My Redacted Life: Chapter Thirteen (Cont._3)

As the fateful year of 1972 progressed, a sense of stability settled in and I knew I had entered the proper field of work and study. It paid well. It accorded with my long-nurtured progressive leanings. It attracted the best of people into its ranks. If done properly, it could lengthen the life-sustaining period during which our planet suffered humans to exist. Simply stated, it satisfied.

It also abounded with political minefields.

I discovered that one day upon being ushered into the head-man’s office. Beckoning me to sit, he drew on a pipe he used to express gravity. I sat back.

“Are you ready?” He threw the question at me as if there were only one acceptable answer. I could decide to be cute and reply “Ready for what?” He wasn’t a man who tolerated “cute” very well. I chose my patented maneuver, honed by four years of military service. I call it “aggressive suck-up,” and it has only failed me a few times over the years, those mainly in marital situations wherein superior intelligence quickly demolishes subterfuge.

I leaned forward and said in my most sincere voice, “I’m sure that with your help and guidance, I am.”

This resulted in a long draw on the pipe and a slow exhalation of smoke. I waited. Who could possibly predict the outcome? Who even could guess where the hell we were headed?

After checking the ashes in his pipe, he looked up at me. “You’d best be.”

Again, my military training guided me. “Yes sir,” I said. Then I shut up. I knew from experience that the one who didn’t speak next would emerge the winner.

He studied me as if I were a figure in a museum diorama. He drew on the pipe with no result. He laid it aside and again looked me over. At last he spoke. “We could hire an experienced planner to fill in,” said, “but that would cost more money than we can afford.”

I nodded as if the two of us had just settled upon a jointly-developed cure for cancer.

“Vines pissed off the new city manager in Malvern, and he prefers that we start sending someone else to work with their planning commission.” He stared into me, into someplace I had never known existed. I stared back. “I can’t go,” he said.

I must have looked surprised.

“It wasn’t Jim’s fault. He just told them the truth a little too plainly. He does that sometimes. Doesn't always work in our profession. Anyway, it’s opening up a spot.”

I nodded again, filling the nod, I hoped, with an air of wisdom long held from mortal view and reserved for only the highest of the gods. He picked up his pipe, tapped residue into an ash tray, and reached for his tobacco pouch, a nice leather one, very expensive I imagined. He held the pipe in one hand, the pouch in the other, and looked at me as if offering me the choice between two of life’s most important treasures.

“Want it?”

I considered standing and shouting “Sir, yes sir!” I had learned to do that someplace or other. Instead, I chose understatement. “I do,” I said.

It’s funny how those two words, strung together at the right time, can produce such a cosmic change in one’s life.