The Ivory and the Horn

by Charles de Lint

  Dennison stood staring at the door after it had closed behind her. The apartment had never seemed so empty before.

  Definitely flaky, he thought as he returned to the kitchen. But he thought maybe he’d fallen in love with her, if that was something you were allowed to do with angels.

  He finished his coffee and cleaned up the dishes, dawdling over the job. He didn’t know anything about the Kickaha except for those that he saw in his office, applying for welfare, and what he’d seen on the news a couple of years ago when the more militant braves from the reservation had blockaded Highway 14 to protest logging on their land. So he had only two images of them: down and out, or dressed in khaki, carrying an assault rifle. Wait, make that three. There were also the pictures in the history books of them standing around in ceremonial garb.

  He didn’t want to go to this Elders’ Council. Nothing they could tell him was going to make him look at the world any differently, so why bother? But finally he put on a lightweight sportsjacket and went out to flag a cab to take him to City Hall, because whatever else he believed or didn’t believe, the one thing he’d never done yet was break a promise.

  He wasn’t about to start now—especially with a promise made to an angel.

  Dennison left the elevator and walked down a carpeted hallway on the third floor of City Hall. He stopped at the door with the neatly lettered sign that read ELDERS’ COUNCIL. He felt surreal, as though he’d taken a misstep somewhere along the way yesterday and had ended up in a Fellini film. Being here was odd enough, in and of itself. But if he was going to meet a native elder, he felt it should be under pine trees with the smell of wood smoke in the air, not cloistered away in City Hall, surrounded by miles of concrete and steel.

  Really, he shouldn’t be here at all. What he should be doing was getting his affairs in order. Resigning from his job, getting in touch with his cousin Pete, who asked Dennison at least every three or four months if he wanted to go into business with him. Pete worked for a small shipping firm, but he wanted to start his own company. “I’ve got the know-how and the money,” he’d tell Dtennison, “but frankly, when it comes to dealing with people, I stink. That’s where you’d come in.”

  Dennison hesitated for a long moment, staring at the door and the sign affixed to its plain wooden surface. He knew what he should be doing, but he’d made that promise, so he knocked on the door. An old native woman answered as he was about to lift his hand to rap a second time.

  Her face was wrinkled, her complexion dark; her braided hair almost grey. She wore a long brown skirt, flat-soled shoes and a plain white blouse that was decorated with a tracing of brightly coloured beadwork on its collar points and buttoned placket. The gaze that looked up to meet his was friendly, the eyes such a dark brown that it was hard to differentiate between pupil and iris.

  “Hello,” she said and ushered him in.

  It was strange inside. He found himself standing in a conference room overlooking the parking garage behind City Hall. The walls were unadorned and there was no table, just thick wall-to-wall on the floor and a ring of chairs set in a wide circle, close to the walls. At the far side of the room, he spied a closed door that might lead into another room or a storage closet.

  “Uh…”

  Suddenly at a loss for words, he put his hand in his pocket, pulled out the package of cigarette tobacco that he’d bought on the way over and handed it to her.

  “Thank you,” the woman said. She steered him to a chair, then sat down beside him. “My name is Dorothy. How can I help you?”

  “Dorothy?” Dennison replied, unable to hide his surprise.

  The woman nodded. “Dorothy Born. You were expecting something more exotic such as Woman-Who-Speaks-With-One-Hand-Rising?”

  “I didn’t know what to expect.”

  “That was my mother’s name actually—in the old language. She was called that because she’d raise her hand as she spoke, ready to slap the head of those braves who wouldn’t listen to her advice.”

  “Oh.”

  She smiled. “That’s a joke. My mother’s name was Ruth.”

  “Uh…”

  What a great conversationalist he was proving to be today. Good thing Pete couldn’t hear him at this moment. But he just didn’t know where to begin.

  “Why don’t you just tell me why you’ve come,” Dorothy said.

  “Actually, I feel a little foolish.”

  Her smile broadened. “Good. That is the first step on the road to wisdom.” She put a hand on his knee, dark gaze locking with his. “What is your name?”

  “Chris—Chris Dennison.”

  “Speak to me, Chris. I am here to listen.”

  So Dennison told her about his job, about Ronnie Egan’s death, about getting drunk, about Debra Eisenstadt and how she’d come to send him here. Once he started, his awkwardness fled.

  “Nothing seems worth it anymore,” he said in conclusion.

  Dorothy nodded. “I understand. When the spirit despairs, it becomes difficult to see clearly. Your friend’s words require too much faith for you to accept them.”

  “I guess. I’m not sure I even understand them.”

  “Perhaps I can help you there.”

  She fell silent for a moment, her gaze still on him, but she no longer seemed to see him. It was as though she saw beyond him, or had turned to look inward.

  “The Kickaha way to see the world,” she finally said, “is to understand that everything is on a wheel: Day turns to night. The moon waxes and wanes. Summer turns to autumn. A man is born, he lives, he dies. But no wheel turns by itself. Each affects the other, so that when the wheel of the seasons turns to winter, the wheel of the day grows shorter. When the day grows shorter, the sweetgrass is covered with snow and the deer must forage for baric and twigs rather than feast on its delicate blades. The hunter must travel farther afield to find the deer, but perhaps the wolf finds her first.”

  She paused, sitting back in her chair. “Do you see?”

  Dennison nodded slowly. “I see the connection in what you’re saying, but not with what Debra was trying to tell me. It was so vague—all this talk about positive energy.”

  “But the energy we produce is very powerful medicine,” Dorothy said. “It can work great good or ill.”

  “You make it sound like voodoo.”

  She frowned for a moment as though she needed to think that through.

  “Perhaps it is,” she said. “From the little I know of it, voudoun is a very basic application of the use of one’s will. The results one gains from its medicine become positive or negative only depending upon one’s intention.”

  “You’re saying we make bad things happen to ourselves?”

  Dorothy nodded. “And to our sacred trust, the earth.”

  “I still don’t see how a person can be so sure he’s really making a difference.”

  “What if the child you save grows up to be the scientist who will cure AIDS?”

  “What if the child I don’t get to in time was supposed to be that scientist, and so she never gets the chance to find the cure?”

  Dorothy lifted her hand and tapped it against his chest. “You carry so much pain in here. It wasn’t always so, was it?”

  Dennison thought about how he’d been when he first got into social work. He’d been like Debra then, so sure he knew exactly what to do. He’d believed utterly in his ability to save the world. That had changed. Not because of Ronnie Egan, but slowly, over the years. He’d had to make compromises, his trust had been abused not once, or twice, but almost every day. What had happened to Ronnie had forced him to see that he fought a losing battle.

  Perhaps it was worse than that. What he felt now was that the battle had been lost long ago and he was only just now realizing the futility of continuing to man the frontlines.

  “If you were to see what I have to work with every day,” he said, “you’d get depressed, too.”

  Dorothy shook her head. “That is not our way.”
/>   “So what is your way?”

  “You must learn to let it go. The wheel must always turn. If you take upon yourself the sadness and despair from those you would help, you must also learn how to let it go. Otherwise it will settle inside you like a cancer.”

  “I don’t know if I can anymore.”

  She nodded slowly. “That is something that only you can decide. But remember this: You have given a great deal of yourself. You have no reason to feel ashamed if you must now turn away.”

  She had just put her finger on what was making the decision so hard for him. Futile though he’d come to realize his efforts were, he still felt guilty at the idea of turning his back on those who needed his help. It wasn’t like what Debra had been saying: The difference he made didn’t have far-reaching effects. It didn’t change what was happening in the Amazon, or make the hole in the ozone layer any smaller. All it did was make one or two persons’ misery a little easier to bear, but only in the short term. It seemed cruel to give them hope when it would just be taken away from them again.

  If only there really were something to Debra’s domino theory. While the people he helped wouldn’t go on to save the environment, or find that cure for AIDS, they might help somebody else a little worse off than themselves. That seemed worthwhile, except what do you do when you’ve reached inside yourself and you can’t find anything left to give?

  Dorothy was watching him with her dark gaze. Oddly enough, her steady regard didn’t make him feel self-conscious. She had such a strong personality that he could feel its warmth as though he was holding his hands out to a fire. It made him yearn to find something to fill the cold that had lodged inside him since he’d looked down at Ronnie Egan’s corpse.

  “Maybe I should get into environmental work instead,” he said. “You know, how they say that a change is as good as a rest?”

  “Who says you aren’t already doing environmental work?” Dorothy asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if the dying trees of the rainforest are being reborn as unwanted children?” she asked.

  “C’mon. You can’t expect me to believe—”

  “Why not? If a spirit is taken from its wheel before its time, it must go somewhere.”

  Dennison had a sudden vision of a tenement building filled with green-skinned children, each of them struggling to reach the roof of the building to get their nourishment from the sun, except when they finally got up there, the smog cover was so thick that there was nothing for them. They got a paler and paler green until finally they just withered away. Died like so many weeds.

  “Imagine living in a world with no more trees,” Dorothy said.

  Dennison had been in a clear-cut forest once. It was while he was visiting a friend in Oregon. He’d stood there on a hilltop and for as far as the eye could see, there were only tree stumps. It was a heartbreaking sight.

  His friend had become an environmentalist after a trip to China. “There are almost no trees left there at all now,” he’d told Dennison. “They’ve just used them all up. Trees clean the environment by absorbing the toxins from carbon dioxide and acid rain. Without them, the water and air become too toxic and people start to die off from liver cancer. China has an incredibly high mortality rate due to liver cancer.

  “That’s going to happen here, Chris. That’s what’s going to happen in the Amazon. It’s going to happen all over the world.”

  Dennison had felt bad, enough so that he contributed some money to a couple of relevant causes, but his concern hadn’t lasted. His work with Social Services took too much out of him to leave much energy for other concerns, no matter how worthy.

  As though reading his mind, Dorothy said, “And now imagine a world with no more children.”

  Dennison thought they might be halfway there. So many of the children he dealt with were more like miniature adults than the kids he remembered growing up with. But then he and his peers hadn’t had to try to survive on the streets, foraging out of trash cans, maybe taking care of a junkie parent.

  “I have a great concern for Mother Earth,” Dorothy said. “We have gravely mistreated her. But when we speak of the environment and the depletion of resources, we sometimes forget that our greatest resource is our children.

  “My people have a word to describe the moment when all is in harmony—we call it Beauty. But Beauty can find no foothold in despair. If we mean to reclaim our Mother Earth from the ills that plague her, we must not forget our own children. We must work on many levels, walk many wheels, that fives may be spared—the lives of people, and the lives of all those other species with whom we share the world. Our contributions, no matter how small they might appear, carry an equal importance, for they will all contribute to the harmony that allows the world to walk the wheel of Beauty.”

  She closed her eyes and fell silent. Dennison sat quietly beside her for a time.

  “What … what advice would you give me?” he asked finally.

  Dorothy shrugged. Her eyes remained closed.

  “You must do what you believe is right,” she said. “We have inside of each of us a spirit, and that spirit alone knows what it is that we should or should not do.”

  “I’ve got to think about all of this,” Dennison said.

  “That would be a good thing,” Dorothy told him. She opened her eyes suddenly, piercing him with her gaze. “But hold onto your feelings of foolishness,” she added. “Wisdom never comes to those who believe they have nothing left to learn.”

  Dennison found an empty bench when he left City Hall. He sat down and cradled his face in his hands. His headache had returned, but that wasn’t what was disturbing him. He’d found himself agreeing with the Kickaha elder. He also thought he understood what Debra had been telling him. The concepts weren’t suspect—only the part he had to play in them.

  He felt like one of those biblical prophets, requiring the proof of a burning bush or some other miracle before they’d go on with the task required of them. If he could just have the proof that he’d made a real and lasting difference for only one person, that would be enough. But it wasn’t going to come.

  The people he helped continued to live hand to mouth because there was no other way for them to live. Caught up in a recession that showed no sign of letting up, they considered themselves lucky just to be surviving.

  And that was why his decision was going to have to stand. He’d given of himself, above and beyond what the job required, for years. The empty cold feeling inside told him that he had nothing left to give. It was time to call Pete and see about that shipping business. He wasn’t sure he could bring Pete’s enthusiasm to it, but he’d do his best.

  But first he owed Debra a call: Yeah, I went and saw the elder, she was a wonderful woman, I understand what you were saying, but I haven’t changed my mind. He knew he’d be closing the door on the possibility of a relationship with her, but then he didn’t feel he had even that much of himself to give someone anyway.

  He dug a quarter out of his pocket and went to the pay phone on the corner. But when he dialed the number she’d given him, he got a recorded message: “I’m sorry, but the number you have dialed is no longer in service.”

  “Shit,” he said, stepping back from the phone.

  An older woman, laden down with shopping bags, gave him a disapproving glare.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  Flagging down a cab, he gave the driver the address that Debra had written down to accompany her bogus phone number, then settled back in his seat.

  The building was a worn, brownstone tenement, indistinguishable from every other one on the block. They all had the same tired face to turn to the world. Refuse collected against their steps, graffiti on the walls, cheap curtains in the windows when there were any at all. Walking up the steps, the smell of urine and body odor was strong in the air. A drunk lay sleeping just inside the small foyer.

  Dennison stepped over him and went up to the second floor. He knocked on the door th
at had a number matching the one Debra had written down for him. After a moment or two, the door opened to the length of its chain and a woman as worn down as the building itself was looking at him.

  “What do you want?”

  Dennison had been expecting an utter stranger, but the woman had enough of a family resemblance to Debra that he thought maybe his rescuing angel really did live here. Looking past the lines that worry and despair had left on the woman’s face, he realized that she was about his own age. Too young to be Debra’s mother. Maybe her sister?

  “Are you… uh, Mrs. Eisenstadt?” he asked, trying the only name he had.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “My name’s Chris Dennison. I’m here to see Debra.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What’d she do now?”

  “Nothing. That is, she gave me some help yesterday and I just wanted to thank her.”

  The suspicion didn’t leave the woman’s features. “Debra!” she shouted over her shoulder. Turning back to Dennison, she added, “I’ve got lots of neighbors. You try anything funny, I’ll give a scream that’ll have them down here so fast you won’t know if you’re coming or going.”

  Dennison doubted that. In a place like this, people would just mind their own business. It wouldn’t matter if somebody was getting murdered next door.

  “I’m not here to cause trouble,” he said.

  “Deb-ra!” the woman hollered again.

  She shut the door and Dennison could hear her unfastening the chain. When she opened the door once more, it swung open to its full width. Dennison looked down the hall behind the woman and saw a little girl of perhaps nine coming slowly down the hallway, head lowered, gaze on the floor.

  “I thought you told me you were in school yesterday,” the woman said to her.

  The girl’s gaze never lifted. “I was.”

  She spoke barely above a whisper.

  “Man here says you were helping him—doing what, I’d like to know.” She turned from her daughter back to Dennison. “Maybe you want to tell me, mister?”