“They couldn’t give you a posting in Tauranga? Your own home-town?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I guess this is where God wants me to be right now.”
Across the courtyard Alice was standing with her hands on her hips eyeing the both of us suspiciously. “Oops. I think Alice wants her hotdog that I said I’d get for her.”
Christie moved to the side of the table and poked Lucas in the arm. “I need a sausage for Alice.”
He looked at her suspiciously. “Another one? I didn’t know Alice was such a big fan of hotdogs.”
“Well she is.”
“She should get one herself instead of getting you to do all her bidding.” The corner of his mouth turned up in a grin.
Christie nodded politely trying not to smile. “Maybe I’ll tell her that.”
“Yeah, you should.” He put a hotdog in her extended hand. “Want an extra one just in case you get hungry on your way back?”
Christie smiled through gritted teeth, blinking. “I’ve already had a couple thank you very much.”
“Just a couple?”
She walked away grinning.
I’m pretty sure she had picked up more sausages than anyone else – even the people donating stuff, even the random street kids and polytech students who hadn’t donated anything.
Lucas took a break and came and stood next to me, handing me a hotdog smothered in sauce. “I took the liberty of assuming you weren’t a fan of charcoal so added extra sauce to try to even the flavours out.”
“Thanks.” I took a bite finding that the sauce was enough to allow me to ignore the other flavour, while the charcoal itself gave the hotdog a certain ‘crunch’ factor that you don’t usually get from sausages. I crunched my way through the rest of it.
Lucas put his hands on his hips. “Don’t you love being out in the sun, having fun, helping people?”
I used to. My bedroom had become a shadow trap. Weeks on end were spent with the curtains closed and the only light being emitted coming from the computer screen as I stared directly into it completely oblivious to what was happening in the world outside. “Yip,” I said as I wiped my mouth with a serviette. “Can’t beat the sunshine. Unless, of course, you have the powers of a 75th level Sorcerer at your disposal!”
A voice I recognised popped in beside me. “David, you can barely make it up to a 75th level of anything.”
I looked around and saw Martin staring down at me with a plate in his hand. I eyed him suspiciously. “Smell the food from your classrooms?”
“Too lazy to grind?”
“I don’t consider grinding for the sake of levelling up particularly good game design.”
“I don’t consider judging me on how I get food to mouth particularly good Samaritan behaviour.”
I decided against replying to that.
He put out his plate towards Lucas. “Howzit?”
Lucas put a piece of bread down and a sausage well-done on top. “Sauce?”
Martin looked at the burnt meal on his plate with some derision. “Ummm, yeah, sure.” He turned back to me. “And anyway, someone smelt something. When word got around, it was exit city. That place is a steaming bag of shit-storm that’s brewing in the corridors at the moment. Everyone wants out!”
“Why, what’s up?” I asked.
“Dude, there’s this chick on the Arts course that had an exhibition a week ago, and apparently it was so controversial that the church she was attacking wants to have her or the Polytech up for defamation. I don’t know which one, don’t really care, but apparently management are scared shitless about lawsuits.”
Lucas dropped his tongs. “What?” They clattered against the barbeque before bouncing onto the ground.
“That’s crazy.” I said.
“Well fuck, whatever is happening, I can tell you that management is not happy about the whole thing. Apparently they’re under pressure to fire her tutor for allowing the exhibition of those paintings to go ahead. But the tutor had no idea what the paintings were actually about, only that they were worthy of an exhibition.”
“Huh,” I said, thoughtful of the idea that other people were oblivious to certain events that had happened in town.
Lucas picked up the tongs and carelessly wiped them on his apron. “What were the paintings about?” He was looking at me.
Martin raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, I was at the exhibition,” I explained.
“And you didn’t tell me about it.” He clicked his fingers. “Damnit! I knew there was a free meal I had missed out on recently.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. I don’t get art at the best of times.”
Martin blinked suddenly. “Dude, whenever we talk about games, your first comment is almost always how fuckin aesthetically pleasing the bloody artwork is. Like I give a shit.” He turned to Lucas. “We got a genuine art critic in the flat with us.”
Lucas waved his tongs like a wand. “Y’ know, I have noticed this guy’s attention to detail on occasion.”
“Should be doing an art-appreciation course or something.”
“They have those?”
“Well, we’ll just call it the journalism course shall we?”
Lucas raised his eyebrows in consideration. “Art History?”
“Sure. Whatever.”
“Anyway,” I said, keen to get them away from me as a topic, “how did you find out about it? And what’s the big deal anyway?”
Martin was fondling his hotdog not really sure if his student hunger could overcome the charcoaled crispiness. “Umm, design and art always crosses over, especially now that the polytech offers some introductory courses to game design and programming. And anyways, news travels fast in that building, especially when there’s computers at your finger tips.”
“True,” I said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here now.”
He winked at me, “Perks of being a student,” and took a bite of his hot dog. “Good sense of smell too!”
Lucas went back to toiling with his flame-burnt sausages, somewhat agitated and much less enthusiastic than before. “It pisses me off. Of all the people who end up getting offended by shit, it’s bloody institutions and management. Anyone with a core belief that needs to be protected.”
Martin was still chewing on the charcoal. “And funding – to answer your other question, David. The polytech relies heavily on outside funding and if that goes down the tube, jobs and education go down the tube. It’s bureaucracy, dude. Politics and people. Or in this case, politics and art.” Martin shrugged as he downed the last morsel of sausage, bread and sauce, said that he’d catch up later and waltzed back to some classmates. Lucas seemed downcast for a while, occasionally shaking his head in frustration, but by the time the sausage sizzle had ended, and he had insisted that we help The Salvation Army pack up, he was back to his sunny self again.
Part V
– Zombie swatter –
It seemed like Lucas was on some kind of helping bender. He even asked to help sort everything that had been donated, and then take it all to the Family Store. I thought he was crazy, but he was seriously enjoying helping. I could barely believe it.
For most of that week I came and went, not really doing much, but helping out here and there with Lucas. Wednesday afternoon I had walked into town from the flat around three o’clock as Lucas was finishing off the last of his jobs at the Family Store. We went back to the foyer of the main building and hung around like vagrants off the street without anything else to do.
I got up and looked through some of the leaflets that they had set up on a wall. There were a few overseas volunteer work, helping to build new homes and such in poor countries type leaflets as well as some newsletters and youth programme ones. I was about to pick up the youth programme leaflet when my attention wandered over to a simple white and red one titled ‘The Salvation Army Bridge’. I had never heard of it before. I looked over at Lucas but he was slouched across the couch with his head hangin
g off the sofa arm, eyes closed and his mouth on the verge of sucking in a fly that was hovering around him. The leaflet made it into my fingers and was gently pulled out of the clear plastic socket it sat in.
Christie walked out of her office looking like a zombie – arms hanging low, head slung back and mouth open in an exaggerated moan. I wondered if Lucas was eventually going to rise from his slumber looking like this. I also wondered if I had suddenly stepped into a scene from Resident Evil.
“Why David? Why?”
“What?”
She raised her hands. “What is so hard about getting an extension lead, installing it in the server, feeding it through a couple of walls and then connecting it to my computer?”
“Ummm…”
“Exactly! Useless!” She looked down at the leaflet in my hand. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Just never heard of this Bridge thing before.”
“Oh. It’s for people with substance abuse problems. They work with clients to bring about a new attitude to how they approach life. They work with families as well as single people, but it’s all designed to try to encourage the client to approach their entire life with a different attitude, one that obviously doesn’t rely on alcohol and drugs.”
“Right. Basically the AA?”
“Yeah, but designed on trying to create a stronger focus on the family as a means of helping to beat the abuse. It’s not just about going straight, because so many family problems are caused by substance abuse, but about working with the client to improve family relationships while being straight.”
I nodded my head and put the leaflet back where I found it.
“You can keep it if you like. They’re free.”
“No I’m okay.” I coughed feeling awkward.
Alice walked out of her office and said “I need to go over to the men’s hostel to sort some of their stuff and decide whether or not any of it should go to the Family Store. Would you like to come along, since you haven’t been there yet?”
“Oooh, yes please!” Christie clasped her hands together. “Can David come along as well? Please?”
She hadn’t even asked me if I wanted to come.
Alice looked at me with an understanding grin. “Sure.”
I didn’t understand anything. It was like a completely silent conversation had passed between them so quickly that it had passed right over my head without me even knowing.
We all looked over to the guy slouched all over the couch. The fly couldn’t make up its mind where to land on him.
“Should we wake this guy or leave him here?”
The fly finally decided to land on his nose. Lucas shook his head violently, arms sprung upwards as his body lurched forward. He sat up and looked at us.
“Well,” said Alice. “I guess God wants Lucas to come with us.”
“What?”
I was finding that I didn’t like Alice much. She seemed nice, but I always got the feeling that she was hiding something, some acquired knowledge that amused her. Christie had that laidback nature about her, ready to make a joke of anything, but Alice, even though she often looked for a good sarcastic reply, seemed to be looking more to confirm her own suspicions about the world. It was annoying. Even more so when that look was turned towards me.
The men’s hostel was an old villa that had been purposely built to contain large numbers, almost like one of those old psychiatric wards you see in movies set in the 1940s: crumbling wallpaper, mould growing around the door frames, and dark and dingy corners where patients obsessed with the night hang out on a consistent basis demanding their food and meds be brought to them for fear that light might singe them into oblivion if they took two steps closer to the rays reflecting through the windows.
Alice said The Salvation Army struggled to find funding to do even minimal repairs on it – “the budget is that tight” – so lots of volunteer work was sought from the community.
She jokingly clicked her fingers at me. “So feel free to volunteer any time you like.”
I pointed my finger at Lucas. “I think he’s the expert at volunteering around here.”
Alice laughed as she went down to the basement with the supervisor while one of the daytime caregivers gave Lucas, Christie and I a guided tour.
The Caregiver stopped at the banister before taking us upstairs. She noted that the hostel was meant to be a home for these men, not an institute or psych ward. “Most of the men and young men are only passing through, either on bail or just have nowhere else to go; some are here because they have mental conditions and need to be looked after. We try our best to encourage the capable men to learn how to take care of themselves and to work towards leaving so that they can get back on their own two feet again. Some of these younger guys can’t stand the curfew rules, but we always say, ‘well, if you don’t want to live by these rules then move out and live on your own’.”
Christie nodded her head enthusiastically – maybe she had a better understanding of this place than I did, so I asked “Doesn’t that mean that they could just end up going back to their old ways?”
The woman shrugged her shoulders. “We’re not here to baby-sit. We are here to look after them though. When people need a place for the night – we’re here; when people need a place to start over from again without falling into old habits – we’re here. It’s not important what state they are in, what is important is that we have a facility to care for them when they need it the most.”
A grizzly old man wrapped up in a fluffy bathrobe made his way down the stairs, somewhat cautiously, perhaps with suspicion, but definitely oozing derision directly at the caregiver. “I’ll believe that when I see it,” he hissed. “You don’t even fuckin’ care about us, y’ fuckin …”
“Samuel,” the Caregiver warned, “if you speak again like that today, you know that you are not going to be getting any dinner tonight. How about being polite while we have guests here?”
He brushed past us, his slow walk synced with low mumbling. I’m pretty sure it contained more swearing, but I guessed that he had learnt to keep quiet just enough so he could still get dinner.
“Men like Samuel, well, we still love despite their idiosyncrasies. We know there’s a heart of gold – somewhere – underneath all that bitterness.” The Caregiver smiled. “But in the end, we can only do so much. The rest of these guys, well, some learn after being in prison even for just a short time that they never want to go back and they’re the ones who make the effort; others, well, they might be here for a short time but as soon as they leave they’re back to their old ways. Guys like that we can’t do anything for – they never learn their lesson. A couple have been blacklisted…”
I looked at her questioningly.
“That means that their record stops them from being able to live with other people. A couple of guys who have lived here have been blacklisted, mostly due to notorious theft and not having any consideration for other people’s welfare.”
Christie frowned. “Forced to live on their own? Tough but fair, I guess.”
I would have loved being able to afford to live on my own. It wasn’t like I needed anyone to talk to – I certainly had no desire to make conversation with Tinsdale and Martin; even with Martin being a gaming freak we barely spoke to each other that much.
I was finding it hard to sustain any sense of sympathy towards anyone here, least of all the ones who had gone out of their way to hurt other people.
“It sure is,” Lucas said. “It’s not like they didn’t make a choice to break the law though. I mean, when it comes down to it, regardless of their situation, they are the ones who made the decision that would end up with them being blacklisted, or whatever else has put them where they are now.”
Christie had to concede the point. “True, but thank God that we have the Sallies to help them put their feet back on the right path.”
“And that’s only if they choose to follow any kind of advice at all. Right?”
“Well, yeah, sur
e. But God works his wonders in all sorts of ways.”
“I would have to question how many of these people even believe in God if this is where they’ve ended up.” Lucas put out a defensive hand towards the caregiver. “Not saying this is a bad place, or anything; just that what they’ve done has caused them to end up here.”
Christie countered: “Well if they put their faith – and their lives – wholeheartedly into God, they would find that they would no longer need to make those kinds of decisions that would land them here.” She put out a defensive hand towards the caregiver. “Not saying this is a bad place, or anything.”
Lucas rubbed his chin. “Yeah, but that’s only if they choose to even follow God.”
Christie took a deep breath and tapped her foot impatiently on the bottom step.
Lucas turned to her. “You alright?”
“My toes are getting sore.”
He looked down at her feet. “You should try a different pair of shoes then.”
The staircase made a lot of old creaking noises as we ascended it. Each step seemed to have its own whine, like the timbers were complaining about the amount of weight walking on them. After being told about some of the mental patients and criminals that ended up here, I half expected a resident to burst out of their room brandishing a weapon and yelling at us to keep the noise down or he’d shoot our bloody heads off! I also wondered if my over-active imagination would get the better of me someday.
I didn’t exactly want to make my presence known, although the caregiver was hardly doing anything to keep her noise down, giving casual nods and boisterous ‘hellos’ to residents that walked past. Some of them greeted her with just as much enthusiasm – one older man excitedly shook our hands, each in turn, smiling gloriously like his day had been made that much brighter just by our visit; others ignored us, shuffled past and pounded down the creaking stairs trying to escape our four-person crowd.
All of a sudden we rounded a corner and the wood panelling that created the hall in front of us seemed like an old run-down apartment from Swat 4, a game that I had recently completed without too many hassles. I readied myself, shotgun in hand, pistol at my side; creeping down the hall about to bust through broken and worn down doors in search of terrorists and psychotics who were planning either world domination or were simply taking revenge on sworn enemies. I checked a couple of windows to see if they might offer an alternate route along the outside walkways where I could get an angle into their hideouts to fire from, but they were locked. No good, will have to take the direct approach.
I Am The Local Atheist Page 8