Angels
House
© 2007 by Tony Hearn
Chapter Six
Cashiering at a convenience store opened up to me
new vistas on life. Ever see what occurs in urban spaces in the middle of the
night? It's edifying. I met a whole other class of persons, plus a constant stream
of people buying gas for their cars as they traveled north or south on the
Interstate cutting across Austin. They were those in a hurry to get and go. The
locals tended to loiter in the light of the gasoline pumps out front. The Tex
Mart offered gas from 16 pumps. At certain times, especially in the early
morning hours, all the pumps were dispensing "motion lotion" as I
learned to call the fuel for America's motoring mania.
I became reasonably adept at monitoring the pumps
and collecting cash and processing credit card payments. The Tex Mart was a
cash cow for its owner who I rarely saw. By eight in the morning, my
replacement had arrived and I was cashing out. I did this in an employee's
restroom behind the cashier's counter. I actually balanced out, sitting on the
toilet, with the lid down, of course. I was, by that hour, exhausted and longed
for my bed at Angels House. When I left the Tex Mart, I walked up the grade to
Navasota and East 7th Streets. I was moving in my sleep, and I literally fell
into my bed. I became instantly unconscious.
This went on for weeks, serving the evening meal at
Saint David's, laboring at the Tex Mart, walking in those blessed tennis shoes,
by then the soles wearing thin and the cloth tops stained by spilled soup and
other fluids encountered along the streets they trod.
One day I was rescued, however, from serving the
public at the Tex Mart. The rector of Saint David's Church, the Rev. James
Bethell, who had become proprietary about The Open Door, let it be known that I
should become an employee of the church. An unknown donor had given Saint
David's a certified cashier's check for $1,000 for The Open Door. I would
receive a very modest salary and become the director of homeless services. I
resigned at the convenience store, effective as soon as someone could be hired
to replace me. I was eager to go to bed at a decent hour.
Another thing happened shortly afterward that
altered my routine. One Saturday night, after The Open Door closed down and the
gym and the church kitchen were cleaned, I ventured over to an automated teller
machine at the corner of West 6th Street and Guadalupe. I wanted to get some
cash for something I needed to buy the following day. At the ATM, I entered my
cash card. I waited for the gears to turn and for the cash and receipt to
appear. I waited! Nothing happened! All of a sudden the machine flashed a
notice in the little window. "Out of Order! Please Wait for Your
Card!" I waited! I waited. Thirty damn minutes, I waited. I was livid!
"Lord!" I cried out. My card slid out the little slit in the machine.
"God!" I muttered. I started the considerable walk back east along
Austin's 6th Street to the Interstate and then over to 7th Street and up the
climb to Angels House. I was weary.
As I approached the white picket fence, I saw the
front door of Angels House ajar. "Hmmmm!" I said to myself. "I
didn't leave that door open!" I neared the door. And then I saw two
figures leaving the back door of the
house. They were toting my belongings. I was being robbed. Actually they were
burglarizing Angels House. (Definitions learned practicing journalism: Robbers
rob persons; burglars burglarize places.) If I had walked in on this pair
minutes earlier, no telling what would have befallen me. "Thank you, Lord,
for fouling up that ATM! I'm through second guessing you!"
Several days previous to the burglary, that claimed
all my possessions with any value whatsoever, I had given the key to Angels
House to a young woman who had told me she was "on the street"
homeless in Austin. I relented. I'm a sucker for a sobbing women! I told her
she could stay at Angels House for a couple of days until she found another
spot. I showed her my bed. I showed her the bath. I told her I would spend the
nights at Saint David's. I do not know, of course, if she shared the secrets of
the house's layout. Perhaps she was as innocent as a newborn lamb. I do know
the intrusion rattled me. I was spooked. I moved back in to Martha;s place,
back onto her couch. I shut down Angels House, and I sought space at the Bluffs
of Barton in a new apartment. I would walk to Saint David's from there. No
steep grade was involved, just a flat stretch of city blocks, west to Lamar, across the Colorado River bridge,
then west again on Barton Springs Road, left again, and then on around to the
apartment complex behind Barton Springs. I never went back to the first Angels
House. "Burglarize me once, shame on you. Take my stuff twice, shame on
me!"
I developed a new routine. The blessed tennis shoes
had lost their house. They were bunking in with me under my bed in my new
abode.
At The Open Door every evening we were serving many
new people who joined the soup line. The Carter Recession brought transients to
Austin. Word spread about the soup kitchen. Even ABC News did a segment on us.
The Austin American-Statesman did a story on us. We were becoming famous. Even
Monsignor Richard McCabe, who ran Caritas next to Saint David's, treated us
more kindly. He had urged Rev. Bethell to ignore our appeal for space. "Those
lay people shouldn't be encouraged to get involved in ministry," he had
told Jim Bethell. "They don't know what they are doing. It's for the
clergy to run a charity," he said. (I rue the day I didn't follow his
admonition!)
From the black couple who joined us for dinner that
first night at The Open Door, during the first week of October, by Christmas we
were serving as many as 300 people who sat down for our evening meal. We never
seemed to run out of food though I had to scrape the bottom of the pan to dish
out the last serving of the night. Food was brought to Saint David's by many
volunteers from churches across Austin. I would cook and then help in the
serving line, but most of my time was spent in monitoring what went on at the
cafeteria tables set up in the gym. I often sat down at the tables to visit
with the homeless persons, listening to their stories, many heartbreaking. More
than once, I had to break up fights. I prayed constantly for everyone to keep
cool and calm.
Some who frequented The Open Door told tales. Some
caused me great concern. Mixed in with those who shared with me stories of
economic hardship from the Northeast and elsewhere were those who had been
"de-institutionalized" from the mental hospitals of Texas at that
time being closed down. About half the people served at The Open Door were
suffering from mental illness of one sort or another.
I recall one young man who was really sick. He told
me he was "with the FBI." The federal building was a block over from
Saint David's on East 8th Street. The resident agents of the FBI worked out of
that building. This young man spent most of every day standing outside the
entrance of the building. Then he would cross the street and wait until the
soup line formed outside the gym. I talked with him. "I'm with the
FBI!" he would tell me. "They won't let me back into my office!"
he would say.
In warm weather and cold, this young man persisted
in waiting outside the federal building. Finally, I resolved to go talk to the head
agent of the local office of the FBI.
"About this young man who claims he's 'with
you,' what can we do with him?" I asked.
"Nothing!" I was told.
"But he stands there and over at our church,
his teeth chattering in the cold!" I said.
"Forget about him!" the agent said.
Having lived in San Antonio where the FBI has a
larger office, I decided on a course of action. I went over to the downtown
Greyhound Station. I bought a one-way ticket to San Antonio. I told a lie.
"I've just received word from the FBI for you.
They have asked me to give you this bus ticket. They need you back in San
Antonio," I told the young man.
"No! They don't need me over there! I'm needed
at the Austin office!" he said with certainty. He refused to accept the
ticket. I had hopes of him finding a better spot in San Antonio at the downtown
Salvation Army. The one in Austin was filled to capacity with newly arriving
transients by the day and night.
Not everyone had a tale of woe, however. I remember
one night very close to Christmas, a young man entered The Open Door. He ate
quickly, and then he came over to me with a question. "May I please take a
plate to my wife who cannot come inside?"
We had a rule posted on the walls that food could not be taken outside.
"We have a rule against that!" I said.
"I understand, but my wife cannot come inside.
She's across the street. She's just given birth to our child!" he said.
"Come and see!" he said. He invited me to meet his wife in a
converted school bus. They were living and traveling in the bus through the
southern states from California, looking for work for him to do. He was a
carpenter. He had come to The Open Door. I went across the street to verify
what he had told me. I came back rapidly to gather food.
For a certainty, I had just met another Mary, for
that was her name. She was holding to her breast a newborn babe, wrapped in
what looked to me like swaddling clothes. She was a serene young woman, nursing
her baby. I almost cried. (By then, I was always almost in tears!) I packed as
much food as I could gather into that bus that night – that holy night, that silent night. And I
know the angels were gathered around. I know my shoes gave me a new burst of
energy.
And then there was another episode. It happened on
the only night we actually ran out of food. At closing time, another young man
appeared at the entry to The Open Door. I was about to shut and lock the door.
"I'm awfully sorry," I told him. We've
just run out of food."
"That's okay," the young man said. "I
was only coming to see if I could beg some money for gas for my truck. I'm
about to run out and I have a job to paint just outside of town in the
morning," he said. I had heard a different version of that story before.
At that instant another latecomer arrived at the
door. "I'm really hungry, can I have a meal?"
"I'm sorry!" I repeated. "We've run
out of food!" It was the only time that happened.
"Just some bread then," the man said.
"Please! Anything to eat!"
I stepped inside and came back with several slices
of white bread. "Here's all that's left," I said. He took the bread.
"I have some peanut butter," the other
young man said. "You can have the whole
jar!"
At that moment I knew the man who offered the peanut
butter was authentic. I happened to have a $20 bill in my wallet.
"You have just answered that young man's need
for food," I told the painter.
"God is telling me to answer your need for
gasoline. Take this!" I said, handing him the $20 bill. "This,
apparently, is how God's economy works!" I said.
The three of us smiled at each other. I locked the
door and went home to bed.