The Cross and the Switchblade

by David Wilkerson

  “You Davie,” he spoke very slowly. “You are the preacher. The cops, they throw you out.”

  “Yes,” I said. I walked in. Mr. Alvarez stood.

  “I pray that you come,” he said. “You will help my boy?”

  “I want to, Mr. Alvarez. But they won’t let me see Luis. I have to have written permission from you and from the other parents.”

  “I give that.” Señor Alvarez got out a pencil and paper from the kitchen drawer. Slowly he wrote that I had his permission to see Luis Alvarez. Then he folded the paper and handed it to me.

  “Do you have the names and addresses of the other boys’ parents?”

  “No,” said Luis’s father, and he shook his head slightly. “I don’t keep so close touch on my son. God, He brought you here, He will bring you to the others.”

  So a few minutes after we had parked at random on a Spanish Harlem street, I had my first signed permission.

  On my way down the dark stairs, I nearly collided with a boy, about seventeen, who was running full tilt up the stairs.

  “Excuse me,” I said, without stopping.

  The boy looked at me. As I passed beneath an overhanging light, he looked at me again.

  “Preacher?”

  I turned.

  “Aren’t you the guy who was thrown out of Luis’s trial?”

  “I’m David Wilkerson, yes.”

  The boy thrust out his hand. “I’m Angelo Morales. I’m in Luis’s gang. You been up to see the Alvarezes?”

  “Yes.” I told Angelo that I needed their permission in order to see Luis. “I have to get permission from each boy’s parents. Mr. Alvarez didn’t know where the other boys live. But you do, don’t you?”

  Angelo drove all over Spanish Harlem with us, locating the families of the six other defendants in the Michael Farmer trial. As we drove, Angelo told us about himself: He would have been with the boys that night they “messed Michael up,” except that he had a toothache. He said the boys had not gone out with any particular plan in mind: They had just gone “rumbling” (looking for trouble). “If it hadn’t been Farmer, they’d of been jitterbugging.”

  Jitterbugging meant gang fighting. Miles and I learned a lot from Angelo. The boys in this particular gang—were they all like this?—were bored, lonely and smolderingly angry. They craved excitement, and they took it where they could find it.

  Angelo had an amazing way of making things clear. He was a bright, appealing boy, and he wanted to help. Miles and I agreed that no matter what happened, we would keep in touch with Angelo Morales. We would show him another way.

  Within two hours we had every signature.

  After we wrote down Angelo’s address and promised to keep in touch, Miles and I drove back downtown, our hearts singing.

  The district attorney was very surprised at seeing us again so soon. When we produced the required signatures, he called the jail and said that if the boys would see us, we must be allowed in.

  But at the jail itself, a strange and totally unexpected block was thrown in our way. The prison chaplain who had the boys in his care considered that it would be “disturbing” to their spiritual welfare to introduce a new personality. Each of the boys had signed a form saying, “We will talk with Reverend David Wilkerson.” The chaplain struck out the “will,” and wrote in “will not.” No amount of pleading persuaded the city that his decision should be overruled.

  Once again, we headed back across the George Washington Bridge—very puzzled. Why was it that we had received such dramatic encouragement only to have the road end again at a blank wall?

  As we drove along the Pennsylvania Turnpike late that night, I saw a ray of hope in the darkness around me in the form of a remarkable man: my father’s father. I decided to pay him a visit, to place my puzzlement before him.

  5

  At home, I phoned Grandpap to say I wanted to see him.

  “You come right on, son,” he said. “We’ll have us a talk.”

  My grandfather was 79 years old and as full of vinegar as ever. He himself was the son and the grandson, and perhaps the great-grandson, of a preacher. By the time Grandpap reached his twenties he was already a preacher. He was a circuit rider, which meant he spent a good part of his ministry in the saddle. He’d ride his horse from one small church to another.

  Grandpap developed what he called “The Lamb Chop School” of evangelizing. “You win over people just like you win over a dog,” he used to say. “You see a dog passing down the street with a bone in his mouth. You don’t grab the bone from him. He’ll growl at you. It’s all he has. But you throw a big fat lamb chop in front of him, and he’s going to drop that bone and pick up the lamb chop, his tail wagging to beat the band. Now you’ve got a friend. Instead of going around grabbing bones from people, I’m going to throw them some lamb chops. Something with real meat and life in it. I’m going to tell them about new beginnings.”

  My father was different. He was a minister more than an evangelist. My father built solid churches where he was beloved and sought out in times of trouble.

  “It takes both kinds of preachers to make a church,” my father said to me when I was a kid. “But I envy your grandfather’s ability to shake the pride out of people.”

  Dad’s church was in a fashionable suburb of Pittsburgh, among the bankers and lawyers and doctors of the city. It was an unusual setting for a church. Our services could be noisy and undignified, but we’d toned them down due to our surroundings. It took my grandfather to show us we were wrong.

  One time Grandpap was passing through, and Dad asked him to preach a sermon the following Sunday night. I was at that service, and I’ll never forget the look on Dad’s face when the first thing Grandpap did was to take off his shoes and place them right smack in the middle of the altar rail!

  “Now!” said Grandpap, staring out over the startled congregation. “What is it that bothers you about dirty shoes on the altar rail? I’ve smudged your beautiful little church with some dirt. I’ve hurt your pride, and I’ll bet if I’d asked you the question, you’d say you don’t have any pride.”

  Dad cringed.

  “Go ahead and wriggle,” Grandpap said, turning to him. “You need this, too. Where’s all the deacons in this church?”

  The deacons raised their hands.

  “I want you to go around and open all the windows. We’re getting ready to make some noise, and I want those bankers and lawyers sitting on their porches on a Sunday night to hear what it’s like to be glad in your religion.”

  Then Grandpap said he wanted everybody to start marching around the church clapping our hands. We marched and we clapped. He had us clap for fifteen minutes, and when we tried to quit he shook his head and we clapped some more. Then he started us singing. Now we were marching and clapping and singing, and every time we slowed down a little, Grandpap shoved open the windows another inch.

  That was quite a service.

  The next day Dad went to the bank on business and, sure enough, sitting behind a big desk was one of our neighbors. The banker called to him: “Say, Reverend Wilkerson. That was some singing at your church last night. Everyone’s talking about it. We heard that you people could sing, and all this while we’ve been waiting to hear you. It’s the best thing that ever happened in this neighborhood.”

  Grandpap was a praying man. Once he asked me, “David, do you dare to pray for help when you’re in trouble?”

  It seemed a peculiar question at first. I thanked God often for the good things that came my way, certainly, like parents and home, or food and schooling. I prayed that the Lord would some day in some way choose to work through me. But to pray for specific help, that I rarely did.

  “David,” said Grandpap, “the day you learn to be publicly specific in your prayers, that is the day you will discover power.”

  I didn’t quite understand what he meant, partly because I was just twelve years old, and partly because I was afraid of the idea. It meant saying, in the hearing of others
, “I ask for such and such,” and taking the risk that the prayer would not be answered.

  By accident I was forced, one dreadful day, to discover what Grandpap meant. During all of my childhood, my father had been a very sick man. He had duodenal ulcers, and for more than ten years he had been in pain.

  One day, walking home from school, I saw an ambulance tear past. When I was still more than a block away from home, I knew where it had been heading. From that distance I could hear my father’s screams.

  A group of elders from the church sat solemnly in the living room. The doctor wouldn’t let me in the room where Dad was, so Mother joined me in the hall.

  “Is he going to die, Mom?”

  Mother looked me in the eye and decided to tell the truth. “The doctor thinks he may live two more hours.”

  Just then Dad gave a loud cry of pain, and Mother ran back into the room. Before the door closed, I saw why the doctor wouldn’t allow me in Dad’s room. The bedsheets and floor were drenched with blood.

  At that moment I remembered my Grandfather’s promise: “The day you learn to be publicly specific in your prayers is the day you will discover power.” For a moment I thought of walking in to where the men sat in the living room and announcing that I was praying for my father to get up from his bed a healed man. I couldn’t do it.

  Instead, I ran down the basement stairs, and there I prayed, trying to substitute volume of voice for the belief that I lacked.

  What I didn’t realize was that I was praying into a kind of loudspeaker system.

  Our house was heated by hot air, and the great trumpet-like pipes branched out from the basement furnace into every room of the house. My voice carried up those pipes so that the men from the church, sitting in the living room, heard a fervent voice pouring out of the walls. The doctor heard it. My father, lying on his deathbed, heard it.

  “Bring David here,” he whispered.

  I was brought upstairs past the staring eyes of the elders and into my father’s room. Dad asked Dr. Brown to wait in the hall for a moment, then he told Mother to read aloud the 22nd verse of the 21st chapter of Matthew. Mother opened the Bible. “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer,” she read, “believing, ye shall receive.”

  While my father lay limp on his bed, Mother read the same passage over and over again, a dozen or so times. I felt a tremendous excitement. I walked over to Dad’s bed and laid my hands on his forehead.

  “Jesus,” I prayed, “I believe what You said. Make Daddy well!”

  There was one more step. I walked to the door and opened it and said, loud and clear: “Please come, Dr. Brown. I have—” it was hard to say—“I have prayed believing that Daddy will get better.”

  Dr. Brown looked down at my twelve-year-old earnestness and smiled a warm and totally unbelieving smile. But that smile turned to astonishment as he bent to examine my father.

  “Something has happened,” he said. His voice was so low I could hardly hear. Dr. Brown tested Dad’s blood pressure. “Kenneth,” he said, feeling Dad’s abdomen and then reading his blood pressure again. “Kenneth, how do you feel?”

  “Like strength is flowing into me.”

  “Kenneth,” said the doctor, “I have just witnessed a miracle.”

  My father was able to get up from his bed in that miraculous moment. In that same moment I was delivered of any doubts about the power of getting out on a limb in prayer.

  Driving down to Grandfather’s farm so many years later, this was one of the memories I brought with me.

  I was glad to see Grandpap was as alert as ever. He was a little slower in his movements, but quick of mind. He sat in a straight chair, straddling it backward, and listened as I told him about my strange experiences. He let me talk for an hour, interrupting only to ask questions.

  “What do you make of it, Grandpap? Do you think I had a real call to help the boys in the murder trial?”

  “No, I don’t,” said Grandpap. “I think that door’s slammed just about as tight as you’ll ever find a door shut, David. I don’t think the Lord’s going to let you see those seven boys for a long time. I’ll tell you why. Because if you see them now, you may figure you’ve done your duty among the teenage boys in New York. I think there are bigger plans for you.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I’ve got a feeling, son, that you were never intended to see just seven boys, but thousands of boys just like them.”

  Grandpap let that sink in. Then he went on.

  “I mean all the mixed-up boys of New York who might end up murdering for kicks unless you help them. I have a feeling that the only thing you need do is expand your horizons.”

  My grandfather had a way of putting things that left me inspired. From wanting to get away from the city as fast as possible, I suddenly found myself wanting to rush right back and get to work. I said something like this to Grandpap, and he smiled.

  “That’s easy to say, sitting here in this warm kitchen talking to your old grandfather. But wait until you meet more of these boys before you start having visions. They’ll be full of hate and sin, worse than you’ve even heard of. They’re just boys, but they know what evil is. And Davie, you’ve got to keep your eye focused on the central heart of the Gospel. What would you say that is?”

  I looked him in the eye. “I’ve heard my own grandfather often enough on this subject,” I said, “to give him an answer from his own sermons. The heart of the Gospel is change. It is being born again to a new life.”

  “You rattle that off pretty smooth, David. But that’s the heart of Christ’s message. An encounter with God—a real one—means change.”

  Grandpap unfolded himself stiffly from his chair and started walking toward the farmhouse door.

  “Davie,” said Grandpap, “I’m still worried about you when you meet the raw life of the city. You’ve been sheltered. When you meet wickedness in the flesh, it could petrify you.

  “You know . . . some time ago I was taking a walk through the hills when I came across an enormous snake. He was a big one, Davie, three inches thick and four feet long, and he just lay there in the sun looking scary. I was afraid of this thing, and I didn’t move for a long time. But lo and behold, while I was watching, I saw that old snake shed its skin and leave it lying there in the sun and go off a new creature.

  “When you start your new work in the city, don’t you be like I was, petrified by the outward appearance of your boys. God isn’t. He’s just waiting for each one of them to crawl right out of that old sin-shell and leave it behind. He’s waiting and yearning for the new man to come out.

  “Never forget that, David, when you see your snakes, as surely you will, on the sidewalks of New York.”

  6

  When I drove to New York next, I was no longer a man with the simple mission of helping seven boys. There was a new vision, and I only knew that it had to do with specific help I was supposed to give boys like Luis and his friends.

  “Lord,” I said, “if You have work for me in this place, teach me what it is.”

  This was the beginning of a four-month-long walk through the streets of New York. During the months of March, April, May, and June of 1958, I drove to the city every week, using my day off for the trip. I would rise early and make the eight-hour drive, arriving in New York in the early afternoon. Then, until deep into the night, I roamed the streets, driving home in early morning.

  These were not idle explorations. The feeling of being guided by a purpose other than my own never left me, though the nature of it was more mysterious than ever. I knew of no other way to respond than to return to the city again and again, holding myself open, always waiting for the direction to become clear.

  I remember the first night of this four-month walk. Maria had told me that one of the roughest, most brutal neighborhoods in all New York was the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.

  “Preacher,” said Maria, “if you want to see New York at its worst, you just drive across the Brookl
yn Bridge and open your eyes.”

  So I drove for the first time into the heart of an area that at the time was supposed to have more murders per square foot of land than any place on earth.

  It was a cold March night when I pulled into the area and parked my car. Across the street a group of teenagers were hanging around. They wore leather jackets with a curious insignia stenciled on the back. I wanted to talk to them, but I hesitated.

  In the end I didn’t cross the street—not that night. I just walked, past bars and overflowing garbage cans, past storefront churches and police stations and on into an immense housing project with broken windows and broken lights and a broken “Keep Off the Grass” sign on the ground.

  On the way back to my car I heard what sounded to me like three quick shots. Then I thought I must have been mistaken, because no one on the street seemed excited. Within minutes a police car roared by, siren screaming, to pull into the curb with its light flashing red. Only a few people stopped to watch as they brought a man out of a building, dripping blood.

  I went back to my car, and after hanging an old shirt in the window for some privacy, I lay down, pulled a rug over me, and went to sleep.

  I wouldn’t do that today. I know better. But in the morning I woke up safe. Was it the words from the 91st Psalm that I said as I fell asleep that kept me safe?

  Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

  Bit by bit, during this four-month walk, I got to know the streets. Angelo was very helpful in this. (I had kept in close touch with him.)

  One day as Angelo and I walked down a street together, I asked him, “What would you say was the greatest problem boys have in this city?”