Ragged Company (38 page)

“I do?”

“Yeah. If you had to put a wheel up right now, this afternoon, even after all this time, your hands would remember what to do even before your head did. Don’t you think?”

“I guess. Never thought about it. But you know, Timber, all them friggin’ wheels is hydraulic now. Don’t matter a fuck if my hands remember or not. They don’t need an old-time ground-mounted wheelman no more.”

“Still.”

“Yeah. You’re right. Why is that, I wonder?”

“Because you’re an artist.”

“I am?”

“Yes. You said so yourself. The best fucking wheelman in the world. It takes an artist to get to that point.”

“Yeah, you know, I am. Or I was. You figure that’s how I know how to fix up all the shit I find?”

“Yes. You have an artist’s hands. They can bring something to life.”

“I can’t do nothing like this, though,” I go, waving the little carving at him. “This is scary. It’s so small but you can see him. It’s like, whattaya call it? Voodoo.”

“Effigy,” he goes.

“Hey, no need to be fucking rude.”

He grins at me and gives me a shot on the arm. “An effigy. It’s a small image of somebody. The old tribal peoples used to make them, some in voodoo like you say. But this is a different kind of magic.”

“What kind is that?”

“Representational. Playing it for real.”

“How come?” I go, firing up a smoke and staring at the log.

“I don’t know the theory. But I do know that when I carve something from life, life goes into it. It comes out like it could breathe. Real. Like it’s carrying the spirit of the person in it.”

“That is friggin’ voodoo.”

“In a way. But this is like an honouring. Respect. Giving him dignity. I’m honouring the spirit of our pal.”

“He could use it right now.”

Timber looks at me and takes a drink. “Yes. I feel like he wants to say a whole lot more but he doesn’t know how.”

“I kinda know that feeling.”

“Me too.”

“You know, I heard some pretty incredible shit in my time but I never heard nothing like that. Friggin’ kid. He was just a friggin’ little kid and his dad had him hauling fucking moonshine around. Pretty harsh friggin’ times.”

“Pretty harsh.”

“That’s why you got him like this? So you can see the shit he went through on his body, in his face?”

“Yes. I suppose. Only I did the small one before we went to
Dances with Wolves
and before he told us about being a kid. I only
saw him in a private moment when he was lost in it, I guess. I never imagined what the story was like.”

“Rock figures there’s more.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Rock and the old lady and Margo been talking and they figure D’s got a whole lot more that he ain’t telling. Rock wanted me to talk to him. Try ’n get him to spill the beans.”

“And?”

“And nothing. You know the fucking drill. We don’t spill. Not ever. Unless we really want to.”

“Rounder’s code.”

“Fucking right.”

“Maybe we’re not rounders anymore, Digger. Maybe this money changed all that. I mean, if we look around, we’re not exactly living a rounder kind of life anymore. You own a store. We own a house. We’re not exactly street.”

“That’s kinda what Rock said and I got pissed. Maybe I’m pissed now too. I don’t know. All I know is that there’s stuff I gotta hang on to from the life, you know. The friggin’ life taught me how to survive. Taught me how to not give a fuck about the irritating stuff that drives everyone batshit. Taught me how to tough through anything. I don’t wanna forget that. Ever.”

“I guess we don’t have to. But maybe there’s things we can do different without exactly selling out.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Like talking to each other. Like this. Like staying on each other’s wing. Wingers. Just like the old days but in a different way. Maybe that’s what we’re supposed to learn how to do now. Be the same solid rounder kind of guys but in a different way now.”

“You figure?”

“Guess.”

“Still don’t gotta spill the fucking beans unless we want to. That’ll never fucking change.”

“Maybe we’re supposed to help him want to.”

“How the fuck do we do that?”

“I don’t know. I want to figure it out, though.”

“Me too. You know he don’t sleep nights?”

“No.”

“The old lady says he watches friggin’ movies all night. Stays up all night, watches flicks, and drinks.”

“He’s never pissed up. Not bad, anyway.”

“Maybe he gets to the line and stays there. He’s always got a mickey on him.”

“That’s not new. Shit, I carry sometimes myself still.”

“Yeah, but you ’n me, we got somewhere else now. I figure Dick hasn’t moved. He’s still where he was when we scored the loot. That’s what you seen when you seen him on the porch.”

“The movies,” he goes.

“What?”

“The movies. In the beginning we went to the movies. All of us. Together. To get out of the cold. Nowadays we don’t go as much and Dick, well, he’s got his collection in his room and he watches all by himself. I think we need to get back to where it all started again.”

“How do we do that exactly?”

“Well, I guess if it means staying up all night and watching movies with him, that’s what we’ll have to do.”

“Do you think he’ll go for that?”

“It’s Double Dick Dumont we’re talking about. No matter how he might be acting or what kind of stuff he has going on inside, he’s still Double Dick. Still our winger. Still one of us. He’ll be tickled pink to have us sit and watch movies together.”

“You’re right. We used to go to a flick every day. Be nice to get back to that.”

“Yeah,” he goes. “The four of us.”

“Five.”

“Well, six, really.”

“Seven if you count Merton.”

“Seven if you count Merton.”

“Do we count Merton?”

“Fuck yeah,” he goes, and we head out for the truck and the drive back home.

T
HERE’S FOUR DIRECTIONS
in the Great Wheel of Life. The Medicine Wheel. Each has things that make it special, give teachings to the People. The whole point of being is to learn to move through all those directions and pick up the teachings on the way. That’s what Grandma One Sky taught me and what I recall thinking about Dick and how our lives have changed so much so fast. Sometimes life gets so busy we forget what we’re really supposed to be doing, and I guess that’s what happened to us. We’re supposed to consider where we’ve been. The way we came together was like the spirit of the Medicine Wheel. See, there’s the east first. The east is where the light comes from and the teaching there is how to be a physical person. That’s Digger. He’s always been the tough one. Then, the south is where growing takes place and the teaching is how to be an emotional person. That’s Dick. He’s always the one who feels things the most. The west’s teaching is thinking, reflecting, and that’s Timber. He was always the one who needed to know, to understand. The north teaches spirituality, because the journey around the great Wheel of Life brings you to that if you look back at where you’ve been. That’s me, I guess, since the shadowed ones let me see them. So we came together for a reason. To be strong together. To be whole. To be a circle. Thinking about it, I could see that the only way to help Dick through this difficulty was to come together again like we did in the beginning. Dick didn’t need us poking around his insides. He didn’t need us asking questions that required tough answers he wasn’t ready to give. He didn’t need us worrying about how he was. He needed us to be a circle again. He needed us to be the tiny band of wanderers that we were. Funny, even when you forget, the Wheel is always working in your life. Sitting there in my rocker, alone, while Dick slept upstairs and the other two boys were at work in Digger’s store, I was grateful for that invisible energy that moves us. The Wheel, turning and turning, spinning on forever, relentlessly, moving us inch by inch sometimes, always in the direction of home, in the direction we all want to go, regardless.

Timber and Digger pulled up in front of the house in Digger’s truck, and as I watched them climb out and walk toward the veranda steps I saw how strong they’d become, how purposefully they walked, and how determined their faces were. I saw how far they’d travelled around the Wheel. North. They stood in the north now. Together. They stood together in the place of spirituality—and therefore, wisdom.

“We know what we gotta do for Dick,” Digger said as they entered the room.

“I know you do,” I said. “I know you do.”

I
T WAS LIKE A CARNIVAL
. Every day for a week we went to the movies again, and it was like a carnival. We sat in the kitchen with the newspaper spread across the table and we talked about what we wanted to see that day, just like we used to do at the mission. There were the usual good-natured debates and arguments, generally started by Digger, who although determined to see Dick through whatever torment he was going through, was still gruffly rebellious about anything soft or romantic. Dick responded like he always had: excited, antsy as a kid. He seemed happy to have us all back in the swing of things and he didn’t feel as heavy as he had. He still sat all slack-jawed at the movies like he had the very first time, only the rise of a hand with popcorn or a mickey showing he was breathing at all. We saw
Pretty Woman
,
Reversal of Fortune
,
Total Recall
,
Cadillac Man
,
Bird on a Wire
,
The Hunt for Red October
, and
Hamlet
all in a glorious splash of sound and light and colour. It was amazing. Amazing as a carnival for the senses, and even if we didn’t see any films that moved us spectacularly, we saw ones that told us again about the particular grace of the movies: to lift you up and away. We were happy.

I carved every morning, and as the man in the chair took shape and form and substance beneath my hands, I saw little of that moment in Dick those days. Little. But now and again, you
could see it rise in him. See it in the way his shoulders slumped or in the woebegone way he looked at you. We didn’t worry, though. Digger and I took turns sitting up with him. We’d turn the volume down low in his room and watch whatever he wanted to watch, and when he nodded off now and again I made sure to make no sudden moves, no sounds that would disturb the haven of sleep he’d wandered into. When he awoke he would see me in my chair and grin like a kid caught sneaking cookies, and turn to the film again. I saw no ghosts in that room on those nights, and I knew that he was glad for the company. When morning came, I’d cover him with a blanket and leave him snoring gently in his large overstuffed armchair and head off to do my work.

Then came
Ironweed
.

“What do you want to watch tonight?” I asked as we looked through his shelves. We were going to sit in the living room with all our friends and watch movies. Granite, Margo, and James had come over for a supper of Chinese food and we were all looking forward to seeing something on the big screen with the theatre sound.

“Don’t matter,” he said. “Some I seen, but there’s a lot I ain’t got around to yet.”

His shelves were frightening. There was no order. Movies were stacked on top of each other, leaned crookedly, and piled haphazardly so you had to tilt your head to read the titles. He had everything: westerns, horror, science fiction, comedy, drama, and even some foreign films with undecipherable names.

“Here’s one,” I said. “
Ironweed
. Have you seen it?”

“Don’t think so. Who’s in it?”

“Jack Nicholson.”

“Which one’s he?”

“Hmm. Remember the one about the hitman who falls in love with the lady hitman?”

“Yeah. That was funny.”

“That’s him.”

“Okay, sounds good to me. Let’s watch that one.”

The others were all settled into their favourite chairs waiting for us when we got back downstairs. Dick settled in next to Amelia and I handed the tape off to Digger, who had assumed the role of machine operator from the very first time we watched movies at home. Then I sat on a large pillow on the floor with my back pressed against the wall.

“What are we watching?” Margo asked, her hand in Granite’s.

“
Ironweed
,” Dick said. “With Jack Nicholson.”

“Oh, that sounds good. I like him,” she said and smiled.

“Me too,” James said. “Have you seen this one, Granite?”

“Yes. It’s quite good.”

“What’s it about?” Amelia asked.

“Well, it’s about—”

“Geez, will you cool it, Rock?” Digger said. “I don’t always gotta know the story before I see the flick.”

“Okay,” Granite said. “But it’s good.”

“Thank you for the friggin’ analysis,” Digger said, “but now it’s showtime, folks.”

He flicked off all the lights and the room fell into the theatrelike ambience we all loved. Digger had set the sound up perfectly and we were all lost with the first flare of light on the screen and the crash of sound. The film was jaw dropping. It told the story of three back-alley drunks in a small city near the end of the Depression, and it told it so accurately that I thought I saw myself there as I had been not so long ago. It was bleak as only a street life can be. It was heavy like the woe we had all carried. It was hard. It was tough. It was gritty and it was as on the nose as anything I’d ever seen except the life itself. When it ended we all sat there, unmoving and silent, until the tape reached its end. Digger got up to shut it off and turn on the lights. We stared at each other. No one said a word.

“I gotta go,” Dick said.

“Me too, so hurry up, pal,” Digger said.

“No,” Dick said, his chin trembling and a frightened look in his eyes. “I mean, I gotta go.”

“Where?” Amelia asked.

“Somewhere. Anywhere,” Dick said. “I just gotta go.”

“A walk, you mean?” Amelia asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, a walk,” he said.

“Hang on. I’ll go with you,” I said.

He looked at me then and I saw the man in the chair.

“No,” he said. “I gotta go alone. I don’t want no one comin’ with me. I don’t want no one followin’ me neither.”