The ceilings in the Student Union were nine feet high, and the bulb Shawn Miller was replacing was fluorescent, and seven feet long, so it took both hands. Shawn was twenty-four and had been a custodian at the college for four years. He was five feet nine, with blonde hair that lightened at even a hint of sunlight. His skin seemed to not be able to make up its mind whether to freckle or tan, so it did both. Even though Shawn’s job required more than enough physical labor, he made an effort to be as involved in sports as he could. That combined with the diet his overly, health-conscious mother had securely engrained in him, left him in very good physical shape, and with an abundance of energy.
Shawn was keeping his balance about halfway up the ladder and gently handling the bulb, hoping he wouldn’t slip and accidentally squeeze the bulb and shatter it, when his pager started vibrating. His first instinct was to think he was being shocked. Being so close to high voltage only strengthened that instinct. He jerked and lost his balance. Shawn had quick enough reflexes that he didn’t try to maintain his equilibrium on the ladder and instead, simply jumped off. He landed and crouched so that he could cushion the descent of the seven-foot bulb he was, by now, holding in one hand.
He carefully set the bulb on end next to the box of bulbs it had come out of, and then leaned against the wall to let his racing heart slow down, and the surge of adrenaline wash out of his bloodstream.
With his eyes closed, he reached down to his belt and unclipped the pager. He lifted it and opened his eyes. It displayed the extension for the president’s office. He frowned.
He took a deep breath, let it out, and replaced the pager on his belt. He walked over to the snack bar and grabbed the phone. By the time he’d gotten the instructions from the president’s assistant, his heart rate was back to normal, and most of the adrenaline was out of his bloodstream.
It took him a few minutes to replace the cover on the light fixture since he wouldn’t be able to change the bulb until later. Then he put the bulb back in the box and carried the box to the storage closet at the side of the room. Once everything was locked away, he headed toward the faculty offices, jangling his keys as he searched for the two he’d need.
This was certainly a day he wouldn’t forget. He’d been woken at five a.m. by a frantic call from Dr. Payton begging him to come in and clean something up. Wanting to know what in the world needed to be cleaned up at five in the morning, Dr. Payton grudgingly told him the details.
Shawn told Dr. Payton he’d be right there. He knew the police didn’t clean up crime scenes. He’d worked as a youth minister one summer when he had attended college and during that summer one of the kids, who’d been having emotional problems, killed himself. He’d managed to steal a gun from a friend’s house and shot himself in his bedroom. Shawn had been called along with the church’s pastor to help console the family. As the police left, the pastor found that the family would be responsible for cleaning the blood and gore splattered across the boy’s bedroom.
Calling Shawn aside, the pastor had told him. Together, while other church members consoled the family, they cleaned the room. They never told the family, they just made sure it was clean. The family had only sporadically attended the church before then, after that they became regulars, rarely missing a service.
As the pastor and Shawn had sorted blood-soaked items into things that needed to be thrown away and things that needed to be cleaned, Shawn found a hymnal the boy had taken from the church. Its cover and many of the pages had been stained with the boy’s blood. The engraved name of the church had been almost completely covered in red. Shawn had started to clean it, but the pastor pointed out that the pages couldn’t be cleaned. The pastor had looked at Shawn and told him to clean it up the best he could and keep it to remind him that a minister’s job is not always glamorous. Shawn still had the hymnal stored with a photo the boy had given him that summer.
Finding the keys, Shawn located Professor Engstrom’s office. He started to open the door but decided to wait. He didn’t know how picky the police would be about the door being unlocked by someone else. So he waited.
Todd had taken classes for two years before quitting without getting a degree. He saw so many people spend time on things that, to him, seemed trivial. He’d decided that he wasn’t overly obsessed with money. A reasonable amount of hard work was more than enough to take care of the financial needs of a modest lifestyle. He wasn’t worried about prestige or power. Those things seemed hollow to him. He’d worked as part of the custodial staff while he was taking classes and seemed to learn more from working, than from classes. He enjoyed the work and made it a challenge by trying to do better at it. He took classes sporadically as those that offered something he wanted to learn came up.
The students, who didn’t assume a custodian was a mindless nobody, benefited from his experience and knowledge of how the campus worked. He found himself more and more in the role of unofficial counselor to many students, helping some study, and guiding others through the best class choices. He liked the idea of being such an essential part of the growth of kids who had such potential. He also liked the fact that more and more he was becoming indispensable to Dr. Payton and most of the faculty. This morning was a further example of that. Of the twenty-five people on the custodial staff, several of whom were over Shawn, Dr. Payton had only been able to rely on him for such a job. He knew Shawn would not argue, once he knew the circumstances, and would be discrete and thorough.
All in all, Shawn was pretty satisfied with his life.