Free The Street Lawyer by John Grisham

Dolly’s method. My fingers were hot and practically blistered when I finished.

Eight
    M ORDECAI LED me up a dark stairway to the foyer. “Watch your step,” he said, almost in a whisper, as we pushed through a set of swinging doors into the sanctuary. It was dim, because people were trying to sleep everywhere. They were sprawled on the pews, snoring. They were squirming under the pews, mothers trying to make children be still. They were huddled in the aisles, leaving a narrow path for us as we worked our way toward the pulpit. The choir loft was filled with them too.
    “Not many churches will do this,” he whispered aswe stood near the altar table and surveyed the rows of pews.
    I could understand their reluctance. “What happens Sunday?” I whispered back.
    “Depends on the weather. The Reverend is one of us. He has, on occasion, canceled worship instead of running them out.”
    I was not sure what “one of us” meant, but I didn’t feel like a member of the club. I heard the ceiling creak, and realized that there was a U-shaped balcony above us. I squinted and slowly focused on another mass of humanity layered in the rows of seats up there. Mordecai was looking too.
    “How many people …” I mumbled, unable to finish the thought.
    “We don’t count. We just feed and shelter.”
    A gust of wind hit the side of the building and rattled the windows. It was considerably colder in the sanctuary than in the basement. We tiptoed over bodies and left through a door by the organ.
    It was almost eleven. The basement was still crowded, but the soup line was gone. “Follow me,” Mordecai said.
    He took a plastic bowl and held it forth for a volunteer to fill. “Let’s see how well you cook,” he said with a smile.
    We sat in the middle of the pack, at a folding table with street people at our elbows. He was able to eat and chat as if everything was fine; I wasn’t. I played with my soup, which, thanks to Miss Dolly, was really quitegood, but I couldn’t get beyond the fact that I, Michael Brock, an affluent white boy from Memphis and Yale and Drake & Sweeney, was sitting among the homeless in the basement of a church in the middle of Northwest D.C. I had seen one other white face, that of a middle-aged wino who had eaten and disappeared.
    I was sure my Lexus was gone, certain I could not survive five minutes outside the building. I vowed to stick to Mordecai, whenever and however he decided to leave.
    “This is good soup,” he pronounced. “It varies,” he explained. “Depends on what’s available. And the recipe is different from place to place.”
    “I got noodles the other day at Martha’s Table,” said the man sitting to my right, a man whose elbow was closer to my bowl than my own.
    “Noodles?” Mordecai asked, in mock disbelief. “In your soup?”
    “Yep. ’Bout once a month you get noodles. ’Course everybody knows it now, so it’s hard to get a table.”
    I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, but there was a twinkle in his eye. The idea of a homeless man lamenting the lack of tables in his favorite soup kitchen struck me as humorous. Hard to get a table; how many times had I heard that from friends in Georgetown?
    Mordecai smiled. “What’s your name?” he asked the man. I would learn that Mordecai always wanted a name to go with a face. The homeless he loved were more than victims; they were his people.
    It was a natural curiosity for me too. I wanted toknow how the homeless became homeless. What broke in our vast system of public assistance to allow Americans to become so poor they lived under bridges?
    “Drano,” he said, chomping on one of my larger celery chunks.
    “Drano?” Mordecai said.
    “Drano,” the man repeated.
    “What’s your last name?”
    “Don’t have one. Too poor.”
    “Who gave you the name Drano?”
    “My momma.”
    “How old were you when she gave you the name Drano?”
    “’Bout five.”
    “Why Drano?”
    “She had this baby who wouldn’t