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The Adventurist

St. Martin's Press

1

More and more I have been thinking: What this country needs is war.

Don't misunderstand. I'm not pining for another foreign adventure. I mean an honest reckoning, here on our own pilgrim dirt. One of the company's Finance men is forever reading military journals and wringing his hands over the Chinese, a billion-strong infantry or something, cinches for any war of attrition, etc. Whenever I bump into him, I make it a point to hear him out. "Chuck," I might say, "worst-case scenario: no way the People's Army makes it past Nevada." "Oh ho. You just keep thinking that. Here's a tidy little fact for you. Last year Chinese defense spending more than tripled the previous five years' total ..." — this while I slide into dread anticipation like a warm bath. Mind you, I'm not winding him up. I want to be convinced. The more an old saber rattler like Chuck frets, the more I think: Let them come.

Later I am always ashamed. War is torture chambers, and fathers killed in front of sons, homes burned while children scream from the attics — what is the matter with me? But just moments ago I caught in the rearview mirror a glare from my fellow citizen. It was a look of such opprobrium, such astonished offense (I changed lanes too abruptly), that I would have the nerve, the gall to interrupt even for a moment her progress in the world, and back I am to thinking, Yes: tank treads and the tromp of boots, here on our courteous soil. It is the only remedy.

At last the Cyber tower rounds into view and I forget all about my military fantasies. This is a place anyone would be glad to work. A thirty-story functionalist construction, our building stands demurely aside from the steel sails and ribbons of the last boom — to say nothing of those glass three-stage rockets that sprang up across the Sunbelt in the futurist eighties. Its apartness is literal: the building is quite clearly removed from the skyline's huddle of commercial A-space. However, the difference is not more than a few blocks. The downtown district is scarcely big enough to get lost in. It would take some real trying, anyway. No, I do not deceive myself that this is a sprawling capital city. Ours is a first-rate building in a not quite first-rate town. I'm not complaining. The city is all the better for it. I have traveled to so-called world capitals and found the inhabitants only too aware of themselves as such — that is, as movers in a world capital.

The lobby is a cavernous glass place with a red granite floor. A gigantic Christmas tree still looms in the atrium entrance. People stride for the elevators in a billow of coattails and trailing scarves. The morning light comes in like snowfall. I am especially brisk of step this morning. Earlier I received a call from my manager's assistant. A summons at that hour, and from her, could mean only some wonderful or terrible bit of news. Except she gave nothing away. Her voice was colorless:

"Keith would like a word this morning."

"Of course," said I, just as soberly. We bid each other good-bye in tones gone positively funereal. Anyone listening would think what serious business this is, to be subpoenaed by the boss. Only not really. Keith and I are friendly.

Off the elevators and into a waking office. The floor plan is like an open range: elevators in the center, offices at the perimeter, desks among low divider walls everywhere else. Our eighteenth-story perch is generously windowed. Beyond the warren of cubicles is a bright winter sky. Small clouds stand in the blue like flak burst. Sunlight ricochets off downtown glass and beams upward through the windows. People attend the blinds, their heads looming like moai statues on the white drop ceiling. Others shuck jackets, greet neighbors, lift phones, punch buttons. Computers pop to life. It is a good bunch. Whatever stories we tell ourselves, it's the one about the American work ethic that is observably true. A rare instance of treasured impression borne out by facts. Some of the most satisfying days I've known have occurred inside these walls. Just yesterday while searching my computer for a document, I came upon an old slide whose bold-boxed message read, Relentless focus to reduce waste, improve quality, and increase customer satisfaction. Its font colors were a kind of Mediterranean blue. I was cast back years ago to the moment of creation: hunched with my cohorts in a conference room on a midafternoon in summer, the sun in the blinds and the smell of carpet fibers and fresh paint. Four centered youths, our brains keen and college-minted, eager to be of use.

This regard for work surprises some. My sister, for example. In her mythology a corporate job is a necessary evil, to be tolerated only until a person finds what he was Meant To Do. I once felt the same. I landed a job with Cyber Systems straight out of college, and no sooner had the hiring manager handed me a security badge and shown me to my computer than was my radar wheeling around for a destiny. What changed my mind was love. Of money. I am only partly joking. There may be satisfactions like a thick wallet, but you need a thick wallet to have them. It's no good avowing one's regard for money, I know. You set yourself up as a satirical creature. And in fact money was not the only thing: also my destiny never resolved itself. There's no lack of good to be done in the world, and as soon as any noble thing presented itself, it was replaced by another. To pick one and run is fine if there is nothing else. But when a person has already obtained a kind of momentum — it didn't take long to see that acquiring a skill, linking arms with others to fix problems, fulfilling one's duties with aplomb, all toward a commercial end, is its own kind of nobility. The nobility of no pretensions. Gretchen, my sister, works in Minneapolis for a charity shop whose wares are made by indigenous peoples guaranteed a living wage. It is a good mission. I must say, however, that her co-nonprofiteers are a fairly self-satisfied bunch. One of them, a Young Werther in East German frames, once told me that although his work might barely feed him, it would always sustain him. When I mentioned this later to Gretchen, she wasn't surprised. My sister is perfectly clear-eyed. She allowed that if he of the politburo (I don't recall his name) occasionally gave himself to stirring performances, it was all "positively directed." She guessed that Cyber Systems must have a similar type: heroes who stayed late, worked weekends, sure of a hallowed cause. This was no hypothetical, of course. I explained, not for the first time, that as an industry, internet security software was as dear to me as it was to her: not at all. The day I hold forth on digital security at a dinner party is the day I quit. What moves me to work is money's comforts, yes, and also a community of smart, mostly efficient people; the sense of place that a good office gives. If this sounds mundane, so much the better. Gretchen, in a dear little-sister way (she is thirty to my thirty-four), won't accept that I feel no tug to heroism. And in a way she is right. Only my heroes are the mundane sort: good managers, homeowners, taxpayers.

Keith is on the phone, frowning. His office is a corner one. Windows for walls; the city hustles beyond. I am motioned into a chair. His desk is a polymer thing with a vast black surface shaped like an apostrophe. It is bare but for computer and telephone.

"That's not the point," he says.

And then: "Right. Barry — I understand the algebra."

Ah. Barry is my counterpart in Sales. Sales is under tremendous pressure at the moment. Last quarter was horrendous, and this one has started no better. The responsibility for this ultimately lies with Keith. He has been General Manager a short half year, promoted from elsewhere to take over from the previous GM, who was shown the plank. I should explain that here "General Manager" retains its meaning. Cyber has so far avoided the usual arms race over position titles, the sort that ushers in dozens of "Chief" officers to the executive suite. Here each business unit is appointed one GM, and one only. They are the Mayors of the Palace. It's true that Keith is answerable to an opaque tier of masters installed somewhere in far-off Dallas. But locally there is no higher power. At Cyber it is simple: there is the General Manager, there are the Directors, charged with running the various departments (I am one; Barry is another), and there is everyone else.

"Listen to me," he says into the phone. "I get it. Going to bat for your team is what good managers do. But only to a point. Because at the end of the day, you own the number. And if this guy isn't getting it done —"

There comes a tinny volley of apologetics. Barry is nothing if not persistent. Keith plants a heavy elbow on the table, laying his ear to the receiver. He is tall, big-bellied, broad-shouldered, broad-faced; heavy. Against the broadness of his face, the lips stand out. They are Cupid's-bow-like, and oddly sensual. Then there is the gaze. Perhaps if you were to pass him in an airport or hotel bar, you'd notice little more than his ample frame and draping oxford shirt, the lank black hair attached to thinning part: one more Southern salesman nearly gone to seed in discount brokering or life insurance. But he is no Babbitt. There is the gaze, and it moves over the devices of the world, and it does not forget.

Now he is nodding testily. "Look," says Keith. "My rule? Never carry a salesman longer than his mother did. You're profitable in nine months, or you're out." The receiver goes back into its cradle.

"How's the weekend."

I report the weekend was fine.

"Yep." The irritation of their back-and-forth has carried over into the room; he is not really listening. "Mine I spent doing honeydew chores. Not you, I know. No honey to tell you what to do."

"The chores were here."

"And? How turn the wheels of Engineering?"

"The team made some good progress over the weekend."

"No thanks to their Director." An absentminded jab. Really he is absorbed in his monitor.

"I'm single-handedly keeping this place afloat."

Harmless banter, but immediately I see it is a stupid thing to say, the worst possible rejoinder in light of the last quarter. He looks up.

"Aha." His eye goes past my shoulder. The door. "Shut that, will you?"

Now comes the first inkling that all is not well. At the doorway his assistant shoots me a curious glance. There is time only to offer an apologetic smile before the light of the wider office is sealed off.

"So," Keith says. "We're only as good as our last quarter. That's the cold hell of business. Let's start there."

I wait. When nothing else comes: "Meaning right now we're not very good."

He nods. "And another one like it ..."

"The market doesn't forgive." I surprise myself. The market. What do I know about the market. I have a team to feed and care for, software to design, code, test. The market I leave to economists.

"No," Keith says. "The market forgives just fine. Nothing's got a shorter memory than the market. It's our bosses we need to watch out for."

I am silent. Do I imagine it, or is there not an echo of threat in this? Although he may be thinking of Barry. Or perhaps he means pressure being exerted from Dallas on him himself. Having been brought in at no small expense to turn revenues around, and with last quarter failing to show any upward signs, the noose around his own neck may be going tight.

He is distracted again by email. The only sound is the rasp of mouse on desk, the quiet click of its buttons. He swears under his breath.

"Anyway. It's what we get paid for. If there were only good quarters and better quarters, no need for managers. Now's when we earn our keep."

Though I have known Keith only these past six months, already he is the finest boss I've ever had. He uses only "us" and "our" and "we." In the mouths of past supervisors, this team-speak always sounded mealy and euphemistic. Why not with him? I think it is because his sovereignty doesn't frighten him. The worst managers speak of "us" in hopes of finding refuge among the masses. It is a bid to wish away the responsibilities of hierarchy. Keith has no qualms about the hierarchy or his place in it. We work at his pleasure, and he does us the courtesy of not pretending otherwise.

"To that end," he goes on, "I need to be sure I've got the full attention, the commitment, of certain folks."

"I see." I see.

"You do."

"I think I do."

"Tell me."

"The business is shaky right now. You want to be sure managers aren't poking around at other opportunities."

"I want to be sure you're not poking around."

"I'm not."

"I've seen to it."

Keith digs into his computer bag on the floor and withdraws a sheet of paper. He gives the page a frowning once-over, then sends it hissing across the desk: CS Salary Adjustment Form. The contents take a moment to register. My current pay is indicated at top; at bottom, the figure plus twenty percent.

"I'm counting on you. What happens in the next ten weeks will define us for a long time to come. Believe it."

I am at a loss. He pushes from his desk and heaves around. I rise to meet him. We shake hands firmly and formally. Keith smiles down on me, and there comes a feeling like a pressed knuckle at my throat. Ye lovely saints above. The joy of money is sharp as grief.

* * *

I was born and raised in Minnesota, went to college in Virginia, and chose the South to live. A proven decision, I think, not least for the mercy of Southern winters. Today at noon it is sixty degrees in the sun. I sit on a park bench a few blocks from the office, marking time before lunch. It is an attractive place, nearly ten brick-paved acres. Where once leaned tenement houses now are benches and green bandstands, potted conifers and towering obelisks of galvanized steel cut in the shape of torches. In summer, jets of water erupt from blowholes in the plaza's brick floor while children frolic like mental patients among the geysers. The bricks themselves are stamped each with a name or short message. A few are engraved in memoriam. Today I found another: William C. Dawes 1982–1985. It reminds me of a trip I made last fall to see a friend in Charleston. The visit itself was nothing to speak of; what I remember is the drive home. The roads of the low country are tricky things. They wind through realms of gray marshes and haunted forests, and after dark they become especially tricky. In plainer terms, I got lost. Doubling back, I caught something strange in the headlights. I stopped. The forest ran right along the shoulder of the road, a thick flanking of elephant ears and draping limbs, but here there was a gap. It worked as an entrance, a vestibule of a few trunks' depth beyond which was a small clearing, opened among the trees like a bedroom. It was after midnight; the forest was quiet. No: in fact it was a riot of croakings and chirrings, but these were a solid pattern upon which the smallest exception could be heard. The engine ticked in the heat. Fireflies bobbed and winked their green signals. Soon I could make out the purpose of this place. Laid in a row were five cocoon-like mounds of bleached seashells, each glowing dully among the ferns.

What is my point? In the American South, Death won't be ignored. Slavery and revolution have soaked its clays red. Everywhere one bumps into history, tragedy, and failure. Bandstands on gravestones, but no amount of happy theater will change the facts. This is the South's great comfort, although, surveying the park, I am reminded it may not last. Across the plaza, a crowd of red-hatted tourists are admiring the two-story television marquee on the side of the city's new convention center. Some strange cartoon is showing. The South's major cities have, by tract house and conference center, begun to except themselves from their soil's bony history. No nation ever had less use for a graveyard, and Dixie's mayors know it better than anyone. Conventioneers have no chance at business with Death wheezing on their necks.

"I'm sorry sir: no sleeping on the park benches."

"Hm —? Oh. Hullo Barry."

"'Hello Barry.' Now that's — jeez, that's a funeral greeting. Let's try again."

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Excerpted from The Adventurist by J. Bradford Hipps. Copyright © 2016 J. Bradford Hipps. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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