Kevin screwed the cap back on the bleach bottle and got out of his car, dropped some quarters into the parking meter, and went into the municipal court building. Through the metal detector, past the row of young black men in orange jumpsuits chained to a bench, up the cinder block- motif stairwell, through the heavy steel door marked PAROLE AND PROBATION. The office staff was behind a window lined with chicken wire, in case any of the parolees got rowdy, though the atmosphere was never one of typical government chaos. It was subdued, polite, and quiet. These were people who had gotten out and weren’t going to jeopardize their freedom with unsightly displays of emotion before a court clerk.
Aware of the intimidation factor, the clerks were brutal. They never made eye contact with the parolees and barked orders at them through the wired glass. A heavyset, middle-aged woman with glasses and stiff black hair didn’t even look up at Kevin as she snapped, “Name?”
“Kevin Gurdy. I’m here to see-”
“Have a seat.”
Kevin sat down on the black vinyl bench with two young black men, who were staring straight ahead. After a moment, the woman lifted her head and said, “ Jackson.”
Kevin and the two men looked at each other.
“ Jackson,” she repeated, her voice rising with irritation at this delay. “Who’s Jackson?”
“I think he went out to go look for a water fountain,” one of the men said.
“Well, go get him. If he isn’t here in thirty seconds, I’m marking him down as absent.”
The man got up and went out into the hall to look for Jackson, returning with him inside a minute. Jackson, another young black man, who had clearly just been to the restroom, was still buckling his pants.
“Mr. Jackson,” she hissed. “‘Have a seat’ means have a seat. It doesn’t mean go wandering around the court-house.”
“I just had to-”
“Officer Deakins is ready for you,” she interrupted, her voice high with anger, as she shoved a piece of paper through a slot in the chicken-wire window. She turned her back to Jackson as he retrieved the paper, then buzzed the door leading into the back office, which Jackson opened.
“Hunt?” she snapped.
Again no one responded. “All right,” she said, and began to fill out paperwork, dooming Mr. Hunt to a return to jail.
“Gurdy?”
Kevin stood up quickly, and she looked at him for the first time, her attitude almost imperceptibly changing as she noticed that he was white. In his months of coming to parole appointments, Kevin had detected a definite pattern of racism from the office staff. The white women were often slightly less horrible to the white parolees. The black women were equally horrible to everyone, except for the younger ones, who were sometimes civil to the young black men. They would grow out of it.
“Yes, that’s me,” said Kevin. The woman shoved a slip of paper under the glass and buzzed the door.
“Officer Poacher,” she said, as if Kevin didn’t know. He walked back through the parole office, past cubicle after cubicle of young black men sitting in rickety institutional chairs, explaining their lives to bureaucrats who were sitting, bored, behind tiny desks. Corrections Officer Poacher was one of the senior parole officers, and he had an actual office all the way in the back, a cramped mess of scattered paperwork and half-open file cabinets, forms spilling out of every drawer.
“Have a seat, Gurdy,” Poacher said when he saw Kevin. He turned to a file cabinet behind him and pulled out Kevin’s file. “How’ve you been?”
“Fine,” Kevin said. He wondered if he was supposed to ask the question back, as one would do in any other social situation, or if it was an official question to determine Kevin’s state of mind. One had to be very careful what one said in a parole interview. To give a hint of any negativity might start the officer asking questions. If Kevin sighed and said, “OK, I guess,” Poacher would start digging around about why life wasn’t perfect and whether this meant that Kevin was going to return to his life of crime because of the stress. In a parole interview, you couldn’t have problems. As far as Poacher was concerned, Kevin’s marriage was wonderful, his dog walking business was about to get him on the cover of Money magazine, and the thought of growing or smoking marijuana was so repulsive as to make him want to vomit.
“How’re things at home?” Poacher asked, without looking up from the file.
“Great, great,” said Kevin, nodding, trying to force a smile. “My daughter just got picked for the lead in the school play.” Kevin had made that up on the spot, because he had learned that it was always good to mention Ellie. Sometimes it triggered Poacher to talk about his son, who was fourteen, and then the interview became an unfocused mess of two parents babbling about their kids for a half hour, which was what Kevin wanted. Stay away from topics like drugs, crime, and prison, have a court-mandated chat, and get the hell out of there.
“Really?” said Poacher, so brusquely that Kevin knew it wasn’t going to work this time. Actually, it hadn’t worked in over a year. Poacher had become more reluctant to discuss his son as time had passed, and Kevin had pieced together that Poacher was going through a bitter divorce and may have lost custody. In fact, Poacher’s general aura had deteriorated significantly since Kevin had been assigned to him.
Poacher flipped the file shut. “You staying off drugs?” he asked.
Kevin nodded. “Yes, absolutely.”
“Honestly?” Poacher stared into Kevin’s eyes, and it unnerved him. Did the man know something? Had he been peering through Kevin’s basement window? Was this the time to confess or to act unsure? Gut instinct told him to lie.
“Absolutely,” said Kevin. “No drugs.” He was going to add something else, but then remembered that he had recently heard on the Discovery Channel that interrogators often noticed people were lying because they overexplained. Brief answers were best. There was a silence between them, during which Kevin repeatedly stifled the urge to do just that-start babbling and overexplaining. The Discovery Channel knew its shit.
Poacher reached in a drawer, and Kevin felt certain he was going to produce one of the little clear plastic pee cups for the drug test, but instead he pulled out a form.
“I’m a busy man,” Poacher said. “I’ve got fifty-six parolees assigned just to me.”
Kevin crossed his legs, a gesture of comfort and relief at the conversation going off on this tangent.
And then it happened.
The rubber bubble at the top of the eyedropper in his pocket compressed as a result of the action, squirting bleach through the hole in Kevin’s pocket and all over his balls.
Kevin knew what had happened right away. He felt the liquid trickling through his pubic hairs, like little insects running around down there. He kept his expression frozen and remained still. For the first second, the liquid was cool. Then it began to feel warm.
“So what I’m going to do,” Poacher said, “is wrap up your parole. You seem like a good guy, a family man. I don’t really see a reason to keep making you come back in here for your monthly visits. You’ve come up clean every time we’ve tested you and…”
Poacher kept talking. The warmth had turned to heat, then burning. It felt like someone was holding a lit cigarette to his nut sack. Kevin tried to beam with glee at what Poacher was saying, but instead felt his face freeze in a death grimace as sweat broke out on his forehead. Then the powerful odor of bleach hit him. He and Poacher were only a few feet apart, and Kevin was sure Poacher was about to sniff the air and wonder what the smell was.
Oh god, MY NUTS ARE ON FIRE. Kevin gritted his teeth. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore, and he grabbed his balls and tried to shift them around, his eyes watering as a great rush of air came out of him, his mouth wide open as if he were singing a silent opera.