Forests of the Heart by Charles De Lint Read Free Book Online

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 I 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 programs 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