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?”
Most of them nodded. He had been pounding this into them all week. Those who could get the message had already got it. This last harangue was for the benefit of the press microphones and the police within earshot, to get it on the record that this was intended as a strictly peaceful demonstration.
“Where’s Sister Carrie?” someone of them asked.
That had to be One-thumb George, but Dan couldn’t place him in the crowd. George had asked the question at least a dozen times since they’d left Tompkins.
“Sister Carrie is in her room at the convent, praying for us. Her order doesn’t allow her to march in demonstrations.”
“I wish she was here,” the voice said, and now Dan was sure it was One-thumb George.
Dan too wished Carrie were here. She’d done as much as he to organize this march, maybe more. He missed her.
“And I’m sure she wishes she could be here with us,” Dan shouted. “So let’s make her proud! Waldorf, ho!”
Pointing his arm uptown like an officer leading a charge, he jumped off the sculpture base and marched his troops the remaining blocks. He was just starting to position the group when Senator Crenshaw’s limousine pulled up before the entrance. Dan had a brief glimpse of the senator’s head—the famous tanned face, dazzling smile, and longish, salt-and-pepper hair—towering over his entourage as he zipped across the sidewalk, and then he was through the front doors and gone.
Damn! He’d shown up early.
He heard groans from the demonstrators but he shushed them.
“It’s okay. We’ll be all set up for him when he comes out. And we’re not leaving until he does.”
They spent the interval marching in an oval within the area reserved for their demonstration, demarcated by light blue horses stenciled in white with Police Line - Do Not Cross. Dan led them in chants updated from the sixties, like: “Hey, hey, Arthur C., why you wanna imprison me?” and “Hell, no! We won’t go!” And of course there were the endless repetitions of “We Shall Overcome.”
The choices were calculated. Dan wanted to bring to mind the civil rights marches and anti-war protests of the sixties to anyone who saw this particular demonstration on TV. Many of the movers and shakers in the country today—the President included—had participated in those demonstrations in their youth; many of them still carried a residue of nostalgia for those days. He hoped enough of them would realize that but for luck and the grace of God they might be marching on this line tonight.
As he marched and led the chants and singing, Dan felt alive. More truly alive than he had in years. His priestly routines had become just that—routine. Hearing confession, saying Mass, giving sermons—it seemed little more than preaching to the converted. The souls who truly needed saving didn’t go to Mass, didn’t take the sacraments. His priestly duties around the altar at St. Joseph’s had become...empty.
But when he left the main floor and went downstairs to the soup kitchen in the basement—the place he’d dubbed Loaves and Fishes—then he felt as if he truly were doing God’s work.
God’s work...Dan had to smile at the phrase. Wasn’t God’s work for God to do? Why was it left to mere mortals like him and Carrie to do God’s work?
And lately, in his darkest moments, Dan had begun wondering if God was doing anything. The world—at least the part of it in which he spent his days—was, to put it bluntly, a fucking mess. Everywhere he looked people were sick, hurt or dying—from AIDS, from racism, from drugs, from child abuse, from stabbings, shootings, or just plain old kick-ass muggings. And the violence was escalating. Every time Dan told himself it can’t get any worse than this, sure enough, it did.
And every year there seemed to be more homeless—more lost souls.
Tighten up on the misery spigot, will you, God? We’re up to our lower lips down here.
Yeah. Where was the hand of God in all this? Why wasn’t it doing God’s work? A long, continuous howl of agony was rising from this city, this world. The Middle East was ablaze with a fire that might never burn out; when Muslim factions weren’t targeting infidels, they were targeting each other. Suicide bombers in Israel, reprisals in Palestine, race riots if Paris, bombings in London. And Africa—a perpetual cycle of slaughter, famine, AIDS.
Was Anybody listening? Why didn’t He respond? Dan could do only so much.
Like tonight. This was doing something—or at least Dan hoped it was. An infinitesimal something. Who knew if it would accomplish anything? All you could do was try.
And then word came out that the thousand-dollar-a-plate dinner was over. The doorman started signaling the hovering limos forward. Taxis nosed in like koi at feeding time. Dan pulled Dirty Harry out of the line and set him in the middle of the circle.
“All right, everybody! He’s coming. Chant as loud as you can. Harry’s going to lead you.”