"Mitchell is squatting on the sidewalk. His hair is too long and he needs a bath. He stinks."

    The lady’s voice droned on and on, describing me in all my tarnished glory. She had a strident German accent, and her voice came from somewhere over my head, like out of a loudspeaker. Only there wasn’t any loudspeaker and there wasn’t any lady.

    My mother always blamed drugs, as in "Your father and I gave you everything. We mortgaged the farm to send you to college, but you had to go and wreck your brain with those marijuana cigarettes and who knows what else."

    The nurse at the Rainbow Village Day Program had a different take. She used words like "schizophrenia" and "auditory hallucinations". Then her lips would pull back over her big teeth in this fake smile that wouldn’t fool a four-year-old, and she’d pull out her needle and syringe. Those were her drugs, the kind that made you feel like your brain was turning into soggy breakfast cereal and your arms and legs into stone.

    But my mother and that nurse were back in the little town where I’d grown up. Last month, I’d hitched my way to the city. In between learning how to avoid cops and where to get a meal, I tried to work out how to tell when voices were real or just in my head. That’s what I was doing that chilly morning in front of the old stockyard, sitting alone with my back against the wall, willing the lady of the loudspeaker to just shut up.

    If you didn’t know that this weedy maze of crumbling brick walls and wooden cattle pens was my home, you’d pass right by never knowing. The drivers of the passing Volvos and BMWs headed for their glass office buildings downtown would never believe that I’d slept here last night -- me and six other guys who didn’t have anywhere else to go.

    Pork Chop was the one who kept us together. His real name didn’t matter. He’d busted out his two front teeth gnawing on a pork chop bone so Pork Chop he’d become. Like me and Donnie and all the others, Pork Chop was done with clinics and caseworkers. The difference was that Pork Chop had been on the streets a lot longer than we had. He’d had time to figure out how to survive.

    "Morning, Mitchell. Want some coffee?" It wasn’t the mean Nazi woman and it definitely wasn’t Pork Chop; this voice was low and calm.

    I looked up. A smiling man with frizzy gray hair that topped his head like a smoky halo was bending toward me, offering a styroform cup. A baggy turtleneck sweater nearly covered the black shirt and collar that marked him as a priest, but I knew who he was and he knew me.

    Every morning, after he’d said Mass at St. Ann’s, Father Leo went to the McDonald’s up on Second Street and bought as many coffees as he could carry. Then he made his way down to the river, stopping at underpasses and abandoned buildings. The priest was okay. His smile was for real and his voice never criticized.

    "Going to be a gorgeous day -- fall is really in the air. Keeping warm enough at night?" he asked.

    I nodded. We had a fifty-five gallon drum way back in a corner of the building that still had a roof. Made a great container for a fire.

    "If it gets too cold, there’s always the shelter over on Market Street."

    Fat chance, I thought, but I nodded anyway.

    "How are the voices, today?"

    "Not so bad." My voice sounded flat and far away, even to me. "Not like Donnie’s. That guy’s real bad off. Doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground."

    Since Father Leo wasn’t giving me that "ho-hum, wish I was somewhere else look" that the psychiatrist always had, I went on. "Donnie talks like he thinks he’s back home with his mother, always talking about her and her stories."

    "Maybe that’s a comfort to him. She probably read him bedtime stories when he was a boy."

    "Well, the way he howls and shivers, her stories must’ve given him nightmares." Geez, was I ever getting chatty. Pork Chop wouldn’t like that. Better shut up, he and Donnie were coming through the weeds in front of the building now.

    Father Leo held up the cardboard carrier from McDonald’s. "Hot coffee, boys?"

    Pork Chop planted his boots wide apart and stuck his chin in the air like he was a muscular TV wrestler instead of a greasy, little wimp whose flat butt could barely hold his jeans up.

    "No, thanks, Padre. We take care of our own here, so you can just keep walking."

    Father Leo didn’t push. That wasn’t his way. He just strolled on down the sidewalk, whistling a tune under his breath and lugging the coffee carriers under his arms. I worried about him, all alone in this part of town, but I didn’t have long to fret. Pork Chop gave me a backhand across the face that banged my head into the brick wall and made me see stars. "How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t talk to those do-gooders."

    I wiped blood on my sleeve and whispered, "Father Leo’s different."

    "Different, hell. He wants to help us. That means cops rousting us out of a good place and Social Services nabbing us for the psycho ward. Grow a brain, college boy. I’m the one that’s keeping you out of the nuthouse, and I’m the one that makes the rules. So screw your Father Leo."

    Pork Chop poured the rest of my coffee down the sewer grate and handed me the empty cup. "Here, start downtown by the Galleria and don’t come back until you’ve filled this cup at least twenty times. Remember, no holding out. I’ll collect the take and get us something to eat later. And take Donnie with you. I ain’t got time to babysit that turkey all day."

    I knew the drill. Stand in the little park in front of the jazzy new shopping mall they’d built to span both sides of Fourth Street, but not so close that the security guard would take notice. Put some change in the cup and jiggle it to give people the idea.

    "Got a dollar, lady? Please, for a sandwich? Coffee?" Try to look hungry and pathetic. Not too friggin’ hard.

    Middle-aged ladies were your best bet. Look for the ones who might have a son about your age. Then, as soon as the cup began to fill up, transfer the money to an inside pocket. And don’t forget to keep an eye out for uniforms. See a cop? Don’t run, just put your head down and slowly ooze around the block.

    I managed to stuff the German woman and her running commentary into a back corner of my mind and went to work. Donnie was a hassle. I sat him down on a bench and told him to stay put, but he wanted to wander. He kept going to look at himself in the window of a video rental place. He twisted his skinny body into weird postures and chattered nonstop. "Mom -- beans -- knees -- hurt -- pictures -- no stories -- Mom."

    Good thing most people don’t like to get involved. All Donnie got were a few dirty looks as shoppers and businessmen hurried by. Still, I had to keep a sharp eye on him.

    I hit some good luck around lunchtime. A man in a three-piece suit got a coney and some fries at a pushcart, but after a bite or two, his cell phone rang and he shoved them in a trash bin. The munchables kept Donnie quiet long enough for me to take a break and look at a newspaper. It was several days old, the Metro section.

    It was all the usual stuff. The city council wanted to build another bridge, but some rich people who had condos overlooking the river were taking a "not in our backyard" stance and hiring lawyers. Lots of schools and neighborhoods were planning fall festivals for the weekend. Here was a story about a you-pick-‘em pumpkin patch. The photo showed a young guy throwing his arm around a scarecrow surrounded by pumpkin vines stretching in all directions. Not a bad idea. Even a head case like me could plant some seeds.

    "Mitchell thinks he can be a farmer. He is stupid and immature." Damn, just when I thought I had her under control. I tried to force the grating voice into the background by concentrating on the next newspaper story, making myself read it word for word.

    It was gory, for sure. A priest at one of the downtown churches had been cut up real bad. Someone had found him alone, bopped him on the head and cut his face and arms up like a jigsaw puzzle. The cuts were pretty superficial, but there were a lot of them. The old guy had lost so much blood, they weren’t sure he was going to make it. Churches were warned about locking their doors except at service times.

    "Mitchell is going to get in trouble. Mitchell is not watching Donnie." Damn and double damn. A silver-haired lady rigged out for an elegant luncheon was asking Donnie if he needed any help. I dropped the paper and ran to grab his arm.

    "He’s fine, ma’am. He’s with me and we’re both fine."

    She clutched her purse while she looked me up and down. "Are you sure? Your friend seems quite troubled. Perhaps I should call a policeman."

    "Oh no, ma’am, please don’t do that. We’re just on our way back to our shelter house to meet with our social worker."

    "Well, take this then, for some hot coffee." She dug inside the purse and handed me a coin with her gloved fingertips. I looked at the shiny dime on my palm. That lady was even worse off than I was. She must’ve thought it was still 1961. I thanked her anyway.

    By mid-afternoon I’d collected enough money to satisfy Pork Chop, and my empty belly felt like it was trying to digest itself. We were too late to make the sandwich giveaway at the Salvation Army, so I headed to St. Ann’s with Donnie in tow. Father Leo always had a bite to eat for anyone who knocked at the back door of the little rectory tucked behind the old stone church with the soaring stained-glass windows.

    Donnie behaved himself while Father Leo put some peanut butter sandwiches together, but when the old priest asked us to carry some boxes of church bulletins over to the sanctuary, Donnie lit out like a rabbit with a pack of dogs on his tail. I didn’t try to catch him. That crazy dude had wandered the city for months before he’d taken up with Pork Chop. Donnie’s voices might be beating up on him, but he would find his way back to the stockyard.

    I followed Father Leo across the sunny courtyard and dumped the bulletins in the vestibule. Then he asked me to sit with him in the sanctuary for a few minutes. I figured he had something on his mind and I wasn’t wrong.

    "Mitchell," he began, "I read an article about this new medication. It’s a pill, not a shot, and it seems to help the symptoms of schizophrenia without producing nearly as many side effects."

    I didn’t say anything, just stared up at the dust motes taking a lazy swim in the sunbeams shining through the arched stained-glass windows. Outside, a siren wailed and heavy trucks rumbled by, but the city noises seemed far away. For a wonderful moment my mind was absolutely quiet, the loudspeaker silenced.

    Then Father Leo sighed. I thought he might bug me about the medicine, but he asked about the windows instead. "Do you know how old those are, Mitchell?"

    The tall, brilliantly colored windows were like pictures in museums, only made of pieces of glass outlined with black metal. I’d never seen anything like them in our little Baptist church back home. I answered, "Really old, I guess."

    "Over a century. When St. Ann’s was built, the parish had hundreds of families. They sent all the way to Italy for the craftsmen who made these windows. Each piece of glass was cut, outlined with lead and set in place by hand."

    "The pictures are all different."

    "Back then, a lot of people couldn’t read, so they put stories from the Bible in the windows. See, this one is St. John the Baptist, and the next one tells the story of Mary and the Archangel. Back when I was a boy, they were called God’s storybooks."

    I liked the windows with all their multi-colored bits, but it was time for me to get moving. Father Leo walked me to the paneled front doors.

    "Will you at least think about the new medication?" he asked, with his hand on the door handle.

    "Maybe," I mumbled. I knew the priest wanted to help, but he didn’t understand that the doctors were always bragging on some new pill that always turned out to cause the same old problems. Then I had a thought. "You really should keep these doors locked, Father. Somebody is doing bad things to priests."

    "You heard about our sad occurrence, did you?" He squeezed my shoulder. "You needn’t worry. I’m sure it was an isolated incident."

    "But you’ll lock these doors?"

    He shook his head. "We can’t change our way of doing things because of one bad apple. I only lock the doors when I put the church to bed for the night. At other times, the doors must stay open so people can come in to pray." He added wistfully, "Not that we get many people praying anymore."

    When I got back to the stockyard, the sun was going down behind the buildings across the street. Donnie had beaten me in, and Pork Chop was mad as hell. "Can’t you do anything right?" he bellowed.

    To stop his raised backhand, I pulled the wad of bills and change out of my jacket.

    His scowl turned to a gap-toothed smile. "That’s more like it. We’ll eat tonight after all, boys."

    Pork Chop took one of the guys to help him carry the food, and they headed for the Second Street McDonald’s. He ordered the rest of us to get the fire going. We started poking through the ruins, looking for wood scraps, and when we couldn’t find any, pulled loose planks off the cattle pens. Donnie was no help. He amused himself by throwing his pocketknife at the rats we stirred up. We didn’t care -- whatever kept him busy.

    My take bought a lot of burgers, so we all had full bellies that night. It only took a few minutes of conversation around the fire for the guys to start nodding off. When you don’t have electricity, you turn in early.

    I was snuggling down in my nest of cardboard and rags, watching Pork Chop stir the fire with a long mop handle, when Donnie started his nightly howl. "No beans -- Mom -- no -- no stories." His moaning voice echoed off the brick walls.

    The guy next to me had been asleep. Now he was up and cussing. "Shut up, punk."

    Donnie just went on howling.

    "Aw, get out of here and let us sleep. Go on back to your Momma if you won’t shut up about her."

    Pork Chop wielded the mop handle and the guy doubled up, groaning and sputtering.

    "You shut it," said Pork Chop. "Donnie can’t go back home. His Momma’s dead."

    "What happened to her?" I whispered.

    Pork Chop pushed the end of the mop handle into my chest. The firelight gave his sharp face a demonic glow. "I don’t know what happened to her. Never thought it was any of my business. But I do know Donnie spent time in prison for whatever it was." He twisted the handle into my ribs. "Any more questions, Mr. Nosy-britches Mitchell?"

    Donnie finally shut up -- or wandered off -- and everybody settled down. It wasn’t that cold, but I couldn’t get to sleep. The German woman wouldn’t let up, and scenes from the day kept flashing through my head in disconnected pictures.

    After it had been quiet for a couple of hours, those scenes began to link up and make sense. Like Father Leo’s storybooks of glass, the shattered bits of my day were gathering together to tell me something.

    In the dull light from the fire’s embers, I searched the other piles of rags. Donnie was gone.

    I shook Pork Chop awake. "Is Donnie Catholic?"

    "What the…? Is Donnie what?"

    "Catholic. Was he raised Catholic?"

    "Geez, Mitchell. I think so. Why?"

    I took the blocks to St. Ann’s as fast as my feet would fly. It wasn’t really that late and there was still traffic on the streets. The Nazi woman stayed with me all the way: "Mitchell is running too fast. Mitchell is going to get hit by a car." I just ignored her and kept running, up the stairs in front of St. Ann’s, through the paneled doors and down the aisle to where Father Leo was putting out the altar candles.

    When I reached the first pew, I saw the crouched figure hiding behind a big potted fern at the altar rail. I launched myself into the air and we collided with a crashing thud. Donnie’s knife flew out of his hand, landing at the feet of one very startled priest.

    After the cops were on their way and we’d tied Donnie’s wrists and ankles with cords from the sacristy, Father Leo and I tried to make sense of his babbling. It seemed Donnie’s mother had punished him by dragging him to church and making him kneel on uncooked beans while she and the priest lectured him about the saints portrayed in the stained-glass windows. There was more, lots more, but it was those jigsaw puzzles of colored glass that had really set the poor guy off.

    The cops arrived with sirens screaming and TV news trucks right behind. Somebody stuck a microphone in my face every few minutes and asked, "How do you feel having prevented another attack on a priest?" I knew those reporters must have gone to college; couldn’t they come up with a more intelligent question than that?

    After Donnie was on his way to University Hospital and the news crews had disappeared, Pork Chop and a couple of the guys met me on the steps outside the church.

    "You’re not gonna let this hero crap go to your head, are you?" Pork Chop asked. "If the cops knew about your voices, they’d be taking you off to the psycho ward, too."

    I shrugged.

    Pork Chop sucked air through his missing front teeth. He sounded like a hissing snake. "You just happened to be at the right place at the right time, nutball. Don’t forget, you’re no better than the rest of us."

    I chewed at my lower lip and thought back over all I’d done that day. Better? No, I didn’t think I was better than the other guys.

    But maybe I was better than I’d always thought I was; maybe I didn’t need a little jerk like Pork Chop running my life.

    In a few minutes, the other guys would follow Pork Chop back to the old stockyard, but I didn’t have to go with them. I could stay at the rectory for the rest of the night, and in the morning ask Father Leo for bus fare back home. Maybe I could even talk to the nurse at Rainbow Village about that new medication he was so hot on.