“Good morning, dear ones,” says the adjunct to his first class, an AMH 2012 section, History of the United States, pre-Columbus through Reconstruction. His students have waited for him. They know to. They know his car doesn’t always start up right away; they know he’s at the mercy of morning gridlock, that he’s divorced, that his ex-wife has the kids, that he’s dissatisfied adjuncting. Maybe they’re not privy to all the relevant details, that he was denied tenure at the local state university, that his ex-wife and her new husband have a restraining order against him, that he’s recently lost joint custody—but they do know more about his personal life than they should. Adjunct. Wears his heart on his threadbare sleeve. Gypsy, nomad, circuit-rider. “What’re we talking about today, class? Oh, yes. Appomattox Court House. The War’s end and its aftermath, right? How far we get Friday?”
Adjuncts often wing it, with only mildest preparation. Americana according to Alan Polk. Well, you get what you pay for, Alan might say, and sometimes not even that. How much prep does two thousand buy you?
His students don’t seem to mind. Here they’re a classic blend of teenagers and non-traditionals, multi-ethnic, mildly capable, mildly motivated; a few don’t speak English so good. They’re not a very vocal group, so Dr. Polk lectures, mainly—although there is this one inquisitive young woman, Nicole Newman, who’s comparatively outspoken. She’s twenty, assertive-contentious, reminds him of Leisel, his ex-wife . . . same size, build, mouth; same cat’s eyes, muscular legs, playful sexuality, but Miss Newman has a larger nose, bigger teeth, visible tattoos. Dr. Polk had a 7:45 appointment with her, missed it. Damn. He’s been setting her up, softening her up, not so subtle in his lust. Damn. Dr. Polk makes eye-contact, and to Miss Newman says simply: “Apologies.” This raises a few eyebrows. She’s suitably charmed.
In the back row, by the window, sits Dr. Carlos Blanco, the department chair; he arrived precisely at 8:00 for the scheduled classroom visitation and performance evaluation. Goddamn, I forgot about him, too. Alan doesn’t panic. After acknowledging Blanco and admonishing his students to behave themselves, the adjunct opens the textbook (which Blanco co-authored) to Chapter 31, begins reading from some it, editorializing here and there.
“Because of Grant and Lee’s good behavior at the surrender, there ‘arose from the ashes the phoenix of reconstruction and reconciliation, the potential for a lasting peace . . . a peace not completely realized for many years, yet the possibility of peace which would ultimately help North and South become one nation again.’ Pretty words, aren’t they? The ‘phoenix’ of a reunited nation arising ‘from the ashes.’ Pretty words.” He pauses, then snarls: “Who writes this stuff?” Alan won’t look over at Dr. Blanco now. “Reconstruction . . . reconciliation . . . one nation, under God, indivisible . . . yet, ‘the pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath.’” His students don’t recognize the Led Zeppelin reference, and it disappoints him, but he’s not surprised. “You watched all of the Ken Burns documentary—it was assigned, remember, is on reserve at the library media center—you watched it, and what you should’ve taken from it, if anything, is that these men during this time in our history, these soldiers, whether Rebel or Yank, they were utterly courageous; they were brave; and they fought with such resolve; ergo, there was greatness and purpose in what they did, right? If you missed that, friends, then you missed everything. Courage . . . above all else, perhaps even above compassion . . . courage is an admirable quality, and it should be encouraged, shouldn’t it? If you don’t get this, if you don’t see it, then you don’t understand anything. If a nine-year-old kid is at the plate, playing baseball, and he gets hit on the elbow with a sixty-mile-per-hour fastball, then it hurts him, it hurts him like nothing else he’s ever felt, but if that kid gets up, and dusts himself off, and refuses to cry a single tear, and trots on to first base . . . what courage! Maybe someday he’ll be a man. ‘We know a great many coats and breeches,’ wrote Thoreau, ‘but few men.’ You young males sitting in class today, are you men? Are you? If it were July, eighteen-hundred-sixty-three, would you be at Gettysburg? Would you?” Alan eyeballs his male students, each one of them; many seem unaware. “My wife used to be fond of reminding me that men make the wars, men are the war-hawks, are the warmongers . . . that we are inherently destructive, combative, whereas women are productive, making the babies, cleaning up men’s messes, right? Maybe, just maybe, there’s some truth to it . . . is this not our history? But to say that men are by nature ruinous, while women are naturally creative, that men are violent, testosterone-spiked, glory-seeking pigs, this is ridiculous. It’s not that simple, darlings; nothing ever is. Men fight wars because it affords them the opportunity to behave courageously, because they have no choice but to behave courageously if they’re going to survive the war, if they’re gonna save their buddies’ hides, if they’re gonna defend their way-of-life . . . that’s the nature of war, yes? Before the War, Grant was a failure, he was selling shoes in his daddy’s store, and then the War came, and the opportunity for greatness presented itself, and he rose to the occasion. Is that what you want to do with your one chance at a life . . . sell shoes? Is it? That’s what most of you will do, isn’t it?” Again, he long-pauses. “Are any of you hearing me! Reconstruction was not a ‘phoenix’ arising ‘from the ashes’ . . . Reconstruction wasn’t reconciliation . . . Reconstruction in the South was brutish, nasty, and not-so-short . . . and the scars it left are deep.” He pauses yet again, glares out the window. “Segregation, systematic oppression, the KKK. ‘Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses.’ If you don’t remember Zeppelin, certainly you know Rage Against the Machine?”
Many in the class seem lost, uninterested. But Nicole Newman is entranced; she tells herself she’s more in love with this shabby, furious manic-depressive than any man she’s ever loved in her whole entire life. Dr. Blanco yawns.
“Who can explain to me what sharecropping is?” asks the adjunct. “What is a sharecropper?”
Miss Newman and Shequita Davis combine in separate answers to offer a satisfactory definition.
“Good,” says the adjunct, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. “Let’s talk about sharecropping—I’d intended to show you a short film this week, an adaption of Faulkner’s Barn Burning, Tommy Lee Jones as Abner Snopes—but there’s no time for it; sorry. Anyway, sharecroppers . . . they replaced slave labor, right? Sharecroppers were mostly blacks, yes, but every immigrant minority and the poor white trash were exploited, too; indeed, the vulnerable are always exploited, aren’t they? Most of us will be, at some time or another, at some point in our lives . . . you will be . . . and the question is: what to do about it?” Alan leaves the lectern now, paces the room. “Allow me an analogy. The adjuncts, the part-timers, half the teachers on this campus, we are sharecroppers, nothing more. Let’s say a school, this fine college, for instance, let’s say it’s a farming community, growing cotton; no, producing a different commodity, the college degree . . . you students, you’re the crop, if we can harvest you. The faculty are the farmers. And who profits from our labor? No, not us, not the adjuncts, not the part-timers—because we don’t own the land, aren’t vested, aren’t tenured. They give us a small piece of dirt to work, a class here, a class there, and they say ‘produce,’ and we do, yet we adjuncts reap not what we sew . . . it’s not even subsistence farming. The administrators, they own the farm . . . all those deans and vice-presidents and department heads, they own it, and the tenured faculty, too, yet at a place like this, adjuncts teach more actual classes, probably sixty percent, while he-who-administrates and they-who-are-tenured hoard all the profit for themselves; the adjunct doesn’t even make minimum wage, not if you were to take all his classes, a year’s worth, ten or twelve, and call it a salary, while Professor Blanco back there brings home eighty thousand, eighty-five, owns a boat, spends a month in Europe every summer. And we adjuncts, we don’t get the best piece of dirt either—we get the rocky plots, the freshman classes, the blue-jeans courses. Same with sharecroppers: they’d toil from sun-up to sundown, sweat and bleed, work their hands to the bone, and then they wouldn’t have enough to feed or clothe or shod their own children, who’d work in fields, too, the children, out in the fields, out in the rain and the blistering sun, cutting their small fingers to the bone . . . and all to feed the landowner’s greed. There weren’t any fat sharecroppers, I promise you that. Now, look at me—why don’t you?—and then take a gawk at good Professor Blanco.” Yes, there is a decided disparity of girth, and some students do laugh; Blanco seems as bloated as Brando in his dotage. “‘Where’re all the nice people, the good people, Rhett?’ asked Scarlett O’Hara of post-War New Orleans. ‘They’re all dead,’ Rhett Butler answered, ‘or starving.’ The sharecropper starved; a lot of people after the War starved, or died of disease, or were strung up from cypress trees by the neck . . . and that, dear friends, was Reconstruction.” Another dramatic pause. “Maybe we should talk more about the politics of it, or the socioeconomic context of it, or the technological gains and advancements that were also a part of it, but sometimes you need to feel it to understand it, to feel and taste the suffering of a time and place before you can come to know that time and place, right? Why did the sharecropper submit to it, to use and abuse? Why put himself and his family through it? Are any of you hearing me! Well, what else was he gonna do? A man’s gotta do what he knows how to do, correct? A sharecropper’s got to sharecrop, even if it starves him, because he’s got nothing else, because working the soil is what he is, yes? . . . have I convinced you? . . . any questions?”
There are none, so Alan moves on—hurrying through Lincoln’s plan, Andrew Johnson’s plan, the black codes, the 14th Amendment. Dismissing the class three minutes early, he thanks Dr. Blanco for coming and reminds the students to start studying for next week’s Final.
“Poor guy, I feel like I should give him a tip,” whispers one student to another as they gather their books. “No wonder his shirts are never ironed—can’t afford no dry-cleaning.”
“Or an ironing-board.”
Nicole Newman comes up to Alan’s desk, asks to reschedule their appointment, hints that she’d be available for and amenable to a lunch-date. A picnic in the park with pretty Miss Newman, smiles the adjunct, some finger food, some wine, a song of seduction, and sex for dessert. Sounds like a plan. Two years ago, such conduct would have been unimaginable for him, but five semesters adjuncting can change a man’s outlook. He agrees to meet with her after her last class.
Two other students, both male, both wearing red New York Yankees hats turned backwards, approach Dr. Polk to make sure he counts them as present, not absent; both came in thirty minutes late. “I never take attendance,” answers the adjunct, “on days I’m late myself. Call me what you will, gentlemen, but I’m no hypocrite.” They agree.
“Alan, I think I take exception to your sharecropping analogy,” says Dr. Blanco, once the classroom has emptied out. “Higher education in America is much more analogous to . . . to the guild system of medieval Europe, don’t you think? GTAs are the apprentices, adjuncts or visiting professors are the journeymen, and tenured faculty are the master craftsmen. You’re not a sharecropper, trapped in an oppressive system, with no means of escaping it. You’re a journeymen, Alan, going from town to town, college to college, working for a daily wage at the pleasure of the guild. Don’t be so histrionic, so self-indulgent—you browbeat these kids.”
Alan has no reply to this, although his strongest impulse is to slap the prescription glasses right off the department chair’s fat face. Blanco now explains that he won’t be able to offer Alan the full-time temporary teaching position for the upcoming fall term after all, that the written evaluation of Alan’s performance would be ready to read and sign some time this afternoon, if that’s convenient. Fine, answers the adjunct. Fine. Eat shit and die.
