The Watchman

A sudden and unexpected movement occurred in front of me. The snap of the turnstile followed. Someone had entered the plant without showing identification. That wasn’t supposed to happen. I was hired to prevent unauthorized nocturnal admissions. I used my pen to mark the place and closed the notebook. I stepped outside the booth to see if I could identify who entered. The person was walking fast and had already traversed half the truck yard. I was going to call after him and demand that he stop, but that was a waste of breath. He was far enough along not to hear me. If he heard me, he wouldn’t obey. Employees were instructed to show their identification badges to get buzzed inside the locked turnstile. In a similar manner, drivers on New Jersey roads are encouraged to adhere to the posted speed. None of the employees showed their badges and the lock on the turnstile no longer worked. The buzzer had a habit of staying on when pressed. The sound could drive a guard crazy and the people who lived across the street complained when the buzzer got stuck in the middle of the night. We avoided pressing it and the maintenance department dismantled the lock so the turnstile revolved disconnected from the buzzer. We were supposed to challenge anyone at the gate who didn’t show identification. I tried that the first night on the job, but no one complied. I might have been invisible for all the success I had getting employees to show their laminated bona fides. A six-foot-four redhead descended from Vikings should be able to intimidate people into showing anything he wanted, but I lacked a menacing persona. I think my freckles eliminated whatever menace my height and hair color presented. No one is frightened of a grown man with a feast of freckles on his face. My right cheek was a patternless mess. The freckles on my left cheek were better organized. An astronomer friend claimed the pattern of freckles on my left cheek resembled the constellation Sagittarius. I don’t know that they did for a fact, but he was a college graduate and I suppose he knew what he talked about. The turnstile shone like an errant moonbeam in the overhead mirror. The image in glass restored to my recollection the memory of the single employee who showed identification. Julie’s hands had touched the metal. Her hips slid through it. A bar patted her backside. Another bar rolled across her pubis. If the booth was ever dismantled, I must remember to take the turnstile home as a keepsake. I returned to the booth and carelessly dropped onto the chair. It didn’t swivel. The springs didn’t stab me. I wasn’t sure the sigh came from the cushion or from the starry recesses of my soul. I stared at the frame of the open window. The paint had peeled in places and the wood had started to chip. Splinters extended above the frame like prickles in a cactus. There are untoward events in life and plenty of those. A toward event had occurred in that window—there are too few of those. I saw Julie Hanks for the first time in the frame of that window. I happened to look up from my notebook—Rob was doing something in Weldon. The most beautiful face I have ever seen was staring at me. I startled at the sight, it was so unexpected. No, I shivered. Her face wasn’t a glancing blow—I was punched silly by her beauty. I became lightheaded and suffered a nervous feeling at the root of my chest. I became disoriented, as if I had drunk too much—I think the disorientation had something to do with the saccadic movement of my eyes stopping. I staggered without moving and collapsed while seated and still. I slid off the chair and melted. Sergeant Wells would find my uniform floating on a puddle of protoplasm when he arrived at the morning shift. The rest of me would be in the Somesuch Public Works Department swirling out to sea. An excessive splash of hair the color of sunshine surrounded Julie’s face. Her complexion was a shade lighter than her hair. Her eyes were bright blue and beamish. It was the middle of the night—eyes shouldn’t be so clearly blue at three in the morning. I glimpsed the origin of the cosmos in those eyes. I glimpsed my own origin as well. My life began at that moment. I was wrenched out of the obscurity of my former existence. I could never be the same. Something immensely beautiful had entered my world, something immensely tormenting. A celestial presence slammed my body to earth. What should I do? What could I do? Relish her? Revere her? Ravish her? Her blue gaze started ideation spinning on its pointed head. Thoughts became jumbled. My past evaporated like the steam from the stacks atop the factory. My once orderly existence scattered to the street corners and around the block. My future dove into the accommodating river. My once simple life became maddeningly complicated. Julie paused at the window and held her photo ID up. I nodded, as if I saw it. A person’s style of movement can be as beautiful as a person’s face. I saw for the first time that endearing quirk of Julie to express herself nonverbally a moment before she expressed herself in words. Her brow lifted subtly, her shoulders hunched slightly as at the commencement of a shrug, her hands opened, and her jaw inched forward. A moment passed and then she said, “Hi.” Her brow lowered, her shoulders completed the shrug, her hands closed, and her jaw returned to meet lip on luscious lip. I could park my life in the pause between gesture and utterance. It was the briefest slice of time and it opened into eternity—into an eternity I repeated over and over. “Hi,” she said. I didn’t know what to say in response or whether I should say anything. I couldn’t vocalize to the occasion when my heart was in my throat. It was a while before speech recovered and syntax returned to put words in their proper order. I didn’t know what to do or how to comport myself. I thought to stand. I thought to wave her on with a dramatic flourish. I thought to swipe the badge out of her hand and press it to my heart. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t do anything. I sat patiently and passively and watched as Julie stepped into the darkness. “Hi,” I said when she was half a block distant.