Ragged Company (17 page)

Suddenly I’m like Mountain Rivera in that flick. I’m an old fucking man. I’m an old fucking man who only knows how to do one thing. One thing that I was the fucking best at. So I wander around
the city looking for a job but nobody’s looking for the best fucking wheelman in the world. Nobody’s looking for an old man with no history the real world can use. Long as I kept looking, Pete fronted me the room at the old lady’s. But after a while I’d had enough of being turned down at everything I went for. I was the fucking best and no one wanted that. They only saw an old guy trying to score a young man’s job, and they always took the young buck. So I quit trying. Pete gave up after that. Once the old lady told him I was spending my days drinking in my room, he let me go completely. The old lady tried putting up with me, gave me a few months on the cuff, but even she got tired and let me go too.

There I was old, drunk, with nothing to put up in the sky no more. But I wasn’t going down like that. No fucking way. Maybe I had to sleep outside. Maybe I had to eat at the fucking Mission. Maybe I had to score my clothes at the shelter, but I wasn’t gonna be on the fucking mooch like everybody else. I was the best fucking wheelman in the world. I was an old-time carny. So I went to the only work an old guy like me could do without having to ask any-fucking-body. I went and did what I had to do without nobody telling me I was too fucking old or too fucking drunk or too fucking anything. I started to dumpster-dive. I dug for my cash. I worked out my route a long fucking time ago and I stuck to it.

Nowadays, in my little hole in the wall, I’m the king of my world. I’m still the best fucking wheelman. I sit there at night and look out over the city from the hilltop and it feels sometimes kinda like it felt standing in the crossbraces watching the lights of the show beneath me and the lights of the stars above me, the wheel trembling under my feet like a horse ready to race. Except I don’t wonder what’s on the other side of the horizon no more. I don’t wonder what kind of lives the people are living there. I know that there’s just another city just like this one. I know there’s a million or so other people just like these ones, and I know who they are. I walk the alleys behind their houses. I pick up their toss-offs. I see what they waste and I know. So I only think about me. Me. The best fucking wheelman in the world. Long as I feel that, I know I can deal with it. I know I can handle it.

N
O ONE SAID NOTHIN
’ after Digger finished tellin’ his story. I liked it but I never said nothin’ neither on accounta I didn’t know what was right. Digger never told nothing about himself before so I kinda knew it was big. Big enough that nobody said nothin’. We just sat there all quiet until Granite asked us where we wanted to go. Timber told him we’d all go where we went most nights an’ he just nodded. He drove us down near the Mission in his nice car an’ still nobody was hardly talkin’ at all.

“I can meet you all here in the morning,” Granite said as we was gettin’ out of his car. “We’ll need to be at Merton’s early to get things rolling, though.”

“What’s early?” Digger asked.

“Nine?” Granite asked back.

“That’s not early but yeah, I guess,” Digger said.

“Digger, thanks for telling us that story. For telling me,” Granite said.

They just looked at each other then an’ it was diff’rent from how they looked at each other before. I can’t explain it except that it was different an’ it made me feel funny inside. Good, but funny, inside.

“Are you sure you want to go wherever it is you go?” Granite asked us. “I mean, you have money now. You could get a room. You don’t have to be outside.”

“We haven’t any money,” One For The Dead said.

“No, well, not now. But you have the ticket and tomorrow you’ll have a lot of money. Tonight, I mean, I could spot you the cost of rooms.”

“It’s a nice night,” Timber said. “And I just want to be by myself.”

“Me too,” I said.

“Same,” Digger said.

“But you could think, you could be alone, in a room with a bed and sheets and a television,” Granite said.

“And walls,” I said.

Everyone looked at me. There was another one of them moments when nobody said nothin’ again. The words just slid outta me an’ even I was surprised to hear them. But I knew what they meant, though, on accounta rooms made me nervous at night an’ I know they made the others nervous too. I didn’t know how money was gonna fix that. Granite just nodded finally like he got what I said, waved, an’ drove off slowly. I watched his car all the way up the street until he turned at the lights an’ disappeared. Digger handed out smokes an’ we smoked and had a gulp from Timber’s mickey. Nobody still knew what to say. Me, I wished we could go to a movie. Me, I wished I had a story I could tell. Me, I wished we could just stay together that night but I knew it wasn’t gonna happen on accounta even though we was hangin’ on an’ not headin’ off on our own we all still wanted to be doin’ that an’ I could feel that. I felt my insides wantin’ that, anyhow.

“Well, fuck,” Digger said, crushin’ out his smoke with his foot. “I’m gone. Been too weird a fucking day for me and I gotta cash it in.”

“It feels like the tracks,” I said so fast it scared me.

“What tracks?” Timber asked.

I gulped all nervous and looked around at them hopin’ maybe they’d just nod an’ pretend they never heard. But they did. “Railroad tracks,” I said.

“Okay,” Digger said. “What railroad tracks?”

I gulped again. I didn’t like goin’ where the words was gonna take me on accounta I try’n never go there with people around. I told them, though.

“There was some railroad tracks near where I lived when I was small. We wasn’t supposed to go there on accounta there was a big turn an’ the driver of the train couldn’t see us when it was coming around. But we usedta go anyhow. We usedta go an’ kneel down beside them tracks an’ put our ears on the rail on accounta someone said you could tell if the train was comin’ on accounta it made them rails hum. So we’d kneel down an’ try’n guess how big the train was. I never could. The other kids got good at it an’ always said before it got there how big it was an’ even sometimes what kind it was. Like a grain train or a cow train or just boxcars. I could hear the hum an’ all but I never knew how big the train was. Never. This kinda feels like that. Like I know there’s a train comin’ but I don’t know how big.”

They all just nodded an’ we went our separate ways.

“All aboard,” Digger said as he walked away, one hand reachin’ up and pullin’ a invisible bell. “All board.”

J
AMES
M
ERTON
was good man. I could tell by his face when I met him. He didn’t half look away like most people when they meet us for the first time. No. James Merton came around from behind his desk, greeted us, shook our hands, and looked each of us square in the eye. It wasn’t because of the ticket. It wasn’t because of the money. It was because he was a good man. Pure and simple. His hand was warm and strong and when he asked me how I was I knew that he wanted to know, not giving me that pinched look at the corner of the eyes that people do to fake concern.

“I’m feeling like a fish out of water,” I said. “This is all pretty new.”

“Yes. It would be. And it will get a lot stranger as we go,” he said. “The media will badger you pretty good today.”

“They know?” Granite asked.

“They know that the winners of the draw will be there at eleven to claim the prize. They don’t know anything other than that.”

“So what’s the deal here?” Digger said.

“Well, the deal is that you don’t have what it takes to get this done, Digger. But I do. You pay me a fee to represent you, to act as your power of attorney, and I set everything up that you need. That’s the deal.”

“How much?” Digger asked.

James gave Digger a look that said,
I see you.
Digger gave the same one back. “Ordinarily, a percentage. For you, because you’re friends of Mr. Harvey, you cover my costs, buy me a dinner with a nice bottle of champagne to celebrate your win, and I’m all yours.”

“That’s it?”

“For now. If you want to keep me on to help you with this, I’ll charge you what I’d charge anyone else for the same services.” James went back to sit in his chair. “Coffee, anyone?”

I liked him. Straightforward, strong, and he smelled nice. I could tell that the boys were impressed, and despite their discomfort at the strange surroundings they settled into the chairs James had arranged around his desk and listened. There were papers to sign that he said would let him set up bank accounts for each of us, and other papers that said he had the power of attorney over the money for now so he could do that. Granite explained whatever we needed to understand. He told us that the papers were only temporary and that once we had the accounts set up for ourselves, James would step aside and we’d be on our own. James was only getting us started. We filled out the papers. It felt odd printing my name, and the boys seemed awkward with it too. We handed the papers to James when we were finished so he could sign them.

“Ms. One Sky,” he said, handing me a copy of mine.

“Mr. Dumont,” he said to Dick, who just blinked and blinked, trying to keep up with the happenings around him, and tucked his papers in his pocket.

“Mr. Haskett.”

“And finally, Mr. Hohnstein.”

“Hohnstein?” Digger said to Timber. “Your name is Hohnstein?”

“Yeah,” Timber said, folding his papers and putting them in a pocket. “Jonas Hohnstein.”

“Jonas,” Digger said. “After all this time. Jonas. Fuck me.”

Timber looked at me and I just smiled. He looked at the floor.

“Nice to meet you, Jonas,” I said quietly.

He just kept looking at the floor.

“That’s all we need at this end,” James said. “But we need to discuss how we’re going to deal with the media. There will be television cameras there and news photographers, so you’ll have to be okay with having your pictures taken.”

“We gotta?” Timber asked.

“Unfortunately, yes,” James said. “The government wants everyone to see how good they make things for people by allowing them a chance to win a lottery. In order to do that, they ask that winners have their pictures taken and their stories told in the media. The rules state that you have to agree to go along with it.”

“Train a’comin’,” I said quietly.

“What’s that, Amelia?” Granite asked.

“Nothing. Just something Dick told us last night.”

“Nervous?” James asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, try to relax. I will handle anything that comes up that any of you don’t want to deal with. The news people only want to sell papers, get viewers, get listeners. They only really want you for a few minutes and then they’ll go away and write their stories. For those few minutes, I’ll be right there. And so will Granite.”

We all stood up. None of us seemed too eager to walk out the door, though. I guess somehow we knew that as soon as we did, our feet would be touching a new kind of ground, a ground none of us had ever walked on before. Even James and Granite would be on different footing today. I felt like the old people must have felt when they struck their lodges at the end of a hunting season and headed for a new territory, each step bringing them closer
and closer to a different landscape, each step coaxing their feet onto a new moss, a new ground where every skill they’d learned would be called into play and all the teachings would have to come into practice if they were to survive. As I looked at the faces of my boys, I could see the desire to run from this etched in their faces. I could see the uncertainty. I could see their hunger for the feel of the familiar—the streets, the alleys, the shelters and drop-ins they were used to—for the city, alive as an animal and all of us grown used to it, needing the reassurance of its presence, the feel of its wildness at our backs.

“Let’s fucking do ’er, then,” Digger said.

“Yes,” Timber said quietly.

“Okay, then,” Dick said.

And we stepped forward onto different ground.

W
E PULLED UP
in front of the lottery offices and the limo driver opened the door. Along the block I could see media vans parked already. We walked into the building and as we entered the reception area I could see a large crowd waiting in the main lounge. A nattily attired man and woman moved forward eagerly when they saw us. They were Sol Vance and Margo Keane, and as introductions were made I felt myself growing as nervous as my four friends appeared to be. Vance took control effortlessly and guided us to a small, comfortable anteroom. Timber, Dick, and Digger all asked for drinks and then gulped them down hurriedly. Amelia watched over them and murmured quietly to them while they drank. Merton busied himself making arrangements with Vance.

“You’re Granite Harvey. The journalist. How are you connected to this, Mr. Harvey?” Margo asked me.

“I’m a friend,” I said. “I arranged the lawyer for them.”

“You came to my school to speak when I was trying to decide between journalism and public relations. I loved your work.”

“Thank you. What did you decide?”

“After hearing you speak, I chose PR.”

“That compelling about journalism as a life, was I?”

She laughed and reached out to touch my forearm. “No, no. I just decided that I wasn’t cut from a responsible enough cloth to cover events. I was better at planning them. I was better at people than stories about people. But you were compelling. Maybe we can talk more later?”