He doesn’t own a cellular phone, doesn’t dine in sit-down restaurants; he drives a twelve-year-old Geo Metro, high-mileage, low freon, no insurance. Alan Polk is an adjunct, a part-time professor, teaching six total courses at three different colleges this term. Two thousand dollars a section, if that. No medical, no dental, no retirement portfolio. Nights, Saturdays, eight o’clocks. No office of his own. Adjunct. The very sound of the word disgusts. Adjunct, defunct, skunked. He’s sick of it.
Monday morning, the snooze control makes him late for class, as does a speeding ticket, and his commute from a southwestern Dade suburb to the nearest community college seems worse than usual, accidents and lane closures choking the Turnpike. He surfs the radio-dial, scanning for something soothing, something with a clear-conscience, some Mozart maybe, or Vivaldi, music that sings in the voice of a charitable God. Nothing. Nothing but shock-jocks, hip-hop, salsa, the local news and weather. His car’s tape-player stopped working last July.
Exiting the Don Shula Expressway at SW 104th, Alan whips around a stalled delivery van, and an equally assertive Ford F-250 cuts him off, forcing him on to the shoulder. An obscene gesture, the honking of a angry horn, these reactions might suffice for most of us—not Alan Polk. Not for the adjunct. He’s had it, all he’ll take of it. Any insult, any indignity can trigger him. Thus, he pursues the offending truck, tailgates, jockeys, overtakes, cuts sharply in front . . . almost gets himself rear-ended. At the subsequent red light, the F-250 crowds the adjunct, inches ever closer, flashes headlights. Putting his Geo in neutral, yanking up the parking-brake, Alan now reaches into the back seat, into the equipment bag for the Little League team he coaches, his son’s team, and he slides out a wooden bat, a Louisville Slugger, 32 ounces, which he uses it for infield practice before a game, because he likes the sound of maple on horsehide far more than the shrill pings of aluminum. Wood feels better in his hands, seems more authentic.
With the bat on his lap, Alan eyes his rear-view. Get out the truck, man. Come on out and play! But the truck-door never opens, and when the light turns green and the little Geo stays put, the F-250 negotiates around, the driver shouting nothing in the adjunct’s direction, not even the obligatory “fuck you, asshole!” Sure, he’s a burly man, the truck’s driver, blue-collar and buff, but his intuition whispers to him to steer clear, to lay off this guy. Good thing. Alan merely lifts the bat up as the driver passes, lifts it as a salute, as if he were touching the brim of a hat with a riding crop. The adjunct smiles, and grumbles: “Goddamned coward.” I’d have freaking done it, by God! To bash in that man’s skull, would it be so unthinkable, so incomprehensible? Maybe . . . but I might’ve done it.
At 8:08, Alan parks his rusty sedan in the faculty lot. His head aches; his eyes itch; he’s congested and all in a sweat.
