Cassovan was tired; the daily fog of exhaustion had begun to roll in. Wisely and slow, he thought; they stumble that run fast. “I’ll consider it,” he said.
Roland patted his shoulder again, sending Cassovan almost tripping through the elevator doors. By the time he righted himself and pushed the button for the ground floor, Roland—feeling no need to end their tête-à-tête with formalities—had turned and begun to walk down the stairs.
* * *
—
In the middle of the night, sleep a distant country to which he had once again been denied a visa, Fitger lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, listening to Franklin Kentrell’s shambling progress down the hall to the bathroom, his hourly voyage announced via the squeaking wheel on his walker on the floor below. Kentrell had been oystered away in Fitger’s first-floor study since his return from the hospital five days before, Fitger having moved his own computer and most of the contents of his desk to his bedroom upstairs. He had equipped what was now Kentrell’s sick bay with a pullout guest bed, extra pillows, blankets, beverages, a side table stocked with magazines, and a small TV. The TV—its provision, in retrospect, a significant error—was on at all hours, tuned to talk shows and mindless midday dramas whose soundtracks floated freely (the downstairs study had no door), along with the sound of Kentrell’s intermittent snoring, through every room.
Impossible, Fitger thought, to endure even another hour of his colleague’s presence. Twice, shutting himself in his bedroom closet so Kentrell wouldn’t hear, he had called the hospital’s patient helpline to ask if his invalid friend might be transferred to an aftercare facility—perhaps a day care center or a pet motel. But he was told that Kentrell had not requested aftercare, which, in any case, was not available under his insurance plan.
He heard the toilet flush downstairs—Kentrell typically left the bathroom door open during use—and discerned the sound of his corduroy slippers (they were in fact Fitger’s slippers) as they began their shuffling journey down the hall. He lay perfectly still, lest he be summoned. The daily reality of Kentrell’s sojourn was painful enough (the bottles of pills on the kitchen counter, the incessant TV, the compromised cleanliness of the toilet); but at night, to hear his colleague whimpering in dreams…appalling, appalling. Each morning, Fitger rose and dressed in disbelief that Kentrell was still there.
Fran called him at home one icy January afternoon. “I thought you were coming in today,” she said. “You were going to write those performance reviews.”
Fitger stood at the sink, rinsing the remains of Kentrell’s lunch—a nauseating mix of applesauce, yogurt, and bananas—into the drain. He lowered his voice. “I had to take him in today—for a checkup.” He had not only driven Kentrell to the clinic but accompanied him into the examination room and watched him struggle into a polka-dotted gown. The female physician who eventually knocked and came into the room looked young enough to have a jump rope rather than a stethoscope in her white coat pocket.
“Are you his partner?” she’d asked, after shaking hands with Kentrell.
“No, I’m his department chair.”
The doctor had ended up scolding Fitger for neglecting to bring his colleague in sooner. Hadn’t he noticed the patient’s lethargy? His fever? After ordering antibiotics, she had charged Fitger with the responsibility of taking Kentrell’s temperature every four hours and, after administering the drug, making sure it “stayed down.”
“Wait: Kentrell is still living with you?” Fran asked.
Yes, because a member of the staff had apparently listed him as an emergency contact. But perhaps that member of the staff would now be interested in setting aside a room in her own home and taking a turn with—
“Nope.” It would be inappropriate, Fran said, for a female member of the administration to take care of the faculty.
“It must be equally against some rule for me to be stuck with him,” Fitger said. He squeezed out a sponge. He had accomplished none of the reading or writing he had intended to tackle during the break, and his attempts to placate President Hoffman had failed: she had sent him the latest round of clippings (Shakespeare a Payne in the Neck at Midwestern University) and insisted that he put a stop to the unfavorable publicity ASAP. And Fran was right about Hoffman’s desire for an event or a speaker. In her latest e-mail she had suggested that the damage to his department might be assuaged if English were to host someone prestigious: a scholar or author who had won a major award. How Fitger would pay for such an event without a budget, she didn’t say. Meanwhile, Kentrell—beginning day six of his convalescence in Fitger’s study—was turning into an oversized foster child.
“Well, Franklin will owe you one,” Fran said. She asked if Fitger intended, all week, to work from home.
“I wouldn’t call this working,” he said. “It’s more like telecommuting from hell.” Was there anything interesting happening up at the office?
No, not much. What with the lack of heat, Fran was dressing in layers, but it was quiet, with the students gone. The conference room had gotten a new coat of paint and looked very good. English still couldn’t use it, but Fran had managed to get a look at it through the locked door. Also—maybe this was of interest—Roland had toured a few bigwigs through the first floor of Willard with his accomplice, Marilyn Hoopes. And he seemed to be pursuing friendships with faculty in English. Fran had overheard something about Roland paying a visit to Martin Glenk, at Glenk’s hobby farm.
“Why would he visit Glenk?” Fitger asked. “And what the hell is a hobby farm?”
Kentrell trundled past, the front of his bathrobe open.
Fran said she didn’t know, but if Fitger was restless and looking for an outing, he could give Glenk a call and visit the hobby farm himself.
* * *
—
During the forty-minute drive through frozen pastureland, a wrinkled map on the passenger seat by his side, Fitger wondered about the mental well-being of the sort of person who would consider farming—one of the most precarious and physically dangerous ways to make a living—a weekend hobby or source of fun. Did other citizens relax on the weekends by spending their free time working at miniature construction sites? Did they dabble in restaurant work or podiatry? What had happened to reading on the weekends, or playing cards? Turning left as Glenk had instructed at the skeleton of a VFW hall, he traversed a final stretch of veld (broken cornstalks jutting unevenly up through the snow) that led to a vinyl-sided rambler, tenuously connected, via a sort of breezeway, to a matching barn. He parked at the top of a gravel drive. The thermometer on his dashboard registered eight degrees, so he put on his hat before giving a cordial tap to the horn. On the phone, Glenk had sounded surprised that he was coming and had told him to honk when he arrived. Getting out of the car, Fitger hoped his visit might occasion something hot to drink. A coffee with whiskey would be perfect, perhaps accompanied by a leather footstool in front of a fire.
Before he could make his way to the door, he heard a shout and saw Martin Glenk, T. S. Eliot scholar, dressed in a pair of thick brown coveralls and heavy mud boots. A hunting cap with fur flaps encased his head. Like a swaggering plowboy (rather than the professor who famously required his students to spend an entire class period speaking in iambs), he jogged out of the barn.
Not knowing what else to do, they shook hands.
“So,” Glenk said. “You want to take a look at the farm.”
Fitger glanced longingly at the homely little rambler, the wind whistling through the cloth of his coat. “Of course. A quick look…I suppose you grow things here in the summer?”
“No. It isn’t that sort of farm.” They turned and walked through the breezeway, the scent of manure thickening the air. “I have a pot of tomatoes and basil on the step but that’s it. The only reason for the farm is the donkeys.”
Donkeys?
“Miniature donkeys,” Glenk sai
d, as if the idea of a full-size animal would be absurd. He had been raising miniatures, and selling them, for a dozen years. He kept a very clean studbook. Normally the jennies would be out in the pasture but Glenk had just given them a ration of alfalfa and brought them in, because of the cold.
Glancing up at the rafters in case of a hidden camera, Fitger learned of Glenk’s preference for the draft-horse body type (“the rump is wider,” Glenk explained). Then, on the lookout for a chance to shift the conversation to matters of business (e.g., the Shakespeare requirement and/or Glenk’s possible acquaintanceship with any Nobel-winning writers or scholars who might be interested in delivering a lecture for free), he followed his colleague into the barn. “Martin,” he said, “I’m hoping you and I can—” Both his feet and his sentence came to a stop.
“They’re something, aren’t they?” Glenk asked, as Fitger gazed disbelievingly at the strangely mythical-looking creatures, two to three feet tall, lifting their snouts from a series of wooden troughs.
He almost expected the donkeys to speak. “How many of these things do you have?”
“Twenty-six of them,” Glenk said, beaming as if he had sired the oddly foreshortened beasts himself. Some of the donkeys were enclosed in stalls, but others wandered freely through an indoor arena. One of them ambled over to Fitger, pushing a dove-colored nose into his pocket and leaving a foot-long smear of saliva behind.
Stroking their ears and their suede faces and proffering endearments, Glenk led Fitger on a tour of the barn. He discussed the problem of cow hocks and parrot mouth while Fitger fended off a trio of animals that trailed closely behind him, one of them nipping now and then at his thigh.
“You don’t want to let them take advantage,” Glenk chuckled, when Fitger discovered a rip in his pocket. “They’ll try to get away with bad behavior. By nature, they’re gentle, but given the chance to be naughty…”
Fitger high-stepped over a clump of turds and tried to put Glenk between himself and the donkeys. “Martin,” he said, “I hope we can find some time this afternoon to discuss some issues in the department.”
Glenk nodded but seemed not to have heard. They walked to the far end of the arena, where, through a cobwebbed window, Glenk pointed out the boundary of his estate: a decrepit grain silo at the edge of a field. There was still a good hour of daylight ahead, Glenk said. Would Fitger like to go for a ride?
Another nip at his thigh. “Ow! Yes.” The rip in his pocket was getting bigger. He felt for the car keys in his coat, imagining a three-mile trip down a country road to a homey café.
But Glenk had entered a shed in the corner. One of the donkeys turned its head, staring at Fitger with an ex-convict’s lopsided grin. “Martin, I’d be happy to drive if—” The other animals, perhaps alerted by the anxiety in his voice, had begun to approach. “Martin!”
Glenk backed awkwardly out of the shed—the tide of animals dispersing—and Fitger saw that he was pulling behind him what could only be described as a donkey buggy or mini-cabriolet.
“Astonishing, isn’t it?” Glenk asked.
Fitger agreed that it was. Glenk, busying himself with halters and bridles, handed Fitger a whip, which he explained was “mostly for show.” Fitger was glad to accept it, but it did occur to him that, given the nefarious gleam in some of the animals’ eyes, he would have been safer with a two-by-four or a gun.
Soon both men were seated, pressed together, in the mini-carriage, with two mini-donkeys in harness and ready to pull. Glenk gestured to the whip in Fitger’s hand. “Just a touch,” he said. “Right there on the flank.”
Fitger stroked one of the donkey’s buttocks with the tip of the instrument: nothing. Glenk made a kissing sound with his mouth; ears rotating like TV antennae, the donkeys picked up their stocky, truncated legs and started to trot. They jounced in a dust-filled circle around the arena, Fitger feeling that his bones were being rattled free of their sockets. The cabriolet’s seat was an icy board.
“I hear I’m not the only member of the Payne faculty who asked about visiting you this week,” Fitger said.
“You’re referring to Roland?” Glenk flicked the whip in the air between the two donkeys, and the carriage headed out of the arena and onto a small frozen path. “He didn’t visit; we ended up talking on the phone.”
A herd of animals had followed behind them and, gradually picking up speed, were on their tail. Shades of Planet of the Apes, Fitger thought. “What did you talk about?” he asked.
Glenk took a corner somewhat quickly, one side of the carriage almost lifting off the ground. Apparently Roland knew something about horses, and had sympathized regarding the problem of finding a farrier. “Mainly, though,” Glenk said, “he wanted to talk to me about retirement.”
“Why is your retirement any of Roland’s business?” They took another sharp turn, and Fitger noticed that the mini-stampede of donkeys was gaining on them.
Glenk smiled. “They get excited when they see the carriage.”
“Excited in what way?” Fitger was remembering the folktale about wolves chasing and devouring the members of a wedding party, picking off carriages one by one in the snow. Was that in My Ántonia?
“Apparently, Roland’s committee, QUAP, has some discretion in regard to retirement incentives,” Glenk said. If he agreed to retire within the next twelve months, he could end up with enough money for a heating and cooling system in the barn.
“We don’t have heating and cooling in Willard,” Fitger said, as they headed toward a stand of trees. “This is bribery, Martin. And you can’t retire yet: we haven’t gotten permission to replace the faculty who have already left.”
That might be true, Glenk said, but the money would be welcome; and who would look out for Martin Glenk other than Glenk himself?
A donkey war cry arose from the trees on their left. Besides, Glenk said, he was tired of the chaos and ill will in the department, and he wasn’t alone. Tyne was thinking about retirement. And Sandra Atherman had long complained about the English faculty’s failure to mark important disciplinary occasions and to take an interest in one another’s hobbies and areas of research.
Remembering Atherman’s fondness for nineteenth-century garb, Fitger made a mental note: Find out about the Brontës’ birthdays. A cluster of beasts was closing in on the starboard side.
Glenk cracked his whip in the air and the donkeys galloped, hell-for-leather, toward the barn.
“Martin? Should we slow down?”
No, they were fine.
Clutching the carriage with frostbitten hands, Fitger said he was glad to have had this chance to learn about Glenk’s very stimulating hobby; and he hoped that Glenk wouldn’t make any sudden decisions regarding retirement. Roland and QUAP weren’t to be trusted. Their aim was to divide and destroy English. Look what they had done to the conference room! If the English faculty were able to unite around the SOV and—
Glenk cut him off. He preferred not to talk about work while he was relaxing down at the farm.
TWELVE
STUDENTS “SMARTING” FROM TRAUMA-INDUCING MATERIAL IN APOCALYPSE CLASS
—by L. R. Young
The Campus Scribe (January 11, 2011): Two undergraduates enrolled in an English class taught by department chair and professor Jason T. Fitger have lodged complaints with the university’s Office of Mental Health and Wellness about traumatizing material required by the syllabus.
The students, who have requested anonymity, claim that the reading list for the fall class—on the “Literature of Apocalypse”—was detrimental to their mental health and “psychologically hostile.” One of the students has reportedly consulted a family lawyer.
Sophomore Yvetta Curtin, who was not enrolled in the class but had seen a copy of the syllabus, suggested that the selection of novels was “irresponsible” and could be dangerous for students with emotional issues or
PTSD.
“This is part of the faculty’s systematic disregard for the well-being of students,” Curtin said. “We shouldn’t have to put up with this kind of insensitivity.”
Professor Fitger, who designed and taught the controversial death-based class, was not available for comment.
At 3:26 a.m., in bed with a 40-watt bulb attached via elastic strap to his forehead, Fitger was reading this latest depiction of himself in the Scribe. Where had that photo—it made him look like a yeti—come from? And did the Scribe’s reporters (the name L. R. Young was faintly familiar) have a mandate to portray the chair of English as a hideous fool? He had a suspicion regarding the identity of the article’s two anonymous plaintiffs—one of whom had failed his class by attending less than half its sessions; the other having mentioned the legal/adversarial careers of his parents at least four or five times—but who the fuck was Yvetta Curtin? Furthermore: How could a class on the subject of apocalypse be personally triggering, when none of his students had yet lived through the end of the world?
He turned slowly and gingerly onto his side, the mattress beneath him emitting a squeak. At any small sound or even a glimmer of light, Kentrell would bestir himself downstairs. Nearly three weeks after his release from the hospital, he was still living with Fitger. There had been a setback, including a twenty-four-hour rehospitalization; then, on the day when Fitger was getting ready to load his colleague’s belongings into the trunk of his car, they got a call from Kentrell’s neighbor: a pipe had burst, and Kentrell’s bathroom and a nearby closet were flooded with ice. The neighbor asked if someone had turned off the heat. Kentrell didn’t think so, but Fitger recalled an image of his own fingers, a few days after Christmas, spinning the dial.
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