Have a Little Faith - Mitch Albom [42]
“When you gonna hear my story, Mister Mitch?”
You’ve got a story, too?
“I got a story you need to hear.”
Sounds like it could take a few days.
He laughed. “Naw, naw. But you oughta hear it. It’s important.”
All right, Cass. We’ll figure something out.
That seemed to appease him and, thankfully, he dropped the subject. I shivered and pulled my coat tighter.
It’s really cold in here, I said.
“They turned off the heat.”
Who?
“Gas company.”
Why?
“Why else? Didn’t pay the bill, I suppose.”
The humming noise was overwhelming. We were shouting just to be heard.
What is that? I asked.
“Blowers.”
He pointed to several machines that looked like yellow windsocks, pushing warmed air toward the homeless, who waited in line for chili and corn bread.
They really turned your heat off? I said.
“Ye-up.”
But winter’s coming.
“That’s true,” Cass said, looking down at the crowd. “Be a lot more people in here soon.”
Thirty minutes later, up in his office, Henry and I sat huddled by a space heater. Someone came in and offered us a paper plate with corn bread.
What happened? I asked.
Henry sighed. “Turns out we owe thirty-seven thousand dollars to the gas company.”
What?
“I knew we were running behind, but it was small amounts. We always managed to pay something. Then it got cold so quick this fall, and we started heating the sanctuary for services and Bible study. We didn’t realize that the hole in the roof—”
Was sucking the heat up?
“Up and out. We just kept heating it more—”
And it kept disappearing out the roof.
“Disappearing.” He nodded. “That’s the word.”
What do you do now?
“Well, we got blowers. At first, they shut off our electricity, too. But I called and begged them to leave us something.”
I couldn’t believe it. A church in the cold, in America, in the twenty-first century.
How do you explain that with your faith? I said.
“I ask Jesus that a lot,” Henry said. “I say, ‘Jesus, is there something going on with us?” Is it like the book of Deuteronomy, the twenty-eighth chapter, “You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country’ for living in disobedience?”
And what does Jesus answer you?
“I’m still praying. I say, ‘God, we need to see you.’”
He sighed.
“That’s why that tarp you helped with was so important, Mitch. Our people needed a glimmer of hope. Last week it rained and water gushed in the sanctuary; this week it rained, and it didn’t. To them, that’s a sign.”
I squirmed. I didn’t want to be part of a sign. Not in a church. It was just a tarp. A sheet of blue plastic.
Can I ask you something? I said.
“Sure.”
When you were selling drugs, how much money did you have?
He rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. “Man. Do you know, in one stretch, over a year and a half, I brought in about a half a million dollars?”
And now your gas gets shut off?
“Yeah,” he said, softly. “Now the gas gets shut off.”
I didn’t ask if he missed those days. Looking back, it was cruel enough to have asked the first question.
Later, when the plates had been cleared and the tables folded, Cass called names off the clipboard—“Everett!…DeMarcus!”—and one by one, the homeless men stepped up and took a thin vinyl mattress and a single wool blanket. Side by side, a few feet from one another, they set up for the night. Some carried plastic trash bags with their possessions; others had only the clothes they were wearing. It was bone-cold, and Cass’s voice echoed off the gym ceiling. The men were mostly silent, as if this were the moment when it really sank in: no home, no bed, no “good night” from a wife or a child. The blowers roared.
An hour later, Cass, his work finished, lifted himself on his crutches and hobbled to the vestibule. The lights in the gym were dimmed. The men were down for the night.
“Remember, next time, I tell you my story,” Cass said.
Okay, sure, Cass, I said. My hands were dug into my pockets, and my arms and torso were shivering. I couldn’t imagine how these men slept in this cold, except that the alternative was on a rooftop or in an abandoned car.