His gloves, so valuable these days, are useless, burned while dragging a man from a tent fire early on Saturday.
It happened at 2 a.m., on an icy night of no mercy. It involved three men trying to sleep near the intersection of North Main Street and Interstate 393. Perhaps that area is familiar to you. The place where a disabled, homeless man in a wheelchair, Gene Parker, was killed last January because no one, not the state, not the city, would plow the darn sidewalk.
And now the place where this fire burned. Dan Andrus, Concord’s fire chief, told me by phone the cause probably had something to do with cooking equipment inside the tent.
It could have been worse. Homeless people often are good neighbors. That’s what happened here.
“I wasn’t concerned with my gloves when there was a human being on fire,” Shawn Joubert told me while eating breakfast at the Friendly Kitchen. “They melted. It was pretty bad.”
Joubert told me not to worry, that he’d find a new pair of gloves. I also met Ben Barry, who helped Joubert pull the victim to safety. And I spoke to Daniel English, who told me from his bed at Concord Hospital that his leg hurts, but he’s fine.
And we can’t forget the human-looking figure, portraying a dead body, dropped off during the cover of darkness this weekend, wrapped tightly in trash bags from head to toe on the sidewalk in front of the state house, at the foot of the Nativity Scene, with signs taped to it that read, “This family was Homeless too,” and “Live Freeze And Die.”
The source is unknown, but the reference is clear: Parker is dead. Who’s next?
Connect the dots, and the issue takes shape, just as it does each winter. People are homeless. It’s cold, below zero the past few nights. The homeless shelter, at St. Peter’s Church, doesn’t open until next month. So people try to stay warm, and sometimes people die, and sometimes fires start.
The severity of the Saturday morning fire depends on whom you talk to. Andrus called it a tent fire. The people who were there say it was much worse.
Joubert said flames shot 20 feet into the air. Barry called it an explosion. He said he thought a shotgun had been fired and his chest vibrated.
Whatever. We know it might not have happened had these people had a place to sleep. A place with a roof.
“They better open that f shelter soon,” Barry said, while scraping eggs from his plate at the Friendly Kitchen. “When is that supposed to be?”
Jan. 4 at the earliest, we’ve been told. The shelters once available at the First and South Churches have closed after more than 10 years, short on resources.
Some of the homeless, we know, have had little to no interest in bettering themselves, in getting back on their feet. But the people I met and spoke to on Saturday didn’t fit that mold.
Joubert, 38, is a Concord native, dark and slender with a kind smile. He said he worked for 12 years as a roofer, and in fact recently had a roof over his head, living with his now-estranged wife. He said the company he worked for began subcontracting work out, meaning there wasn’t enough left for him to do.
He said he wants to work. “I’m trying to start my own business, roofing and siding,” Joubert told me. “But I’m trying to picture how it’s going to go through an estimate with me rolling up to the job on a bicycle.”
He said he has a vision for the future.
“Goals? To get my life back, and what I mean by that is simple things,” he said. “A roof over my head, a job, have my wife want to live with me, if I’m a man who can take care of my wife, provide for my family.”
Barry, who wears a long, scruffy beard, is 40. He eventually wants to find his birth certificate, get a social security card, find a place to live. Now, though, he has one goal in life: stop drinking. He shook a little as we spoke at the Friendly Kitchen.
“I got to stop drinking,” Barry told me. “I went into detox at the hospital like three times already and I have to go again.”
He has a girlfriend who he said was in the hospital as of Saturday. He wants to be with her.
“She doesn’t want to come next to me because she needs to stop drinking,” Barry said. “She has it bad, so I don’t blame her for not coming by me. It just hurts my heart because I’ve been with her for like three years.”
Barry asked to use my phone to check on his girlfriend and the burn victim whom he pulled through the snow to safety. When he came back to the table he said, “I couldn’t find out. I don’t know his last name.”
It’s English. Daniel English. He served in Vietnam. He cooked and washed dishes in Tilton, lost his job and said he’s been homeless for seven months. He doesn’t know what happened Saturday, in the cold and the dark. He said one of his legs, the lower half, has painful burns. He said he has a propane tank.
“Nothing was lit,” English told me by phone. “I was going to my tent and I was halfway through it and there was an explosion in my tent. That’s all I know. Two people dragged me out.”
That’s Barry and Joubert. They hang out together, warming up at the bus station, the library, where ever they can find a spot, where ever they can blend in.
The past two nights, both featuring sub-zero temperatures, were rough. “I slept off and on,” Barry said. “I have a sleeping bag, but my feet are cold. My socks, they’re not that warm.”
At the end of the day, they sleep in the area near the Friendly Kitchen. Near the spot where a man died while spinning his wheelchair on the eastbound lane of I-393, not able to use the unplowed sidewalk. Near the spot where a wheelchair was placed last week, reminding motorists of Gene Parker.
And near the place where a fire glowed in the wee hours Saturday.
“It was scary, man,” Joubert said. “I got to get some new gloves.”