“It’s not anything for you to worry about.”
“This is part of it,” Ginny said. “I want us to tell each other things.”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
A shrug. “Got to tell somebody. Do you have anyone to talk to?”
“I’m not a talker.”
“That’s bad.”
“Yeah…” He didn’t know what he wanted to say. He’d been closed up, closed off, didn’t know how to say what was wrong. Maybe he didn’t even know because he couldn’t say it out loud. “What if I try, really try my best, and nothing comes?”
He’d never said that out loud before.
“We all get scared.” She twirled his chest hair.
That was all she said. Morgan suddenly felt tired again. He moved closer to her, put his head on the pillow. He felt lighter. He drifted. Sleep.
When he awoke, Ginny was gone. Morgan didn’t feel bad about it.
He walked around the cold house naked, looked into each room. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he felt he was looking for something. An invisible need drew him. He wandered to his desk, opened the bottom drawer. An old accordion folder.
His poetry.
Halfhearted attempts at least a year old. He winced at the pages. Old themes and strategies mixed and matched and rehashed. It was painful to read but he made himself. He wrapped up the folder, put his head in his hands, and closed his eyes. It was worse than he remembered. Even his grad students were showing brighter sparks of originality.
He lifted his head. Set his jaw. It was time. Too long he’d galumphed along, stagnant. What was it Keats had written? Half in love with easeful death . That was Morgan all over. He’d been walking around dead, and it had been easy, so Morgan let it go on.
No more.
He showered, dressed. He scooped up the poems quickly before he could change his mind. He jogged to his Buick, drove to campus.
In Albatross Hall he took the stairs up two at a time. On the fifth floor, he listened for the music. It wasn’t there, but it didn’t matter. He knew the way. He found Valentine’s office, knocked once, barged inside. He was breathing hard, heart thumping into his throat.
Valentine sat on his couch, sipping a cup of tea. He arched his eyebrows at Morgan. There was a portable TV the size of a toaster on Valentine’s lap.
“These are some of my poems.” Morgan showed him the folder. “I’m-” He shook his head, cleared his throat. “I’m having some problems with my writing, and you’re the single greatest living poet I know. I need your help.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Valentine said. “ Wheel of Fortune is on.”
Dean Whittaker sat at his desk, shuffled papers, made stern phone calls to department heads. He went about the machinery of being dean, the dogged determination of an academic administrator. He crossed T ’s, dotted i ’s.
A knock.
Whittaker looked up. “Come in.”
The door swung open, and Jay Morgan walked in. He flipped a two-fingered salute at the dean and sat in the chair across from him.
“Good. You got my message,” Whittaker said. “I tried to find you in your office, but you’re a hard man to track down.”
“Sorry, I was consulting with a colleague.”
The dean searched Morgan’s face. There was something different about the man. His head was up. He was smiling. There was an easy look in his eyes. The dean thought he might smell alcohol.
“I wanted to talk to you about the Spring Reading. We usually have a few handpicked grad students read. I want you to make sure Sherman Ellis is one of them.”
Morgan smiled big. “Sure. Let’s give him an NEA grant too.”
Whittaker frowned, shot radioactive heat rays out of his eyes at Morgan.
Morgan gulped. “You’re serious.”
Whittaker raised an eyebrow. He’d had nothing but complaints about this Ellis kid, and so he wasn’t surprised at Morgan’s lack of enthusiasm. He’d had to be tough with a few of the faculty to keep them in line on the subject.
“I take it he’s doing well in your workshop.”
“Not at all,” Morgan said.
“Tough titty. Look, Morgan, we both know this is a public relations move. The university wants to show off their new African-American student. With or without you the administration wants Ellis. But if you don’t want to be part of this, I completely understand.”
Morgan stood. “I don’t want to be part of it.”
Whittaker cleared his throat, the rough sound of a surgical saw cutting into bone. “However…”
Morgan sat down again.
“I’d hate to think you weren’t a team player.” The dean shook his head like he was disappointed with a puppy that had shit on the carpet. “After all, when you go to your next job after this, you’ll want to give me as a reference. They always check your last employer, and they always want to know if a professor is a team player.”
Morgan felt sweat behind his ears. He wiped his forehead, swallowed hard. “I don’t think you understand. Ellis read his last poem, and, well, he scared the crap out of everybody in the class. I mean, I just don’t think it’s the feel-good poetry you want for a public relations event.”
“It’s exactly what we want,” Whittaker said. “Tell Ellis to let it all hang out. Let him be ethnic as hell. We’ll show the regents we can be as multicultural as anyone.”
“But-”
“There’s another consideration,” the dean said. “I’m getting a little concerned about Professor Valentine. He might be close to retirement. That would mean an open position for a tenure track professor.” The dean could see he had Morgan’s interest. The classic carrot and stick ploy. A brand-new job or a ruined career. “I’m sure you know what a lot of trouble it is to put together a search committee and go through a hiring process. It would sure be easier on everyone if there was a poet right here under our nose who fit the bill.”
Morgan nodded slowly. “I want to be a team player, Dr. Whittaker. I’ll get ahold of Ellis. I’ll make it happen.”
Whittaker sat back in his chair, an evil smile spread thin across his face. “I knew we could count on you, Morgan.”
Morgan felt excited and frightened and a little sick as he left the dean’s office. Sherman Ellis. Why in the hell did they want this gangster rap craziness as part of their annual poetry reading?
But Morgan wanted that job. God, how he wanted it. He tried not to think of Valentine. Hey, it was eat or be eaten. Morgan was tired of going from school to school. What if he couldn’t get another position? He couldn’t live on adjunct pay. Hell, he might actually have to resort to teaching high school. No, he wouldn’t be able to stomach that. Teenagers scared the hell out of him.
Okay, he’d find Ellis. Tell him he was going to read some goddamn poetry and that was it. Morgan would write the poems himself if he had to. All Sherman Ellis would have to do was stand up there and read them without alienating every white person in the room.
Jenks had set up the deal for early in the morning.
DelPrego had been strangely eager. Lancaster didn’t want anything to do with it, but Jenks had insisted over and over again that Lancaster would only be required to sit in the car.
Jenks rode between Lancaster and DelPrego in DelPrego’s fifteen-year-old pickup truck. The day was cold but clear, and they drove with the windows down, huddled close across the truck’s bench seat. Jenks wore a heavy army surplus jacket, baggy, big pockets. He pulled his dark blue watch cap over his ears. Lancaster wore a long camel hair coat, slightly worn at the elbows. It had once been an expensive garment, but Lancaster confessed he’d picked it up at a thrift store in Tulsa. DelPrego’s denim jacket was too light for the weather, but the cold never seemed to bother him.
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