To Squeeze a Prairie Dog Read online

  As he sat in bed, the sound of amplified angelic crooning and guitar strumming could be heard in the distance, so J. D. cracked open his bedroom window and listened. His landlord had warned him about the nearby neighborhood bars and cafes, all of which hosted live music at night on their patios, which she complained about constantly and reported to the police, citing noise ordinance violations at night. It bothered his landlord to no end but J. D. actually enjoyed hearing the music. It pleased him to hear the folk music seep into his tiny house along with the scent of the blooming wisteria flowers that grew on the fence behind his house. It was an intoxicating combination for him and, rather than change into his night clothes and then brush his teeth, he simply laid down in his bed and allowed the folk singer to serenade him to sleep.

  4.

  When J. D. entered Unit 3 around 8 a.m., the small office was already abuzz. Deborah and Conchino were busy at their desks entering data while Rita stood at the printer table, uncovering a clear, glass dish filled with homemade brownies. The printers belched paper into their paper baskets. Brent was nowhere to be found, his desk abandoned.

  “G’ morning!” Rita said to J. D., folding the aluminum foil used to cover the dish of baked goods so she could reuse it later. “I brought some goodies for us to share. I baked brownies for my grandkids but we need these treats more than they do. We work for a living!” she said, then cackled. “They tell me school is hard but nuttin’s harder than workin’ every day and supportin’ your family. Go on and take one. They good for your soul.” J. D. took a brownie and bit into the delicious treat. She returned to her desk, sat down, placed the aluminum foil in her purse, then began typing.

  J. D. set his lunch box on his desk and then sat down. He opened the right, bottom drawer so he could set his lunch box in there but he discovered a platoon of sugar ants marching single-file across the bottom of the drawer.

  Deborah noticed J. D. staring into his desk drawer and said, “Our office is infested with sugar ants. We’ve tried everything to get rid of them but they won’t go away.”

  “They now our suite mates!” Rita said. Both women giggled. “They don’t bite, though. They not fire ants.”

  J. D. closed the drawer—not disturbing or killing the sugar ants—and kept his lunch box where he sat it on the desktop. He tapped a few random keys on his keyboard, which awoke the computer sleeping on his desk. On the screen was an image of the state of Texas—drawn in green ASCII characters on a field of pitch black—which looked like this:

  J. D. stared at the image of Texas, mesmerized by its simple yet accurate depiction. How long did it take to do that? he thought to himself. Will I be drawing pictures on the computer, too?

  “Make yourself at home,” Deborah said while typing. “I’ll sit next to you in a bit and train you as soon as I get done with this batch of apps.”

  “OK,” J. D. said, continuing to examine the ASCII image of Texas on his computer screen.

  “The café downstairs sells coffee,” Deborah continued. “You can go down and grab some, if you’d like.”

  “That’s OK,” J. D. said, eating his brownie, crumbs falling into the folds of his shirt and pants, as he inventoried the various punctuation marks and characters of the border of Texas on the screen. “I don’t drink coffee.”

  “You don’t drink coffee?!” Rita blurted. Her exclamation interrupted Conchino’s trance—the same hypnotic trance J. D. would learn to succumb to as he typed and entered data all day long at his new job—and he stared at J. D., shaking his head in disbelief. Rita continued, “How you goin’ to get through your day without coffee? And nuttin’ goes better with homemade brownies than coffee.”

  “So true,” Deborah said. Conchino agreed with an emphatic nod. “Nothing gets you through the boring routine of entering these unemployment applications than a good cup of coffee.”

  “I can’t agree more!” Brent Baker said, the door to Unit 3 flying open and then smashing against the wall. He tossed his shoulder bag behind his desk, plopped in his chair, and slammed his head on the desktop. “Coffee sounds really good right now.”

  “What’s wrong? You hung over?” Rita said, sarcastically.

  “I wish,” Brent said, covering his head with his arms, as if shielding himself from his obligations and duties. “You guys entering apps?”

  “Of course we are,” Deborah said. “You could be helping us, you know. We’re swamped.”

  “I will, I will,” he said, sitting up and then pushing his hair back into its usual style: controlled shagginess. “But first things first. COFFEE! Anybody else want some?” he said, standing up, his hands plundering his pockets for money, then looking around the room for takers.

  A collective groan came from the old crew. J. D. smiled at Brent, then said, “No thank you.”

  “You bring lunch today?” Brent said to J. D. while opening the door to Unit 3.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Don’t bring tomorrow. I’ll take you to lunch. How’s that?” he said, punctuating the order with a thumbs-up.

  “Sounds great,” J. D. said, flattered.

  “I’ll be back in a jiffy.” Then he vanished from Unit 3, the door slamming closed behind him.

  Deborah pushed her chair from behind her desk, parked it next to J. D., then plopped down—setting a manila folder filled with papers on her lap.

  “Get used to it. He’s always gone,” she said, adjusting her sitting position in her chair, scooching close to J. D.’s desk. “Ready to learn how to enter apps into the system?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “OK. Well, before we start, let me tell you a little about our computer system.”

  She went on to tell him about the Texas Application Processing Entry System, or TAPES as most in the agency liked to call it since it was an easy-to-remember acronym. TAPES was a mainframe data entry application that had been around since the 1970s, used to enter unemployment applications from the citizens of Texas applying for unemployment benefits through a “green screen” terminal. In the 1990s, personal computers eventually replaced mainframe “green screens” but the TAPES interface was converted into a terminal emulation, allowing agency employees to still enter data into TAPES via their personal computers. J. D. was surprised at the specificity of Deborah’s knowledge of TAPES, definitions of processes and steps of procedures rolling off her tongue like a comic book enthusiast rattling off the super powers and backstories of all the heroes in the Marvel Universe, except she wasn’t a computer genius; she was a low-level, state government data entry clerk who looked like she was about to be a grandmother. She went on dryly for a good fifteen to twenty minutes about the history of TAPES. J. D. struggled to focus but at least absorbed some of what she had to say.

  “And that’s everything you’ll ever need to know about TAPES. Got any questions?”

  “Well...,” he said, pausing for a breath or two. “Does Mr. Baker’s epilepsy cause him a lot of—”

  “Epilepsy? Mr. Baker?!” she said, cackling. “Boy, he doesn’t have epilepsy. That’s funny. Any other questions?”

  “No.”

  “Good. So, what you do first is, set a paper application on your paper holder, like so.” She took the first application from the manila folder on her lap and clipped it on the metal paper holder on his desk, then turned it to face J. D. “Then enter all the filled-in places on the app to the data fields on the screen.”

  J. D. attempted to read the chicken-scratch handwriting on the application. The citizen’s handwriting was barely legible, awful to the point of indecipherable, but—to J. D.’s amazement—Deborah was able to read it.

  “I’ll read it out loud and you enter. Got it?”

  “OK.”

  Deborah rattled off all the information: First Name, Last Name, Address, so on and so forth. With two fingers, J. D. pecked at the keyboard like a farm hen gingerly searching for grubs on the ground. Deborah chuckled.

  “Boy! Where did you learn to type like that?”

/>   “I did take a keyboard class in high school.”

  “Keyboard class? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “I really don’t know how to type, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at.”

  “Well, I can see that. Don’t worry about it. You’ll be a pro before you know it. You’ll just catch on.”

  “Thank you,” he said, grateful that she didn’t tease him more about his abysmal typing skills.

  “You remind me of my son. You two are about the same age, too. Getting yourself in things when you don’t know how to do things.” J. D. turned to see Deborah smiling at him. “You’re much nicer than my son, though. He’s mean to me.”

  “Why is he mean to you?”

  “Beats me. Spoiled, I guess. Anyways, let’s keep going. The social security number is 459-55—,” she continued.

  J. D. typed as fast as his two fingers allowed him. Conchino examined the two, first J. D. and then nodding at Deborah. She nodded back, then smiled. She continued to feed J. D. information from the application until she reached the end. He looked up at the computer screen. A prompt hung on the screen. He read it out loud. It said: “Submit data or save and print?”

  “Which do I do?” J. D. said, looking for guidance.

  “Hit Ctrl Shift P on the keyboard to save and print.”

  “OK,” he said.

  “See? It’s printing. Then you move on to the next application. Any questions?”

  “Hmmm,” J. D. said, thinking. “Why not just submit the application?”

  “Submit? What do you mean?”

  “Well, the screen says, ‘Submit data or save and print?’ Why don’t I just submit the application?”

  “Good question. We’ve always just saved and printed. I don’t even know how to submit. Rita?” she barked, over the typing of the other two.

  “Yeah?!”

  “Why don’t we submit instead of save and print?”

  “‘Cause there is no submit! Must be a typo or somethin’ on the screen.”

  “Typo?” Deborah said, confused.

  “Yeah, a typo. You know? A misspelling.”

  “I know what a typo is, my dear.”

  “Then why did you ax me?” Rita said, halting her data entry, peering at Deborah.

  “Don’t get your panties in a wad,” Deborah said, rolling her eyes.

  “My panties are just fine,” Rita said, typing again. “Pristine, even.”

  “It’s a typo,” Deborah said to J. D. “Just save and print.”

  “OK.”

  “And that’s it. Want to try yourself?”

  “Sure,” J. D. said. He grabbed the next application, set it on the paper holder, and began to enter the data on his own. Deborah was pleased.

  “Just to let everyone know,” Rita called out, while typing. “We weren’t jackpot winners last night but we did win $6!”

  Deborah and Conchino clapped softly, like the gallery of a golf tournament. Rita pulled the Ziplock bag from her middle desk drawer and opened it.

  “Everyone, pitch in for the next one,” she said, handing the bag to Deborah. “One of these days, we’re goin’ to hit it big. I can feel it!”

  “Hallelujah!” Deborah said.

  But in the meantime, they were just ordinary folks doing ordinary things at just another ordinary place of employment.

  5.

  The next day—as soon as he stepped into Unit 3—Brent informed J. D. that he would be taking him out to lunch, as he promised. Brent tore through the door like a tornado mowing through the plains of Oklahoma and accosted J. D. at his desk.

  “Remember, we’re going out for lunch today. Right?”

  Dang it! J. D. thought. The sleepy country boy was what many liked to call a “creature of habit,” being that he made his lunch every work morning like clockwork—peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread, plain potato chips, a soda, some variety of pecan snack from Brady, Texas, and so forth. J. D. was a little embarrassed that his efficient morning routine might have just ruined his first week on the job.

  “Sorry, Mr. Baker. I forgot about our lunch plans. I brought my lunch today, as usual.”

  “That’s OK. Save it for tomorrow. And call me Brent. Mr. Baker is how people used to address my father. I’m just good ol’ Brent.”

  “All right,” J. D. said, meekly.

  “But before we leave for lunch, I’ll give you a little tour of the building. You know? Show you around. You down?”

  “How can I say no?”

  “Great!” Brent said, careening around his desk and then plopping in his office chair, tossing a messenger bag from around his neck to the floor. He surveyed the pile of papers on his desk—monuments reminding him of the high unemployment of the State of Texas as well as the endless amount of applications that poured in daily—and he sighed deeply. “This shit never ends, does it?”

  “Never does!” Rita squawked while she typed.

  J. D. turned to look at Rita and marveled that two of his new coworkers—Rita and Deborah (not Conchino because he hadn’t spoken a single word to anyone since J. D. started work)—not only could talk but seemed to be able to have full conversations while entering data. In a way, their ability to do two things skillfully at once reminded him of the acrobats and clowns from the circus who visited Brady, Texas, last summer, the way they could ride unicycles and juggle tennis balls at the same time or traipse across high wires in ballet shoes while spinning colorful hula hoops on their hips. It was miraculous to watch: the circus. J. D. wondered if he would graduate from two-fingered pecking with deep concentration to ten-fingered typing while idly chatting. It seemed like a pipe dream, too good to be true. He also wondered if Conchino might actually be mute since he hadn’t spoken a word. Dang, he thought. He’s quieter than a horny toad running for cover.

  “Well, get on it then. No time to waste,” Brent said, then he laid his head on his desk as if ready to take a nap.

  “What time do you want to leave for lunch?” J. D. said to him.

  “11:30 sharp,” Brent said, his head on his desk hidden behind stacks of papers.

  “OK.”

  J. D. placed an application on the paper holder and then began to peck slowly at his keyboard, entering the information on the app into TAPES as Deborah trained him to do the day before. As he worked, Deborah and Rita struck up a breezy conversation, one where they compared the good and bad about their children and—in Rita’s case—her grandchildren as well. Turns out, Deborah’s son—who was close to J. D.’s age as she had mentioned before—enjoyed making extra money by selling questionable items in various ways, whether it was on the internet or through acquaintances. Some of the items he sold were run-of-the-mill household appliances or electronics. But some of the other things he sold placed him precariously close to being categorized as a criminal, something which irked Deborah to no end.

  “He’s just like his father,” Deborah lamented. “That no-good son of a bitch. And yes, my former mother-in-law is a bitch. I said it!”

  “Oh, my Reggie’s mother was a saint, rest her blessed soul,” Rita said. “And Reggie, too. Lord, I miss his sweet face.” Rita blew a kiss to the heavens, the place she felt her late husband and his late mother resided, where they were sitting together and waiting patiently for her. As it also turned out, Rita was widowed not long ago—her poor husband Reggie dying from heart disease and diabetes, both so malicious to his health that the doctors couldn’t decide which actually caused his early demise—and she was left to live her elderly days as the matriarch of her large brood of five adult children and thirteen grandchildren. The adjective she used most to describe her five children was worthless. The adjective she used most to describe her grandchildren was mischievous. But that didn’t stop her from doing her best to be the greatest mother and grandmother to them all. “I just wish Reggie was still here to help me. I told him to eat better!”

  “Amen, sister,” Deborah said.

  J. D. learned a lot about Deborah and R
ita just from listening to their idle chats. Conchino, on the other hand, was still a mystery and would be for quite some time. He never said a word, except for occasional guttural grunts or conspicuous nods or headshakes when spoken to. Unlike Deborah and Rita—whose desks were covered with photos of their children and, in Rita’s case, grandchildren—Conchino did not decorate his work area with family memorabilia. What Conchino loved most was his car (he was obsessed with street racing), and his work area reflected that. His desk was covered with car parts, car audio equipment, and tools. When he had a break from work, he piddled around with the car parts and accessories at his desk, screwing and unscrewing things, snipping and then clamping other things. J. D. knew nothing about cars, so watching Conchino silently mess around with these parts was mysterious and fascinating to him.

  What kind of car does he drive? J. D. thought. I bet it’s fast.

  The four coworkers entered applications all morning, the printers belching endless reams of serrated paper into metal baskets. Once 11:30 approached, a man entered Unit 3—a pale man with a balding pate, short-sleeved button-down shirt containing a bulbous stomach, thin and hairy arms, and legs as slender and frail as dried twigs. He slowly pushed a metal cart, which he parked next to the printer table, then watched the paper spill from the printers into their baskets. He waited patiently, his hands resting on his boney hips.

  When Rita noticed the odd-looking man, she said, “It’s Ken. Almost lunchtime!” She stopped typing and then the others—including J. D.—eventually followed suit.

  The printers soon stopped printing, then the man named Ken ripped each paper pile from their respective printers and stacked them on his cart. Once done gathering the printed applications, he slowly pushed the cart back to the door of Unit 3.

  “Have a great day, Ken!” Deborah said. He raised his hand above his head, as if attempting to wave but not moving his hand, then closed the door behind him. The sound of the door slamming awoke Brent Baker, who had been snoozing on his desk.