Ghetto Cowboy Read Online Free PDF

This thing is about fifteen feet tall and fills up a huge part of the yard.
    Bob scowls. “City used to come and haul it away, just like it did for all the stables in Philly. Then about two months ago, they just up and stopped, saying something about budget issues and how we ain’t legal —”
    “Legal? What you mean?” I ask.
    He makes a face. “We own some of these structures here, but all of
this
land,” he says, pointing from the Ritz to the corral and the clubhouse, all the way out to the fields, where some teenagers are running horses. “The City owns all
that.
But it never did anything with it, ’cause nobody ever wanted nothing to do with this neighborhood. For decades, they just let it rot. Buildings would sit here empty and vandalized, just waiting to become crack houses and gang hangouts. But this our home turf, and we decided to make something of it. So we took it back. Made it our own.”
    My eyes bug out. “You
stole
it from the City?”
    He leans in real close to make sure I hear him right. “No. We reclaimed it. It’s called homesteading — that means if they don’t use it, they lose it.”
    I look around the spread. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
    “We turned something ugly into something beautiful, Cole. Turned it into a real neighborhood. It’s the only safe place around here, the only place a kid can go without worrying about messing with guns. And it’s all ’cause of them horses.”
    My eyes come to rest on that smelly mountain in front of me. “But what you gonna do now? How much bigger is that pile gonna get?”
    He laughs bitterly. “A lot, because the City suddenly decided it wanted to build a mall and condos out here. Now it wants the land back.”
    I’m confused. “What’s that got to do with
this
?” I say, pointing at the pile.
    He takes his hat off, wipes his brow. “Everything.” He looks up and sees a neighbor staring out her window at him. She don’t look happy and shuts her curtains.
    “See, the neighbors always liked us, but now they see this . . . 
pile
 . . . growing in the heat and humidity of summer, where it smells ten times worse and . . . well, you get the picture. City stopped service in order to divide us. Then all they gotta do is wait for the complaints to start rolling in, and next thing ya know,
BOOM,
they swoop in with health code violations —”
    He stops, must see he lost me. Shrugs.
    “Just shovel this onto the pile. It won’t matter much, ’cause they’ll be coming to shut us down soon.”
    Before I can say
Why?
he gestures over to something covered with a tarp.
    My jaw drops again when I see a hoof sticking out from underneath the tarp. “Is that —?”
    “Yep. But we got nowhere to take it, just like we got nowhere to haul this pile. And it ain’t even our horse.” He spits. “Yep, the end is coming, that much I know. . . .”

I start rolling that wheelbarrow back and forth. Fill it, empty it, fill it, empty it. I don’t care.
    Slowly them other kids bring back the horses they was washing to put them in the stalls. The oldest one smiles when he sees me working. “I guess Harp told you everybody works if they come in here.”
    “I just felt sorry for y’all. I still ain’t stayin’,” I say as I roll up to the last stall. I hear a noise and peek into the stall where that horse Harper broke is standing — big, black, sweaty, and staring me down.
    I freeze in my tracks just as Harper comes strolling in with a bunch of hay. “You ’bout done?”
    He takes the hay into the stall, but the horse is still staring right at me and starts backing into the corner.
    “I think he’s scared of you,” says Harp.
    Yeah, I don’t think so. He just wants me to come closer so he can stomp on me.
    Harper sees me frozen there. “Boy, if you gonna be around horses, you gotta learn they ain’t gonna hurt you unless you scared. A horse can smell fear; it makes ’em nervous. You scared?”
    I look at him. “Who you