Writer Wendy’s weekly blog

Food City was crowded when I pulled into the feeding spot across the street. With two days to go until Christmas, my mind’s eye conjured what the store’s insides would look like: one shopper per square foot; a fight over the last jar of cinnamon sticks; the oranges gone.

Although I was late, I was the first one there, at this place with cement-embedded picnic tables where meals for hungry people happen during business hours. When the café closes for holidays (in this case Dec. 22 – Jan.2), a group of church ladies bring meals in boxes for people to enjoy outside the shuttered facility.

I wasn’t exactly the first one there; a guy dressed in the style known as “homeless but warm” waited.

“Is it good or bad that you get dessert first?” I joked, setting out 50 slices of pie. “The women with the meals will be here shortly.”

The guy gave a wan smile, came over, and downed a piece of apple pie in two bites. I was about to apologize for not having plasticware, when he took a slice of red velvet cake and ate that too—slower this time.

It can take sheltered church ladies a minute. Slowly, I realized this guy hadn’t eaten in a while. The van full of meals arrived. He asked could he help unload; he was strong, happy to help. Dignity is an essential ingredient of any free food service. He set the meals up for us, then took one back to his table and wolfed it down. Not like someone eating because it’s lunchtime, but eating to stop the demon hollowing out his belly.

People came, we gave them meals. With about 14 box lunches left, a twenty-something woman pushing a classic homeless cart walked up but sat on the stage across from the feeding area. I waved, “Come eat!”

“Ain’t got no money,” she called back.

When she learned it was, indeed, a free meal, she came cheerfully over with that cart twice her size. I called her Jen, since that was the name on the homemade tattoo above her eye, and she said she now went by Baby. Baby enjoyed the ham and mashed potatoes while we asked about her sleeping arrangements.

She was looking for her sister, who lived in a house in town, but suspected she’d be sleeping rough. Baby had walked from Coeburn, a town about an hour and a half away if one is driving. We told her about the encampment behind one of the big retail stores, stressing that we didn’t know how safe it would be for a woman on her own. We also told her about the park, where people without tents could roll under the sound stage.

She gave an endearing smile. “I got protection.”

Baby was also looking for a job. My friend and fellow church lady Michele is good at these moments. “The realtor with the tent city behind it is hiring. They don’t ask for a lot of info and they are known to hire people with complicated life stories. My husband works there.”

Baby laughed.

Michele smiled. “I’m not saying you’re an addict, but they will drug test you.”

Baby gave her endearing smile again. “I could pass that tomorrow.”

With two meals and six desserts remaining, up walked a young, slender man carrying something long and skinny over his shoulder.

Michele waved to him, then turned to me. “He’s the kid I gave your tent to.” Walmart had a sale; I bought their clearance tents for Michele to distribute, since there had been a rash of tent thefts in the park. No one would admit the police were taking any visible signs of camping there, or that if you parked behind the retail giant, they left you alone. Message sent; up to you to receive it. Our town doesn’t have a homeless problem.

The kid—call him D—sat down, coughing. His nose was bright-with-cold red. Michele brought D a meal.

He said, “Thank you ma’am” and tore into it with his hands, ripping the ham and stuffing it into his mouth, scooping up mashed potatoes with his fingers. The roll, the stuffing, the green beans followed in seconds. Then D saw the plasticware in the lid, and his face went red.

Do you know how hard it is to watch someone hungry eat? Recently a doctor said to me, “Americans don’t eat because we’re hungry. We eat because it’s time to eat. That’s half the problem.”

All us church ladies, we do this because we like to cook and the unhoused should be fed. It’s not until you see someone pulling a ham slice apart with his fingers, licking the juice off, eyes desperate, shoulders hunched, that it truly clicks there’s a group of people who are only going to eat if you feed them. They are hungry. Not “didn’t eat breakfast hungry.” Despair of nothingness hungry.

Michele placed the last meal next to his elbow. “Take this with you for later.”

I bagged up the extra desserts for him as we chatted. Either the voucher the local homeless service provided for his week in a motel had run out, or he had done something. Unaware his stuff had been thrown into the parking lot, he came home to find it stolen.

“Where are you sleeping tonight?” I asked as Michele wrote out her contact details on a card.

“Got clothes she gave me.” He inclined his head toward Michele. “Thank you,” he added.
“She says you gave me this tent. Sleeping in it tonight.”

I thought of the lettering on the box when I bought it: weatherproof to 35 mph winds, lightweight and easy to put up. Not “warmest thing ever.” Not “gonna keep that cough and cold from getting worse.”

D coughed again, hesitated, and opened a second dessert. He ate slower now, with the fork, savoring the sweetness. We helped him pack up and head for another, smaller place where tents are sometimes spotted. We reminded him to keep his with him at all times, and avoid the park. He left. Baby moved across to the stage, looking as though she intended to camp there. It’s a good spot for someone with no tent.

Michele and I looked at each other, tracking D as he walked north toward the retail city. “I could give Baby a ride to the encampment. I could take him home for the night. I don’t know what to do,” I said.

“Yes you do,” she said. “We don’t put ourselves in harm’s way. But I’m going to get him a motel room.”

I pulled out my wallet. She literally slapped my hand away. “No. You gave him a tent. It’s just he’s sick. And the churches will bring meals out there Christmas Eve and Day. At least he can eat.”

She hopped in her van and drove like a mother bat leaving Hell in pursuit of her infant.

Michele texted a short time later. “I couldn’t find him, but he has my card with my number on it. He’ll only see it if he can get his phone plugged in someplace. If he texts, can you get the room for him and I’ll pay you back?” Michele lives some way out in the country.

Neither of us heard from him as I packed up the equipment and headed to my house—the house with the spare room, where Jack and I would spend a solitary, cozy Christmas. When I drove away, the Food City parking lot was overflowing with people trying to get the goods home for the holidays.

You can’t take them home. D isn’t a kitten one scoops from a road. I know all the advice from homeless people I’ve known over the years who tell the same story: going home with someone is worse. It’s awkward, and when you have to get high, it’s get-you-gone time, and people aren’t prepared for your realities, but they want your life story in exchange for a room, and you’re trying really hard not to rock their world, but they keep expecting you to steal something and run away.

The only thing worse than watching a hungry person eat is not being able to do anything else for them.