NIGHT SHIFT

                                       story by Patrick Breheny                 pjbreheny@hotmail.com

     Mo Johnson was a down and out kind of guy, but when he wasn’t tipping a bottle of port wine or hitting on a rock, he managed to work out of casual labor offices. Shift Workers was one of them, and he, not by habit an early riser, was inclined to use them because they often had work starting afternoons or evenings. Most ‘slave market’ offices---referred to as such by their workers---closed at 5:00 PM, but it was just about that time this day that he felt fresh enough to present himself to work a shift, for which, if he got on, he would be paid at the end of.

     The agency itself had divided shifts between two managers, the later supervisor being Jack. The office was often empty of prospective workers so late, so if there was anything, Mo would likely get it. This evening, however, there were six others there. As he reported his presence and availability to Jack he noticed, but discounted as coincidence, that the others looked a bit like him---the same build, not slim, not stocky, sturdy despite lifestyles, and all were white guys with brown hair. Seeing such competition, and considering the others were there first, unless there were a lot of jobs…He inquired of Jack, “You have a big call out?”

     “Just for one, but hang around. You had a phone I would have called you.”

     “You called them?”

     “Those who have a number.”

     “Those who don’t?”

     “Word of mouth, I guess.”

     Mo sat beside the others on one of the hard metal chairs set on the concrete floor. He asked the closest to him if he knew what the assignment was. He said, “No, we don’t know.”

    Before he could converse further, through a door from an anteroom behind the reception counter a man in a generic dark blue suit, dark tie, walked out. He then came with Jack to where the workers sat and closely examined each applicant.  Mo was thinking, Shit! Heavy lifting on this one.

    The pair went back behind the reception counter, where they conferred in whispers. Then they came back and Jack said, “Those I called, you get paid for two hours for coming in, as I promised. In fact, you all do.”

      There were whoops of glee at that. “And for the lucky guy, you get that bonus too, and get paid for working, plus it’s a twelve hour shift, so there’s overtime.”

     One quipped, “This aint ‘The Apprentice’, is it?”

     “Not quite, but the winner is…Ready...? Envelope please…”

     Jack did a pantomime, circling his hands, looked at his right palm.

     “Mo, you want to work tonight?”

     “Is a snowball cold?”

     “The rest of you guys, come back in thirty minutes for your vouchers. Mo, we’ll go in the back and talk about the job.”

        Jack let the others out, locked the door, put up the COME BACK sign, then led Mo behind the counter and into that room behind. Which room was cozy, all things considered for skid row, had two soft armchairs, a rug on the floor, a TV, and a sofa with a pillow that indicated Jack might not spend all the late hours of his shift sitting up.

     The man in the suit was not introduced by name. Jack said for him that Mo would be working as a clerk at a secure location. Mo wasn’t bestowed with clerical talent. Best he could say of computers was that he believed they existed. He could type with two fingers, but just when he was getting good at that Bill Gates killed all the typewriters. The two finger typing spoke of another attribute though.

      ”I’m fast at filing,” he offered.

     The suit man said, “We only need you to be there.”

     So, Mo thought, a clerk at a place where there’s nothing to do. One of those featherbed jobs, just be a body present.

     Jack said, “You do need to wear a uniform, Mo.”

     He opened a closet from where he took a hanging pressed brown uniform that had stenciled, under a lapel, CORRECTIONS..

      Mo, always the comic, said “The clerical part is correcting their mistakes”” 

     The guy in the suit actually laughed, but Jack was giving his stern warning look. The suit said, “You will have to leave your ID when you go in there.”

     Mo’s ID was a social security card and a library card Sometimes he actually read at the library, but he mostly went there to nap and wash up. And---because they’d just run his record anyway and find out---he volunteered, “If this is a job at the jail, I’ve been there in other capacities.”

      “Such as?”

      “Nothing serious. Minor possessions, drunk in public.”

     “Slight transgressions, hereby pardoned. We’re short staffed, need you tonight. I appreciate your integrity.”

     Jack gestured toward the bathroom and said, “Try the uniform on.”

     It was a perfect fit. The mirror over the basin was clear and shiny. Mo thought that except for the shaggy hair length he looked like a movie star. No, maybe it was the unkempt hair that made him look like a movies star. Just not an oldtime one.  If he cut his hair? Cary Grant? He admired his fantasy so long, one of them (had to be Jack) knocked on the door.

     “Haven’t fallen in, boss,” he said and went out to reveal his new persona. Jack whistled, and the suit man, whose opinion mattered, also seemed impressed by the makeover.

     “We’ll go in my car,” he said. “I have to escort you. Let’s have that ID now. When we go in the jail., I’ll give it to them.”

     He and the suit arrived at the beginning of a guard shift change. A bunch of guys wearing a uniform like Mo’s were punching the time clock, some leaving, some arriving.

Suit said, “No reason to punch in. You’re a temp”. He pushed Mo’s ID through a narrow slot to a woman behind a bulletproof glass window, and said to her, “In a hurry. Sign him in, OK?” OK was a question but it wasn’t a question. He and the suit went into the jail with all the arriving guards. Mo observed, there was about this man in a dark blue suit, something---he should have been conspicuous as they walked to his car through indigents on skid row, now among uniformed guards--- but you didn’t notice him. Mo was also seeing how in uniform the male guards, who were on discernment of every size, shape and color, all seemed the same.

      Before long he was at a cell, in a section of its own away from other cells or people, with one prisoner inside.

     Suit said, “All you have to do is watch him.”

      Mo got to see the tube once in a while at the mission evening meal. He recognized this prisoner. It was Bert Player, previously convicted and currently charged with procuring, trafficking, rapes, and connected to the rich and famous, presidents and princes.

     Mo was thinking, So, all I have to do is babysit this lowlife all night? He wondered if they had any magazines. But there was no chair in the corridor.

     “Can I sit somewhere?”

     “Yes, of course. There are two cots in there.”

     “In there?”

     “He’s not supposed to be left alone.”

      In the morning, they found Bert Player hung by the neck and Mo Johnson had retrieved his ID, collected his voucher, took himself, and left. He never signed out, but then he never signed in. The photocopied ID didn’t provide sufficient details to track him, and he never cashed the voucher. Those are the revealed facts, though Mo is known by a select few to have landed on an obscure tropical island that doesn’t require a passport, and where, to this day, occasionally with the same few as visitors, he continues to fulfill his vision of Paradise itself on this earth.