Moo (36 page)

“That wasn’t our idea. Ag technology, with some hog dioramas—”

“Oh, Dr. Jones, I remember that! That was a very good first thought! And I surely did emphasize that when I wrote the proposal, but things have evolved since then.”

“You call a chicken museum ‘evolving’?”

“I do.” She tapped him on his tweed vest. “I do because that’s what we got the funding for. It happens to a lot of proposals. There are good ideas, lots of them, and then there are fundable ideas, fewer of those. Fundable ideas are better ideas. In this case, chickens are fundable, so chickens are a better idea, you see?”

No, Dr. Bo thought, he did not see.

D
R
. L
IONEL
G
IFT WAS
all set. His summer-weight suits were packed, as were his Egyptian cotton dress shirts, undershorts, and socks. He had a spare pair of glasses, a swimming costume, a silk robe, a hat with a wide brim. He had his laptop, his modem, his internal communications program. He had his tickets and his money.

As usual, his exams would be given out by his graduate assistants and graded by the university computer. These grades would then be added to those already on the computer from the midterm, tallied according to a statistical curve, and reported to the students. By then, Dr. Lionel Gift would have been in Costa Rica for over a week. Let it snow let it snow let it snow: He would not be here to see it, and that suited him perfectly.

He looked at his watch. The limo to the airport would arrive in ten minutes. He decided to make one more last-minute check of the premises. All electrical cords were unplugged. All faucets were turned off. The furnace was set at fifty-five degrees. Two lamps and a radio in the living room were set to turn on around dusk, and one in the
bedroom was set to go on at 9:30, his customary bedtime. All the lamps and the radio were set to go off at 11:00 (what was more revealing than lights that stayed on all night?). The burglar alarm, with its digital recording of a pair of furiously barking rottweilers, was armed. In other words, all was well and good in the Gift manse, all the goods well protected against the insatiable desires of those who had not prospered in the legitimate economy and had cast their lot with the illegitimate one.

Everything considered, this was a semester that Dr. Lionel Gift was glad to see pass. While he himself had performed with his usual excellence and probity, the same could not be said of his colleagues. The entirely unauthorized dissemination of his confidential report, while it had not damaged his prospects for success (nothing ever did that) had hurt him, had perhaps hurt him deeply, for it had revealed on the part of his colleagues what Dr. Gift could only interpret as abiding envy of his success and importance. As indifferent as he meant to be to the opinions of others, he found that he was not. Of course he would never show such a thing, but—

Even Cates! Even a chemist so successful in receiving grants as Cates had read the report with unseemly interest rather than just handing it back without being asked! And Helen! Many years ago, he had served on the committee that granted Helen tenure, and he had judged her an intelligent and personable young woman, pretty but not too pretty, French but not too French, Italian but not too Italian. Why had she turned on him? he wondered. And she was rumored to be involved with Ivar Harstad himself, so perhaps her behavior reflected some sort of opinion Ivar shared? Ah, Dr. Gift could hardly bear to think about it, it shot so full of holes his long-standing estimation of how he was generally beloved on the campus.

Even though it had no effect on the larger picture (his meetings were already set up, and the TransNational and the Seven Stones people would be there to follow up on everything he said and did), the shock was still with him, the shock that so few of his colleagues, all men and women of the finest educations, lived in so unprincipled a manner. He, who himself upheld the most scrupulous indifference toward others’ fates, had not been able to quite overcome it, and so he felt doubly fortunate that the end of the semester afforded him the opportunity to get away. Down in Costa Rica, in his house there, he would certainly feel once more the pleasant knowledge that he was appreciated, and after all, that was enough for him.

As for his project, he had not allowed himself to underestimate the benighted forces who would, under the cover of “environmentalism,” advocate a retrograde localism, express a knee-jerk conservationist ethic, and resist the inevitable embrace of the market and the future. There were a few radicals who could not be moved. That was always a given. Most of the others felt real fear. While this was more a psychological problem than anything else, practical considerations made it imperative that such fears be soothed, and he had worked up a sympathetic manner for dealing with the fearful. Fear was contagious, though, and there was another, more pivotal group that had to be protected from it. This group was inclined to move forward, and simply harbored a few doubts. He had an argument for them that they could understand: All transitions are difficult, and progress sometimes does look very much like deterioration, but that is an illusion caused by not fully embracing progressive ideas and methods. The solution is to redouble efforts and commitment. A fourth group he didn’t have to worry about, though regrettably smaller in Costa Rica than in other places, they were entirely on his side already. This group fully understood the bottomest of the bottom lines—with revenues from forestry, fisheries, cattle, and tourism inexplicably gone, declining, or levelling off (Dr. Gift’s own projections were proving rather optimistic, though he attributed that to the mistakes of geologists and forest and fisheries experts), growth could not be sustained without the exploitation of something new. This gold seam was an unlooked-for bonus that would keep that line on Gift’s graph shooting upward for some undefined period of time, and really, that was what mattered most to those with the firmest grasp on reality.

He saw the limo round the corner up the street. Though the pavement had been plowed, it was still icy, and the vehicle fishtailed a bit as it entered Dr. Gift’s street. Actually, it was not a limo, it was merely a minivan. Somehow these two things coming together—the sight of the van fishtailing on the ice and the recognition of the disparity between what the van was called and what it was—infused Dr. Lionel Gift with the sense that really he need not return to this place, that, if he chose, he could be walking out of his house for the last time. It was a remarkable thought, most importantly, a principled thought—he had spent considerable time and money on his house, and yet he was more or less indifferent toward it. He turned before picking up his bag and surveyed the front hall and the living room. Comfortable, masculine, decorated to resemble an exclusive men’s
club, but what attached him here? He smiled. He picked up his bag and his computer and stepped out onto the porch, careful to stay within the exit parameters allowed by the burglar alarm.

W
HEN
K
ERI OPENED
the door, she saw Bob’s neck crane to look around her. She knew then that he saw the empty room behind her, the made beds, the picked-up floors. But he said, anyway, “Diane here?”

“Hey! No, sorry.” After a pause, Keri felt herself whine, “I know she’ll be sorry she missed you.”

“Well, I just brought by some stuff. You know. She left it. I figured she’d want it sometime.”

He dropped the bag of stuff by the threshold, and Keri picked it up and set it inside the door. She couldn’t help noticing that the stuff wasn’t all that important—no clothing or underwear or anything personal. A toothbrush. A notebook without much in it. A novel. A package of blank computer disks. Bob sighed. Considering that he was the one who called it quits, Keri thought he looked awfully depressed. He said, “I guess you don’t have any classes right now?”

“No, I’m done for the semester. I mean, except for exams.” She continued to smile. They both knew that there had been plenty of those gab sessions that girls get into, and that therefore she knew plenty more about him than she was letting on. He interpreted her smile, which she meant to be encouraging and sympathetic, as amused.

“Well,” he said.

“I’ll be sure she gets this stuff,” she said.

“Okay.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah. Thank you.” He turned.

“You want to come in and wait for her?”

“Sort of.”

She stepped back from the door.

He said, “What do you think?”

“About what?”

“About what I should do next.”

“Go home for Christmas and ask some girls out.”

“Oh. I’m not going home for Christmas.”

“You’re not? Why not?” Now she felt genuinely sorry for him.

“Oh, my job, you know.”

“Then get somebody to do your job for a day or two and go home. That’s what I think.”

The funny thing was, he’d always noticed how pretty she was, but only after a while. He said, “Okay, well, there’s the stuff. Bye.”

“Bye.”

He turned.

After four steps, he turned back. She was just shutting the door. He said, “Say, don’t tell her how weird I’m acting, all right? I mean, I broke up with her, and I still think it’s the best thing to do.”

“I won’t tell.”

And she wouldn’t. But she knew that he wished that she would.

D
R
. C
ATES DID NOT
, as a rule, develop personal relationships with his undergraduate students, which was why he was surprised to see one of them, or someone who said that he was one of them, standing outside his office when he came in about noon to pick up his mail. Dr. Cates was taking a rare day off. His son, Daniel, wanted to go sledding. Finding himself on the horns of a familiar dilemma—sledding was dangerous but Dr. Cates did not want Daniel to learn fear from him—Dr. Cates resolved it in his usual way. The sled was in the back of the car and Daniel was waiting for him in the front seat. Dr. Cates estimated that his way of safeguarding Daniel by going along with him whenever there might be a risk would last at most another year—Daniel was eight, and already beginning to chafe under Dr. Cates’ restrictions.

The undergraduate student approached him as soon as he got off the elevator. “I’m Lyle Karstensen, sir?” he said, and he held out the portfolio he had under his arm. “I’m leaving school? I’m going to work for a year or so and come back? It’s not like I’m flunking out or anything? It’s just so expensive, you know?”

Dr. Cates said, “Is there a problem with your grade?” He pushed the key into the lock of his office.

“No, sir? You gave me an A? See, that was the only A I’ve ever gotten here? Because I really liked your course? So when I was thinking of someone to give these to, I thought of you?” He pressed the portfolio into Dr. Cates’ hands.

“What is this?”

“Well, I don’t know, sir? It looks like a cross between some kind of plans and one of those drawings where you find the hidden pictures?
I don’t know what it’s for, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away?”

“What do you want me to do with it?”

“I don’t know, sir? But just have a look before you throw it away?”

Dr. Cates had always thought that his special talent was focusing, and over the years he had learned never to be distracted by other people’s business. Nevertheless, as he opened the portfolio, the elevator bell rang, its doors opened, and there was Daniel. “Dad! What are you doing? I’m cold!” he barked.

Cates caught himself in the act of flinching and smiled patiently. “I’m speaking to a student, Daniel. Please wait for me a minute.”

“It’s always a minute!” said Daniel in exasperation. “A minute isn’t as long as you think it is, Dad!”

Lyle reflected that “please” was not a word that his father had ever used to him. But, of course, exasperation was not a feeling he had ever expressed to his father, either.

Cates made a show of looking at the plans, but really he didn’t see them. He was too aware of Daniel’s darkening mood and, also, too aware of the treat he had promised himself—the sparkling brightness of the day and the prospect of flying down that giant hill, Daniel or no Daniel. He closed the portfolio with his customary dignity, though, and laid it on his desk.

“Thanks?” said Lyle.

“Come ON!” said Daniel. “Here’s the ELEVATOR!”

A
FTER
M
ARY HAD
passed through the line at the cash register, she saw that the only seats available in the commons were at a large table right up front that was already occupied by a white kid, maybe a sophomore or a junior, kind of blondish and largish, the sort of person she had a hard time distinguishing from most of the other white kids on the campus. She hesitated, as much out of habit as anything else. Had she been with her own group, the other black students she ate most of her lunches with, she would have immediately looked elsewhere, but today she was eating lunch with Keri, Sherri, and Diane. If she didn’t sit down, but passed by on a fruitless search for an unoccupied table, Sherri’s exclamations would be loud and embarrassing, attracting everyone’s attention to the sight of her conspicuous self turning around and scuttling back as ordered. Her hesitation lasted only the second it took her to summon her most opaque manner. She set her tray down at the corner farthest from the white kid and pulled out the chair.

Joe looked up from his meditation upon his lunch (two quarter-pound burgers with cheese and an order of fries, plus a large Pepsi) and leaned back in his chair. Without even thinking, without actually feeling unusually hostile, and without losing his ingrained feeling of innocence, Joe said, “Hey, nigger, you can’t sit there.”

In fact, this was the first time since coming to the university that Mary had heard the word “nigger.” None of the black students here used it in the teasing way men used it in her neighborhood at home, and the white students and professors were very very careful, at least around her. So more in surprise than anything else, she said, “What?”

Now Joe looked around, just to see who was watching. Detecting a large and potentially sympathetic audience at the other tables, he leaned expansively even farther back in his chair. “Hey, nigger,” he said.