“Hey preacher,” he said. “You …”
“Yes?” I said, pretty sure he was going to ask me for some cash. But he didn’t right then, instead launching into a story about the Bunn brothers and their
lumber yard, how both of them had gotten jobs with the Bunn brothers when they
first came to town twenty years back. Did I know Sam Bunn? No I didn’t, I said. Certainly had heard of him.
“Well, everyone has heard of Sam Bunn,” he said. “Time was, I could pick up the phone and call him at home. Knowing his home
number; that’s what you call knowing someone.”
“That’s where the two of us met,” she added. “I worked right out in the yard with the men,” she said. “I was the first woman out there, before that kinda thing was normal. Look at
these hands -- those ain’t no secretary’s hands.”
She was right. Her hands looked as worn and weathered as her face and the rest
of her.
“Hey preacher,” the bearded one said. “You said you came here to help. How ‘bout helpin’ out a Vietnam veteran. We was really countin’ on that lunch today.”
He was right; I had come to help. I drew out my wallet. I had two one dollar
bills but nothing else small. I pulled out the two singles and held them out.
He looked down at the money, obviously disappointed. “Two hungry people ain’t gonna get far on two measly bucks,” he said. “You ain’t got a five?”
“No. Just the two singles and a twenty.” Against my will, fearful thoughts flooded my mind. Soon my own paycheck might
cease to be. In fact, might was soft pedaling it. Would come to an end. How long? Not sure. Some kind of
severance would be in order, I hoped. I’d never been poor; never rich either but I always knew the source of my
livelihood, just like my father. Believe me, individual churches worry about
their bottom line just like businesses, but in the big denominations we have
something to fall back on. If these people, this hapless couple missing their
noon meal, had anything to fall back on, they wouldn’t be here on the street begging from me. Was I about to become one of them? My stomach knotted. I reassured myself with thoughts of family. I could fall back on them. “Twenty seems like too much for two people,” I said.
“Hey, I know,” she said. “See those boys on the steps? Well, there’s six of us altogether. You give us the twenty and maybe the two ones too and I
believe I can run over to the Publix store …”
“Where’s there a Publix round here? Ain‘t even a Winn-Dixie no more,” the beard said.
“Well then,” she said, “I’ll go over to the 7-11 and buy us some of those sub sandwiches they make … they ain’t as good as the Publix subs but they’s cheaper I know for sure. And I’ll get a big bag of chips for us to share, and if there’s any left I’ll get a bottle of coke and I’ll grab some cups and we’ll have us a nice feast -- all on you pastor. Now that’s gotta make you feel good about yourself.”
“You said you wanted to help,” he added.
I handed them the money. Twenty-two dollars. “I hope it’s enough,” I said. I felt ashamed that the churches had let the feeding program close
down, and strangely, giving away the last of the money in my wallet helped me
spit in the eye of that fearful specter hovering over my disappearing paycheck.
We’ll see, I told myself, how brave you feel when your bank account is empty too.
They grabbed the twenty-two bucks and were off without a thank you. “God bless you,” I said, mumbling “you’re welcome” under my breath. They were quickly back with their “family“ on the church steps, and soon after headed off to the 7-11, the whole bunch of
them moving fast as one unit. It occurred to me they didn’t want to bring the food back here where they might be accosted by the other
homeless people now wondering where to find their lunch.
I made it back to my car without another request for money. How many did they
usually feed? Fifty? A hundred or more. There’d be lots of hungry folks wandering the neighborhood. If you wanted to do a TV
show on survivors, here’s your cast. This is the real deal, not some trumped up “preppies on an island” fantasy.
Sagan’s foster care worker had her office in the building across the street from where
I‘d parked. She didn’t know what had been happening with us. If she did, I’d have had a phone call. I figured with all her clients, she’s thinking no news is good news. At some point she’ll call me to make the routine, periodic computer entry, “Made contact. Client doing well.” Foster boys Sagan’s age living with respected ministers were the least of her worries.
Anyway, he would be 18 soon and free to make his own decisions. I hoped he’d want to live with me, but the truth is the whole damn thing was unraveling in
my mind. I mean, the goal was to keep us all together as a family, but no one
seemed to be cooperating. Carolyn wouldn’t come home with the kids because I wanted Sagan in the house. Sagan was gone
because he thought he’d driven off the rest of my family. I was going to lose the house because I
insisted to my boss that I had to have Sagan in the house with me, which he
wasn’t, and I wasn’t sure if he would come back or not. So what happens if I go home, call Charley
and say, “Look Dr. Webster, I changed my mind.” Carolyn will come home with the kids and then Sagan will want to come home but
of course he can’t, and if he does, then I have to ship him out again and stick him in a program
or else Charley will … and who says Sagan would consent to a program and not just run away. And if he
did consent, it would just be for my good despite how it would affect him, and
if I let him volunteer for a program against my wish and his, wouldn’t that tell him once again, “boy, of all the expendable ones, you top the list.”
See what I mean? It’s a freaking fire drill for clowns. A “welcome” sign on the front door, and “get the hell out” on the back. In psychology it’s called a double bind, in literature Catch 22. Here on the street, and I’m thinking I better learn to speak some street, it’s called being screwed. If there was a good way out, I couldn’t see it. I knew just one thing for sure: I was up to my ass in alligators with
no way to drain the swamp. Maybe something would come to me on the drive home.
So many times I had sat in counseling session, formal or informal, and advised
people against looking back. “The most important question,” I’d tell them, “is where do you go from here.” When they’d insist they had to deal with this pain or that lurking in their past before
they could move forward, I’d say, “No you don‘t. Focus on the road ahead and as you travel, the road you’re traveling now will become the road behind you. That old road you fear will
begin to fade from memory.” It sounded simple enough when I was ladling it on other people, but I came up
short on answers when I was the one being asked “where do you go from here?” I didn’t see many options.
Fortunately, I had put on my game face and steeled myself against self-pity. “There’s always options, Dietrich,” I told myself, “like them or not. And if you don’t like the ones you see, create some new ones.” I liked that: first ask yourself, “where do I go from here,” and, if you don’t like your options, create new ones. Truth be told, when I first spoke those
words to myself, I was just trying to get through a moment of doubt, but that
little philosophy would save my sanity in the coming weeks, and would lead me
to places I would never have dreamed existed.
Back home I had two messages on my answering machine. First was Charley saying
he had received my e-mail and wondered how I wanted to proceed. Did I want to
do this the “easy way or the hard way?” He wanted me to call as soon as possible.
The second message was from Carolyn. She sounded sad and a little unfriendly.
She wanted to see me. “Don’t call; just come over. I’ll be home all day,” she said. I wondered why she hadn’t called me on my cell. Apparently, she didn’t want to reach me; she wanted us to have it out face-to-face. “This is going to be sweet,” I told myself, laughing out loud. “Let the fun begin.”
All content Copyright © Gary Broughman, 2008
