“Ah—Alec, are there not other institutions to which a person in distress may turn?”
“Oh, certainly. In a city this size the Roman Catholic Church is bound to have more than one refuge. And there will be other Protestant ones. Probably a Jewish one. And—”
“I meant, ‘Not connected with a church.’”
“Ah, so. Margrethe, we both know that this is not really my home country; you probably know as much about how it works as I do. There may be refuges for the homeless here that are totally unconnected with a church. I’m not sure, as churches tend to monopolize the field—nobody else wants it. If it were early in the day instead of getting dark, I would try to find something called united charities or community chest or the equivalent, and look over the menu; there might be something. But now—Finding a policeman and asking for help is the only other thing I can think of this time of day…and I can tell you ahead of time what a cop in this part of town would do if you told him you had nowhere to sleep. He would point you toward the mission right there. Old Sal.”
“In København—or Stockholm or Oslo—I would go straight to the main police station. You just ask for a place to sleep; they give it to you.”
“I have to point out that this is not Denmark or Sweden or Norway. Here they might let us stay—by locking me in the drunk tank and locking you up in the holding pen for prostitutes. Then tomorrow morning we might or might not be charged with vagrancy. I don’t know.”
“Is America really so evil?”
“I don’t know, dear—this isn’t my America. But I don’t want to find out the hard way. Sweetheart…if I worked for whatever they give us, could we spend a night with the Salvation Army without your feeling sinful about it?”
She considered it solemnly—Margrethe’s greatest lack was a total absence of sense of humor. Good nature—loads. A child’s delight in play, yes. Sense of humor? “Life is real and life is earnest—”
“Alec, if that can be arranged, I would not feel wrong in entering. I will work, too.”
“Not necessary, dear; it will be my profession that is involved. When they finish feeding the derelicts tonight, there will be a high stack of dirty dishes—and you are looking at the heavyweight champion dishwasher in all of Mexico and los Estados Unidos.”
So I washed dishes. I also helped spread out hymn-books and set up the evening services. And I borrowed a safety razor and a blade from Brother Eddie McCaw, the adjutant. I told him how we happened to be there—vacationing on the Mexican Riviera, sunbathing on the beach when the big one hit—all the string of lies I had prepared for the Immigration Service and hadn’t been able to use. “Lost it all. Cash, travelers checks, passports, clothes, ticket home, the works. But just the same, we were lucky. We’re alive.”
“The Lord had His arms around you. You tell me that you are born again?”
“Years back.”
“It will do our lost sheep good to rub shoulders with you. When it comes time for witnessing, will you tell them all about it? You’re the first eyewitness. Oh, we felt it here but it just rattled the dishes.”
“Glad to.”
“Good. Let me get you that razor.”
So I witnessed and gave them a truthful and horrendous description of the quake, but not as horrid as it really was—I never want to see another rat—or another dead baby—and I thanked the Lord publicly that Margrethe and I had not been hurt and found that it was the most sincere prayer I had said in years.
The Reverend Eddie asked that roomful of odorous outcasts to join him in a prayer of thanks that Brother and Sister Graham had been spared, and he made it a good rousing prayer that covered everything from Jonah to the hundredth sheep, and drew shouts of “Amen!” from around the room. One old wino came forward and said that he had at last seen God’s grace and God’s mercy and he was now ready to give his life to Christ.
Brother Eddie prayed over him, and invited others to come forward and two more did—a natural evangelist, he saw in our story a theme for his night’s sermon and used it, hanging it on Luke fifteen, ten, and Matthew six, nineteen. I don’t know that he had prepared from those two verses—probably not, as any preacher worth his salt can preach endlessly from either one of them. Either way, he could think on his feet and he made good use of our unplanned presence.
He was pleased with us, and I am sure that is why he told me, as we were cleaning up for the night, after the supper that followed the service, that while of course they didn’t have separate rooms for married couples—they didn’t often get married couples—still, it looked like Sister Graham would be the only one in the sisters’ dormitory tonight, so why didn’t I doss down in there instead of in the men’s dormitory? No double bed, just stacked bunks—sorry! But at least we could be in the same room.
I thanked him and we happily went to bed. Two people can share a very narrow bed if they really want to sleep together.
The next morning Margrethe cooked breakfast for the derelicts. She went into the kitchen and volunteered and soon was doing it all as the regular cook did not cook breakfast; it was the job of whoever had the duty. Breakfast did not require a graduate chef—oatmeal porridge, bread, margarine, little Valencia oranges (culls?), coffee. I left her there to wash dishes and to wait until I came back.
I went out and found a job.
I knew, from listening to wireless (called “radio” here) while washing dishes the night before, that there was unemployment in the United States, enough to be a political and social problem.
There is always work in the Southwest for agricultural labor but I had dodged that sort of work yesterday. I’m not too proud for that work; I had followed the harvest for several years from the time I was big enough to handle a pitchfork. But I could not take Margrethe into the fields.
I did not expect to find a job as a clergyman; I hadn’t even told Brother Eddie that I was ordained. There is always an unemployment problem for preachers. Oh, there are always empty pulpits, true—but ones in which a church mouse would starve.
But I had a second profession.
Dishwasher.
No matter how many people are out of work, there are always dishwashing jobs going begging. Yesterday, in walking from the border gate to the Salvation Army mission, I had noticed three restaurants with “Dishwasher Wanted” signs in their windows—noticed them because I had had plenty of time on the long ride from Mazatlán to admit to myself that I had no other salable skill.
No salable skill. I was not ordained in this world; I would not be ordained in this world as I could not show graduation from seminary or divinity school—or even the backing of a primitive sect that takes no mind of schools but depends on inspiration by the Holy Ghost.
I was certainly not an engineer.
I could not get a job teaching even those subjects I knew well because I no longer could show any formal preparation—I couldn’t even show that I had graduated from middle school!
In general I was no salesman. True, I had shown an unexpected talent for the complex skills that make up a professional money-raiser…but here I had no record, no reputation. I might someday do this again—but we needed cash today.
What did that leave? I had looked at the help-wanted ads in a copy of the Nogales Times someone had left in the mission. I was not a tax accountant. I was not any sort of a mechanic. I did not know what a software designer was but I was not one, nor was I a “computer” anything. I was not a nurse or any sort of health care professional.
I could go on indefinitely listing the things I was not, and could not learn overnight. But that is pointless. What I could do, what would feed Margrethe and me while we sized up this new world and learned the angles, was what I had been forced to do as a peón.
A competent and reliable dishwasher never starves. (He’s more likely to die of boredom.)
The first place did not smell good and its kitchen looked dirty; I did not linger. The second place was a major-chain hotel, with several people in the scullery. The boss look
ed me over and said, “This is a Chicano job; you wouldn’t be happy here.” I tried to argue; he shut me off.
But the third was okay, a restaurant only a little bigger than the Pancho Villa, with a clean kitchen and a manager no more than normally jaundiced.
He warned me, “This job pays minimum wage and there are no raises. One meal a day on the house. I catch you sneaking anything, even a toothpick, and out you go that instant—no second chance. You work the hours I set and I change ’em to suit me. Right now I need you for noon to four, six to ten, five days a week. Or you can work six days but no overtime scale for it. Overtime scale if I require you to work more than eight hours in one day, or more than forty-eight hours in one week.”
“Okay.”
“All right, let’s see your Social Security card.”
I handed him my green card.
He handed it back. “You expect me to pay you twelve dollars and a half an hour on the basis of a green card? You’re no Chicano. You trying to get me in trouble with the government? Where did you get that card?”
So I gave him the song and dance I had prepared for the Immigration Service. “Lost everything. I can’t even phone and tell somebody to send me money; I have to get home first before I can shake any assets loose.”
“You could get public assistance.”
“Mister, I’m too stinkin’ proud.” (I don’t know how and I can’t prove I’m me. Just don’t quiz me and let me wash dishes.)
“Glad to hear it. ‘Stinking proud,’ I mean. This country could use more like you. Go over to the Social Security office and get them to issue you a new one. They will, even if you can’t recall the number of your old one. Then come back here and go to work. Mmm—I’ll start you on payroll right now. But you must come back and put in a full day to collect.”
“More than fair. Where is the Social Security office?”
So I went to the Federal Building and told my lies over again, embroidering only as necessary. The serious young lady who issued the card insisted on giving me a lecture on Social Security and how it worked, a lecture she had apparently memorized. I’ll bet you she never had a “client” (that’s what she called me) who listened so carefully. It was all new to me.
I gave the name “Alec L. Graham.” This was not a conscious decision. I had been using that name for weeks, answered with it by reflex—then was not in a good position to say, “Sorry, Miss, my name is actually Hergensheimer.”
I started work. During my four-to-six break I went back to the mission—and learned that Margrethe had a job, too.
It was temporary, three weeks—but three weeks at just the right time. The mission cook had not had a vacation in over a year and wanted to go to Flagstaff to visit her daughter, who had just had a baby. So Margrethe had her job for the time being—and her bedroom, also for the time being.
So Brother and Sister Graham were in awfully good shape—for the time being.
XIV
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race
is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of
understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill;
but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Ecclesiastes 9:11
Pray tell me why there is not a dishwashing school of philosophy? The conditions would seem ideal for indulging in the dear delights of attempting to unscrew the inscrutable. The work keeps the body busy while demanding almost nothing of the brain. I had eight hours every day in which to try to find answers to questions.
What questions? All questions. Five months earlier I had been a prosperous and respected professional in the most respected of professions, in a world I understood thoroughly—or so I thought. Today I was sure of nothing and had nothing.
Correction—I had Margrethe. Wealth enough for any man, I would not trade her for all the riches of Cathay. But even Margrethe represented a solemn contract I could not yet fulfill. In the eyes of the Lord I had taken her to wife…but I was not supporting her.
Yes, I had a job—but in truth she was supporting herself. When Mr. Cowgirl hired me, I had not been daunted by “minimum wage and no raises.” Twelve dollars and fifty cents per hour struck me as a dazzling sum—why, many a married man in Wichita (my Wichita, in another universe) supported a family on twelve and a half dollars per week.
What I did not realize was that here $12.50 would not buy a tuna sandwich in that same restaurant—not a fancy restaurant, either; cheap, in fact. I would have had less trouble adjusting to the economy in this strange-but-familiar world if its money had been described in unfamiliar terms—shillings, shekels, soles, anything but dollars. I had been brought up to think of a dollar as a substantial piece of wealth; the idea that a hundred dollars a day was a poverty-level minimum wage was not one I could grasp easily.
Twelve-fifty an hour, a hundred dollars a day, five hundred a week, twenty-six thousand dollars a year—Poverty level? Listen carefully. In the world in which I grew up, that was riches beyond dreams of avarice.
Getting used to price and wage levels in dollars that weren’t really dollars was simply the most ubiquitous aspect of a strange economy; the main problem was how to cope, how to stay afloat, how to make a living for me and my wife (and our children, with one expected all too soon if I had guessed right) in a world in which I had no diplomas, no training, no friends, no references, no track record of any sort. Alex, what in God’s truth are you good for?…other than dishwashing!
I could easily wash a lighthouse stack of dishes while worrying that problem alone. It had to be solved. Today I washed dishes cheerfully…but soon I must do better for my beloved. Minimum wage was not enough.
Now at last we come to the prime question: Dear Lord God Jehovah, what mean these signs and portents Thou hast placed on me Thy servant?
There comes a time when a faithful worshiper must get up off his knees and deal with his Lord God in blunt and practical terms. Lord, tell me what to believe! Are these the deceitful great signs and wonders of which You warned, sent by antichrist to seduce the very elect?
Or are these true signs of the final days? Will we hear Your Shout?
Or am I as mad as Nebuchadnezzar and all of these appearances merely vapors in my disordered mind?
If one of these be true, then the other two are false. How am I to choose? Lord God of Hosts, how have I offended Thee?
In walking back to the mission one night I saw a sign that could be construed as a direct answer to my prayers: MILLIONS NOW LIVING WILL NEVER DIE. The sign was carried by a man and with him was a small child handing out leaflets.
I contrived not to accept one. I had seen that sign many times throughout my life, but I had long tended to avoid Jehovah’s Witnesses. They are so stiff-necked and stubborn that it is impossible to work with them, whereas Churches United for Decency is necessarily an ecumenical association. In fund raising and in political action one must (while of course shunning heresy) avoid arguments on fiddling points of doctrine. Word-splitting theologians are the death of efficient organization. How can you include a sect in practical labor in the vineyards of the Lord if that sect asserts that they alone know the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth and all who disagree are heretics, destined for the fires of Hell?
Impossible. So we left them out of C.U.D.
Still—Perhaps this time they were right.
Which brings me to the most urgent of all questions: How to lead Margrethe back to the Lord before the Trump and the Shout.
But “how” depends on “when.” Premillenarian theologians differ greatly among themselves as to the date of the Last Trump.
I rely on the scientific method. On any disputed point there is always one sure answer: Look it up in the Book. And so I did, now that I was living at the Salvation Army mission and could borrow a copy of the Holy Bible. I looked it up again and again and again…and learned why premillenarians differed so on their dates. r />
The Bible is the literal Word of God; let there be no mistake about that. But nowhere did the Lord promise us that it would be easy to read.
Again and again Our Lord and His incarnation as the Son, Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, promises His disciples that their generation (i.e., first century A.D.) will see His return. Elsewhere, and again many times, He promises that He will return after a thousand years have passed…or is it two thousand years…or is it some other period, after the Gospel has been preached to all mankind in every country?
Which is true?
All are true, if you read them right. Jesus did indeed return in the generation of His twelve disciples; He did so at the first Easter, His resurrection. That was His first return, the utterly necessary one, the one that proved to all that He was indeed the Son of God and God Himself. He returned again after a thousand years and, in His infinite mercy, ruled that His children be given yet another grant of grace, a further period of trial, rather than let sinners be consigned forthwith to the fiery depths of Hell. His Mercy is infinite.
These dates are hard to read, and understandably so, as it was never His intention to encourage sinners to go on sinning because the day of reckoning had been postponed. What is precise, exact, and unmistakable, repeated again and again, is that He expects every one of His children to live every day, every hour, every heart beat, as if this one were the last. When is the end of this age? When is the Shout and the Trump? When is the Day of Judgment? Now! You will be given no warning whatever. No time for deathbed contrition. You must live in a state of grace…or, when the instant comes, you will be cast down into the Lake of Fire, there to burn in agony throughout all eternity.
So reads the Word of God.
And to me, so sounds the voice of doom. I had no period of grace in which to lead Margrethe back into the fold…as the Shout may come this very day.
What to do? What to do?
For mortal man, with any problem too great, there is only one thing to do: Take it to the Lord in prayer.