DMV, page 32
A petite older woman wearing a vicious and jarringly incongruous grin stepped forward and handed the supervisor a sharpened yellow pencil.
Which was promptly shoved into Mitchell’s right eye.
His scream was louder than any Jorge had ever heard. Jerking against his restraints, his entire body lurched forward, but he was strapped in too tightly to budge more than a fraction of an inch. The supervisor pulled out the pencil, and Jorge expected to see Mitchell’s eyeball impaled on the end of it like a gruesome Tootsie Pop, but there were only bits of gelatinous tissue clinging to the pointed tip. The eyeball itself, damaged and dripping, hung half in and half out of its socket, lolling against the top edge of the trainee’s cheek.
Mitchell, still screaming, was carried out in the chair by the security guards. The chimes sounded, even as his screams faded, and everyone headed back to work.
Some time later, the chimes sounded again. This time, Marcine, one of only three remaining female recruits, was caught nodding off at her station during a lull between waves of applicants. She ended up stripped and whipped, all of her hair shaved off. By the time she was carried off, every inch of skin was coated red with a thin sheen of her own blood.
They were dropping like flies.
Having filed the latest batch of forms in the appropriate cabinet drawer, Jorge distributed the remaining copies to the proper stations. The labyrinthine layout of the office still confused him, and it was only through a combination of trial-and-error and luck that he managed to find his way to the various divisions, although often not in the order he intended.
He finished delivering the last of the forms and was pushing the empty metal cart back to his assigned station, making his way between an oddly configured arrangement of desks, when an officious-looking clerk—not one of his fellow trainees—nearly ran into him while sorting through a sheaf of papers in his hand. The man looked at him with disdain as he passed by. “Watch it, wetback.”
Jorge punched him in the gut.
The man went down, dropping his papers, gasping for breath, and Jorge kept walking, praying that no one else had seen. He wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been so tired, but that racist jibe was the snot sauce on this shit sandwich of a day, and his reaction had been instinctive.
Ms. Signal, his supervisor at today’s station, had seen, and as he met her gaze, she smiled and nodded her approval. “Nicely handled,” she told him.
Apparently, violence was a perfectly acceptable way to deal with inter-office conflict at the DMV.
He was going to keep that in mind.
During his absence, a new batch of forms had arrived, and he placed them on his cart and headed back to the file cabinet.
It was the top form on the pile.
By rote, Jorge read the number in the upper left corner first, opened the correct file drawer, then glanced at the name of the form centered at the top of the sheet: Application for Civilian Entrance to Department of Motor Vehicles Training Camp.
Civilian entrance?
Someone from the outside could fill out this form and get into the camp?
If there was one thing Jorge had learned during his time here, it was that forms and paperwork were like Holy writ to these people. If a form said to do something, they did it, no questions asked.
If he could somehow get this to Rosita and Todd, they could blow the lid off this place.
Heart pounding, he glanced quickly around to see if anyone was looking in his direction. No one was, and he was about to take one of the forms, fold it up and put it in his pocket, in case he ever had the opportunity to contact the outside world. But then he thought of the other recruits who had been punished, and realized that all of the trainees, including himself, were probably under constant surveillance, whether they realized it or not. He briefly considered getting a pen and writing the number of the form on his hand, before deciding instead to simply memorize it. Holding the paper in front of his face, he read the form number over and over again, repeating it under his breath.
“A one-thirty-one slash two B. A one-thirty-one slash two B. A one-thirty-one slash two B…”
There was a tap on his shoulder, and Jorge jumped, startled, certain that he’d been caught.
The man standing over his shoulder, a nondescript white guy in a gray suit with red tie, chuckled at his reaction. “Didn’t mean to scare you there, sport. I was just wondering who gave you this busywork. Who’s your supervisor?”
“Ms. Signal.”
He shook his head. “She should know better. What we do here in the Office has repercussions throughout all of the satellite branches. And the fact is, we’re actually phasing out in-person registration. It’s no longer effective in this online age. Our goal is to make services more easily accessible to people, and to that end, we’re updating our processes and procedures. Pretty soon, these forms you’re filing will only be available online. People will have the option of filing electronically or printing out applicable forms and sending them in, but once the updates are complete, they will no longer be able to obtain any forms at a branch office. Everything will be done from the comfort of their own homes.” He slapped Jorge on the back, and it was all Jorge could do not to slug him. “Pretty good, eh Tonto?”
Tonto?
The asshole might think he was Native American and be trying to insult him with that dated reference, but in Spanish tonto meant “stupid,” and he wouldn’t put it past someone from the DMV to purposely use it in that manner in order to get his goat. Either way, it was a put-down, and Jorge had to force himself to let the matter slide and turn back to his work.
The man left, still chuckling to himself, and Jorge put the Application for Civilian Entrance to Department of Motor Vehicles Training Camp at the bottom of his pile, repeating its number to himself even as he filed the other forms. He wanted to see if he could memorize and retain the information while continuing to sort and file the rest of his batch. He was relieved when he reached the bottom of the stack and, before even looking at the form number, said to himself, “A one-thirty-one slash two B.”
He’d done it.
There were no forms for him to distribute, so Ms. Signal farmed him out to Mr. Green, a beefy Bill Barr lookalike who was in charge of Window Nine. Jorge was promptly put to work at a desktop computer, updating the records of drivers who had submitted change-of- address forms. He had input over a dozen when Mr. Green circled back around to check on him. The fat man stood there for several moments, silently staring, before loudly clearing his throat. “I have a question for you, Senor Guiterrez.”
The disdain in his voice when he emphasized the word Senor was clear, and it was all Jorge could do not to punch the man in his froggish Burghermeister Meisterburgher mouth. Even in his exhausted state, however, he knew that assaulting a superior would not be tolerated. It might be fine for dealing with other trainees or employees on his level, but like most organizations, the DMV was a hierarchy, and he knew that if he punched up, he would be taken down. He didn’t have to accept the insult passively, though, and he looked up at the man with a subservient simpleton’s smile. “Yes, massa?”
The fleeting expression of annoyance that flitted across the supervisor’s features gave Jorge a welcome sense of satisfaction.
“One of your fellow recruits—” Mr. Green said the word with contempt. “—seems to have given a young woman applying for an ID card incorrect information and provided her with the wrong form for what she wishes to do.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“How do you think we should punish him?”
Jorge fixed him with a flat stare. “What do the regulations say?”
“Castration.”
“There’s your answer.” He turned back to his computer. “Excuse me. I need to get back to work.” He started entering a driver’s new address. “A one-thirty-one slash two B,” he muttered under his breath.
The question Mr. Green asked must have been hypothetical since no punishment was meted out to anyone. In fact, soon afterward, the entire office was shut down and they were released. Mr. Toll was always the one who led them to and from the office, and once outside, he gave them the choice of eating or sleeping, since they had done neither for what had to have been over a day. One recruit opted for the cafeteria, but the rest of them headed straight to their quarters and bed.
No room had never looked so inviting, and as he closed the door behind him, Jorge wondered if the other remaining recruits had accommodations as nice. The first thing he did was pick up a pen and piece of scratch paper, and jot down the number of the form he had found. “A one-thirty-one slash two B,” he recited as he wrote. He folded the paper and put it into his right front pants pocket, where he could easily pull it out if the opportunity arose.
Application for Civilian Entrance to Department of Motor Vehicles Training Camp
If he could just get that out to Rosita and Todd…
Drained, Jorge fell onto his bed, not even bothering to take off his clothes. He expected to hear the pleasant buzzing that usually spoke to him before he fell asleep, but there was nothing this time, only the silence of the room and the chaos of his own thoughts. As much as he distrusted that oddly pulsating hum, it seemed he had come to depend on it, and as tired as he was, he found it difficult to succumb in its absence. For what seemed like forever, he tossed and turned, and he was about to get up, go out and get something to eat (could hunger be causing his insomnia?), when he finally managed to slip into sleep.
In his dream, he was back home and Beverly was alive and they were in bed on a Friday night. He still had his old job, and he’d come home late, but a weekend of free time stretched before them, and they were both looking forward to sleeping in and then going for a morning walk together. He had just started rubbing his hand between her legs and kissing her neck, when he felt her body stiffen. “What’s that?” she said.
“What’s what?”
“I heard a noise.”
Jorge groaned inwardly. He would have to get out of bed to investigate, and then come back and try to get things started up again.
“It sounded like it was in the garage.”
He listened. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Go check it out.”
Of course. Getting out of bed, he pulled on his pants. He knew it was nothing, so there was no real reason to put his pants on, but if he didn’t, Beverly would think he wasn’t taking it seriously, and they would end up fighting.
He headed quickly out to the kitchen, wanting to get this over with. Flipping on the light, he opened the door to the garage—
—and was in his parents’ house in Mexico. He was standing in the small front room. The place was completely dark and appeared to be empty. Refracted moonlight from the room’s lone window offered the only illumination. “Mama!” he called. “Papa!”
There was only silence.
No, not quite silence. Listening carefully, he could hear what sounded like whispering. Walking slowly forward, he saw, through the crack at the bottom of the closed bedroom door, a low flickering light.
“Mama?” he said tentatively. “Papa?”
The whispering stopped.
It was as though he was a child again, afraid of the dark, and, heart pounding, he tiptoed carefully and quietly across the wooden floor, reaching the door and slowly turning the knob. He pulled open the door and behind it was his high school gym. Driving in circles around the basketball court was a child-sized car, and within the car, their blank rotting faces pressed distortedly against the glass of the windshield, were the corpses of his parents.
He was awakened by Mr. White and Mr. Black, both grinning broadly, each of them dressed in purple suits with matching purple top hats. “My boy!” the recruiters exclaimed in unison. “You won!”
Jorge stared at the men, bleary eyed and confused, wondering how long he had slept, wondering if it was day or night.
“Willy Wonka?” Mr. Black offered helpfully.
“We just wanted to show you that it’s not all seriousness at the DMV,” Mr. White explained. “We have a sense of humor here.” He took off his hat. “We’re actually supposed to take you to the other side today.”
“You’re graduating!”
“One of us!” they both chanted. “One of us! One of us!” Mr. White punched his shoulder. “Fun and games here, I’m telling you.”
“You’re going to like working for the DMV,” Mr. Black assured him.
Jorge looked from one to the other. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s over,” Mr. Black said. “You’re no longer a recruit or a trainee, you’re an employee.”
“Probational employee,” Mr. White emphasized.
“Well, yes, but you have been hired by the Department. You are part of the family. Have you decided yet where you’d like to be stationed?”
Nowhere, Jorge thought, but he merely shook his head.
“If you’re lucky, you might get assigned to Re-Education.” Mr. Black smiled wistfully. “That’s a sweet gig. All those miscreants under your tutelage, and you’re free to set them straight any way you see fit.”
“That’s where we’re taking you right now,” Mr. White explained. “Get dressed, so we can get going.”
“I’m taking a shower,” Jorge informed them. “Then I’m getting something to eat. I’m starving.”
“Nothing finer than DMV food,” Mr. Black said.
“We’ll meet you at the cafeteria,” Mr. White told him, putting his purple Willy Wonka hat back on. “But we’re leaving in an hour, whether you’re finished eating or not. So I suggest you take a short shower.”
“What time is it?” Jorge asked.
“It’s eight-fifteen,” Mr. White said, looking at his watch.
Jorge nodded as the two of them exited the room.
After all the weeks or months here, he had finally been allowed to know what time it was.
****
He was the only person in the cafeteria, and when the two men came for him, and he followed them outside, they were the only people in sight.
They took a concrete path between two buildings that led into the woods beyond. Mr. White and Mr. Black talked amongst themselves. Jorge assumed he was supposed to overhear what they were saying, so he purposely did not listen. The trail wound through a small meadow, past a fairly high hill. Somewhere to their left, he knew, was the graveyard. Thinking about the gradually thinning pool of trainees, he wondered if more plots had been added—and filled—since his last excursion.
Eventually, they ended up at the wall.
The murals here were not as benign as those he’d encountered earlier. Painted on this segment of concrete were not generic scenes involving transportation but very specific modes of death that were caused by transportation. In front of a bus with a dented grill were sprawled the bodies of two teenagers whose faces had been smashed and whose akimbo arms were covered in blood. On a train track, an old lady had been cut in half, the top portion of her body on one side of a rail, the bottom on the other, innards spilling onto the ties. Most horrifically, an overturned stroller lay behind a station wagon, a mother screaming as she stared down at the squished body of the infant she had just backed over.
There was a door in the wall that Jorge did not notice until Mr. White walked up to it, although he should have realized it was there, since that was the point where the path ended. The door was concealed by being part of a mural scene—a horse-drawn carriage that had just run over a little girl in a pink dress—and Mr. White knocked three times on the door, placed his hand on a knob that Jorge could not see, and pulled the door open.
On the other side was a smaller, more primitive, budget version of the camp they had just left. Instead of large modern buildings with landscaped space, there were low concrete structures situated close together that looked like something out of the 1950s. The path they took was dirt, and the copse they passed through on their way to the road was little more than a narrow greenbelt. There was a sense of grimness about the place, and if Jorge had felt confined on the other side of the wall, the atmosphere here was closer to that of an actual prison. From one direction, he heard chanting. From another direction came screams.
The three of them stepped off the path and onto asphalt.
“When drivers break the rules,” Mr. White said, “they are sent here.”
“I thought people get tickets for traffic violations. Or go to jail if they do something really wrong.”
“The people in this camp broke rules not laws,” Mr. Black said. “DMV rules.”
Mr. White nodded. “And if they break the rules while they are here—” He gestured around the camp. “—they are taken to this building.” The three of them stopped in front of a concrete structure that looked almost identical to those on either side of it. The recruiter walked up to a metal door, turned some knobs, and pulled the door open.
Inside was a large dark room, and taking up most of the room was a metal cage filled with naked men and women who shuffled sluggishly about, shoved so close together that they could barely move. Nearly all of them were people of color, Jorge noticed immediately.
“Animals,” Mr. Black said, disgusted.
“You can’t have a civilized society if you don’t follow rules,” Mr. White noted. “And sometimes you have to remove the disruptive elements within a society in order to save it.”
An emaciated Asian woman, a look of pleading on her face, stretched a hand out between the bars.The sound that emerged from her open mouth was more wild primate than human.
Mr. White closed the building’s door. “Let’s take a look at some drivers who actually have a chance of getting out of here and going home.”
They continued down the street toward a cul-de-sac at the end, passing well-dressed DMV employees with whom the recruiters exchanged greetings. Many of the employees were leading small groups of individuals who had been incarcerated here. All of the internees wore orange jumpsuits. Several were in chains.
