The Kingdom of Dog (9 page)

 

Monday morning, the campus was crowded once again as students, returned from winter break, scurried from dorms to classes. I ran into President Babson as Rochester and I were walking into Fields Hall. “I want to see everything that's been printed about Joe's death,” Babson said. “Put a file together for me to read. Get it to me by the end of the day.”

I had just walked into my office when Rinaldi called. “Thanks for the tip on that guy who kept sending the letters to Eastern. We found him yesterday and brought him in for questioning. He really had it in for Dagorian, and the college. He hasn't admitted to the killing, but he has no alibi. We're going to keep working on him.”

That was good news. I sent a quick email to the President and to Mike, though I cautioned that we would have to wait for an official statement from the police before we could comment to the press.

With the weight of Joe's murder off my mind, I began to look through a folder of newspaper and magazine clippings Dezhanne had assembled for me. Publications being what they are, it often takes months to assemble a complete file, but I read through the articles I had and Xeroxed copies for Babson.

The murder always made the headlines, and the first several paragraphs of each story read like a medical examiner's report. But in almost every case, the article continued with a brief summary of Eastern's history, culled from the press kit I had prepared. The details of the campaign followed, and the overall exposure for the college and the campaign was greater than I could have hoped for.

I went down to President Babson's office just before noon to give him my preliminary report.

“You've done a good job, Steve,” Babson said. “Without your groundwork there would have been no benefit to Eastern. I'll look these over. Thank you.”

As I walked back into my office, the phone was ringing. “Steve, I'm glad I reached you. It's Lucas Roosevelt.”

Lucas was the chair of the English department. I would be forever grateful to him for hiring me as an adjunct instructor when I returned to Bucks County and no one else was willing to take a chance on hiring a paroled felon.

“What's up, Lucas? Did you have a good winter break?”

“I did, but one of our adjuncts didn't. Perpetua Kaufmann. Did you ever meet her?”

“I'm sure I'd remember her if I did. Her name makes her sound like a Jewish nun.”

“You wouldn't be far from the mark,” he said. “She was a nun, a long time ago. Then she left the convent, taught English in El Salvador, and married a psychiatrist who was working for a human rights organization. I don't remember which one. I'm sure I used to know.”

Lucas had a tendency to ramble from topic to topic. Behind his back, his students called him The Wandering Jew.

I looked at the pile of papers on my desk as Lucas continued to witter on about Perpetua Kaufman. “Sorry, Lucas, but is there a point to this?” I finally asked.

“Oh, dear, I've done it again. Lost my train of thought. Poor Perpetua. Had a faulty space heater and died of carbon monoxide poisoning over the winter break.”

“And you want me to …” I paused. “Write a biography of her or something?”

“Oh, no, I was hoping you could take over one of her classes. She was teaching professional and technical writing on Mondays and Wednesdays at three.”

“I'm working full time in the alumni relations office, Lucas. I don't think I can get away.”

“I already cleared it with John William Babson,” Lucas said. “You'd be doing me, the English department, and Eastern College a great favor if you could pick this class up.”

“When you put it that way.” I didn't bother to finish by saying, “I can't exactly refuse,” but that's what I was thinking.

“Excellent. Candace has the text and a copy of the syllabus for you,” he said, referring to the department secretary, the perpetually sour Candace “Don't call me Candy” Kane. “Must dash. Thanks ever so.”

He hung up before I could protest. I shrugged, pulled on my coat, and walked over to Blair Hall, the home of the English department. I found Candace at her desk, surrounded by spider plants in clay pots. She's a Wiccan whose love for the natural world exceeds any tiny bit of affection she might harbor for humans. She was a slim blonde in her forties, wearing an incongruous pink sweater with a smiling snowman on it.

“Here's the book,” she said, handing me a spiral-bound handbook. “And the syllabus, the course roster, and a copy our department policies regarding adjunct staff. Fill out pages 1-25 and include copies of your undergraduate and graduate transcripts. You'll have to go online and take the sexual harassment tutorial, register for a staff ID card, and go to the campus safety department for a temporary parking permit.”

“Candace, I taught here all last year. I've already done all this.”

She looked up at me. It was like I'd said I was from the planet Al'Teresha, and my people taught using fish skins and wooden dice. “Oh,” she said.

I looked at the syllabus. “This class meets today?”

She took back all the paperwork except the syllabus and the roster. “You won't be needing any of this, then,” she said.

“Candace. Today?”

“If that's what the syllabus says. ” Her phone rang and she answered. It was obvious from her body language that I was dismissed.

I walked back across the quad to Fields Hall, sticking to the well-trod if somewhat slushy paths. A few dirty piles of old snow nestled around the bases of the pine trees in dirty clumps. Stapled flyers fluttered from the notice board in the center of the quad as I walked past.

I hadn't taught professional and technical writing for years, since I was a newly-minted MA in New York scrabbling for any work that came my way, but I'd been writing memos, letters, resumes, reports and presentations for years.

The syllabus was pretty straightforward. The class met in one of the computer-equipped classrooms in Blair Hall and students did both in-class and online work, using a software program I had begun using in the previous term. I logged in and looked at the materials Perpetua had assembled, ignoring the messy pile of papers and phone messages on my desk.

Fortunately she had prepared a series of video lectures on each topic. I was surprised to see how old she was—she looked like she'd been a nun when Martin Luther was posting his ninety-five theses on that church door in Wittenberg. I didn't understand how someone could look so old, frail and munchkin-like and still be alive. But then again, she wasn't any more.

I grabbed a hoagie from one of the trucks for lunch and went back to my regular work. I pulled bits of roast beef out of my sandwich and fed them to Rochester as I made phone calls and answered email.

Just before two Dezhanne came in for her work-study shift. “I'm rethinking this whole pre-med thing,” she said, dropping a couple of huge texts on the reception desk outside my office. “Do you believe how much reading we have to do for organic chemistry?”

“When was the last time you saw a doctor, Dezhanne?”

She cocked her blonde head the way Rochester did when I said something to him that he didn't understand, but she said, “I still go to my pediatrician back home. I guess it was like, in August, just before I came back to campus.”

“And wouldn't you want him to know everything about whatever might be wrong with you?”

“Well, sure.”

“Don't you think he had to study organic chemistry? And understand everything?”

“He's like a hundred years old,” she said. “And he has a hunchback.”

“Probably from carrying around heavy textbooks,” I said. “You have to accept the responsibility that comes with whatever career you choose, Dezhanne. You want to be a doctor? You have to be the absolute best doctor you can be, because people will depend on you to heal them or keep them healthy.”

“But it's so hard.”

“If it wasn't hard, then anybody could be a doctor. Would you want a doctor to treat you, or your family, who didn't have the brains and the determination to study organic chemistry?”

“Fine,” she said. “But just for the record, I hate alkyl halides.”

I didn't even know what those were, but I said, “Duly noted. ” Then I walked back to Blair Hall. Time to be a teacher again.

 

The professional and technical writing class met in a first-floor computer lab in an addition at the back of Blair Hall that hadn't been there when I was a student. The rest of the building was dark and gloomy, with tall, gothic-arched windows in the classrooms, and dusty fluorescent lights hung on pendants. The classrooms had rich wooden wainscoting and scuffed floors, and I had fond memories of seminars in the small rooms on the third floor, a professor and a handful of students discussing the meaning of life and literature.

At least that's the way I remember it. We were probably as uncommunicative as today's students, and our professors must have felt like brain surgeons, probing our heads for any spark of intelligence.

Tall windows in the computer classroom looked out on a walkway between buildings, where the grass was sparse and brown. A squirrel shook the branches of a pine tree as I walked in to the room, causing a flurry of the last fine snow outside the window.

Computers lined the perimeter of the room. About twenty students either sat at the terminals or at a couple of round tables in the middle of the room. I threaded my way through them, saying “Good afternoon,” until I reached the podium.

“You're not Sister Perpetua,” a boy at one of the round tables said.

“That's very perceptive,” I said. “I'm Professor Steve Levitan, and I've been asked to take over your class for the rest of the term.”

“What happened to the sister?” a girl asked from the side of the room.

“She was called to her heavenly reward last Thursday night. I see from her syllabus that we're discussing memos today. I'm going to give you a brief lecture on memos, and then I'm going to ask you to write a memo for distribution to the campus about Professor Kaufman and her death.”

“Will we have to use the phrase ‘heavenly reward' in the memo?” the same snarky boy at the table asked.

“If it's appropriate for your audience.” I used that as a segue into the topic of memos, forestalling any more comments. I told them how long I'd been teaching at Eastern, and about my current job in the alumni office. “I write this kind of material for a living these days,” I said. “And those of you who see yourselves earning a living at some point in the distant future will need to know how to communicate with your colleagues, your clients, and any other audience as appropriate.”

I pulled up Perpetua Kaufman's video lecture on memos. She was surprisingly animated for such an elderly, gnome-like person, and I was sorry that I hadn't had a chance to get to know her over the past year. But adjuncts tend to come and go as classes demand, and we don't spend a lot of time socializing with each other, or with full-time faculty.

When the video was finished, I said, “Now I want you to consider the audience for your memo. Are you writing to your fellow students? To the faculty and administration? How do you think your memo might be different based on those different audiences?”

The snarky kid raised his hand. “What's your name?” I asked.

“Lou Segusi. You could change the kind of language you use—more colloquial for students, more formal for adults.”

“I'm not sure all the faculty here behave like adults,” I said. “But that's a good point. Any other ideas?”

No one else had anything to say, so I started picking names off the roster, starting with one I recognized, the girl from the booster club who had helped out at the party. “Barbara Seville?”

“Professor Kaufman had a really interesting life. You could pick out different details to tell about her depending on the audience.”

“Good point. Where could you find information on Professor Kaufman for your memo?” I looked back at my roster. “Yenny?”

I expected a girl, but a skinny boy with a wild bush of dark hair raised his hand. “Google?”

“Yes, but Google's just a search engine—it just points you to sources. What kind of source would have the information you need?”

“An obituary?” Lou asked.

“Good idea. You can find obituaries by checking the local papers. What about something closer to home? La'Rose?” I asked.

A black girl with elaborate braids raised her hand. “Maybe on the Eastern website?”

“Yup. There's often information about your professors on the site. ” I called the rest of the roll, then showed them where to find the memo templates in Microsoft Word. “You have the rest of the class to write this memo. Use the assignment button to submit.”

As they worked, I went up to the teaching station and used the computer there to log in to my email. I managed to answer a couple of press queries before Lou raised his hand and asked, “Professor?”

“Yup?”

“If I finish the assignment can I use the computer to work on something else? Sister Perpetua always let us.”

“I don't have a problem with that.” I went back to my emails, and a few minutes before the end of class I walked around the room, looking over shoulders. “You don't need the CC: field if you're not copying anyone on the memo,” I told La'Rose. “You don't have to put a salutation on a memo,” I told Ashleen.

As I passed Lou's computer I saw that he was working on a paper for history class that had someone else's name on the top. “That your paper?” I asked.

“I'm just proofing for a friend.” He minimized the paper quickly.

It looked more like he was writing it for a friend, but I wasn't going to start my first day by accusing a stranger of plagiarism. I went back up to the podium. “Remember, guys, I will be grading you based on the format of your memo, as well as your ability to write clearly and punctuate appropriately.”

They all began packing up. Lou was the last to go, typing away up until his last classmate had left and I was standing by the door. “I'm going to lock the door,” I said. “You can stay here until the next class comes in.”

“Thanks, Prof,” he said, still clacking away at the keyboard.

Eastern was to close at four o'clock that afternoon so we could all attend Joe Dagorian's funeral at Saint Augustine's in Leighville, and I got back to my office just in time to say hi to Rochester and give him a rawhide bone until I returned from the funeral. I didn't want to contemplate what kind of mischief he might get up to at a cemetery.

I rode out to Saint Augustine's with Sally Marston, and we slipped into a pew in front of Mike MacCormac and Sam Boni, the director of intercollegiate athletics. Sam looked like a California beach boy sprung to life from the pages of a fashion catalog. He had been a collegiate swimmer and water polo champ at a California college and he had maintained a swimmer's lean and muscular physique. He also had wheat-blond hair, blue eyes, and cheekbones models die for. A few rows back I saw Norah's colleagues from the English department, and other departments were grouped around us.

The priest concluded his eulogy by saying, “Someone told me that Joe managed a difficult process with style and grace, and that he managed to convey to the students who weren't admitted that it was in their best interests to forget about Eastern and move on to a better place for them. Today, we bid farewell to Joe as he heads to his own better place.”

The cemetery was behind the church, and we followed the pallbearers and the coffin down a paved path, and then across to the plot that had been reserved for Joe. A wind came up as we stood around the hillside grave and the priest read a few words. I could feel that chill January wind sweeping across the Pennsylvania countryside and raising our fuel bills as we shivered in it.

While the others stood and mingled for a few minutes after the coffin had been lowered into the earth, I walked to the top of the rise and looked out on the countryside. Before me, just beyond a checkerboard of farmland, lay Leighville, its black roofs clustered together as if for warmth. Below my feet blades of grass poked up through a thin slush, while along the roads it had turned a brown grey from the exhaust of passing cars, and on the far hills it still looked deep and white.

As I stared out at the roofs of Eastern College, I thought about how much the college had changed since it was founded. About all the Joe Dagorians and the Steve Levitans who must have worked there over the years, whose names and records were lost to history. What we remember of history is usually the movers and shakers, the people who change things. The Joe Dagorians merely maintain the status quo.

I rode back to Eastern with Sally, picked up Rochester, and headed downriver. Night was just falling, neons awakening and cars just beginning to turn on their headlights.

One of the things I had to adjust to when I came back to Bucks County, after the bright halogens of Silicon Valley, was the lack of street lights. Where I lived with Mary, the night was almost as bright as the day, between the streetlights, store window lights, neon signs and headlights. But in the country, when it was dark, it was dark. Most nights I found the dark welcoming, a soft gloom that overtook the day and gave us time to recharge. But since Joe died I had started to fear the night, because it covered the evil around us. I shivered and Rochester snuggled next to me.

As I fixed dinner, I kept one eye on the evening news, and saw Thomas Taylor being led into the police station. “That's the homeless guy who was hanging around the car when we went to the printers,” I said to Rochester. “I wonder if he picked up one of the programs from my car. Oh my God, maybe it was because of me that he knew where he could find Joe.”

I had to sit down, and Rochester came over to press his head against my knee. My mind was full of questions about the contact between Taylor and Joe. Had Taylor been hovering around outside Fields Hall and taken advantage of Joe's trip outside? Or had he contacted Joe and made arrangements to meet him outside? And would Taylor have even known about the party if it wasn't for me?