Ironweed - William Kennedy [12]
“If she’s drunk she can’t go inside the mission,” Francis said.
“That’s right,” said Rudy. “She comes in drunk, he kicks her right out. He hates drunk women more’n he hates us.”
“Why the hell’s he preachin’ if he don’t preach to people that need it?”
“Drunks don’t need it,” Rudy said. “How’d you like to preach to a room full of bums like her?”
“She a bum or just on a heavy drunk?”
“She’s a bum.”
“She looks like a bum.”
“She’s been a bum all her life.”
“No,” said Francis. “Nobody’s a bum all their life. She hada been somethin’ once.”
“She was a whore before she was a bum.”
“And what about before she was a whore?”
“I don’t know,” Rudy said. “She just talks about whorin’ in Alaska. Before that I guess she was just a little kid.”
“Then that’s somethin’. A little kid’s somethin’ that ain’t a bum or a whore.”
Francis saw Sandra’s missing shoe in the shadows and retrieved it. He set it beside her left foot, then squatted and spoke into her left ear.
“You gonna freeze here tonight, you know that? Gonna be frost, freezin’ weather. Could even snow. You hear? You oughta get yourself inside someplace outa the cold. Look, I slept the last two nights in the weeds and it was awful cold, but tonight’s colder already than it was either of them nights. My hands is half froze and I only been walkin’ two blocks. Sandra? You hear what I’m sayin’? If I got you a cup of hot soup would you drink it? Could you? You don’t look like you could but maybe you could. Get a little hot soup in, you don’t freeze so fast. Or maybe you wanna freeze tonight, maybe that’s why you’re layin’ in the goddamn dust. You don’t even have any weeds to keep the wind outa your ears. I like them deep weeds when I sleep outside. You want some soup?”
Sandra turned her head and with one eye looked up at Francis.
“Who you?”
“I’m just a bum,” Francis said. “But I’m sober and I can get you some soup.”
“Get me a drink?”
“No, I ain’t got money for that.”
“Then soup.”
“You wanna stand up?”
“No. I’ll wait here.”
“You’re gettin’ all dusty.”
“That’s good.”
“Whatever you say,” Francis said, standing up. “But watch out for them dogs.”
She whimpered as Rudy and Francis left the lot. The night sky was black as a bat and the wind was bringing ice to the world. Francis admitted the futility of preaching to Sandra. Who could preach to Francis in the weeds? But that don’t make it right that she can’t go inside to get warm. Just because you’re drunk don’t mean you ain’t cold.
“Just because you’re drunk don’t mean you ain’t cold,” he said to Rudy.
“Right,” said Rudy. “Who said that?”
“I said that, you ape.”
“I ain’t no ape.”
“Well you look like one.”
From the mission came sounds made by an amateur organist of fervent aggression, and of several voices raised in praise of good old Jesus. Where’d we all be without him? The voices belonged to the Reverend Chester, and to half a dozen men in shirt sleeves who sat in the front rows of the chapel area’s folding chairs. Reverend Chester, a gargantuan man with a clubfoot, wild white hair, and a face flushed permanently years ago by a whiskey condition all his own, stood behind the lectern looking out at maybe forty men and one woman.
Helen.
Francis saw her as he entered, saw her gray beret pulled off to the left, recognized her old black coat. She held no hymnal as the others did, but sat with arms folded in defiant resistance to the possibility of redemption by any Methodist like Chester; for Helen was a Catholic. And any redemption that came her way had better be through her church, the true church, the only church.
“Jesus,” the preacher and his shirt-sleeved loyalists sang, “the name that charms our fears, That bids our sorrows cease, ‘Tis music in the sinners’ ears, ‘Tis life and health and peace…”
The remaining seven eighths of Reverend Chester’s congregation, men hiding inside their overcoats, hats in their laps if they had hats, their faces grimed and whiskered and woebegone, remained mute, or gave the lyrics a perfunctory mumble, or nodded already in sleep. The song continued: “… He breaks the power of canceled sin, He sets the prisoner free; His blood can make the foulest clean, His blood availed for me.