The Blood Came

It was quiet on the edge of summer when the blood came. A man with a knife stepped into the Union Gospel Mission and turned the place of bread and beds into a place of screams. Eleven men bled. Some were workers. Some were wanderers. All were human.

One of them, a worker, lies in a hospital now. His breathing comes with the rhythm of machines. The doctors say he might wake up. They do not say when.

The mission didn’t close. The doors stayed open. They served dinner. They kept the chapel lit. They prayed in the same rooms that had held the wounded. That is what they do.

They gathered on a Thursday, those who knew pain and those who had only read of it. There were pastors. There were mayors. There were men with wet eyes and hats in their hands. They prayed not only for healing, but for meaning. They asked that something good might grow from what had been done. Like wheat in burned ground.

The one who stabbed is gone. Police took him. He has a name. But the people at the Mission did not speak it. They spoke instead of love. Of God. Of staying open even when blood stains the floorboards.

It is a hard thing, to suffer and serve in the same breath. But they are doing it. Because that is the way in Salem. When the knife comes, you hold the wound, and you keep feeding the hungry.