The Cross and the Switchblade, Page 5

  Before we left Brooklyn, we put Buckboard and Stagecoach in touch with a local minister. “I think,” I said to Jimmy, “we’d better check in on them from time to time, too.” To be perfectly honest, neither one of us could rid himself of the suspicion that the boys were having some fun with us.

  When I later told Gwen that, she scolded me.

  “David Wilkerson,” she said, “don’t you realize that you got exactly what you wanted? You asked the Holy Spirit for a miracle, and now that you’ve got one you’re trying to argue it away. People who don’t believe in miracles shouldn’t pray for them.”

  8

  It seemed to me that I had passed the first milestone on the road toward my dream. I had been given hope. I even dared to hope that perhaps I would be allowed at last to see Luis. I heard from Angelo that Luis was supposed to be transferred to the Elmira, New York, prison.

  “Do you think I could get to see him?” I asked.

  “Not a chance, Davie. Once they learned you were the preacher at the trial, they’d never let you in.”

  Still, I wanted to try. I made inquiries and was told to write a letter, stating my relationship with the prisoner and why I wanted to see him. The request would be considered.

  So that was that: I’d have to tell the truth, and I’d never be allowed in. But I did hear which day some boys were being transferred to Elmira. I went down to the train station and waited. When the train came in, about twenty boys were marched off. I scanned each of their faces, but Luis was not among them.

  But if the Holy Spirit was closing that door to me, He was opening others. One warm night in early spring 1958, I was walking through a busy, noisy street in Spanish Harlem when I heard singing. I was surprised to recognize the tune as a gospel song, being sung in Spanish. There was no church nearby; the music seemed to come from a window in one of the walk-up tenements I was passing.

  “Who is that singing?” I asked a young man who was sitting on the fender of an automobile, smoking a cigarette.

  The boy cocked his head to listen.

  “That’s some kind of church,” he said. “Upstairs. Second floor.”

  I walked up the stairs and knocked on a door. It opened slowly, but when the light hit my face, the woman standing inside gave a little shriek. In her excitement she half-closed the door on me, and turned around rattling off something in Spanish. Soon the doorway was filled with smiling, friendly people. They took me by the arm and pulled me into the apartment.

  “You are David!” one man said. “Aren’t you the preacher who was thrown out of court?”

  It turned out that this was what is known as an out-station church in the Spanish branch of the Assemblies of God. The people of an out-station meet in private homes until they can afford to build. They had followed the Michael Farmer trial closely and had seen my picture.

  “We have been praying for you, and now you are here,” one man said. His name was Vincente Ortez, and he was the minister of the little church. “We want to hear how you came to be at the trial,” he said.

  So that night, I had a chance to tell this group of believers about the way God seemed to be leading me into New York’s streets. I told them what I’d learned about the problems boys and girls faced with the gangs, and with drinks and narcotics. I told them about my dream and about the first milestone I had passed. “I think God put that idea into my head, ‘They’ve got to begin again, and they’ve got to be surrounded with love,’” I said, summing up. “We’ve seen how the Holy Spirit can reach them right on the street.”

  I realized I was more excited about these young people than I had guessed. By the time I had finished, I could see that these good people felt my urgency at the need.

  When I sat down, these men and women held a brief discussion. They spoke for a few minutes, and then pushed Reverend Ortez forward as spokesman.

  “Do you think,” he said, “that you could come back tomorrow to talk to us, when we could have some more ministers in to hear you?” I said that I could.

  As quietly as that, a new ministry was born. Like most things born of the Spirit, it came simply, without fanfare. Certainly, none of us that night knew what had begun.

  “What’s your address here?” Reverend Ortez asked. “Where can we call you about the time and place?”

  I had to admit that I had no address. I didn’t have the money for a hotel room. “I am, in fact,” I said, “sleeping in my car.”

  Real alarm came over Reverend Ortez’s face. “You mustn’t do that,” he said, and everyone in the room agreed. “It’s more dangerous than you know. You stay here in our house—this night and any night you are in town.”

  I accepted this kindness gratefully. Reverend Ortez introduced me to his wife, Delia. I was shown to a room with a bunk bed in it, and I have never slept better than I did that first night off the streets.

  The next morning I spent in prayer. It was far more than coincidence that I had dropped into that home church. What was going to happen now, I could not imagine, but I wanted to be ready to step out in whatever direction the Holy Spirit should point.

  While I was at prayer, Reverend Ortez and his wife were constantly on the telephone. By the time we arrived at the church where the meeting was to take place, representatives of 65 Spanish Assemblies were gathered to hear what I had to say.

  This time I related the events that had brought me to the city. I told about the embarrassment of the trial and of the puzzling, gnawing feeling I’d had ever since, that behind these seeming mistakes was a purpose I had barely glimpsed.

  “I’ll tell you frankly that I don’t know what I am supposed to do next. The experience at Fort Greene may have been a one-time thing. I have no idea that it could be repeated on a larger scale.”

  Before the meeting was over, those 65 churches had come forward with a plan of action that would determine whether or not Fort Greene had been a one-time experience. They would hold a mass rally for teenagers in St. Nicholas Arena, a prizefight center in New York, where I could address many gangs at once.

  I was hesitant. In the first place, I wasn’t sure that mass meetings were the right approach. And it would take thousands of dollars to rent a big arena.

  A man jumped to his feet in the back of the church and shouted something. I finally made it out. “Davie,” he was saying, “everything is going to be all right.”

  After the meeting, the man introduced himself. He was Benigno Delgado, an attorney. Once again he repeated his statement that everything was going to be all right.

  “Davie, you go to St. Nicholas Arena,” he said. “You rent it and talk to these kids. Everything will work out.” Then Mr. Delgado pulled from his pocket the largest roll of bills I had ever seen. “You talk to those children, Davie. I will rent the arena.” And he did.

  This was how, literally overnight, I became involved in a citywide youth rally, scheduled to be held in St. Nicholas Arena during the second week of July 1958.

  When I returned to Philipsburg with the news, everyone became excited.

  Only Gwen was quiet. “You realize,” she said, “that’s when the baby’s due.”

  I hadn’t realized. I mumbled something or other about the baby coming late.

  Gwen laughed. “It’ll be right on time,” she said, “and you’ll have your head in the clouds somewhere and won’t even know it, and one day I’ll present you with a little bundle. I don’t think you really know a child exists anyway until he walks up to you and says, ‘Daddy.’”

  Which was doubtless true.

  The church in Philipsburg was most generous, not only with its money support during the next two months when I could give it so little of my attention, but with its enthusiasm. I’d been keeping everyone posted on my trips to the city, telling of the tremendous problems these young teens faced. So they knew how much a part they were of anything the Lord was planning for New York.

  As July approached, I found myself spending more time in the Ortez apartment. The Spanish churches supp
lied us with street workers who posted bulletins all over New York announcing the weeklong meetings. They trained counselors to be available in the dressing rooms of the arena for boys and girls who might decide to try a new beginning. They arranged for music and ushers and they handled the practical arrangements with the arena.

  All I had to do was supply the teenagers.

  But the closer we came to zero hour, the more I doubted the wisdom of this big rally.

  Walking the streets, I’d talked to hundreds of boys and girls, but I’d never, until now, grasped what it was like to be inside their desperation. The simple prospect of traveling a few miles and entering a large building, so routine to you and me, loomed for them as an immense and peril-filled undertaking. They were afraid in the first place to leave their own turfs, afraid that as they passed through another gang’s territory, they would be jumped. They were afraid of large groups of people, afraid of their own hates and prejudices, afraid that their anger and insecurity would erupt out of control into bloody fighting.

  Strangest of all, they were afraid that something in the rally might make them cry. Bit by bit I came to realize the horror these young people had of tears.

  What is it about tears that should be so terrifying? I learned that tears to them were a sign of weakness in a harsh world where only the tough survive.

  Yet I knew how important tears are in making a person whole. When finally we let the Holy Spirit into our innermost sanctuary, the reaction is to cry. I have seen it happen again and again. Deep soul-shaking weeping. It comes when that last barrier is down and you surrender yourself to wholeness.

  When it comes, it ushers forth such a new personality that, from the days of Christ on, the experience has been spoken of as a birth. “You must be born again,” said Jesus. At the heart of this newborn personality is joy; yet the joy is ushered in by tears.

  What instinct told these boys and girls they might have to cry if they came into contact with God? They had their own way of expressing this fear, of course. I paid return visits to the gangs I had met, the Rebels and the GGIs, the Chaplains and the Mau Maus, inviting them to the rally, and everywhere it was the same. “You’re not going to bug me, Preacher. You’re not going to get me bawling.”

  One night, some time after I had been to the basement hideout of the GGIs with the news of the rally, there was a knock on the door of the Ortez apartment. Delia Ortez looked at her husband with raised eyebrows; he shook his head: No, he wasn’t expecting anyone. Delia put down a knife with which she had been slicing meat and walked to the door.

  There stood Maria. As soon as she stepped into the room I knew that she was high on heroin. Her eyes shone with an unnatural brightness; her hair was all over her face; her hands shook at her side.

  “Maria!” I said, getting up. “Come in.”

  Maria came into the center of the room and demanded to know why we were trying to break up her gang.

  “How do you mean, Maria?” said Delia.

  “Trying to get the kids to a church service. You want to break us up.” Then Maria began to curse us roundly.

  One of the Ortez children came into the room, and Delia moved instinctively to stand next to the child. In that moment Maria rushed to the table where Delia had laid the butcher knife. One sweeping movement and the knife was in her fist, its long blade flashing. Delia jumped quickly between Maria and the child. Vincente leapt to his feet and started across the room.

  “Stand back!” yelled Maria. Vincente stopped, because the girl had lifted the knife to her own neck. “I’m going to cut my throat. I’m going to stick myself like a pig and you’re going to watch.”

  All of us in that room knew enough about the despair of the addict to know this was serious. Delia started talking rapidly about the long and wonderful life Maria had ahead of her. “God needs you, Maria,” said Delia over and over again.

  Over a five-minute period, while Delia never stopped talking, Maria’s knife slipped lower and lower until finally it hung from her hand down at her hip. Still talking, Delia inched closer and at last, with one beautiful and agile leap, she knocked the knife from Maria’s hand. It clattered to the floor.

  Maria simply stood in the center of the room, the most forlorn bundle of dejection I had ever encountered. Suddenly she began to moan. She hid her face in her hands. “There’s no out for me,” she said. “I’m hooked and there’s no way out.”

  “Why don’t you give God a chance with you?” I asked her.

  “No. That’s not for me.”

  “Well, at least let the other kids come. Think—maybe they can find the way out before it’s too late.”

  Maria straightened up. She seemed to have gotten back her composure. She shrugged her shoulders. “It depends if you’ve got a good show,” said Maria. With that, she turned and walked out of the Ortez apartment, head high and hips swinging.

  9

  I had never appreciated how much went into mounting a show. We set up a system of special buses that would pick up each gang on its own turf and take it nonstop to the arena. Workers from the 65 sponsoring churches combed the streets, alerting gang members to the arrangements.

  On the fourth night, a hundred people showed up. The arena could hold seven thousand.

  I remember standing at a little window on the balcony, where I could watch the teenagers arrive without being seen myself. Each night I hoped for a breakthrough. Each night only a handful of people straggled off the special buses and made their way into the arena.

  The teenagers who did come, came for a show. It was difficult talking to an empty auditorium with the youngsters blowing smoke rings in your face and making lewd remarks.

  The worst of it was what the kids call “breaking up.” Whenever they didn’t understand something, or didn’t believe it, they began to laugh. I got so I dreaded to go out on the platform for fear of that laughter. The fourth night was the worst I’d ever known it. I did my best to build the meeting to a certain pitch of dignity and solemnity, and then all of a sudden one of the ringleaders snickered. Someone else picked it up and, before I could stop it, the whole bunch of them were holding their sides with laughter.

  I cut the meeting short that night and went home ready to quit.

  “Lord,” I said, “we’re not even beginning to reach these kids. What am I supposed to do?”

  As always—why is it I had to learn this again every time?—when I really asked, I was really answered.

  I met Jo-Jo the next day in Brooklyn. Jo-Jo was pointed out to me as the president of the Coney Island Dragons, one of the largest street gangs in the city. I walked up to this boy and stuck out my hand.

  Jo-Jo’s first act was to slap me across the palm. Then he leaned over and spit on my shoes. In the gangs this is the highest sign of contempt. He walked away and sat down on a bench with his back to me.

  I walked over and sat beside him. I said, “Jo-Jo, where do you live?”

  “Preacher, I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”

  “But I want to have something to do with you,” I said. “I’m going to stay here until I find out where you live.”

  “Preacher,” said Jo-Jo, “you’re sitting in my parlor.”

  “Where do you go when it rains?”

  He said, “I move down to my suite in the subway.”

  Jo-Jo had on a pair of old canvas shoes. His toe was sticking out on the right foot, and he had a dirty black shirt on and a too-big pair of khaki trousers. He looked down at my brand-new shoes.

  Jo-Jo said, “Look, rich man, it’s all right for you to come here to New York and talk big about God changing lives. You’ve got new shoes and you’ve got good clothes. Look at me! I’m a bum. There are ten kids in my family. My people kicked me out—there wasn’t enough food to go around.”

  I took off my shoes and asked him to try them on.

  “What are you trying to prove? I’m not going to put your stinking shoes on.”

  “You’ve
been griping about shoes. Put them on.”

  Jo-Jo put on the shoes. They fit.

  Then I got up and walked away. I walked down the street in my stocking feet, about two blocks, to the car. Jo-Jo came up behind me and said, “You forgot your shoes.”

  “They’re your shoes.” I got in the car.

  “Preacher,” Jo-Jo said, reaching inside the window, “I forgot to shake your hand.”

  So we shook. Then I said, “Look. You don’t have any place to live. I’m bumming a bed myself right now. But there’s a couch out in the living room. Maybe the folks who took me in will take you in, too. Let’s go ask them.”

  “Okay,” said Jo-Jo, just like that. He got in the car, and we drove to the apartment.

  “Mrs. Ortez,” I said, a little hesitantly, “this is the president of the Coney Island Dragons. Jo-Jo, I’d like you to meet the lady who is putting me up for a while since I can’t afford any place to sleep, just like you.”

  Then I asked Mrs. Ortez if Jo-Jo could stay with me a few days in her home. She looked at her two little children, and she looked at the switchblade sticking out of Jo-Jo’s pocket. Then she very kindly went over and put her arm around him and said, “Jo-Jo, you can sleep on the couch.”

  It was a brave thing, as anyone knows who has worked with these potentially violent boys. I took Jo-Jo aside and said, “Your clothes stink. We’re in a home now, and we’re going to have to do something. I’ve got eight dollars. We’ll go to an Army-Navy store and get you a shirt and a pair of trousers.”

  I put on my other pair of shoes and took Jo-Jo to the nearest Army-Navy store we could find. He went into the back room of the store to change and simply left his old clothes where he stepped out of them. On the way back home, Jo-Jo looked at his reflection in every store window. “Not bad . . . not bad,” he said.