I was early. Yet to be jaded by the system and endless files on society’s forgotten and forlorn, I was keen to make an impression. I sat in my car, sipped my coffee and waited for the Hunter Correctional Services office to open. I’d moved from Newcastle to Maitland for this job. Not too far, geographically, but enough emotional distance between me and what I left behind. It also wasn’t where I saw myself headed, but the salary was incentive enough. The desire to help those less fortunate still burned in me, and if that was admirable or naïve, only time would tell.

I was really hoping for admirable.

I was also possibly too young to be a parole officer. I’d interviewed well, even though the woman interviewer found my age and doe-eyed optimism amusing. She’d wished me well like it was funny, pursed her wrinkled lips, and mumbled something about the system eating me up and spitting me out. If she thought her words would deter me, then she was sorely mistaken. People like her, attitudes like hers, fuelled me. The fire to prove them wrong burned a little bit brighter.

I knew most other parole officers were older and probably wiser, but most of them were just biding their time until they could claim a government pension.

I wanted to make a difference.

I was twenty-four years old, and today was my first day as a government employee⁠—a Community Corrections Officer was the official title, though most people knew it as a parole officer. With a quick glance in my rear-view mirror, a flash of blue-eyed determination stared back at me, and at five minutes to nine o’clock, I got out of my car and walked into the office.

A middle-aged woman with a severe black bob haircut was dumping her handbag on the reception desk with her mobile phone pressed between her shoulder and her ear, coffee in one hand, files in another. She wore a navy cardigan and a frown as she spoke into her phone. It sounded like she was having a conversation with a teenager who’d left something on a school bus.

She mouthed an apology to me and continued her lecture about responsibility and learning hard lessons. I looked around the small waiting room just as a man down the hall spotted me and started toward me.

“You must be Noah Huxley,” he said, extending his hand. He reminded me of the boss of the Daily Bugle from Spiderman, minus the cigar and plus forty kilos. His handshake was soft but his smile was warm.

“I am,” I replied, pleased someone was expecting me.

“Dave Baird,” he introduced himself. “Come through this way.”

I followed him through the office. He showed me where the break room was, told me to label any food I might put in the fridge, and to wash and dry my own coffee cup. “Believe me, you’d rather hear that coming from me than Sheryl. She was the one on the phone out the front. She’s got four kids and doesn’t take any crap, runs this place with military precision. Makes a mean coconut slice, though.”

I got the feeling Dave liked to chat.

“Here’s your office,” he said, opening a door off the hall. “But we’ll make a cuppa first and do the rounds of introductions. Then Sheryl can get you set up with passwords and whatnot.”

By the time we had coffees made, all the other staff had arrived and I’d been introduced to the other corrections officers and office staff. I soon learned my position was replacing a man named Wayne and that I was the youngest on the corrections officer’s team by at least two decades.

Still, my enthusiasm couldn’t be swayed.

For the rest of the morning, Sheryl sat with me in my office, showing me the government computer programs we used for reporting and accounting. I was given passwords and a security pass for the car park and my photo ID badge. I filled in work uniform request forms, sorted out employment forms, tax forms, and about another dozen different government forms for everything they did and didn’t need to know.

After lunch, Terrell knocked on my open door. “I’m making some work-placement calls this afternoon. Dave thought you might wanna come.”

I grinned. “Sure!”

Out of all the other officers, Terrell was probably the youngest. At a rough guess, he looked maybe forty, but it was hard to tell. Those forty years looked like they’d been hard, and whether his bent nose and the scar through his eyebrow were from football or fighting, I didn’t know.

Keen to get out into the field, I grabbed my ID badge from my desk, and as soon as I got to the door, Terrell handed me a dozen manila folders. Okay, so ‘some’ work-placement calls looked more like twelve. I grinned at him and Terrell shook his head at me.

As we drove to the first job site, Terrell told me a bit about procedure and how all the in-house training didn’t really prepare anyone for the real job. There was so much legislation and so many rules, boxes to be ticked and the paperwork . . . don’t even get him started on the paperwork.

He explained how he also worked as the Indigenous Liaison Officer for some cases, and he’d smiled handsomely when he spoke of his accomplishments. I imagined twenty years ago he would have been hot, given dark hair and dark eyes were my type. And given the wedding band on his finger, I assumed he made someone very happy. I liked him, as far as first impressions went. And as the afternoon wore on, my opinion of him was reaffirmed.

We met case after case, parolee after parolee. Guys who were getting their lives back on track, working hard, honest jobs. One was a tyre-fitter, one worked the back dock of a wholesalers, two worked at the abattoir, two worked on road crews for the local council, one worked at the city library, and one worked at a nursing village helping the old folk manage their gardens.

They seemed like decent guys who just got dealt a shitty hand in life.

I knew firsthand how life could change on a dime. How sometimes all it took was getting laid off work and trying to make easy money to feed a family. Sometimes parents didn’t give a shit and kids had to steal stuff to survive. Sometimes they got lost in the system, trampled on by life, blinded by the fact no one seemed to give a rat’s arse. Sometimes they were forgotten; sometimes it was desperation or mental illness or addiction that kept company with bad decisions and unfortunate circumstances.

And sometimes good people did bad things. Sometimes they weren’t good people at all. Sometimes evil lurked behind blank stares, and sometimes it screamed.

Terrell reminded me of that on my third day tagging along with him. The last case of the day was a home visit, and he said we weren’t going to be well received, and he wasn’t wrong.

Her name was Traci Coombs and she’d done three years at Delwynia, a women’s correctional facility outside of Sydney. “Normally Teresa would handle the female cases.” Teresa was another parole officer I’d met on my first day. I hadn’t seen her since because she was in Sydney doing some compliance refresher course we were all expected to do at times. “But Ms Coombs is due for a visit,” Terrell said. He looked out the windshield at the fibro-clad house in question. “She knows to expect us, but that don’t mean she’s gonna be happy about it.”

And she really wasn’t happy.

Terrell knocked on the rickety front door. It opened barely a crack and her warm welcome began with, “What the fuck do you want?”

“Department of Corrections Services,” Terrell replied.

The door didn’t open any wider. “Where’s Teresa?”

“Stuck in a classroom in Sydney,” Terrell answered. “You got us this time.” The door remained still, a statement of unwelcome. Terrell stood back a little and sighed. “How you doin’, Traci? Been okay? Heard you got a job stackin’ shelves. They treatin’ you okay?”

His tone was softer, gentle. But he never took his eyes off the slit of the open door.

I really did like Terrell. I liked his approach, his demeanour. He wasn’t jaded and apathetic like Dave seemed to be. Dave didn’t seem to care one iota about the names in his case files. They were just numbers to him. But Terrell treated each and every case with respect. He even joked with some of them.

“You got a knife behind that door, Traci?” Terrell asked, same calm tone as before.

I took a quick step back from the door, no doubt looking as scared as I was wet behind the ears. A knife? Jesus Christ!

Terrell’s disposition never changed; neither did his voice. “I sure hope not because then I’ll have to write it up, and you don’t wanna violate your parole, do ya, Traci?”

Silence.

“Can you step outside please, Traci?” Terrell asked. “We just need to ask the routine questions. You know how it is.”

It was almost as if I could hear her weighing up her options. After a few heart-pounding seconds, the door opened some more and Traci stepped out onto the front stoop. She was tall and wiry, too thin, and a waft of cigarette stench billowed out from behind her. Her clothes hung off her, her hair was unwashed and oily, her pale face gaunt and pocked with sores. She looked me up and down, took a drag of her cigarette, and blew the smoke at me. “Who the fuck are you?”

“My name is Noah.”

“He took Wayne’s job,” Terrell added.

Traci nodded. She answered his few questions with short grunts, her arms folded, her eyes wary. She said her job sucked but it was money, Terrell encouraged her to keep working, and reminded her if she needed help with anything to call.

Apparently that was the end of the meeting because she went back inside and slammed the door behind her. Terrell nodded toward the car, and honestly, I was happy to leave. Feeling a sense of relief to be in the car with the doors shut, I couldn’t take my eyes off Traci’s house. “Do you think she really had a knife?”

“Probably,” Terrell answered. He was writing something in the manila folder assigned to Traci’s case. “It’s her weapon of choice. She did three years for aggravated assault with a weapon. She stabbed her drug dealer.”

I blinked and my stomach felt full of cold sludge.

“Lucky for her, he didn’t die or she’d be still inside.” Terrell sighed. “Looks like she’s using again though. See her skin?”

“The sores?”

He nodded. “And her pupils were dilated. She was twitchy. Typical symptoms of ice.”

I shook my head in disbelief, shock. “What happens now?”

“You tell me?” he said, handing me the folder. “What did your training tell you to do in this situation?”

I swallowed hard and tried to remember. “Document the meeting, report findings. Check her parole conditions, and if she’s in violation, we notify the police. She’ll be rearrested.”

Terrell nodded slowly. “Yep. But drug use isn’t cited on her parole conditions. She cooperated fully with questions and she’s been working now for six months.”

“So we make a note of her suspected drug use?”

“Yep. If she’s fired from her job because she’s high, then we can threaten her with violation codes.”

“Because employment is a parole condition,” I noted.

Terrell smiled. “You got this down pat already, kid. Soon you’ll be out on your own.”

* * *

I went home that night to my half-unpacked house. It was only tiny; just two bedrooms, but it was a detached house with a yard and a carport, and considering I was by myself, it was perfect for me. The house itself was probably a hundred years old, but the kitchen and bathroom got a revamp in the 90s, by the look of the cupboards and tiles. It was just a rental, but it was home for now.

I was too wired to be bothered with boxes of books and DVDs. I had all the essentials unpacked, and that was good enough for now. Plus, I had all weekend to get that shit done. It wasn’t like I had friends here or a social life of any kind, or God forbid, a boyfriend . . .

I fell onto the sofa and took a swig of beer. Today had been a bit real. A violent offender could’ve pulled a knife. What would I do if I was on my own and that happened? Was I ready for this? Did I ever want to be?

I didn’t get too much time to think about that because, on Friday morning of my very first week, Dave walked into my office at nine a.m. and dropped a tall stack of files on my desk. “Okay kid, you ready for your first solo cases?”

“Um . . .”

He nodded to the top folder. “Have fun with that one.” He smiled at a joke only he knew the punchline to. “A good one to cut your teeth on,” he said. “If you’re sticking around, you’ll need to get familiar with the folk on Davis Row.”