Ragged Company (11 page)

“Sounds kosher,” I go. “Kinda like the old numbers game.”

“Yes,” Timber goes. “Just like that. Only legal.”

“How do you work it?”

“I think you just take it to a store and they check the numbers for you,” Timber goes.

“That’s it?”

“I guess.”

“Fuck, might as well check on our way to the flick.”

“Might as well,” Timber goes. “But luck’s been pretty good to you already.”

“Can’t never get enough of that sweet woman’s way.”

“What woman?” Dick goes, all worried-looking.

“Lady luck, Double D,” I go. “Sweet old lady luck. Once she
calls your number, you better be home because that baby’s mighty picky whom she favours.”

“Well, Digger,” the old lady goes, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in such a poetic mood before.”

“Dig it while you can, mama. Dig it while you can.”

So we lumber on out of the Mission and head down the street. It’s a bright, almost spring day and there’s people everywhere. Dick’s going on to the old lady about the birds and the squirrels and the other things that loogans always seem to notice, and me ’n Timber are just moseying along in silence. We swing into a liquor store and I grab a mickey for each of us.

“You sure?” Timber goes when I hand him his.

“Sure I’m sure,” I go. “Let’s stop over in that park for a minute.”

We head into the park and stop by a big tree. I pull out my mickey and hand it over to the old lady without even thinking about it. She nods her head at me, unscrews the cap, pours a little splash on the ground, and goes, “There’s one for the dead.” She does the same thing with the other guys’ bottles and we all take a drink.

“Ah,” I go. “Now then, let’s hit the flick.”

“Why don’t you check the ticket at that store over there, Digger? You never know, you know,” Timber goes.

“Fuck,” I go. “The chances of us winning anything is a million to one at least. Me, I figure I scored enough already.”

“But you never know,” he goes.

“Right. You never know. Fuck it. Let’s go.”

It’s just a regular corner store. Garden Grocery, it’s called. I walk in and the others wait outside. It’s kind of dark in there and when the old Chinese guy behind the counter sees me he gets all nervous.

“Y-y-yes?” he goes.

“Yeah,” I go. “How do I check this out?” I show him the ticket.

“Oh, very easy. You no play before?”

“No. No play.”

“I check,” he goes, and I hand him the ticket.

I stand around pretending to look at the shelves, eager to be out
of there. He pushes a couple numbers on the machine behind the till and waits for something to happen. Silence. Then all of a sudden there’s music. Not riotous fucking music but just tinkly little music like you’d hear from a doorbell or something. He looks at the ticket, looks at me all wide-eyed, and then starts yelling something crazy in Chinese. He’s standing there all excited, yelling his head off, and I can’t figure out what the fuck is going on. The door at the back opens and this big, young Chinese guy comes into the store on the run. They gibber away at each other all in a panic and I figure it’s time to hotfoot it out of there. The fucking thing probably came up stolen and I’m off to the hoosegow.

“Winnipeg!” the old guy goes, pointing at me.

“What?”

“Winnipeg!” he goes again.

The young guy looks at me and starts around the counter. I’m no track star but I figure my fear can outrun this guy’s anger, so I book it on out of there. The fucking ticket was a heat score and I was about to take the pinch, so I was gonna make it at least hard for them to take me in.

The old man’s still yelling about Winnipeg when I hit the door and shoot past the other three. I sprint across the street and into the park, figuring on heading over to the alleys where I have a chance of losing them. I hear Timber yelling. I hear the old lady scream but I’m making tracks as fast as I can, thinking they won’t have to take any part of the pinch if I pretend I don’t know them. The mickey falls out of my pocket and breaks on the sidewalk so I cut to the grass but it’s slippery as fuck. I wipe out and take a fucking header into some bushes. As I scramble to get out of there, the young Chinese guy catches up and reaches out to grab me. I swat his hand away and try ’n make another break for it but I lose traction and land on my ass again.

“Wi-wi-win-winni-winnipeg,” the old guy goes as he chugs up to us, still holding the ticket.

“I never been in fucking Winnipeg,” I go.

“Winnipeg?” the young guy goes, pulling me up.

“Yeah,” I go. “What he said.”

The other three arrive just then and Timber gives me “the look” to see if I wanna clock this guy and make a run for it. I shake my head.

They jabber away in Chinese again and I hear Winnipeg and figure that this ticket belongs to someone in Winnipeg and I’m the fucking stooge who tried to cash it. I’m thinking that I’d probably only pull a month or so in the joint for fraud, and that’d give me a nice little rest, when they stop jabbering and look at me.

“What?” I go.

“Not Winnipeg,” the young guy goes.

“Not Winnipeg?”

“No, not Winnipeg.
Winna big.
My father says you ‘winna BIG.’”

“Yes,” the old guy goes. “Winna BIG! Winna BIG!”

“Winna big? How fucking big?” I go.

“Pretty fucking big,” the young guy goes, smiling.

“Well, exactly how big is pretty fucking big?”

“Thirteen-and-a-half-million-dollars big,” he goes.

“Thirteen and a half …”

“Million,” he goes.

“Thirteen and a half million dollars?” I go, and I hear the old lady gasp behind me.

“Yes. Yes. You just won thirteen and a half million dollars!”

I fall flat on my ass on the wet grass.

“I
DON’T BELIEVE IT
,” I said, more to hear myself speak, to feel real, than for anything else.

“It’s impossible,” Amelia said.

“I don’t understand,” Dick said, looking back and forth at Amelia and me for guidance.

“None of us do,” I said to him.

Digger was sitting on the ground staring at his shoes and shaking his head. The two Chinese guys were all smiles and talking to each other in Chinese. The young guy finally reached down and handed Digger the ticket.

“You got to keep this safe,” he said. “Better that you go down now and take care of it.”

“What?” Digger said, reaching up to take the ticket. “Go down where?”

“Lottery office. Downtown,” the young guy said.

“Downtown?”

“Yes. I write down address for you.”

“Go down and cash this in?”

“Yes.”

“For thirteen and a half million dollars?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck me.”

The young guy smiled. “For thirteen and a half million dollar, lots of people want to fuck you now.”

Digger laughed. “I fucking guess,” he said and stood up. “This is for real?”

“Yes. For real,” the young guy said.

“Jesus. Jesus. I need a smoke. I need a friggin’ drink. I need to sit down.”

We moved to a bench under a tree and sat there, smoking and drinking, not saying a word but looking around at each other like you do when no one really knows what to do or say next. The two Chinese guys walked away but the young guy came back a few minutes later and handed Digger a slip of paper.

“Address,” he said. “You lucky. You very lucky.”

“Yeah,” Digger said. “Winnipeg.”

The young guy smiled. “Yes. Winnipeg. You go now or you lose it. You go there now.”

We looked at each other again. Amelia moved over and sat beside Digger and put an arm around his shoulder. To my surprise, Digger slipped an arm around her waist and squeezed her gently. “Jesus,” he said again. “Jesus.”

“What do you want to do, Digger?” she asked.

He looked at her. “I don’t know. What’s a guy supposed to do at a time like this?”

“Cash it in,” I said.

“Cash it in?” Digger repeated, looking at me and reaching for my mickey.

“I guess,” I said. “What else?”

He drank. “I don’t fucking know. I just do not fucking know. Whatta you figure there, loogan?” He looked at Dick, who stood
there scratching at the dirt with the toe of one shoe, trying to make sense of it all.

“You’re asking me?” he said.

“Yeah,” Digger said. “I’m asking you.”

“How come?”

“How come? On accounta you ain’t so busy in the brain as me and maybe you got a way to figure this I don’t.”

“Oh,” Dick said. “I don’t, though. It’s like a movie.”

“No shit,” Digger said. “It’s like a movie. Only what do you think happens in this movie?”

Dick looked at him. “I think the friends all go down there together.”

“And?”

“And, I don’t know.”

“Me neither. I don’t even know where to start. I never figured this, you know,” Digger said and squeezed Amelia again.

“No one could have,” she said. “But I know one thing for sure.”

“What’s that?”

“I know that someone wants you to have that money. Or else it wouldn’t have happened.”

“Wait a minute. Wait a friggin’ minute. You don’t think I’m going through this all alone, do you?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean, we’re all wingers, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then if we’re wingers, then what comes to me comes to you.”

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“I’m saying that one-fourth of thirteen and a half is four point three or something like that, if I figure right.”

“One-fourth?” I asked.

“Yeah. Each of us. Together. Think about it. A guy like me don’t have clue number one about what to do with a fucking chunk of change like this, but four of us, well, we might just be able to figure out what to do.”

“What’s he saying, Timber?” Dick asked.

“I’m saying that you’re rich, buddy boy,” Digger said.

“Rich?”

“Yeah. Filthy, lousy, stinking, way-more-fucking-money-than-brains rich. Just like the rest of us.”

“Wow,” Dick said. “We can go to way more movies then, huh?”

“Way more,” I said.

“Then I guess we’d better get down there, claim our loot, and then head off to, what was it again?” Digger asked.

“
Field of Dreams,
” Amelia said.

“
Field of Dreams,
” I replied, and felt the world I thought I knew slipping away.

I
WANTED TO RUN AWAY AGAIN
. I don’t like it when things happen fast on accounta I fall behind an’ it takes me forever to catch up an’ when I do it’s movin’ away even more. Rich. Digger said we was rich. I didn’t know what that meant but I hoped it didn’t mean that we was gonna get away from each other, that rich would mean we couldn’t be friends no more. I didn’t want that. All I wanted was to go to the movies with my friends like we was doin’. I didn’t wanna try ’n handle no more than that.

“How come this happened?” I asked One For The Dead while we was walking toward downtown.

“I don’t know, Dick,” she said. “But maybe you can keep thinking about it like you were.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Well, you said that it was like a movie, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It is like that on accounta in the movies there’s always things going on that you never know about until they happen.”

“And what do you do in the movies at times like that?”

“Well, mostly I just wait an’ things move ahead on their own an’ everything comes out the way it’s s’posed to in the end.”

“Can you do that with this?”

“I guess. But this scares me.”

“What scares you about this?” she asked, and took my arm in hers.

“Well, in the movies when I don’t know what’s gonna happen I’m excited. Now I’m just scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“Scared that everything’s gonna be different on accounta we’re rich. I don’t know how to be rich. An’ I’m scared that on accounta everything bein’ different that we’re not gonna be together no more.”

She squeezed my arm. “Dick, I will never, ever leave you. No matter what. You and I are always going to be together.”

“Even though we’re rich?”

She smiled. “Even though we’re rich.”

“What’s that mean, anyhow?” I asked.

She laughed. It felt good to hear someone laugh. “I don’t really know. I’ve never been there in my life. But I think it means that you don’t have to struggle anymore.”

“Struggle?”

“Yes. Fight. Tussle. Strain. Struggle to get enough to do what you want to do. Struggle to make it through your day or even plan your life. For you, it means you don’t have to panhandle anymore because you have enough.”

“Wow. What’ll I do if I don’t gotta be out there for hours at a time?”