Out of the Cold (6 page)

“This means a lot to us, Robyn,” he said. “You can't believe how busy we get on a night like this.”

I looked around and was surprised to see how many people were already bedding down on foam mattresses and fold-up cots.

“The regulars know that when it gets this cold, we'll be open for the night, so they show up on their own,” Art said. “But there are a lot of other people out there who don't know or who need coaxing. We find them, tell them the shelter is open, and bring them back here—if they want to come. We have a lot of territory to cover. I've assigned both of you to Eileen. Billy will introduce you—I think Eileen's in the kitchen—and fill you in on what you'll be doing. Okay, Billy?”

Billy had explained everything on our way to the shelter. Some people, he said, prefer to sleep out-side—no matter what. They can't tolerate the cramped quarters of an emergency shelter or they're afraid someone will steal their few belongings. We would try to persuade everyone to come back to the shelter, but we couldn't force them. Anyone who insisted on staying outside would be given hot soup and an extra sleeping bag to get them through the night. Billy also told me that there was a team assigned to each of the shelter's two vans—a professional social worker with enough medical training to know when a person either had to come in out of the cold or be transported to a hospital, and two volunteers whose job it was to hand out the soup, warm clothes, and sleeping bags. We headed for the kitchen.

As soon as Billy pushed open the kitchen door, I spotted Ben. He was loading cartons of soup into insulated boxes. Betty worked alongside him. Another volunteer was packing boxes of foil-wrapped sandwiches. Ben looked up when we entered the room and greeted Billy warmly. He didn't say anything to me, and I didn't speak to him either. Billy asked Betty where Eileen was. She nodded to the kitchen's rear door. We went out into the parking lot behind the church and found a thin, serious-looking young woman wearing a big hat with earflaps and the thickest pair of mittens I had ever seen. She was piling sleeping bags into the back of a van. Billy introduced me and asked her what she needed us to do. She sent us back into the kitchen for soup, which we loaded into the van.

“I think that's everything,” Eileen said ten minutes later, her words turning into frosty swirls in the frigid night air. “Let's get rolling.”

We had been assigned the west side of down-town. Eileen and Billy knew exactly where to look. We found people huddled under mounds of blankets and dirty sleeping bags, on top of subway vents, in bus shelters, in the entrances to stores and office buildings. Every time we spotted someone, Eileen stopped the van, got out, and asked the person if he or she wanted a ride back to the shelter. Mostly they were men, but there were a few women, some couples, and even two people with dogs.

If the person didn't want to leave his or her spot, Eileen made a note of where we had found the person and promised everyone who chose to stay on the street that someone would be back later that night to check on them. If people wanted to get in out of the cold, Eileen brought them back to the van and then drove to the next spot on our route. When the van was full, we drove back to the shelter.

Billy and I waited in the foyer while Eileen showed the passengers inside and helped to get them settled. A second van pulled up and Ben got out. He made no move to speak to me, which suited me fine. When Eileen came out of the shelter, we set off again.

The next three people we found refused a lift back to the shelter. Eileen tried to coax them. She warned them how cold it was going to get and what could happen to them if they stayed outside. When she had exhausted all of her arguments, she summoned me, and we made sure that each person had something warm to eat and a clean, new sleeping bag to keep them warm. By midnight we had given out almost everything we had and had transported more than fifteen people back to the shelter.

“I'd like to make one more run before we call it a night,” Eileen said. “Everyone okay with that?”

Billy and I nodded. I called my dad and let him know what was going on.

“You're going to be tired tomorrow, Robbie,” he said. “Let me know when you're done, and I'll come and get you.”

We did one more circuit, each of us looking for the lumps of blankets and sleeping bags that marked another homeless person. For a long time, we saw no one.

“Up there,” Eileen said, pointing to a bus shelter ahead of us.

“Over there,” Billy said at almost exactly the same time, pointing to a figure lying in the doorway of an office building. Eileen stopped the van.

“I'll check the bus shelter,” Eileen said. “You two go and check out that doorway.”

Billy waited for me to join him, and we set off across the street to investigate the blanketed figure.

The person—I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman—lay on top of a couple of old sleeping bags, covered only with a thin, worn blanket. On a night as cold as this, I wondered, why wouldn't the person have used the sleeping bags to cover up? I shivered as a gust of arctic air sent some old newspapers swirling. An empty bottle, propelled by the wind, rolled out of the alley next to the building and stopped at my feet. I glanced at it—a whiskey bottle.

“We'd better wake him up,” Billy said. “It's the only way to make sure he's okay.” He started to bend down.

“Wait!” I said, grabbing his arm.

So far everyone we had approached had been awake or had at least stirred at our arrival. But this person seemed to be fast asleep. What if Billy startled him—or her? What if the person responded by attacking him? My mind flashed back to my encounter with Mr. Duffy in the homeless shelter basement.

“I have to wake him up, Robyn,” Billy said. “It'll be okay. I've done this before.”

I stood back a few steps, just to be on the safe side, and watched him bend down and reach for a shoulder. He gave a gentle shake.

“Hello,” he said. “Hello.”

No response.

I edged in close to Billy. The person hadn't moved. Billy pulled the blanket down a little so that he could see who he was shaking. It was a man with a scruffy beard. He was lying on his side with his face pressed in against the door. Billy shook him again, more vigorously this time. The man fell over onto his back—Mr. Duffy. But his eyes were still closed.

Billy glanced at me. Then he shook him again, even harder.

“Mr. Duffy,” he said. “Wake up, Mr. Duffy. We've got a hot drink for you.”

There was something funny about the way he was lying. So still. Too still. I crouched down beside Billy, no longer afraid that Duffy would lash out at me, and loosened the scarf, stiff with grease and grit, that was wound around his neck. Billy looked bleakly at me as I pulled my mitten off and gingerly pressed my fingers against his neck to check for a pulse.

“You'd better get Eileen,” I said.

  .    .    .

Eileen did the same thing I had done—she felt for a pulse. Then she fished out a cell phone, called 911, and asked them to send an ambulance.

“Is he—” Billy began.

“I'm not a doctor,” Eileen said, her face grim. “So I have to call. It's procedure.”

Eileen urged us to go back to the van to wait, but I couldn't make myself go. I kept checking my watch, waiting for the paramedics to show. Maybe it wasn't hopeless. Maybe there was something they could do.

Finally the paramedics arrived. So did a police cruiser. After the paramedics had examined Mr. Duffy and contacted a hospital, Duffy was pronounced dead. The police called the coroner. Billy turned and walked back to the van. He sat there, his head bowed slightly, until the police approached him. They talked to each one of us alone. They asked me to tell them everything I knew about Mr. Duffy. It didn't amount to much. They asked me twice exactly when we had spotted him, what we had done when we approached him, what we had touched, and where exactly we had stepped.

“What happens now?” I heard Billy ask one of the police officers.

“The coroner will probably order an autopsy,” the officer said, “to determine cause of death.” He gave us a sympathetic look as he closed his notebook. “What you kids are doing is great. If there were more people like you around, the world would be a better place.”

By the time the police left, it was nearly two in the morning. On our way back to the shelter, I got out my phone and called my dad again.

“Robbie, I was just about to call you,” he said. “I was getting worried.” When I told him what had happened, he said, “You and Billy stay put. I'll be there as soon as I can.”

When we got back to the shelter, everyone seemed to know what had happened. Eileen and Art Donovan huddled together in the outside the front door. I saw Billy talking to Ben. Ben glanced at me, a grim expression on his face. My stomach clenched when he and Billy walked toward me.

“I still can't believe it,” Billy said. “Mr. Duffy was practically the first person I met when I started volunteering here. I saw him almost every time I came down.”

Ben looked sharply at me. “If you hadn't said anything to Mr. Donovan, Mr. Duffy wouldn't have been barred from the shelter. He would have showed up on his own when the temperature dropped. We wouldn't have had to go looking for him. And you wouldn't have found him dead.”

I stared at him, stung. Was he right? Was I responsible?

“Hey,” Billy said. “It's not Robyn's fault. We don't even know how he died. Maybe it's like the police said. Maybe it was natural causes. Or something else wrong with him. You know as well as I do that people on the street develop all kinds of health problems.”

I sure hoped that Billy was right.

“Sure,” Ben said. “It's the coldest night of the year and we find him dead under one thin blanket. Definitely natural causes.”

“He could have gone someplace else,” I said. “There are plenty of shelters—”

“He didn't feel comfortable in most of those places,” Ben said. “But he felt safe here. I told Mr. Donovan that.”

That was news to me.

A sleek, black Porsche pulled up outside. I raised a hand to wave at the driver. Ben arched an eyebrow as he looked from the car to me. I felt his eyes on me, but I refused to look at him. I grabbed Billy's hand, and we ran down the steps and got into my father's car.

CHAPTER
FIVE

T

he next day, when Morgan and I were on our way out of school, she nudged me in the ribs.

“Look who's here,” she said, grinning at me. She pointed down the stairs. Ben was leaning against the wall just inside the main doors. “He's really cute, Robyn. You two would look great together.”

“He hates me, Morgan. He practically accused me of killing a homeless person.”

“I know. But that's ridiculous,” she said. “He probably came to apologize.” She waved at him. “Hi Ben.”

Ben nodded in acknowledgement, but he kept his eyes on me. Morgan poked me with her elbow again.

“If I end up with a bruise, you're going to be sorry, Morgan.”

“Look at the way he's looking at you,” she whispered. “He's definitely interested. I can tell.” She flashed me another grin, said, “I have to run,” and retreated to a bank of lockers down the hall, where she pretended to busy herself with a lock that wasn't hers.

Ben stood where he was. He stared at me but didn't say a word.

“What's the matter?” I said. The way he was looking at me gave me the creeps.

“Mr. Duffy didn't die of natural causes. It wasn't a heart attack or a stroke or anything like that.”

If you'd just glanced at him, you would have thought he was perfectly calm. You had to look closely to see that he was trembling all over. I started to get a bad feeling.

“What did he die of?” I said, even though I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.

“He froze to death.”

I felt sick inside.

“That's awful,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

“You should be.” He was blaming me. He was definitely blaming me.

“I'm sure everyone who knew him is sorry, Ben.”

“Right,” he said. “But it's not
everyone's
fault. If you hadn't ratted him out to Mr. Donovan—”

“I'm sorry,” I said again. “But I was upset. He scared me. I was bleeding.” I touched the ugly bandage on the right side of my face. “I told Mr. Donovan that I didn't think he meant to hurt me. I never meant for anything to happen to him.”

“I wish you'd never come down to the shelter,” Ben said. “Then this never would have happened.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm really sorry.”

Ben glared at me a moment longer before turning and stalking out of the school.

Morgan came back to join me. “I guess that didn't go so well, huh?” she said.

  .    .    .

“Do you think I did the wrong thing?” I asked my father when I got to his place after school.