The Digger's Game (10 page)

“ ‘Calling me “Monsignor” doesn’t ease the pain, Coughlin,’ I said,” Paul said, “and I paid him. That was the last time Coughlin saw anything the archdiocese had to hand out. That was the most expensive fourteen-hundred-dollar funeral that devil ever ran, I can guarantee you that.”

“I thought Dad’s insurance covered his funeral,” the Digger said.

“It did,” Paul said. “He had five with the Hibernians, too. A thousand from the union. Social Security was a little over two hundred.”

“So that didn’t come out of you,” the Digger said.

“Sorry,” Paul said. “I got the canceled check for his funeral, if you’d like to see it. The insurance went to Ma. I never asked her for it. She had nothing else. No Social Security from the Poor Clares, no retirement either. That insurance was all she had.”

“Bastards,” the Digger said.

“If they had it,” Paul said, “guys like you’d have to pay for it. Since they don’t, guys like me have to pay for it. No complaint: the Church didn’t treat Ma like it should’ve, and that was bad, but it treated me a lot better’n it probably should’ve, and I took it. So she washed the floor and she walked on it and she slipped and she broke her hip. How many years’d she done that?”

“Ever since I can remember,” the Digger said.

“Sure,” Paul said, “you take it in stride. The hospital was thirty-three hundred dollars that I paid,
plus
whatever she paid.”

“Hey,” the Digger said.

“That was before the nursing home,” Paul said. “Flynn runs a good home, as you say. He also charges all outdoors. In two months of drugs and special nurses
and the man who cuts toenails she went right through all the money in the bank that I hadn’t asked her for. Then I started writing checks again. Every week, two-fifty-three, two-fifty-seven, two-fifty-six. I figure, thirty-five hundred dollars or so. Okay, want half?”

“No,” the Digger said.

“You’re sure,” Paul said. “Eleven for Pa’s funeral, fourteen for hers, thirty-five hundred for her being sick, in the home, plus the thirty-three I paid the hospital, you sure you don’t want half of the Hibernians?”

“I didn’t know,” the Digger said. “I figured, Ma’s probably pissed off at me, I went inna can. I didn’t know you spent all that dough.”

“What is it you want, Jerry?” Paul said.

“Money,” the Digger said.

“That,” Paul said, “that, I know. When Aggie told me where you were, I went inside the Shrine and offered up a prayer. Before I saw Father Francis. I asked God to grant you a safe return. I also asked Him to keep you out of games you couldn’t afford. I even asked Him to let you win. I was praying for me. I said, ‘God, you’re not paying attention. He’s going to get in trouble. Please get him out.’ ”

“Father Doherty,” the Digger said, “I got some bad news for you about the power of prayer.”

“How much?” Paul said.

“Eighteen thousand dollars,” the Digger said.

The ship’s clock ticked several times.

“That,” Paul said, “is a very impressive sum of money.”

“I think so,” the Digger said. “I know I was impressed. I didn’t really know, you know, how bad it was. Then I get back to the room, and I add everything
up. Well, I had an idea. But I add it up, I was, I was impressed. I felt like somebody kicked me in the guts, is how I felt.”

The clock ticked several more times.

“I can understand that,” Paul said. “Of course the question is, where’re you going to get the money?”

“Well,” the Digger said, “I
got
some of it.”

“How much?” Paul said.

“About two thousand,” the Digger said.

“That leaves you sixteen thousand to get,” Paul said.

“That’s the way it come out when I did the figuring onna way over here,” the Digger said.

“Where do you plan to get it?” Paul said.

“I been running a little short of ideas,” the Digger said. “I know where to get sixteen, but it’s probably gonna get me in a deep tub of shit. That’s why I come out here. That don’t appeal to me. Now you say, you remind me, all them times I come out here, I’m inna bind. Right. But I don’t
like
asking you, you know? I know you’re pretty sick of it. I’m a big pain in the ass. But it isn’t, I don’t
plan
all them things, you know? I just got a way, it seems like I can stay out of trouble just so long, and then there I am, in trouble again. And here I am again. I had some way, getting that dough, Paul, I wouldn’t be here. But I don’t. I haven’t got any way of getting it, won’t get me in worse trouble’n I’m in already.”

“Who,” Paul said, “to whom do you owe all this money? Forgive me, I’m innocent. Is it some casino? I never knew anybody in a scrape like this.”

“Well,” the Digger said, “actually, probably, I don’t know yet. Some loan shark.”

“Fellow in a black sedan,” Paul said, “cigar.”

“Could be,” the Digger said. “I know one, looks like that. But see, I don’t know who’s got the markers, yet. I thought somebody’d be in before this. I still owe it. It’s some shy.”

“How much time will he let you have,” Paul said, “to raise this money?”

“Time?” the Digger said. “He’ll let me have the rest of my life, is what he’ll let me have. That’s the way he wants it. It’s me, I don’t want the time. I figure the vig goes me four and five hundred. Probably five, maybe I hold him off for four, it’s somebody it turns out I know.”

“Four hundred dollars a month,” Paul said.

“Four hundred a
week
,” the Digger said. “I got two grand. That’s either vig plus sixteen off the nut, or it’s five weeks to raise the eighteen. See, that’s what I come out here, find out, what do I do, what do I plan on? I dunno how I use the two.”

“Say it,” Paul said.

“Say what?” the Digger said.

“Say what you want me to do,” Paul said. “Those other times I listened to your story and then I said I’d try to help you, and you said: ‘Thanks,’ and I started making telephone calls and presuming on friendships, trying to find a way out for you. This time I want you to say right out what you want me to do. I think it might do you good to hear yourself say it.”

“I want you to give me sixteen thousand dollars,” the Digger said.

“Not
lend
,” Paul said, “
give
.”

“Paul,” the Digger said, “if I could borrow sixteen, if
I could go somewhere and get it, I wouldn’t be here. No, I admit it, I didn’t come here, I’m not looking for no loan.”

“You want me to give you sixteen thousand dollars,” Paul said, “just like that. Sixteen thousand dollars.”

“Yeah,” the Digger said.

“No,” Paul said.

The clock ticked.

The Digger cleared his throat. “Paul,” he said, “you know, maybe you don’t know, you know what this means. It don’t matter, what shy got the paper, you know? They all work the same way. They’re going to come around and say, where’s the money? And I got to have the money for him, is all. Otherwise, well, they got, every one of them has got a guy or so with a Louisville Slugger, come around and break your kneecaps for you or something. I mean that, Paul. I could get my knees broken.”

“I believe it,” Paul said. “You convinced me, a long, long time ago, that if anybody knows how those things’re done, you do.”

“Paul,” the Digger said, “I don’t like the idea, you know? Getting the knees busted up, it don’t appeal to me.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t,” Paul said.

“Furthermore,” the Digger said, “furthermore, I’m not
getting
the knees broke. That’s how much it don’t appeal to me: I’m not gonna sit around and wait for it to happen. I’m gonna do something before it happens.”

“That seems to have a threatening sound to it,” Paul said.

“You can take it any way you want,” the Digger said. “One way or the other, I’m getting that dough. You
don’t give it to me, I’m getting it some other way. But I am getting it. I don’t need the kind of grief a man gets if he don’t.”

“Well, now,” Paul said, “let’s see. There aren’t an awful lot of ways you can do that. Seems to me as though about the only thing you can do is go to a bank and get yourself a mortgage man.”

“That’s one of the first things I think of,” the Digger said. “I can hock the Bright Red. Then I think, I’ll be lucky, somebody’ll give me ten onna place. So that means: the house, I got to hock the house. What’s that good for? I suppose I could probably get five onna house, I was to go out and look for it. So, I’m still short, and not only that, what’s Aggie got then? Nothing. So I think, I say, I’m not gonna do it. It’s not Aggie and the kids’ fault, I need that kind of dough. It’s something I did. I can’t go out and do that to them. I gotta keep them things free.”

“Very touching,” Paul said. “Of course it doesn’t leave you much room to maneuver, but there it is.”

“There it is,” the Digger said. “I’m not looking for no credit, Paul. I’m just telling you, I’m not getting no more mortgages. So that leaves me, that leaves me with some of the other things I think of to do.”

“Which are?” Paul said.

“Well,” the Digger said, “I don’t know as I oughta answer you that one. See, some of them could be kind of risky, and you might get nervous.”

“Now that,” Paul said, “that is very definitely a threat. As little as I know about being threatened, I can recognize that. Just what do you plan to do, Jerry? Rob the poor box down at Saint Hilary’s?”

“What I got planned,” the Digger said, “it’s none of
your business, Paul. You don’t want to help? Okay, you don’t want to help. I give you credit, you lay it right onna line. You don’t gimme the long face and say, ‘Jeez, Jerry, I don’t have it.’ Man knows where he stands with you, at least. Until the kneecaps go, anyway.”

“I have got it,” Paul said.

“There you go,” the Digger said, “of course you got it. You got the fancy dogs running around and the hair, dyeing the hair, the whole bit. The rugs, you got to have it. That’s why I come to you. But I give you credit, you don’t shit a man. I ask you and you say, ‘Fuck you.’ Okay, fuck me. But I give you that, you put it right down there, no bullshit about old Paul. Way to go, Paul
baby
. Course they’re not your kneecaps, but that don’t matter, does it.”

“Oh come off it, Jerry,” Paul said. “None of this belongs to me and you know it. It all belonged to Labelle before me, and it’ll belong to somebody else after me. None of this is mine, Jerry.”

“But you’re still all right, right, Paul?” the Digger said. “Long as Paul’s all right, that’s all that matters.”

“The car’s mine,” Paul said. “The clothes’re mine. I’ve got a couple of very small bank accounts, when you think about how long I’ve had to work to get them. I couldn’t live two years on what I’ve got in the bank. The rest belongs to the Church.”

“You got the place at Onset,” the Digger said.

“I have,” Paul said. “I paid fifteen-five for that place seven years ago. I’ve reduced the principal considerably since then, mostly by putting money into it that I might’ve liked to spend on something else. It’s about twenty-eight thousand now, with appreciation and inflation and the improvements I’ve made. I owe three
thousand on the note, now. So, in equity, I’ve got twenty-five thousand dollars, say. About that.”

“That’s what I was saying,” the Digger said.

“Those things,” Paul said, “American Express’ll trust me for a month and I’ve got a new set of Walter Hagens. I’ve got five thousand dollars’ worth of AT and T. I spent twenty-four years of my life grubbing up that very little pile. If I retire at sixty-five, the way I expect I’ll have to when I get to be sixty-five, I’ve got nineteen years left to add to it. If I can stay on till I’m seventy, or don’t die or something before then, I’m precisely halfway along. Otherwise, I’m on the decline.

“Now, what is it you want, Jerry?” Paul said. “You want those twenty-four years to pay for three or four days of you making a goddamned ass of yourself. That’s what your position is. You’re forty-two years old and you’re still acting like you never grew up, and you expect me to pay for it. You want me to turn over everything I’ve got, to you, and start over. I won’t do it.

“That house in Onset is my retirement home. I’ve got to pay it off before I get on a pension, because I won’t be able to carry more than the taxes when I retire. Maybe not even those. I’d better not live too long, is what I’m saying. If I mortgage it now, I pay off some bookies in Nevada, I won’t have it when I quit. I just won’t. I’ll have to sell it and throw the money into the common pot of some home for drooling old priests and spend the rest of my years getting chivvied about by jovial nuns. No thanks. This time you want more’n I can afford.”

“I’m sorry I came,” the Digger said.

“You’re nowhere near as sorry as I am,” Paul said. “That doesn’t mean I’m not sorry you got yourself into
this mess, though. Now, you told me what you wanted me to do, and I told you I won’t do it. And you’re mad. If you’re interested, I’ll tell you what I will do, and you can take it or leave it. If you’d rather be mad, you can be mad. Suit yourself.”

The Digger had started to get up. He sat down again. “I’m desperate,” he said, “I’ll take anything.”

“Oh, I know that,” Paul said, “but this is a little more than that, taking something. This is a deal. A deal, you have to give something, am I right?”

“Yup,” the Digger said.

“I’ll give you my Limited,” Paul said. “I’ve got three thousand dollars in a special bank account, what I got for Christmas and Easter and baptisms and weddings over the past few years. There isn’t going to be any more of that now, the pastor’s special get-rich-slow scheme, but that’s the way it goes. The Electra’s good for at least another year, and my Limited’s probably not as important to me as your kneecaps are to you. Or to me, for that matter.

“Now,” Paul said, “you can do whatever you like with the money. You can buy seven more weeks, of whatever it is, or you can reduce the principal. Just as I did on my house. It’s completely up to you.”

“I’m not hocking the place,” the Digger said.

“Jerry,” Paul said, “I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m telling you something. You can have three thousand dollars, free, gratis and for nothing. You don’t have to pay it back.”