The Cross and the Switchblade, Page 6

  So far, what I’d done with Jo-Jo was similar to what any social agency might have done. It was no doubt a good thing that this boy at last had a pair of shoes and a shirt, and that night he didn’t have to sleep in the subway. But at heart, Jo-Jo was very much the same boy.

  It took a change in me to bring about a change in Jo-Jo. And this change has affected both our lives ever since.

  That evening at St. Nick’s was as bad as ever. There was the usual breaking up, laughing, jeering. There were the usual fistfights and threats. There were the same suggestive gestures and lewd responses. Jo-Jo was there out of curiosity, watching it all.

  Afterward, on the way back to the Ortez apartment, I was silent. I’d been hurt by the lack of response, and actually, I was sulking.

  “Preach, you’re trying too hard.”

  It came just like that. From a homeless boy who pretended to be calloused through and through came a wonderful piece of insight.

  The impact of those words went through me as if they had been spoken by God Himself.

  Of course! I had been out there trying to change lives; I wasn’t bringing the Holy Spirit to the gangs, I was bringing Dave Wilkerson. Even in giving Jo-Jo a pair of shoes I had been out in front. I knew in that moment that I would never be able to help Jo-Jo. I would never be able to help the gangs. All I could do was make an introduction, then step aside.

  “You’re trying too hard.” The sudden insight brought a great burst of laughter that seemed to unsettle Jo-Jo.

  “Cut it out, Preacher.”

  “I’m laughing, Jo-Jo, because you’ve helped me. From now on I’m not going to try so hard. I’m going to step aside and let the Spirit come through.”

  Jo-Jo was silent for a while. He cocked his head.

  “I don’t feel nothing,” he said. “I don’t expect to feel nothing, either.”

  We didn’t speak again until we got upstairs to the Ortez apartment. Then suddenly again, with that direct way he had, Jo-Jo made me a deal.

  “Look, Davie, you got a kid coming, right?”

  I had told Jo-Jo that Gwen would be going to the hospital. The baby might be born any time.

  “And you say there is a God and He loves me, right?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “All right, if there is a God, and if I pray to Him, He’ll hear my prayers, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “All right. What do you want, a boy or a girl?”

  I could see the trap coming, but I didn’t know what to do about it. “Now look, Jo-Jo, prayer isn’t a slot machine where you put the right coin in and out comes the candy.”

  “In other words you’re not so sure about this God business either.”

  “I didn’t say that at all.”

  “What do you want? Boy or girl?”

  I admitted that since we already had two girls we were hoping for a boy. Jo-Jo listened. Then Jo-Jo said a prayer: “Now, God, if You are up there and if You love me, give this preacher a boy.”

  That was Jo-Jo’s prayer. It was a real one, and when he finished he was blinking hard. I was flabbergasted. I ran into my bedroom, and I began to pray as I hadn’t prayed since I’d been in New York.

  Jo-Jo and the Ortezes were sound asleep when the telephone call came at two thirty in the morning.

  It was my mother-in-law. “David!” she said. “I couldn’t wait until morning to call. I just had to tell you that you’re a father! Do you want to know whether it was a boy or a girl?”

  “More than you know.”

  “David, you’ve got a great big, strapping, ten-pound son.”

  Of course the skeptics will point out that there was statistically a fifty-fifty chance of Jo-Jo’s prayer coming true. But something else was going on that night. When I went in and woke Jo-Jo with the news, he scratched his head.

  “What do you know?” he said. “What do you know about that!”

  Before the night was over, Jo-Jo was a changed boy. It began with tears; Jo-Jo cried the bitterness out and he cried the hatred out. He cried out the doubts and the fears, too. When he was all through there was room for the kind of love the Christian knows, which doesn’t depend on parents or preachers or even upon prayers being answered in the way we think they should be answered. From that day on, Jo-Jo had a love that was his for always, and he had taught me a lesson that was mine for always.

  10

  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 GGIs. Among them, I was interested to note, was Maria. Nowhere could I see a Mau Mau, although I looked everywhere for their red jackets.

  I hadn’t been able to forget the appealing face and open manner of Israel, president of the Mau Maus. I’d personally invited this gang to the rally as my guests and hired a special bus for them. When I said I would reserve 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 of 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, fast, as if the driver couldn’t wait to get rid of his passengers. The doors opened. Out spilled nearly fifty teenagers, shouting and shoving. One boy tossed away an empty wine bottle as he stepped down.

  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 making their way down the aisle, 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.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “They’re who the seats are for.”

  I left the usher staring after me and hurried downstairs to the dressing rooms. There I found an atmosphere of grave foreboding. “There are rival gangs out there,” said the manager of the arena, “and we could have a full-scale rumble on our hands.”

  I looked out again. One of our own teenage girls, a remarkable young singer, as pretty as a movie star, was walking onto the center of the stage.

  “Let’s see how Mary does,” I said. “Maybe we can soothe the savage beast with song.”

  But as Mary Arguinzoni began to sing, the hollering and whistling doubled. The boys and girls stood on their seats and began gyrating to the gospel song 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.

  I walked out. It was a long walk to the center of the stage. Israel let me know he was there.

  “Hey, Davie! I told you I’d come and bring my boys.”

  I turned to smile at him, and my eyes met the rock-hard gaze of Nicky. I had a sudden inspiration.

  “We’re going to do something different tonight,” I announced over the loudspeaker 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. He pointed at five Mau Maus and the six of them came forward and lined up in front of the stage. One result of my decision was apparent already: The arena had come to attention. Hundreds of teenagers stopped their cavorting and leaned forward in anticipation.

  I stepped to the wings and took the paper milkshake 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 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.

  While the organ played, Nicky and his boys took up the collection. He did well as a fund-raiser. 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. 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. Two minutes. Now the suppressed laughter exploded in guffaws, and the kids were on their feet, stamping and howling.

  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.

  “Here’s your money, Preacher,” he said.

  “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 back to their places. I began to speak. I had gotten their ears, but I couldn’t seem to get near their hearts.

  I couldn’t understand what was wrong. I’d spent hours preparing my sermon and prayed over every line of it. 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 fifteen minutes, and all I could sense was the growing restlessness of the crowd. I reached the point in the sermon where I quoted Jesus’ command to love one another.

  Suddenly someone jumped up in the second row. He stood on his chair and shouted, “Hold on, Preacher! You say you want me to love them Dagos? One of them cut me with a razor. I’ll love them all right—with a lead pipe.”

  Another boy, this one from the Hell Burners’ section, jumped up and ripped open his shirt.

  “I got a bullet hole here, Preacher. I know who 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 have to ask Him to give us His kind of love. We cannot work it up by ourselves.”

  Suddenly, with brilliant clarity, I saw that these words were intended for me. 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.

  I bowed my head. 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.”

  I stood before that crowd with my head bowed for three minutes. I did not say a word. I did not move. I prayed. It didn’t bother me anymore that some kids were laughing. Slowly the great hall began to quiet down. I recognized Israel’s voice: “All right, you guys! Can it.”

  The quiet spread backward through the house and up to the balconies. That prizefight arena became totally silent.

  Then I heard the sound of someone crying.

  I opened my eyes. In the front row Israel pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose very loudly, then blinked and sniffed.

  I continued praying, “Lord, sweep over this whole group.”

  Nicky got out his handkerchief. I couldn’t believe my eyes and took another look. There he was, snorting and blinking and angry with himself for crying.

  I knew the time had come to speak out. “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, 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?”

  “Right!” said the Mau Maus.

  “I’m going forward and you’re coming along. Get on your feet!”

  They jumped up as one 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, helping where I could.

  Suddenly I realized something peculiar. There were dozens of boys who had come forward for this new life, and only three girls. It was a puzzling thing. I suppose the girls, hearing us talk about love, didn’t want to share love with anybody. They wanted to hold onto the shreds of “love” they did have.

  The conversion hardest for me to believe was Nicky’s.

  There he stood, a great grin on his face, saying in his stammer, “I am giving my heart to God, Davie.”

  I couldn’t believe him. The change was too sudden. He was puffing his perpetual cigarette, telling me that something new had happened in his heart.

  I asked Israel and him to come with me, and I found copies of the Bible for them and each of the Mau Maus who had come forward. There were two sizes, little pocket editions and much larger ones. The boys didn’t want the little ones.

  “Give us them big books, Davie, so people can see what we’re carrying.”

  With that, the boys lit up cigarettes, tucked their Bibles under their arms, and walked out.

  Early the next morning Mrs. Ortez stuck her head in the door of my room. “Davie, it’s the police on the phone.”

  My heart sank.

  On the phone, the lieutenant asked me if I knew the Mau Mau gang. I said that I did. He asked if I’d come right down.

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

  The desk sergeant called the lieutenant, and the lieutenant assembled the whole force. The lieutenant stuck out his hand.

  “Reverend,” he said, “I want to shake your hand.” I took his offer, and he pumped me firmly.

  “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?”

  I shook my head.

  “They want us to autograph their Bibles!”

  I looked at Nicky and Israel and the boys who were with them. They grinned at me.

  “Anytime we can help you set up another street meeting, Reverend, just let us know,” said the lieutenant. 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.

  “Davie!” said Israel. “I’m in the Bible! Look, here’s my name all over the place.”

  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 worthwhile, 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.”

  11

  I made the transition from the sweltering streets of New York to the coolness of the Pennsylvania hills in one swift turnpike jump. But every mile along the way I thought about Buckboard and Stagecoach
, Nicky and Israel, Maria and Jo-Jo and Angelo: boys and girls whose lives had become so entwined in my own.

  Back in Philipsburg, I sat in the shade of our backyard, watching my baby son in his basket under the trees. I caught my mind slipping back to kids in New York.

  “Your parish is Philipsburg,” Gwen reminded me gently one night, when I’d worried aloud for half an hour about Angelo Morales, who had made up his mind to be a preacher but had no money for school. “You mustn’t neglect your own church.”

  Gwen was right, of course, and for the next six months I poured everything I had into my mountain parish. It was satisfying work and I loved it, but the other place was never very far from my thoughts.

  “I’ve noticed,” one of my parishioners told me, “you never get quite as excited about things here as you do about those kids in the city.”

  I swallowed. I hadn’t thought it showed.

  But show it or not, I was getting trickles of an idea that alarmed me: that I take my family and move to New York as a full-time servant to these boys.

  The idea was persistent with me. Was it possible that this urging to go to New York came from God? Was I truly supposed to abandon this parish and move Gwen and our three small children into the city with all its problems for daily living?

  A definite and clear answer did not come right away. Like most guidance, it came to me one step at a time.

  The first step was a return visit to New York.

  “Do you realize that a year has passed since I was thrown out of the Farmer trial?” I asked Gwen one February morning.

  “Uh-oh!” said Gwen.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You’re getting ready to go back to New York, aren’t you?”

  I laughed. “Just overnight.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  It felt good to drive over the George Washington Bridge again, and later over the Brooklyn Bridge, and it felt good to walk through the streets again. I was surprised at how much at home I felt. I wanted to look up old friends. I wanted to revisit sites where miracles had happened in the hearts of boys.