Back into the Cold
Days before local temperatures are predicted to hit 20 degrees or less during the night a call for volunteers goes out via email. Anyone can sign up to sit one or more three hour shifts. Likewise, word is out on the street. Anyone can show up, anytime between 8pm and 8am. No metal detectors, no drug or behavior screenings. No questions asked. You’re cold, you’re in.
Our first early morning volunteer shift at the local shelter’s warming station was a few weeks ago. About nine men were sleeping on the fold-up cots provided. Wrapped in the vulnerability of sleep the men seemed like children. This was no one’s first rodeo except for the two us, Between the hours of 5 and 8 a.m. it was mostly silent. The few pseudo-conversations that passed between the men and us offered brief connection. During the styrofoam boxed breakfast there were polite gestures and fleeting eye contact, not unlike other social spaces awkwardly navigated by strangers. At 8:00 the men left, walking with purpose into the daylight cold. I wondered where they might be going. We headed for our car. The seat warmers were still set in the on position.
The next morning we arrived to the flashing lights of two emergency vehicles in the warming station’s parking lot. The room was calm and the 2-5:00 a.m. volunteers told us what had happened. Pointing to a backpack in the corner they told us to expect an angel, a young man named John, to come back for it. The story unfolded.
John came into the station earlier looking for someone he thought should be there, but wasn’t. He unloaded one of the shopping carts that cluster near the shelter and headed for the tent village behind the Outback restaurant. Even without the subfreezing weather it was quite a hike. John returned with the person he was looking for loaded in the shopping cart, unable to walk. Once the old man was settled into a cot, John walked back for the rest of the old man’s possessions.
Hours later John returned carrying two small bags. When he found the old man was taken to the hospital, he tucked the bags into his pack. He shouldered the pack and looked around the room as if to get his bearings. He decided to go back for the tent and wait for daylight before heading to the hospital with the man’s things. We asked John about his friend. “Not a friend,” he said. “Just someone who needed some help.”