Three o'clock in the morning

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