A supervisor caught him sleeping in an impossible stance just outside the survey of the security cameras in one of his assigned pods at the center. This wasn’t the first time. They gave him a few friendly nudges on the shoulder when he happened to doze off at the central desk of one pod or another. He found that he could lose spans of three to four minutes during games of poker with the kids. At the school, he would steal into the shadows of the empty Home Ec room and disappear for an hour at a time. His attention to his appearance became lax. Teachers asked colleagues if anyone had noticed changes in his attitude. By venturing from the gloom of the home, the cat was beyond the reach of his wife’s meddling.
This same supervisor tore into him early one morning after finding Hatchet bent necked and snoring in a chair near a pod resident’s doors. This led to a full write-up that led to a meeting with several of the juvenile probation officers in charge of the facility that soon became an interrogation during which he finally broke down into a puddle. I think I’m losing my mind, he told them, the wider I open my eyes, the darker everything becomes; John, I don’t know where I am anymore; what am I supposed to do? You’re supposed to be holding it together, Hatchet, the officer said with his eyes shut and his forefingers squeezing on the bridge of his nose. You have to keep it together out here; the liabilities… I know, John. He would later look back on the incident and see that they had pushed him into an emotional alluvion in the same way he had seen children pushed to the brink. He had fallen victim to techniques used on the minds of children and this added more girth to his depression than the fact of his dismissal. They hadn’t planned on firing him but his collapse was so total, they could find no other recourse.
The following week he restrained an eighteen-year-old senior at the school during which the kid’s nose broke and the floor became greased with his blood. A girl vomited near the window. Although a colleague with his same job title arrived to assist in the restraint thereby calming a near explosion, he would in the ensuing investigation imply that Hatchet had overreacted to the situation, corroborating testimony given by several students who actually witnessed the event. A thin sheet of ice had been thawing beneath his employment at the school for weeks following his dismissal from the county facility. His principal held back tears of disappointment as she explained that the administration wanted him to take off a week, unpaid, while they conducted a complete review of his employment history.
Allison had given him a reprieve by ignoring him completely after he broke to her the news of his firing from the county but now that he was on unpaid leave from the school district, she packed a bag, hoisted their daughter against her hip and stormed across the yard and through the alley and she would stay there for several days. The ensuing separation from his child gripped the deepest meaty bindings of his heart. It squeezed him and immobilized him until he could think of nothing but the compression in the air and the claustrophobia of the house as it vibrated under the residual influence of Allison’s will. He found himself lying in his daughter’s room inhaling trace amounts of her that clung to the filial cilia on every fiber of the carpet and the blankets and the tiny animals stuffed with the indifference that inhabited the space.
When his wife finally returned and released their daughter to the trembling magnetism of his arms, she revealed the Kellie family theory on how their marriage should proceed or cease to proceed as the case would be. She and her parents had decided, without the extra income, there would be no way to keep up with the mortgage and they would let the bank foreclose on the house. Her parents had used the home as a leverage against him more times than he cared to recall. He had tried to move his family to level ground in order to establish common goals but the Kellie Compound proved secure. Olivia, his daughter, would move in with them across the alley. He tried to appear stunned but he could feel the bitter relief rushing through his corpuscles like an acidic antidote, like a gangrenous limb lopped off. Leaving her had been easy before their wedding but since Olivia’s birth, that option had been crated or painted over or some white sheet had been draped over it and he forgot it was there, lost among their possessions in the teetering boulder of a house.
She had caught a glimpse of his relief. You’ve wanted this, she said. I might be done wanting anything, Allison. Oh, you’re a poet now, you son of a bitch? Just telling you how I feel. You’re ridiculous. Agreed.
This same supervisor tore into him early one morning after finding Hatchet bent necked and snoring in a chair near a pod resident’s doors. This led to a full write-up that led to a meeting with several of the juvenile probation officers in charge of the facility that soon became an interrogation during which he finally broke down into a puddle. I think I’m losing my mind, he told them, the wider I open my eyes, the darker everything becomes; John, I don’t know where I am anymore; what am I supposed to do? You’re supposed to be holding it together, Hatchet, the officer said with his eyes shut and his forefingers squeezing on the bridge of his nose. You have to keep it together out here; the liabilities… I know, John. He would later look back on the incident and see that they had pushed him into an emotional alluvion in the same way he had seen children pushed to the brink. He had fallen victim to techniques used on the minds of children and this added more girth to his depression than the fact of his dismissal. They hadn’t planned on firing him but his collapse was so total, they could find no other recourse.
The following week he restrained an eighteen-year-old senior at the school during which the kid’s nose broke and the floor became greased with his blood. A girl vomited near the window. Although a colleague with his same job title arrived to assist in the restraint thereby calming a near explosion, he would in the ensuing investigation imply that Hatchet had overreacted to the situation, corroborating testimony given by several students who actually witnessed the event. A thin sheet of ice had been thawing beneath his employment at the school for weeks following his dismissal from the county facility. His principal held back tears of disappointment as she explained that the administration wanted him to take off a week, unpaid, while they conducted a complete review of his employment history.
Allison had given him a reprieve by ignoring him completely after he broke to her the news of his firing from the county but now that he was on unpaid leave from the school district, she packed a bag, hoisted their daughter against her hip and stormed across the yard and through the alley and she would stay there for several days. The ensuing separation from his child gripped the deepest meaty bindings of his heart. It squeezed him and immobilized him until he could think of nothing but the compression in the air and the claustrophobia of the house as it vibrated under the residual influence of Allison’s will. He found himself lying in his daughter’s room inhaling trace amounts of her that clung to the filial cilia on every fiber of the carpet and the blankets and the tiny animals stuffed with the indifference that inhabited the space.
When his wife finally returned and released their daughter to the trembling magnetism of his arms, she revealed the Kellie family theory on how their marriage should proceed or cease to proceed as the case would be. She and her parents had decided, without the extra income, there would be no way to keep up with the mortgage and they would let the bank foreclose on the house. Her parents had used the home as a leverage against him more times than he cared to recall. He had tried to move his family to level ground in order to establish common goals but the Kellie Compound proved secure. Olivia, his daughter, would move in with them across the alley. He tried to appear stunned but he could feel the bitter relief rushing through his corpuscles like an acidic antidote, like a gangrenous limb lopped off. Leaving her had been easy before their wedding but since Olivia’s birth, that option had been crated or painted over or some white sheet had been draped over it and he forgot it was there, lost among their possessions in the teetering boulder of a house.
She had caught a glimpse of his relief. You’ve wanted this, she said. I might be done wanting anything, Allison. Oh, you’re a poet now, you son of a bitch? Just telling you how I feel. You’re ridiculous. Agreed.
Edit 11.3.2018