A Book of Miracles

Skid Row^R6

Bernadette Agronsky

Determined to stock up on as much diverse life experience as possible before settling down, I spent my first year teaching in a remote Arizona school. It was an intense and exciting year, but I was restless to seek out new experiences. At the end of the academic year, I packed my bags to head for Los Angeles to work in a skid row soup kitchen.

My good friend and wise teacher, Angela, hugged me goodbye, and said, "If you ever run into my friend Jim, tell him I said hello. I haven't seen him since high school, and I heard he ended up on skid row."

We both smiled, imagining the immensity of the big city, and the winning-the-lottery odds of running into Jim. Nevertheless, I assured her that I would keep her request in mind.

A busy year followed, filled with new friendships, profound insight and good healthy manual labor. Days were often exhausting, preparing and serving meals for soup lines that sometimes wound around the block and swelled to nearly 1,000 hungry guests. Among them were men who visited the kitchen daily during winter, then hit the rails in spring in search of migrant work. There were young hopefuls, confident they were about to make it big in Hollywood, but for now, were "just visiting the kitchen temporarily" to help subsidize dwindling savings. There were the elderly, the lonely, the confused and the abused, each with unique and moving stories.

As my first year at the kitchen drew to a close, I decided it was time to head back to the Midwest to be among my family to sort out my options before venturing to new places. It was during my last week at the kitchen that I was busy one morning mechanically chopping vegetables for the day's meal. I was lost in thought, or perhaps just tuned out, in an attempt to bury my ambivalence about leaving. In the midst of my preoccupation, a man who was probably younger than he looked walked unsteadily into the kitchen, which was normally off-limits to anyone but staff. I was too distracted to pay much attention, until he insisted on talking.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Bernadette," I answered absent-mindedly.

"Like the saint, huh?" he countered.

I offered a weak smile. "Yep, like the saint," I mumbled, and kept chopping.

"Where you from?" he pressed on.

"Arizona. I was a teacher there," I said, and named the school for him.

"Hey, that's where I'm from, and that's where I went to school," he answered, as I looked up in time to see his face light up.

By then, I was back in the present moment. "Really," I said, only half believing.

He rattled off a few names I didn't recognize.

"You know Angela?" I asked casually, adding her last name.

"Of course!" he blurted out. "We went to school together. She was my girlfriend in high school."

The inevitable question was next. "What's your name?"

"It's Jim," he said softly.

The day's soup and my commitment to it no longer seemed so important.

"Would you like to write her a note?" I offered. "I'll send it to her."

He nodded, and I hastily placed the lid back on the trashcan to improvise a desk. I grabbed an old vegetable crate and stood it on end for a stool. Jim sat down with the paper and pencil I had handed him, and I left him alone with his thoughts. I went back to my vegetables, but couldn't help stopping long enough to glance at him. There was no question our conversation had cleared both of our minds. He brushed tears from his eyes as he carefully wrote his letter.

I sent the letter off to Angela the next day. By the time she answered his letter, in care of the soup kitchen, I had moved on.

I heard from Angela myself later that summer. She wrote that Jim had jumped the first train he could find, and headed back to Arizona. He immediately looked Angela up when he arrived. She had never married, so they took up where they'd left off in high school, years before.

Jim stopped drinking, and his fine skills as an electrician resurfaced. He found a small house to rent and a job. Our meeting was a reality most people would have argued couldn't have happened. But God made sure it did.

(769 words)