The Digger's Game by George V. Higgins

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 threethousand 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 intothis 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.”
    “But I got to do something,” the Digger