New Heart Church

by Jim Barringer

  Chapter Four

  Stanley had come by my room the previous night before I went to sleep, asking if I was interested in helping him feed some homeless people in downtown Fort Worth the next day. I wasn’t sure what to expect, honestly, because I’d never met a homeless person that I knew of, and certainly never on purpose, but I’d told Stanley I would.

  Wednesday morning rolled around, and I pushed my aching body out of bed and into the shower, then down the stairs to meet Stanley at nine o’clock.

  “You want to walk or drive over there?” Stanley asked. Maybe he had seen me moving like an arthritic, or maybe he didn’t relish walking through the cold. The clouds from the previous day had burned off, replaced by beautiful sun, but the chill remained.

  “We can drive,” I told him. “I like a good walk as much as anybody, but not when it feels like my lungs are made of ice.”

  “You’re supposed to be used to this weather,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

  “I never got used to this weather. I hated every winter more than the one before.”

  “Good thing God brought you here instead of to Boston, then.”

  We both slid inside Stanley’s car, which rumbled down the back streets toward the north side of downtown. There was a church, a tall brick building that I’d wandered past a few times while walking, and people milling around outside it. Stanley led me around the back, and we slipped into the kitchen area, where half a dozen people were putting together a meal of Hamburger Helper and dinner rolls.

  After a few introductions to people whose names I already didn’t remember, Stanley told me, “We’ll be on the end of the line, putting dessert and silverware on the plates. Simple enough?”

  “Simple enough. Why are we feeding them Hamburger Helper at nine o’clock in the morning?”

  Stanley looked up at the clock. “Homeless people don’t care much about time the way you and I do, Eli. They don’t have to live by the clock, don’t have to be anywhere at a certain time. Breakfast, lunch, whatever. They get food, they’re happy. It might be the only meal they get today.”

  I hadn’t thought about any of that, and I felt very naïve, so inexperienced in this area that Stanley knew so much about. But I guess it didn’t take much experience to hand plates off to a hungry person, did it? I pulled on some plastic gloves and stood in front of a huge plate of chocolate-chip cookies as the door was pulled open and two hundred disheveled people strode toward us.

  I’d thought there might be pushing or shoving, if these people were as hungry as Stanley said, but they were incredibly respectful to each other. Something reminded me of the previous Christmas, when fights had broken out near the Best Buy in Indianapolis over some of the holiday sales. Privileged white people couldn’t stand patiently in line for something they didn’t need, but homeless folks could treat each other civilly even when their stomachs were growling audibly.

  They stank. They were missing teeth. But they filed past me, styrofoam plates extended to receive the two cookies I was about to give them, and they thanked me politely, moving toward Stanley to receive their plastic silverware, thanking him too. I looked over at Stanley, who was obviously in his element. He didn’t seem happy unless he was helping somebody else. Maybe that was just his personality, or maybe there was something more to it.

  It didn’t take us long to send everyone through the line, and when the last one was almost past us, I said, “Stanley, why do you get so much joy out of doing stuff like this?”

  “I don’t know, Eli.” He scratched his head. “Why do you ask?”

  “It just seems like you go a bit over the top. I mean, every time I turn around you’re doing something for somebody. It’s almost as if…” I couldn’t really finish the thought, didn’t know exactly where I was going with it.

  “Almost as if I’m trying too hard,” Stanley finished. “Like I’m too driven.”

  I nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking.” Suddenly the thought clicked into place, and I knew what I’d been trying to say. “Like you haven’t forgiven yourself for your past, like you’re trying to prove to yourself that you’re not that person anymore.”

  The last homeless man made his way past Stanley, leaving the two of us alone at the end of the line. Stanley rubbed his bottom lip, looking up at the corner of the room. “That’s a very interesting idea,” he said slowly.

  I couldn’t tell if I had upset him, so I busied myself picking up some of the mess around the kitchen, while Stanley still stood there, frowning ever so slightly. Abruptly he started walking, grabbing me by the shoulder and steering me out the back door. “This way, Eli.”

  By this time I had no idea what was happening, so I just walked, the chill of the air piercing my lungs. Stanley was walking quickly, and I had to rush to keep up. “Hey. Slow down,” I told him.

  He did, ever so slightly, then stopped, leaning against a building. “I think God just spoke through you, Eli,” he said, looking me in the eyes. “I don’t think I’ve forgiven myself.” Big, round tears sprang to his eyes, meandering down his cheeks, where he wiped them off on his sleeve. He acted like he was going to start talking, then just shook his head. “I can’t even tell you what it feels like.”

  It seemed to me he was overreacting a bit, but he was right; I had no idea what he was feeling. After all, he had killed a man in cold blood. Maybe television and movies had numbed me to that, making it seem like a person could do something like that and just get over it with no problems. But Stanley had spent twenty-five years in a cold cell thinking about what he had done, had lost most of his adulthood because of one moment of foolishness. I was having a hard enough time just believing that I was valuable to God. I couldn’t imagine how much more amplified that struggle must have been in Stanley’s own heart.

  We stood there for long minutes, catching suspicious sidelong glances from the other pedestrians, but I didn’t care. I leaned on the building next to Stanley, waiting for him to say what was on his mind. I didn’t want to say anything, just wanted to let him have his moment, but I felt like I needed to speak up.

  “Stanley, why are you so ashamed of your story? You’ve spent the last three weeks trying to get me to be honest, spent the whole Bible study last week prying me open because you said my story made God look good. God’s done so much more with you than he has with me. I mean, don’t get me wrong,” I said quickly, “I understand why you might not want that to be public knowledge. But wouldn’t you feel better if you didn’t have to hide secrets from people?”

  “I know, Eli. I know.” He pushed off the building and we started walking again, slowly, back toward where he had parked his car. “Why do you have to be right?”

  “Er…I don’t know…”

  He smiled thinly. “I’m just messing with you, Eli. God’s got a sense of humor, using someone like you to call me out on this. You’re right, of course. You know it and I know it. I don’t do all this helping people because I get joy out of it. I mean, it does make me happy, but I do it cause I feel like I have to. I still think of myself as a murderer, Eli. I know God has forgiven me. But I feel like I can’t forgive me. If I did, it’d be like I wasn’t sorry for that anymore. And I am sorry, every single day of my life, for the years I lost. I feel like I have to pay God back for wasting the life he gave me.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Nothing in my life could compare to what he was talking about; I had no idea what he was thinking or feeling. He seemed very unsure of himself now. The normally smiley, secure, outgoing exterior had melted away, and this doubtful, haunted man was what was underneath. I wondered how many people had ever seen it, given how carefully Stanley kept it concealed.

  “But you’re right,” he said resolutely. “I’m a hypocrite if I tell you not to be ashamed of your story while I’m ashamed of mine.” We had reached the car by then, but Stanley was looking eastward, where we could see Interstate 3
5 between the skyscrapers. He wasn’t looking at anything in particular; his eyes might as well have been closed, because his mind was somewhere else completely.

  “You’re going to visit your parents over Christmas, you said, right?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Where did that come from?”

  “I’m going to see if I can get a hold of the family whose son I killed,” he said, chewing on his tongue. “I want to fly up there for Christmas. I want to ask them for forgiveness.”

  “For Christmas? You’re sure they’re going to want that kind of drama in their holiday?”

  “I have no idea, but I feel like I have to try. I want to reconcile.”

  “And I want to reconcile with my parents,” I told him, almost before I knew what I was saying. Did I really? Doubts rushed in, about what I was going to say and whether they would want to hear it, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen to any doubts, so I told God to come take care of them.

  “It’s a deal,” Stanley said, extending his hand. I took it, feeling the strength of his grip, and we shook. “I want to deal with this,” he told me, getting into his car. “I want it behind me. I don’t want it affecting the way I think of myself and the way I live my life anymore. It’s ancient history.”

  “Right on.”

  We rode back to the apartment, neither of saying anything, and went back to our separate rooms. It was kind of funny. The night I had given my life to God, I’d been complaining that I didn’t have the deep connection that my friends had with each other. Well, now I did; now I was elbow to elbow with them in all the crazy stuff that was going on. I had said the morning after my prayer that the prayer itself wasn’t any kind of climax, but it seemed it had certainly opened the door for everything that followed.

  It was Wednesday night, the night praise band practice was supposed to happen, but I was going to be leaving on Sunday morning in order to get back to Indiana in time for Christmas, so there was no point in practicing with the gang. Besides, I didn’t want to talk to anybody just then. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts, with God, talking to him about the journey I was on and where it was going to end up.

  The only answer I got was that I was supposed to keep following him, and given his track record so far, that was something I was more than happy to do.