The Mentor

by Pat Connid

  Turning to leave, I said: “Don’t mind him.”

  "These broken wings!!”

  “It’s time for his afternoon coffee enema,” I said, pushing the door open, waving my friend out. “He gets like this.”

  “And learn to fllyyyy again!”

  Before the door closed behind us, we both heard one of the giant stacks of paper collapse with a crash and scatter to the floor.

  Once out of earshot, we both howled with laughter as we crossed the campus to the Chemistry building. Pavan punched the air, still laughing, which drew a frown from a small group of students who clutched their books as they slid by.

  "You're a fucked up dude, Dexter, and I love ya for it!"

  "Well, it's nice to be appreciated."

  The sun was starting to dip and the temperature felt like it had dropped ten degrees since we’d gone into the administration building. Picking up the pace a little, I felt myself move more confidentially. My strides felt more sure and I needed the map less, as if I'd settled into a shallow, invisible groove that had been carved by my own footballs, years earlier, and hundreds of times before.

  I was remembering.

  Inside the Chem building, there were a few scattered students, perched on the ledges of the giant dusty widows that capped the staircases on each of the structure’s three floors.

  Jepson’s old classroom was on the second floor. It seemed fruitless to even bother seeking it out, he was no longer there, but now that my mental spillway was breached, the sight of the classroom might force a crack or fissure and help me better remember the man.

  Sure, it was all I really had, but the feeling my answers would come from my old professor was tangible, even tactile, like I could reach out and grab it.

  The door was locked and the light was off but there was enough sun still streaming in that Pavan and I could see most of the classroom through the skinny window in the door.

  My friend asked about the class, what it was like, where I sat. This, so far, escaped me.

  “You forget something inside?”

  Looking over my shoulder, I saw a man in his fifties, graying at the temples but sporting an impressive, huge, jet black mustache. He smiled and tapped some keys at his belt-line.

  “I’ve got a key to all the rooms on this floor. You leave something on your desk?”

  Choosing not to concoct a big story because, in part, it takes so much to maintain whopper lies like that, I explained this had been my old classroom.

  Mustache-man popped open the door and hit the lights.

  The moment I was inside, the soft lines around the room hardened, as information about this room, the students, course materials, drizzled back into their empty slots.

  Pavan asked, “You okay, man?”

  Looking down, I saw my fingertips pressing against one of the desks, as I steadied myself a little.

  One, two, three...

  “There,” I said and smiled, letting him know I was all right. “I sat there.”

  The man who'd let us in the room introduced himself as Professor Marsh. He walked up next to me.

  “Couldn’t have been too long ago,” Marsh said. “I thought you guys were both students. When did you go to the school?”

  “About six years ago, now.”

  Wow, I thought. Has it been six years!

  Pavan said: “I didn’t go here. Me, I’m still undeclared, yet. Still looking for the right fit, you know?”

  “Sure, naturally," Marsh said. "Do you know you have staples in your hair?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Sitting down in my old desk, I could almost see my old professor at the front of the class. Most of the class was lecture-- he’d been notorious for not writing things down so note taking was a must for just about every student.

  Within the first week of class, he'd singled me out having noticed I wasn't actually taking notes. I'd been writing in my notebook, but mostly it was random, abstract doodling.

  This had initially drawn a scowl from him. After peppering me with questions for about fifteen minutes-- everyone in class slowly realizing that I'd done something to incur the professor's apparent wrath-- he finally stopped, nodded.

  "Good," was all he'd said, then smiled. When some kid from Texas asked what "that was all about", Professor Jepson shrugged and said every student should be expected to know the material, at all times. He cast a quick, private glance at me and nodded and, surprisingly, he made no mention of what had triggered our little tete-a-tete.

  Jepson never exposed my secret to the other class members.

  “He used to walk between the door and his desk,” I said and raised a hand toward where the American flag was hanging. “It used to be over there.”

  “Who was your teacher?”

  “Professor Jepson. He’d walk between the desk and the door like he was stalking his prey,” I said and Marsh smiled. “A lion in a tweed jacket and elbow patches hunting our imagination. He loved to really get us going.”

  “Students still talk about him,” he said, grinning again. “He was only here a few short years but, no question; he left his mark on this place. A good one, too.”

  Marsh perked up suddenly and he walked over to a long table, covered with books, and knickknacks. Scanning the table, he said, “I came here shortly after he left-- in fact, I had to pick up a couple of his classes that were left without a teacher. Ah! You'll love this!”

  Carefully, Marsh lifted a figure about the side of his forearm from the table. Wire glasses, pot belly and one of the likely only two shirts and tie combos Professor Jepson ever wore.

  “You remember this?” Funny question but Marsh didn’t know it. I hadn’t told him about the accident or the holes in my past.

  Pavan was trying to reassemble a model of a molecule he’d managed to take apart farther down the table and looked up. He said, “Wow, voo-doo cool!”

  I said, “Ha! That looks like him, too.”

  It was a papier-mâché likeness of Jepson. Not bad either. Holding it, it seemed unnaturally weighted for papier-mâché.

  “Heavy.”

  “Oh, shoot. Forgot,” he said and pointed to an indentation in the doll’s back. “He had a good sense of humor about himself, obviously, because he recorded that for a student. Hit the button, there.”

  The soft patch of paper moved down about a half inch, and I felt it click.

  “I am prepared and I am armed with chalkboard erasers, students. Are you ready for this?”

  Marsh said, “A senior explained it to me and said Jepson was known for nailing sleeping students with er-- are you okay?”

  In the distance, I heard Pavan’s voice: “Hey, man. Dex!”

  What had been a trickle of memories earlier was now a flood.

  My vision went black.

  The roar in my head, louder and louder and more gritty the longer it went on and the sensation of falling, nothing beneath my feet.

  Flash, a bolt of lightning.

  Images and sound and words and colors and light came at me so fast, it was too much and I struggled to suck in a breath, filling instead with sights and smells and, especially, the music of some coked out, incoherent symphony that scratched and banged against their instruments, playing no music but this throbbing chaos.

  Laughing at a coffee shop, throwing a football on a wide expanse of grass, jumping into the Chattahoochee, so much movement and noise, and it kept coming and coming at me.

  “Dexter!”

  It felt as though my brain was melting, gushing out my ears.

  Images whirled by, one encouraged by the next, I know the way, flooding back to me.

  “I am prepared and I am armed with chalkboard erasers, students. Are you ready for this?”

  Jepson’s voice rattled around my head and I looked down to the wheel, gripping it, white knuckled with one hand.

  "Are you ready..?"

  My other, pressing something against my head. Was I bleeding?

  In the mirror, I saw my eyes, wid
e, crazed and beyond that, the windshield flooded by the downpour.

  Suddenly, I was driving again, all those years ago.

  Into the mobile phone at my ear, I shout, “Professor? I can’t-- I can’t talk right now the storm--”

  “Dexter, there’s no time,” he says, and sound and light split the sky, I feel like I’d been electrocuted. “They... damn, they’ve found me, Dexter.”

  I blink away the rain. “What? Who found you, Professor?”

  “It shouldn’t be this way,” he yells over the storm, as fire-red taillights blaze across the glass in front of me.

  “Sir, I can’t... I need to call you when we’re off the interstate, it’s too--”

  “Dexter, listen!” I’ve never heard him yell. And, more terrifying, I’ve never heard that tone before in his voice. He's scared. “They’re here for it, but they won’t find it. They’ll never find it. But that doesn’t mean the rest of the world shouldn’t know it. It’s... it should be for the world, not for them!”

  A truck blasts its air horn at someone to my left. I can't see either vehicle.

  “Professor? What’s-- what’s wrong?”

  There is a crack again but this time it was tinny, thinner than I’d remembered when the dream had come before.

  “Christ, they’re shooting out the lock.”

  “What??” I swerve to avoid a truck and its wandering trailer. "Who's shooting?

  Another crack and he says: “No time. Dexter, you told me what you can do and... it shouldn’t be this way! But, I have no choice. It can’t be lost forever.”

  “Professor! Professor, who’s shooting at you?”

  “No. Dexter, please. This is all that matters: please listen closely.”

  For the next half minute, half decade, or half century, I'm listening-- real time, hyperaware and in the moment, taking it all in, as strange as it was, I'm listening intently-- but most of the words that he wants me to hear do not entirely make sense. A jumble of phrases that, wait!, sound like--

  That’s when the crash came.

  Reds and silvers and, then, black darker than the void of space and cracks of light that splintered glass into my mind.

  I heard the scream.

  It wasn’t the Professors. It wasn't mine.

  I heard my sister Ruthie. I heard Ruthie's terrible, terrible scream.

  “DUDE, YOU ARE FREAKING me the fuck out!!”

  Pavan’s face filled my eyes as I opened them, in my ears a jingling like a ringing was coming closer.

  He blinked and looked up then back down at me.

  “Are you back? Are you okay, man?”

  Nodding hurt my head, and I said, “Yeah. Yeah, man. Blacked out, I think.”

  Professor Marsh burst into the room with a woman carrying a black, soft sided bag. Before I could say a word, she was kneeling at my side, lighting shining in my eyes, eye to eye, eye to eye.

  “Hi, how are you feeling? How’d the head, Mr--”

  Pavan said, “Dexter. My friend’s name is Dexter.”

  “You okay, Dexter?”

  Sitting up, I left a damp patch on the tiled floor and felt cold. My body was wet, my sides streamed with cold droplets.

  “Easy, easy,” she said. “You worked yourself into a sweat here. Are you epileptic, Dexter?”

  “No,” I said, not moving much more. Close to a migraine.

  “Okay,” she said, turning to Marsh. “No medical bracelet and getting fine pupil response. Can you tell me what happened?”

  Marsh and Pavan filled her in while I tried to stop the Earth from moving from side to side. Once the school medical assistant was satisfied, she told me to go straight to the emergency room to get checked out.

  As she left, I smiled at my friend.

  “She was pretty.”

  Pavan, still shaken, said, “You were all Linda Blair and shit for a minute, man. Shaking and stiff at the same time.”

  “Gave us a scare, Dexter. Has that ever happened before?”

  I shrugged but said nothing. For months after the accident, my head injuries had taken time to heal and there had been a couple episodes. But, I'd learned to control them because they'd always lead with the onset of a migraine.

  Just nip that in the bud and, for years now, I'd been okay.

  Until today.

  The episode had ripped away some callus or retaining wall, whatever, and it was all coming back-- a steady stream now in dribbles and bursts. Still, it was too much at once. I was struggling a little with holding it all in place, making sense of it.

  Taking a breath, I calmed myself, and let the memories wash back over me. Most of it was a jumbled cacophony of sensations, but I could feel it begin to slowly settle in place. Like custom marbles for some mental Chinese Checkers board… just all rolling around until they find their exact, cozy little spot.

  “Listen guys,” Professor Marsh said, “My office is on the next hall. In the back storage area, there’s a cot where I take naps between classes sometimes. If you want--”

  Holding my hands up, I said, “Very cool of you, but no, I’m good. Thanks, though.”

  As I stood, the dream sloughed off me faster, and I took another couple deep breaths.

  I assured Marsh-- and my friend-- that the episode was over and left me no worse for the wear. Still, the Professor's face was tense, pained.

  Knowing a hell of a lot about guilt, I made sure he knew he'd done nothing wrong. It was on me: just my wiring.

  Then I had a thought, “You didn't say what you were a professor of, professor.”

  “Chemistry, biology. But mostly Chem.”

  Before the crash, before my sister’s scream, Jepson had me listen to this odd, long list of... well, facts, sort of. No, more like a sequence, all strung together for some purpose.

  A lot of it was jumbled, but I told it to Marsh-- at least the part I could recall at the moment.

  “It’s some sort of process or formula, I think. I’m not sure.”

  He frowned and a crease formed between his eyebrows.

  He said, “Hmm. Do you remember more of it? It’s hard to tell exactly what you’re talking about...” I shook my head (Oh, and regretted that, as the pain spiked at me). He added: “Sounds like part of a recipe for some sort of hydration process.”

  “You mean like water?” Pavan said, wanting to be a part of the cool science conversation.

  “Yes, could be,” Marsh said taking a professorial tone now. “A big part of the problem with post-surgery and even long term illness can be simple hydration." He stopped, tapping his lip. "You'll also have to consider, Dex, that in the jumble you may be hearing your doctor's words after the accident. His instructions to you, keep hydrated. And for whatever reason your brain is putting your old professor's face on it."

  I nodded and said, "I hadn't thought of that."

  Pavan chimed in, “So, that… it's not the cure for cancer?”

  Marsh laughed. “No, sorry. But, Dex, I am worried about your episode here. I can recommend a good doctor to take a look at you, or if you just want to talk… free to ring me up.” He took a step to the table. “There should be a pen around here, I can write my number down.”

  I smiled and said, “Nah, It's just a number. I can remember that simple enough.”

  A few minutes later, we said our goodbyes to the professor and traced our steps back to the car.

  I took a few moments to try and put some of the pieces in place, but my mind kept coming back to the sequence Jepson had given me. It seemed…

  Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Pavan glance around the campus and wondered what he was thinking. He'd been such a good friend, never complained, despite this little adventure being my adventure, my problem. Still, he's right there walking beside me.

  "You're a good friend, Pavan."

  A big smile pulled across his face and he nodded. He said, "You making some sense of it, now?"

  I breathed out, sighing. "Trying. The sequence is stuck rolling around my head, but
Marsh might be right. I could be jumbling it with what the doctor said when I'd recovered after the accident."

  "Makes sense, I guess."

  Looking up, I saw Pavan's car in the student lot, now half empty.

  "Sorry I scared ya, man."

  "Nah, I'd seen seizures before, just worried about you."

  "How long was I out?"

  "Uh," he said and blinked slowly. He was tired. Hadn't smoke a joint in more than an hour. Must be exhausting for him. "Maybe ten or fifteen seconds."

  I stopped. "Really? That quick?"

  "Yep. Quick, and scary as a motherfucker to watch."

  "And," I said, "In ten or fifteen seconds you told him I'd been in the accident? Maybe to explain the seizure, I guess. But, in ten or fifteen sec--"

  "No," Pavan said and started walking toward the car again. "Come on, man. I got a doobie in the car that's getting stale."

  I stood for a moment, then followed. I said, "You didn't tell him about my accident?"

  "No."

  "How'd he know… then? You sure, Pavan?"

  Still walking, man on a mission, he called back over his shoulder. "I dunno. I don't think so. I may have said something but, you know, that's your business. Not my place."

  "But, how--?"

  Like a cat, Pavan quickly opened the door, climbed over the passenger seat and within seconds I saw a small flame light his face.

  And when he exhaled, the massive cloud that rose from the car may have actually hastened global warming by a three years.

  My mind went back to my unanswered question: But, how…?

  MARSH ENTERED HIS OWN classroom and closed the door. Putting his hand up to his chest, he rifled through his desk drawer for some antacid.

  As he searched, he dialed the phone.

  A voice on the other end, said: “Yes?”

  Professor Marsh found the packet and said, “He remembers. He remembers the procedure. Just one part of it right now, it seems, but it’s coming back.”

  “Are you sure? You’re sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure, goddammit. It worked, okay? You all were right: Eller was too arrogant to let it die with him, so he told the kid. He knew the kid wouldn't ever have to write it down.”

  “Incredible.”