Too Hot to be Outside

I was working diligently in our jam-packed cold storage room condensing and piling away skids of fresh produce to make room for tomorrow’s order. Having cleared a skid, I picked up the heavy and cumbersome empty pallet and carried it above my head, kicking open the swinging door and marching out. I was stopped by my favorite co-worker, Dylan, who smirked at me and had a comment to make about my shameless showing-off.

               “Don’t work yourself too hard, Hercules. Today is supposedly the hottest day ever.” He had placed special emphasis on the word ‘ever,’ as if there was more to his comment than just the usual banter.

               “Hottest day ever?”

               “Apparently. The guy on the radio was just talking about all the records this heat wave is breaking and he says that today is not only the hottest day of the year so far, but the hottest temperature ever recorded in London.”

               I grinned at him “And here we are, spending all day walking in and out of the cooler. Lucky us! I never thought I’d say this, Dylan, but I’m glad to be here.”

               He chuckled back. “For sure. We get paid shit and treated like shit, but at least we stay cool when it’s too hot to be outside.”

               I went to the loading dock and threw the pallet on top of the stack, and checked the time on the receiving dock phone. It was 4:30, and I was done at 6:30. It was time for my last break. I walked past the produce section and hollered at Dylan that I was taking my break and he nodded back in acknowledgement. I ran up the stairs and into the locker room to grab my phone and headphones. Glen was sitting on the bench when I got there, changing out of his uniform. I asked him the obvious question:

               “You done?”

               “Yeah, 8-4:30 today. You?”

               “6:30. Break time and then back for the fourth quarter!”

               Glen nodded and smiled at me. Then he pointed over to the corner of the room “Hey… is that your tent?”

“Yep, that’s mine. I had to get a new one today. Some assholes came and destroyed my other one last night.”

Glen was shocked and a little concerned. “Is everything alright?”

               I heaved a sigh. It had been a long and awful day, but I had been trying to keep a brave face on and soldier through it. It was upsetting for me to think about, but I made the decision to talk about it. Glen was a good listener. He was sympathetic and genuinely concerned about my well-being, and I always felt better after talking to him. 

               “Honestly Glen, I’m pretty pissed off right now. I’ve been trying not to think about it. I was camped out by the Carling skate park. That probably wasn’t the greatest idea, but bylaw enforcement never bothers me there and it’s got a porta-potty. I’ve been camping there for about six weeks without issues, but last night was the lucky night. I woke up to guys talking near my tent and someone started spray painting it.”   

I felt a tight feeling in my throat and I could tell that my face was flushing a little. Glen shook his head disapprovingly, but listened without interrupting.

“I heard them run back when I started opening the zipper, and I grabbed my mallet and went outside. There were four of them. I probably looked ridiculous standing out there in my underwear holding a mallet, and they didn’t leave. One of them had a whip – who the hell goes around at night carrying a whip? He started lashing it at me and there wasn’t much I could do. I can’t actually hit one of them with the mallet, or they’ll wind up in a coma or dead,”

               “And then it’s your ass,”

               “Exactly. Then I’m charged with aggravated assault or murder, sitting in the courtroom listening to his mom cry about what a sweet gentle boy he was, and before you know it, I’m a poster boy for…” I made air quotes with my fingers and said with a dramatic flair “increasingly violent and dangerous homeless encampments.” 

               “So then what happened?”

               “I hunkered down in the tent but wouldn’t leave. The one guy was whipping the tent, the other guy was spray painting it, the other two stayed back and one of them was even trying to tell his buddy to cut it out, but nope. So I called 911.”

               “Did they get them?”

               I shook my head, bitterly disappointed. “No, they got away. But at least the cops showed up and scared them off. But by the time they left, they’d pulled apart the poles and torn it all to hell. Poles I could maybe have replaced, but it’s got a big tear in the one side and it’s no good now.” I slapped the carrying case for my brand-new tent I had purchased that morning on my way to work. “Hence the replacement.”

               “What did you do? I guess you couldn’t have slept in it after that?”

               “No, I couldn’t, and I didn’t really want to stick around anyway. I had to sit in McMahen park and wait for six o’clock to roll around so I could get in to the storage place.”

               “Jeez man, so you’ve been up all night because of this”

               I laughed. “Yeah. It’s been a long day alright.”

               “I’m glad you’re OK, though, Ian.”

               “So am I. I’m grateful the cops showed up when they did. It was funny how scared they were though, the kid with the spray paint was all choked, yelling that I was a pussy for calling the cops.”

               Glen chimed in sympathetically “Called YOU a pussy, after they attacked you while you were sleeping”

               “Yup.”

               “So what are you going to do tonight? I guess you don’t want to go back there again”

               “No, definitely not. Tonight, I’m going to try out the encampment in Ann Street Park. I’ve been avoiding the tent cities. I’ve heard a lot of bad things about stuff that goes on there and I didn’t want to risk getting mixed up in any of that. But, a group of drunk assholes is probably less likely to attack 20 tents than they are to attack one tent, so maybe it’s time to stop being anti-social. It could be worse if I get caught alone again.”

               “Safety in numbers!”

               “Exactly.”

               “Well I’m sorry that happened to you, Ian, and I hope things are better in the tent city. Are you back in tomorrow?”

               “Yeah, I’m closing tomorrow.”

               “I’m closing too. I’ll be seeing you then, you’ll have to let me know how it goes.”

               “For sure Glen. See you then, have a good night.”

               “You take care of yourself out there!”

               “Don’t worry, Glen, I will. See ya tomorrow.”

               Glen gave me a fist bump and left with his bike and backpack. I sat on a chair with my headphones on and didn’t leave the locker room for the rest of my break. The rest of the shift passed unremarkably. Like any Thursday it was dead. Dylan was a strong worker and so was I, and between the two of us we had all of the produce displays packed full on the sales floor and the back room neatly organized with plenty of time left over to screw around and find things to laugh about.  When 6:30 rolled around I got changed and grabbed one can of sardines, one can of mackerel, a 99 cent baguette and two cans of beer on the way out.

               As I walked out of the store I was greeted by a wall of wet, muggy, oppressive heat. I was sweating profusely by the time I had reached the edge of the parking lot. My storage locker was three kilometers away and I was running on roughly three hours of sleep and was exhausted. The walk seemed to take forever, but at least the beer was still cold when I got to McMahen park, across the street from the self-storage facility.

               I sat down at a picnic table there and wolfed down my food and beer. I sat staring off into the distance at the spot where I and two other men had been camped earlier that year. One of them, Terry, had been friendly and I’d gotten to know him a little bit. He had a job doing asphalt that paid under the table and kept his gear in a friend’s shed nearby. The other guy who had been here kept all this stuff in two shopping carts which he’d fastened together. He wasn’t social, but minded his own business and didn’t cause trouble so he had been fine in my book.

I had moved to this park after switching storage lockers and met Terry the first night, and then the other guy joined our budding encampment a couple of days later. But that had all changed when McMahen park was designated a “no-go zone” by city council and we were all rousted out by bylaw enforcement. I had never seen Terry or our other neighbor since. I was bitter about it – to get to the Ann Street Park encampment would be a long walk, carrying all my gear. If bylaw would just leave us alone, I’d be home by now.

After a few minutes of resting at the table I got up and went to my storage locker. I stuffed a large winter coat into my backpack for a makeshift pillow along with a few bottles of water.  When I was done gathering up everything I needed for the night I had the backpack on my back and my sleeping bag, slung over my shoulder and was carrying the tent with my other hand. The sleeping bag was big and heavy, and rolled into something that looked like an army duffel bag. It was rated for camping in the arctic at minus forty-five-degree temperatures and consisted of multiple concentric layers, with a wool blanket attached in to the very inside layer. It was a hassle to carry, but I had been very grateful for it during the winter.  Carrying everything was a bit of a balancing act but I had gotten used to it. I had been living outside for six months and had done this every day, back and forth from the locker to the camp site at night, and back to the locker and back to work in the morning. 

I felt a little self-conscious marching through the downtown core with my camping gear, but everywhere I looked there were grim reminders of just how much worse the situation could be. People with nowhere to store their stuff were pushing it in carts, others were lying on the sidewalk covered with blankets, apparently sleeping (but if they were dead, God only knows how long it would be before someone actually noticed.) I saw people looking dirty, ragged and disoriented wandering into traffic, talking to themselves with animated gesticulations and sometimes yelling angrily at nobody in particular. I counted my blessings; I had a storage locker to secure my gear, a gym membership so I could shower, and a job so I could pay for the locker and gym and feed myself. I couldn’t even imagine how miserable it would be without any of that – especially on the hottest day ever recorded in London.

Sometime after 8:00, I was finally within sight of Ann Street Park. I had walked almost half the length of the city at that point, and there was less than an hour of daylight left. I was eager to set up my tent and relax. As I approached the pathway leading to the encampment, the first thing I saw was a man chasing around a flock of geese. He was a large man, shirtless and sunburned, with a vacant look in his eyes and an intoxicated grin on his face. A few people who seemed to be his friends were trying to get him to leave the geese alone but he delighted in taunting, tormenting, threatening and scaring them. I felt a heavy sense of unease weighing my stomach down as I passed by the crowd. People being high and acting aggressive made me very nervous.

Things looked a little more promising as I continued down the pathway. I passed the community garden and saw someone washing herself with a garden hose. I hadn’t expected a source of running water. On the other side of the path, there was a porta-potty. Once I entered the wooded area where people were camped it was cool in the shade and it wasn’t long before I found some soft, level ground near the river on the outskirts of the encampment. I set up my tent, and breathed a great sigh of relief when I finished, stashed my gear inside and zipped it up. Today had been grueling. I sat on a fallen tree nearby, and it wasn’t long until I was approached by someone from the encampment.

“Hey, they’re not going to let you camp there”

I looked up at the speaker, not particularly happy to hear what he’d said. I was alert for the possibility of a confrontation, and he continued.

“Bylaw is going to kick you out in the morning. They don’t let anyone camp on that side of the pathway.”

I was relieved that he was just warning me about bylaw enforcement and not trying to bounce me. 

“I’ll be gone in the morning anyway,” I replied. “I’m out and about during the day and I’m just here to sleep at night. Thanks for warning me though.”

He nodded at me. “Okay then. Just so you know, they come around eight in the morning.” 

He turned and headed back. I sat and fended off mosquitoes, taking a closer look at the encampment. It was larger than what I could see from where I was sitting and stretched into the woods. The area closest to me abutted the concrete back wall of a parking garage and there were lights shining down onto it. From where I was sitting, I saw ten or so tents gathered in clusters of two and three. Some people had their area tarped off or had makeshift fences made out of sticks set up. As I looked around, I saw that one man was having a camp fire next to his tent which stood by itself in the open, surrounded by piles of his possessions. I decided this might be a good opportunity to be neighborly.

I found some large chunks of dead wood and broke into smaller pieces with a rock and carried an armload of firewood over to the camper. He saw me coming, and I greeted him.

“Mind if I join your fire?”

“Sure! I heard you over there breaking that wood.” My new neighbor gestured towards a stump close to the fire that would make a decent seat, and I sat down.

“They’re not going to let you camp over there, you know. Bylaw will come kick you out.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard. But I’m gone during the day so it’s not a big deal. I have to be up early so I’ll either be out of here when they show up or they’ll be my wake-up call.”

“That’s fine then. You want something to eat?” 

My neighbor, whose name was Dane, offered me a bag of large cheese buns and I took it and thanked him. We sat and talked for a short while, and I warmed up a little and decided to move my tent in closer with the group.  Dane helped me move it across the pathway, over next to his and said goodnight shortly after. It had gotten dark and I was looking forward to getting a good sleep. I crawled into my tent and unfurled my ground pad and my sleeping bag, tired but happy to finally be able to get a good night’s sleep.

Just as I was drifting off there was a commotion. I tried to ignore it at first, but when I heard a scream, I unzipped my tent and looked out to see what was going on. Not fifty feet from me, one of the other tents was engulfed in flame. A small crowd watched it burn, including its occupants who had managed to escape in time. There was a cacophony of shouting and arguing and while I couldn’t follow everything I was hearing, one thing was abundantly clear: The fire was not an accident, it had been set deliberately and the arsonist had escaped into the night. There were accusations and speculation flying about who had set it and why.

I didn’t join the crowd. I stayed huddled in my tent watching from inside. I decided immediately that tomorrow I wouldn’t be coming back here and that my only option was to search for another camping spot, somewhere well-hidden where I could have some peace of mind that I wouldn’t be found by anyone. For the time being, I would wait until the crowd died down, pack up my things and go sit in the park across from the storage locker again, waiting for 6AM so I could drop off my gear and pick up my gym bag and work clothes. Tonight was going to be another long, sleepless night.