Shattered (5 page)

“What do they do instead?” I asked.

“Eat out of dumpsters, hang around the streets or the park just over from here begging for change.” He paused. “That park is one bad place.”

Again I was tempted to say something but I held my tongue. I didn't know why I cared what he thought but I
did. Maybe it was nothing more than me not wanting him to think I was an idiot or a wimp. I just kept on ladling out stew. If we did run out of food, at least I knew where the baseball bat was now.

Three

MAC GENTLY SHEPHERDED
OUT the last of the men. As they'd eaten, people had become more animated and talkative and some had wanted to stay and talk to Mac. The very last few stragglers had been the most reluctant to leave. I guess I couldn't blame them. This wasn't the fanciest place in the world but at least it was warm and dry and inside. Mac said goodbye to the last man, closed the door and bolted it shut.

I continued to gather up bowls and cups, piling them up on a tray. I put two more bowls on the tray. It was now as full as I dared to carry. I hefted it up and carted it away, pushing through the swinging door and into the kitchen. It smelled better back here—smells of hot water and cooking odours. Out in the dining room the men were gone but their smell lingered on. Through the course of the evening, the smell of the food had been replaced by a foul combination of dirt and sweat and urine that stung my nostrils. It was so strong that it was more a taste than a smell.

On my first trip into the kitchen I'd been shocked to find out that nobody else was in the back helping. I'd figured that there had to be at least a couple of other people. There was nobody else. It had all been Mac and
me—really Mac. If I hadn't showed up he would have done the whole thing by himself.

The counter was already overflowing with dirty dishes and I put down the tray carefully so as not to disturb the rest of the mess. The sink, filled with soapy suds, was already filled to capacity. Was I supposed to help wash the dishes as well? I hated washing dishes— not that I did it very often. Berta, our housekeeper, took care of all those things. If I was supposed to do the dishes here that could take forever. Then again, what did I care? The longer I was here the more quickly I'd be through having to come back. It was seven forty-five. If I worked another fifteen minutes that would be two hours. That meant I had to come here
twenty
times to complete my placement. If I came here three times a week that would take almost seven weeks. If I hadn't been so stupid I would have started doing my hours when everybody else did. It would probably be better if I did stay and work on the dishes. If I stayed until nine that would be three hours, and I'd only have to come here thirteen times—only thirteen times. I shook my head.

I dipped my hands into the hot water and fished around for the dishcloth. I swirled it around the first bowl—the first of how many bowls? I didn't even want to count them. Satisfied that the first bowl was clean, I dipped it into the second sink, which was filled with clear water, and rinsed off the remaining suds.

“You don't have to do that,” Mac said as he entered the kitchen carrying more dishes.

“Somebody's got to do it,” I said and shrugged.

“That somebody's usually me.”

“Do you do everything around here?” I asked as I pulled out another bowl.

“I'm the executive director, the chief cook, the bouncer and bottle washer.” He set the tray down. “Although sometimes I have more help than I want.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes there's a tidal wave of do-gooders who show up. They can cause more damage than they do good. You didn't do half bad tonight,” he said as he continued to stack bowls.

“So does that mean I did half good?”

“Don't push it. What that means is you didn't screw up and that means you can come back again.”

“Gee, thanks, what an honour.”

“Maybe you
should
consider it an honour. Lots of people I don't ask to come back. You done okay. You served the food, you didn't ask too many questions, you were polite, and like I said, you were here for the same reason as everybody else—you had no choice … same as everybody we fed tonight. I never met anybody who said his dream was to live on the streets, beg for change, wonder where his next meal was gonna come from, or where he was going to sleep.” He dropped more bowls in the sink. “If you didn't have to do this for school, is there any way in the world you'd be here tonight?”

I laughed. “Yeah, right, like washing dishes is my dream job.”

“That's another thing I like about you,” he said. “You're honest.”
I didn't know what to say to that. I didn't know if my parents or most of my teachers would have thought that about me.

“What about you?” I asked. “Do
you
want to be here?” “This is the place I'm
supposed
to be.”

I guess I looked confused, because that was how I felt. “This is my calling.”

“You sound like a priest or minister or something,” I said. I focused on the dishes in the sink, not wanting to look at him as the conversation got more serious.

“Maybe I am.”

“You are?”

“Don't sound so surprised. Don't I seem like a minister?” he asked, a serious look on his face.

I thought about the minister at our church—the church we went to at Christmas and Easter and maybe two other times a year. He was always dressed immaculately, with a sharp crease in his pants, drove a fancy car, and lived in the big beautiful house beside the church. Sometimes my father would go golfing with him at the country club. I could picture our minister on the golf course, and I could clearly see him standing up at the altar boring me with another sermon. What I couldn't do was imagine him making stew or cleaning tables. I certainly couldn't, in my
wildest
dreams, picture him pulling out a baseball bat to stop a fight between two of the parishioners.

“Well?” Mac asked.

“Not really,” I admitted, hoping I wasn't insulting him. “I'll take that as a compliment,” he said as his serious expression dissolved into a crooked smile. “I'm not part of any church or anything like that, but this is my mission.

God is everywhere. Here,” he said, motioning with his hands. “And out there on the streets.”

I don't know which streets he'd been on but the ones I'd walked down today looked like God had forgotten them and the people who lived on them.

“How long have you been doing this?” I asked, turning away from the soapy sink.

“It's coming up to ten years I've been running the place. Seven days a week.”

“Seven days a week?” I asked in amazement. “Don't you get any time off?”

“People need to eat seven days a week. I'll take a day off when hunger does. This is my place … literally.” He pointed to a bed in the corner.

“You mean you live here?” I asked incredulously. “Saves on the commute and the rent is perfect. I've slept in a lot worse places.”

I wanted to ask him what could possibly be worse than this, but I didn't want to offend him. I kept washing dishes, rinsing them off, and piling them on the counter. Mac took each one, dried it off, and put it in the cupboard. There didn't seem to be an end to the bowls.

“How many people you figure were here tonight?” I asked. “It must have been close to a hundred.”

“One hundred and seven,” he said. “I have to do a head count. Our funding is based on the number of people that get fed.”

“I thought the food came from fancy restaurants.” “That and food donations from all over, but they don't pay the rent, or my salary, or guarantee there's food on the table every night. We get some funds from the government
and some from the United Way. These people need food every night.”

“I had no idea there were that many homeless in the city. One hundred and seven seems like a lot,” I said.

“That's just a little drop in the bucket. Those are the people who showed up here tonight. It doesn't include them who skipped a meal, or went to another soup kitchen, or got their meal from a dumpster behind McDonald's, or were too drunk to show up, or who were spending the night in jail or in an emergency department of a hospital, or who were off their medication and couldn't stand to be around other people,” he said, counting the reasons off on his fingers.

“Then how many people—homeless people—do you think there are in the city?”

“It varies from month to month, mostly depending on the season, and whether you count kids who run away for a day or two,” he explained.

“Right now,
tonight,
how many people do you think are out there on the streets looking for a place to sleep?” I didn't know why but it seemed important to me.

He didn't answer right away. I could tell he was thinking. “My guess is well over a thousand … maybe two thousand.”

“That can't be right,” I argued. “Sure, I see some street people around but there can't be two thousand.”

“You don't live around here, do you?”

I shook my head. “About a thirty-minute drive away in the suburbs.” I wanted to say in another universe but I didn't.

“Not many street people where you live, I bet. Lots here if you know where to look. You'd see'em too, if you went out with me on my rounds.”

“Your rounds?”

“I walk through the streets and alleys and parks, talking to people, letting them know about the kitchen here, and suggest places where they might want to sleep.”

“Is that a safe thing to do?” My experience in the park came flooding back.

“It's safe … for me. I know pretty well everybody. It's not like I'm a stranger.”

“I guess you really do get to know a lot of them,” I said, remembering how he greeted people at the door this evening as they came in.

“I know a lot of them,” he repeated in agreement. “I even understand them … well, at least some of them. You know, we're all the same in so many ways, but I don't pretend to know the demons that some people live with. You can walk a mile in somebody's shoes but those shoes still belong to them.” He paused. “It's getting late. How are you getting home?”

I hadn't really thought about it. “I guess I should call and ask my mother to pick me up.”

“Then why don't you call now. By the time we get finished she should be here. The phone is right over there.”

I dried my hands on the apron and walked over to the phone.

“And tell her to make sure she keeps all the car doors locked,” Mac said.

That sounded like good advice.

Four

THE SOUND OF THE CHALK
squeaking against the board brought me out of my thoughts and back into the classroom. Mrs. Watkins was writing something. I'd been trying my best to block her out all class but she had the same grating effect as the chalk. She seemed to know just what to say or how to say it to stop me from drifting off too often. Maybe that was a good quality for a teacher to have but it certainly cut down on my ability to catch up on my sleep.

It had been late when I got to bed and even later when I finally drifted off. My mind was filled with all the images I'd seen the night before. My mother would have called it processing. Leave it to her to put everything in computer terms instead of human terms—computers she knew about. I lay in bed thinking about the lady with the shopping cart, the men shuffling in for their meal, the conversations—angry, crazy, polite—and the smells of the food and the alcohol and the body odours. And I realized how close I came to not only losing my shoes, but maybe having the crap beaten out of me, and wondering what could have happened if that man hadn't stopped them.

Mrs. Watkins moved aside to reveal the words she had written on the board. In big letters they read,
Peacekeepers, not War Makers
.

“Does anybody know what that means?” she asked. “It probably means more work for us,” a voice shot out from the back of the room and a number of people laughed in response.

“Anybody else care to add something … something of value?” she asked.

Nobody raised a hand or a voice.

“Does the name Lester B. Pearson mean anything?”

Mrs. Watkins asked.

“Didn't he used to play for the Leafs?” the same guy— Jeremy—asked and there was more laughter.

“Somebody better come up with an answer or everybody is going to be given an additional assignment on Canadian prime ministers,” she threatened.

“Okay, he was a Canadian prime minister,” somebody answered.

“And he is best known for?” Mrs. Watkins questioned. Obviously he wasn't best known for much of anything because nobody even knew who he was.

Mrs. Watkins let out a big, deep sigh. “Let's try this from another angle. In the rest of the world what is
Canada
known for? What are the symbols or institutions or objects that the world thinks of when it thinks of Canada and Canadians?”

“Hockey,” several people called out.

“We're the best in the world on the ice. Everybody knows that,” Jeremy said.

“What else?” Mrs. Watkins asked.

“Maple syrup and the Mounties,” somebody else volunteered.

“Universal health care,” Kelsey added.

“All sorts of programs including medicine, pensions, and education,” Mrs. Watkins said, nodding. “What else?”

“The paint roller,” a boy—Justin—offered.

“Paint roller?” the kid behind me repeated, sounding amused.

“A Canadian invented it,” the first boy explained and shrugged.

“All valid. Now, what else?” Mrs. Watkins asked. “Snow and cold and igloos and Eskimos,” another girl added.

“Niagara Falls and the mountains,” another voice added. “All good. And are we seen as a country that believes in war?”