The shelter has one hundred beds on the main floor, with thirty more in the basement adjacent to the men’s and women’s showers and locker rooms. (Aside from storage, the basement was used by the hotel’s employees, many of whom worked two jobs and came to work at the hotel after finishing their shifts at one of the steel mills or canneries—those too now long gone.) A third of the main floor is covered with folding tables and chairs—the dining area—and the Reverend’s office, which is a pretty decent size and doubles as his bedroom, is past the swinging doors on the right; go straight through the kitchen, turn left, you’re there.

During the holidays you’ll see more unfamiliar faces and crowded conditions because of transients on their way to Zanesville or Dayton or Columbus, bigger places where there might be actual jobs or more sympathetic welfare workers. The shelter turns no one away, but you’d damned well better behave yourself while you’re here—the Reverend might look harmless enough at first, but when you get close to him it’s easy to see that this is a guy who, if he didn’t actually invent the whup-ass can opener, can handily produce one at a moment’s notice. (Opinions are divided as to who the Reverend more resembles: Jesus Christ, Rasputin, or Charles Manson. Trust me when I tell you that he can be very scary when he wants to.)

Almost no one does anything to piss off the Reverend. The business earlier that night with Joe was a rarity—even those folks who come in here so upset you think they’ll crumble to pieces right in front of you and take anyone in the vicinity with them know that you don’t ruin things for the rest of the guests. That’s what the Reverend calls everyone, “guests,” and treats them with all the courtesy and respect you’d expect from someone who uses that word. Still, the business with Joe was enough to set everyone’s nerves on edge a bit. It wasn’t even ten-thirty yet, so the regular guests who weren’t already here would be wandering in by midnight. Of the two dozen or so guests who were here, I only recognized a few.

We had four new faces tonight, a young mother (who couldn’t have been older than twenty-three), her two children (a boy, five or six; a girl, three years old tops), and their dog (a sad-ass Beagle with an even sadder face who was so still and quiet I almost forget he was there a few times until I nearly tripped over him). It breaks my heart to see a mother and her kids in a place like this. The Thanksgiving/Christmas period’s always the worst, and the most depressing. At least for me.

“That’s about all the excitement I can stand for one night,” said Ethel, the old black woman who mans the front door. She’s a volunteer from one of the churches—St. Francis—and sits here every weeknight from seven p.m. until eleven, greeting folks as they come in, handing out all manner of pamphlets, answering questions, and you-bet’cha happy to take any donations; she’s got a shiny tin can at the edge of her folding card table marked in black letters for just such a purpose.