Night Work Read Online Free Page A

knuckleheads.”
    “Is that the technical term?”
    “They’re juvenile delinquents until they hit sixteen. Then they’re PINS until they’re eighteen. Persons in need of supervision. But I call them knuckleheads. It sounds more positive, like it’s just a phase they’re going through.”
    “I guess I can see that.” She took another bite of her salad. “So probation, you say … Is that the same thing as parole?”
    I put my fork down. I knew I was about to launch into my speech, but there was no power on earth that could stop me. So many people had no idea what I really did for a living.
    “Okay,” I said. “The main thing about a parole officer is that he’s really working inside the prison system. Sometimes, right in the prison facility itself. When you get out on parole, he’s the guy watching you, ready to put you back inside if you slip up.”
    “Right…”
    “As a probation officer, I work for the court. Assoon as you’re arrested, I’m already gathering information about you.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I’m the one who’s going to write up the recommendation for what your sentence should be.”
    “The judge doesn’t do that?”
    “Well, he can follow my recommendation or not. He usually does, but ultimately it’s up to him. If you end up getting a term of probation, then I’m the guy who helps you live up to it.”
    “So that’s totally different from what a parole officer does…”
    “A parole officer puts you back in prison. He’s your worst enemy.”
    “But you make sure they don’t go to prison in the first place,” she said. “So you’re like their best friend.”
    “Exactly. Sometimes their last and only friend.”
    “But what if somebody’s on probation and can’t stay straight?”
    “Well, then he violates the terms of his probation. So I probably have to file a report.”
    “What happens then?”
    “That depends. There’ll be another hearing. He might get a stricter schedule, have to come see me twice a week instead of once a week. Or I’ll make a point of going to
his
house. Really get in his face. He might even have to wear an ankle bracelet so we can keep track of him.”
    “Kids are wearing these?”
    “If that’s what it takes,” I said. “We don’t want toput a kid into the system these days. Because once they get locked up … We just know …”
    “They’re not going to come out?”
    “They might come out, but odds are they’ll be going right back in.”
    “But some people … I mean, no matter what you do …”
    “Yeah, I used to think anybody could be turned around,” I said. “If you got to them the right way. At the right time.”
    “You don’t think that anymore?”
    “No,” I said, picking up my fork again. “I guess I don’t.”
    “Well, I bet you do a good job. You must help out a lot of people.”
    “I try.”
    “Sorry about the boxing thing. I wasn’t trying to give you a hard time.”
    “It’s okay,” I said. I smiled, and maybe I even started to relax a little bit. Then she asked the question I had been dreading all day long.
    “So how come you’re still single?”
    J ust like that, it’s two years ago. To be exact, two years plus twenty-five days. In one second I can go back and feel it like it’s still happening, like that night lives in its own parallel universe where time stands still. A part of me is there always, living in that single span of darkness, the sun on the other side of the earth. I’m afraid this will be the only thing left whenI die. The one part of me that continues will go back there like I’m finally going home.
    A bachelor party—what a hateful name for a night out making yourself sick. The guys dragging me from one bar to another, until finally we’re at that strip club in New Paltz. I’ve never had so much alcohol in my body as that night. Certainly not again since then. As much as I might crave the oblivion it would bring, I couldn’t stand the thought of feeling that way again,