Things was goin along just fine at the mission till that smilin white couple started servin in the dinin hall on Tuesdays. Ever week, that woman drew a bead on me in the serving line. She’d smile at me real big and ask me my name and how I was doin—you know: attackin me for no particular reason. I did my best to stay completely outta her way.
And I didn’t tell her my name was Denver, neither, but some fool blowed my cover. After that, the woman would corner me and poke her skinny finger in my face and tell me I wadn’t no bad fella.
“Denver, God has a calling on your life,” she’d say.
I told her several times not to be messin with me ’cause I was a mean man.
“You are not a mean man, and I don’t ever want to hear you say that!” she’d say.
She was gettin kinda smart with me. Ain’t never been no woman done that before, and few men, either, without them gettin hurt. But she kept on attackin me until I thought to myself, What’d I ever do to this woman that she won’t leave me alone so I can go on about my business?
It might seem like bein homeless don’t take no skill, but I’m gon’ tell you, to stay alive homeless folks has got to know who’s who and what’s what. Here’s what the homeless in Fort Worth knowed about me: Stay outta my way, ’cause I would beat a man down, have him snorin ’fore he hit the ground.
But no matter how mean and bad I tried to act at the mission, I couldn’t shake that woman loose. She was the first person I’d met in a long time that wadn’t scared of me. Seemed like to me she had spiritual eyes: She could see right through my skin to who I was on the inside.
Lemme tell you what homeless people think about folks that help home-less people: When you homeless, you wonder why certain volunteers do what they do. What do they want? Everybody want somethin. For instance, when that couple come to the mission, I thought the man looked like the law. The way he dressed, the way he acted. Too high-class. His wife, too, at first. The way she acted, the way she treated people . . . she just looked too sophisticated. Wadn’t the way she dressed. It was just something about the way she carried herself. And both of em was askin way too many questions.
While everbody else was fallin in love with em, I was what you call skeptical. I wadn’t thinkin nothin evil. It was just that they didn’t look like the type to come in and mess with the homeless. People like that may not feel it within themselves that they’re better than you, but when you the one that’s homeless, you feel like they feel like they’re better than you.
But these folks was different. One reason was they didn’t come just on holidays. Most people don’t want the homeless close to em—think they’re dirty, or got some kinda disease, or maybe they think that kind of troubled life gon’ rub off on em. They come at Christmas and Easter and Thanksgivin and give you a little turkey and lukewarm gravy. Then they go home and gather round their own table and forget about you till the next time come around where they start feelin a little guilty ’cause they got so much to be thankful for.
On Tuesdays, I started waitin till there wadn’t no line so I could get through real fast without talkin to that couple at all. But that didn’t mean I wadn’t watchin em.