Adrian Pearson - Cow Country

Here Dr. Felch stopped in mid-thought. Up ahead was an old house where a man in denim overalls was washing his truck in his driveway. Soapy water rushed down the pavement and spilled out into the street. “That’s Rusty Stokes,” he said. “Our animal science instructor. He runs the museum. And he’s chair of our College Council. A good person to know. He’ll be at convocation on Monday too….” Dr. Felch gave a double-honk and a friendly wave to Rusty, who looked up, gestured back at our truck, and then went right back to his washing. Dr. Felch waited a few moments and then continued:

“So anyway I was just trying to warn this gal about some of the ins-and-outs of our college. How there are deep divisions. How the faculty is polarized. How there are two factions on campus that are as different as night and day and that these two factions despise each other and will do anything to keep the other from getting an upper hand. You know, in the way that vegetarians deplore meat while meat-eaters deplore…. vegetarians. So I’m telling her that she’s got to find a way to work with them both. And here she holds up her hand and tells me I’m wasting my breath, that she’s worked with diverse faculty in the past and they’ve all been happy omnivores and she doubts that Cow Eye will be any different. Well, of course it’s different, I say. All places are different! But there’s no shaking her. She’s got it under control, she says. She’s had training courses and she’s an expert in finding win-win solutions. When she’s done with everyone, she says, there will be no need for nocturnal or diurnal divisions because our entire campus will be adamantly and happily crepuscular. Just trust her, she tells me. And so I step aside…”

“This sounds a bit ominous…”

“…Just wait. So I step aside and she starts her first day with guns a-blazing and I figure just to get her feet wet I’ll put her in charge of the Christmas party because, well, what could be simpler than that? We’ve had a Christmas party every year for as long as we’ve been a college. It’s a highlight for everyone. In fact, it’s the only time that all faculty and staff put aside their differences to come together in a display of harmony and goodwill. Of course having free alcohol doesn’t hurt the cause! So it’s a given, right? It’s straight-forward and non-controversial! Well, to make a long story short: within a couple weeks the Christmas Committee was at each other’s throats too. They were refusing to meet without their lawyers in the room. There was at least one physical altercation involving thrown chairs and hurt feelings. I tried to jump in to help but it was too late. The Christmas party never happened. Just like that — POOF! — gone. A long-standing tradition wiped away. Charlie, last year was the first time in the history of Cow Eye Community College that we didn’t even have a goddamn Christmas party!”

Dr. Felch had finished one cigarette and was using its butt to light another one. Angrily he tossed the first butt out the window.

“So is that why she left?” I asked. “Because she failed to pull off the Christmas party?”

“As if…!” Dr. Felch shook his head. “No, she still believed she was doing a great job. She felt that she was a great asset to the college. It wasn’t her fault of course. Nothing was ever her fault! Besides, we didn’t have time to dwell on it too much because we had the accreditors breathing down our neck.”

“Accreditors?”

“Yeah, every couple years the accreditors come for an inspection visit and this was our year. And she was coordinating the process — compiling the self-study report, organizing their accommodations and such. So the day they’re supposed to arrive I get a call from our chemistry instructor, who just happened to be passing the bus shelter on the other side of town — where I picked you up — and he says they’re all standing around waiting for a ride to campus. All twelve of them. In coats and dresses and holding clipboards. They’ve been waiting for two hours under the sun and by now they’re hot and thirsty and pretty much acutely pissed off at the world in its entirety and at Cow Eye Community College and its aspirations for reaffirmation of its accreditation in particular. She’d mixed up the times! So I drop everything and rush out to pick them up before they get heat stroke from being in the sun much longer …”

“You picked them up… in this truck?”

“Right, in this truck. And I get there and only two of them can fit in my cab and so out of respect for organizational hierarchy I give the team chairman the seat next to the window — where you’re sitting right now — and the vice chair gets the middle seat with one leg on my side of the stick shift and the other leg on your side….” Dr. Felch pointed to where the vice chair’s two legs had once been splayed. “He’s a President of his college — PhD in Applied Linguistics or some such — and I have to reach between his legs to go from second to third gear. And I’m driving about as slow as I can so I don’t have to use the fourth gear because — well, no advanced degree is going to prepare you for that! And meanwhile the rest of the accreditation team is hanging out the back of my truck with their clipboards. All ten of them crammed into the back. Hell, if I’d a known they might end up there I would’ve hosed it down….”

I laughed:

“That’s unfortunate, Mr. Felch. But I’m sure they took it all in stride. They probably saw it as one of those exotic small-town adventures that city people seek out. You know, like digging a hole with a shovel. They’re probably still telling the story fondly to their friends….”

“I doubt that.”

“…Although in their telling it was probably even hotter and you drove even slower. But aside from that first impression, how did their visit go?”

“Not well. The college got knocked down to warning status. Now we’re a report or two away from losing our accreditation. Sure, it wasn’t all her fault — our college has some glaring shortcomings we need to fix. But that first incident just sort of set the tone for their visit. I mean, geez, at least we could have picked them up at the damn bus shelter!”

While Dr. Felch was saying this an oncoming truck approached and he gave a familiar wave as it passed.

“One of my ex-wives. She runs our fiscal office.”

I watched the truck retreating in the mirror.

“You said one of your ex-wives. How many ex-wives do you have?”

“Four. And that’s not including my current wife….”

“You’ve been married five times?”

“That’s right.”

“To five separate wives?”

“Well, yes. And they all live in Cow Eye. Which means I get to see them on a daily basis. One’s a career counselor at the college. Another just retired from the Ranch. My third ‘ex’ runs our fiscal office. And the last one, well let’s just say I’d rather not talk about that one.”

“Sure, no problem, I understand completely. I have a couple ex-wives myself….”

Between us passed a tender moment of shared male remembrance. And when it had subsided I decided to divert the conversation:

“So, Mr. Felch, any children from your marriages?”

He laughed.

“Of course. I’m intact, you know. I’ve got three sons and a daughter. But they’re all grown and moved away….”

Here Dr. Felch took his time telling me the name, age, and special talent of each of his children — along with their favorite cut of meat, what they drove, and at least one cute story from their respective childhoods. Proudly, he told me the names of his children’s spouses, what they drove, and the different places around the country where they now lived with their own families.