A Harrowing Mission

In my hobo days I found the evangelical mission system across the Southern states to be interesting and I often took advantage of them for meals and sometimes a bed for the night. Basically it worked as follows. The unfortunate, bewildered, mentally ill, drunk, or lazy (as in my case) homeless street urchins in urban districts gathered nightly in the mission nearest them for a free meal and a bed if they wanted and one was available. We arrived at suppertime, and were made to sit and wait; most of the time on folding steel chairs, for the preacher to arrive and that was often quite an event.
Thus the hungry, tired, wet, sick, drunk and cold “congregation” was forced to endure a sometimes spectacular raving show of hellfire and brimstone that would embarrass Mick Jagger and probably leave Jesus himself in awe. I must say some of those crazy preachers were quite talented.

That’s Rapsutin a preacher of renown. He has nothing to do with this story.

I even remember one impressive character so well I can quote a bit of what he said. He was right out of The Grapes of Wrath; medium height, fireplug build, balding, granny glasses, suspenders, dirty white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a really loud robust delivery. I still see the rivulets of sweat streaming down his face as his voice rose incrementally to crescendo “And I pray when you go out from this place!, where the Lord and these good people (sweeping gesture) provide your bread!!, and you put that poison bottle to your lips!!! that God Almighty himself !!!! will strike you down so that another more worthy soul may take your bed!!!!!”; and so on. Everybody, no matter how drunk, really had their bell rung by this vocal tour-de-force but you didn’t realize it until he stopped thirty or more minutes later. PTSD 100%.
When he did stop it was to get someone in his captive audience to accept the Lord and testify. “Who will testify?! Who will embrace the Lord and Savior!! Who will swear off the evil spirits and witness Jesus Christ our Lord and savior?!!! Who will be saved!!!” Nobody got fed until one amongst us was born again. We all knew that. I could never bring myself to do it.
A quiet murmur rippled through the crowd. After quite a lot of prodding and more pregnant moments some poor old drunk would finally submit himself to Jesus starting in a meek uncertain voice as if he wasn’t sure that he might be struck dead for bearing false witness before  the Lord God. The preacher would be on him is a heartbeat and he soon received absolution and was saved with all of us witnesses before the lord. The saved soul’s shivering was more like the DTs than divine inspiration. Nonetheless, everybody in the room knew the routine well. His hunger for souls satisfied the preacher thanked the lord again, congratulated everyone and himself, shook hands with the managers of the place and went on his way, probably to another mission around the corner. Our hunger for “soul food” was soon satisfied as it was on to the real thing.

  These are Pinto Beans I believe. Black-eyed Peas were another favorite.

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In the missions I learned to love red beans and rice, which I still do to this day. The gruel was usually pretty good and surprisingly uniform across the country. Variety, some greens or cornbread, was mostly lacking and always welcome. Beans and rice was the basic fare, filling and pretty damn tasty to a hungry man. Sometimes it was a heavy pea soup with bread and margarine or some root vegetable was added. Meat was quite rare though a true Sunday dinner was often had. What was universally awful was the coffee. Chicory? I don’t think I ever had a good cup of coffee in a mission. Breakfast usually sucked, cold toast, oatmeal and bad coffee with no milk around and often no sugar. Sometimes a doughnut/bakery shop would give yesterday’s leftover unsold stock to the missions, but they were often stale dried up and inedible without a cup of the worst coffee on God’s good Earth.

I witnessed a variety of strange happenings and people in the missions; hardly any of it was good. One incident especially comes to mind for example. I have often wondered about it.

I took the mission bed one nasty rainy night. I did not often do that cuz at 8-9PM or so you were basically locked inside a dormitory with 20-50 cot beds, lights out. It was very difficult for me to sleep on account of the lucky ones who were snoring away in 10 minutes. That night as I fought to find sleep the guy in the cot next to mine started crying; loudly. This was very annoying, worse than snoring, and it went on and on. By about 30 minutes he had escalated to heavy sobbing and I’d about had it. I reached my foot over and kicked his bed to get his attention. He was awake, or so it seemed. I’m not so sure now.
He started talking and continued sobbing. It turned out that I didn’t say a single word to him because he said:
“I killed ‘em. I shot ‘em both. Right in my bed I caught ‘em. Emptied my pistol right into them both. Dead for goddamned sure. Goddamned right I killed ‘em both dead! Wish I hadn’t now. Yup! Can’t never go back to Kentucky now. Wife’s dead and gone. Ain’t got nothin’ now. Shot the son-of-bitch first. Shoulda stopped there but what could I do?” He never took his crying eyes off of me. Pretty creepy scary moment! ( I was surprised he used the word pistol.)
He seemed calmed after ranting about this terrifying double-murder for several eternal minutes and fell silent. I wanted to ask him if he still had the gun, but thought better of it. Not so long after he was asleep. I was wide awake.
Jeeezus! Whaddaya do in that situation? Needless to say I was locked in a room with this guy (+30 others), couldn’t sleep a wink and didn’t particularly want to have breakfast with him. So I went to the ever-reluctant watchman and begged my way out of the place. I remember walking out into the empty wet lonely city street, the rain having stopped. I never heard any more about it or him. I never knew if he was having some sleep talking/sleep-walking a nightmare, or if he had really done it. And I never told anybody until now.