Between Halos and Horns

Chapter 2 ~ Humble Beginnings

Chapter 2 ~ Humble Beginnings 

I noticed immediately that this man was very thin. Reid looked like a skeleton with some skin over him; his eye sockets were extremely sunken in, making his eyes look huge. He had thin lips and a slightly long nose. By all standards he was, indeed, a hobo. His light brown hair was shaved down, and his five o'clock shadow only complimented the hairstyle, or rather, lack of. He was dressed completely in black; a black v-neck, black brawler jacket, black jeans, and even what appeared to be black combat boots. His hands were clothed in black, fingerless biker gloves. That's when I noticed his fingers. 

      They were gnarled, curved inward, much like an old arthritis patient... but he looked to be maybe in his mid-thirties. 

      "Did you hear me?" I heard him ask, and I politely shake my head no and give an apologetic smile. "That's alright, you're just wakin' up. Keep up though, I'm one hell of a storyteller."

      "Sure thing, Mr. Reid."

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     The first thing you should know, Jesse, before I even begin my story, is that there is such a thing as magic. Plain and simple, there are things out there science cannot explain; beings which you've only heard of in fairy tales are really out there, and curses do exist. Stop looking at me like that, it's the truth, and now that I've told you, when all of this is over, you will notice things. But anyway, I only tell you this because my experience with the magic of this world, both good and bad, is extensive.

     Okay, let's start with how I came to be. My father, Norman, well he was the son of an infamous outlaw cowboy in the late 1800s. Without gettin' into too much detail, my old man wanted nothin' to do with the old family business, so he skipped out of Texas and into Tennessee in the year 1907. It was there he stayed for many years, livin' in hidin' from my grandfather, fearin' sure death if the bastard found 'im. Well in 1933, he met who, in a year, would be my mother. Her name was Ayita, and she was from the Cherokee clan; the few memories I have of her, I see them vividly. She was cute as a button, and never once did I see her wear anything but her own Native garb. 

    Here's where things really get rollin', I was born on August 30th of the year 1934. Stop lookin' at me like that, I told you before we started, magic is a very real thing, and I will explain why I look so young. My mother gave birth to me alone, in the small house that my father had bought for her in Nashville a year before. I tell you alone because two months before I was due, the man got rabbit in his blood and decided to skip town once again. She named me Tai Kash. The first name was her own imagination and Kash...well she kept my father's last name, even after he bailed. And yes, you can record that as my real name. My mother was far away from any family, and because she had chosen the moving ways of the new world over the traditional Injun ways, she knew no one, had no help. But it was a successful birth, as you can see, and she took care of me best she could on her own with a shit job and no one to come home to - strong lady. 

     She died six years later, no one cared but me. I never had no formal education, but she had taught me the basics of readin' and writin', and speakin' both English and Cherokee. I had only one friend when I when I was six years old, and his name was Dale Williams. He was a black boy, my age, and every bit as lonely as me. His mother was an alcoholic and his father was always doped up to the point where he didn't know his name. He obviously wasn't allowed to go to school at the time, and since we were both loners at a very young age, we decided to join forces. Kids, you know? 

    Dale helped me bury my mother. Imagine that. Unspeakable nowadays, to even think that two six year olds could bury someone on their own. We did it in my own backyard - dug what could have been a ten foot hole with two shovels we'd found lyin' around, wrapped her up in a couple of blankets, and plopped her right on in. I said a few Cherokee words of passing, and Dale insisted on singin' three gospel songs from his church. (Reid laughs here and scratches his beard in what may have been nostaligia.) Meanwhile, I took this singin' time to fill the hole back up with dirt. 

    So, now that I had no parents, and Dale basically didn't either, I invited him to stay with me. It was a house with no electricity, a small amount of money for food, but no bills, because as far as the state was concerned, it didn't exist. My old man never joined up with his father, but that didn't mean he was oblivious to the ways of bending the law. Of course I wasn't worried about that at the time, it was much later when I began to question how I could have stayed in that house without payin' anyone anythin'.

    It wasn't long before Dale and I had burnt through my mother's savings, and we could only take so much from his doped father before his mother would chase us out of the house with a knife. We had to figure out somethin', and somethin' quick. So at eight years old, we hit the streets of Nashville full of gimmicks and false advertisin'. We would set up small booths on the streets, and Dale and I would take turns tryin' to sell a ridiculous item while the other pickpockets the potential customer for everything they're worth. Before too long, we were makin' a killin' - as far as two eight year olds were concerned anyway. Pretty soon we got to be pretty handy with slippin' wristwatches off of the men and bracelets off the broads. And no matter what, we would always get away with it. We were young, sharp, fast, and fairly unsuspectin'. We knew how to get around town, knew all the local hotspots, and most of all, we knew where to exchange our hot merchandise for a few dollars. At the time, it didn't seem wrong to us, we were just kids earnin' money to have food to eat, and to have clothes on our backs. 

    We never went to school, so we had all the time in the world to devise new schemes, eat all day, shop all day, or go explorin' outside the city limits. We grew up fast, and though it was good that we did at the time, it's almost sad to think back on myself as I was. (He runs a hand through his shaved hair and sighs before giving his eyes a good rub and taking another drag from a dying cigarette.) We were good at what we did, which was con, steal, and otherwise do wrong by people for our betterment. This was the reason that a local crimelord named Bo Deacon found us - a man that would show us things we didn't want to see, teach us things we didn't want to learn... and most importantly, change our lives forever.