Out of the Cold (3 page)

T

he way we had arranged it: I would meet Morgan and Billy at the shelter, Billy would introduce me to the director, and the director would assign me something to do.

The change in plans: While I was waiting for the bus, Morgan called me on my cell phone and said she couldn't make it after all because she had woken up with a really bad sore throat. She said they didn't like people to volunteer at the shelter if they were even remotely sick—a lot of the homeless people who used the place weren't in the best of health. Some of them had immune systems that were seriously unreliable. But, she said, Billy was on his way, he was excited that I was going to join him, and he was dying to show me around.

The way it actually happened: I got off the bus where Billy had told me to. I could have waited for a second bus, but it wasn't due for another ten minutes. It wouldn't take that long to walk to the homeless shelter, and walking would help me to stay warm. At first I was moving past downtown stores, office buildings, and restaurants. Even there I kept running into people who were down and out. I'd only gone half a block before a grubby young man sitting in the doorway of a vacant store asked me for money. He was halfwrapped in a weathered sleeping bag and he kept his eyes on the ground when I dropped some quarters into a plastic cup on the sidewalk in front of him. One block onward, I passed a man with one leg who was leaning against a utility pole. He was holding out an empty margarine container and muttering, “Sparechangesparechangesparechange,” over and over in a whispery voice. I shrugged apologetically. I had already given all my coins to the young guy in the doorway.

On the next block, an old guy sitting in front of an office building was cursing at a well-dressed man who was digging into his pocket for his wallet. He dropped a five-dollar bill into an upturned hat on the sidewalk, but it didn't silence the old man. He kept right on cursing. I glanced at him and gasped involuntarily when he looked up at me. A jagged red scar slashed through his left eyebrow and ended halfway down his cheek. His left eye looked twisted. When I stared at him, wondering if he was blind in that eye, he started to curse at me too. The well-dressed man gave me a sympathetic look before he turned and walked away. I picked up my pace and wondered what had made Billy and Morgan think this would cheer me up.

The scenery changed rapidly after that, and I soon found myself in depressing surroundings. The shelter was located in a run-down part of the city a couple of blocks away from a sprawling low-income housing project. Just as I was about to turn the corner, a woman in a puffy coat and tattered sneakers started screaming at me. At least, that's what I thought she was doing. It turned out that she was just plain screaming—it had nothing to do with me. She shoved past me, pushing a shopping cart heaped with what looked like garbage, shouting and cursing and looking ferocious.

I arrived at my destination five minutes early. Even though the temperature was well below zero and the sky was a gloomy lead-gray, a loose group of men in grime-encrusted coats, most of them with dirty hair and scraggly beards, crowded the sidewalk in front of the church hall that housed the shelter. At first I couldn't figure out why they were standing out in the icy cold when they could have been inside where it was warm. Then I noticed that almost all of them were smoking. Billy had told me that the shelter enforced a strict no-smoking policy, so people who wanted a cigarette had to go outside. A couple of them gave me a once-over as I made my way to the door. One of them said something I didn't quite catch to a second man, and the second man responded with a laugh that was as crusty as his coat.

I opened the door, stepped inside, and was immediately overwhelmed by the heat and by the stench of unwashed bodies and tobacco that mingled with the aromas of coffee and food cooking. I had never smelled anything quite like it. I was sur-prised that Morgan hadn't said something about it. There was no way
she
would have gotten used to it.

From what I could see from the main entrance, the shelter took up the whole church hall and consisted of one enormous room that had been divided into several areas, as well as a kitchen—which I spotted when someone bustled through a door on the far side of the hall—and several smaller rooms.

I looked around the large main room. In the area farthest from the entrance, some battered armchairs and two sagging couches sat around a television set that was tuned to a talk show. Most of the seats were occupied. A few people, mostly women, each with a bundle buggy parked nearby, were staring at the screen. A few others appeared to be asleep.

Another part of the room was set up with a long wooden table and folding chairs. People sat hunched over orange plastic trays that held bowls of cereal, mugs of coffee, and plates of toast. Along one wall, a woman—a volunteer?—was handing out plastic-wrapped sandwiches and containers of soup. Coffee was self-serve from a huge urn set up on another, smaller table.

The third area consisted of a half-dozen card tables ringed with folding chairs, some raggedy armchairs, and a small bookshelf that was crammed with paperback books. Decks of cards, a couple of cribbage boards, and some chess and checker sets sat atop the shelf. A group of men sat around one of the tables, playing cards.

I didn't see Billy anywhere.

A hand fell on my shoulder and I jumped. I turned and looked into the weathered face of a man in faded jeans and a frayed denim shirt. His long gray hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He smelled of soap and aftershave lotion.

“You look lost,” he said.

“I'm looking for Billy Royal,” I said. “I'm supposed to meet him here.”

The man smiled. “You must be Robyn. Billy called. I'm afraid he's had a change of plans. I'm Art Donovan. I run this place.” He thrust out a hand and we shook. “Are you handy in the kitchen?”

I nodded.

“Great. I'll have someone show you around. Then, if you don't mind, I'll put you to work in the kitchen.” He raised an arm and snapped his fingers. “Ben!” he called. “Ben, over here.”

One of the card players, younger and better dressed than the others, got up and loped toward us.

“Robyn, this is Ben Logan,” Art said. “Ben, meet Robyn ...”

“Hunter,” I said, supplying my last name.

“Robyn is here for the day,” Art said. “Who knows, maybe she'll like it so much that she'll decide to come back. Do me a favor. Show her around. Then take her in to Betty.” He smiled at me. “Betty can always use an extra hand. Welcome aboard, Robyn.” He left me with Ben.

Ben looked me over.

“Nice boots,” he said.

I glanced down at my feet. “Thanks,” I said. They were brand new and I loved them. My mother had really grumbled about the price.

“Nice jacket too,” Ben said. It was also new, and amazingly warm. “Looks expensive.” He made it sound like that was a bad thing. His eyes shifted to the gold earrings my father had given me for my birthday and then to my new sweater.

Like Art Donovan, Ben was wearing faded blue jeans. He also had on a pullover sweater that had seen better days and a pair of beat-up sneakers. I started to feel self-conscious. Compared to him—to everyone in the place—I was seriously overdressed.

“Come on, I'll give you the grand tour,” he said. The look on his face made me think that he would rather be scrubbing toilets. First he showed me where the various offices were—one for Art Donovan right off the main hall, one for a nurse who came by regularly, and, down a short hallway, one for a social worker who helped people get the things they needed. There was also a workspace with a couple of computers that visitors to the shelter could use to access the Internet. Then he led me to the far end of the room, where a cooking show had come on the TV. Nobody was talking anymore.

Ben nudged me over beside the TV and said, in a loud voice, “Hey, everyone, this is Robyn.”

A couple of people pulled their eyes away from the TV just long enough to give me a once-over. The rest of them remained focused on the cooking show.

Next he led me to the long table where a dozen or so people spooned up milky oatmeal. One man was dunking pieces of toast into a mug of coffee and—yuck!—sucking on them.

“Hey, everyone,” Ben said again, “this is Robyn.” A few pairs of eyes looked from breakfast to me. One of them was the scruffy young man I'd given money to in front of the vacant store. His hands were wrapped around a mug of coffee. He stared at my boots and frowned when Ben introduced me. Ben shrugged at the lack of response. “You can see how excited everyone is to meet a brand new two-four,” he said.

“A two-four?” I said.

“As in twenty-four—hours. One-day wonders. We get them around here all the time. Kids who have to put in a few hours of community service for school. People who drop by once a year, usually to serve Christmas dinner, so that their consciences won't bother them too much for having scored some Gucci or Prada or Louis Vuitton on Christmas morning. Come on, I'll show you the rest of the place, so you can tell your friends what a shelter for the homeless looks like.”

I stared at him. “Where do you get off talking to me like that?” I said. “You don't know anything about me.”

He looked me over again, staring pointedly at my earrings, my jacket, my boots.

“I get it,” I said. “You think that because of the way I dress”—I looked just as pointedly at his own shabby attire—“I don't care about these people. Is that it?”

As soon as I said “these people,” a few people looked up at me from coffee mugs and cereal bowls. Great.

“Is that why you're here?” he said. “Because you care so much?”

I wished I could say that that was exactly why I was there, but it wasn't. There was no way I was going to admit that to him, though. “I'm here because my friend Billy volunteers here and he told me they're always looking for more help,” I said stiffly.

“Billy?” He sounded surprised. “Billy Royal?”

I nodded.

“
You're
a friend of Billy's?” He looked as if he'd just witnessed Billy sinking his teeth into a thick, juicy steak.

“Since kindergarten,” I said.

“Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't know. I thought you were—”

“A one-day wonder. Yeah. I got that. Mr. Donovan said they could use some help in the kitchen, so if you'll excuse me ...”
And even if you won't
, I thought. I turned, went into the kitchen, and introduced myself to a woman who turned out to be Betty. She was standing in front of a counter, shelling what looked like several dozen hardboiled eggs. A huge pot of soup simmered on the stove beside her.

“Can you follow a recipe?” she said, gesturing to a binder on the counter.

“We do three kinds of cookies—oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip, and molasses spice. I need twelve dozen of each.”

“Twelve
dozen
?”

“Of each.”

“But that makes ...” My math failed me.

“Four hundred and thirty-two cookies. That should get us through the weekend.”

Four hundred and thirty-two cookies would get them through the weekend?

“It would be a lot easier to just buy them,” Betty said, reading my mind. “But these people don't eat right unless they're
given
good food. That includes cookies made with real eggs—without all those chemicals and preservatives they put in the store-bought stuff. We get between eighty and one hundred people in here for dinner every day. Each person gets a piece of fruit and two cookies for dessert. That's one hundred and sixty to two hundred cookies per dinner. We also package some up to give to people who want to take a sandwich with them instead. And there are always people who sneak a few extras. The pans are there.” She pointed. “Bowls, wooden spoons, measuring cups, and measuring spoons are all in there.” She pointed to the far side of the room. “We can get twelve good-sized cookies on a pan, two pans in the oven at a time, fifteen minutes per batch.”

That made...my math skills failed me again.

“That means four and a half hours just to bake the cookies. But first you have to mix the dough. Here's what you do ...”

What you did, it turned out, was mix one batch of cookie dough—I started with oatmeal raisin—and scoop it out onto cookie sheets. Then, between popping batches of the first kind of cookie into the oven and taking them out again, I mixed up the second batch of cookie dough. Et cetera.

  .    .    .

Two and a half hours and a mountain of cookies later, Betty said she was going outside for a smoke.

“Yeah, I know smoking isn't good for me,” she said. “You have any idea how many times I've tried to quit? Mind the store for me, huh?” She pulled on a parka. “Clients aren't allowed in the kitchen. And absolutely
no one
is allowed into the basement.” She nodded to the door that led downstairs.

“Why don't you just keep it locked?” I said.

“All of my supplies are down there,” she said. “And Art's the only one who has a key. He says it's easier to control access that way. He unlocks the door when I come in and locks it again as soon as I'm finished for the day. Strictly off-limits to clients. I'll be back in ten minutes.”

I had just started to mix the molasses cookie dough when a raggedy old man shuffled into the room. At first I stared at his head. It was lopsided, as if somewhere under his matted hair a piece of his skull was missing. Then I looked at his face—at the scar and the twisted left eye—and realized he was the same man I had seen out on the street, shouting at the man who had dropped a five-dollar bill into his hat.

Betty had told me that the kitchen was off-limits to people who used the shelter—she called them clients. “If anyone comes in, politely ask them to leave,” she had said. “If they won't leave, call Art.”

The old man looked at the oatmeal raisin cookies that were sitting in big plastic containers on the counters. I watched him and hoped that he would go away.