by Nancy Rue
“Excuse me? Are you the one in charge of this?”
I turned from Chief to a fiftyish, white-haired woman whose maturing beauty was startling. Her well-matched man stood beside her with an Italian leather wallet in his hand. They had the aura of money.
“We are,” I said, pointing to Chief, or at least where Chief had been seconds before.
“So if we wanted to donate to this, who would we make a check out to?” the woman said.
The man waited, Montblanc pen in hand.
“We aren’t really an organization as such,” I said. “I wouldn’t know what to tell you.”
“That’s a shame,” she said, “because this is the way it should be done.”
“I mean, okay, it’s a handout,” the man said. “But you’ve got people counseling and talking about jobs.”
“And that child—now he is darling.”
The man clicked his pen. “Well, hey, let me just make a check out to you, and you can use it at your discretion. What’s your name?”
“It’s Allison Chamberlain, but—”
“Really.” The woman’s lovely eyebrows shot up. “Now it really impresses me that CE isn’t linking their name with this for the PR.”
“It shocks the heck out of me,” the man said and added quickly, “I hope you don’t take that the wrong way.”
“There’s only one way to take it,” I said. “And just so you know, this project is in no way affiliated with Chamberlain Enterprises.”
“Oh, is this where we give the money?” A large woman with a Mother Earth chest stuck a $10 bill between the couple. “I didn’t see a place for donations.”
“We aren’t really taking any—”
“Then what’s this about?”
That came from a thirty-ish guy with a sardonic mouth and a Bluetooth device in his ear. Middle management going for a CEO image.
“What’s it about?” I shrugged. “It’s about giving folks a chance to see that people who’ve had some bad breaks or made some bad choices are still people and could use a little food and a little support.”
He lifted his chin in that I-know-and-you-don’t way that always made me want to smack at it. “So this is just ‘break a little bread with the homeless and feel better about yourself and go home.’ I get that.”
“No,” I said, “you don’t get it.”
“So what’s to get?”
“We’re hoping somebody will step up to the plate and start something where people can be fed and helped to get back on their feet.”
He actually rolled his eyes. “We’ve got social programs for that. These people aren’t taking advantage of them because that would mean they’d actually have to do something with their lives besides stand around with their hands out.”
With each supercilious syllable another hair rose on the back of my neck.
“What’s your issue, dude?” somebody else said. “If you don’t agree with what she’s doing, go somewhere else. Here—I wanna give five bucks.”
“Somebody give me a hat and we’ll pass it—”
“Are you people serious? You don’t know what’s going to happen to that money. For all we know, this woman’ll pocket it and run off to the Caymans.”
“She’s not even asking for money—”
“That’s what she wants you to think—”
“Buddy, why don’t you just take a bagel and—”
“Allison.”
I turned gratefully to Hank, who had her lips to my ear.
“I think you should make a formal statement. From the gazebo—before this gets out of hand.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“When has that ever stopped you before?” she said.
We exchanged a long look that felt like a serious Nudge to me. I nodded.
“Chief,” Hank said. “Allison needs everybody’s attention.”
He whistled and I was somehow ushered to the top step of the gazebo. When I looked down, the hundred or so people looking up to me merged in a blur of indecision. A few emerged with clarity. Bonner, fists pressed against his mouth, fighting me as if I were about to take a step too far. With him, India in huge sunglasses and a pashmina shawl over her head like she was going incognito.
“Preach it, sister,” somebody said, and I knew, of course, that it was Ulysses.
“I’m not going to preach,” I said, with a nod to him. “I just want to explain what we’re about here.”
I went over again what I’d said before, about offering food and support, about hoping someone would take what we had done and run with it.
“I already have a ministry with another segment of our population that needs to be heard and seen,” I said. “We started with far less than this, so—”
“So this is a church thing,” said the man who was becoming far more than a mere pain in the tail. His tone was belittling, the very set of his shoulders enough to make me pick up a bagel and hurl it at him. “That’s what you religious types always do—act like you’re just doing this out of the goodness of your hearts and then you sneak the Bible in there.” He looked around with mock indignation. “What? No tracts to tell me what a sinner I am?”
“Who said anything about sinners?” I said. “We’re not pointing a finger at anybody. We’ve all come up short—that’s not the point.”
“Then would you tell us what the point is?”
Why, oh why, was he still standing there heckling me?
Because he needs to hear what I have to say.
With the Pathetic Pleading Prayer barking from the back of my brain, I obeyed the Nudge.
“If you want a debate, you’ve come to the wrong place,” I said to him. “God doesn’t call me or any of us to ‘debate’ human suffering. We’re called to relieve it.” I found India and her pashima in the crowd. “If you want a sermon on what people have done to bring on their own poverty and homelessness, that’s not what we’re about, either. Look, we’re just offering a blanket to somebody who’s cold, water to someone who can’t even speak because his throat’s so parched, food to a man or woman whose pangs are more than hunger, but real pain.” I looked at Bonner. “Maybe this sounds familiar to some of you. It’s Jesus-talk—Jesus saying tend the sick, free those who are prisoners in their own minds—”
The Wannabe raised his arm and stabbed the air with his finger. “So take your salvation show down to West King Street. They’re the ones to blame for the mess—”
“I told you—” I said. “I’m not going to argue over who’s to blame. All I know is that what’s happened on West King is a symptom of all of society’s evils. You can go argue why with somebody else—but I’m telling you we”—I panned the smear of faces and saw a few more in high definition: Willie from the nursing home, Caroline in her Camelot Tours uniform—“can restore the neighborhood to its rightful owners. We can demand more police protection. We can run the evil out of there and make room for the good that’s straining for life among human beings in community. And we can start with this—”
I closed my eyes and breathed in the words so I could breathe them out. “Every human being wants to be seen, really seen, by another human being, not as a statistic in some sociological study, not as a casualty of poverty, not as a victim of a corrupt social structure. We can start by seeing both what is and what can be. That is why we’re in the plaza in the midst of the wealth and the history and the consumption. And if we don’t start, I’m afraid for us all. For the safety of the sufferers, and the salvation of those who do nothing about it.”
A sweet stillness hushed the crowd—broken by the slow, demeaning clapping of one man.
“Why are you still here?” the Mother Earth woman yelled at him.
“I’ve got as much right to speak out as she does.”
“Y’all just don’t pa
y any attention to him,” someone else said. “Where’s the hat? I didn’t get to put anything in it.”
Chief raised his motorcycle helmet over the crowd and several people reached for it, bills in hand. I leaned over the railing to Hank.
“What are we going to do with that money?” I said. “This is—”
“See? I told you this was a scam to raise money for—”
“You know what? I’ve had about enough of you.…”
The voices rose to a pitch that rose further into somebody taking a swing at the heckler. The crowd swayed as if it were being knocked over as one. Women screamed, men shouted obscenities, and above it all I heard a whistle that didn’t come from Chief.
Two city police officers cut through the crowd to the tangle on the ground, yelling for the fighters to break it up and the crowd to get back. I looked around wildly for Desmond and found him perched on a bench next to the guy with the dog, cheering like he had a front row seat at WrestleMania.
“Chief!” I said. “Can you get Desmond out of here?”
He handed me the overflowing helmet and headed across the park. By then the Sacrament women were huddled behind me with Hank, and the fight had been untangled. I took brief satisfaction in seeing that the troublemaker was dabbing a little blood from his upper lip. He wasn’t going to make CEO if he showed up for work with a shiner.
I turned to my women. “Everybody okay?”
They only nodded, their gazes behind me and their faces deliberately blank. I’d seen that look before, so it didn’t surprise me when I turned back around to see one of the police officers coming up to greet me.
“You Allison Chamberlain?” he said.
“Yes sir. Is everybody okay down there?”
“Yeah, listen, we’re going to have to break up your meeting.”
I glanced at my watch. “We have permission to be here until noon.”
“That was before you went outside the boundaries of your permit, ma’am.”
“What boundaries?”
“Your permit says you were going to give away food, that no money was to be exchanged.”
“No money was.”
He nodded at the money-stuffed helmet I was still clutching.
“This was collected by the people. I didn’t ask for it.”
“It’s a separate permit to sell goods and services.”
“I told you, I didn’t ‘sell’ anything.”
“Did you promise to sell anything? Some solicitation, maybe?”
I followed his gaze—to Jasmine and Mercedes and Geneveve.
“Hank,” I said. “Go find Chief, would you?”
“If you’re talking about Jack Ellington—ma’am, you don’t need a lawyer. You’re not under arrest. I’m just telling you that you have to break this up.”
“And I’m just telling you that you are full of soup. I haven’t breached any boundaries, and I certainly didn’t bring these ladies here to ‘solicit.’ How dare you make that assumption? How dare you?”
“Allison, don’t say another word.”
Chief took the steps in one long lope and put his hand out to the cop, who had now been joined by his partner. They shook silently, as if a conversation were already going on.
“What’s the problem?” Chief said.
“No problem. Y’all just need to knock off for the day.”
“That is a problem!” I said. “We have a right to be here until noon and we’re staying until noon—and I want an apology from you to these women or I am going to file a formal complaint against you. Then there really will be a problem.”
The two officers gave each other the same look Heckler Boy had been giving me for the last hour.
“Girls,” the first cop said, “my apologies. I didn’t know you were off duty.”
“Okay, that is it. Chief, do whatever you have to do to file a complaint for me. That is just unconscionable.”
“Do what you gotta do,” the cop said. “But right now you need to pack up and—”
“No,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.” I sat down on the top step and stared across the park. What was left of the crowd had moved to the surrounding sidewalks. Traffic was almost at a standstill.
Chief leaned over me, mouth barely moving as he spoke. “You sure this is what you want to do? He can arrest you.”
“Let him,” I said.
“Ma’am, I’m going to ask you again—”
“Don’t waste your breath,” I said. “I’m staying until noon.”
“All right then. You have the right to remain silent …”
“Good luck with that,” I heard Chief mutter.
While I was being Mirandized and handcuffed and looked at like a nutcase by the officer, Hank was having problems of her own. Geneveve was struggling to get past her, wrists out in a position that was disturbingly natural.
“If Miss Angel goin’ to jail, I’m goin’ with her!” she said.
“Geneveve, there is absolutely no point in that,” Hank said.
Jasmine was, of course, crying. Mercedes brought her wrists together too.
“I ain’t lettin’ her go to no jail by herself,” she said. “She don’t know how to handle herself in there.”
“I do,” I said. “Don’t you remember all that advice you gave me?”
I was trying to stay calm, which was hard with the officer’s hard hand around my arm and the handcuffs cutting into my wrists. The one thing they hadn’t told me was that those things hurt.
“I need you out here praying,” I said to them. “You can’t mess up everything you’ve started—this is my journey, okay?”
“I’ll have her out in two hours,” Chief said. “Hank, you want to see them back to the house?”
“What about Desmond?” I said as I was led down the steps.
“I’ve got the Desmond watch,” Chief said. “He’s right—”
The words died on his lips, and I saw a look cross his face that I could never have put there in my wildest imaginings. His color drained and his gaze darted from the cannon to the obelisk to the pavilion. I knew, because mine went with it.
“Where is he?” I said. “Where’s Desmond?” I could hear the panic rising in my voice. “Okay, take these things off me. I’ll leave the park. I have to find him.”
“Too late, ma’am,” the officer said. “You’ll have to take it up with the judge now.”
I tried to wrench my arm away but his grip was hard and frightening.
“Don’t make it worse for yourself now,” he said.
“Chief!”
He planted himself in front of us, hand up to the cop, who said, “One minute.”
Chief put his face close to mine. “I’ll find him—just go with them and keep your cool.”
“I can’t.”
“Hey.” His eyes grabbed mine and held on. “Do you trust me?”
DearGoddearGoddearGod, why did you let him ask me that question?
I didn’t have time to wait for the answer. The officer was already motioning for Chief to step aside. I knew it anyway—it was the same answer I’d been given over and over for weeks. You don’t have a choice.
“Yeah,” I said. “I trust you.”
Chief held my eyes for another second, before I was tugged away. It was long enough to see that I had had a choice. And that I’d made the right one.
But the rest of it, I thought, as they ducked my head into the back of the cruiser and closed me into a backseat I couldn’t get out of—the rest of it I had blown somehow.
Otherwise why would I be going off to jail while Desmond was who knew where? I prayed pleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod until I couldn’t pray anymore.
CHAPTER TWENTY
True to his word, Chi
ef had me out within a few hours. I was never placed in a cell, though sitting in the sick-green hallway in handcuffs, on a bench with a drunk passed out on either side of me, I could hear the sounds of incarceration every time someone opened the metal door that led to them. Most were obscenities I hadn’t heard even Desmond use, others were nonverbal expressions of mere frustration or just plain throwing up. Without ever seeing what was beyond that clanging door, I knew everything Jasmine and Mercedes and Geneveve had told me was true.
“Looks like I’ll be able to handle this out of court,” Chief said when we were safely out the front door of the police station. “You might have to eat a little crow.”
“You didn’t find Desmond.”
Chief stopped, hand on one of two white columns. He didn’t even have to shake his head. My fingers went straight to my temples.
“Hank checked your house,” Chief said. “He didn’t go to his mom’s.”
“Okay—will you take me to my bike so I can start looking? No—wait—we’re only two blocks away. I’ll just walk down there.”
“Down where?”
I pointed west on King with one hand. The other one was covering my mouth—though pleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod was already moving my lips.
“I already did a drive-through while I was waiting for the paperwork,” Chief said. “He’s not anywhere obvious.”
“Desmond’s not going to be anywhere obvious! Okay. I’m just going—”
I bolted for the steps and ran into the arm Chief stuck in my path. He let me push it away, but the steam was seeping out of me.
“We’ve got to find him,” I said.
“We will. It’s still daylight.”
“That doesn’t make any difference. Last time it was four in the afternoon—”
“What last time?”
I hugged my arms around myself. “A couple of days ago—Wednesday, I guess it was …”
I told him about the incident behind C.A.R.S. With each sentence his eyes grew harder and closer together.
“I was going to tell you—”
“Wish you had.”
“All this stuff was going on … but do you see why I’m freaking out here?”