Read Online To Make Death Love Us by Sovereign Falconer - Free Book Online Page A

apart from most of the world, had no
drama to it.
    From the first day
he bent his thumb back to his fore­arm for the amusement of his schoolmates, his antic talent was
little better than commonplace. After all, there was Harriet down the block, who'd been born with
a sixth toe on each foot, and Martin, who could spit clear across the width of the boys' John.
There were special wonders as fine or finer than his own.
    He did have,
however, the advantage of having been born a gypsy, and was trained from the beginning in the
technique of making coin from even such meager gifts as his own.
    He lived with the
woman he thought to be his mother in a storefront in Philadelphia. A constantly changing gypsy
family of between twenty and thirty shared the space with him. He found that pleasant for several
rea­sons.
    He was never
without companionship or confederates in games or ventures of small thievery. He had partners in
sexual experimentation and lost his virginity to a cousin— he supposed that was what she was—when
he was twelve. There was always more than enough shared warmth in his nighttime bed to keep him
comfortable in the coldest of Philadelphia winters. Even the fact that some of the younger
children of the protean family occasionally re­lieved themselves upon his own body during the
night, only served to teach him humility and forbearance, useful tools for a
philosopher.
    The jumble of
children served as cover for his frequent truancy from public school. He stopped going altogether
sometime around the sixth grade. He found his education for himself at the public library and
never stole a book from it, much as he would have liked to.
    There was one great
unpleasantness. He rarely had enough to eat. His appetite was abnormal. Thin as a rail, some
furnace within his belly consumed food in great quantity and left almost nothing upon his
bones.
    His life, all of
his life, had been one long battle to keep the pangs of hunger stilled.
    He joined his first
carnival on the promise that he would be given all the hot dogs, sausages, candy, and popcorn he
could eat. If he spent everything he earned on food, he still did not get enough.
    Pepino learned in
time to manipulate his body so that he "grew" four inches by simply stretching his elastic frame.
He amused the crowds by scratching his back with his own foot. He made his stomach "disappear" by
draw­ing it in till his belly button very nearly touched his back­bone. He learned never to smile
while he performed such outrageous and ludicrous acts and that served to make the crowds laugh
boldly at his otherwise rather unattractive antics.
    His skills were
altogether unstartling and, somehow, more sad than ultimately amusing. They were largely
un­salable, as well. Double-jointed rubber men were plenti­ful if not exactly a drug on the
market.
    He earned his keep
by being a jack-of-all-trades, but since everyone in carnivals and circuses was adept at many
skills, he was not the only jack-of-all-trades traveling in his circle and therefore, once more,
was a common­place.
    He had long,
slender, and clever fingers, and shared out with his employers the bounty of the pockets he
some­times picked. It was not a happy skill for a philosopher and he did it only when his
enormous appetite gave him little choice.
    He was an excellent
shill. When the hicks were lured to the games of chance by his imaginary but loudly pro­claimed
winnings, he would smile widely and the sudden, extraordinary gladness that illuminated his face
seemed a benediction and a guarantee that his good fortune should be their own.
    Even so, smiling
was no great pleasure to him. He con­sidered it to be a refutation of all that he knew to be true
about life. His summation of life, of its meaning and being, was a simple and direct but profound
one: no one would ever have his or her appetite satisfied completely.
    Life meant one was
born to suffer hunger eternally until