The Polygraph
By Julia Workman

Jo’s office was full of fake plants.

I flicked the plastic surface of a leaf.  “When did you become a gardener?”

She laughed tightly.  “A lot can happen in two years, I guess.  You sit around in Iraq, and I – well, I develop a veritable green thumb.”  Jo walked over to the desk.  A bank of windows behind the desk cast sunlight upon beige, wall-to-wall carpeting.

Still holding onto a leaf, I smiled.  “Mom would die if she saw these things.” Jo was flipping through some papers on the desk. “What’ve you been up to lately?”

“Still the Clairon case.”

I squinted.  “Clairon?”

“You know.” She ran her hand through the air as if to catch a stray piece of lint.  “Clairon.  Cosmetics company.  Shampoo.  Stuff like that.”

“So what’s the deal?”

“Don’t you read the newspaper, Mark?”

I shrugged.  “I’ve kind of stopped caring.”

“Well, Clairon was caught dumping toxins into the Chesapeake.  Now they’re being investigated by the state.”

“And?”

“And, I’m one of the attorneys on the case.”

“You mean one of Clairon’s attorneys?”

“Yeah.”

We were quiet for a moment.  I moved towards one of the large glass windows overlooking teeming Connecticut Avenue.

“I just don’t get it.”

“Get what?”  Her voice had an edge.

“How do you defend a corporation that has been caught committing a crime?”

“That’s not the way I look at it.”

I was watching cars zip in and out of lanes as the heat rose up inside me.  “How do you look at it, then?”

“Corporations have a right to defense too.”

“Even if the defense is a lie?”

“The defense is not a lie, Mark.  It’s a case.”  She paused.  “Sit down.”  She walked over to the stainless steel mini-fridge near the desk.  “Water?”

“I’m fine.”

She slowly took a seat again.  “So tell me about the new job.  The Treasury Department!  It sounds so exciting!”

I looked at her.  “You mean the internship?”

Jo looked abashed.  “Oh yes, I forgot.  The internship.  Sorry, Mark. I thought you had passed the exam.”

I was tracing my finger along the edge of a fake tree – slowly creating a dustless wake.  “I did pass the exam.” 

“Oh.  What’s wrong, then?”  She scrunched her face up.  “And could you please sit?”

I made my way over to the chair on the other side of her desk and flopped down.  “That’s just the exam part of it, Jo.  This is the government.  After you pass the service exam, you still have to take a polygraph.”  Jo looked confused.  “I mean – you know – a lie detector test.”

“Oh.  When’s that going to be?”

“In about three weeks.”

“Well,” she said.  “I don’t mean to be pre-emptive, but –” 

“But what?”

A smile broke out across her face.  “Why aren’t we celebrating?  It’s kind of in the bag.”

“Yeah, more or less.”

She smiled, came over to my side of the desk, and put her arms around me.  “I’m so proud of you.”  Then, opening the mini-fridge, she produced a bottle of champagne.  Two stemmed glasses came from the cabinet and she arranged them neatly on the blotter.  “To you,” she said, pouring a glass with a sparkle in her eye.  And for once, I sensed a real happiness and pride.  “To you – for getting out of that shithole, Iraq.  To you – for getting out of the Guard forever.”

I turned up the corners of my mouth and lifted my glass.

 

***

“When you’re sitting there, in that chair,” Dave had said,  “You’re basically strapped to it, right?  You just tell them you smoked one joint.  If you don’t, you’re screwed ’cause that’s what they’ll assume.  They’ll assume you’re lying and that you did at some point.”  He turned around to face me.  “And fuck,”  he continued, “You were in fucking Iraq.”  He laughed.  “Chock fulla grass.  I honestly don’t know what kept you from it.”

I could hear Dave’s voice as I pushed against the glass doors of the Federal Building and felt a cold blast of air conditioning.  It was the kind of air conditioning only the federal government could supply.  The federal agent was waiting in the lobby.

“Mr. Thompson?  Here for the PDD?”

“Yes sir.”

As he led me down the hallway, the turquoise wall-to-wall carpeting floated beneath my field of vision.  I felt suspended.  I swung my arms and remembered the first time I looked out of the hatch of a C-47 Transport.  My parachute was just a flimsy pack on my back and it shivered and flapped as I looked onto the land below.  Most of the time, I’m the kind of guy who stands on the top of a tall building and – while the tourists are busy clicking away – I just fight the urge to jump.  And sometimes – when I’m driving down Highway I57 – I suddenly get the urge to drive into the oncoming traffic.  And it’s almost as if I can’t control it.  But that day, jumping out of that plane, I had found control over panic.  And as I jumped and my parachute unfolded, I thought, I can do this.  And I’m not going to die, either. 

Now we turned the corner and the agent led me into a small, white room.  There was a long chair in the middle that looked uprooted from a dentist’s office.  Next to the chair was a table with a metal box on top of it – wires spilling out of its sides.  Holding the wires out of the way, the agent motioned for me to take a seat.  As I sat down and leaned back, I felt the heat rising inside of me again.  The agent fiddled with the wires and began to unwind a string of tape.

“Roll up your sleeves, please.” 

I did, hoping he wouldn’t notice the sheen of new perspiration on my skin.  As he taped, I pictured the fields stretching out below me.  They always tell you not to look before you jump.  I mean you’re supposed to look, but not in the comprehending sort of way.  You aren’t supposed to really register what’s happening because it goes against all instinct.  You’ve got to pretend as if your body is somehow somewhere else. 

The agent cleared his throat.  “I’m going to clarify what we will do in the next few hours.”  He scratched his head and tapped his pen against the desk.  “This test – the PDD examination – is designed to detect the physiological signs of lies.  It is important that you listen carefully to the questions and answer them truthfully.”

“Yes sir.” 

The agent adjusted his belt.  “This is also a government test.  And - as a government test - none of the information you disclose is secret.  It is all public, official, government domain.  And it remains on your permanent record.” 

“All clear, sir.”

“And perhaps even more importantly, this is the only polygraph you may take.  Once the results are in you may not appeal them.  The results will appear on every government job application you ever submit.  Even if the job does not require a polygraph test.”

“Yes sir.”

“All right.” The agent cleared his throat.  “I’m going to begin by asking you a few questions before I turn the polygraph on.”  He sat down at the metal desk and flipped through some papers at the desk. 

“Mr. Thompson.  Were you born in Texas?”

“Yes.”

“Is your birthday May twenty-second?”

I hesitated slightly.  “No.”

“Have you ever stolen anything?”

“No.”
           
“Had you ever worked for a government agency before?”

“No.”

“Is your mother’s name Deidre Pare?”

“Yes.”

Dave had warned me about the pre-exam interview.  “It’s like the control of an experiment,” he had said.  “And God forbid you flip during that part since it’s the part they’ll hold all your other reactions against.  It’s so stupid ’cause it’s easy.  But, it feels like you’re being fucking brainwashed.” 

“All right.”  The agent scraped the metal chair against the floor and began fiddling with the wires.  The machine hummed to life with a quiet rattle.

“Is your name Mark Thompson?”

“Yes.”

“Is your birthday April twenty-first?

“Yes.”

I focused on a small crack in the ceiling as I said it, everything else dissolving around me.  The crack slowly meandered across the white desert before veering sharply to the left.  I followed.  It seemed to be the only solid thing in the room.  As the examiner spoke, his voice began to dissolve into the whiteness of the walls.  It pulsed through my body, his voice in tandem with mine as if the voice were attached to the wires and my wires to the voice and all three were working together to produce the one thing that held.  The truth.  The whole truth.  And nothing but the truth.  Distilled.  Refined.  So help me God.

Last week, I had been counting the threads in a hundred dollar bill under the scanner while Dave paced in front of the window.  “Don’t over think it.  It’s just a lie detector.  Not like it can test for actual truth.”  He laughed.  “Plus, you lock down the job with The Service and you’re out of the Guard.”  He clapped his hand on my shoulder heavily.   “Released from active duty.”  Then he was out the door and it was still two minutes till five o’clock.

Suddenly, I felt a pull of the wire on my arm.  The agent’s pen tapped against the metal desk.  I fumbled – my hands leaving the arms of the chair, pulling up wires with them.  “Sorry,” I said – laughing thinly.  I wondered if he noticed that I had wiped my hands on my pants again. 

“Did you serve in Iraq?”

“Yes.”

“Were you ever wounded during that time?”

“No.”

“Were you ever injured?”

“Yes.”

My body was beginning to feel heavy, as if I had drunk lead.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Timothy McVeigh.  His execution happened during the week I was home with the flu.  The newspapers printed no pictures of McVeigh – only the mugshot taken after his capture.  I tried to picture him again – only this time – moving down a long hallway. 
 
That son of a bitch.

I pictured him strapped down to the table. 

Didn’t even confess.

But, as I imagined, I felt something odd creeping up the nape of my neck.  For a moment, horror seized me.  The truth was, I felt oddly proud of McVeigh.  He went as he had been – a proud motherfucking son of a bitch.  He killed without passion and he went without confession.  And, in that moment, in that chair, he had told his truth.  Silent.  Unrepentant.  Even though the un-repentance was ugly.  By then, the nausea had hit me.  And I had gone to the toilet and thrown up.
 
The agent shifted in his chair.  “I’m going to ask you about your past drug use.  About alcohol – well – I’m going to let you off easy on that one.  But I will ask you about illegal drugs.” 

I tried to focus my mind back on the crack, but it was blurry.  The questioner put his clipboard down.  I heard it hit the metal desk.

“Ever smoked marijuana?”

“No.”

I heard him shift his weight in the chair and the heat that was growing inside me seemed to spread from the anvil at the back of my neck down across my shoulder blades.

I could picture Dave holding up hundred dollar bills against the scanner lights.  “Of course,” he had said.  The government knows all about good lies.  Even these bills that look as bona-fide as anything!  Lies, lies, and more lies.”  He threw it to the shredder.  “And damn good ones too.  Just think how many of these suckers get passed around hand to hand before they’re caught and sent here.”  He had paused and looked at me. “But think how far they came, dude.  Think how many hands they passed through before they ended up here?  Thousands.”

In the chair, my insides were beginning to writhe.  The agent looked at me.  I could feel his eyes.  “Never smoked a joint?”

“No.”

The agent squatted down, and, for the first time, I actually looked into his face.  “I’m gonna let you in on a little secret.  All you’ve got to do admit is that you smoked one joint.  Just tried it.  Once.”  His voice seemed taut. 

“No sir, I didn’t.” 

All I could see then was the brownness of the fields and I could see I was getting closer – so close that I could see the individual blades of grass beginning to pop out from the flat plain.  But by then, it was too late to save myself.  Far too late.

***

Jo’s voice sounded strained on the other line.  “I don’t understand you, Mark.”

“None of it seemed right.”  I was cutting off my circulation with the phone cord as I twisted it around my arm.  “Lying so that I could get off for doing something I’ve never even done?  But, the polygraph registered anxiety – and on the polygraph, anxiety equals a lie.” 

On the other end, Jo’s breathing was coming in shorter gasps.  “You were inches away from a government job.”  She caught herself.  “I just don’t understand, Mark.  I’m sorry.  I just don’t.”

 I exhaled.  “Maybe it’s just a part of me that doesn’t want to be part of the system.”

She was upset now, and I thought I might even hear tears.  “Life’s a system.  You’ve got to play the fucking game.  You don’t play the game – you lose the game.”

I hung up on her then.

The next morning I took a rather roundabout route to work.  Passing by Arlington Cemetery, I thought about Dave working at the FBI Treasury Department in a suit and padded chair and writing 5 PM on his time sheet.  I thought of Jo, behind her desk, pouring over pages of legal loopholes.  As I continued on past Arlington, I looked over the sea of white crosses and wondered – just wondered – if mine might look any different.  For a moment, I wanted to stop.  But I kept walking.  I kept walking because – somehow I knew – it would look just the same.