Peter Abrahams - Crying Wolf

The answer didn’t come until he was back on the quad, almost at the main Plessey door. The problem wasn’t with the home equity loan itself, he finally realized, but the original mortgage on the house. How would they make the payments now? Specifically, how would they make the payments without him going back and finding a job? That meant that even coming up with money to pay the bills at Inverness wouldn’t be good enough. Thinking had only made the problem worse.

Back in his room, he took off his boots, warm boots but a little tight, which was why his feet were blue. He rested them on the radiator, gazed out the window as shadows fell over the campus, the golden dome on Goodrich Hall holding the last of the light. Later the moon rose. He ate the granola bar.

Nat was at the financial office the next morning, 8:00 A.M. He told the story of his mom’s job and the home equity loan.

“I’m so sorry,” the woman said.

Nat could tell she meant it. “That’s all right,” he said.

“I feel so bad,” she went on, “whenever something like this happens. The good news is that as a student in good standing, you’re welcome back at any time, any time, that is, after the resolution of these financial difficulties.”

And the bad news?

“I wish there was something we could do,” she said.

What about making up the difference, he thought, just till the end of the semester? I’ll work two jobs this summer, maybe three, and… But he didn’t say any of that, was already on his feet. They’d been generous with him; wouldn’t they do it if they could? He couldn’t make himself ask for more; and pointless, too, when the answer had already been given.

Nat picked up his check in the Alumni Office, cashed it at the Student Union, filled a tray: bacon and eggs, French toast, cornflakes, juice, milk, coffee; paid cash. He sat at a table by the window. Someone had left the campus newspaper, the Insider, behind. He started reading automatically: he’d eaten many meals alone growing up, liked to read at the same time. The lead story was about a survey of the current activities of last year’s graduates. They were impressive.

Creme de la creme.

Nat stopped reading. He heard talk all around him, student talk rising from other tables. There was only one other solitary eater, a middle-aged man in heavy olive-green work clothes, warming himself over a bowl of something steaming. Nat’s appetite vanished. He left the rest of his food untouched despite all his mom had taught him about waste, despite how hungry he thought he’d been.

Monday: bio, English, econ. He cut them all. Hadn’t paid for them was the fact of the matter.

Nat knocked on the door of Professor Uzig’s office in Goodrich Hall.

“Yes?”

He opened the door.

“Ah, Nat.” Blue blazer, blue fountain pen; white shirt, white paper. “How nice to see you. Do we have an appointment?”

“No.”

“Then?”

“Something’s come up.”

“You intend to drop the course.”

“Drop the course?”

“Your friend-Ferg, is it? — has preceded you.”

“He dropped the course?”

“Within the hour, but still, well before the deadline, and therefore no harm done.”

“I’m not dropping the course,” Nat said. “Not intentionally.”

Professor Uzig looked interested.

“I love the course.” He’d meant to say like. “Nietzsche…”

“Yes?”

“I’d barely heard of Nietzsche before I came here. Do you realize that?” That just came bursting out. And more: “Izzie’s right. He was a sweet man.” What was this? He was suddenly close to tears; hadn’t cried since he was a little boy.

Professor Uzig watched him. Nat could sense the power of his mind. He made his face a mask, watched him back.

“Sweet,” said the professor. “A remarkable observation. Izzie’s a remarkable young woman.”

Professor Uzig paused. Nat said nothing.

“Grace is remarkable too,” Professor Uzig went on. “Both remarkable, as one might expect, each in her own way, as one might not.” The professor smiled, as though just happening upon something witty. Nat didn’t: it was the plain truth.

“A sweet man-perhaps true, to some extent,” said Professor Uzig. “But of no use to him in the end. Sweetness is a self-defeating characteristic in combination with genius of that order.”

Nat understood perfectly: Because ambition should be made of sterner stuff. He kept that to himself.

“But you’re not here to bat around peripheral ideas. You came to deliver your unintentional rationale for dropping the course.”

Nat told him. Professor Uzig had a way of listening that Nat had felt before, as though some powerful device, like a radio telescope, was at work. He’d felt it at Aubrey’s Cay, in the classroom under the dome, in Professor Uzig’s dining room on College Hill. He didn’t feel it now.

“That’s the story, then?” said Professor Uzig.

Did he no longer look interested? Was he disappointed, as though the account lacked drama, originality, or something else he valued? A weird idea, even paranoid, Nat decided: his imagination was out of control.

“That’s the story.”

“Very considerate of you to tell me in person,” said Professor Uzig.

Nat didn’t quite get that, wondered where it was leading. When it led nowhere, he said: “I thought you might have some ideas.”

“Ideas? Of what sort?”

“Some way I could stay.”

“This seems to be a purely financial matter.”

He paused as though expecting a reply, so Nat said, “Yes.”

“Those I avoid,” said Professor Uzig.

There was nothing wrong with Nat’s imagination.

He went back to his room in Plessey Hall. Almost immediately he thought of a modification for his bio experiment, a new test run conducted at a higher temperature that might Forget it.

Nat began packing his stuff, first actually folding the odd thing, but soon packing only in his head, staring out the window. Snow lay deep on the quad. Some students were building a huge mound, or ramp, as he realized after a while, a ramp leading up to a tall window over one of the entry pediments of Lanark. He heard laughter and shouting; condensation clouds rose from their mouths; the sunshine was dazzling.

The tall window over the pediment opened and someone emerged; flew out, really, surfing down the ramp on a cafeteria tray. A girl: her hands outspread, body poised, balanced-actually in some control of the tray. It was Izzie. She hit the soft snow at the end of the ramp, went airborne, dove like a surfer bailing out. A male student, two male students hurried to help her, but she was up on her own, laughing and covered with snow, before they reached her.

Nat turned away.

He was good at solving problems. What about calling Mrs. Smith? What about calling Mr. Beaman? What about calling his mom again, to be sure he’d heard right? Could he put her through that? No.

That left winning the lottery. He didn’t have a ticket, had never bought one.

“I don’t get it,” Grace said.

They were down in the cave, the three of them, that night.

“It’s pretty simple,” Nat said.

“You have to go home?” Izzie said. “I don’t understand that part at all.”

“Tomorrow?” said Grace.

“Or the next day. I still have to change my ticket.” His return ticket, to have been used at the end of the semester.

“Home equity loan?” Izzie said. “What is that, exactly?”

Nat explained again.

“But what’s it got to do with Inverness?” Grace said. “It should be none of their business.”

He went over that too.

“And I thought you were on scholarship anyway,” Izzie said.

“Partial. This is about the rest of it.”