Chapter 9: Professor Reaper

Fall 2018 to Spring 2019

Thanksgiving was at my parents’ house. Last year it was supposed to be there, but Kelly had inherited it when Dad had his heart attack that week. Another way of looking at it was that Mom gave him a heart attack, considering what the two of them were up to when the event occurred. With all the mayhem I’d been around in my life I’d prefer to check out the way he almost did. Regardless, this year it was at Mom and Dad’s, and it would give us a chance to tease them some more. Up until then Thanksgiving dinner swapped between my parents and Aunt Laurie and Uncle Dave’s house. Now it looked like Kelly and I would be in the mix.

Kelly made pies and I brought a couple of bottles of nice bourbon. This year Aunt Laurie and Uncle Dave attended; they alternated with the Matucket crew and family members out of town. That was going to be the same with Bobbie Joe and Joanne and little Robert; they were spending the holiday in Boston with her family and would visit at Christmastime. Jack, Teresa, Diego, and Miguel were already in town and would be at the house with us. They were flying to Miami on Friday to see her family. He once told me that he was too much a gringo and preferred a Thanksgiving with turkey and stuffing. Teresa’s family was Cuban, and their version of Thanksgiving included roast pork, black beans, and rice. Finally, Grandma and Grandpa would be there.

It was a nice time. Mid-afternoon, Bobbie Joe and Joanne called and Facetimed with us. He also asked Dad if his heart was any better and if he and Mom were still exercising together. That got the pair of them hooting and hollering at us, even though it went completely over the heads of the kids. We kept teasing them even after the call ended. What Kelly and I didn’t do was to say anything about me moving to Athens part-time. We would wait until everything was finalized and tell them, probably around Christmas.

Friday, I called Rich and told him I was interested and what we had come up with as a plan. He agreed that it was probably the only way I would be able to free up enough time to both teach and go to school. He promised to try and schedule any classes I taught to fit in with my time at UGA. He also said he’d ask around to see if anybody knew of any efficiency apartments in the area. The odds were good that something was available since there were undoubtedly students at Georgia who had flunked out after the fall semester. I was checking online and would call Student Housing on Monday to see what might be open through the university.

Our parental units, both Kelly’s and mine, were very concerned when we told them our plans at Christmas. Everyone seemed to consider this was simply the first step on the road to divorce. We assured everybody it was a temporary thing only, and that I would be coming home weekends and holidays and whenever else I could manage it. The same applied when the Athens academy wasn’t teaching; classes ran for eleven weeks, but there was always a week or two in between classes. Our mothers were still skeptical.

Speaking as a law enforcement professional, if this was the start of a divorce, it was the most pleasant divorce I had ever seen. Most that I had been involved in started with screaming and went downhill from there! There’s a reason cops hate ‘domestics.’

I survived my first semester as a doctoral student and promptly ran out and bought my books for the spring semester. I was hoping to begin reading ahead before class started in January. Classes began the first full week in January, which was the same week that classes started at the academy. Classes ended at the end of April. The academy class finished the end of March, and the next class started up mid-April. I would be busy, but it should prove doable. I drove over to Athens right after Christmas and picked up the gear I would need as an instructor, mostly uniform items. Just like the students all had to dress alike, so did the instructors. That wasn’t too onerous a burden, though. Students wore khaki pants and a white polo shirt with the academy logo on it. Instructors dressed similarly, though with black polo shirts. I also picked up any teaching materials I needed at the academy.

We found a small furnished efficiency apartment through the university, with the emphasis on the small. It was a single open room with an attached bath; a half-wall separated the eat-in kitchenette from the living room. The bedroom consisted of a folding futon bed on one side of the living room. The weekend before classes started Kelly and the kids helped me move in. Riley and Seamus didn’t really understand what was happening; Riley wanted to know if Mommy and Daddy were getting divorced. We just assured them Daddy would be coming home frequently. Then after we brought everything in, Kelly began making a list of everything I would need. We headed out to the local Walmart to buy bedding and a few staples. I was to keep a list of necessities and bring it home on Friday, and we would try to scrounge it up around the house. I was also left with several Tupperware containers of leftovers and casseroles I could heat up for meals.

Monday morning, I was at the academy by 0700. Classes didn’t start for another hour, but I didn’t want to be late my first day. It wasn’t critical, in any case. The rest of the instructors came in by 0730 and we mostly just sat around and drank coffee. The first day was folderol, checking students in, making sure they had the required gear, introducing the staff, handing out books and materials, and so forth. I was assigned morning classes, Monday to Friday, 0800 to 1200.

Classes began for real the next day. The Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council made the rules about what you needed to do to become a cop, and the Georgia Public Safety Training Center ran the training. The GPSTC was the main academy in Forsyth, and they also ran the satellite academies throughout Georgia. They weren’t the only police academy in Georgia, though. Atlanta and the Georgia State Patrol both had their own academies. Still, most Georgia police and sheriff’s departments used the GPOSTC and GPSTC requirements and then modified them to fit local requirements. Matucket, for instance, had changed since my rookie days. Now you took the eleven-week course at an academy, followed by three weeks of additional training in Matucket, and then four months of hands-on ride-along training with a training officer. Only then were you considered trained and allowed loose on the public without a keeper.

Athens and the other satellite academies almost exclusively taught Basic courses. Basic Law Enforcement was a 408-hour course, which worked out to eleven weeks. Also taught was an 80-hour, two-week course to become a Basic Jail Officer, but I wouldn’t have anything to do with that. Basic Law Enforcement was a single long course and was required of every peace officer in the state of Georgia. Even if you were an officer from out of state and trying to get a job in Georgia, you had to prove that you had passed an equivalent course elsewhere. Afterwards, you had to take a minimum number of Continuing Education courses every year in order to keep your qualifications current.

There were three levels of police officer in Georgia, Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced. Everybody starts out as Basic after making it through the academy. The next two levels required additional classes taken at Forsyth, with minimum additional credit hours and minimum time in grade requirements. It works out to four to five weeks of additional training for each level, but since you have to fit that in around your work schedule with your department, it can take several years to move forward to each higher level. That’s important, too. Most departments have rules about promotions. In Matucket you needed to have at least a couple of years of college and an Intermediate level to be promoted to Senior Patrolman; Sergeant required a four-year degree and an Advanced level. Most other departments had similar rules. Additionally, being a Senior Patrolman opened a number of paths in the MPD. You needed to be a Senior Patrolman to be a training officer or instructor with the department. There was a big pay jump, too, so that with overtime you could make as much as a sergeant. A lot of officers took their time working towards Advanced and never even tried to make sergeant, since they didn’t want to go back to school or stop working side gigs that tied up their time.

As with any Basic course, you ended up with a wide mix of students. Some were already knowledgeable about policework, having experience as MPs with the Army. We had a large number of vets, some with combat experience. That was useful since they already had experience with weapons and body armor and understood being shot at by angry locals. Then you had the utterly clueless, kids who only knew about the police from what they saw on television. We had a real mix.

Nobody introduced me as anything special, which was just fine with me. The first few days involved getting everybody into the swing of things, pushing teamwork and conditioning. We had them running and doing calisthenics, marching and saluting. That proved amusing when Todd Whitlock was leading the class in marching and saluting and somebody in the rear ranks loudly muttered, “What the fuck do we need to salute for?”

Todd immediately ordered the class to stop and come to attention in ranks. “Cadet Winston, front and center!” The loudmouth’s eyes popped open, but he marched to the front of the formation. I recognized him as one of the guys with military experience. Todd positioned himself to the side and said, “Mister Reaper, would you care to instruct Cadet Winston in the reason we teach the cadets how to march and salute.”

I rolled my eyes but marched over to where Winston was standing. He was smart enough to have realized by then that he had fucked up. The way to survive training, any kind of training, was to become invisible. I stood in front of the hapless cadet and looked him up and down slowly. Then I answered, “The reason you are being taught to march and salute, Cadet Winston, is so that you won’t embarrass your department at the funeral when your training officer is killed covering your butt when you screw up in the field. If you wish to avoid that destiny, I suggest that you stop complaining about what you are being instructed in and dedicate your life to learning your lessons. Is that understood, Cadet Winston?”

“UNDERSTOOD, SIR!”

I left Winston and turned towards Todd and received a surreptitious wink. It was a rare cadet who wanted to be singled out like that more than once.

Friday afternoon I packed my laundry and the empty Tupperware and headed back to Matucket. I had called every night like I had been ordered, but that wasn’t enough. I made it home just as they were getting off the school bus. Riley was in the second grade and Seamus was in kindergarten. Sharon O’Connor, Kelly’s mother, was waiting for them in the driveway. They got down off the bus and ran down the driveway, not realizing I was right behind them. She waved at me when I stopped and turned off the car. That was when my son and daughter noticed I was home.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” came screaming out from both of them. They ran away from Sharon and over to me. I knelt in the driveway and let them tackle me and take me to the ground. It was chilly but dry, and we roughhoused for a few minutes. Then I stood up and sent them back to the house.

Sharon smiled and said, “Grim, you’re home! Welcome back! How’s school going?”

I gave my mother-in-law a hug. “Good, good. Going fine. Where’s Kelly? Late day?”

She nodded. “She has a late class and then was going shopping. She told me she’ll be home by five.”

“And she didn’t need to go shopping with these two,” I finished for her. I chuckled at that. “Well, feel free to head home. I’m just going to take my stuff inside and settle in. Where’s your Seamus?” My Seamus was named after his grandfather, Kelly’s father.

“He’s here this weekend. He flew in today and will be here for a week.”

The elder Seamus was an international banker based in New York and London. Though they lived apart, he and Sharon remained very close and loving. He came back to Matucket for a week every month, and Sharon would spend a week in New York with him every month. Kelly rolled her eyes and said that like my parents, they were occasionally too loving. It was a good idea to ring the doorbell before barging in. “Well, let him know I’m home, too, in case he wants to come over and compare bourbon to Irish.”