57 Pressure

Ruth took a job teaching English to junior high students in Logan, Iowa, and we agreed that I would stay home and care for our twins. My oldest daughter Donna moved to Logan with us, too, and there completed her senior year of high school. For Ruth teaching junior high English was torture. One night early in December my wife woke me from a sound sleep at 3:00 in the morning because, Ruth said, she had something she had to tell me.

It could not wait.

"I've lost my faith in god," she said.

Hmm.

The next night at 3:00 almost the very same thing—

"I don't want to wake up anymore."

Hmm.

In the morning my wife and I agreed that I should find a job so she could quit hers and do something else. I read the job ads in the Sunday World-Herald and applied for four—ombudsman for an Indian reservation in South Dakota, deputy director for city development in my home town of Shenandoah, counselor in a halfway house for troubled teens in Ames, Iowa, where I had earned my bachelor's degree fifteen years earlier, and instructor of English at the west campus of a nearby community college. I was invited to interview for all four positions. At the conclusion of the second interview I was offered the job on the spot. On January 2 of 1980 I began teaching English at Omaha Technical Community College.

Whew—

Not so fast!

I arrived just as the annual evaluations of faculty by their supervisors—and of supervisors by their superiors—were taking place. My new colleagues tried immediately to enlist me in their causes. In confidence I was told, by four or five different colleagues, whom they believed ought to be fired.

"Marcella ought to be fired," Grace told me.

"Oh."

"Grace is burned out—all used up," Marcella told me. "She ought to be fired."

"Oh."

Neither of them liked Ellen.

"Oh."

"Feller ought to be fired," Ellen told me.

"Oh."

Feller was my new boss, the man who had just hired me, the supervisor of developmental studies and the only person of color at the west campus of the college. Though I had been on the job for only three weeks, an annual evaluation of me was required nonetheless, so to the office of Mr. Feller I reported as appointed. Feller was encouraging and friendly and our conversation was both informal and brief. At its conclusion Feller asked me if I had encountered any problems in my new position so far. Fool that I was—trying still as best I could to be honest and without exception to tell the truth all the time—I told my supervisor that I was troubled, uncomfortable, and confused by the ugly academic politics in the office. Grace thinks Marcella should be fired, I explained, Marcella thinks Grace should be fired and, I added, neither Grace nor Marcella seems to approve of the job that Ellen is doing. I didn't even really know these people. I had only just met them. To me all four of them seemed normal, cooperative, competent, hardworking.

"What is going on?" I asked.

"Ellen has had a few problems," Feller responded.

No end to it.

"Ellen thinks you should be fired!" I laughed.

Feller shrugged.

At the absurdity of it all I laughed again.

Feller smiled.

A week later Ellen met with Mr. Feller for her own annual evaluation. They conferred in his office for over an hour, and when Ellen finally emerged she was furious, livid, cursing under her breath, and as she strode through our common office area Ellen made a beeline straight for my desk.

"Did you tell Feller I thought he should be fired?" Ellen demanded.

"No," I lied.

It was the first outright lie I had told in five years.

My twins were only two years old, my oldest daughter Donna was living with me and Ruth in Logan, I was still paying child support each month for my oldest son Devon, who lived with his mother and her husband in her home town of Shenandoah, my wife Ruth, totally exhausted by her job in junior high, planned to quit in May, and my job now I thought I really needed.

I felt desperate.

Trapped.

It was two months before I could bring myself to confess.

"Ellen?"

I apologized and started to explain.

"Don't."

Ellen interrupted me.

"Forget it."

Ellen simply dismissed the matter with a wave and never mentioned it again—for which I was much relieved and still feel grateful. It had been a much bigger matter to me than it had been to Ellen. Because of our study and practice of religion for two years together in Reunion, Iowa, I felt obliged to tell my friends Paul, Billy, and John of this incident.

Each reacted to it in the same way.

"Pressure."

They understood.

Also—

On one occasion my three nephews inquired about the religious experience to which I and others in the family sometimes alluded. I told some stories and boasted of my years of honesty. After my brother and his three teenage sons had gone home my wife corrected me.

"You smoked pot for years," Ruth said.

I nodded.

"That was a lie."

"Yes."

From many people I had kept that secret for a long time, I had not quit completely until five months after the birth of my first grandchild, and so I told my nephews the next time I saw them.

Following the year of my experience, seldom did I speak of my vow to be honest.

It no longer felt magic and special.

I had failed.