once we’d drunk it empty an’ we put coins in it.

“That’s yours,” he told me. “Next time we got an empty it’ll be mine and we’ll stash it in the ground side by each.”

“How come?” I asked.

“Tucumcary.”

“What?”

“Tucumcary,” he said again. “It’s a place.”

“What kinda place?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Just a place. Some place that’s not here. It sounds like a place I wanna go.”

“Tucumcary,” I said, an’ I liked the sound it made.

So we put them jars side by each in them holes an’ we stuck whatever coins come our way in them. We was gonna go to Tucumcary. Me ’n Tom Bruce. We was gonna save our money an’ hit the road together. After that, we talked about how we was gonna get there, what kinda girls we might find, what kinda work we might wanna try, an’ all sorts of stuff like that. We talked about it all the time when we was drinkin’ up in that little hideout. Tucumcary was where everythin’ was gonna be all right. Tucumcary was where there weren’t no more sawmills an’ shacks by the roadside. Tucumcary was where we was gonna lay up in the sunshine an’ drink pink drinks an’ listen to the wind blowin’ through the palm trees. Palm trees. I didn’t know what they were back then but I remember I liked how they sounded on accounta they sounded like they was holdin’ you all soft an’ gentle, rockin’ you kinda while you slept in their shade. Palm trees. Me ’n Tom Bruce was gonna go sleep under palm trees in Tucumcary. That was my dream.

It never happened, though. We kept on puttin’ them coins in those jars an’ haulin’ that moose milk up an’ down them roads,
but Tucumcary never got no closer. We just got bigger an’ we drank more moose milk. Got to be we didn’t wanna do nothin’ but hide out an’ suck up that juice. No one said nothin’. Guess even my dad knew, but he didn’t wanna queer the deal he had on accounta the cops never once looked at a couple kids with a wagon or a sled, so he pretended like he didn’t know we was drinkin’. Or he flat out didn’t care. Long as we delivered, we was okay. Once we got too big to be playin’ with wagons we got to ride around on a tractor. Big old tractor they used to pull logs outta the bush to cut up for firewood an’ stuff. We’d put the moose milk in boxes under a pile of logs an’ deliver firewood an’ firewater at the same time. We was fourteen. Them mason jars was full by then an’ me, I kept switchin’ the dimes an’ nickels for quarters, half-dollar, an’ dollars. It was full up by the time Tom Bruce an’ me started gettin’ called out to do man’s work.

We didn’t do much. Mostly I drove, on accounta no one figured I could do nothin’ more, or else I chainsawed, an’ I got pretty good at that but I didn’t like it. But we was young an’ the mill guys wanted young insteada old an’ we got called out more than my dad an’ them. Meant we could go to county dances. We’d head on down there most weekend nights an’ stand around the outside talkin’, smokin’, and passin’ a crock back an’ forth with the other boys. Didn’t bother with no girls. Dances was for drinkin’ an’ cussin’ an’ tellin’ tales. Only the sissy boys danced with girls, or the older ones who was more lookin’ for that sorta thing. Me ’n Tom just settled in at the edges an’ watched.

That was my life. Haulin’ firewood an’ firewater all over the county, doin’ whatever man’s work come along we figured we could stand, an’ drinkin’. By then we was drinkin’ with the men, but we still liked goin’ to our hideout and talkin’ best. We never noticed once we started to get sick. First it was just a little pukin’. A few heaves in the mornin’. Then it got worse an’ we’d meet each other up at the hideout all washed-out lookin’ and shaky, really kinda needin’ what Tom Bruce called a “bracer.” Kinda brace us for whatever we had goin’ for the day. Them bracers always got us goin’ again. We was sixteen.

Then one week them bracers really got us goin’. We didn’t even figure on gettin’ drunk. We just met up in the morning, sat down in the hideout an’ had a few big slops of moose milk, an’ the next thing we know we’re smokin’, talkin’, and gettin’ pissed-up drunk. We stayed there six days. We only went out to get more or wobble down to someone’s kitchen for other company at night. I don’t know how much we drank on accounta it all got weird, but we drank lots. Then Tom Bruce had had enough, an’ waved me away finally. So we both headed back to our shacks, tired an’ sick feelin’.

That’s the night my brother asked me to watch Earl. I told him I was sick but he was mad an’ he liked to hit things an’ people when he was mad an’ I was too sick feelin’ to put up with that so I waved him off an’ they left. Maybe if he’da listened, it never woulda happened. Maybe if I’da said we was drinkin’ six days, they wouldn’t have got me to look after him. Maybe if I’da just passed out in the hideout. I don’t know. I only know what happened. I only know how them feet looked stickin’ out of that lard pail.

I ran. I ran through the darkness an’ fell down on the ground in the hideout. They found me there the next day an’ hauled me off to the county jail. That was the worst on accounta I was dead sick an’ they made me shake it off in a cell. Horrible. Nightmares, sweats, puking. I got through, though, an’ they brung me up in front of the judge, charged with drownin’ Earl. But Tom Bruce told how we drank all them days an’ my brother told how I said I was sick an’ that judge let me go. He called it an accident. He said it was a horrible accident an’ I was free to go. Free to go. When I walked out of that county jail there was nowhere to go. I hitched a ride back to the sawmill town an’ walked to the hideout. My jar was still there. I took it an’ walked away without saying nothin’ to nobody. Took it and headed toward Tucumcary, where them palm trees could hold me soft an’ gentle, rockin’ me kinda, helpin’ me forget the sight of them tiny feet in the flickerin’ light of that television. I never made it there an’ I never forgot.

Ironweed
brung it all back an’ I thought about it all while I walked around drinkin’. I walked a long time an’ I was gettin’ drunk out there on the street so I turned into a motel, got a room,
an’ settled in. The night man liked me but he liked the roll I showed him better. He got me some more bottles. He got some girls to come over. He got me a player an’ some movies. When I called him Tom Bruce, he answered an’ laughed. I liked that. Me ’n Tom Bruce. Together again in the Rainbow Motel. Tucumcary. We was finally gonna make it to Tucumcary.

I
SLEPT IN HIS ROOM
. I had to. I wanted to be there if he walked back in late at night and needed someone there. I wanted to be the first to let him know that it would be all right. I wanted to see him. So I curled up in his armchair and slept by the light of a single candle I kept burning for him. I placed it on the win-dowsill and slept by its wavering glow, surrounded by all the movies that Dick had come to love, all the possible worlds he felt attracted to, all the dreams not his own that he watched, hoping a little of that magic might shine for him sometime. I wished I still had the medicines. Wished for the sweetgrass, the sage, the tobacco, and the cedar. The prayer medicines of my people. I hadn’t had any for years. If I’d had those medicines, I’d have burned them for Double Dick Dumont, right there in the room that was his home. Burned them so their fragrant smoke could carry my prayers for his safety to the Spirit World—to the Grandmothers and Grandfathers, the Spirit Helpers who watch over us—and ask them to bring him home to me. Burned them so the shadowed ones would know that someone cared for that lost one and maybe whisper something in his ear to remind him of us. Burned them so the spirit of the People from which he came might spark in him again, and he’d find the warrior’s strength to travel the dim trail back to his lodge. Burned them so my dreams would be good. Burned them to ask forgiveness for myself.

I should have known. I should have felt the weight he carried more strongly. I should have asked more questions, provided more safety, let him know how much I had seen, survived, and grown up
and away from. I should have talked about my Indianness more. Should have told more stories and coaxed his own out of him, allowed him to talk about his father and his father’s tribal past. I should have made the path more clear for him because he was incapable of reading signs for himself, unable to follow even the boldest of blazing on the trees, not skilled enough to navigate the way himself. I felt all of that curled up in that armchair, breathing his scent and feeling the hollow where his body rested. I felt his awkwardness cast off and discarded in the nearness of all those stories on the shelves. I felt the unscalable wall of literacy dismantle itself and tumble to the carpet next to the magnificence of time and place and texture presented in those shining tales. I felt loss replaced by dreams of gaining the crown of the world, grief replaced by glorious victory, shame salved by forgiveness, wrath tamed by love, love itself illuminated by a love returned, and homelessness, loneliness, and woe rendered speechless in the face of welcomings radiant and warm. I felt his jubilation in seeing all those things. I felt that just as I felt the chill of departure when the story faded to black again and the man in the chair faced the darkness alone, afraid, ashamed, and not drunk enough to dream a shining dream of his own. I felt all that and I slept there so there would be one place he would not have to feel like he wandered into alone. One place where someone waited, eager to alter the way she had done things, desiring to carry more stories forward and help him blaze a trail through the darkness.

I
CARVED AT NIGHT
. While the others slept, I worked on the man in the chair. In the flicker of candlelight I seemed to be able to see him in sharper detail, the shadow moving like a hand telling me where to chip, scrape, slice, and etch. I never knew how much shadow he lived in, how much the darkness haunted him, how twilight never held the romance it sometimes graced other people’s lives with, how it only talked to him of another vigil to
be maintained, another gathering of hours huddled like bandits waiting to waylay the unprepared. While I worked I thought about the years we’d travelled together, how we had thought we knew each other, how we had called that semblance of knowing friendship, and all the while my grief over Sylvan rested under all that like an uncobbled stone—the pathway to knowing incomplete, the treading difficult, impossible perhaps, impassable. I thought about how I had failed him. How my secret had taught him how to keep his own. My pain granting his permission to fester and growl away at his guts too. I thought about how easy it is to hide in the company of others, allowing the motion of lives to obfuscate your inner workings so that what’s presented becomes more a bas-relief than sculpted image. I had failed him then. Failed to let him see me. Failed to let him know me in all the corrugated chips and fracture lines. Failed to let him know that friends are imperfect replicas of the people we think we choose, and that imperfection is the nature of it all. We come together in our brokenness and find that our small acts of being human together mend the breaks, allow us to retool the design and become more. I never taught him that.