I think I was accepting my grade school diploma in my grandparent’s front yard when the car behind me decided he’d had enough. He held the first honk until he saw my heavy head spring to life and followed it with a few shorter ones before zooming around to my left, mouthing some generous words of wisdom, and driving off. I turned the heater off and cranked the radio. It was a half hour long drive from my apartment to my job. Most of it was highway and traffic was rarely an issue during these midnight hours, but these four lights…these four goddamn lights between me and a fresh pot of Snicker-doo-doo coffee had a tendency to muck things up. Especially around the holidays.
The freezing outside air quickly blotted out whatever comfort had been achieved by the heater and the blaring radio was more to piss me off than it was to keep me awake. As I dozed at the last light and began giving my Valedictorian speech, I jerked myself so hard that my foot slipped off the brake and I had to run the intersection before someone called the cops. I confidently pulled into the security entrance gate of the college campus and badged myself in. I pulled down the little mirror on the sunshade and stared hard into my exhausted face. I slapped myself a few times to put a little rose in my otherwise pale cheeks and slapped on a smile that said I could hack it.
I took a deep breath at the staff door and waited for the click.
“Allo, gentlemen!” I said as cheerfully as I could. “What’s going on tonight?”
Rogers stood up from the tiny desk and removed his gun from his belt while he spoke, “Not much. We had some drunk idiots trying to get into the library earlier, but they complied with us in a hurry.” Rogers removed his magazine and set both it and the weapon inside grey foam cutouts in his bright blue case. Barbee appeared from the bathroom already out of uniform. I looked up at the clock. Bastard was still officially on duty for another 15 minutes. Barbee came over to the desk and sat down behind the computer. “Check it out, Lemon. I figured you’d get a kick out of this.” He wound back the footage of the drunk kids Roger had been referring to. The visuals at night were grainy and the video was sketchy at best. One minute, you see two figures standing in front of the exterior library door, the next, one is on the ground and the other has his hands up. “That’s pretty nifty. You guys managed to stay totally out of sight this time.” Rogers kept his shirt tucked but removed his badge to clean it. “Snarky little punks got a free lesson, if you ask me…” he muttered as he began polishing the eagle on the crest. Barbee closed the video and threw on his coat. “You should have a quiet night ahead of you,” he said to me as he walked towards the door, “there was a party for donors earlier tonight, but those old farts left before the event was even over.” He held up his hand and walked out with 10 minutes left on his shift.
Rogers continued his careful cleanup and I went to the bathroom to get changed. I could hear my shift mate entering the security area. Then his voice laughing it up with Rogers as I buttoned up my uniform and put a fresh pot of coffee on. Rogers yelled out his goodbye to me, leaving my keys on the desk with a note that read: CLEAN THAT PISTOL. As I put my belt on, Tommy began rambling about what he would have done with those kids by the library. He was younger than myself by about 15 years. A twenty-three year old athletic Red Bull of a man who loved telling me what he Would Have done. Even though I was much older than he was, we were still the youngest on the job. Rogers and Barbee were both in their 60’s. Training with the older dogs had been so simple, but now, I had to try and impart old wisdom to a young pup who couldn’t stand quiet nights. “Let’s just get through this, huh?” I said wearily as I walked back to retrieve a cup of coffee. We finished our preparations and set out to walk the campus grounds. He was in charge of the girls’ dorms. What luck. If I wasn’t trying to calm him down about how hands-off our shift really was, then I was trying to talk him out of fucking the sheep he was supposed to be watching over. As I approached the chapel, I heard his giggling voice shaking in the cold over the radio, “I got a Code-9 over here, Lemon. Should I pursue?” I knew better than to answer. I imagined him chuckling to himself while squeezing his dick in his polyester pants.
The winter air and shotgunned coffee helped me perk up. Before long, I didn’t have to pretend to be alive anymore. It seemed as though word had spread about what Rogers and Barbee had done because where I was usually having to monitor inebriated party-goers stumbling back to their dorms, I had managed to go the entire shift to that point without hearing a single lurch. It was coming up on three in the morning, so I stopped at the foot of the concert hall and leaned against the concrete columns to rest my feet a bit. The lawn was littered with pamphlets and napkins. Bottle caps glimmered like diamonds in the darkness and every so often, I’d see a stray cat making off with a discarded piece of banquet food. It wasn’t uncommon for the university to have events outside of the concert hall, given how picturesque the overhanging trees and bright yellow rose patches were, but I couldn’t imagine why the hell they would have held a ritzy shindig on a night like this. A tactic to get more money out of the rich bastards who kept the lights on, perhaps. I took a thorough look around to make sure it was safe to goof off for a moment. I pulled out my phone and sent my husband a picture of the littered ground. Underneath it, I wrote, “Don’t worry about groceries this week, babe. There’s enough food here to last us for days.” I smiled to myself and sent one more text that read, “Did Jojo eat his noodles?”
I waited for a few minutes, but I knew there’d be no reply. My husband was dead asleep and Joseph was old enough now to understand that noodles were all we could afford. I put my phone back in my pocket and sighed a hot cloud before making my way back to base. I got most of the way down the lawn before stepping on something firm, yet yielding. I withdrew my flashlight from my belt and flashed it down to the object. It was a black, leather wallet that had blended in with the darkness of the grass. I reached down and opened it with one hand while still shining the light with the other. “PARKER, ANTOINE MOSES. DL#28746127 DOB: 02/19/1966” An older gentleman’s picture sneered in the little blue box. I turned the flashlight off and walked back towards the concert hall where the lamp posts would help me look less obvious. Behind his license was his social security card and a lifetime membership to some gun range I’d never heard of. A dizzying variety of credit cards I’d only heard stereotypical jokes about fattened the left side of the billfold while the main cash compartment held a thick bundle of God knows. With my curiosity getting the better of me, I took out the wad and counted it. “Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, one. Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, two…” I mumbled and counted while taking careful looks around. $3,000. This old fool had rent, gas, electric, and six weeks of groceries just for walking around.
I booked it back to base as fast as I could without looking like there was trouble. People tend to get the wrong idea when they see an armed guard running for no good reason. My face hurt when I got inside the warm security area. Tribble, the control room guard, popped out from beneath the desk. “Hey, Lemon! Lunch time?” I jumped and nearly dropped the wallet. “Jesus, Tribble... Yeah, I’m taking lunch… Do you happen to have the Lost and Found reports for yesterday?” He bent back down and retrieved a thick, white binder from the drawer. “You find something?” he asked, handing it to me. For a brief second, I considered pocketing the wallet. I thought about my son’s old clothes and my husband’s cut hours. I thought about the classifieds filling up our otherwise bare kitchen. I had to physically shake my head to get rid of the idea. I dropped the wallet on the desk and said, “Yeah, I’d say so.” Tribble's eyes widened as he sat down in the desk chair and rolled over to inspect it. Tribble was old, too. He could just glance at the money and estimate how much was in there. “Good golly, there must be at least a couple grand in there!” “You think so? I didn’t look.” I was doing the right thing. I didn’t have to be honest about it. I flipped through the book and read the entries for the previous day. Some jewelry had been reported missing from the event, but nothing about a wallet. Tribble scratched his bald head with one hand and stroked his ugly beard with the other. “You know, between me and you, I think we should split it and call it a day. No one else has seen it, right?” I grabbed the wallet and held it back. “Are you crazy? I've been on this job for damn near ten years and you want me to throw it away for $3,000?” “So you DID look!” Goddammit. “Fine, I counted it and the thought crossed my mind, but this isn't ours and I highly doubt this Parker prick won’t come looking for it. I may be a lot of things, but I ain’t no thief, Tribbs.” He held up his hands and handed me a pen. “So write the report, angel.”
ITEM FOUND – BLACK LEATHER WALLET CONTAINING $3,000 CASH, A VARIETY OF CREDIT CARDS, A TEXAS DRIVER’S LICENSE IN THE NAME OF ANTOINE MOSES PARKER, SS CARD.
LOCATION FOUND – WEST LAWN BETWEEN THE CONCERT HALL AND FROG POND COURTYARD
TIME AND DATE FOUND – @0323 12/22/16
TURNED IN BY – OFFICER OLIVIA PUCKER
I sealed the information tag with the wallet inside a manila envelope and dropped it in the safe under the desk. Tribble chuckled and shook his head, “Alright, Mother Teresa. Go eat your ramen noodles.”
Somehow, Tommy caught wind of what I’d done and made sure to voice his disapproval at the end of our shift. His voice echoed from the restroom, “You’re shitting me! Are you shitting me? You’re shitting on top of me!” I waited for him to finish changing before I answered him. He came out with his shirt wet from washing his face. His elastic youth made me self-conscious when we talked face to face. “We’re not vultures here, Thomas. What’s so hard to understand about that?” “Hey, I don’t need the money, but I know you’re always talking about how poor your family is and-“ I shot him a look that said it was time to be quiet now. He took the hint and didn't say another word about it.
I nodded off just the once on the way home.
Three nights later, I got a call from my immediate supervisor saying that the wallet had been claimed earlier in the day and that the owner wanted to meet me. In the morning, that is. I had to finish my midnight shift, stick around and wait on him, drive the half hour home and do it all over again. It was just shy of one in the afternoon when he waltzed in. Boss Freddy Garza had to shake me awake in the break room. “Olivia. O-liv-ee-uh!” My body must have thought I was still sitting in traffic because it jerked so hard that I not only spilled the cup of coffee in front of me, but I’d accidentally head-butted Freddy’s chin. “Jesus, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Freddy grabbed some napkins for the spilled coffee and rubbed his chin. “Hey, it’s alright. I know you’re tired. You’re coming back in tonight, right?” I nodded and apologized once more before splashing some cold water on my face and walking out to the desk. There stood my big bosses next to the man on the driver’s license. He was painfully thin and had a ski-slope nose. His eyes seemed like he knew he’d kept me waiting and his grin seemed like he didn't care. “Officer Puckett, I’d just like to thank you for returning my wallet. There are a lot of dishonest people in the world who would have jumped at the chance to keep it for themselves.” I considered correcting his mispronunciation of my name, but I was too damn tired. “It’s my job.” I said, forcing a smile. “Well, you went above and beyond in my eyes so to thank you for your honesty, I would like to donate this money to the university in your name.” He beamed with generosity. I thought I might puke. “Thank you, sir.” The man turned and walked off in an excited chatter with my bosses.
I faded in and out of consciousness on the drive home. After the third brush with the guardrail, I pulled over, unbuckled my seat belt and reclined my seat. I thought, “Somewhere, there’s a book of donors. Pages of the names of the wealthy and elite.” My stomach growled. I felt too tired to call home. “And somewhere in all of those boldfaced royals is going to be my name.” I closed my eyes, turned my ring to face forward, and flipped my cap tassel to the left.