The Digger's Game (7 page)

“Where’s the guy live, you need ten dollars’ worth of gas,” she said, “New York City?”

“The tank’s almost empty,” the Digger said. He pushed the plate away. “I’ll have some coffee if it won’t do my heart any harm.”

“It won’t help it,” she said, pouring the coffee. “Of course I keep forgetting, the way that car uses gas you probably couldn’t go more’n twenty miles on a tank anyway.”

“You know,” the Digger said, “I could get ten dollars easier, I was to go over the Poor Clares and beat them out of it. And they haven’t even got ten dollars, to hear them talk, although I see they probably got a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of real estate. Jesus Christ, are you gonna start in on the car again?”

The Digger drove a 1968 Olds Ninety-eight convertible.
It was dark grey and had a red leather interior. It had factory air conditioning.

“I’m just being practical,” she said, “I don’t think you need such an expensive car.”

“I had that car two years,” the Digger said. “For two years you’ve been being practical about it. Two years and I haven’t spent a dime on it except for tires and gas and stuff. Not one dime. I think that’s pretty good. That’s a good car. It’s well built, just like you. No repair bills.”

“It’s still a great big car,” she said. “It burns a lot of gas and you have to buy high-test. I drive it, the one day a year I’m lucky enough to get the car, it’s very hard for me to drive. If you’d drive a smaller car, I could have a Volkswagen.”

“It is a great big car,” the Digger said. “As you just remind me for a couple hours, I’m a great big man. I need a big car. I can’t get in one of them puddle-jumpers. I get in, I can’t move. They’re not built for a man my size. I’d break the seat down in a week. Friday night, I was in one of them Jaguars. I couldn’t move. I thought to God, I’m going to die before I get out of this thing and they’ll have to bury me in it.”

“Who do you know, owns a Jaguar?” she said. “You told me you were working Friday night.”

“I did and I was,” the Digger said. “I went out, after.”

“For what?” she said.

“To see a guy,” the Digger said. “I went down the Saratoga and this guy I know, he wanted to show me his new car, is all.”

“Jerry,” she said, “you worry me. The weight’s going to kill you. You spend way too much money. You drink
too much. You got friends I never see, I don’t know their names, this guy with a Jaguar. What’ll I do, Jerry, with four kids in school? What’ll I do if something happens to you?”

“Ride around in a big car every day and enjoy yourself,” the Digger said. “How the hell do I know what you’re gonna do, be doing when I’m dead. I’ll be dead. Won’t be nobody dipping in the house money, at least, which I notice is up around sixty bucks a week. I’m always dipping into my dough for twenty more around Thursday, after I go and give you the forty Monday. And do I give you a load of shit about that? I do not.”

“Don’t you talk to me about what it costs to run this house,” she said. “If I spend forty-five dollars a week on food, most of it goes down your gullet. The kids go off to school on ten cents’ worth of Wheaties, wearing cheap shoes I can get for them in the Basement, and if Paul ever sees a pair of pants Tony didn’t wear for a year first, he won’t know what to do with them.”

“Well,” the Digger said, “at least he won’t have to scrape the come offa them.”

“Jerry!” she said.

“Okay,” the Digger said, “okay.”

“He’s your son,” she said.

“He’s your son too,” the Digger said.

“I don’t think it’s a mother’s place to talk to a boy about sex,” she said.

“I didn’t say it was,” the Digger said. “No point in it anyway, it’d be like telling a priest about the Apostle’s Creed.”

“It would be now,” she said. “I told you a long time ago, the time’d come to talk to him.”

“About six months ago,” the Digger said. “He’s been
coming in fast every night for about a year or so, ‘Hi Mum, Hi Dad,’ don’t stop to talk to you, runs right upstairs just like he did last night, if he comes down he’s wearing different pants. Spends about two hours a day in the flush. Why you think he does that, does them things, huh?”

“It’s your fault,” she said, “if he is, it’s your fault. You just remember that.”

“Fault?” the Digger said. “What’s this, fault? I’ll take the credit, that’s what you mean, although I got to say, I don’t think I deserve it all, you know what I mean. He takes after his mother a little bit too.” She did not answer him. She took the plate off the table and got up and went to the sink. “How come you get embarrassed when I say something like that, there isn’t anybody else around?” the Digger said.

Her shoulders sagged. For a while she did not answer. Then without facing him she said, “Jerry, I do the best I can, I really do. I hunt around until I can get things on sale. But you come down here, you’ve got to have the eggs and the blood pudding I have to shop for special at the delicatessen, two-fifty-six a pound and it’s really terrible for you, and you eat three pounds a week. You’ve got the French Shriners that you pay the full price for. Off you go whenever you like in your air-conditioned convertible big car. Can you understand, does that maybe make some sense to you? The trouble is that I’d do anything to make you happy. I love you.
And you know it
. That’s what the trouble is.”

“Lemme try it for the four hundredth time,” the Digger said. “Let’s see if you can get it through your head this time. I bought the car used. The air conditioning was in it. I agree with you, it’s silly. You put the
top down, what good’s the air? You leave the top up all the time, what do you want a convertible for? The guy had the car before me, he didn’t. He wanted the air for rainy days and the top for nice days. Okay, he was buying, it, he could have it the way he liked. I didn’t put it in. You take it the way you find it. I wouldn’t’ve saved no money, I had the air taken out. It would’ve cost me money. So I leave it in. Although I think now, I knew how much music it was gonna cost me, I would’ve paid the extra dough to take it out.

“The shoes,” he said. “It’s the same with everything I wear. I got trouble getting fitted. I don’t go the King-Size Shop, I have to scrounge around for hours, trying to find something I can get into, doesn’t look like it was to wear for going out to get shot. Okay, you go down the Basement, you get the deals. I haven’t got the time. I got to go to work and get the dough you spend onna deals.”

“You could do it,” she said. “Unusual sizes’re very easy to find. Easier’n the stuff I’m looking for, that, everybody’s got kids. It’s just the same thing as the car, that’s all. You don’t want to. Money to spend on Jerry’s just money, and Jerry’s got it. Something his family needs, Jerry wants to know right off, how come and how much?”

“Where’d you learn this?” the Digger said. “You didn’t know all these songs, I married you. I looked you over pretty good. I didn’t hear nothing like this. Now you got that trap of yours working every minute. I wished I knew what the hell happened to you, made you different.”

“Some things about you,” she said, “changed a little in sixteen years. I used to be able to go to Confession.”

“You still can,” the Digger said. “Two blocks down, three over. It’s a church thing, you’ll recognize it right off. Course it don’t sound the same, there’s likely to be some hairy-looking bastard running around talking English like a Protestant, but it’s right there. Every Saturday, Confessions three to five and seven to eight thirty, unless Father Alioto’s got tickets to the ball game. Then seven to seven fifteen.”

“I can’t go to Confession,” she said. “I can’t tell them what we been doing.”

“Oh for Christ sake,” the Digger said, “wake up or something. Things’ve changed. Nobody pays any attention, that birth control thing. That’s just the ghinny Pope raving around. Them guys, they must feel like they’re running a drugstore, everybody coming in, one way or the other. They’re used to hearing it.”

“I’m not used to saying it,” she said. “It’ll bother
me
. What if he asks me, Jerry, what do I say?”

“Look him straight inna screen,” the Digger said. “Tell him, ‘The foam.’ Then you say, ‘What difference it make? My husband don’t like the rubber boots, you take the Pill you’re liable to grow a tail or something, and I ain’t letting them put one of them things inside
me
.’ Then ask him, ‘This how you get your cookies, Father? Asking people?’ That’ll slow him down.”

“Of course I’ll also be telling him,” she said, “my great Catholic husband don’t want any more children. Doesn’t believe in sex for that any more. Just something he likes to do, like bowling or something.”

“You can tell him that too,” the Digger said. “Matter of fact, tell him I tried both and I think it over, I hadda give up one or the other, it’d be bowling. I see the ghinny Pope coming around with a couple hundred a
week, the next kid to eat and wear and go to school on, and some more for a bigger house so I can do what I like to do without the whole goddamned world looking on, well then I’ll say, ‘Thanks, Pope,’ and maybe we’ll think about having another kid. Otherwise, my way.”

“If you didn’t spend every cent on yourself,” she said, “we wouldn’t need the extra. I know lots of families that haven’t got anywhere near what you make, and they live much better. Their kids’re swimming in the ocean this week. Our kids’re over the MDC pool. They go to the Cape, the kids go to camp, and my friends’re all nicely dressed. I never have an extra dime, and when I do, you come back and take it. You and your wonderful friends, that’s where the money goes.
You’ve
got the big convertible.
You’re
going to the track.
You’re
going to New York, to see the Giants.
We
can’t afford twelve hundred dollars for
three weeks
at the Cape, but
you’ve
got a thousand dollars to go to Las Vegas. How much did you lose out there, Jerry, in four days by yourself?”

“All of it,” the Digger said. “Just like you said.”

“How much more did you lose?” she said.

“We been through all of this before,” the Digger said. “I told you, I was taking a hundred bucks extra. I didn’t bring no checks with me. That’s all I took. So all right, I’m a bastard. Get off my back.”

“Eleven hundred dollars,” she said. “A hundred less’n we couldn’t afford for three weeks. All on yourself. Oh, Jerry, I think that’s selfish. I think that’s very selfish. I thought it was the limit when you paid out a hundred and seventy dollars for the season’s ticket to the Patriots, but at least that’ll give you something for it. I would’ve been able to see it, even, if you’d got more of
them so you could take the boys once in a while. But this, this is the worst thing you ever did, Jerry, the absolute worst thing.”

“Good,” the Digger said. “That’s about the twentieth worst thing I remember. Now maybe you’ll just howl about Vegas all the time and give me a change from the car and the clothes and all.”

“Those were the worst until this one,” she said. “Now you’ve topped them. I hope you don’t think of a way to top this. I don’t understand it. I never will. How could you come from the same mother and father as Paul, and be so different? So inconsiderate and mean. That, that I will never understand.”

“Paul is a great guy,” the Digger said. “I agree with you.”

“Couldn’t you,” she said, “couldn’t you just try to be more like him? Couldn’t you do that?”

“Well,” the Digger said, “I could. Course I’d have to get rid of you and them kids first, him being a priest and all, I don’t think I could qualify. But I’ll give it some thought, yeah.”

“Think about us,” she said. “Think about your family once in a while, instead of just yourself. What’s happened to us, Jerry, think about that. If you figure it out, tell me, will you? Just tell me?”

The Digger stared at his coffee cup until after she had left the kitchen. “So far,” he said to the cup, “so far it’s really been a great day. I can hardly wait for the rest of it.”

A
TAN STUCCO WALL
, eight feet high and capped with red tiles, shields the Church of the Holy Sepulchre from the noise of very light traffic on Larkspur Street in Weston. The driveway openings in the wall were built to accommodate LaSalles and Zephyrs.

Before noon the Digger eased the broad Oldsmobile through, reminding himself that he had managed the entrance before without gouging a fender.

The Digger parked at the edge of the oval drive, brushing the right fender with the heavy green foliage of the rhododendrons. Blood-colored hedge roses, pruned severely square, bloomed along the inside wall. Ponderous hydrangeas in white wooden tubs drooped before the roses. The air was crowded with fat honeybees around the flowers. On the lawns an underground sprinkling system put up low, whispering fountains in the sunlight; a few corpulent robins walked in the spray, shaking their feathers now and then. In the shade of tall black maples at the end of the lawns, a silky silver Weimaraner arose and padded off toward the rear of the rectory. Keeping a close watch for bees, the Digger walked to the door of the stucco rectory, pushed the bell and sighed.

Mrs. Herlihy was about to turn sixty. She was gradually putting on flesh. She dressed in blue, simple suits, and might have been the hostess of a small tearoom known for its delicate pastries. Escorting the Digger toward the study she said again, “You could be twins.”