The Lives Behind the Line at the Shelter

They all begin at the front desk and go far beyond.

Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash

This morning my shift at the shelter begins somewhere else. “Last name?” I ask the man standing at the front desk to sign in.

“Hello, Nurse,” the man says, “no, not yet, Doctor.”

The man looks past me and pumps some hand sanitizer into his palms and rubs them together. I wait, watching, and then the man looks back at me, tells me his last name, and moves on.

I don’t have a chance to ask him where he spent last night so I can record it in the online roster from the drop-down list that appears next to each man’s name—Outside, Jail, Other Shelter. But, I think—Hospital. That could be another option to add to the drop-down list.

Behind me on the other side of the front desk Becca is answering the phone and handing out supplies, rolling in her chair from drawer to bin and back again. The men are keeping her busy asking for socks, briefs, water, and hand-warmers, sometimes coming around trying to get seconds on one thing or another.

The days are longer now but still cold. Men are still coming in sooty and smelling of smoke from staying warm around fires, wherever they may kindle them, their eyes white against their blackened faces, their clothing smudged, charred in places.

“I’m gooder than better, can’t get better than gooder,” a man says as he comes around the front desk holding a white Styrofoam cup of coffee. “I don’t know why that’s stuck in my head, but it is,” he says.

“I don’t know why either,” I say, “but if it gets stuck in my head, I will know where it came from.” “You sure will! the man says,” smiling. He raises his cup and nods to me and then continues around the front desk, picking up his ditty where he left off.

Annette and Deena are working today, along with Shawn and Duane. Shawn is tall and lean, low-key but alert, with a cool, steady gaze. He’s older but new to the shelter. We met last week when I came in for my usual morning mail room shift. He holds a black belt in kempo. “I’m third in the rankings for my age group,” he told me then. “You’re the right kind of guy to work here!” I said. “Oh, well,” he said, “I just really try to live in the zen space, is all,” he said. “Even better,” I said.

Duane is short and strong with no patience for nonsense. He’s coming around the front desk now, past Annette and me, muscling a man out the front door who’s just said he has a gun.

“You go on now,” Duane says, one arm cradling the man’s shoulders, “you ain’t got no gun—go on outta here!”" Duane leans into the front door to push it open, draws the man out to the front steps, and comes back inside, shaking his head. “He ain’t got no gun,” Duane says, “don’t know why he gotta say that.”

“It’s supposed to be a quiet day,” Annette sighs, leaning against the front desk, “but people been saying the Q word.” Quiet—the jinx word. I learned about that last weekend. As soon as someone says it, something happens. Someone said it, and then that guy popped off that he had a gun.

Annette glances over by her office. “Michael,” she says, “you got to get up out the middle of the floor and pick up your garbage.” I look over the front desk and see Michael there, lying under a blanket, slippers on his feet. Annette goes over to help him up and move to a chair in the back near the t.v.

When she comes back she leans against the front desk again, and then after a moment she steps aside for a man who’s just come in. He whispers his name but I can’t hear him. “Last name, sir?” I ask. He holds up his right wrist to show me a white hospital band and points with his left hand to his name there on the band.

As I find his name in the online roster, he pulls open the top part of his shirt to show a scar down the middle of his chest, empurpled and bumpy like a trail of squashed plums. The man closes his eyes as he rebuttons his shirt and goes around to sit in the chair by the volunteer room, easing down slowly, closing his eyes again, and resting his head against the wall behind him.

Annette has watched him. “Let me have a water,” please, she says to me. I hand her a bottle from a case under the front desk and she takes it over to the man. She touches his knees with the bottle, he opens his eyes, and then she just lays the bottle across his lap and walks over to the intake room by the front door. Hospital, I think, eyeing the drop-down list by his name, the choice that’s not there to round out the other options.

Over by the phone Deena is getting ready to place an order for a Dollar General delivery. She’s taken a poll to see staff or other volunteers need anything. “Always being a sweetheart,” Shawn says. “God’s blessed me in many ways,” Deena says. No one needs anything. She goes to the staff room to place the order and returns in a few minutes, just when a group comes by with a couple of boxes of sack lunches.

Becca and I put one box on the counter and the other on the floor nearby, and then I start unloading the box on the counter, the men lining up and taking them as fast as I can put them out, some also trying to take two. Deena notices. “If you take two I’m gonna have a problem,” she warns. We finish off the first box and move on to the second, unloading it just as quickly. Becca takes the empty boxes back to the storage room for recycling.

About twenty minutes later a church van arrives to take any interested men to services. Deena doesn’t bother with the mic. “Hallelujah,” she booms, “heads up! Church bus just got here! Get out there if you wanna go! God loves all the little children! Terry! Stop running your mouth and go to church!” I see Terry, toggled in a duffel coat and scarf with his blond hair curling up from under his hat, shuttle out the front door to the van.

Becca has stepped away for a few minutes to go get some more supplies from upstairs. When the phone rings, I answer it. It’s a woman, asking if her husband is at the shelter. “I’m at the hospital,” she says, “about to get out, and I’m wondering if he can come and pick me up.”

My mind sort of stalls here, trying to figure this situation. She is getting out of the hospital and her husband is supposed to get her and take her—where?

“Let me see if he’s here,” I tell her. She gives me his name and I return to the roster to see if he’s here. He isn’t. I let her know. “You can leave a message for him if you want,” I tell her. “Oh, okay. I will,” she says. She gives me her name and number, and I write them down on a notepad by the phone.

After I hang up, I go back to the online roster and scroll through it to find the man’s name. When I see it I click a plus sign by his name that lets me enter a message. Call your wife, I type, followed by her phone number. If her husband comes in, whoever is doing sign-in will see the message next to his name and can give it to him.

Just as I finish another man comes to the front desk to sign in. He’s neatly barbered, wearing khakis and a maroon windbreaker, glasses. No smudges, no charring, no smokey smell. He looks as if he could be on his lunch break from one of the nearby office buildings.

“Last name?” I ask. “Parrott,” he says, “like the bird but two t’s.” I find his name in the roster and check the box next to it. “Got it,” I say, thank you.

Hearing him say his name reminds me of when I introduced myself to a man here named Stephen a few months ago. “Polly,” I said, “like ‘Polly want a cracker’.” Stephen laughed and smiled and moved on to get some coffee.

Stephen came back a few minutes later. “So," I gotta know,”” he said, what else does Polly want?” I was stumped. No one had asked me that before. Nothing came to mind.

Today Stephen’s question echoes and mingles in my mind with the coffee man’s jingle and I think, maybe, I have an answer now—something better than gooder, because gooder is not good enough.

To learn more about my experiences at the shelter, please see Angels, Fire Here, Angels, Fire Everywhere, and It's Cold Outside and Crowded in the Shelter.

You may also support my work at Buy Me a Coffee.