The Book of Joby (43 page)

The dining hall doors were just being opened, and the jostling crowd starting to move, when Joby saw them coming, hand in hand, across the parking lot.

“Hey!” he called happily. “It’s the happy couple!”

“We were just about to sell your seats!” Sundog teased.

Gypsy smiled shyly as Sarina beamed beside him, and Joby suspected they
were late because they’d been off necking somewhere. Everyone had heard the news by now, and because Gypsy couldn’t seem to tell anyone about their engagement without crediting Joby for “scaring him into proposing,” Joby had been getting almost as many kudos as the couple had. Mary, in particular, had drawn Joby aside one evening to say what a fine thing he’d done, though a minute or two of crying over spilled milk didn’t seem all that heroic to him. In fact, he tried not to think about that part of it.

“My
fiancé
has some awesome news!” Sarina said, as they joined Joby, Sundog, and Mary in the now moving dinner line.

“She’s pregnant?” Sundog blurted out merrily. There was an awkward silence. “Sorry.” Sundog shrugged. “I was just joking.”

“I got a job,” said Gypsy with quiet pride. “Right here at the church. It’s just janitorial and maintenance work, but it comes with an apartment, right here behind the Meal Project kitchen!” An ecstatic grin transformed his face. “We got a place to live!” he shouted.
“Is that fuckin’ awesome, or what?”
He looked suddenly abashed, and said, “Guess now that I’m workin’ for the church, I better watch my language, huh?”

“That might be advisable,” Joby said, trying not to laugh and bursting with affection for Gypsy, who’d become something like a little brother to him now. “Man, when you make up your mind to go, you go, don’t you,” Joby said, trying not to think about the fact that he’d most likely lose his own apartment in the next few weeks.

“I’ve got reasons now,” said Gypsy, turning to smile at Sarina. “Turns out that was all I needed.”

Sarina leaned in to give him a lengthy kiss as they reached the dining hall doors, where a woman on that evening’s volunteer staff was handing out some sort of flyer.

“What kind of shit is this?” someone ahead of them in line bellowed angrily. Joby saw the man waving the flyer over his head and realized that there was a lot of angry buzzing inside the dining hall.

Sundog, who was first to reach the pamphleteer, began to scan one of her flyers, then barked, “Awww, Christ!”

“What’s wrong?” Joby asked, reaching for a flyer.

“Fucking self-righteous bastards!” growled the normally sanguine giant. “Look what those assholes do with all their fuckin’ free time!”

“We’re asking you all to go to this meeting down at city hall,” said the volunteer at the door. “The city’s got to hear from all of us too, or this could really happen.”

“This is so fucked!” said Gypsy, as he and Joby scanned the flyer.

“Relocate?”
Joby asked the pamphleteer. “Where would they relocate it to?”

“ ‘Relocate,’ my rosy fuckin’ ass,” Sundog snarled before she could answer. “They’ll just close us down and promise to find another place someday when we’ve all starved to death. That’s what they always do. All those
‘residents’
pay taxes. We don’t. End of story.”

“No!” Joby said indignantly.
“No! They can’t keep doing this!”
The after-school tutoring program for which he’d once volunteered had lost its funding two months later; the Refugee Assistance Network had been shut down on legal grounds weeks after he’d signed up to help; and Joby’s “little brother” had been busted for selling a palmful of pot to two of his friends. Watching the once gentle boy harden during six months in juvenile custody while his permanent placement was arranged had filled Joby with despair. He was fed up with having his life shut down every time he found a bench to sit on. In fact, he was enraged! Sweeping his companions with an angry glare, he said, “We’re going to that meeting, and we’re going to show that commission we’re as scary as any little clutch of housewives and accountants.”

“Hell, yes!” Gypsy said, looking at Joby with a brand-new kind of light in his eyes.

Gypsy leaned forward, amazed by Joby’s performance. The neighborhood’s “legitimate” residents had been given so much time to vent that Gypsy hadn’t been sure anyone from the Project’s side would get to talk at all. When the planning commission’s chairman had finally given Meal Project proponents their chance, a few dumb protests had been followed by an embarrassed silence as their side realized how outclassed they were at fancy speech-making; until Joby had gotten up and begun to speak, that was.

“I still haven’t heard a shred of hard evidence it was us,” Joby continued politely.

“A man of clearly vagrant appearance
was
seen vandalizing several neighborhood gardens,” said the commissioner chairing the meeting, “and a Meal Project ticket was found inside one of the burglarized homes. That hardly constitutes ‘no shred of evidence.’ ”

“If residents said they’d seen someone of ‘clearly
teacherish
appearance’ digging up their gardens,” Joby asked, “would you be shutting down the nearest school?”

“We’ve told you repeatedly, Mr. Peterson, no one’s proposing that anything be shut down, only a brief suspension of services during relocation.”

“Then I’ll rephrase my question. Would you
relocate
the nearest school to some as yet
undetermined
location?”

He’s not even scared!
Gypsy thought, in awe of Joby’s composure.

“You’re wasting our time with nonsense,” said a second commissioner with wiry black hair severely pulled back from a pinched, unpleasant face. “There’s no such thing as
teacherish
appearance, and schools are a basic service relied upon by the entire community.”

“Not a
frivolous
service like feeding people their only daily meal,” Joby replied, just short of scornfully.

Yeah!
thought Gypsy.
Joby scores!

The chairman looked bleak.

“All right.” Joby shrugged. “Even if your suspect does eat at the Meal Project, this relocation proposal punishes an entire community of people for no crime but dressing vaguely like the offender. Has anyone dressed like you been arrested in this city lately? Should we relocate all men wearing ties?”

“Mr. Peterson, these residents have been subjected to real and intolerable offenses which—”

“Who hasn’t?” Joby interrupted, gesturing toward his downtrodden compatriots in the audience. “I agree that the guilty party should be arrested and tried, but what’s that got to do with exiling everyone who offends the aesthetic sensibilities of—”

“May I remind you,” another commissioner angrily interjected, “that these residents are legitimate property owners, Mr. Peterson, while you and your constituency are merely
guests
in
their
neighborhood!”

“There it is!” roared Sundog, leaping to his feet. “I told you, Joby! Own a chunk, got rights! No chunk, no rights! There’s the constitution
they
all follow!”

As Joby tried to wave him down, a short, wild-haired woman in tie-dye stood up and shouted, “The rich don’t need no Meal Project! They just eat
us
!”

“The rich eat their own young!” bawled a man who looked like Santa Claus moonlighting as a chimney sweep.

Neighborhood residents in the audience began shouting and jeering insults of their own then, as the chairman banged his gavel. By the time order was restored, all five commissioners were clearly out of patience.

“Mr. Peterson, you have more than exhausted your turn to speak,” the chairman said frostily, “and this meeting has run well over schedule. I call for a vote on the proposal to suspend operation of the Berkeley Public Meal Project at Castor Avenue Unitarian Church while an appropriate site for relocation is determined.”

“I second,” said the wire-haired woman to his left.

“In favor?” asked the chairman.

Five hands were raised.

“The motion is passed unanimously,” said the chairman.

His last words were nearly drowned out by angry protests from the homeless audience, but Joby whirled around to wave them silent with such angry intensity that, to everyone’s surprise, they obeyed him almost instantly. Then he turned to face the commission again, his tone no longer mild.

“For fifteen years, we who have our daily bread at the Meal Project have bothered no one,” Joby said, his face a mask of contempt, “but—”

“This meeting is adjourned,” the commissioner said, rising to leave along with the other commissioners.

“But these mean-spirited property owners,” Joby continued unfazed, “may have a lot more noise to deal with now. You can turn your backs on justice, but
don’t think we’ll go quietly
!”

There was loud cheering from the homeless contingent, as neighborhood residents in the audience fled the chamber in unconcealed apprehension. The commissioners continued to file through their side door without acknowledging the upheaval at all.

As Joby stood with stormy dignity watching them go, Gypsy stared at him in openmouthed admiration. Here, at last, was just the someone he’d left home so many years ago to find. Someone he could follow clear to Hell and back, if that’s where this fight took them.

Hell NO! We won’t GO! Hell NO! We won’t GO!

For all its unoriginality, everyone had conceded that the phrase would likely serve their interests better than “Eat ME!,” which Sundog had suggested to much laughter. As he carried his
BREAD, NOT BUNKERS!
picket sign that morning, Gypsy thought that it had never felt so good to be alive! After nearly two weeks of marching in rain and drizzle, the sun had come out at last. They’d been on television too! The mobile news trucks were becoming a daily source of embarrassment to the “neighbors” and their commissioners. Public opinion seemed to be swinging their way. Lots of people passing by were offering their support these days. Normal people! Some of them had even joined the marching! Though it made him feel guilty to admit it, Gypsy half-hoped it didn’t all end too soon. After a pointless life of suburban obscurity followed by an even more disgraceful life on the street, Gypsy was feeling proud of himself for the first time in many years. He’d even written his parents a letter telling them how well everything was going for him now.

Gypsy’s happy reverie was shattered by a burst of shouting from behind him, and he turned to see other protesters pointing down Hearst at two police cars that had turned across traffic to block the street. An instant later, someone else was shouting and pointing down Castor, where a column of officers in riot gear was coming slowly toward the church.

Jesus!
Gypsy thought.
Where are the fucking news trucks when you need them?

“I knew it!” Sundog bellowed. “I knew the bastards’d fuck us over!”

“But we’re not doing anything illegal!” protested one of the newer marchers, a woman who might have been anybody’s mother.

“You’re with us, lady,” said someone else. “That’s wrong enough.”

A few of the latest recruits dropped their signs and ran up Castor away from the advancing police force.

“She’s right!” Joby yelled, climbing onto the bumper of a car to be seen over the crowd. “We haven’t broken any laws! We’ve just embarrassed city hall, so they’re trying to scare us off! But we don’t have to let them do it!”

“Yeah!” Sundog called. “Just stay peaceful! They want you to give ’em an excuse, so don’t be stupid. We stay peaceful, those tin soldiers’ll just have to go right back to their little toy box!”

“Look! There’s more!” someone shouted.

Everyone turned to see a second force of riot police coming slowly up Hearst from behind the patrol car barricade.

Most of the crowd was clearly on the edge of fleeing.

“This is what we’ve been marching for!” Joby shouted. “To make them pay attention! Well, now they are, so let’s show them what we’re about! Do just what Sundog said! Stay peaceful! If they arrest you, let them arrest you, but do nothing to make it seem right! If this city wants to shame itself, let’s not give them any cover!”

It was true, Gypsy realized with excitement. This, right now, was their moment! His heart swelled with pride in all of them who were standing up for what was right.