Chapter 48: Administrative Assistant

I was able to get in to see Captain Crowley on Thursday morning. Another young officer, African-American this time, was the one who escorted me in, and this time Crowley had some paperwork on his desk. I got the impression that after this meeting it would be time to shit or get off the pot. Crowley outlined the procedure to apply, and then reviewed the pay and benefits. “Grim, as an Administrative Assistant you make a bit more than minimum wage, but it’s a full-time job and it qualifies you for civil service benefits. Health insurance for instance, even though you get your VA benefits anyway. In any case, it gets you on the books and counts towards your pension.”

I gave him a curious look. “Man, it’s hard to imagine a pension, you know.”

He smiled. “Listen, time creeps up on you faster than you can imagine. Before too long you turn around and you’ve got three kids heading to college and a wife who wants to retire to Arizona.” I snorted in understanding. He continued, “Here’s the good news, your military service counts towards your retirement, also. Normally you need twenty years in to retire and get a pension, but you’ve already got four years. You could conceivably retire at thirty-eight or thirty-nine. Believe me, that’s not old! You could get another job and collect a paycheck there and a pension from Matucket.”

My eyes popped open at that. That was younger than my parents! “That’s interesting, Captain.”

He tossed me over a packet of paperwork held together by a binder clip. The top page read ‘Application’. “It’s time to make up your mind, Grim. If you’re interested, you can take that home to fill out, or go into the break room and fill it out. The application on top is for the Administrative Assistant slot. Down below is the app for police officer. You first need to fill out the admin app.”

I thought for a second, but I could see myself doing this. I nodded. “Let me use the break room. If I have any questions I won’t have to call or come back in.”

“Good.” He hit a button on his phone and said, “Ask Creighton to come back in.”

A couple of minutes later the black officer returned. “Grim, this is Patrolman Creighton Matthews. Creighton, this is Graham Reaper. He’ll be applying for an admin assistant slot. Take him to the break room and get him a pen. If he has any questions, give him a hand.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Graham, good luck.”

That was my cue to leave. I stood up and shook the captain’s hand, and then followed Matthews out. We went down a short corridor to a small room with some vending machines, a large coffee brewer, and a few tables and chairs. “Have a seat.” He pulled a pen out of his pocket and dropped it in front of me. “Care for some coffee?” He moved to the counter with the coffee system.

“Sure, please. Black.”

The officer poured two cups and brought them back to the table. They were in MPD mugs that had seen better days. He set one down in front of me and then sat down across from me. “Call me Creighton. Admin assistant, huh? You’re looking to become a cop?”

“That seems to be the plan.”

“Ever done anything like this before?”

I smiled at that. “My last attempt at law and order was mostly on the order side. There’s not much law in Iraq.”

“Army? MPs?”

I nodded. “I did two tours in Iraq in rifle companies. I was infantry, not an MP. Is that going to be a problem?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. Probably not. Just get back?”

I sipped my coffee, which was hot and bad. “Creighton, don’t take me wrong, but this stuff is awful.”

He smiled and sipped his. “Ain’t it, though? Why the hell you think cops hang out at doughnut shops? It’s for the coffee!”

“And the doughnuts don’t mean anything.?” I laughed.

“Just something to dunk in your coffee. So, been back long?”

“Yes and no. I left Iraq in June, but I’ve been in hospitals since then. They just released me two weeks ago.”

He looked at me in surprise. “June? That was four months ago! What’d you do to get stuck in a hospital for four months?”

“I had a really, really bad day. I’m good, though. All healed up now.” Mildly crazy, but all healed up. No, I didn’t say that.

He didn’t push it, and I started filling out the app. Mostly I could fill it out on my own, though I did have a couple of questions. Certain items I would need to dig up, prominent among them my DD-214. That was my discharge paperwork, which would show my discharge as Honorable, and detail my service and awards. There were also a few release forms I had to sign, to allow the MPD to get my school records here and in Watertown, and to allow them to get my medical records from the Army. After that I was taken down to Human Resources, where I turned everything over to a secretary. I was to bring back my DD-214 as soon as possible since I couldn’t begin the process until they had that.

I drove home and dug out my DD-214 and drove back to the police station. I got to the same secretary as before, and she made a copy of them, giving me back the original. I would get a call sometime next week, to set up a time for a physical and a drug test. Meanwhile they would begin my background check. I thanked her and took off.

Kelly was coming back to Matucket on Friday. We were going to try to alternate weekends for a bit. She would be coming home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the Christmas break would be several weeks. Still, that was a few months away. When I got back to the apartment Thursday, I did some yard work for Grandma and then made dinner for myself and watched some television. Friday, I cleaned up the apartment, did the wash, changed the sheets, and went grocery shopping. Kelly had assured me that someday I would make a fine housewife.

The sheets got rumpled quickly when she arrived late Friday afternoon. Afterwards, as we lounged in bed, I told her about my decision. To my surprise she didn’t try to argue me out of it. “Grim, I hate to say it, but I’m not surprised. You are many fine things, but you’re not much of a guy to hang around an office. You’ve been thinking about this ever since Captain Crowley mentioned this.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Just promise me, don’t do anything stupid. Let the bad guy go if you have to.”

I laughed at that. “Promise!” Then I thought some more. “What if I can’t do it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. What if, I mean, if I do have to do something with a bad guy? Will I be able to do it, or will I start getting all messed up? You know what I mean.” What if my PTSD wouldn’t let me react properly? What if I did something stupid that got somebody else hurt?

“Well, no, not really.” I tried to say something, but Kelly put a finger to my lips. “Grim, that will never happen. I might not understand the Army or the police, but I understand you. If something happens to somebody else, it won’t be because you failed.” She sat up in the bed and smiled down at me. “Grim, you’re a hero. You’re not a perfect hero, but you’re a hero, nevertheless. It’s the way you are. If something bad happens, you’ll do something heroic. You worry way too much!”

I smiled, both at her words and at the vision that perfect body made. I tugged her back down beside me and decided to worry about it later. Afterwards we cleaned up and went out for dinner. Buffalo Wild Wings had opened a place in Matucket, and wings and beer sounded like something simple and not ridiculously expensive. Over dinner Kelly asked, “Remember Hollis? From Athens?”

“Uh...” I racked my brain for a second, and then knew who she was talking about. “Hollis, Afghanistan vet, no hand, no leg? That the guy?”

Kelly nodded and sipped her beer. “That’s the guy. He came over to the office I work in and dropped off something for you.” She wiped her hands and grabbed her purse. From inside she pulled out a folded-up piece of paper. “He said these were some numbers for support groups. He asked around and said they have branches in Matucket.”

I nodded and wryly looked at the paper. “I really must be nuts if people are telling me to see somebody for help.” I had some messy wings in my fingers, so I pointed at the table and Kelly set it down between us.

Kelly shook her head. “I think it’s more like what he said last week. I think anybody who goes through that sort of thing is going to need help, just some more than others. People recognize that now. I bet your grandfather would have appreciated something like this.”

“You’re right. I bet he would,” I agreed. Grandpa had coped well, but he told me he had been one of the lucky ones.

“Here’s something else I was thinking about. Like I said earlier, I know you. All your life you have taken responsibility for helping people around you, even when there was nothing you could do to help them. You’d worry about missing a tackle or a fumble, because what it might do to hurt the Pioneers, and you told me you cried after that big attack during your first tour, because you couldn’t save everybody, even though the ones who died had died even before you were at your post.”

I nodded. That was all true. “Yes.”

“So, what happens when something bad happens as a police officer and you can’t stop it? You’re driving along in your police car, and you see an accident and you stop to help, but it’s too late and somebody is dead or dies afterwards. I know you. You’d feel like it was your fault for not getting there fast enough. Right?”

I sighed. “You are probably right. Sounds crazy.”

She pointed at the folded paper. “Maybe these groups can help, or they can point you towards getting some help.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll look into it.” I wiped my hands on my napkin and tucked the paper in a pocket.

“Promise?”

“I promise! Wow! You’re already nagging, and we haven’t even gotten married yet!”

Kelly started laughing so hard she almost snorted her beer out her nose, and that got me to laughing as well. Eventually she calmed enough to say, “You know what the real problem is? You’re not ruthless enough.”

I smiled. “Since when is being ruthless a good character trait?”

“Hear me out. What I mean is that in the Army there’s a cost of doing business. I’ve heard you say that. No matter what happens, somebody somewhere is going to get hurt, or even killed, right?”

“Sure. We call it the butcher’s bill. Dead, wounded, all of that.”

“Your problem is that you take so much responsibility on yourself that you think the butcher’s bill is your fault. It’s what made you a good leader - taking that responsibility - but every time you moved up, there was more responsibility, and the bill kept getting higher. The more men under your command the more likely somebody was going to get hurt or killed.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I was told flat out that if I stayed in, I could be a platoon sergeant in a few years. Instead of eight or nine guys to worry about, it’d be forty to fifty. A company top kick might have three times that many, or more.”

“Yet you’d have been a great one, because you really are a leader and very conscientious and good at it.” She held her hands up like a balancing act. “You’re too much on one side and not on the other.”

“Probably. I think I need to do my thing at a low level.”

“Maybe. We’ll see. Talk to those people.”

“I’ll call on Monday.”

“Call tomorrow,” she argued. “I worry about you. That’s my burden,” she laughed.

Saturday, I made a couple of phone calls. One was to something called the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, which was a national group with a local chapter, and the other was a local group, the West Georgia Veterans Coalition. I got addresses and a couple of guys volunteered to meet me in town. I figured the crazy would hold off for a few days longer, so I asked to see somebody in town next week. Maybe talking to some other people would be good.

Saturday, we also went out and bought a computer for me. Kelly was quite useful for this, but she was the math major and computer genius. I was warned that she would be able to tell if I was visiting porn sites, and I countered that I was going to visit horny-stacked-redheads-dot-com to see if her picture was there! Then we took the computer back to my grandparents and ordered up a Time Warner internet connection and used the connection in my grandparent’s house to cruise some vacation spots for our honeymoon.

Kelly left for Athens at the crack of dawn on Monday, though we did wake up early enough to spend some quality time together. Tuesday, I got a call from the police station; I had passed the initial background and fingerprint check and if I was still interested, I needed a physical. I was given a Thursday appointment at a clinic near the station. It was in the morning, and I was told not to eat or drink anything before the appointment. I was also told to be at the station on the following Monday to start work. If I flunked the physical or drug test, they’d know by then and send me home.

I met a couple of vets, separately, to get a feel for the veteran’s groups. Interestingly, they both knew of the other, and often had guys who were members of both. It wasn’t all that formal, and often just acted as sounding boards and crying shoulders for guys with issues. Nobody seemed to think I was foaming at the mouth, but I might be able to help myself by helping others. I was invited to an antique car rally the following weekend and found myself agreeing to go. Maybe the PTSD was something I could figure out how to cope with.

Monday, my workday started at 0800 and would run until 1630, with a half-hour lunch break in the middle. The dress code was something they called ‘business casual’, which made no sense whatsoever. I had to admit that was one of the benefits of the Army. They always let you know exactly what you had to wear. I took business casual to mean no jeans or t-shirts, but also no coats or ties. I wore khakis and a dress shirt and tossed a sport coat and tie in the back seat of the Subaru just in case I was totally wrong.

Now, instead of parking out front in the visitor’s parking lot, I parked out back where the police and staff parked. Once inside, I would get a parking sticker and an identification card that would allow me to enter. I still had to go past a police officer, but the lobby was larger, and the door was wedged open. Once inside, the police officer took my name and then called for somebody to take me. A couple of minutes later a cute blonde in her early thirties came over.