Ramblings of a late-night worker |
I am a security guard. For the summer, at least.
Not a blue-shirted, union-scaled Security Guard (or Campus Safety Officer, as they like to be called here), but a "night host" at the local outdoor performing arts center. As the person who hired me said, "you’re 51% maintenance and 49% security, but don’t fool yourself. That’s just so we don’t have to send you to classes or pay you security wages." It’s quite the change from my regular job as a schoolteacher. The hours especially – the shifts start at 11 p.m. and go to 7 a.m. Between one other person and me we have to cover every night. For the most part, it’s three days on, three days off. It is not demanding. If there are thirty-five acres to "watch over," I’d be surprised. The center is on the grounds of the local community college, which has its own full-time security. About every hour and a half to two hours, I make a general tour of the grounds, making sure the doors are still locked, the lights are still on, and no one is trying to sneak in early. The occasional maintenance duties are light – usually vacuuming, spraying for flies, or putting out cones and barriers for a concert. It leaves a lot of time for reflection. The three a.m. general tour is the most amazing part of the shift. I think somewhere it’s a law that everything must be asleep at 3 o’clock in the morning. There is the most pervasive silence I’ve ever been in. This particular night was especially so. I had to empty two garbage cans and take the bags down to the dumpster. It’s not a heavy task, but I do have access to the golf cart so I don’t strain myself. Not being a warm night – the recent heat wave had broken two days ago, leaving the nights in the 60s and 70s – I decided to walk the trash down and then take my tour. The entire property sits on a hillside. At the top is the community college building. Directly below that is the actual stage and seating area – the shell, as it is called. The main (only) road comes down behind the shell, then turns parallel to the seating area for a few hundred yards and then turns back down the now-leveling base of the hill towards the road, about five hundred yards away. The concessions stands, bathrooms, and entry gate (a canopy, really) sit on a terraced concrete tarmac between the seating area the road, staggered along the road. The ticket office is past the final turn back down the hill, and the parking lot is beyond the ticket office, running parallel to the road. There is a public road on the opposite side of the parking lot, but that’s nearly four hundred yards away. On the opposite side of the road are small woods and a pond; on the shell side of the road, between the entry gate and the parking lot, is another forest with a fish hatchery hidden somewhere. After I dropped the bags into the dumpster, I took a minute to "check in" with security, as required at the halfway point of the shift. "121 to 105," I broke the silence. "105," came out of the hand-held black box. "It’s 3 o’clock and all’s… quiet" I hoped to get at least a little conversation started. "10-4," ended the conversation. So much for getting a small conversation going. Officer 105 always shows proper radio manners. Her opposite, Officer 104, usually doesn’t. The other night, I reported to him that "the shell hasn’t moved yet," to which he responded, "That’s good. Keep on top of the situation, and if it moves, let me know and we’ll get right on it." That was good for twenty minutes of replay in my mind that night. Without my rapier responses to dwell over, I contemplated what I said, "all’s quiet." That’s when the silence sunk in. I silently started off, headed for the ticket office. There was nobody – nothing – stirring at all. No birds, no cars, no airplanes, no insects, nothing. There was a slight breeze, not enough to really blow in your ear, but enough to see smaller branches and leaves rock noiselessly back and forth. As I approached the ticket office, I could see the signposts on the road brighten. A car was coming. The reflective tape on the signs grew brighter, and then I could see the light source, with a bright red taillight following it. The car passed the signs, barely cutting through the silence. Only the hill caused the engine to wail slightly, which I could hear. I continued my walk, tugging the each of the metal window door handles, causing a singular rattle, then silence. I circled the building and walked out into the parking lot slightly. I let me eyes adjust to the lack of light before shinning my flashlight in a sweeping arc. My ears were right again; there was nobody in the parking lot. As I started my return trip, my mind wandered a bit, contemplating how one sweeps for security at night. Your eyes are worthless. They cannot penetrate beyond the edge of the light. If I had my way, I wouldn’t turn on any lights on my "beat," so I could see farther. I would gladly trade seeing well for seeing farther. When someone wants to get past me, all they have to do is stick to the shadows. To compensate, I try to use my other senses. My ears come in very handy – I can hear cars on any of the three roads that immediately surround the campus, one of which is almost a mile away. I use my nose to search for the two skunks that frequent the area, especially around the dumpsters. I haven’t developed any touch or taste abilities on this beat yet, but I may still. I’ve talked to enough professional guards, both private security and police officers, and have my army training to know that at night, you don’t look for anything. You just keep scanning, and let you mind tell you when something’s not right. That’s not a fail-proof system. Just the other night I was walking up the side of the shell. I caught a slight movement, so I swung my light up and snapped it on just in time to see a brown blur moving towards me. I made some guttural animal-like sound – I think it was more like a dog bark than a scream – before I realized it was just a cottontail rabbit jumped away from me. Luckily, the officer on duty was inside and couldn’t hear me. Last week, a concert had just gotten done breaking down and the crew had left. I was doing my initial lock-down tour, and was walking through the seating area under the shell roof. Like usual, I didn’t have my flashlight in my hand, when I realized that something wasn’t right. I glanced to my right to see a shape three rows up – I turned my light on a person. A local homeless man was collecting bottles and cans. I had a pretty decent conversation with him, allowing him to continue his task (it saved us time to pay someone to do it) and talking a bit about the weather and other sorts of small talk. It isn’t much of a surprise when my imagination will flash a scene of unexpected shapes, objects, or other such things sometimes when I reach up in the dark vestibule to test the restroom doors. My mind quickly snapped back when I realized there was a humming sound in the present (thankfully, I dismissed my imagination from going further with objects behind doors that I locked but weren’t). I stopped and looked up. The amber argon lights were the cause of the hum. It wasn’t a hum, it was more like a screech – the silence made the normally ignorable sound ear splitting this evening. Another car passed on the road below, this one in need a new catalytic converter and an engine tune up. It rattled as it climbed the hill. I watched the lights disappear and then continued my tour. A grasshopper was strumming his call somewhere in the grassy ditch on my right. As I approached the entry canopy, the bullfrog croaked a deep hello. That bullfrog is the bane of my nerve’s existence. The same sound, depending on what building it bounces off of, can sound like a hello, a call of my name, a quiet whisper, or a car horn. Of course, it’s nothing like the fox that was around a few weeks ago. It was right around the high school graduations, and with the bomb scares, there were two night hosts and two security guards on duty for the nights prior to commencement exercises. The other night host and I were in the shell when our radios declared, "what was that?" We went outside to hear this god-awful high-pitched yelp. At least, we thought it was a yelp. It occasionally sounded like a woman’s "help," and since it was done over and over, we had no idea what it really was. We did a cursory check of the woods, but couldn’t find anything, man, woman, or beast. We knew it wasn’t a raccoon, thought it could be a coyote, but settled on a fox. It definitely was a canine. As I circled each of the buildings checking every door and window, I kept an ear out for other noises. There was still nothing. Only I checking the doors and windows or booting a small pebble across the concrete would break the silence. One of my boots’ heel is coming off, and I could hear the faint sound of the boot squishing against the heel then pulling apart. I took a swing around the back of the seating area, and the silence was just as pervasive there as the rest of the walk. As I approached the backstage area and unlocked the door, I knew that in a few short hours, there will be a few tractor trailers idling alongside of the road, waiting for me to allow them to back in to drop off the equipment for tonight’s show. Cars will soon fill the main road as people drive in to work. A few joggers will pass by the shell. Students will be driving into the college parking lot and walking across to the door, laughing, complaining, muttering about their lack of time to complete their tasks. I will spent the next few hours holed up in the office, with the air conditioning and the dehumidifier running, leaving me with a ringing in my ears for the first few minutes of my next g |