A Horse Named Sorrow Read Free

something to drink, sir?”
    â€œForty-ouncer.” He chuckled bashfully.
    â€œComing right up.” And back I went down the block to the liquor store, the old black proprietor, his glasses and steel-wool gray hair; his curious way of looking at me, an odd pullet in the neighborhood. The news was going on the TV behind him, and there was the smell of wet boxes and spilled soda, old and sticky; and there was dust, dust everywhere; and cigarettes, liquor, lottery tickets, blistered old plastic Pepsi and Miller signs, crooked and burnt by years of bad fluorescence.
    â€œDon’t drink it all in one place,” he chuckled wryly.
    But that was just what we did. And then I took Jimmy home.

2
    I ended up right back on that same platform a year later. Alone. And going in the opposite direction. But the bike was the same, and the panniers—even the clothes on my back were the same, since they were Jimmy’s: the baggy army cutoffs, the Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt. Even a new tattoo: on my left ankle, the Chinese symbol for “dog,” inspired by Jimmy—or his goodness, or both.
    And second thoughts, of course. Eyes a vivid blue.
    The bike was still covered in those strings—he’d only gotten to a few dozen, and there were hundreds: every sort of string imaginable— from all colors of cotton thread to skeins of silk, and even braided hair and plastic fishing line. There was a short section of some of that yellow police tape, and a twisted length of shimmering tinsel from some old Christmas tree; a thong of leather, some Mardi Gras beads, and even plastic ties from food bags in yellow, blue, and white. And there was yarn and hemp and tangles of packaging twine. There were the shimmering brown remains of cassette tapes—I wondered what songs? There were twisted pieces of ribbon—cherry red, navy, kelly green—and even a frayed knot of rope. And the name, painted over where it used to say Schwinn on the front handlebar post of the bike—scrawled in Jimmy dime-store model paint: Chief Joseph .
    And Jimmy, of course, in an old purple velvet bag with gold drawstrings, all ten pounds of him, tied tight around the center of the handlebars. Taking him back the way he came , just like he’d asked.

3
    I’d yanked a coarse blue thread off the seat cushion on the BART train that day we’d met as we sped along under the bay toward San Francisco, lights flashing by that I always liked to believe were those deep-sea fish with organic lightbulbs on their heads. But they weren’t; the tube was concrete and not a window in it anywhere.
    â€œHere, Jimmy, your final string.”
    He gave me that quick smile of his, leaned forward, and tied it onto the frame, right under the handlebars, which brought me face to face with Chief Joseph .
    â€œWhat’s with the name?”
    He looked at me, like I’d already asked too many questions, and then he looked at it, and contemplated it for a minute. “There’s a long answer and a short one to that,” he offered somewhat reluctantly, enigmatically.
    â€œYou don’t gotta tell me at all, if you don’t want to; I was just curious.”
    Whoosh, whoosh, went the BART train, people yammering above the din.
    â€œChief Joseph said, ‘I will fight no more forever.’ That’s why.” But he wasn’t looking at me when he said it. The short answer. I let it drop as the train beeped and we emerged under downtown, the platform a scurrying anthill of suits and hairdos. Jimmy perked up and looked slightly alarmed, but I shook my head no: “Four more stops, Jimmy.”
    Beep, beep, like the roadrunner, and the windows exploded with light and faces for the fifth time.
    We came up the escalator from underneath, the BART tube under the Bay having now delivered us from Oakland like a birth canal to the garden of earthly delights at 16th and Mission, ground zero for the lost youth of America come to