“How do they do that? A bunch of cops come in and arrest people, or drive through with the loudspeaker on, telling them to get moving, or what?”
“It’s not quite that harsh,” he said. “The police tell the missions and the social-service agencies they’re about to shut down a camp, so then the social workers come out and warn people, tell them if they’ve got stuff they don’t want to lose, they should pack up and leave beforehand. The railroad’s already hauled the culverts to somewhere else, and the city will probably send a crew to clear out everything else here in a few days or weeks or months. Meanwhile, the people find some other place to camp.”
“The shell game?”
“The shell game.”
We walked back to the Honda and bounced along the gravel, back toward town. Up ahead, I could see the rear of the Salvation Army complex approaching, and the looming concrete supports and decking of the I-40 viaduct. We’d come almost full circle, although we were off-road still, a hundred yards west of Broadway, approaching a large graveled area beneath the interstate. Earlier I’d been surprised at how many people were gathered under the viaduct where it crossed Broadway; now I was astonished at the bustling scene taking shape. It was almost as if I’d wandered down a staircase and found myself in the service tunnels hidden beneath Disney World—a realm I’d barely known existed, yet one alive with people and activity.
Dozens of cars and trucks were pulled off to one side of the graveled area beneath the viaduct, which measured roughly the size of a football field. Near the parked vehicles sat a steel storage unit, of the heavy, corrugated type carried by container ships. The yellow container was labeled LOST SHEEP MINISTRIES, though if I’d been naming the program, I’d have called it “Worker Bee Ministries” or “Well-Oiled-Machine Ministries,” because I’d never seen such efficiency. A steady stream of workers, mostly fresh-faced teenagers and young adults, ferried folding chairs and tables from the container’s interior and set them up, row on row, facing a portable lectern or pulpit. A bank of high-intensity lights—the sort used by highway construction crews at night—switched on, banishing the gloom beneath the viaduct. As Roger and I watched, the space beneath the rumbling viaduct became an impromptu assembly hall, filled with dozens of tables and hundreds of chairs. Several tables were set up end to end farther back from the pulpit, and a separate squad of workers began loading these with restaurant-style steam tables, hundreds of soft drinks, stacks of sandwiches and potato chips.
“This is amazing,” I said to Roger. “If the U.S. military moved with this much speed and focus, we’d have been in and out of Iraq in one week.”
He nodded.
I caught a whiff of beef stew wafting from the steam table, and it smelled better than any of the convenience foods I’d microwaved for myself this week. A ragtag band of humanity converged on the food tables from every direction—scores of people, then hundreds, emerging from the bushes and railroad tracks and sidewalks and streets—and began queuing up neatly for food. One of the first in line was a young woman with a pair of children, a boy and a girl who seemed to be about the ages of my grandsons. The mother and children appeared clean and healthy, but they had a wary, weary look in their eyes, even the kids, and that grieved me—to see them beaten down so early in life. Behind them in line was a man who moved with uneven, shuffling steps; his head and right arm twitched periodically as he mumbled, steadily and incoherently, to himself or to some unseen companion.