Same Kind of Different As Me (30 page)
She turned then and smiled at Denver, but her weathered face telegraphed concern over my presence. To ease her mind, I nodded at the snuff-can mountain and told her that my grandmother and great-aunts had dipped Garrett snuff. That seemed to make her feel better.
Aunt Pearlie May invited us into her parlor, a space that measured about six feet by eight feet and was wallpapered in a patchwork of Christmas wrap, along with three pictures of Jesus. Somehow, someone had managed to shoehorn two worn-out love seats into the room and arrange them facing each other. When Denver and I sat down across from Pearlie May and her husband, our knees touched. We chatted about this and that, except for the husband, who sat across from me expressionless, and never said a word. Later, Denver said that was the friendliest he’d ever seen him.
“Y’all come out back and see my hogs,” Pearlie May said after a short visit. “I’m thinkin’ ’bout sellin em off. Want you to see em case you know anybody wants to buy em.”
We unfolded ourselves and covered the distance to the back door in three long steps. Outside, two corpulent hogs snuffled and grunted, wallowing in mud up to their bellies. Pearlie May made a little porcine sales pitch, then yakked cheerfully about her new indoor toilet. She’d had it installed in 2001, and paid for it with proceeds earned over a lifetime of bootlegging Natural Light beer through her bedroom window for a buck a can. Said she still mainly used her outhouse, though, since all the kinks hadn’t been worked out in her indoor plumbing yet.
We left just before dark, and as we drove away the images of poverty and squalor burned themselves into my brain like hated tattoos. I could hardly believe places like that still existed in America. I thanked Denver for taking me there, for taking my blinders off.
“Mr. Ron, they’re livin better than I ever did when I was livin here. Now you know it was the truth when I told you that bein homeless in Fort Worth was a step up in life for me.”
By
the second week in September, more than half a million dollars had poured into the mission. A couple of days before the groundbreaking ceremony for Deborah’s chapel, Mary Ellen called me. She wanted to share with me something that Jesus had told His disciples, a metaphor for His own death recorded in the Gospel of John: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains by itself, alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
In prayer that morning, Mary Ellen said, she’d felt God whispering to her heart,
Deborah was like that kernel of wheat
.
The next day, Denver dropped by for a visit. Sitting across from me at my kitchen table as he had so many times, he said nearly the same thing but in the language of a country preacher. “Mr. Ron, all good things must end,” he said. “And nothin ever really ends that somethin new don’t begin. Like Miss Debbie. She’s gone, but somethin new is beginnin.”
Three days later, on September 13, we gathered to break ground on “New Beginnings,” the new mission. Only two days before terrorists had crashed a pair of passenger jets into the World Trade Center, changing America forever. Carson lived in New York City. It had taken me hours to reach him by phone, as I sat before the live TV news coverage, stunned at the news, knowing it was now not only my own world that tragedy had changed forever.
The nation ground to a halt, but in honor of Deborah, the mission board decided to go ahead with the groundbreaking. I followed the familiar route she and I had driven so often to the mission, past train tracks and derelict buildings and underpasses that doubled as outhouses for the homeless. The first time Deborah and I traveled East Lancaster, she’d dreamed of bringing beauty there. And she had, but not in the way she’d first imagined. Instead of lining the sidewalks with picket fences, she’d fenced out fear, prejudice, and judgment, creating with her smile and open heart a sanctuary for hundreds. Instead of planting yellow flowers, she’d sown seeds of compassion that changed hearts, mine and Denver’s only two among them.
So I stood with Regan, Denver, my mother, Tommye, and nearly a hun-dred friends that day, under God’s blue canopy, using a ceremony program to shield myself from the sun. We listened as Mayor Kenneth Barr and State Senator Mike Moncrief spoke of the hope this new mission would bring to the homeless of Fort Worth. Behind them, a ten-foot patch of red dirt lay exposed and four shovels festooned with blue ribbons stood like soldiers, ready to turn over the soil. Ready to receive the kernel.
Now on East Lancaster Street stands a new mission that includes new services for the needy: residential rooms for women and children and the Deborah L. Hall Memorial Chapel. Both are a memorial to a woman who served the city, a woman God took home so that in His strange providence, the sick and the lost might find greater refuge and hope. Bitterly, I wondered if He could have managed to build them without taking my wife. It could have been called God’s Chapel and Deborah Hall could have served Him there.
I remembered what C. S. Lewis said of the clash between grief and faith: “The tortures occur,” he wrote. “If they are unnecessary, then there is no God, or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary for no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren’t.”
The pain of losing Deborah still brings tears. And I cannot mask my profound disappointment that God did not answer yes to our prayers for healing. I think He’s okay with that. One of the phrases we evangelicals like to throw around is that Christianity is “not a religion; it’s a relationship.” I believe that, which is why I know that when my faith was shattered and I raged against Him, He still accepted me. And even though I have penciled a black mark in His column, I can be honest about it. That’s what a relation-ship is all about.
Still, I can’t deny the fruit of Deborah’s death—Denver, the new man, and the hundreds of men, women, and children who will be helped because of the new mission. And so, I release her back to God.
The Sunday after the groundbreaking, Denver and I pulled into the parking lot of the New Mount Calvary Baptist Church, a church in a depressed neighborhood in southeast Fort Worth. Pastor Tom Franklin had heard Denver speak at Deborah’s memorial service and for months had kept after me to try to convince him to come and preach at his church. Finally, Denver agreed. I had prayed for a standing-room-only crowd, but by the looks of the parking lot, folks were standing somewhere else that morning.
If Abraham Lincoln had been black, Pastor Tom would have been his twin. Gray-haired and bearded, he greeted us at the church door, pulling us each into a lanky hug. Peeking into the sanctuary, I could see only a few people scattered through the pews.
Pastor Tom read my thoughts. “Don’t worry, Ron. Everyone the Lord wants to be here will be here.”
As the service began and the tiny congregation filled the air with old spirituals, Denver and I huddled on the back row. Pastor Tom had wanted me to introduce Denver from the pulpit but spend a few minutes telling his life story first. As I suspected, Denver wasn’t having any of that. During the singing, he and I huddled on the back row to negotiate.
“It ain’t nobody’s business how I got here!” he whispered. “’Sides, I don’t want to tell em ’bout me. I want to tell em ’bout the Lord.”
“So what do you want me to say?”
He paused and stared down at the Bible laying on the bench next to me. “Just tell em I’m a nobody that’s tryin to tell everbody ’bout Somebody that can save
anybody
. That’s all you need to tell em.”
And so, when the singing stopped, I walked down front and said just that. Then Denver took the pulpit. At first, his voice quavered a bit, but it was loud. And the longer he preached, the louder and stronger it became. And like a magnet, his voice pulled people in off the street. By the time he wiped the sweat off his face and sat down, the pews were nearly full.
Like a cannonball, Pastor Tom shot out of his seat into the pulpit, raising his arms toward the people. “I believe God wants Denver to come back and preach a revival!” he said. The congregation, most of whom had been drawn into the sanctuary by Denver’s voice, exploded into applause.
My mind flashed to Deborah’s dream, her seeing Denver’s face, and recalling the words of Solomon:
There was found in the city a certain poor man
who was wise and by his wisdom he saved the city
.
Again, something new had begun. Something I was certain had my wife dancing for joy on streets of gold.
Like
I said before, when Mr. Ron promised he wadn’t gon’ catch and release me, I was skeptical. But listen to this: Not too long after I preached at Pastor Tom’s church, Mr. Ron asked me would I move in with him. And you ain’t gon’ believe where—at the Murchison Estate in Dallas, in a mansion where Mr. Ron said United States presidents, movie stars, and even a fella named J. Edgar Hoover used to stay.
I guess the Murchisons at one time was the richest folks in Texas and some a’ the richest in the whole country. In 2001, Mrs. Lupe Murchison passed on, gone to join her husband, and their kin was wantin Mr. Ron to live on the estate and sell off all a’ their art. They had hun’erds a’ pictures and statues and what have you. Mr. Ron said it was all worth about a zillion dollars. So he hired me to live on the estate with him and be the night watchman. That suited me ’cause I was ready to work for a livin and earn some money of my own. The mansion was real old and grand, built in the 1920s, Mr. Ron said. A coupla nights while I was guardin it, I met some ghosts wanderin around.
Not long after I moved into the mansion with Mr. Ron, I found some paints in the garage and decided to paint me a picture. I was gettin paid to guard all them silly-lookin pictures by fellas like Picasso. Didn’t look to me like they was very hard to paint. Sure ’nough, it only took me a coupla hours ’fore I had made a picture of a angel that was ever bit as good as some a’ them I was guardin.
Mr. Ron liked it a lot when I showed it to him the next mornin. “How much do you want for it?” he asked me.
“A million dollars,” I said.
“A million dollars!” he said, laughing. “I can’t afford your paintings.”
“Mr. Ron, I ain’t askin you to buy it. I’m askin you to sell it like you sell them other million-dollar pictures.”
After that, though, I showed my angel picture to Sister Bettie and she said it was her favorite paintin she had ever seen, so I gave it to her. She’s like an angel to me anyway. Then Mr. Ron set me up my own studio in the room right next door to Lupe Murchison’s five-car garage. I guess I’ve painted over a hun’erd pictures by now. Sold some of em, too.
Carson and Mr. Ron have done sold off most a’ the Murchisons’ art, and somebody bought the mansion, too. Now we’re livin in another house on the estate while they sell the rest.
During the day when I ain’t workin, I carry Miss Debbie’s torch, the one the Lord told me to pick up so she could lay it down. I still go down to the Lot and help Sister Bettie and Miss Mary Ellen. Sister Bettie’s gettin on in years, and I worry about her. Once a month, I preach at the Riteway Baptist Church. I take clothes over to the homeless people and take care of my homeboys that’s still on the street, maybe give em a few dollars.
I do some travelin, too. In January 2005, me and Mr. Ron went to the presidential inauguration. Mr. Ron was invited and he asked me to go with him. That was the first time I ever went on a airplane. We landed in a snow-storm, but I didn’t know I was s’posed to be scared.
So there we was, on the White House lawn, sittin on the front row, and I’m lookin around at all the astronauts and war heroes and wonderin, how in the world did a fella like me wind up in a place like this? It was somethin I never even dreamed of. I wadn’t that far from the president, but I wanted to check him out a li’l better so I got up outta my seat and walked up closer to where he was sittin, gettin ready to make his speech. But this Secret Service man, a black fella like me, held up his hand.
“Sir, where are you going?”
“I’m gon’ walk right up here and see the president,” I said.
He looked at me kinda firm. “No. You’re close enough.”
Later that night, me and Mr. Ron went to the inaugural ball. The president and his wife was dancin right there in front of me. I had on a tuxedo and a bow tie. I felt purty good about that.
The next day, I got to stand on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial. I remember way back when I was li’l bitty fella, Big Mama told me ’bout how President Lincoln freed black people from slavery. That’s why they shot him.
I felt mighty blessed to be able to go and see the president. Me and Mr. Ron done some other travelin, too. I been to Santa Fe and San Diego. Back home in Dallas, we still go to restaurants and cafés, the ranch and rodeos, and to church on Sundays. All in all, we’s purty tight. Lotta times, we’ll sit out on the back porch at the Murchison place, or out on the patio at Rocky Top, lookin at the moon shinin on the river and talkin about life. Mr. Ron’s still got a lot to learn.
I’m just messin with you. Even though I’m almost seventy years old, I got a lot to learn, too. I used to spend a lotta time worryin that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks. Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried that I was so different from them that we wadn’t ever gon’ have no kind a’ future. But I found out everybody’s different— the same kind of different as me. We’re all just regular folks walkin down the road God done set in front of us.