Worthy Opponents(40)

“No, it’s cheap. It’s been standing vacant for two years. Now are you going to tell me what you’re up to?”

“Soon,” she promised him. She made a date to see it with him that afternoon. She was thrilled when she saw it. It was exactly what she had in mind. And now she had to do the rest. She’d been refining the concept in her head for weeks, and was excited about it. She hadn’t told a soul what she was up to.

She asked Marcy to place an order for a hundred down jackets at wholesale prices, in four sizes—medium, large, extra-large, and a small, average size for women—a hundred sleeping bags, gloves, beanies, blankets, sweatshirts, Tshirts and big white cotton shirts for summer, insulated tarps, some collapsible umbrellas, small tool kits, hygiene supplies, nonperishable food snacks, and staples like instant coffee, tea bags, and sugar.

“This isn’t for Brooke’s,” she explained to Marcy, “it’s for me to give away. I want solid quality that won’t fall apart in your hands, at the best prices we can get. This is an experiment. And I need big cheap tote bags to put it all in, one for each person. And a bottle they can carry water in.” Marcy was intrigued, and so was Paul Trask. Spencer signed a six-month lease for the garage at a ridiculously low price. It needed some repairs but not for what they were doing, and it had an alarm to protect it. And an iron gate in front, and the bathroom worked, for the employees who would be there.

“What are you going to do with all this stuff?” Marcy asked her. “Who’s it for?” She was intrigued.

“You’ll see,” Spencer said mysteriously.

“When do you need it?”

“As soon as you can get it.”

Within a week, everything had arrived, and she had it put in the garage, after she had the place thoroughly cleaned by the store’s janitorial staff, working at night. She had Paul buy her some old collapsible card tables, and they bought a few long ones secondhand.

Spencer sent emails to the fifteen employees who were interested in extra work at night and asked them to come to the garage a few days later, after the store closed. She was there herself before they arrived. Marcy and Beau had volunteered to come with her for her mystery project. She had spread the supplies out on the tables herself before the employees showed up. She explained the principle of it when they got there. She wanted to load the tote bags they’d gotten with one of everything, a jacket, a sweatshirt, a pack of Tshirts, socks, sleeping bag, food, tools, basic hygiene supplies, all of it.

“I want us to pack the bags, and we’re going to leave the bags here, as neatly as we can. We’re going to put these signs on the windows of the store.” Spencer had made big red hearts herself, and on each of them, it said “We want to help. If you need supplies (brand-new jackets, sleeping bags, etc.) come to (the address of the garage), every Tuesday after work hours.” And underneath it, in bold, “Please don’t camp here at night.” “It’s a trade-off,” she explained to Marcy and Beau. “Don’t camp in front of the store, and we’ll give you great new stuff for free. And we found a spot that’s just far enough away, so I hope that out of respect, they won’t come back to the store to camp, and they’ll stick around where ‘their own store’ is.”

“Oh my God, Spence, you’re a genius,” Beau said. “It’s a brilliant idea. If it works, we’ll be giving them great supplies, and keeping them away from our customers. Everybody wins. It’s like the lottery for everyone, and they’re all winners.”

Spencer explained the plan in detail to the fifteen employees who had shown up. Half a dozen of them could man the tables with the supplies. The others could walk past with the bags and fill them. “We’ll pile them up here and one night a week, Tuesday or another day, we’ll hand out the bags. We can open on other nights if we want to.”

“You want to do this once a week?” Marcy asked her. “It’s going to cost you.”

“I know. But someone has to help the homeless. It breaks my heart to see them on the street. And if they do us the courtesy of not camping in front of the store, our customers will be happy too, and so will we. I don’t want people afraid to come here because they think the neighborhood is dangerous. It isn’t, but it looks that way at times. I’ve been trying to think of what we can do to help the homeless. No one is doing anything for them. It’s time we did. And I’m hoping they stay closer to the garage at night, rather than setting up camp in front of our windows. If they don’t camp at the store, it will be a bonus for us.”

“It’ll be good publicity for the store,” Paul commented, always with his eye on benefits to Brooke’s.

“That’s not the point. But maybe it will set an example for others to help them too. If every business in the area reached out to help all these people, they’d be better off than they are now. Everyone wants to turn a blind eye and let someone else help them. I want to be the someone else. I thought about starting a soup kitchen, but it’s too complicated. You need a lot of permits to serve food, food spoils, and you lose a big percentage. Tarps and sleeping bags don’t go bad, and you don’t need a permit to give them away. Maybe no one will show up, but let’s try it and see what happens.”

Two of the female employees looked nervous after Spencer described her plan and spoke up.