The Cross and the Switchblade

IT WAS ALMOST TIME for the meeting to begin. The auditorium was filling up on this final night of the rally. Far more young people had already come than had come on any previous evening. I saw some of the Chaplains; I saw the Dragons, and some GGI’s. Among them, I was interested to note, was Maria.

I hadn’t been able to forget the appealing face and open manner of Israel, president of the Mau Maus. I’d been down to invite this gang to the rally as my personal guests, and to tell them about the special bus that we’d hired for them. When I said that I would reserve some seats down front just for them, Israel promised to come and bring the others.

But it was the last night and they weren’t here, and I thought I knew why. Nicky. He had stood seething and silent while Israel and I talked, exuding hatred for me and everything I stood for.

I wandered to a window overlooking the street. A bus was arriving. I knew it was the Mau Maus even before I saw them. I knew by the way the bus pulled into the curb: it nosed in fast, as if the driver couldn’t wait to get rid of his passengers. The doors opened fore and aft and spilled out nearly fifty teen-agers, shouting and shoving and out for a ball. One boy tossed away an empty bottle of wine as he stepped down. In the short distance between the bus stop and the arena entrance, they picked up several teen-age girls who were standing around outside in very brief shorts and halters.

I’d asked the ushers to reserve the first three rows in the arena but had not revealed who the seats were for. Now the head usher came rushing up to me, excited and upset.

“Reverend, I don’t know what to do.” He drew me out onto the balcony and pointed down into the arena, where Israel and Nicky were tapping their way down the aisle with their canes, whistling and jeering as they came. “Those are Mau Maus,” the head usher said. “I don’t think I can keep them out of those reserved seats.”

But I sounded more confident than I felt. I left the usher blinking and staring after me and hurried downstairs to the dressing rooms. There I found an atmosphere of grave foreboding. “I don’t like the looks of it,” said the manager of the arena. “There are rival gangs out there, and we could have a full-scale rumble on our hands.”

I looked out again. One of our own teen-age girls, a remarkable young singer, as pretty as a movie star, was walking onto the center of the stage which had been set up at one end of the arena.

“Let’s see how Mary does,” I said. “Maybe we won’t have to call more police. Maybe we can soothe the savage beast with song.”

The boys were standing on their seats doing the Fish, and the girls in their halters and too-brief briefs gyrated to the gospel song that Mary sang. She looked over to where I was standing in the wings and asked with her eyes what she should do. Despite the cheers and the clapping and the calls for another song, I signaled to Mary that she should come away.

“No. Not yet. Let’s wait just a little longer. I’m going to try to talk to them. If you see things aren’t going right, then you can do whatever you choose.”

“We’re going to do something different tonight,” I announced over the loud-speaker system. “We’re going to ask the gang members themselves to take up the collection.” I looked right at Nicky as I spoke. “May I have six volunteers?”

Nicky was on his feet in a flash, incredulity and secret triumph struggling on his face. He pointed at five Mau Maus and the six of them came forward and lined up in front of the stage. One good result of my decision was apparent already: that arena had come to attention. Hundreds of teen-agers stopped their cavorting and leaned forward in breathless anticipation.

I stepped to the wings and took the paper milk-shake cartons from the hands of the astonished ushers. “Now,” I said to the boys as I handed them round, “when you’ve passed down the aisles, I’d like you to bring the offerings around behind that curtain and up onto the stage.” I pointed to the place, watching Nicky’s face. Behind that curtain, as well as the stage steps, there was a door to the street. A big arrow announced it: EXIT. Nicky accepted the carton solemnly, but in his eyes I could read mockery and contempt.

And so while the organ played, Nicky and his boys took up the collection. He did well as a fund-raiser, too. Nicky had sixteen stabbings to his record and was known as a vicious knife-fighter not only to the Brooklyn kids but to the gangs in Manhattan and the Bronx as well. He was also famous for his baseball-bat tactics. Newspapers had pegged him “The Garbage-Can Fighter” because in a rumble he would put a can over his head and wade into battle swinging his bat blindly in a deadly circle. When Nicky stood at the end of a row, shaking his carton, the kids dug deep.

When he was satisfied that he had enough, he signaled the other boys and together they walked down front and ducked behind the curtain. I waited, standing on the stage.

A wave of giggles swept over the room. A minute passed. Girls clapped their hands to their mouths to keep in the glee. Two minutes. Now the suppressed laughter exploded in guffaws, and my inspiration evaporated into sheerest lunacy before my eyes. The kids were on their feet, stamping and howling in derision.

Then the room froze. I turned my head. Nicky and the others were crossing the stage toward me, the full cartons in their hands. Nicky looked at me with bewildered, almost frightened eyes, as though he himself could not understand what he was doing.

“Thank you, Nicky,” I said, in what I hoped was a casual voice. I walked over to the pulpit as though I had not just lived through the worst two minutes of my life.

There was not a sound in the room as the six boys filed slowly back to their places. I began to speak, my heart beating high with hope. But if I thought I had won the sympathy of that crowd for my message, I was sorely mistaken. I had gotten their ears, but I couldn’t seem to get near their hearts.

I couldn’t understand what was wrong with my sermon. I’d done everything I could to make it a good one. I’d spent hours preparing it, and prayed over every line of it. I’d even fasted in the hope that this would strengthen my delivery and my persuasiveness. But I might as well have stood up and read the stock-market report. Nothing I said seemed real to these kids; nothing came through to them. I preached for perhaps fifteen minutes, and all I could sense was the growing restlessness of the crowd. I had reached the point in the sermon where I quoted Jesus’ command to love one another.

“Hold on, Preacher! Hold on! You say you want me to love them Dagoes? One of them cut me with a razor. I’ll love them all right—with a lead pipe.”

“I got a bullet hole here, Preacher. One of them Nigger gangs did it. And you say we’re supposed to love them? Man, you’re not real.”

It didn’t sound real, not in that room so charged with hatred. It didn’t sound humanly possible. “It isn’t anything we can achieve through our own efforts,” I admitted. “This is God’s love I’m talking about. We simply have to ask Him to give us His kind of love. We cannot work it up by ourselves.”

And then, suddenly, with brilliant clarity, I saw that these words were intended for myself. Wasn’t this the very lesson I’d learned from Jo-Jo? There’s very little we humans can do to change ourselves or others, to heal them, to fill them with love instead of hate. We can bring our hearts and minds to God, but then we must leave them there.

Right there I turned the meeting over. “All right, Jesus,” I prayed, “there is nothing more that I can do. I invited these young people here, now I’m going to step out of the picture. Come, Holy Spirit. If you want to reach the hearts of any of these boys and girls, it will have to be through Your presence. Have Your own way, Lord. Have Your own way.”

Three minutes can be an incredibly long period of time. I stood before that crowd with my head bowed for three minutes. I did not say a word. I did not move. I prayed, quietly and yieldingly. It didn’t bother me any more that some of the kids were laughing. Nor did it surprise me when slowly the great hall began to quiet down. First it was the front three rows. I recognized Israel’s voice: “All right, you guys! Can it.”

The quiet spread backwards through the house, and up to the balconies. Before the three minutes were up, that prize-fight area was totally silent.

I opened my eyes. In the front row Israel was tugging at a handkerchief in his hip pocket. He pulled it out and blew his nose very loudly, then blinked and sniffed.

And while I prayed, Nicky got out his handkerchief. I couldn’t believe my eyes and took another look. There he was, leaning on his cane, snorting and blinking and angry with himself for crying. One of the boys put a hand on his shoulder. Nicky shrugged him off.

“All right. You’ve felt Him; He’s here; He’s in this room, come especially for you. If you want to have your life changed, now is the time. Stand up and come forward!”

Israel didn’t hesitate. He stood up and faced his gang. “Boys,” he said, “I’ve been your leader for three years. When I say go, you go! Right?”

They jumped up as a man, and followed Israel forward. No, they raced him, elbowing each other to get there first. I looked to see if Nicky was among them. He was.

The surge forward was contagious. More than thirty boys from other gangs followed the Mau Maus downstairs to the dressing room where workers from the churches were ready. We were swamped. I kept going from room to room, trying to help where I could, and it was during one of these tours that I suddenly realized a peculiar thing. There were dozens of boys who had come forward for this new life, and only three girls. I heard a whistle out in the hall, and poked my head through the door just in time to see one of the other girls open her blouse, expose a bare breast and call to the boys from her neighborhood. “You go in there and you won’t get this.”

Before we could stop them, other girls had picked up the theme and succeeded in drawing a few of the boys away. It was a puzzling thing. I suppose the girls, hearing us talk about love, felt a simple jealousy. They didn’t want to share love with anybody, and were fighting in the only way they knew to hold on to the little, poor, shoddy shreds of “love” that they did have.

I couldn’t believe him. The change was too sudden. He was puffing his perpetual cigarette, the little jets of smoke streaming out the side of his mouth, telling me that something new had happened in his heart. What about the narcotics addiction? What about the stealing and the mugging, the heavy drinking, the stabbings and the sadism? Nicky must have read my thoughts, because he defended himself by the only technique he knew, cursing:

“Damn it, Davie, I’ve given my heart to God.” “All right, Nicky, okay.” I wanted to do something to give him confidence, so I asked him and Israel to come with me, and I found them, and each of the Mau Maus who had come forward, copies of the Bible. There were two sizes, little pocket editions and much larger ones. The boys didn’t want the little ones.

It was early the next morning that the phone call came. Mrs. Ortez stuck her head in the door of my little room. “Davie, it’s the police on the phone.”

My heart sank. And when I stumbled out to the phone, the words I heard didn’t make me feel any better. The lieutenant asked me if I knew the Mau Mau gang, and when I said that I did, he asked if I’d come right down.

When I got to the Edward Street Precinct, sure enough, there were half-a-dozen boys from the gang. I walked past them briskly and introduced myself at the desk. What happened next I shall never forget.

“How did you do it?” he asked. “These boys declared war on us a few months ago. They’ve given us nothing but trouble for years. Then this morning they all troop in here and you know what they want?”

“Any time we can help you set up another street-meeting, Reverend, just let us know,” said the lieutenant, and as we all stepped out onto the sidewalks of Brooklyn, I saw the sergeant sitting at his desk, shaking his head in wonder.

The boys, I learned, had been reading their Bibles most of the night. They were fascinated with the Old Testament stories particularly.

That night when I called Gwen at the hospital I was so full of the meetings I could hardly talk of anything else. “Last night made everything worth while, honey,” I told her. “If only you could have been here!”

“Well, I’ve been kind of busy, Dave,” she said. “Remind me to tell you about it sometime—when you get back to earth, that is.”