Have a Little Faith - Mitch Albom [50]
“After a while, Pastor got deliveries from these food bank organizations and he’d serve them out the side of his house in an empty field. A few of us made this grill next to his place and we’d heat the food up. People would come from blocks away, they’d bring a bowl, maybe a spoon if they got one—I seen people with plastic bags scooping up food and eating with their hands.
“And Pastor would have a little service right there against his house. Say thanks to God.”
Wait. Outside? Against his house?
“That’s what I’m saying. So pretty soon, we’re liking this guy. We see him coming, we say, ‘Here come Rebbey Reb. Hide the dope! Hide the liquor!’ And he’d give us a little money to help him unload the food trucks—turkeys, bread, juice. Me and a guy had our own unloading system: one for the church, two for us. We’d throw ours out in the bushes, then come back later and pick it up.
“Eventually, Pastor come to me and say, ‘You got enough to eat, Cass? Take what you need.’ He knew what I was doing. “I felt ashamed.”
“One night in the projects, I had just gotten high and I hear Pastor call my name. I’m embarrassed to come out. My eyes are big as saucers. He asks if I can do some landscaping around his grass the next day. And I said, sure, yeah. And he gives me ten dollars and says meet me tomorrow. When he left, all I wanted to do was run upstairs and buy more dope and get high again. But I didn’t want to spend this man’s money that way. So I ran across the street and bought lunch meat, crackers—anything so I don’t spend it on drugs.
“That night, this guy who’s staying where I’m staying, while I’m sleeping, he steals the pipes from under the sink—steals ’em for the copper, so he can sell ’em. And he takes off, and all the water starts running in. I wake up on the floor and the place is flooded. I’m washing away.
“My only clothes is all ruined now, and I go to Pastor’s house and I say, ‘Sorry, I ain’t gonna be able to work for you. I’m all soaked.’ And I’m telling him how mad I am at this guy, and he says, ‘Cass, don’t worry. Sometimes people got it worse than you do.’
“And he sends me over to the church, and he says, ‘Go upstairs, we got some bags of clothes, just pick out what you want.’ And I get some clothes—Mitch, it’s the first time I got clean underwear in I don’t know how long. Clean socks. A shirt. I go back to his place and he says, ‘Where are you gonna stay now, Cass?’
“And I say, ‘Don’t know. My place is all flooded.’ And he goes in, talks with his wife, and he comes out and says, ‘Why don’t you stay here with us?’
“Now I’m shocked. I mean, I did a little work for this man. I stole food from him. And now he’s opening his home?
“He said, ‘You wanna think about it?’ And I’m like, ‘What’s there to think about? I’m homeless.’”
Henry never told me any of this, I said.
“That’s why I’m telling you,” Cass said. “I moved in with his family that night. I stayed there almost a year. A year. He let me sleep on the couch in his main room. His family is upstairs, they got little kids, and I’m sayin’ to myself, this man don’t know me, he don’t know what I’m capable of. But he trusts me.”
He shook his head and looked away.
“That kindness saved my life.”
We sat there for a second, quiet and cold. I now knew more than I’d ever figured to know about an elder of the I Am My Brother’s Keeper Ministry.
What I still didn’t know was why.
And then Cass told me: “I see the way you watch the Pastor. You here a lot. And maybe he ain’t the way you think a pastor should be.
“But I truly believe the Lord has given me a second chance on account of this man. When I die, Jesus will stand in the gap for me and I will be heard and the Lord will say, ‘I know you.’ And I believe it’s the same for Pastor Covington.”
But Henry’s done some bad things in his life, I said.
“I know it,” Cass said. “I done ’em, too. But it’s not me against the other guy. It’s God measuring you against you.
“Maybe all you get are chances to do good, and what little bad you do ain’t much bad at all. But because God has put you in the position where