The Wall
Before she could make it into the police academy, she had one thing to get over

By Ann Patchett
Sunday, June 24, 2007

In 1993, I was awarded a fellowship at Radcliffe College to work on a novel, but, as sometimes happens, I got ahead of myself and finished the book before I arrived. I was in the market for inspiration, and I found it in Glendale, Calif., sitting in my father's den, drinking gin and tonics, and watching a special edition of "Nightline."

Ted Koppel and then-police chief Daryl Gates were picking through the rubble of South Central Los Angeles. They were talking about the riots and Rodney King.

"There's a guy who did some good things for the city and some bad things," my father said about Gates. "But all that's over. Now he'll only be remembered for this."

My father had retired from the LAPD two years before. With Koppel and Gates in the background, we fell into a conversation about how the police force had been portrayed so often over the decades and yet was so rarely understood. Somewhere in my brain, a little light bulb switched to bright: I decided to write a book about the LAPD.

"You want to be a cop?" my father asked. Even with two books behind me, he still felt I lacked a professional calling.

"Not at all. Not even a little bit. I want to understand why other people want to be cops."

"But you'll try out, take the test?"

My plan formulated as the words came out of my mouth: Yes, I wanted to take the test, I wanted to go through the police academy, I wanted to write about it. This was part of the story, but not all of it. I was interested in the job these people wanted, but I was also interested in the job my father had had. My father and I were close, but we had seen remarkably little of each other in our lives. After my parents divorced when I was small, my mother had moved with my sister and me to Tennessee. We could go back to Los Angeles only one week a year, for no better reason than there wasn't enough money to go more often.

Now I'd have the chance to understand what it was that my father had done all those years I wasn't in the house. I would relearn Los Angeles. I would drive up Elysian Park and spend my days at the academy, where as a child I had swum in the long blue pool shaded by eucalyptus trees, eaten tuna melts in the coffee shop with my father, and learned to shoot a revolver.

I was 30 years old, a semi-ancient age for pursuing police work. I had no idea if I could pass the long string of entrance exams.

"The wall is what keeps women out," my father told me. "The women protest; they say it's unfair, especially the short ones. The first thing you have to worry about is getting over the wall."

I decided that the wall was as good a place as any for this book to start.

ONCE I WAS SETTLED BACK IN CAMBRIDGE, I began to study. There was plenty of studying going on there, though this, of course, was different. It had to do with carving something into my body. Knowledge became defined as what my body knew and what it could be taught. For the first time, I learned to run. I ran along the Charles River. I came to know the distance between the bridges. I began to hunt up prospective walls around Cambridge to throw myself over, low ones at first. I'd wait for traffic to clear and then take a flying run.

It did not come naturally, jumping over a wall, and more often than not I smacked into it like a cartoon animal. My hands bled, my legs and arms bruised. People watched me. The best wall, the height of which I measured with the open span of my hand above my 5-foot-7 self, surrounded Episcopal Divinity School. I went there late at night, earnestly fiddling with my Walkman until the strolling couples and dog walkers passed, then I ran as fast as the narrow street allowed, and I hit it in a jump, my fingers curling around the top edges as I pulled up and up. On top, I sat for a minute and looked down at the gardens on the other side and thought about my smart father at 25, out of the Navy and working in a liquor store, wanting nothing more than to get a good job as a cop in L.A.

My work became like any other studying. Once I knew it, it was mine. I taught myself to jump over walls until I could do it in a skirt. Then I started working on my grip strength. I hung from jungle gyms in children's playgrounds and watched the tendons pop from inside my wrists. I bought grip strengtheners, two sets of plastic handles on tight metal coils. I kept them on my desk and squeezed them and squeezed them, until my fingers were weak as noodles. The high squeak they made, like springs in an ancient mattress, reminded me of staying with my father for that one beautiful week in the summers when I was a girl. My sister and I would know that he was awake when we heard the squeak of the grips that he kept on his bedside table. We would go into the back-porch room where he slept, and he would be sitting on the edge of his made-up bed, wearing a white T-shirt and sweat pants, crunching his hands in a steady rhythm.

"Don't be fooled," my father said when I called to tell him this happy memory. "The springs on those things wear out fast. You need to buy a new set every couple of weeks."

"They're killing me the way they are." It was not the point I'd wanted to make.

"You think you're getting stronger, but it's just that the coils are broken in," he said. "Squeeze a quarter between the handles and hold it for sixty seconds. That'll make the difference."

WHEN IT WAS SUMMER AND FINALLY TIME TO TAKE THE TEST, my father wanted me to come to California early. This had always been the case; any trip west should last a few days longer than I had planned. He said he could drill me for my oral, but what he really wanted was to watch me run. The morning after I arrived, we walked over to Glendale Community College. I ran laps on the track while my father stood at the grassy edge with a stopwatch. "Ten seconds," he yelled when I passed, which was how much time he wanted to see come off the next lap. While I kicked my heels up toward my back and cut past the other runners, my father, looking at me and his watch in equal measure, was a training officer and I the brightest cadet in the class. He yelled to me to sprint the last 100 yards, and I ripped my heels into the track.

"Jesus, Ann," he said when I stopped. He came to me and hugged my shoulders hard while I panted. "You're going to kill them."

I was no great athlete, but I was a very good student.

In the evening, we sat in the back yard of my father and stepmother's house, the house I had lived in briefly when I was 5 years old. I asked him to tell me things: Who was his favorite partner? What was the best case he ever had? We talked about police work until it was dark and my stepmother got tired and went inside.

"You're going to need to stay on for a year," my father said. "If you're going to get a feel for the thing. You need to give it that much time."

I told him again, I was never going to be a cop. I was going to write about being a cop.

He thought about this for a minute. "If you stayed on for two years, you could get in the FBI. Now that," he said, looking off past the lemon tree that grew by the driveway, "that would be a hell of a book."

BETWEEN THE APPLICANT AND THE WALL there was a written exam. On the morning of my test, my father said he wanted to drive me over to the police academy and then pick me up. He said it was the only way he could participate, and I thought, yes, this is our team effort. As we drove up Elysian Park, we saw an endless line of people snaking down the drive, people lining up to take the test. It seemed that everyone in the world had come in hope of landing a spot on what was reputed to be the country's most reviled police force. It made me think this was indeed a good idea for a book. My father, who had not taken me to school since I was in the early weeks of first grade, kissed me and drove away.

In line, I was handed a blue card on which to write my name, address and where I had heard about the LAPD. An attractive woman wandered back and forth through the line, repeating over and over again in a loud voice that we must have a picture ID and be at least 20 1/2 years old as of today. A few people peeled away from the group and slunk back toward the parking lot. Most of the people in line looked like they'd barely scraped in under the wire for age. The group was less than 10 percent women and, I would guess, less than 10 percent over 25. The multiple-choice test wasn't difficult: four ways to spell "calendar," a definition for felony, the kind of simple grammar that would only be difficult for non-native speakers and those who had slept through high school. I was put in with the out-of-town group, and our application process was accelerated to warp speed. While the other people who took their test wouldn't get their results for weeks, ours came in minutes.

I was then sent off for an oral interview, another written test, and then was told that I should report back for my physical agility test (PAT) at 6 in the morning.

MY FATHER KNOCKED ON MY DOOR AT 5. He had made me a tiny bag on a string to wear around my neck; it contained two quarters so that I could call him to come and get me when the test was over. Every year when we left California, he made index cards for me and my sister. He wrote down every phone number where he might possibly be reached and taped a dime at the end of each line. After we got back to Tennessee, I would take the dimes off my card and spend them. My sister saved her card just the way it was. She still has them all, one from every year.

When we arrived, the parking lot was full, and cars were parked down either side of the street. It was a combination of the Jehovah's Witnesses convention that had been going on all week in Dodger Stadium and the 215 people who had shown up to take the PAT.

We waited in lines that looped around the picnic tables. The gnats came through in dark swarms, and we twitched and stamped like horses. The men made up about 80 percent of the group, and they were huge: Marines, airmen, police officers from other cities. The T-shirts people wore gave a lot of information: "Explosive Ordnance Disposal 'Pau Hana' Mobile Unit One." I wore a shirt from the University of Iowa, a reminder to myself that, even if I failed, at least I had gone to graduate school.

The two women who had overseen the written test yesterday were back today, controlling the crowds with blanket authority. One walked back and forth over the picnic tables. "I don't want to see your blue cards," she called out, waving a stack of blue cards. "You don't need them; don't show them to me. You need a picture ID, people. Don't tell me you don't have a driver's license. You drove over here, you better have a driver's license."

The track at the police academy had been ripped out to make way for a new drainage system, leaving us to run the parking lot at Dodger Stadium. We went out the front gates of the academy and up a long, steep drive. By noon, the temperature would reach 120 degrees. The smog was a thick, woolly blanket over the city while we waited without water or shade. They broke us into groups of 30, and for that first group they called out -- Patchett -- 28. It was a godly piece of luck. When I ran, it would be 95 and not 110. I picked up my neon orange rubberized vest with the giant 28 on the back and snapped it up.

"Attention, people!" the proctor called out. "You must run around the pylons. The lap is one-tenth of a mile, and you need 10 laps to qualify. You must not stop running until you have completed the 12 minutes. When they call stop, you must stop dead in your tracks or be disqualified.

"Go."

I began to run with the pack. My saliva was gone on the first lap, and I began a shallow panting. I felt faint, not from heat or exertion but from the fear of fainting. But my feet trotted on. I could not keep count of my laps. People passed me. I passed people. I tried to see the Charles River in my head, the tender saplings sloping down toward the water. When they called "Time" I stopped and put my hands on my knees and began to hack. The Marines were coughing, too. The Los Angeles air was two packs of Marlboro Reds every day of your life. My lungs were full of the rusted-out S.O.S. soap pads that linger behind the faucet. I spat into my hand to see if there was blood.

I completed 11.2 laps; the best of our group did 13.5. Two of the four women in our group didn't make 10.

Each event had to be completed in the stated time to receive a qualifying 70 points. There were four events, with a minimum score of 280 needed to pass. Hypothetically, one event could be failed completely if the others were completed in such astonishing time as to gain the needed extra points, but it seemed clear to all of us that failing one thing was equivalent to washing out.

The wall jump was next. Our group trundled back to the academy, wheezing. There were 17 seconds to run 50 yards (including a hairpin turn around a pylon, which killed one's time considerably), jump the wall without touching the metal posts on either side, then run an additional 10 yards.

Most of the men vaulted the wall, hands on top, legs straight out to the side. One women hit the blue guardrail with her foot and was disqualified. We clapped along politely, giving the occasional cheer for a job well done. I struggled a bit, surprising myself, and pulled over. The crowd roared for me. I had finished the course in 16 seconds. The men and one particularly wiry young woman did it between 10 and 11.

We headed down to the obstacle courses that were carved into the side of the hill for the bar hang. I would have pegged this as the worst event, though now I was sure that nothing would ever be as bad as the running. The instructor told us to run 50 yards around a pylon, go to our bar, jump up, and once we stopped swinging, the timing of one minute would begin. It was harder than it sounds. There were three bars. We would be sent out in a staggered order. The athletic woman told me to crush a leaf on my hands to make them sticky, that it would help to keep me on. I wondered which leaf was sticky enough to glue my full body weight to a bar for a minute. An airman stationed in Savannah told me it was all a mind game. "You just have to clear your head. Count slowly, one, one thousand one, one, one thousand two . . . by the time you get to thirty in your head, it's time to drop." And people were dropping. Men struggled, grabbed, and slipped off. One fellow fell at 59.4 seconds. The day grew hotter still, and I left my hands face up and open in my lap, hoping to keep them dry. The crowd cheered people according to their spot. "Hang on, lucky 2!" they shouted.

"You can do it!"

I had 17 seconds to get to bar number 3, the farthest one to run to. Still, I took my time getting on to minimize the swing. I tensed everything I had, and then I counted, one, Mississippi, one. I closed my eyes, and the crowd called to me in a dream. "You look great, number 3." "You look great, Sweetheart." "Think about a nice cold beer. I'll buy you a beer, Iowa." My hands hurt. When I got to one, Mississippi, nineteen, the officer brought up to time the event called drop. "Number 3, drop."

"Why?" I said, holding on. Was there blood running down my arms? Had I been disqualified? "Drop 3, and hold your place." I dropped and held. It did not occur to me that my minute was up. My run to the bar had taken 16.4 of my potential 17 seconds.

The last event was a 160-pound weight drag. Run 25 yards, tug a lead weight the size of two encyclopedias tied to a thick rope through deep, soft dust, backward for 25 yards. When it was my turn, the crowd went wild. I was the mascot now, the favorite girl. No sense in cheering for the two who'd never pass or the one who might beat your score. Cheer for the one who barely makes her time but somehow, miraculously, manages. I yanked the weight backward as the giant men began to chant my name, dragging one syllable into two until it became "Ay-un, Ay-un, Ay-un." It would never happen again; 26 broad-shouldered young men would never call my name at once, and I let the sound trace against my pounding heart.

WE ENDED NEAR THE PICNIC TABLES where we had begun, back under the pine trees where the police academy looked most like the friendly summer camp I remembered from my childhood. I passed at 288. Most of the ones who passed did so well over 300, one at 360. As soon as I heard my score, I ran to the pay phone. "Get me the hell out of here," I said to my father, and hung up. I went back to see my group again, to say goodbye, but they'd all left as fast as I had.

It was barely noon, and already I had realized that I could not get through the police academy for love or money, the two reasons I was planning on going in the first place. Standing at the front gates, I felt that I had used up every ounce of courage and fortitude I possessed just to get through the test. I did not begin to have what it would take to do this day after day, month after month. I knew the truth, and I told it to my father when he picked me up. The best idea I'd ever had for a book was one I was never going to write.

"Wait and see," he said.

But after I had taken the longest shower on record and eaten the breakfast he'd made me, he'd changed his mind. "If you really aren't going to do the job, if you won't be a cop, then I think you shouldn't go through the academy. I'm only saying this because you said you don't want to go. You shouldn't take up the spot of somebody who wants it."

"But I told you all along I was never going to be a cop."

My father looked at me and shrugged. "I didn't believe you," he said.

Later that afternoon, there were two gifts from my father: a medal of the Virgin Mary given to him in school by his favorite nun, and the wedding ring from his marriage to my mother. "There's a lot of good metal in there," he said. "You could melt it down and make something nice out of it."

Even at 288, I felt like I'd failed, though my oral score came two weeks later and I got a 100, which my father said he had never heard of happening before. I did not have what it took to make it through the police academy, to come anywhere close to what my father had done. But I caught a brief glimpse of how difficult it would be to be a police officer in Los Angeles, how easy it would be to fail at the job, as so many have failed. My father had succeeded. He served his city well. Even if I never wrote the book, I wanted the chance to say that.

Ann Patchett's new novel, Run, will be published by HarperCollins in September. She will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at noon.