The Night Watchman

 

 

 

 

 

     Man oh man, there was a lot to think about.

     Frank was seventy-three years old, so he knew this.  There were oceans of stuff to ponder, and all the time in the world.  In fact, one could occupy plenty of time just thinking about all the many facets of possible thought.  Frank smiled at this potential for limitlessness, for infinity.

     Frank pulled the tab on his third can of beer.  Drained half of it in three huge swallows.  Ah, fantastic.  He paused.  Drained the rest.  Threw the can over his shoulder.  The noise of the can hitting the pavement was incredibly loud in the silence.  It sent up a brief metallic echo.  Frank decided he'd think about the quality of that sound and the echo for the rest of the lap he was on—lap five.  A few drops of beer had spilled down the front of his security guard uniform.  He didn't notice.  It was dark out. 

     He replayed the sound in his mind, the piercing sound of aluminum striking pavement.  Not necessarily a pretty sound.  But Frank didn't care about pretty.  The darkness stripped pretty and ugly right out of the equation.

     There was a lot to think about.

     His third beer hadn't lasted half the lap around the building.  He was trying to get better about that, trying to make each can last longer on his rounds.  He wished he had taken two cans from the ice chest he kept stowed away in his car.  Ah, but that would spoil the game.  He was only allowed one can per circle.  That's how it worked.  The beauty in it was that he'd surely make his way back around to the parking lot.  That was guaranteed.  It was carved in stone.  The sun could forget to rise.  The moon could smash into the earth.  Frank would circle the building again.  And again.  There was no could about it.  There was only would.  It was what life was all about.  Circles.  Cycles.  Lap one, lap two, lap forty...

     There was a lot to think about. 

     Frank had become a security guard at the age of twenty-seven and had started out patrolling the external grounds of the same building around which he now paced.  Forty plus years of walking around the same building and drinking beer: drinkwalking.  It was a county building he patrolled five nights a week, and he was damned if he knew why they felt they needed a nighttime security guard.  Nothing ever happened here.  Ever.  He didn't really care.  Nobody bothered him.  The last time Frank had interacted with his supervisor was so long ago that it was hazy in his memory.  It didn't matter.  He had no use for the past.

     It was peaceful, walking the smooth paved pathways in the dark.  It provided him with exquisite opportunity to think.  He had all the cracks in the walkways memorized.  It took no more effort for Frank to avoid stepping on one than it did to draw a breath.

     As he made his rounds he rarely felt like he was at work.  It had stopped feeling like a job to Frank decades ago.  He passed the quiet hours of the night thinking about life, about the stars, the cosmos.  

     What exactly was the universe?  He liked to imagine alien worlds and was quite convinced that, at the same time he watched over the building, somewhere up in the night sky was an alien world and an alien security guard patrolling the grounds of some unimaginable alien fortress.  

     He rarely thought about possessions; his car, his small one-bedroom home were both modest and both paid for.  He had never been married.  He rarely thought about his paycheck.  It was automatically deposited into his account every month where it joined up with his savings.  He never saw it.  He wasn't sure how much they paid him or what his balance might be.  Decades had passed like this.  Maybe centuries, for all he knew.  He drank beer, he got older and he walked around the building.  And he thought about the universe.

     There had never been trouble at the building while Frank was on duty.  There had never been anyone at the building while he was on duty.  He made friends with a cat.  He talked to the cat.  The cat's collar said Jimmy, but Frank called it Buddy.  "Hey Buddy," he would say, "what's going on?  Find any grub around here?  Where ya off to next, Buddy?"

     Once he poured a small puddle of beer on the ground.  The cat scampered over to it, gave it an experimental lick or two and frowned at Frank.  The cat was easily frightened by Frank.  It hadn't come around in over two weeks.  Frank sort of missed the cat.  He never saw anyone.  He was lonely, but he was happy.

     Over the years he'd begun to walk slower.  He told himself it was deliberate, not the result of his age.  He walked slower because he understood it slowed his thoughts down, and his slower thoughts seemed to resonate deeper.  Clearer. 

     Frank always knew the present day and date.  If the date ended with an even number, he circled the building clockwise.  On odd number dates he went counter-clockwise.  He had the constellations memorized for any time of year.  He knew the routes of the planets in the night sky.  Not that this was helpful information to have; he would never get lost circling the building.  It was just another avenue of thought.

     Now, he turned the corner and ahead of him was the lot where his car was parked.  It was the only car in sight, and it sat in the same parking stall each night.  

     He veered away from the building.  When he got to his car he opened the rear door, slid the lid of the cooler open and got his fourth beer of the night. 

     "How about a beer, Frank?"  He said.  "I'd love one!"

     He smiled.

     He looked at the cooler with some fondness, loaded to the brim with ice cubes and frosty cans of brew.  It was always there, always cold.  He never ran out of beer.  He shut his car back up, and headed on to lap six with a fresh can in his hand.  He pulled the tab with a renewed glide in his stride.  There was much yet tonight to think about, and he was only on lap six.

     The night went on.

     Some time later, Frank was on his sixteenth can of beer and twenty-third lap around the building.  He was watching his feet do the ancient left, right, left, right trick when his thoughts turned to numbers and how each one was special.  Beer number 16.  Add the digits and you get 7, a tall, confident number of power.  Lap 23, add the digits and you get 5, an axis number, a central number.  5 plus 7 is 12, add the digits and you get 3.  Another number full of mystery.  The seventh lap was far different from the thirtieth lap.  The first beer was nothing like the eleventh beer.  They were all their own world, telling their own story.  Number 9 was perhaps the most intriguing of them all.  He'd thought about the number 9 many nights.  Perhaps tonight, it was the nine-hundred and ninety-ninth time he'd thought about it! 

     Again, Frank smiled.

     Soon he rounded the corner that gives on the parking lot again.  He once again veered off the pathway for his car and a fresh brew.  Beer number 17.  

     It was just as he was opening the car door when he saw a dark figure leap from a perimeter fence.  Not a cat, but a person crouched on the driveway that runs a rectangle around the building. 

     Frank halted, squinting.  Judging from where he stood it was a small person.  He could make out nothing more than a silhouette.  But he recognized instantly the slow, cautious way the person moved.  It was the movement of a person who did not want to be noticed. 

     Frank was drunk.  Not quite as drunk as he got to be toward the end of his shifts, but drunk just the same.  He had no gun.  Only a walkie-talkie he had never used.  He was sure the batteries were long dead.  As Frank was taught years and years ago, the first thing to do was to make the prowler aware of his presence and hope it was enough to urge them away.

     Frank moved away from his car, beer in hand.  Once alongside the building again, he resumed his slow thoughtful stride toward the rear of the building where the figure was hunched between a pair of shrubs.  Frank began counting his steps, trying to enjoy each number.  When he got to fifty and the prowler had not budged, Frank prepared himself for a confrontation.  He didn't like the idea of confronting a stranger, but it was his job.  And he felt ready.

     Frank turned directly toward the figure and picked up the pace.

     "Excuse me," Frank said.  His voice was rough, strong, free of any drunken slur.  "You, in the bushes.  Can I help you?"

     There was no response.

     Frank was a little put off to notice the figure didn't seem at all aware of his approach.  Surprise was not how he wanted to confront the stranger.  Surely, they had to have heard Frank’s voice.  The lack of acknowledgement made him think for a moment of someone sneaking up behind a deaf person.

     Probably some kid with his headphones on...

     Frank now stood ten feet directly in front of the hunched figure, unable to see more than a vague silhouette.  It was too dark for details.  Unless the person was blind, there was no way they could not see Frank.       "I said can I help—"

     "Don't shoot me, mister!"

     Frank peered into the dark.  "What are you doing here?"

     "Well, uh," the prowler had the high-pitched squeak of a frightened boy, "I was just... sneaking out.  I—I didn't see you."

     "Sneaking out?"

     "Yeah,” the boy said, stepping out from the his hiding place. “Please don't tell my parents!  I'll mow your lawn, I'll wash your patrol car, I'll clean the... say, is that a can of beer?"

     Frank had to glance at the can himself, having forgotten he was holding it.  He hadn't spoken with another person in so long.  He found it difficult to proceed.  "Yes, it is."

     The boy raised his eyebrows and was quiet.

     "You snuck out of your house and came here?"

     "Well, yeah.  Don't arrest me, okay?"

     "Okay, I won't.  Why sneak out?"

     "Cause if I don't, things get real boring.  Are you sure you're allowed to drink beer on duty?"

     Frank found himself a little overwhelmed.  He wondered if this kid was perhaps the wandering cat, Jimmy, morphed into a human.  He couldn't think of a reply.  He was still feeling the adrenaline of a possible confrontation.  He took a deep breath and tried to clear his mind.

     "I never saw a drunk cop before!"  The kid was brimming with excitement.

     "I'm not drunk."

     "Hey, you don't even have a gun.  Is that why?  They don't want drunk cops to have guns?"

     "I'm not a cop."

     "Yeah, I guess you're too old to be a cop.  They won't give you a billy club either?"

     "No."

     "Where's your patrol car?"

     "I don't have one."

     "Can I have a beer?"

     "No."

     "But you have one, and you're on duty."

     "I know."

     "I won't tell if you give me one."

     Frank had to get away from this kid.  He wanted to go back to his thoughts, his meditative pace around the building.  

     "Kid, you shouldn't be prowling around at night time.  If I had been an officer, you'd have had a gun pointed at your head the minute you jumped off that fence."  This was more than Frank had said to anyone in a long time.

     "How 'bout one beer then I'll go home?"

     "Alright, you can have one." 

     "Yes!"

     "But then you better... sneak back in,” Frank said. “Okay?"

     "Okay."

     Frank led the kid back to his car.  He gave the kid one of the frosty cans from the cooler.

     "This isn't a patrol car like the ones in the movies."

     "No."

     "There's supposed to be a shotgun right there,"  the kid pointed to the console to the right of the driver's seat.  He then walked around to the other side of the car.  "No radar gun, either."  He popped his beer and sipped.  "You know, my dad says cops are just guys who didn't make the football team."

     Frank sighed.  "Does he say that."

     "Yep.  Gee, mister, you sure got a lot of junk on your seat."  The kid tried the passenger-side door handle.

     "Don't open that."  

     Too late.

     Piles of Frank’s mail spilled onto the asphalt. 

     "Woah, mister, you should get a garbage can!"

     Frank stared at the kid.  What kind of creature was this?  And how did it manage to so efficiently disrupt his long peaceful laps around the building?

     Frank liked to pick up his mail in the evening as he walked down the driveway to his car for work.  He would throw it on his passenger seat and skim through it in his car later on.  Many times he was so drunk at the end of his shift that he simply forgot to bother with it.  So it piled up.  The kid was right about at least that much—there had been a lot of junk on the seat.

     Now this kid was sipping one of his beers and wading through a scattering of his letters, brochures and junk mail.

     Thumbing through the envelopes, the kid said: "Mister, you must have a gazillion friends."

     "Actually, I don’t have any."

     "Haha, you mean you're a weirdo?"

     "Look, I think it's time you ran—“

     "Say!  A police badge!  Can I have this, mister?  Please?"  The kid had found Frank’s spare badge in the mess of envelopes and fliers on the asphalt.

     "No, I need that."

     "But you already have one right there on your shirt."

     "You better go back home now.  And I need both my badges, they're how I..."  Frank trailed off.  He was looking at one of the letters laying face up on top of the heap.  The corners were worn down and the envelope was yellow with age. 

     "Oh come on, please, mister?"

     Frank picked up the letter and opened it:

 

     November 2nd, 1993

     Dear Mr. Frank Stine,

     We regret to inform you that we no longer need security guard services at our building.  Your personnel file will be referred to the Employee Retirement Department.

     It has been a great pleasure working with you, and we wish you the best of luck in all your endeavors.

     Chief of Staff,

     Robert Gilder

 

     Frank placed the letter on top of the pile, deep in thought.  1993 was over ten years ago. 

     "Jimmy—I mean kid—you have to go home now.  Keep the badge."

     "Yes!  Thanks, mister!  You're the coolest geezer I know!"  And with that, the kid ran back toward the fence. 

     Frank watched him climb up, over and gone.  Then he knelt, and scooped handfuls of his mail back into the car.  It took him a while, but he got them all up.  He walked around his car, opened the door, and got himself a fresh can of beer.  He drank it completely in six long swallows.  Tossed the empty back into the car, took another.  There was still plenty of night left.  

     Frank resumed walking the smooth paved walkway around the building.  Soon, he finished another lap around the building.  Lap number twenty-five.  Two plus five is seven, a tall confident number. He got a fresh beer.  Cracked it, drank.  Ah, fantastic.

     Frank Smiled.

     There was much yet tonight to think about.