Same Kind of Different As Me (13 page)
Last to eat were the undiluted street people, shabby and pungent. It took me a while to get over their smell, which floated in their wake like the noxious cloud around a chemical plant. The odor seemed to stick to the hairs inside my nose. I swore I could see the hair on some of their heads rustling, jostled by hidden armies of squirming lice. A couple of the men had stumps protruding where an arm or a leg used to be. One long-haired fellow wore a necklace fashioned from several hundred cigarette butts tied together with string. He wore black plastic garbage bags tied to his belt loops. I didn’t want to know what was in them.
On our first day, Deborah, surveying the street people, looked at me and said, “Let’s call them ‘God’s people.’”
I was thinking they looked more like the extras in the movie
Mad Max
Beyond Thunderdome
.
Everyone who ate at the mission earned their free meal only after going into the chapel to sit like dead men on hard benches while a white-haired and nearly blind preacher named Brother Bill roared about the saving power of Jesus and the unpleasant consequences reserved for the unredeemed. From the kitchen side of the chapel door—locked to prevent altar-call escapees—I could hear the hellfire-and-brimstone, tough-love message that I agree often cracks hard cases. But it seemed manipulative to me to make the hungry sit like good dogs for their supper. And it did not surprise me that even when Brother Bill split the air with one of his more rousing sermons, not a single soul ever burst through the chapel doors waving their hands and praising Jesus. At least not while we were there.
The men and women we served seemed pleasantly surprised to have a smiling couple with all their teeth serving them supper. I’m sure they thought Deborah was on amphetamines, or possibly running for mayor, as they had likely never seen anyone who smiled and asked after them as much as she did.
“I’m Deborah, and this is my husband, Ron,” she’d say as though welcoming visitors into her home. “What’s your name?” Often, she received blank stares. Some looked at her slack-jawed and goggle-eyed, as though she’d just landed in the parking lot on a spaceship from Mars.
Some fellows answered Deborah, though, and from that day on she was forever telling rough-looking characters with names like Butch and Killer, “Oh, what a pretty name!”
Of the hundreds we served on that first day, only a handful told us what people called them. Deborah wrote down their names: Melvin, Charley, Hal, David, Al, Jimmy—and Tiny, an affable fellow who stood six-foot-five, weighed 500 pounds, and wore Osh-Kosh overalls, fuzzy blue house slippers, and no shirt.
One man, who declined to share his name, did tell us exactly what he thought of our philanthropy. Black, pencil-slim, and looking wildly out of place, he wore a mauve sharkskin suit and a hustler’s tie, both of which he had somehow managed to have sharply pressed. From beneath a cream-colored fedora, he surveyed his domain through dark glasses with a designer insignia stamped in gold. We later found out people called him “Mister.”
That first Tuesday, Mister strode up to me with an aggressive, proprietary air, as though the mission dining hall was his and I was trespassing. “I don’t know who you folks are,” he growled around an unlit filter-tipped cigar, “but you think you’re doin’ us some kind of big favor. Well, tonight when you and your pretty little wife are home in your three-bedroom cottage watchin TV in your recliners thinkin you’re better than us, you just think about this: You miss a coupla paychecks and your wife leaves you and you’ll be homeless—just like us!”
Speaking for myself—on the “favor” part—he was more right than I cared to admit. I didn’t know quite what to say, but when I opened my mouth, out came, “Thank you. Thank you for helping me see homelessness your way.” Unmoved, Mister eyed me like an insect, chomped his cigar, and strode off in disgust.
The encounter unnerved me some, but also gave me a peek at how some of these folks felt. A thought nibbled at the edges of my brain: Maybe my mission wasn’t to analyze them, like some sort of exotic specimens, but just to get to know them.
Meanwhile, no tally of disdain, strange glances, or silence seemed to bother Deborah. She wanted to
know
and truly serve these people, not merely feel good about herself. That first day, she fell in love with every one of them. At her urging, we memorized the names we learned that day and, that night, prayed for each one, even the obstreperous Mr. Mister, whose mind I suddenly found myself hoping to change.
After a couple of Tuesdays, we noticed that the only time these folks got in a hurry was when they jockeyed for position near the head of their designated section of the serving line. We found out the reason for this: They feared we might ladle out all the good stuff—meat, for example—leaving only soup or stale 7-Eleven sandwiches for those unlucky enough to have been seated at the front of the chapel, farthest from the door. When the stragglers wound up with such low-end fare, the looks on their faces told a sad story: As society’s throwaways, they just accepted the fact that they survived on leftovers and discards.
It seemed to us such a simple thing to prepare a little more food so that the street people at the end of the line could eat as well as those who slept at the mission, so we asked Chef Jim for that favor and he agreed. From then on, it thrilled us to serve the street people the good stuff, like fried chicken, roast beef, and spaghetti and meatballs.
That was the first time I tried to do something to improve the lives of the people Deborah had dragged me along to serve. I hadn’t yet touched any of them, but already they were touching me.
On our third Tuesday of serving, Deborah and I were in the dining hall helping Chef Jim prepare the extra food. Blind Brother Bill had just finished preaching on forgiveness and his congregants were filing in to eat, when we heard the crash of metal and a man roaring in anger near the chapel door. Alarmed, we turned to see about twenty people scatter as a huge, angry black man hurled another chair across the dining hall floor.
“I’m gon’
kill
whoever done it!” he screamed. “I’m gon’
kill
whoever stole my shoes!” Then he sprayed the air with a volley of curses and advanced into the crowd, roundhousing his fists at anyone stupid enough to get in his way.
It looked for all the world like a gangland brawl was going to explode right there at the chapel door. As I scanned the room for mission personnel to save the day, Deborah leaned in and whispered excitedly in my ear.
“That’s him!”
“What!” I said impatiently. “What are you talking about?”
“That’s the man I saw in my dream! The one who changes the city. That’s him!”
I turned and looked at Deborah as though she had truly gone over the edge. Across the room, a group of mission workers burst in and began pouring soothing words on the raging man’s temper. Grudgingly, he allowed himself to be led away.
“That’s him,” Deborah said again, eyes sparkling. “I think you should try to make friends with him.”
“Me!” My eyes widened in disbelief. “Did you not notice that the man you want me to make friends with just threatened to kill twenty people?”
She laid her hand on my shoulder and tilted her head with a smile. “I really think God’s laid it on my heart that you need to reach out to him.”
“Sorry,” I said, trying hard to ignore the head tilt, “but I wasn’t at that meeting where you heard from God.”
I wasn’t about to invite a killer out for tea. But we did start tracking the man Deborah said she had seen in her dream. He intrigued us both. Probably in his sixties, he looked younger and, somehow, older at the same time. He dressed in rags. A loner, the whites of his eyes had gone an eerie yellow. He never smiled and seldom spoke. Nor did we see anyone acknowledge him. But it wasn’t as though others at the mission ostracized him; it was more like they kept a respectful distance, as one might give wide berth to a pit bull.
On Tuesdays, when the serving line had nearly dried up, he would suddenly appear out of nowhere. With a poker face and no eye contact, he’d indicate that he wanted two plates, claiming one was for an old man upstairs. It was a clear violation of the rules, but we weren’t there to be the mission police. So we served him double and blessed him, to which he responded with a wall of silence. One Tuesday, someone in the kitchen told us they thought his name was Dallas.
Dallas always ate one plate in the dining hall, picking out a spot in a corner far from other human contact. If anyone dared to sit nearby, he got up and moved. While eating, he stared sternly into his plate, chewing slowly with his few good teeth. Never glancing left or right, he methodically scooped the food into his mouth until it was gone. Then he would vanish. I mean that—vanish. He had this strange knack: You rarely saw him come or go. It was more like he was there . . . and then he wasn’t.
Often, driving up to the mission, we’d see Dallas standing alone in a parking lot across the street in the shadow of a Dumpster, his face a stone slate. A couple of times, I overheard people saying this loner was crazy and not to mess with him. Deborah wrote his name in her Bible, next to Ecclesiastes 9:15: “There was found in a certain city a poor man who was wise, and by his wisdom he saved the city.”
Occasionally, Deborah reminded me that she had a feeling God wanted me to be Dallas’s friend. But I wasn’t looking for any new friends, and even if I had been, Dallas from Fort Worth did not fit the profile.
Still, only to please Deborah—God would have to wait—I began a gingerly pursuit of the man.
“Hey there, Dallas,” I’d say whenever I saw him. “How’re you doing today?”
Most of the time, he ignored me. But sometimes, his yellowing eyes skewered me with a look that said, “Leave. Me. Alone.” Which I would have been only too happy to do had it not been for my wife.
After a couple of months of this, someone at the mission heard me call Dallas “Dallas” and laughed at me like I was the town idiot. “His name ain’t Dallas, fool. It’s Denver.”
Well, maybe that’s why he looks disgusted every time I speak to him
, I thought, suddenly hopeful.
“Hey, Denver!” I called the very next time I saw him out by the Dumpster. He never even looked at me. The man was about as approachable as an electric cattle fence.
Things
was goin along just fine at the mission till that smilin white couple started servin in the dinin hall on Tuesdays. Ever week, that woman drew a bead on me in the serving line. She’d smile at me real big and ask me my name and how I was doin—you know: attackin me for no particular reason. I did my best to stay completely outta her way.
And I didn’t tell her my name was Denver, neither, but some fool blowed my cover. After that, the woman would corner me and poke her skinny finger in my face and tell me I wadn’t no bad fella.
“Denver, God has a calling on your life,” she’d say.
I told her several times not to be messin with me ’cause I was a mean man.
“You are
not
a mean man, and I don’t ever want to hear you say that!” she’d say.
She was gettin kinda smart with me. Ain’t never been no woman done that before, and few men, either, without them gettin hurt. But she kept on attackin me until I thought to myself,
What’d I ever do to this woman that she
won’t leave me alone so I can go on about my business?
It might seem like bein homeless don’t take no skill, but I’m gon’ tell you, to stay alive homeless folks has got to know who’s who and what’s what. Here’s what the homeless in Fort Worth knowed about me: Stay outta my way, ’cause I would beat a man down, have him snorin ’fore he hit the ground.
But no matter how mean and bad I tried to act at the mission, I couldn’t shake that woman loose. She was the first person I’d met in a long time that wadn’t scared of me. Seemed like to me she had spiritual eyes: She could see right through my skin to who I was on the inside.
Lemme tell you what homeless people think about folks that help home-less people: When you homeless, you wonder
why
certain volunteers do what they do. What do they want? Everybody want somethin. For instance, when that couple come to the mission, I thought the man looked like the law. The way he dressed, the way he acted. Too high-class. His wife, too, at first. The way she acted, the way she treated people . . . she just looked too sophisticated. Wadn’t the way she dressed. It was just something about the way she carried herself. And both of em was askin way too many questions.