Harold gazed down at the box in his hands. “Or a unique gift for an old friend.”
“A colleague?”
“Believe it or not, a Catholic priest. He’s something of an authority on the early Christians. He’s read just about everything ever written on the Jerusalem Church.”
Pearlman’s brown eyes sparkled. “I’ll bet he’s never read anything like that.”
“That’s for sure.” Harold almost laughed aloud in anticipation of Father Dan Fitzpatrick’s reaction to this little gift. “I know he’ll get a real kick out of this.”
I despaired.
The Lord oppressed me, my fellow men oppressed me, the very air oppressed me. Perhaps the only fitting place for me was in Sodom or Gomorrah, cities of the dead, hidden beneath the lifeless waves. I threw myself into the salty water but I could not drown.
Even the sea will not have me!
--from the Glass scroll
Rockefeller Museum translation
TWO
Manhattan
Father Daniel Fitzpatrick stopped in front of the Bank of New York Building, turned to the ragged army that had followed him up from the Lower East Side, and raised his hands.
“All right, everybody,” he called to the group. “Let’s stop here for a sec and organize ourselves.”
Most of them stopped on command, but some of the less alert—and there were more than a few of those—kept right on walking and had to be pulled back by their neighbors.
Father Dan stepped up on the marble base of a sculpture that looked like a pair of six-foot charcoal bagels locked in a passionate embrace and inspected the ranks of his troops.
Even if we turn back now, he thought, even if we don’t do another thing tonight, we’ll have made a point.
Already they’d garnered more than their share of attention. During the course of their long trek uptown from Tompkins Square Park they’d earned themselves a police escort, a slew of reporters and photographers, and even an Eyewitness News van complete with minicam and blow-dried news personality.
Why not? This was news, a mild spring evening, and a fabulous photo op to boot. A small army of chanting, sign-carrying homeless marching up Park Avenue, around and through the Met Life and Helmsley Buildings, to the Waldorf—the contrast of their unkempt hair, shambling gaits, and dirty clothes against the backdrop of luxury hotels and pristine office buildings was irresistible.
As Dan raised his hands again and waited for his followers’ attention, he noticed all the camera lenses coming to bear on him like the merciless eyes of a pack of hungry wolves. He was well aware of the media’s love of radical priests, so he’d made sure he was in uniform tonight: cassock, Roman collar, oversized crucifix slung around his neck. The works. He was well aware too of how his own appearance—clean-cut sandy hair, slim, athletic build, younger looking than his thirty-two years—jibed with that of his followers, and he played that up to maximum effect. He looked decent, intelligent, dedicated—all true, he hoped—and most of all, accessible. The reporters would be fighting to interview him during and after the demonstration.
And as far as Dan was concerned, that was what this little jaunt to the Waldorf was all about: communication. He hated the spotlight. He much preferred to keep a low profile and let others have center stage. But no one else was interested in this little drama, so Dan had found himself pushed into a leading role. Media-grabbing was not his thing, but somebody had to get across the message that these people needed help, that they couldn’t be swept under the rug by the presidential wannabe appearing at the Waldorf tonight.
That wannabe was Senator Arthur Crenshaw from California, and this high-profile fundraiser was a golden opportunity to confront the senator on his radical proposal to solve the homeless problem. Normally Dan wouldn’t have given a second thought to a crazy plan like Crenshaw’s, but the way it had taken hold with the public was frightening.
Camps.
Of course Crenshaw didn’t call them camps. The word might elicit visions of concentration camps. He called them “domiciles.” Why have a hundred programs scattered all over the country? Senator Crenshaw said. All that duplication of effort and expense could be eliminated by gathering up the homeless and putting them in special facilities to be built on government lands. Once there, families would be fed and sheltered together, with the children attending schools set up just for them; all adults would receive free training for gainful employment; and those who were sick or addicted or mentally ill would receive the care they needed to make them productive citizens again.
The public—especially the urban-dwelling public—seemed to be going for the Domicile Plan in a big way, and as a result the concept was gaining support from both parties. Dan could understand the attraction of getting the homeless out of sight while balming one’s conscience with the knowledge they were being cared for as they were retooled for productivity, but he found the whole idea unsettling. The domiciles did sound like concentration camps, or detention camps, or at the very least, gilt-edged prisons, and he found that frightening. So would many of the homeless folks he knew—and Dan knew plenty.
But how many homeless did Senator Arthur Crenshaw know?
These were people. It was easy to forget that. Yes, they were on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder—hell, most of them had fallen off the ladder—and they sure as hell didn’t look like much. They tended to be dirty and smell bad and dress in clothing that wasn’t fit for the rag pile. They offered nothing that society wanted, and some undoubtedly had AIDS and wouldn’t be around much longer anyway. But each had a name and a personality, and they’d hoped and dreamed about the future before they’d forgotten how. Truth was, they could all vanish into smoke and the world would not be appreciably poorer; only a few would mark their passing, and even fewer would mourn them.
But they were people, dammit!
People.
Not a cause.
People.
Dan hated that the homeless had become such a trendy cause, with big-name comedians and such doing benefits for them. But after the stars took their bows, after they were limoed back to their Bel Aire estates, Dan stayed downtown and rubbed elbows with those homeless. Every day.
And sometimes at the end of a particularly discouraging day of elbow-rubbing with the folks who wandered in and out of the kitchen he ran in the basement of St. Joseph’s church, even Dan found a certain guilty attraction in Crenshaw’s Domicile Plan. Sometimes he wondered if maybe Crenshaw could indeed do more for them than he ever could. But at least with Dan they had a choice, and that was important.
And that was why they had come here tonight.
They stood quietly now, waiting for their last-minute instructions. They numbered about thirty, mostly males. Dan had hoped for more. Forty or fifty had promised to make the march but he was well satisfied with a two-thirds showing. You quickly learned to lower your expectations when working with these people. It came with the territory. After all, if they had enough control over their lives to act responsibly, if they knew how to follow through with a plan—even as simple a plan as gathering in Tompkins Square at six o’clock—they probably wouldn’t be homeless. About half of the ones who were here carried signs, most of which Dan had hand printed himself during the week. Among them:
SAY NO!
TO CONCENTRATION CAMPS
FOR THE HOMELESS!
and:
WHAT ABOUT US?
WHERE DO WE FIT IN?
and Dan’s favorite:
ARE WE OUR
BROTHER’S KEEPER?
OR DO WE TELL
BIG BROTHER TO KEEP HIM?
“All right,” he said, shouting so he could be heard in the back. “Let me say this once more in case some of you have forgotten: We’re not here to cause trouble. We’re here to draw attention to a problem that cannot be solved by putting you folks in camps. We’re here for informational purposes. To communicate, not to confront. Stay in line, don’t block traffic, don’t enter the hotel, don’t fight, don’t panhandle. Got that?”