by Daniel Smith
Now, appearances are over. Except this last one with the Dean. I show up and wait in his outer office. I’m sure he’s in there ready to talk to me, but he doubtless wants me first to sit and stew about it all. Finally, I get escorted into his little kingdom. It’s just a much larger version of my own office with nice carpeting, a conference table and extra chairs. He motions me toward one of the two comfy chairs staged next to a couple of potted palm tree plants, as if we’re going to sit and relax with a pint and enjoy the beach or something. It’s that faux intimacy thing that deans like to effect. He plops his large body down across from me and manages a weak smile—as if none of this is going to be unpleasant. He’s not a bad-looking guy: middle-aged, sort of going to pot, but dressed well, and, aside from the extra weight, has apparently taken good care of himself.
Fred makes an opening comment about how the spring semester just makes us long for summer and so it just never seems to end. I guess this is supposed to be an ice-breaker of some sort, but it falls flat, and all I can do is try to move things along. “So you wanted to see me?”
“You’ve been here, what, 25-30 years, something like that?”
“That’s right.”
“EMSU has been a real home, like a family to you, then, hasn’t it?”
Oh, my God, Corinne was right! He IS trying to tap into some sort of gratitude thing with me. “I like it here,” I finally say. “It’s not the Ivy League, but most of the students do come to learn and it’s a real place to build a family.”
“Which you’ve done, Brian. And that’s great.” Fred’s face starts to look a bit pinched. He begins smacking his lips. If he were on a baseball mound, he’d be yanked for telegraphing his pitches. “As you probably know, Brian, this university, like so many others, is facing a very challenging financial situation—declining enrollments, higher costs, even an overly large faculty—that is, considering the student population we have.”
“And you’re looking for ways to cut costs,” I say, giving him a moment of apparent agreement.
“I’d be lying if I said otherwise,” he says with a nervous chuckle. “To cut to the chase . . . we’d like to present you with a new opportunity.”
“’A new opportunity?’” What kind of tired, vague euphemism is this?
“A generous financial package that allows you to move into the next phase of your life. How does that sound?”
“Are you talking about retirement, Sir?”
“You could call it that.”
“Why don’t we call it what it is? You want to present me with a buyout package so I’ll leave this fucking place!”
“I don’t see the need for vulgarity, Brian.”
“Why would you? You’re not the one being asked to leave.”
“Let’s be real, Professor Fenton. Given your issues in the classroom and the downturn in your research productivity, you might want to look at this new opportunity as a good time for you to go. You get two years at half pay with no obligations to the university, except to teach one class a semester, but no research or service work at all. And then you’re free. Can’t beat that, Brian.”
“Half my salary is only a slight upgrade from what they pay a night manager at McDonald’s. That seems pretty easy to beat, Dean.”
“Not in this economy, Brian, and not at your age.”
Part of me wants to punch this administrative twerp right in the face, but I resist the temptation and just offer him some well-deserved silence.
“Something to think about, then,” he says, getting up from his chair—my signal to hit the road. I get up and head for the door, but just before I leave: “If you decide to turn us down, life will be considerably less comfortable for you here. I hope you understand that.”
“Go fuck yourself, Dean,” I say in calm, measured tones, and take my leave.
After thumbing my nose at the Dean, I figure leaving campus made a great deal of sense. So I begin the walk back toward the parking lot. But I decide to be leisurely about it. In fact, it’s such a fine spring day—I have to dodge a couple of Frisbee-throwing games—that I decide to amble around and take in the air. I remember as an undergrad at Oklahoma State relaxing on the grass outside the library, especially after an exam or turning in a big paper. Back when I had no idea what I was going to make of my life. I certainly had no plans on getting a doctorate and becoming a professor. Our professor looked so sad with his furrowed brows and deep concentration. Sure didn’t look like he was having any fun. In fact, to most students, the professors we encountered seemed bent on disabusing us of the idea that “fun” was in any way good for us. “You’re here to find out how little you know,” my philosopher professor often intoned, “and what you think you know, is based on false assumptions.” I dutifully wrote that down while thinking to myself, “if I’m that stupid, why did you admit me into college?”
Soon I find myself near some benches surrounding the campus’s big gathering spot, its famous historical statue: the Pioneer Family, a sculpture of a poor but proud farm family—a man, woman, and two small kids migrating into Missouri in the early 1800s—who stand in their shabby but pristine clean overalls looking on with fierce commitment at their new land and the prosperous future that awaits them. Their faces are etched with determination and confidence. I remember when I first came to campus and saw the statue, my initial thought was where are the dirt, worry, and desperation that in fact would have crossed the face of most every pioneer? Oh, well, this was erected strictly to celebrate the get-up-and-go American spirit, a nod to the chamber of commerce. What it has to do with higher education, exactly, has always escaped me.
Sitting down and thinking about my condition, though, seems like an act of prudence and health. I could use some pride and confidence just about now. Maybe if I sit here long enough the pioneer family will rub off on me.
Before I can really start channeling the never-say-die spirit of my determined ancestors, someone sits down a few feet away from me. It’s Pat Jensen, the ultimate buzz kill.
“You know, this statue was funded by the history department over thirty years ago so students, parents, and alumni would always remember the history of this place, that real people came through here, took risks, and made a life together, built a real community—and ultimately a university.”
“You’re sounding a lot like a fund raising pitch, Pat. You bucking for an administration position?”
“I guess I thought you might have some actual feelings for this place.”
“Oh, I do. And right now they’re mostly centered on what greedy assholes the provost and dean are.”
Pat shakes his head, gets up, and then dusts himself off. “You know none of us got into this for the money. I know it sounds like a joke, a cliché in the teaching business, but you just can’t think of this as a money-making job.”
“Says the man who STILL has his job, complete with a $10K upgrade for serving as chair.”
“I’d punch you out if I thought it’d do any good.”
“Wish you would, then I’d at least make some serious bucks suing your sorry ass.”
“Sorry you turned out this way, Brian. I always thought you were better than this.”
“No. I’ve never been better than this, Pat. Neither have you.”
Still shaking his head, Pat turns and walks away. I stare at the Pioneer Family a moment longer. They came out here across the mountains and prairies because they had nothing back east. And most of them got up and left again because farming in Missouri was so damn hard. It wasn’t just bravery or courage that drove them; it was restlessness and just being unwilling to keep living a failed life any longer.
I guess that’s the get-up-and-go mentality I can relate to.
7 | danny
I wake up late, thanks only to my cell buzzing real loud. Who even knows the number on this new burner phone, I wonder? I can’t believe the name I’m seeing on my cell but I answer anyway: “Dawn, how did you—?”
“You think you can just run o
ff—just like that?” she practically yells.
“I didn’t run off. I just took a trip to see my dad. Where are you?”
“Take a look outside, asshole.”
I flip open the curtains and, sure as hell, there she is. Thank God, Mom’s gone to court. Wait, court! I was going to sit in on Elise’s case! Now like a bad dream, instead there’s fucking Dawn right outside waiting for me.
I go open the door and Dawn just glares at me a long moment, then suddenly flings herself at me, knocking me to the ground. We wrestle on the ground for a few seconds until I finally push her off me, and scoot inside the front door. Before I can get the door closed, she manages to get inside too. I step back and look at this woman I’ve let into my life for over a year now.
Dawn’s wearing her usual get-up of tight-fitting jeans and a colorful t-shirt. This one says CLASSY, SASSY, AND A BIT SMART ASSY. Like I said, she’s not shy. I can tell she’s fixed her hair and might even have a touch of makeup on. She’s got that fierce “I know what I want” look that has always been a turn-on for me. She may not be the most brilliant woman in the world, but what things she DOES know, she knows them damn well. As she said to me the first time we met, “I am going to date the hell out of you, Danny.” I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but I knew that I loved hearing it. And it was true. She was all over me like stink on a monkey. Well, until I stepped out on her that one time.
“How did you find me, Dawn?”
“I’ve been here once before. Remember, on our way down to Boaz, you drove by here so I could meet your parents?”
Yeah, they weren’t home that day. Lucky for them and me. I dodged a bullet there. Dawn stands right in the middle of the living room staring a hole in me.
“Let me tell you something, Danny: nobody, nobody gives up on me.”
“Even if I walk in on you lying naked in our own bed slapping skins with your ugly ass boss?”
“That was revenge sex and you know it,” she replies without the slightest sense of regret. “I just wanted to get back at you for what you did with that little slut you were boning.”
“I know I made a mistake there, Dawn, and I apologized for that—remember?”
“It didn’t sound very real,” she says, as she comes up to me, strokes my shoulder, touches my cheek.
“I thought you and I had something real, honey bunny,” I remind her. “I thought we had really found something important.”
Now she moves in even closer, nearly whispering. “When a person really wants something, Danny, finding it isn’t so hard. But when you find something special, it’s knowing how to take care of it that’s hard. You and me—we found each other again. Now we’ve just got to get the taking care part right.”
No kidding. But now I’m wondering what’s so special about me and Dawn. People laugh when we talk about first meeting at the Gun & Knife show in the Memphis convention center. But she was there as one of the food vendors serving some damn tasty pork sliders. What she was serving I was definitely eating, if you know what I mean. When I told her about my extensive knife collection, she laughed at me. Strangely enough, that didn’t really piss me off, like it does when my dad rolls his eyes about my little “obsession,” as he calls it. I liked the fact that Dawn would be honest with me, even over a hobby that really matters to me. Truth is, I don’t know why it matters to me anymore. I took it up in junior high when I couldn’t find any girls who liked me. Maybe it is funny. Of course, it’s also funny that a woman who thinks collecting guns and knives is weird was busy catering at one of their shows. I guess Dawn and me know not to take life or each other all that seriously. Maybe that’s our connection. Except here she is looking me in the eye taking us seriously and expecting me to do the same.
“Look, Dawn, I know I shouldn’t have done what I did with Joanie”—
“’Joanie’? That’s the cunt’s name?!”
“Yeah. So what? No need to”—
“Don’t ever say that stupid name again!”
“Okay, okay. I was trying to apologize—again.”
“Yeah, well, it just gets me riled up.”
“I’m just saying I know I did the wrong thing. Okay?”
She gets silent now. Finally, I seem to be making a little headway with her. Dawn sits down on the sofa as if she wants to collect her thoughts a little. She looks around the room a moment.
“This is really a nice place,” she says.
“Now you’re interested in dad’s house?”
“Just saying. I like the windows and all the light in here.”
Geez, one minute she’s all over me about my little affair, the next she’s making an interior design appraisal. I used to wonder if she’s bipolar or something. I don’t know. Women are so complicated. I decide to sit down next to her, cool things down a little.
“We can’t keep acting like this around each other, Dawn.” She nods. “I read somewhere that you teach people how to treat you.” She looks up at me with a big so-what expression. “I can’t let you treat me like you do.”
“You mean with Calvin.”
“Yeah.”
“It won’t happen again,” she says firmly, not looking at me.
“Really? I’m supposed to believe this just because you say it won’t happen?”
Now she turns and looks me in the eye with that fierce conviction she has: “Do I look like someone who goes back on her word?”
“What do you think you were doing with that shithead in our bed?”
“That was wrong, okay, but I never gave you my word. I give it to you now.”
“That’s convenient.”
“Hey, I drove 500 miles up here to tell you this. How the hell is that ‘convenient?’”
“It’s a figure of speech, Dawn.” She looks at me like I’m diagramming sentences. “It’s a convenient argument.”
“Whatever, Danny. You know what I mean.”
We sit on the sofa in silence for a moment. Then Dawn decides she wants a tour of the place—“I need to see where you grew up, Danny”—so I show her the house. The place is nothing special, really, unless you compare it to the glorified trailer Dawn and I were living in down in Arkansas. There’s a big fireplace in the living room. I have bad memories about fireplaces. I remember as a toddler riding my miniature plastic horse, Bucky, falling off and banging my head on the brick fireplace. Mom went nuts when she heard me screaming and saw the blood all over my forehead. She was about to call 911 before Dad calmed her and me down and bandaged me up and told me to get back up on Bucky again. Mom started screaming then but I got on that little horse and everything was fine. I show Dawn my old room upstairs which is a mess—“bet you never cleaned it except when your dad made you,” Dawn says with a smile. Actually, it was Mom who wouldn’t tolerate my messiness. I can tell that my parents’ bedroom really impresses Dawn—I guess, because it looks like what married people with a long history together should have for their most private space. There are book shelves lining a couple of walls, mostly with history and law books, with a little study off to the side where Mom does her legal stuff. On top of all the bookshelves are framed pictures of where Dad and Mom have gone on vacations all over the world—Hawaii, Dublin, Paris, Vietnam, and a bunch of cruises in the Caribbean. Probably seems like a cool life, just to look at it like that. And maybe it is. But despite all that brainpower in the house, they could use a bigger heart. Especially Mom. She never says it, but IMHO she keeps her distance because I’m just somebody else’s kid that they adopted. Of course, if she wins this murder case thanks to my brilliant help, maybe she’ll see me in a different light.
After the tour, we decide we’re really hungry, so we get in Dawn’s beat-up Honda Civic and drive up to Dog Town where there’s a cool place for brunch. Pat McConnelly’s Irish pub has everything you want—toast, eggs, bangers, burgers and fries, and the best beer in St. Louis.
Even though she’s sort of a foodie, Dawn’s not at all the snarky, snobby sort. (How could she be? She l
ives in fucking Boaz, Arkansas!) She’ll give anything a try, but if it’s not good, she’s gonna let you know. I keep telling her she should go to cooking school and become a chef. I’ve seen her whip up some incredible meals out of scraps lying around our kitchen. She just seems to know how to mix flavors and stuff in ways you’d never imagine. She did go to some community college in Memphis where they taught hospitality and a few culinary things, I think she said. But after working as a hotel clerk, she got tired of checking sketchy guests in, yelling at the lazy housekeeping staff, and working long overnight stretches at lonely hotels. Plus, the pay is really lame. So when she ran into this guy at the hotel who said he owned a bunch of restaurants in Memphis and east Arkansas and was looking for good people, Dawn jumped at it. That’s how she got the gig as a vendor for Southern Sliders ‘n Stuff. Maybe that was good news. The bad news is that this restaurant big shot is Calvin the Shithead, who, when he gets the urge, clearly likes to jump his employees.
I sometimes wonder about Dawn’s family, but there’s no one really to talk to about them. She lost both her parents in a car crash when she was maybe ten or eleven. I get the feeling they were hitting the bottle a lot—may even have been the cause of the crash—so she sure didn’t get much hope from them. Dawn had a grandmother in Memphis who took her under her wing and at least made sure she became a high school graduate instead of a baby mama.
Right now she’s packing away a plate of fried Irish potatoes like there’s no tomorrow while I’m enjoying a good cheeseburger. Can’t believe how well we’re getting along. Then I get a text. It’s from Elise at court: “So far so good. Keep me in your prayers.” Dawn notices I’m reading a text and leans over for a quick look. “Why the hell is someone named Elise ‘in your prayers?’”
