Ivory and the Horn Read Free

behind his eyes; like the dogs, he became family when I took him in and I love him.
    I never thought much about pride back in those days, though I guess I had my share. Maybe I was just white trash to whoever passed me on the street, but I kept myself cleaner than a lot of those paying taxes and what I had then sure beat the hell hole I grew up in.
    I hit the road when I was twelve and never looked back because up until then family was just another word for pain. Physical pain, and worse, the kind that just leaves your heart feeling like some dead thing is caught inside your chest. You know what pigeons look like once the traffic’s been running over them for a couple of weeks and there’s not much left except for a fiat bundle of dried feathers that hasn’t even got flies buzzing around it anymore?
    That’s like what I had in my chest until I ran away.
    I was one of the lucky ones. I survived. I didn’t get done in by drugs or selling my body. Shirley took me in under her wing before the lean men with the flashy suits and too much jewelry could get their hands on me. Don’t know why she helped me—maybe when she saw me she was remembering the day she was just a kid stepping off a bus in some big city herself. Maybe, just looking at me, she could tell I’d make a good apprentice.
    And then, after five years, I got luckier still—with a little help from the Grasso Street Angel and my own determination.
    And that pride.
    I was so proud of myself for doing the right thing: I got the family off the street. I was straightening out my life. I rejoined society—not that society seemed to care all that much, but I wasn’t doing it for them anyway. I was doing it for Tommy and the dogs, for myself, and so that one day maybe I could be in a position to help somebody else, the way that Angel does out of her little storefront office on Grasso, the way that Shirley helped me.
    I should’ve known better.
    We’ve got a real place to live in—a tenement on Flood Street just before it heads on into the Tombs, instead of a squat. I had a job as a messenger for the QMS—the Quicksilver Messenger Service, run by a bunch of old hippies who got the job done, but lived in a tie-dyed past. Evenings, four times a week, I was going to night school to get my high school diploma.
    But I just didn’t see it as being better than what we’d had before. Paying for rent and utilities, food and for someone to come in to look after Tommy, sucked away every cent I made. Maybe I could’ve handled that, but all my time was gone too. I never really saw Tommy anymore, except on the weekends and even then I’d have to be studying half the time. I had it a little easier than a lot of the other people in my class because I always read a lot. It was my way of escaping—even before I came here to live on the streets.
    Before I ran away I was a regular at the local library—it was both a source of books and refuge from what was happening at home. Once I got here, Shirley told me about how the bookstores’d strip the covers off paperbacks and just throw the rest of the book away, so I always made sure I stopped by the alleys in back of their stores on garbage days.
    I hadn’t read a book in months. The dogs were pining— little Rexy taking it the worst. He’s just a cat-sized wiry-haired mutt with a major insecurity problem. I think someone used to beat on him, which made me feel close to him, because I knew what that was all about. Used to be Rexy was like my shadow; nervous, sure, but so long as I was around, he was okay. These days, he’s just a wreck, because he can’t come on my bike when I’m working and they won’t let me bring him into the school.
    The way things stand, Tommy’s depressed, the other dogs are depressed, Rexy’s almost suicidal, and I’m not in any great shape myself. Always tired, impatient, unhappy.
    So I really needed to meet a ghost in the Tombs right about now. It’s doing wonders for my sense of sanity—or