Short Story - The Eater of Secrets
Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2012 1:26 am
This is just something that started as part of a larger story and became irrelevant to it.
P. T. Bridgeport
The Eater of Secrets
I, Dwight Eisenhower Bloomquist, being of sound mind and strong body, took this job anyway.
Aw, that’s not fair. I love being in Japan, and I like the job most of the time. I first came here when I was in the Air Force, and felt a real connection with the people and how they do things. I always wanted to come back. I even learned Japanese. When the Air Force and I decided we’d had enough of each other, I had been the provost marshal on enough bases to know the job. When the opportunity showed up, I took it. Hey, I spent most of my career trying to get “over-exuberant” recruits to respect the service, each other, and local cultures. How hard could it be to corral students in a school like Yamaku? I liked the place and they saw some advantages to having a lunatic foreigner with a gray crewcut as their law and order. Academy Prefect, they call it. It beats going back to coal country.
Well, it’s different. The Air Force had sergeants and Yamaku doesn’t. In the service, a lot of things got fixed before they got to my desk. Everything shows up here. In the Air Force, you just wanted everybody on the base to do their job and stay out of trouble. Here, you’re trying to get young folks with some pretty goddam serious issues to figure out what to do with themselves, both while they’re here and after they leave. It’s real different.
Today was Class 3 review. Every month, I get together with the departments to discuss everything that went on in each class over the past month. Class 3 is the senior class. Usually, this class is real interested in what to do when they get out, so you don’t have as many problems. Usually.
The department heads trooped into my office on time, so we started.
“Security?”
“Nothing real big this month, Ike. Lots of Class 3’s ignoring curfew. Mr., ummm, Nakai is spending some time and effort to sneak out of the girl’s dorm first thing in the morning. He’s not doing it a lot, just now and then.”
I spun up his file on my computer. “Nakai, that’s the one with the heart. Pretty compliant guy until now. Probably got some personal interest in there. No complaints from the residents, right?” Security nodded.
I had second thoughts. “Hey Nurse, what about this? This guy’s heart in any danger?”
The Nurse grinned. “Probably not. Physically anyway. I told him to get more exercise, but that’s not what I meant. I’ll make sure he has all of the facts he needs. On everything, I mean.”
“Thank you kindly, Nurse. What else?”
“Let’s see. The librarian thinks Kenji Setou is stealing books from the library. He’s showing up on the post-curfew cameras too. With stacks of books.”
“Haven’t any of these people heard of security cameras? Setou again. Between cutting classes and stealing books, he’s starting to get up my nose. Let’s see… Phys Ed, will you send one of the coaches over to Mr. Setou’s room to encourage him to return any outstanding books? One of the men, mind.” Coaches are the closest thing we have to sergeants here.
“While we’re on it, do we have any other big-time class cutters?” They looked at each other. “Umm, how about Miss Izekawa, Ike?” somebody asked.
“Nope. Leave her alone. She getting by in class?”
“Yeah – remarkable how well she keeps up, with all of her time out. Setou does too.”
“Different case entirely. Let her work it out herself if she can. Send a coach after him. Speaking of coaches, can Phys Ed have the track coach give the “not on school time, and not on school property” speech to the track team? Lots of interesting things have been showing up around the equipment shed.”
Buildings and Grounds spoke up. “What are we going to do with the painting on the wall in front of the girls dorm?"
“Yeah, that’s Miss Tezuka’s contribution to the festival.” I went back to the computer. “She’s Class 3, right? I know nothing about art. Somebody talk to the art department. For now, let’s say it stays there until she graduates. If the art people like it, it stays longer, maybe permanently. Somebody take a picture in the meantime so we have a record. More than likely, somebody else in the next class will want to try something like it – we’ll use that wall for the canvas if the art department says so.”
“How about asking the Student Council, Ike?”
“Right now, the Student Council consists of Miss Hakamichi and Miss Mikado. You know, the one with the pink hair. The Student Council faithfully represents the views of Misses Hakamichi and Mikado, if Miss Mikado ever decides to have a view. No buy-in at all from anybody else. Let us leave sleeping Hakamichis lie. We start dealing with her regularly, and sooner or later, Hakamichi senior is going to be back in my office with his own very special views on education. Anybody want that?”
I already knew the answer to that one. Chicken Man was becoming a legend around here. Somebody seriously asked if we could get Shizune Hakamichi to graduate early, so we didn’t have to see her father anymore. They call him Chicken Man because his rather large pile of money came from owning half the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises between here and Fukushima. I heard he was writing an autobiography. Can’t imagine what it would say. Probably have lots of “I”s in it though.
We went on like that for another half hour and then the meeting broke and everybody went back to their real jobs. I turned to my new assistant, Shigeru, and asked “What you do think?”
“I don’t know, Ike. Your methods are real different. It’s all oral. No minutes, no notes… almost none of it gets into the files. How do you keep track?”
“I don’t. I keep track of the things I need to, and forget the things I don’t. If I’m wrong on something, the department heads remind me.”
“Yeah, but some of it – the Nakai thing, the Setou thing, even the track team – that could lead to a lawsuit.”
“To be perfectly honest, Shigeru, I don’t see how keeping a whole bunch of gossip on paper is going to help us if we get sued. Matter of fact, it could hurt us.”
“Okay, but what if one of these people is seriously affected by something we know?”
“I absolutely guarantee you that everything we talked about will seriously affect these people. The people here live pretty intensely, just like everybody says you should. The things that happen become part of their experience. That’s not our business. The Nakai thing… if he and Miss, ah, his personal interest stay connected, it’ll affect him. If they don’t, it’ll affect him anyway.”
Shigeru grinned. “So you know who it is?”
“Ain’t exactly a state secret, Shigeru. You just have to keep your ears open in the hallways. Point is, it’s not something that we need to get involved with – not yet anyway, and probably not ever.
There was this young recruit on one of my bases. He fell hard for a local girl and she fell hard right back. Spent a lot of money buying this locket for her. Well, his next duty station comes up, and it’s thousands of miles away. She’s scared to death of being thousands of miles from her family. After lots of agony, they break up, and she gives the locket back. If the Air Force had gotten in the middle of that, it just would have made the whole thing messier. All this stuff is experience for somebody, but we don’t have to pass judgment on other people’s experience, unless they’re doing something really wrong.”
“I don’t know, Ike. It’s a different philosophy than the one I’m used to.”
“The people here are smarter and tougher than the average, Shigeru, and nobody gives people this age enough credit anyway. The trick isn’t getting involved, the trick is knowing when not to. Kept track of that recruit, and he went on to be a pretty good serviceman. Getting officially involved wouldn’t have helped him.”
I could see that Shigeru wasn’t convinced, but we broke it off and went back to business. The conversation brought back memories though. When I get home, I think I’ll dig the locket out of my desk.
P. T. Bridgeport
The Eater of Secrets
I, Dwight Eisenhower Bloomquist, being of sound mind and strong body, took this job anyway.
Aw, that’s not fair. I love being in Japan, and I like the job most of the time. I first came here when I was in the Air Force, and felt a real connection with the people and how they do things. I always wanted to come back. I even learned Japanese. When the Air Force and I decided we’d had enough of each other, I had been the provost marshal on enough bases to know the job. When the opportunity showed up, I took it. Hey, I spent most of my career trying to get “over-exuberant” recruits to respect the service, each other, and local cultures. How hard could it be to corral students in a school like Yamaku? I liked the place and they saw some advantages to having a lunatic foreigner with a gray crewcut as their law and order. Academy Prefect, they call it. It beats going back to coal country.
Well, it’s different. The Air Force had sergeants and Yamaku doesn’t. In the service, a lot of things got fixed before they got to my desk. Everything shows up here. In the Air Force, you just wanted everybody on the base to do their job and stay out of trouble. Here, you’re trying to get young folks with some pretty goddam serious issues to figure out what to do with themselves, both while they’re here and after they leave. It’s real different.
Today was Class 3 review. Every month, I get together with the departments to discuss everything that went on in each class over the past month. Class 3 is the senior class. Usually, this class is real interested in what to do when they get out, so you don’t have as many problems. Usually.
The department heads trooped into my office on time, so we started.
“Security?”
“Nothing real big this month, Ike. Lots of Class 3’s ignoring curfew. Mr., ummm, Nakai is spending some time and effort to sneak out of the girl’s dorm first thing in the morning. He’s not doing it a lot, just now and then.”
I spun up his file on my computer. “Nakai, that’s the one with the heart. Pretty compliant guy until now. Probably got some personal interest in there. No complaints from the residents, right?” Security nodded.
I had second thoughts. “Hey Nurse, what about this? This guy’s heart in any danger?”
The Nurse grinned. “Probably not. Physically anyway. I told him to get more exercise, but that’s not what I meant. I’ll make sure he has all of the facts he needs. On everything, I mean.”
“Thank you kindly, Nurse. What else?”
“Let’s see. The librarian thinks Kenji Setou is stealing books from the library. He’s showing up on the post-curfew cameras too. With stacks of books.”
“Haven’t any of these people heard of security cameras? Setou again. Between cutting classes and stealing books, he’s starting to get up my nose. Let’s see… Phys Ed, will you send one of the coaches over to Mr. Setou’s room to encourage him to return any outstanding books? One of the men, mind.” Coaches are the closest thing we have to sergeants here.
“While we’re on it, do we have any other big-time class cutters?” They looked at each other. “Umm, how about Miss Izekawa, Ike?” somebody asked.
“Nope. Leave her alone. She getting by in class?”
“Yeah – remarkable how well she keeps up, with all of her time out. Setou does too.”
“Different case entirely. Let her work it out herself if she can. Send a coach after him. Speaking of coaches, can Phys Ed have the track coach give the “not on school time, and not on school property” speech to the track team? Lots of interesting things have been showing up around the equipment shed.”
Buildings and Grounds spoke up. “What are we going to do with the painting on the wall in front of the girls dorm?"
“Yeah, that’s Miss Tezuka’s contribution to the festival.” I went back to the computer. “She’s Class 3, right? I know nothing about art. Somebody talk to the art department. For now, let’s say it stays there until she graduates. If the art people like it, it stays longer, maybe permanently. Somebody take a picture in the meantime so we have a record. More than likely, somebody else in the next class will want to try something like it – we’ll use that wall for the canvas if the art department says so.”
“How about asking the Student Council, Ike?”
“Right now, the Student Council consists of Miss Hakamichi and Miss Mikado. You know, the one with the pink hair. The Student Council faithfully represents the views of Misses Hakamichi and Mikado, if Miss Mikado ever decides to have a view. No buy-in at all from anybody else. Let us leave sleeping Hakamichis lie. We start dealing with her regularly, and sooner or later, Hakamichi senior is going to be back in my office with his own very special views on education. Anybody want that?”
I already knew the answer to that one. Chicken Man was becoming a legend around here. Somebody seriously asked if we could get Shizune Hakamichi to graduate early, so we didn’t have to see her father anymore. They call him Chicken Man because his rather large pile of money came from owning half the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises between here and Fukushima. I heard he was writing an autobiography. Can’t imagine what it would say. Probably have lots of “I”s in it though.
We went on like that for another half hour and then the meeting broke and everybody went back to their real jobs. I turned to my new assistant, Shigeru, and asked “What you do think?”
“I don’t know, Ike. Your methods are real different. It’s all oral. No minutes, no notes… almost none of it gets into the files. How do you keep track?”
“I don’t. I keep track of the things I need to, and forget the things I don’t. If I’m wrong on something, the department heads remind me.”
“Yeah, but some of it – the Nakai thing, the Setou thing, even the track team – that could lead to a lawsuit.”
“To be perfectly honest, Shigeru, I don’t see how keeping a whole bunch of gossip on paper is going to help us if we get sued. Matter of fact, it could hurt us.”
“Okay, but what if one of these people is seriously affected by something we know?”
“I absolutely guarantee you that everything we talked about will seriously affect these people. The people here live pretty intensely, just like everybody says you should. The things that happen become part of their experience. That’s not our business. The Nakai thing… if he and Miss, ah, his personal interest stay connected, it’ll affect him. If they don’t, it’ll affect him anyway.”
Shigeru grinned. “So you know who it is?”
“Ain’t exactly a state secret, Shigeru. You just have to keep your ears open in the hallways. Point is, it’s not something that we need to get involved with – not yet anyway, and probably not ever.
There was this young recruit on one of my bases. He fell hard for a local girl and she fell hard right back. Spent a lot of money buying this locket for her. Well, his next duty station comes up, and it’s thousands of miles away. She’s scared to death of being thousands of miles from her family. After lots of agony, they break up, and she gives the locket back. If the Air Force had gotten in the middle of that, it just would have made the whole thing messier. All this stuff is experience for somebody, but we don’t have to pass judgment on other people’s experience, unless they’re doing something really wrong.”
“I don’t know, Ike. It’s a different philosophy than the one I’m used to.”
“The people here are smarter and tougher than the average, Shigeru, and nobody gives people this age enough credit anyway. The trick isn’t getting involved, the trick is knowing when not to. Kept track of that recruit, and he went on to be a pretty good serviceman. Getting officially involved wouldn’t have helped him.”
I could see that Shigeru wasn’t convinced, but we broke it off and went back to business. The conversation brought back memories though. When I get home, I think I’ll dig the locket out of my desk.