Shelter

This Bobbie Burns is no poet, but there are fine details and anecdotes in his thin and modest journal of 41 days in a Tucson, Ariz., homeless shelter. ""Feeling like reading, I go to the library. I notice an old man reading a book in the corner. He's wearing mismatched shoes. I think this is all he can afford, but someone tells me the man refuses to wear matching shoes. No one knows why."" An Army vet and college graduate, Burns gives us too-quick glimpses of the shelter, his background and how he painstakingly saves up his money from substitute-teaching--mainly at a reservation 50 miles outside of Tucson--to be able to rent his own apartment. (Unfortunately, as his epilogue tells us, on his own, he slides back into alcoholism before going to Alcoholics Anonymous.) Habitually cautious in his judgments of others, he tells of a shelter client who becomes infuriated about the theft of his watch. When the client offers a reward for its return, someone comes forward with it; the ""finder"" receives a handshake. This scene evokes one of Burns's rare but useful generalizations on the homeless experience: ""Keeping time is what most homeless people do best--with or without a watch. Time to work. Time to find food. Time to find shelter. Time to move on. Time to panhandle. Time to drink away the pain. Time to stay warm. Time to ask for help. The homeless know what time it is. It's time to survive."" While neither is as compelling or illuminating as Timothy E. Donohue's In the Open: Diary of a Homeless Alcoholic or Lee Stringer's recent Grand Central Winter: Stories from the Street, Shelter is sincere and finally quite touching. 11-city shelter tour. (Oct.)