The Job - Michael James

When people ask me about my job I try to explain that I don’t think of it as job, ‘cause that’s what you do to pay the bills. What I do is more  in the way of a vocation, something I do because I like doing it, and because I think it’s something our society is in need of. I mean, I have met very few who could handle what I do, who face what I have to face day in and day out. Most would fold within a few weeks of starting; as a matter of fact, most do just that: throw in the towel after a month or so, often not even collecting their pay checks. It takes a certain kind of person to keep the edge needed to be effective in my line of work. You can’t go soft or sentimental and still do a day’s good work.

I guess I should thank my mother for the skills and fortitude I have. Like, she didn’t even want a kid, let alone a girl to begin with, being single and no prospect of a husband. So when I came along, she wasn’t entranced, you might say; she wasted no time going gaga over a baby. And as soon as I could understand her lingo, it was chores for me after school and all evening. She earned her living making candles for boutiques so I could be employed in any weather and at any time, day or night. And it was night mostly, ‘cause I had to go to school in the day when she needed the apartment for herself and whichever partner she was entertaining at the moment. So when I returned, it was first the belt to straighten me out, then the work bench.

Of course I grew up hating my mom, vowing I’d do something tricky with her as soon as I was strong enough. I can’t remember how old I was the first and only time I laid into her, but I sure can remember the incident vividly. She had come at me with the belt, as usual, though that time it was going to be special since I was late coming home from school. But I had picked up a nasty, jagged stick on the way home, and held it behind my back. When she let me have it, I lashed her about the legs with the stick until she cried,”Uncle.” She was bleeding and crying and yelling all at the same time, telling me to “Get out and never come back!”

I took my time while she mopped up the blood on her legs, putting a few things in my back-pack, making sure I was provided for that night, which I expected to pass on the golf course nearby. Then I banged out of the apartment. Of course, people came looking for me but they didn’t find me.

The next day I went to school as if nothing had happened, and indeed, nothing out of the ordinary did transpire until near the closing bell when a kid came into the classroom with a note for the teacher telling me to go to the principle’s office at once.

Instead of doing that, I walked jauntily out of the main gate, anticipating freedom, and smack into the arms of a waiting staff member who accompanied me to the place I was supposed to visit. There I was told that the school didn’t tolerate such behavior and that I was forthwith expelled. I would probably be visited in the Hall by the officer in charge of young offenders the next day, who would send me to juvenile court where a public defender would represent me. I would have a hearing before a judge and receive a sentence. Meanwhile, I could cool my heels in the tank for other juvenile offenders awaiting trial, six miles from city hall, since my mother had signed a complaint against me. And waiting to make sure I arrived there in a timely fashion, there appeared the local truant officer, grinning widely, who spun me around and zip-tied my hands behind my back.
 

“Someone’s gonna pay for this,” I growled in a low voice.

“Yeah,” she answered. “You, honey! Now git!” And she shoved me forward and out to the waiting squad car.

When I entered the Hall I was led to a huge woman I learned later the girls all called “Butch” out of her hearing. It meant nothing to me. “Reception” was a windowless room off the entrance to the concrete building. It had a steel door, unlocked by a key attached to a chain on Butch’s belt.  She pushed me through the doorway. From that wide band of black leather hung other cop paraphernalia, what looked like a taser, spray, and bracelets.    

Butch sat facing me on the only chair and told me the procedure. She would undo the zip tie; I would strip; she would check me for weapons, drugs, and anything dangerous to myself or others. She would confiscate any of those; I would dress in the grey sweat clothes of the Hall; she  would zip me up again, and we would go to the processing center. Had I any questions? I hadn’t. I was learning fast. She would, of course, not tolerate disobedience or violence.

She was very thorough, leaving no stone unturned, so to speak. I was to find out later how much fun such searches can become.

My introduction to our system of criminal justice left me sure of one thing: I wanted to be on the other side. I would become a model juvenile prisoner so that when my file was sealed on my eighteenth birthday, I could work towards becoming the model law enforcement officer.

Sentencing was not lenient due to my mother’s vivid description of my “unwarranted attack.” Nothing was said about her beating me with a belt, and my so-called defense lawyer didn’t raise the issue. Make it clean, he said, and you’ll get the minimum for a first-time offender. I did. I would have to finish high school incarcerated. Fine, I thought, the better to learn the ropes. So I cozied up to each of the officers in turn questioning them to determine which hoops they had had to jump through to get a badge. They could do it, then I could, I thought.

Well, long story short, I jumped through the hoops, earned my stripes, and ended up here, at this detention center for foreign female fugitives and tentative terrorists, my function being the collection of intelligence through interrogation. My bosses say I’m good at my job; I get great written reports and have had no complaints from any of the legalistic sissies who hang around  the political arm of the center.

One feature I like about the work is its variety. Not only are the prisoners different from each other in character, courage, and content; they are sometimes so devious as to fool even my female co-workers. The male interrogators they fool all the time. In fact, I have been called upon several times in the last two years to question male prisoners who were particularly intransigent. But I prefer the women partly because I know from experience what it feels like when I work on them in the wrecking room. I am able to create a crescendo of pain and emotion, hold them there, then cut the ground from under them to drop them into despair. It’s at that point they usually give me everything they’ve got, when they have no more hope of continuing as they were. The only thing they want then is cessation of pain. 

The correct application of pain has been the study of certain groups since the Dominicans developed the tools used by the Inquisition. And of course people like Goebels and his team left us detailed, scientific instructions for carrying the study to the next level in documents captured by the Allies after the collapse of the Third Reich, documents which have never been declassified and to which only students of advanced methods of interrogation have had access. Which is just as well, of course, since in their weaker, revengeful moments, some might employ such methods on those who had dealt unkindly with them when they were young and defenseless.

This brings me to my mother.

A vacation is coming my way soon and Mother has invited me to join her for a week in a house on the beach on James Island, in the San Juans. The currents around the island are fierce; six knots is small talk at maximum ebb. I’m still working on the details of  my plans for Mother, but already they’re shaping up to be the greatest tribute to my trade since Torquemada.