Page 3 of The Family Cross

The eruption sounded like a bomb going off and woke the other citizens of that wretched place. They started shouting and crawling from their tents and shacks to see what had happened. Boog lay on the slope, shaking, staring at the burning car, and mourning the loss of what had seemed a sure score just a few minutes ago.

“Anyone got any marshmallows?” a woman up the embankment from him called.

He heard guffaws at that, and a man said, “I’ve got s’mores fixings.”

Boog felt ill. He looked up at the people huddled there in the wavering firelight, felt tears coming on, and yelled, “There’s a… there’s someone in there! You want to cook on that?”

3

ONCE A WEEK, FRIDAYS usually, my best friend and partner, John Sampson, and I volunteer for the early shift in the kitchen of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church. It’s both a giveback—a reminder of just how good we’ve had it in life—and a chance for us as police officers to build rapport with a community that frequently goes unnoticed but often sees all.

It was raining hard that morning, thunder booming, the basement lights flickering at the lightning strikes. Sampson was watching bacon topped with brown sugar and cayenne under the broiler. I whisked three dozen eggs and wondered whether I was making too much.

“Not a big turnout,” I said, eyeing the line of fifteen hungry, wet folks waiting for us to throw open the aluminum grate.

“Rain’s supposed to let up,” Sampson said. “Then we’ll see the surge.”

“Coffee’s good to go,” I said, checking the big brewing machine in the corner. “I’m going to get it out there first.”

“Smart,” Sampson said. “Warm them up.”

Beyond the grate, back in the line, a woman in her forties wearing a filthy trench coat heard us and yelled, “Pop-pop, what, what? Coffee futures up, up, up! Earthquake in Sumatra! Coffee futures up, up, up!”

Other people in line began to groan as I filled one of the urns.

“Better calm her down before things get wild,” Sampson said.

“On my way,” I said, picking up the urn and heading for the door.

We knew her as Anna Bananas, an infrequent visitor to the kitchen who never left St. Anthony’s without at least three bananas sticking out of the pockets of her trench coat. She lived on the streets somewhere, suffered from Tourette’s syndrome, and seemed to be bipolar, sometimes on a high and pontificating, sometimes reduced to gibberish and confusion.

That morning she was clearly on one of her towering upswings, which we had seen turn chaotic in the past.

“Pop-pop, what?” she cried again, shaking her short dreads. “Is Bananas wrong? Coffee up, up, up. Money up, up, up. But nothing for the street. Nothing for the people under the bridge.”

“Save it for the next socialist pep rally,” a big shaggy guy behind her said, and several people in line started laughing.

“Pop-pop-pop-pop,” she sputtered. “Nothing, nothing, nothing,” she said to the big shaggy guy in a voice that turned seething. “People beneath the bridge, we get nothing. No food. No cops. Pop-pop-pop. Nothing, nothing, nothing.”

Coming through the door with the urn, I said, “Anna, Anna, Anna! Let’s get you warmed up with some fresh coffee.”

Anna Bananas looked over at me with sudden interest. “Coffee futures. Up! Up!”

“Heard that,” I said. “Big earthquake in Sumatra.”

“Pop! Pop!” she said and walked closer as I set the urn on a table. I poured a paper cup of coffee for her.

She looked me in the eye and said, “You a cop?”

“Detective.”

She blew air through her lips, making them vibrate and form spit bubbles the way a baby does. “Did you know that a society is judged by the way it treats the people on the lowest rungs of the ladder?”

“I didn’t know that,” I said. “But you’ll get no argument from me.”

Anna Bananas squinted her left eye. “Things are bad under the bridge, and you police won’t come.”

I didn’t know exactly what she was talking about but nodded. “Okay?”