J.M.

From The Fool’s Progress

YOU WHAT? Got a new job. What do you mean you got a new job? I mean I got a new job. What about the old job—the assistantship? Sank it; I quit. What do you mean you quit? I mean I got fired. Fired—what do you mean? I flunked the orals. You flunked the orals? Yep. You’ve got to be kidding. Nope. Henry, your whole career depends on getting that M.A. this semester. Not now it don’t. What do you mean—and stop talking like a peasant. I mean I got a new career. What do you mean you’ve got a new career? I mean a new career. Like what? State Highway Department. What? New Mexico State Highway Department; we’re paving the road from here to Albuquerque. We? Yep, we, me and the boys. And that’s your new job? Yes’m. You’re going to shovel asphalt out of a truck? No, I’m gonna inspect asphalt. You’ll what? I’ll be workin’ for the state, not the contractor; we inspect the stuff, keep them up to standards. So you’re going to inspect asphalt? my husband is going to be an inspector of asphalt? Well, someday; right now I’m only an asphalt inspector trainee. Henry, I don’t believe this. Sorry, Myra. I can’t believe it. I know, honey, but goddamnit you should’ve seen those smug bastards sitting there in that office staring at me. But you’ve ruined your life. I know. Don’t you care? I suppose. Do you really want to be an asphalt inspector? Not really. And what about our married life—suppose I’m pregnant? What kind of a life can we give our baby? I don’t know. I thought you knew everything. I know. I hate know-it-alls. I know it.

HE ALSO FILED job applications with the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service. What he really wanted, perhaps, was to ride a horse through the primeval forest while composing poetry—a verse in the wilderness!—or guide timid but willing young lady tourists up mountain trails toward the giddy summit of their mutual desires. He knew or had heard that such pleasant work was available on a seasonal basis from time to time, at one place or another, and that his college diploma (B.A., thirty-third percentile) made him eligible and his not dishonorable discharge from the wartime Army of the United States gave him a five-point veteran’s preference over other applicants. He mailed off the official forms, with covering letter, to three different national parks and forgot about them. Meanwhile he inspected the asphalt.

Eight hours a day five days a week Henry dug circular core samples from hot asphalt paving before the steamrollers reached it, lugged his samples into the NM Hwy Dept’s mobile housetrailer laboratory and subjected them to a series of tests and analyses. The procedures were simple and routine, the mathematical formulas cut, dried and preestablished, the quality standards highly adaptable, depending on the mood of the supervisor, the amount of the payoff, the political influence of the contractor.