Mary Nealy - Ten Plagues

It was so much worse, Paul didn’t even think of trying to sleep.

He went into the mission and found the usual crowd drinking coffee. There were several men sleeping in their chairs, dressed in clothes they’d found in the mission store. It was warm out so most of them wouldn’t stay here overnight. They were mostly alcoholics, but too many of them drank to quiet the tormenting voices in their heads. Bipolar, schizophrenic, crazy, whatever the currently popular word was for mental illness. They came in for supper, some would hang around for a while, then they’d go back on the streets. But a few stayed here, and a few had let Paul help them find an apartment. And a few, like LaToya and Juanita, had gotten their lives in order and were on their own.

Paul tried to reach all of them, get them help, get them off the street, but mostly he just cared for them, made sure they had food and warm clothes. A reasonably clean bed on winter nights. He saw himself as a servant.

Turning to the small group that sat at a table, talking quietly, Paul saw the kind of thing that kept him going. Made him believe he was doing what God called him to do.

Murray, Buddy, Louie, five others. These men and a group of women who sat at another table made it all worth it. Rosita was one of them. She waved and gave him a smile.

Paul said hello to everyone then grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down by the men.

“How are you, Pastor P?” Buddy was bipolar, near as Paul could tell. He had a beard, weathered face, and gray hair. He had moved into a low-rent apartment just recently, since his meds had started taking effect and he was thinking more clearly. But he still came in for meals and sometimes to help out. He complained about the way the medication made him feel, but he’d been a long way down in the gutter, and at least for now, he seemed to want to stay out of it.

“I feel like a building fell on me.” These men had all gone through plenty, and they liked hearing Paul had his own struggles. And gossip moved through this community like any other, so they knew what had happened to Juanita, how it connected to the explosion in Carlo’s building, and Paul’s part in it.

Murray nodded. “Find anything out?”

All eight men focused on Paul, and he weighed his words. He wasn’t going to talk about the autopsy. That might be enough to send all of them into a tailspin. Telling the truth didn’t mean telling everything he knew.

“The police want to keep working with me. I’m sorry I was gone the last couple of days. Looks like you got the meals served and everything cleaned up without me. I’m sorry to not be here to help.”

“We managed.” Murray had a full beard, black salted with gray, that he hadn’t trimmed in a decade. He was wire thin, full of barely controlled energy. He’d found a talent for playing the guitar and helped with church services and had good managerial skills. When Paul was gone, Murray took over, even preaching a sermon now and then. He had just found an apartment away from the mission, though he still came in daily to work.

“Murray can sing, but his idea of preaching a sermon is to yell at all of us that we’re going to burn if we don’t change our ways.” Louie had just gotten out of prison after a five-year stretch and worked at the mission as part of his community service. The other men laughed softly. Murray was fervent for the Lord, no doubt about it.

“I’d like a turn preachin’, Pastor,” Louie added. “I’d especially like a turn passing the collection plate.”

More laughter. There was no collection plate at the Lighthouse Mission. No one had a dime to spare. Louie ran a hand over his thinning dark hair and slouched in his chair. He was able bodied and did his share of the work and a little more, but he showed no interest in finding a job outside the mission. He’d be gone as soon as he’d put in his time here. Paul hoped he’d reached him for the Lord. Louie said all the right words, but Paul couldn’t tell if the young man had taken salvation to heart.

Paul knew Murray could talk fire and brimstone, but he suspected Louie was reacting more to his own sense of guilt than to what Murray said. Louie had routine drug tests, and if he flunked one, he’d be back in prison immediately. So far, as near as Paul could tell, the young man was staying sober.

“Price of sitting through a meal,” Murray said. His approach might well be the best one. Paul leaned toward love and mercy in his sermons.

The men spent a few minutes good-naturedly teasing each other. Paul let their talk draw him out of the horror of sitting in on that autopsy. He should never have done it. He’d survived it by switching into cop mode. Now he was having trouble pulling out of it, and he let these men, his friends, his brothers in Christ, bring him back to himself. This day had reminded Paul of all the selfishness of the life he’d left behind. He settled back into his faith and rediscovered his servant nature while these men updated him on the day. By the time he finished his coffee, he was Pastor P again, and he thought he was exhausted enough to be able to sleep.

“The day’s catching up to me. I’ve got to get to bed.” The thought of walking up four flights was almost more than he could stand, but the elevator wasn’t reliable, and he had no wish to spend an hour or two stuck between floors.

They told him good night. He walked away from the only friends he had—men who, if they succeeded in the mission, went away and if they failed, went away. As he climbed he thought of that moment when he’d touched Keren while handing over his coffee cup.

That touch made him realize that he was terribly lonely.

He showered and donned a clean pair of sweatpants and another Lighthouse T-shirt then sank into his bed, feeling sleep claim him as he lay his head on the pillow.

The nightmare bloomed instantly to life, jerking him awake. The day played through his head. He tossed and turned half the night, with the autopsy grinding its way into every cell in his brain. When he dozed off, he had nightmares about what LaToya might be going through right now.

It was almost merciful when he was awakened by pounding. He staggered out of his bedroom to answer his door, more exhausted than when he’d gone to bed.

He yanked the door open and saw Keren and O’Shea. Two other men stood in the hallway behind them. His stomach twisted. “You found LaToya.”

Keren shook her head and the lopsided bun she always wore bobbed dangerously on her head. She held up a sheet of paper from her notebook. It said, “Shut up.”

She jerked her head toward the door. He was obviously expected to follow.

Paul’s living quarters shared this floor with the mission offices. She didn’t speak, just waved her hand at him to follow. O’Shea stayed behind with the other policemen and Paul didn’t even ask why. It didn’t fit with the “Shut up” sign.

They jogged down the narrow flights of stairs, past the men’s shelter on the third floor, past his newest project, a teen center on the second floor. The eating area, which also doubled as the church, was on the ground floor. The jog felt like someone was beating on his chest with a baseball bat instead of stabbing him with a knife. Sad to say, it was a big improvement.

There was a women’s shelter in the basement for a few of their special residents. That area was carefully locked away from the men. Even Paul wasn’t allowed down there. The women residents had suffered so much at the hands of men that many of them were incapable of relating to them in any healthy way, even with their minister. In order to make them feel safe enough to trust the Lighthouse Mission, their separation from men had to be absolute. They even had a separate dining room and their own church services led by nuns from the nearby Catholic church. Paul knew he should really move the women’s facility to another building. Rosita had taken over a lot of that part of the mission, along with other women volunteers.