Charles De Lint: The Ivory and the Horn

I don't really hold much with any of this mumbo-jumbo stuff— not Bones's gig, nor what his girlfriend Cassie does with Tarot cards, nor Paperjack's Chinese fortune-telling devices. But while I don't believe that any of them can foretell the future, I still have to admit there's something different about some of the people who work this schtick.

Take Bones.

The man has crazy eyes. Not crazy, you-better-lock-him-up kind of eyes, but crazy because maybe he sees something we can't. Like there really is some other world lying draped across ours, and he can see right into it. Maybe he's even been there. Lots of times, I figure he's just clowning around, but sometimes that dark gaze of his locks onto you and then you see this seriousness lying behind the laughter and it's like the Tombs all over again— a piece of the wilderness biding on a city street, a dislocating sensation like not only is anything possible, but it probably already exists.

Besides, who am I to make judgments these days? I'm being haunted by a ghost.

"How do, Maisie?" he says when I wheel my mountain bike up to the edge of the fountain where he's sitting.

I prop the bike up on its kickstand, hang my helmet from one of the handlebars and sit down beside him. He's fiddling with his bones, letting them tumble from one hand to the other. They make a sound like Shirley's buttons, only more muted. I find myself wondering what kind of an animal they came from. Mice? Birds? I look up from his hands and see the clown is sitting in his eyes, laughing. Maybe with me, maybe at me— I can never tell.

"Haven't seen you around much these days," he adds.

"I'm going to school," I tell him.

"Yeah?"

"And I've got a job."

He looks at me for this long heartbeat and I get that glimpse of otherness that puts a weird shifting sensation in the pit of my stomach.

"So are you happy?" he asks.

That's something no one ever asks when I tell them what I'm doing now. I pick at a piece of lint that's stuck to the cuff of my shorts.

"Not really" I tell him.

"Want to see what Nanabozo's got in store for you?" he asks, holding up his bones.

I don't know who Nanabozo is, but I get the idea.

"No," I say. "I want to ask you about ghosts."

He doesn't even blink an eye. Just grins.

"What about them?"

"Well, what are they?" I ask.

"Souls that got lost," he tells me, still smiling, but serious now, too.

I feel weird talking about this. It's a sunny day, the park's full of people, joggers, skateboarders, women with baby carriages, a girl on the bench just a few steps away who probably looks sexy at night under a streetlight, the way she's all tarted up, but now she just looks used. Nothing out of the ordinary, and here we are, talking about ghosts.

"What do you mean?" I ask. "How do they get lost?"

"There's a Path of Souls, all laid out for us to follow when we die," he tells me, "But some spirits can't see it, so they wander the earth instead. Others can't accept the fact that they're dead yet, and they hang around too."

"A path."

He nods.

"Like something you walk along."

"Inasmuch as a spirit walks," Bones says.

"My ghost says she missed a bus," I tell him.

"Maybe it's different for white people."

"She's black."

He sits there, not looking at me, bones trailing from one hand to the other, making their tiny rattling sound.

"What do you really want to know?" he asks me.

"How do I help her?"

"Why don't you try asking her?"

"I did, but all she gives me back are riddles."

"Maybe you're just not listening properly," he says.

I think back on the conversations I've had with Shirley since I first saw her in the Tombs a few nights ago, but I can't seem to focus on them. I remember being with her, I remember the feeling of what we talked about, but the actual content is muddy now. It seems to shift away as soon as I try to think about it.

"I've really seen her," I tell Bones. "I was there when she died— almost four years ago— but she's back. And other people have seen her, too."

"I know you have," he says.

I don't even know why I was trying to convince him— it's not like he'd be a person that needed convincing— but what he says, stops me.

"What do you mean?" I ask. It's my question for the day.

"It's in your eyes," he says. "The Otherworld has touched you. Think of it as a blessing."

"I don't know if I like the idea," I tell him. "I mean, I miss Shirley, and I actually feel kind of good about her being back, even if she is just a ghost, but it doesn't seem right somehow."

"Often," he says, "what we take from the spirit world is only a reflection of what lies inside ourselves."

There's that look in his eyes, a feral seriousness, like it's important, not so much that I understand, or even believe what he's saying, but that he's saying it.

"What...?" I start, but then I figure it out. Part of it anyway.

When I first came to the city, I was pretty messed up, but then Shirley was there to help me. I'm messed up again, so...

"So I'm just projecting her ghost?" I ask. "I need her help, so I've made myself a ghost of her?"

"I didn't say that."

"No, but—"

"Ghosts have their own agendas," he tells me. "Maybe you both have something to give to each other."

We sit for awhile, neither of us speaking. I play with the whistle that hangs from a cord around my neck— all the messengers have them to blow at cars that're trying to cut us off. Finally, I get up and take my bike off its kickstand. I look at Bones and that feral quality is still lying there in his grin. His eyes seem to be all pupil, dark, dark. I'm about to say thanks, but the words lock up in my throat. Instead I just nod, put on my helmet and go away to think about what he's told me.

8

Tommy's got this new story that he tells me after we've cleaned up the dinner dishes. We sit together at the kitchen table and he has his little paper people act it out for me. It's about this Chinese man who falls down the crack in the pavement outside Aunt Hilary's house and finds himself in this magic land where everybody's a beautiful model or movie star and they all want to marry the Chinese guy except he misses his family too much, so he just tells them he can't marry any of them— not even the woman who won the Oscar for her part in Misery, who for some reason, Tommy's really crazy about.

I've got the old black lab Chuckie lying on my feet, Rexy snuggled up in my lap. Mutt and Jeff are tangled up in a heap on the sofa so that it's hard to tell which part of them's which. They're a cross between a German Shepherd and who knows what; I found Jeff first and gave the other old guy his name because the two were immediately inseparable. Jimmie's part dachshund, part collie— I know, go figure— and his long, furry body is stretched out in front of the door like he's a dust puppy. Patty's mostly poodle, but there's some kind of placid mix in there as well because she's not at all high-strung. Right now she's sitting in the bay window, checking the traffic and pretending to be a cat.

The sad thing, Tommy tells me, is that the Chinese man knows that he'll never be able to get back home, but he's going to stay faithful to his family anyway.

"Where'd you get that story?" I ask Tommy.

He just shrugs, then he says, "I really miss you, Maisie."

How can I keep leaving him?

I feel like a real shit. I know it's not my fault, I know I'm trying to do my best for all of us, for our future, but Tommy's mind doesn't work very well considering the long term and my explanations don't really register. It's just me going out all the time, and not taking him or the dogs with me.

There's a knock on the door. Jimmie gets laboriously to his feet and moves aside as Aunt Hilary comes in. She gives her wristwatch an obvious look.