Ragged Company Read online

  “Everyone but me,” I said flatly.

  He turned to face me. I’d inherited the height of my father and Mac was a hand span shorter, but in all the years we’d known each other he’d had a razor in his brown eyes that cut down the difference. He honed it now as he smoked and regarded me. “All right,” he said. “I know that burying your father has you feeling all morbid and lost. But death is death. It’s a hard fact, sure, but you move on. You move on. Why? Because you’re not the one in the ground. Talk to me! Let me in for fuck sake, Gran.”

  He turned, tossed his cigarette into the lake, and stared across the water. Birds. Water. Wind. Silence.

  It had been thirty years. From the very beginning, on our first day of journalism school, he’d recognized me for what I was—the vague face at the edge of the crowd. One of those people who get so used to a life at the edges that they remain stranded on the limits forever. On our third day he’d sat beside me, winked, and slowly began to bring me off the sidelines. It was the inherent goodness in Mac Maude that brought him to my side, and it was the same virtue that kept him there all this time. We’d graduated together, got our first reporter’s jobs together, and worked our way up on the same newspaper for twenty-six years. When he left the beat for an editor’s post and I moved to writing national columns, he became my editor. Before all the awards and accolades that came my way in those next years, he had prowled my copy relentlessly, many times finding the turn of detail that altered strong phrases into memorable ones. I had trusted him. Not simply in the professional sense but as a friend as well.

  “There’s a song in every board and nail,” I said quietly.

  “What’s that, Gran?” he asked, turning.

  “Oh, just something my father said a long time ago.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  I looked back at the house and began to explain. Our secrets are our greatest possessions. We store them like pocket treasures, reassured by their weight, their heft, and the knowledge that though they may be smoothed by time, they bear the same stories, the same unrelenting hold, the timeless chiaroscuro they were born in. I had no knowledge of how they might alter with exposure to light.

  “My father was never much of a poet. That whole boards-and-nails riff was the most poetic thing I ever heard him say. So in my childish hope, I believed him. All my life I held on to the idea that my ancestors spoke to me through everything. I never knew them, you know. When I was born I was the only son of an only son. No cousins, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, or even grandparents—they’d both died before I can remember them. And I wanted them. Just like every other kid at school that was surrounded by family. So the idea that mine were speaking to me became the link I needed.

  “When I held my high school diploma I swear I heard them praising me. When I got accepted to J-school it was like I heard chuckles of pleasure. And when my mother died the year we graduated it was consolation pouring from the timbers. When Jenny and I spent the night together for the first time as man and wife I heard songs of celebration. And I believed, Mac, that when Caitlin was an infant and she’d cry at night, that those same voices gave her the comfort I used to get.

  “That crazy childish hope held me up through everything, and if the job got to be too much I’d come here and I’d hear them tell me that I could always cope, overcome, prevail. And I always did. But when Jen and Caitlin were killed in that crash, I came home absolutely needing those voices—and I got nothing. Nothing. It was just a big empty house—and I hated it.

  “When Dad died—same thing. Nada. Zippo. Zilch. So why don’t I want it? Because it’s still just a big, empty house.”

  He watched me with those deep brown eyes through the entire length of my outpouring. Smoking. He looked up at the house and studied its roofline. “And let me guess—you’re leaving the paper too?” he growled.

  He could always read me well. This astuteness did not surprise me. Instead, it was comforting. There’s a risk that comes with being known, and its most marked form is the loss of subterfuge.

  “Yes,” was all I could say.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m tired. I feel like the story of my life is finished.”

  “So what will you do?”

  I turned. I’d never really had a plan, just a wish to be away. The geography of this lake was suddenly foreign. “Oh, I don’t know. Inhabit someone else’s stories, I suppose.”

  Double Dick

  AT FIRST, the dyin’ of the lights scared me. They went down real slow an’ it was like that feelin’ just before a seizure when you can feel yourself slippin’ away into the darkness. I was gonna run but I’da had to climb over Digger an’ he wouldn’t like me much for doin’ that. So I just sat there waitin’ for the big black that comes, knowin’ I’d end up on the floor buckin’ an’ sawin’ away like mad an’ we’d all get kicked out into the cold again. But it didn’t come for me. Instead, the screen lit up in a big flash of colour an’ light. Big blindin’ kind of light. Then, some music. Sittin’ there washed in that light an’ music was amazin’. There’s a word I heard one time—glorious, it was. I had to ask One For The Dead what it meant on accounta she always tells me about words an’ things I can’t figure out on my own, an’ she said that it meant that somethin’ was “jam-packed full of wonder.” When she told me that I kinda knew what it meant but I never felt what it meant until right then in that theatre. Jam-packed full of wonder. Timber sat straight up in his seat starin’ at the screen with his mouth hung open a little. Digger kinda scrunched down in his seat but he was glued to the screen too, squintin’ real hard at it with his jaw restin’ on his fist. Beside me, One For The Dead sat forward in her seat, leanin’ on her elbows, not movin’ at all. Wow. Sittin’ there in a light that felt like warm butter an’ a sound like big giant hands on me was glorious. Plum fuckin’ glorious.

  It was like someone dreamin’ an’ throwin’ that dream up on the screen. There was little words to read to help you follow the story but I don’t read so I just watched. I watched the faces. There was so many amazin’ faces. You could see right into them if you stared hard enough. Me, I got right into that on accounta on the street you don’t never get to see no faces. Not really. Rounders call people starin’ at you bein’ “gunned off ” an’ they don’t like it when you do that. An’ the Square Johns don’t like it much neither when they see you starin’ at them. But here you could stare an’ stare an’ stare. Seemed like there was lots of sad people in this movie an’ the looks on their faces made me feel sad too. I took a big knock outta my bottle then ’cause sad always gets me goin’. It felt good. I didn’t wanna be drunk, though, and that was kinda strange. I only wanted to be awake to see all this, be warm an’ with my friends.

  You never know when a dream is gonna end. It just ends an’ when all of a sudden this one was over I wanted back in. I’d have paid again but we all trooped out to the front. Timber an’ Digger started scannin’ the sign an’ I knew we were gonna see somethin’ else. None of us was drunk. That was weird. Two hours with a bottle an’ none of us was even what you’d call tipsy. We was sure warm, though, an’ I looked out the front doors to see that wind sending paper an’ cups an’ stuff flying along. I was glad I was where I was then.

  “Did you like that?” One For The Dead asked, givin’ my elbow a little squeeze.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Couldn’t read it, but I liked it anyhow.”

  She grinned. “That’s good. Any idea what it was about?”

  “You mean you don’t know neither?” I asked, surprised ’cause she’s so smart most times.

  She laughed. “Well, I have an idea but I wondered if you had an idea of your own.”

  “Well,” I said slowly, “it was like someone dreamin’ a real sad dream about people who are real sad too.”

  She looked at me with a twinkle in her eye and said, “Well, that’s about the best answer I think I could have ever heard.”

  “How come people sell their dreams?” I asked, so
sudden I wondered where it came from.

  She grinned again. “Well, Dick, I guess some people carry their dreams around in their heads so long it gets so they can’t stand it any longer and they make it into a story so others can share that dream. In a way it sets them free to dream other dreams. Bigger ones, maybe. Happier ones, too.”

  “Which one we gonna see next?” I asked.

  “Well, Timber and Digger are working that out right now,” she said.

  Digger didn’t look too happy. “Aw, he won the fucking coin toss,” he said when we walked over, “no two out of three or nothing. So I guess we’re gonna see this one called Big.”

  “Well,” Timber said, “it’s got a better ring to it than I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.”

  “Least there’d be some action,” Digger said, “and a fucking story. What the hell was that we just saw, anyway?”

  “Someone sold a dream,” I said, “to set them free.”

  Digger just looked at me hard for a moment. “You ain’t getting none of mine, pal,” he said finally, pulling his coat tighter around his bottle.

  One For The Dead went an’ got our tickets an’ we headed on into the next movie. There was four people in this one but One For The Dead headed right down the aisle an’ into the row right in front of the same guy we saw the last one with. “Hey, mister,” she said, “you aren’t following me by any chance, are you?”

  The guy just goes, “Ahem,” an’ starts playin’ with his buttons. The lights started to go down an’ we sat, the three of us takin’ big knocks from our bottles an’ the guy behind us goes “Ahem” again an’ I’m gone into another person’s dream.

  Granite

  MY WORLD had become a movie house. The real world had little to offer me anymore. I’d settled into a small condo in a fashionable area, surrounded by books and music and the few things I’d saved from the stone house. I had no need of memorabilia. Home had become a base of operations, somewhere to sleep, to deploy from, and the movies had become my only destination. I saw everything. There wasn’t a foot of film that didn’t contain the blessing of escape. I looked for films made by those I thought had something meaningful to say as much as I chased down the fantastic, the magical, the melodramatic, and the inane. Love, family, and the warmth of human kindness were all fine to watch, as were deception, wrath, and chicanery. Story, dreams thrown up on beams of light, made it all palatable. Imaginings. A life lived vicariously now far more comprehensible than a real one. I pulled the darkness of the movie house around me and settled into its depth, eager for the light of fiction. My solitude was my defining line and I accepted it as my lot as easily as I accepted the often skewed optimism of the movies.

  Wings of Desire was supposed to be a treat. Everything I’d read about it pointed to a brooding tale of redemption. When the four ragged people appeared beside me I was surprised, to say the least. Some lives have borders that we’re never meant to touch. When the bent old native woman spoke to me, it was only the rigidity of manners that allowed me to speak. I could have forced myself to move away entirely but I stayed, determined, I suppose, to display class and dignity although we were the only five in the theatre. When the bottles came out, I expected it, just as I expected drunken babble that would force my moving. But they became engrossed and not a word was said between them, and when they walked out into the lobby sober afterwards I was impressed. I silently wished them well and moved on into the next cinema, thinking how unpredictable life can be and how I’d never see anything quite like it again. So when they showed up for the screening of Big and assumed the same positions a row in front of me, I was astonished. When the old woman greeted me again I was embarrassed by my failure to form one word. The bottles appeared again and then a silent rapture almost as they all focused on the screen.

  They were a strange lot. The short one on the aisle seemed a pugnacious sort in the way he moved; short, fast movements like jabs thrown in your face. The man beside him was almost studious. Despite the toss-offs he wore and the surreptitious bottle beneath his coat, he had the squint-eyed look of J-school interns in their first week in the newsroom, overwhelmed but determined to see the workings beneath the chaotic surface. Medium height, craggy features beneath a long crewcut, he had a yardstick for a spine and a calculated regality that I sensed he struggled to maintain. Beside him, tall, stork-like, gaunt, and sickly looking, was a man impossible to age, his history tattooed on his features in crevices and marks offset by a boyish dependency on the others, told by the way he trailed clumsily behind them and stared around at them for direction. The woman was short, lean, bent a little by years with veritable walnuts for cheekbones. Long black hair framed her face beneath a thick grey wool toque. But it was the eyes that arrested me. Even in the hushed light of the cinema they seemed capable of snaring its ambiance and retransmitting it. Huge eyes, black, deep, pinched at the corners by twin sprays of wrinkles etched by a life I felt challenged to imagine. Eyes you could never slip a lie past. Obsidian, depthless eyes like those of jungle shamans, infused with equivalent degrees of clarity and mystery, shadow and light, religiosity and fervour. When they rose to leave, she turned and those eyes were aglitter with amusement. Pulling on her coat, she looked at me while I scanned the credits.

  “You wanna come for a drink?” she asked.

  “What?” I replied, stunned at the intrusion.

  “A drink. A snort, a shot of something good.”

  “No,” I said firmly.

  “Kind of a one-word wonder, aren’t you?”

  “Not generally.”

  “Oops, careful, mister, that was two words.” She grinned.

  “Yes,” I said, “well, I’m generally not one to talk after movies. Generally, I like to sit and think about what I’ve seen.”

  “Pretty general kind of guy,” she said with a smile.

  I laughed and it surprised me. “Yes, I suppose it sounds that way.”

  “We leavin’ or what?” the short one growled from the aisle. The three of them were standing there keeping a close eye and ear on the conversation.

  “In a moment, Digger,” she said quietly. “How about that drink, mister?”

  “I don’t drink in public,” I said. “Generally.”

  “But you drink?”

  “Yes. I have a glass or two at home at night.”

  “Them too,” she said with a nod at her friends. “Only difference is the size of the glass.”

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  “Cold out,” she said. “A nice shot would warm you up for the trip home.”

  “No. Thank you, no.”

  She looked squarely at me. “Okay,” she said finally. “Next time, then.”

  “Yes, next time,” I said, standing and shrugging into my coat.

  “Promise?”

  “Sure,” I said, pulling on my gloves and reaching out to shake her hand.

  She took it gently in both of hers, looked at me and nodded. “Okay. It’s a date.”

  She turned, walked to the aisle, and led the three men out of the cinema. I shook my head in wonder. Far from a defining encounter, it was more a random act of cosmic interference. I thought about the promise I’d made for a drink the next time. There’d be no next time. They’d likely never afford another film and the sheer number of movie houses in the city precluded another random meeting even if they could. I pulled my hat and scarf snug and headed out to flag a taxi home. In the distance, shuffling quickly around a corner, the four street people headed in the direction of whatever situation they called home. Odd, I thought, and forgot them.

  One For The Dead

  WE ARE PEOPLE of the dream, Grandma One Sky said. I remember that even though I was only five when she told me this, in the same year she passed on. Grandma was a storyteller and she would take me with her as she gathered roots and herbs or worked hide behind the little house on the furthest edge of Big River. She knew all the stories of our people, every legend, tale, and anecdote that made up our history. My afternoons wer
e filled by Nanabush the trickster, Weendigo the cannibal, water people, rock people, tree people, flying skeletons, and eerie tales brought back from the solitary trips of hunters and trappers. All of them came from dreams, she’d tell me. Dream life was just as important as earth life, and if I paid attention to what I lived in dreams I could learn more about my earth walk—real life. Visions were dream life. So too were pictographs—the rock paintings on the cliffs just above the waterline up north on the river—and the design work on ceremonial wear. Once I sobered up I remembered her words, and they are where the idea about movies came from.

  My boys—Digger, Timber, and Dick—were pointed out to me by dreams. Dick was the first one. I saw him running. Crashing down the street on those big feet of his with fear all over his face, and the farther he got from me the more he shrank and shrank until he became a little boy surrounded by bush and trees and rock. When I saw him at the Mission weeks later, I knew who he was. He was shy at first, more than he usually is, and sick. Trembling and nervous, he took the bottle I brought him in the park across the street gratefully, eagerly, even though I had to help him hold it to his mouth when he drank at first. It calmed him. When he lay down on the grass and slept, I watched over him, hiding the bottle in my coat. Later, I let him have the rest and made a run to the Mission for a cup of soup and a sandwich. He was really just a little boy, worn and tired and far from home. We spent that first night together by a fire in a hobo jungle in the woods beside an expressway and I told him stories till he slept. We’ve been together ever since.

  Timber was next. In my dream I saw him at a desk in a library in a kind of light that reminded me of a chapel. He was bent over, reading something that he held in trembling hands before laying it on the desk and walking out the door. In the dream I walked over to the desk and found a photograph of him and a woman and then I was behind him on the street where he walked and walked and walked. While Dick would always attach himself to the edge of a crowd, Timber stayed away from groups, and when I first saw him he sat in a corner of the park drinking alone, tossing pieces of bread to pigeons and squirrels. Dick and I sat a few yards away and watched him. He felt so heavy even across that space. When we walked over to share Dick’s bottle it was the need of liquor that kept him there more than the welcome of company. We met like that for a week before he’d tell us his name or say much of anything at all. Once he realized we were not intent on dragging him out of himself and that I could be trusted for bottle runs, he started to talk to us. Not much at first, a few words here and there, but eventually he spoke. He told Dick about pigeons and squirrels and I knew that he’d spent a lot of time with books, and when I shared a few stories from Ojibway culture about birds and animals he listened with half a grin, nodding and flipping bread at the creatures around us. And we were three.