Читать книгу Outside the Line - Christian Petersen - Страница 6

The Community Corrections office occupies the upper floor of a concrete building, its midriff trimmed with green tiles like a gaudy belt, circa 1977, when it butted into the oldest part of town. The neighbouring clapboard and shingled homes date from the late 1890s. Picture sweaty saddle horses dozing with reins looped over the gatepost, hear cream-rimmed bottles clinking in a cart, smell the cattle, fresh milled lumber drying, sawdust in the air. The claim is that it was a simpler, perhaps more innocent era. Silver maples and weeping willows newly planted then to fend off the frontier dust of Interior British Columbia are now three feet thick at their base and finally shading the yards dreamed by the pioneers. Except now the neighbourhood has gone to hell. Even twenty-odd years faded, the crass newer building intrudes here, along with its unpleasant business. Clients loiter on the sidewalk out front, or sit on the curb smoking cigarettes, sometimes fishing stubs from the ashtray by the door. Always loafing, waiting for a ride to show up or a half-clear decision to hit them, in soiled jeans, all too often looking their part, that of criminals.

Upstairs with his swivel chair turned toward the window, a smoked glass shield, the probation officer’s eyes meander. Across the street, among the tended yards and gardens, up the gravel alley, padding like a tomcat at a distance, peeking into open porches and off-kilter sheds. Ordinary domestic scenes have come to instill a peculiar mix of envy and suspicion in him. Something of an occupational hazard, as well as the fallout from his own circumstances over the past eight months or so.

The telephone rings.

“Peter Ellis,” he answers, listens, pulls a grey metal drawer, selects the legal-size file in question, opens it on his desk, reaches for a pen, and jots notes in the running record. “I see. Can I ask your name? Well, this information should go to the police, and they may want to get in touch with you. All right, I understand, and I will follow up. But without a witness the police won’t charge him, you realize? No, it’s very helpful. I don’t mean to pressure you. Sure, give it some thought. Thank you.”

Mid-morning and someone has made another pot of coffee. Peter can smell it, and he rises from his chair, drawn by instinct and addiction to the Colombian brew.

As a former student of literature and lower-case communist who once attended rallies and freely signed all manner of petitions, he had never had any interest or intention of getting involved in the Justice System. When he first began working as a probation officer, a few of his friends questioned the move, and thereby his values. With these keen defenders of human rights he took an almost apologetic tone, claimed the job was a trial run, just a means of survival, certainly temporary. He chews gum at a range of paces, aggressively at the moment, while he swivels back and forth in his chair, prioritizing the work at hand. What he didn’t admit to anyone, even to himself for a long time, was that this job hooked him immediately. Every day it places him at the crisis point in someone’s life, tangent to a stupid mistake, a rage, an arrest.

In the beginning each crime is new: petty theft, a pensioner hobbling away with a frozen Cornish hen in her purse; auto theft, a car chase that ends in a crash, with one teen in hospital and another in jail; impaired drivers after every weekend; welfare fraud, low-brow credit scams; sexual offences, historical incest come to light; uttering threats, and spousal assault. After almost two years in the business, Peter has dealt with each of these and their variants many times, dozens, hundreds altogether. Common elements of local crime: alcohol, unemployment, ever lurking lust and anger. In this town there are rarely convictions for white-collar transgressions, the recent exception being a pharmacist busted for trafficking pills, with an interesting list of customers. Mostly it unfolds after dark, the offshoot of a noisy night in the bars, the ugly blossom that stems from years of toxic social compost.

Peter shies from judgment, despite or maybe partly to spite his Baptist upbringing. He suffers with imagination like vertigo lately, glimpsing life’s infinite heartbreaking scenarios. He wonders whether it is some errant part in himself, some piece askew, that enables his rapport with the probation clients, the offenders.

He turns to his computer, enters one of his numerous required passwords, and spends the mandatory time to scan and delete various emails, weeding out the ones to which he must respond. Then he turns to the physical files stacked upon his desk, all in need of an update — warning letters for missed appointments, collateral phone calls, and the never-ending breach reports requesting a warrant.

When clients reporting in can’t remember his name, when the administrative assistant asks who their PO is, they refer to him as the guy with the hair. He has a thick shock, dark when cut close, but copper-coloured and unruly in its current length. Beneath this and a tall brow, his eyes are grey, his face long and slightly crooked. An oval button-size birthmark hangs below his left eye, so seen from that side he looks a bit like a sad mime.

The central part of the office is a maze cluttered with equipment — printers and photocopier, fax machine, partitions, tables and shelves laden with stacks of forms and files in transit. The individual offices all open off this space; the two administration staff work in a cross-fire of voices.

George Woodgate, the manager, is six foot seven, head and shoulders above the partitions, so he can stand in his doorway and direct his gravelly commands wherever he likes. He’s a former prison director who moved to this community supervision office en route to retirement. Woodgate and his wife found themselves a tidy property in a rural neighbourhood, and he likes the region for all the fishing and hunting it offers. In the prisons both inmates and employees are identified by surnames, and Woodgate has retained the habit, as well as his steel-grey hair in a brushcut. The manager pronounces Ellis more like Alice, which Peter suspects is intentional because he seems to be often out of favour with the man.

“Alice!” the call comes, and a few heads duck slightly while hands finger keyboards.

Peter feels the administrative assistant’s eyes following him because she relishes these little scenes in the manager’s office. He steps in to face the marching music. Woodgate sits ramrod straight in his treasured leather chair with a document in hand, which he plops on the desk to launch things. No pleasantries.

“We have a couple of questions concerning this presentence report, the fraud charge against Gauthier. We, meaning Judge Vanderkraan, and me. Questions I couldn’t answer when he telephoned a few minutes ago.”

The managerial glower is about as fierce as any Peter has seen. Judges are sometimes critical of PSRs in court, especially peeved by inaccuracies of a hurried probation officer, but Peter hasn’t heard of one actually calling Woodgate to make the point. This doesn’t seem like good news, and he shifts his feet.

“Number one — how can you justify recommending a discharge on the sole condition of restitution, which is a fraction, about one-third, of the amount of her fraud?”

“Well —”

“Ah!” Woodgate raises his gorilla-length index finger. “Number two — how do you justify a discharge in the first place? This is fraud. Have you heard of the concept of minimum sentences? Well, check the Criminal Code, Alice. People can do federal time for fraud. A discharge is hardly an option in this case, and the judge wasn’t pleased when the halfwit defence requested one, anyway, and pointed out your bleeding-heart recommendation.”

Peter knows enough to let the wind subside before he ventures a reply. “Well, Ms. Gauthier was only working part-time while on welfare. If she had declared the income, she would’ve still received social assistance, just not as much. So I subtracted the amount she had the right to from the total, which left seven thousand or so as restitution.”

“Nice to know you’re a math wiz,” Woodgate barks, at which the administrative assistant snickers from behind.

“Even that amount would take her years to repay. They lost the family farm in Manitoba. So they moved out here and her husband got a job on a logging crew, but then he had an accident, and Workers’ Compensation won’t —”

“Please!” Woodgate raises his hands to his big ears in mock horror, rubbing his crew cut. “This world isn’t fair. Get over it. We aren’t social workers, Alice. You might have heard me say that before?”

Yes, thinks Peter, and it’s usually a sign the rant is concluding.

“The woman committed an indictable offence. In future don’t be pushing for social revolution in your reports, especially when it embarrasses a judge.”

Peter shakes his head. “Oh, absolutely not.”

Woodgate cocks his head, a possible indication that any impertinence might warrant an old-fashioned flogging.

“I mean,” Peter adds, “that was never my intention. It was an oversight… not checking the Code.”

“That’s what I told Judge Vanderkraan — that it was the mistake of an auxiliary officer of the court.” Woodgate tosses the report into his shredding basket and turns to other business on his desk without lifting his gaze to Peter. “That will be all… for the moment.”