Ragged Company

Amelia One Sky narrates her background. She grew up on an Ojibway reserve, and her family went back far in tribal history. She was the only girl among five siblings. Her oldest brother, Irwin, drowned when she was a young child; that same winter, her parents died in a house fire. Subsequently, social workers sent Amelia and her remaining brothers to a missionary school far away. Harley, the youngest brother, was unable to adapt and ran away from school. He was found days later, frozen to death in their old house.

Amelia retreated into herself, while her brothers John and Frank began to rebel. John grew especially tough and hard, and he left school at 16. He returned a year and a half later, taking Amelia and Frank to live with their uncle Jack in the city. Life was good for a while.

John joined a gang and was stabbed to death when Amelia was 14. Frank then disappeared, and Amelia found him a week later, drinking at the Regal hotel with John’s old gang. Later that day, he clubbed to death the two people rumored to be responsible for John’s murder and was sent to prison with two life sentences; Frank hung himself in his cell shortly afterward.

Upon hearing this, Amelia went to the Regal, where John’s gang took her in and cared for her, keeping her away from alcohol and drugs. She fell in love with a Blackfoot man from Montana named Ben Starr, and they eventually moved in together. She worked as a maid at the hotel, and he worked odd jobs. However, Ben had a drug addiction and eventually died of an overdose.

Amelia began to drink heavily after Ben’s death and stayed drunk for years. She lost her job, and even the gang cut her loose. While living on the streets, she developed an alcohol addiction and performed sex work. One day, she began to see the “shadowed ones” everywhere: “The ones whose spirits can never leave this earth, the ones tied here by a sorrow, a longing” (16). Unable to get rid of them with alcohol, she walked into a detox center and quit; she was 44 years old.

After a hospital stay, and then a women’s program, Amelia returned to the streets, sober, but still saw the “shadowed ones.” She realized that her purpose was to take care of the other unhoused people on the street. Whenever anyone brought a fresh bottle of alcohol around her, she always asked to open it and performed an old “rounder’s” ritual, pouring a splash onto the ground and saying, “[T]here’s one for the dead” (17). This is how she got her rounder name.

A cold front blows over the city, and three unhoused people are found dead. Digger thinks about how there are only two ways to die in the street: if one is “stupid” or if one is unlucky. He’s a survivor, a “rounder” used to life on the streets. He doesn’t live off charity; he digs for scraps that he can sell for money, which earned him his name.

Digger meets up with the only three people he keeps company with: Amelia, Richard Richard “Double Dick” Dumont, and Timber. They wonder what to do about the cold, and Amelia suggests that they go to the movies because the theater will be dark, warm, and private, and a movie ticket is relatively inexpensive.

At the theater, Amelia asks for four tickets to Wings of Desire and, to everyone’s surprise, pulls out a roll of bills to pay with. The manager asks if he’ll have any trouble from them, and Amelia responds that it’s “[w]ay too cold out there for any of us to want any trouble in here” (25).

The only other person in the movie hall is Granite Harvey, a well-dressed man in his sixties. Amelia once again surprises everyone by taking a seat in the same row as him, just two seats down. Timber expects the man to move away from them, but he doesn’t.

Granite reflects on how his father, who worked in the quarry like all of Granite’s ancestors, used to tell him that the sounds made by the wind were songs sung by their ancestors, set free from every stone, board, and nail in their big stone house. The young Granite believed this—and when he was scared, it soothed him to imagine his ancestors keeping him company through these songs. He stopped hearing these songs after his wife and daughter died in a car crash; and after his father’s death, he was once again greeted with silence in the house. Granite then sold the house and retired from the paper he worked for as a journalist for three decades.

When the lights go down in the theater, Dick is initially scared because it feels like the blackness that comes on before his occasional seizures. When the screen lights up, however, he thinks it’s “glorious.” Dick is enthralled by the movie, even though he can’t follow the story because he’s illiterate and can’t read the subtitles. Instead, he watches the people’s faces. Once the movie is over, the group decides to see another one. Timber wins the coin toss and chooses Big. Once again, Amelia leads the group to the same row where Granite is seated.

After selling the stone house, Granite moved into a condo in the city and began to watch movies as an escape. When he goes to see Wings of Desire, he’s surprised to see the “four ragged people” (34-35) who appear beside him and doesn’t move only out of politeness. He doesn’t expect to see them ever again, but they turn up at Big too. When he rises to leave after Big, Amelia invites him to join them for a drink. Granite refuses but on Amelia’s insistence promises to join them next time.

Amelia describes how Digger, Timber, and Dick were all brought to her by her dreams: She dreamt of Dick running scared through the streets; Timber sitting in a library at a desk, upon which he places a picture of a woman and walks out the door; and Digger building something huge and metallic high into the sky. She eventually meets all three men—first Dick, then Timber, and finally Digger—in real life. She recognizes each of them immediately, approaches them, and enfolds them into her care, slowly growing the group until they are four. Similarly, the “shadowed ones” bring Granite to Amelia; when she first saw Granite in the theaters, the “shadowed ones” surrounded him and waved at her.

The cold front lasts a week, and the group goes to the movies every day. Over the week, the movies become like a “fix” for Timber. The feel of the experience keeps making him want to go back, and it becomes something that makes the days different, helping him get through his pain.

Granite reads a good review of Cinema Paradiso and decides to watch it at The Plaza, a theater in an upscale neighborhood. When in line, he notices the same group of four from the previous week approaching the theater. Amelia recognizes Granite and waves to him, asking him to save them seats. She reminds him of his promise to join them for a drink; Granite tries to shrug it off, but Amelia charms him into keeping his word.

Even before getting to the theater, Amelia can sense that this is a momentous night, though the men don’t feel it. After seeing Granite in line, Digger complains that they can’t get away from him and is shocked to hear that Granite is saving them seats. Granite is true to his word, and the group sits next to him in an otherwise packed theater. The movie completely absorbs and moves them all, and they walk out in silence once it ends.

Dick reflects on how, although he couldn’t follow the story, the movie made him want to cry. It made him think about rooms; all the rooms in the world remind him of the one he can never return to, which is what prompts him to live on the street. Dick asks Digger if he thinks people know what’s going on inside their heads, as the movie made Dick feel that way; Digger acknowledges that the movie moved him, too. Amelia reminds the group of their date with Granite. Granite is still hesitant, and Digger is indignant that they’re following through, but Amelia insists, so they all go down to The Palace for a drink.

At The Palace, the group discusses how the movie was “fine,” and what that means to each of them. Amelia thinks everyone sitting together and talking like this feels “fine” to her. Granite introduces himself, Amelia introduces everyone else, and Granite shakes hands with the men. Digger initially refuses to shake Granite’s hand, and Granite likens meeting Digger to once having petted a cornered tomcat that scratched him. It taught Granite that life is risky, so one must try scary things in order to learn, but life is also full of “mean sons of bitches” (57) who’ll scratch you. This description pleases Digger, and he finally shakes hands with Granite.

Digger and Granite sit together and drink even after the others leave. Digger asks Granite why he’s here, and Granite asserts that it’s out of politeness. To Digger’s retort that they don’t need his politeness, Granite agrees, and makes to leave. However, Digger tells him that he’s welcome to sit with them at the movies if they run into each other again, and Granite reciprocates the sentiment.

Amelia remembers that the “shadowed ones” brought them Rain Man. On a drizzly day, the group goes through newspaper listings, and Dick suggests the movie on a gut feeling. Amelia remembers Grandma One Sky telling her about invisible friends who sometimes whisper these sorts of things in people’s ears.

At the theater, the group runs into Granite again, who strangely ended up here even though he initially planned to see a different movie at another theater. Amelia doesn’t find this strange at all.

All five go to The Palace to discuss the movie over drinks. Timber finds it amazing that the Rain Man was able to teach everyone around him that life is never clear for anyone. The movie made Dick sad because the Rain Man reminded him of himself. Things have never been clear for him; he can’t count or read and always needs people to help him.

Granite is surprised to learn this, and asks if Dick’s parents ever sent him to school. Dick gets upset and doesn’t want to talk about his past, so Granite backs off; however, he tells Dick that the Rain Man had a condition called autism, which differs from Dick’s condition. Dick was never taught the skills needed to “interpret” the world, and Granite assures him that he can still learn—that his imagination is proof enough of his potential.

Timber asks Granite how he knows so much about stories, and Granite reveals that he was a journalist. However, he doesn’t want to talk about why he stopped writing stories, and the group understands.

Granite doesn’t see the group for two weeks and wonders about them. Their loyalty to each other both impresses and puzzles him, and he wants to learn more about them. He decides to watch a movie called Stealing Home, which he’s strangely drawn to, and meets the group again at the theater.

Granite tells the group that this kind of movie isn’t his usual thing because romance reminds him of losses. The movie ends up being about death, departures, and returning home, and everyone is moved by it; they decide to go for a drink again, together, afterward. Granite offers to pay again, asserting that he likes the company: “‘This ragged company?’ (Amelia) asked. ‘Yes,’ (Granite) said, smiling. ‘This ragged company’” (70).

The conversation between the two unnamed people at the beginning of the book continues, as they discuss the similarities between time and light: how neither can be made sense of in its entirety but only in fragments. They relate it to how this story, too, can’t be assembled all at once but must be done in pieces.