Richard Ford - The Sportswriter

When I was halfway across the quadrangle, whom should I see but Seth Fairbanks, Melody’s husband, slogging toward the gym carrying a bag full of books and a squash racquet. He was a slender, wiry man with a thin black mustache who’d gone to NYU, and taught the 18th century but also some modern novels. We had once talked about some of my favorites, and it turned out he hated everything I had ever liked and had airtight arguments for why they were laughable.

“Where to, Professor Bascombe,” Seth Fairbanks said, with a derisory smile. “Heading to the library?” This was meant as some sort of joke I didn’t understand. But I put a grin on my face, thinking of his wife shivering up in my office at that moment, just beyond a window that was in sight of where we were walking (if she was still there). It was five o’clock, and the day was gray and nearly dark, and we probably couldn’t have been seen anyway.

“Going home to grade a set of essays, Seth,” I said in a jolly voice. “I’ve had them writing about Robbe-Grillet.” (Another lie. My students had made up their own assignments and also suggested what grade they thought they should get.) “He’s a pretty smart cookie.”

“I’d like to see how you phrased your questions. Drop it in my box in the morning. I might learn something. I’m teaching The Voyeur myself.” Seth could barely suppress a laugh.

“You bet,” I said. I could see my car, caked with snow, as we walked down the hill toward the lot. The old brown gymnasium was across the road, its lights burning yellow in the dusk. It was about to turn cold, and the winter would be a long one.

“I’m getting ready to teach a course in the uncanny, Frank, just for winter minisemester.” I could see Seth’s breath in the cold. “There’re a lot of books about the weird and unusual that aren’t cheap books, but real literature. I’ve got a little theory about it. Somebody needs to be reading those books.”

“I’d like to hear about it,” I said.

“I’ll put a syllabus in your box. We can have lunch next week.”

“That’d be great, Seth.”

“It’s the best of both worlds up here, Frank. I think you ought to stay on a semester. All this sportswriting can wait. You might decide you liked it up here and want to stay.” Seth smiled. I knew he meant nothing of the kind. But I was going to oblige him.

“It’s worth thinking about, Seth. I’ll do it.”

“Right.” Seth raised his racquet to gesture goodbye as we reached my car, and he turned toward the gym and down the hill. I stood and looked up at the dark window of my office where Seth’s wife had been, but was now in all likelihood gone home. And that seemed like the best idea to me. And I got in my car, started it up, and turned for home myself.

A t ten-thirty I’m cleaned up, shaved and dressed in my Easter best — a two-piece seersucker Palm Beach I’ve had since college. On my way out the back, I see Bosobolo striding in through the front door. He has let Frisker slip inside and shoot down the hall past me to the kitchen.

I stop in the doorway and for a moment look him up and down in an arch, appraising way. He is a man I admire, a bony African with an austere face, almost certain the kind to have a long aboriginal penis. We believe we have the same off-beat, low-key sense of humor we’ve always thought as unique, and for that reason are shrewd and respectful toward each other. He likes it that I live alone with no apparent self-pity and that occasionally Vicki spends the night. I respect him for studying Hobbes as an antidote to over-spiritualizing over at the Institute.

He is dressed in his black missionary pants, white short-sleeves and sandals, but with a loudly ugly orange necktie he bought on 42nd Street the day he arrived from Gabon, and that makes him look like an old blues man. Two times lately, from my car window, I’ve seen him arm-in-arm with a dumpy white seminary girl half his age, the two of them strolling on the edge of the grounds. Obviously steamy romance is brewing up in her little garret or possibly even upstairs here.

What a piece of exoticism it must be! A savage old prince, old enough to be her father, whonking away on her like a frat boy.

Seeing me, Bosobolo stops under the hanging crystal lamp X inherited from her aunt, and peers at me down the hall as if I were far away. He would like, I already know, to get upstairs and turn on Brother Jimmy Waldrup from North Carolina, whom he deeply admires, though he’s complained he can’t understand how Brother Jimmy keeps so much in his head at once and cries so easily. He has pages of observer notes I’ve seen in his room. His education here is a complete one.

“How was Sunday school?” I say, unable to suppress a wry grin. Everything between us assumes the air of a complex irony.

“Yes, quite fine,” he says, keeping his distance but looking serious and vaguely fussy. “You’d’ve enjoyed yourself . I saw the Second Methodist Professional Advanced Men. I explained origins of the resurrection myth.” He smiles a haughty smile. “The Neanderthal thought the cave bear was dead, then found out it wasn’t.” I can, of course, guess exactly what the professional men — group insurance sharpshooters and branch bank veeps — thought about this particular news. I’m certain they’re having a few words about it now out at Howard Johnson’s.

“Sounds way too anthropomorphic to me, Gus.” Gus is what he’s called by the Institute professors, who can’t pronounce his actual first name which is full of combative consonants, though he actually seems to like being called Gus.

“Our aim is to reconcile,” he says and takes a step back. “The deity enters wherever he can. In other words.” His black eyes dart up the stairs and back. I would love to grill him about his little seminary squeeze, but he would be indignant. He is married with numerous children, and probably doesn’t take his new arrangement jokingly. There is not enough Fincher Barksdale in me.

I shake my head in mock seriousness. “I just don’t think you can make sense out of all that. Sorry.” We’re talking end to end in the hall, a distance in which no one can be too serious.

“Einstein believed in a God,” he says quickly. “There is a clear line of logic. You should come to the discussions.” He is carrying his big black gospel, though his bony fingers wrap across the front and obscure the title completely.

“I’d be afraid of using up mystery.”

“We are not listening to Bach,” he says. “Our faith’s involved. You’d have nothing to lose.” He smiles at me, proud of this reference to Bach, whom he knows I admire, and whom we both know is exhaustible.

“Do you have any doubters down at the Second Methodist?”

“Very many. I only offer what has been always available. Someday they’ll all die and find out.”

“That’s awful strict.”

Bosobolo’s eyes twinkle with mirth and firmness. He is the authority here. “When I am back home, I will be more compassionate.”

He raises his eyebrows and inches toward the stairs. He hasn’t mentioned Walter’s visit last night. He’d be amused, I’m sure, to know that Walter thought he was the butler. On the morning air-ishness down the middle of my house I smell his grainy sweat, a smell that goes deep in my nose and delivers a vague stinging warning: this man is no one to trifle with. Religion is not sports to him.

“How about Hobbes,” I say, ready to let him go. “Do you discuss him?”

“He was a Christian, too. Temporality interested him.” He is telling me in so many words, yes, he’s romancing the dumpy little seminary chicken, and no, he won’t repudiate it, and I should mind my own business. “You should probably come.”