Evict the miserable wretches!
by Jimmy Breslin
One of the people he loves the most was just carried out on a gurney from a
shelter on West 23rd Street. The man on the gurney looked up with a face the
color of gray paste. Orange straps kept him on the gurney.
"He's all right," a homeless man from the shelter said. "He just had a
seizure." He stood alongside the gurney and smoked a cigarette. The air clawed his
face.
The worst of winter fell onto the city and hunted through the streets for the
helpless, for the defenseless, for anybody too poor to have a roof. For every
other act, a blackout, the fire and explosion in the sky, the great city goes
on. People come and go, they talk. They go to work. The homeless can go
through the most miserable of nights on the streets or under the archways or riding
subways. But cold arrives in silence to torture. Last night was the start of
what might be the worst run of cold weather the homeless have had in this
city. It was Christ's moment to be among them.
At 6:30 last night, he came out of the first darkness and swirling snow and
into St. Patrick's Cathedral. There were homeless people asleep with their
foreheads against the pew in front. They had hoods from rough, old winter jackets
pulled over their heads. It was difficult to see how many homeless were in the
church because there are 14 great pillars that obstruct the view of the rows
along the side aisles, where most like to sleep. Sleeping in the pews on the main aisle is too conspicuous and thus is an uneasy resting place.
Christ slipped into a pew on the side aisle on the left-hand side. He looked
like all the others who had nothing. In fact, he had less. At least the other
homeless people had plastic garbage bags filled with whatever they owned.
Christ sat with nothing.
When he gave up his life for this religion, it was a belief that honored the
blind, the destitute, the lame. Now he sat in a church and looked ahead, far
ahead, over the many rows, to an altar that sat under a steeple and was
dedicated to gold.
He looked up at a ceiling hundreds of feet high.
At the last pew, two ushers in red jackets stood facing the main front doors.
For a while, a city cop was with them. When he left, another came in. Their
hand radios kept saying something.
Christ looked and reflected. A man's forehead slipped off the bench in front
of him and he woke with a start. He put his head down again and soon was back
to sleep. A woman with a blue wool hat on talked to herself. Far ahead, in the
front of the church, a woman walked around, pulling a suitcase on squeaky
wheels.
They were in a palace away from the cold, the most famous church of the
Catholics in America. It is supposed to represent the Lord's religion.
On this cold night, one of the ushers said that the church closes at 8:35
p.m. Exactly.
And at a little before 8:30, a man on the right side stood up, yawned,
stretched and then gathered his plastic bags and walked down the aisle.
From far up in front, a woman pulled her suitcase on loud wheels.
At 8:35, a cop and an usher walked around the church telling homeless people
that the church was closing and they had to go out into the cold.
"Nobody can stay?" an usher was asked.
"Church closes," he said.
In the last row on the left side, a man stirred, then sat bolt upright. He
put on a blue wool hat and lifted a backpack that he carefully put on. He had
two heavy shirts to fight the cold. He started out. People were coming from the
darkness on the side aisles. Soon, the church was empty.
Christ slipped out of a pew and followed the other homeless people out of the
church. The ushers and cops didn't have the slightest idea who he is, and
nobody running the huge church he was leaving knows anything about him, either.
They claim they do. They say they pray to him and try to act in his behalf.
Last night, he was asked to leave and go out into the cold, just like any of the
other homeless.
"Watch yourself out there, it's getting very slippery," a cop said to all of
them who looked like Christ, and one of them was.
In the late afternoon, the freezing wind nearly cut off Christ's bare ankles
and feet. When he was killed in Jerusalem, the temperature was in the 60s and
sandals were common.