Charles de Lint: Forests of the Heart

“Here,” Tommy said. “I’ve got some blankets.”

She wanted to help cover the man up, but her own nausea was too much. Stumbling away, she threw up against the side of the building. Now the taste of vomit went all the way down her throat. She knew it was her own, but it still made her retch again. Nothing but a dry heave this time.

She leaned her head against the brick wall of the theater, weak, stomach still lurching.

“Try some of this,” Tommy said.

He appeared at her side, put an arm around her shoulders to support her and offered her a cup of coffee. It was the only liquid they had in the van. All they carried was the few necessities to help the street people get through another night of bitter winter cold. Coffee and sandwiches. Blankets. Parkas, winter boots, mittens, scarves.

She took a sip of the coffee, gargled with it. Spit it out. Rinsed her mouth again. Tommy had cooled it down with a lot of milk, but because of the taste in her mouth, the milk seemed to have gone off. Her stomach gave another lurch. Tommy regarded her with concern.

“I...” She cleared her throat, spat. “I’m okay. How’s he doing?”

Tommy returned to the homeless man, bundled up with blankets now.

“Still breathing,” he said after checking the man’s pulse. “How’re you doing?”

Ellie tried to smile. “Well, they never tell you about this kind of thing when you take that CPR course, do they?”

They could hear an approaching siren now. Ellie pushed herself to her feet and went to reclaim her gloves. Setting the coffee down on the pavement, she thrust her hands into a snowbank, dried them on her jeans. She put on her gloves. Tossing the remainder of the coffee away, she stuffed the empty cup into the mouth of one of the garbage bags.

“Got any mouthwash?” she asked.

“ ’Fraid not,” Tommy said. “I must’ve left it at home with that love letter got from Cindy Crawford this morning.” He dug about in the pocket of his parka. “How about a mint?”

“You’re a lifesaver.”

“No, these are,” he said and handed her a roll of peppermint Life Savers.

Ellie smiled.

The ambulance arrived before the mint had a chance to completely dissolve in her mouth. Retreating to the van, they let the paramedics take over. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, leaning against the side of the vehicle to watch as the medics lifted the man onto a stretcher, fitted him with an oxygen mask and IV, carried him back into the ambulance.

“My old man died like that,” Tommy said. “So drunk he passed out on the pavement. Choked to death on his own puke.”

“I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

Ellie shot him a surprised look.

Tommy sighed. “I know how that sounds. It’s just…” He looked away, but not before she saw the pain in his eyes.

Sometimes Ellie thought she was the only person in the world who’d had a normal childhood. Loving parents. A good home. They hadn’t been rich, but they hadn’t wanted for anything either. There’d been no drinking in the house. No fights. No one had tried to abuse her, either at home or anywhere else. She could only imagine what it would be like to grow up otherwise.

She knew that Tommy had gone through one of Angel’s programs, but she’d never really considered what had driven him to the streets, what nightmare he’d had to endure before Angel could find and help him. Most of the people who volunteered for Angel Outreach and the other prr grams had come from abusive environments. The ones who stuck it out, who got past the pain and learned how to trust and care again, almost invariably wanted to give something back. To offer a helping hand the way it had been offered to them when it didn’t seem like anybody could possibly care.

But they’d still had to go through some kind of hell in the first place.

“Ten years ago,” Tommy said, “if that had been my old man, I’d have let him lie there and just walked away. But not now. I wouldn’t have liked him any better, but I’d have done what you did.”

Ellie didn’t know what to say.

Tommy turned to look at her. “I guess we’ve all got our war stories.”

Except she didn’t. She’d hadn’t thought of it before, but most of the people she volunteered with must think that she, too, carried some awful truth around inside her. That, just as they had, she’d been through the nightmare and managed to come through the other side well enough to be able—to want —to help others. But the only war stories she knew were from the people she tried to help. She had none of her own.

Before she could think of a way to try to explain this, a police cruiser pulled up. Tommy pushed away from the van.

“I’ll deal with them,” he said.

Ellie let him go. She watched him talk to the two uniformed officers when they got out of their cruiser. The ambulance pulled away, siren off, cherry lights still flashing. When it rounded a corner, she turned back to the van, but paused before getting in. Even in this severe cold, the incident had managed to gather a half-dozen onlookers. A couple of obviously homeless men stood near where she’d thrown up. The others probably lived in one of the buildings nearby, cheap apartment complexes that had long since seen better days.

Opening the side door of the van, she put a couple of sandwiches in the pocket of her parka, then poured two coffees. She took them over to the homeless men. They hesitated for a moment, looked from her face to the legend on the side of the van before accepting the coffees and sandwiches.

“Who was it?” one of the men asked.

“I didn’t get his name,” she told them.

The other man took a sip of his coffee. “I’ll bet it was Howard. Stupid fuck’d sleep anywhere.”

“Would you like a ride to a shelter?” Ellie asked.

“Come on, pretty lady,” the second man said. “Do we look that stupid?”

No matter how cold it got, some of the homeless would never go to a shelter. They were afraid of what little they had being stolen, of something bad happening to them—like the possibility of freezing to death was a good thing, but what could you do? Some were so used to being outside, they couldn’t sleep indoors anymore. Like feral alley cats, the close, heated confines of a shelter made them strike out in panic, attacking a worker, each other, sometimes trashing the place.

“Tell Angel thanks for the coffee and the grub,” the first man told her.

They turned their backs and headed off down the block, shoulders hunched against the cold.

“I will,” she said.

“It’s a wonder they survive.”

Ellie looked at the man who’d spoken. He was one of the onlookers she’d noticed earlier, a tall, dark-skinned man who towered over her own five-ten frame. His gray overcoat was almost as threadbare as those of the two homeless men, but it didn’t have the same slept-in, ratty look. Like her, he was wearing a hunter’s cap, the ear flaps pulled down, except his was real sheepskin; hers was only a quilted wool. His eyes were alert, his features knife-sharp and aged by the passage of time, not alcohol abuse and hard living. Even with the cold, his overcoat was unbuttoned, flapping in the wind. He wore no scarf.

“It scares me,” she said. “We’ve already had four homeless people die of exposure this year.”

“That you know of.”

She gave him a sharp look, then sighed. “That we know of,” she agreed.

There were places in the city where a body could easily remain undiscovered until the spring thaw. There’d been one last year in the Tombs, half-eaten by rats and wild dogs by the time someone stumbled over it. Her stomach went all queasy again, just thinking about it.

“Do you have any more of that coffee?” the man asked.