The Professor’s Plight (Patreon)

Here's a new E1 short story from Charles:

The Professor’s Plight

Good writing takes a scalpel to the soul, and an unusually skilled writer can wield his instrument with a surgeon’s precision. Or something like that. Vincent St. Timothy considered himself one such surgeon, and a good one. Like any surgeon he took care to get the proper accreditation. His great great grandfather was Thaddeus Yale, the founder of Yale. His great great grandmother was Mildred Harvard, the daughter of the founder of Harvard. Thaddeus Yale was a man whose every wise word and selfless deed was recorded for posterity. The character of Mildred Harvard’s words and deeds are now unknown, as they were swept away and lost to history for some strange reason.

In any case there can be no doubt that St. Timothy was of stellar pedigree, and generations of well credentialed Ivy League ancestors had stocked the storeroom of his mind with the right treasures to express all the particularities of the human condition.

But traces of Vincent’s DNA hinted, somewhere further back in his lineage, at some more rebellious ancestor. He was grandfathered into both Harvard and Yale, but instead took the pariah’s path and enrolled for graduate MFA studies at Columbia University. The furore this caused among his family only proved that he had made the right choice. New York City was a writer’s city. The stomping ground of giants: Whitman, Melville, Fitzgerald. If he could merely take a magnifying glass to their mammoth footprints, study their indelible shapes, he too could become one of the greats.

His time in New York proved fruitful. He placed short fiction in all the most prestigious magazines, stalwarts like The Paris Review and Ploughshares, literary publications so rarified that only about 20 academic writers in the country actually read them. A mere two years and $250,000 later his labors were rewarded with an Ivy League MFA.

Once again the rebel spirit took hold. He could take a post at Harvard, at Yale, and pass the wisdom of all his two years of graduate-level tutelage onto the nation’s brightest minds, sure. It would be no sweat for him. But he had some quintessential American urge to get out into the nation’s vast heartland. He wanted to experience life as it was Out There. This most American of urges, by the way, would also provide great material for his work and would sustain some notion he held about his own life story, a story of a literary genius whose voice was singular and whose success was self-made, but whose impulse to commune with the commoners was noble, simple, deeply American, and quite at home in this great country’s literary canon.

He applied to teach far and wide. One could contend that his connections and pedigree were what got him so many open-armed tenure-track invitations in an academic world where so often new initiates are handed the threadbare adornments of the adjunct. Vincent would contend that it was his stellar portfolio and singular vision and voice.

Of all the many backwaters he could choose to bless with that vision and voice, he settled on Terre Haute University in the town of Terre Haute, Indiana. He found it quaint that the town was the informal “capital” of the Wabash Valley. He delighted in the fact that the university was chartered with three distinct typos in its name, and this problem had only been corrected in the late ‘90s. The people there would have a certain simple but wholesome Character, he thought. It would reflect well on his own character, and of course his work, to stew in it, to get a sustained whiff of its pedestrian stench.

In an ascetic flourish worthy of Thoreau, he left for the heartland with just a Gucci tote filled with toiletries and a day’s clothing. Everything else he would buy online the day he got there, of course. He boarded a private jet bound for the Terre Haute Regional Airport to begin his new life. For a pittance he had purchased a small bachelor pad in Terre Haute Hills—the tony part of town populated by what passes for the aristocracy in these parts of America: local politicians, mid-level entertainers, college sports coaches.

There were no jitters on his first day teaching. He had prepared a robust lesson plan for the entire semester. He had even practiced extemporaneous quips about literary icons that he might casually pepper into his lectures to foster a collegial but authoritative rapport with his charge of young scholars. His anticipation was palpable but he was not at all nervous as his first students entered the room for the first day of class.

Like seven of them had the last name Branson. Another seven were Hudsons. All of them were male. One of them was Bugs Bunny, who appears in this story courtesy of Warner Brothers Pictures (All Rights Reserved). Two of the Branson boys had their teeth clasped around opposite ends of a single piece of bacon. They were growling at one another like stray dogs as they tugged at the greasy strip of pork. Bugs Bunny was nibbling on a classic cartoon carrot, making masticatory sounds that St. Timothy found to be excruciatingly loud and profoundly distasteful.

“Nnnnyyeeeah, what’s up doc?” said the overgrown anthropomorphic hare.

St. Timothy was at least relieved to be greeted with a proper and respectful title, given his credentials. However, the rabbit’s tone did not seem to confer respect for authority.

“I am so glad you asked,” he said. “Today, scholars, I thought we might dive headfirst into something from one of Joyce Carol Oates’ best-loved collections, The Mundane Farmer Examines Her Crops.”

Only the Hudson boys had taken out their notebooks or brought supplies of any kind with them to the classroom. Apparently even that was a liability here. One Branson boy, Tug, stole Lafontaine Hudson’s notebook while Slurp Branson lined up behind him, as if Tug were playing center and Slurp quarterback, using the notebook as a ball. Tug hiked it and Slurp immediately fumbled it. The notebook danced around the floor for a moment till Slurp scooped it up and threw Da Bomb, chucking it right into a garbage can in the far corner of the room. All seven Branson boys erupted into a flurry of dabbing and shouting, an impromptu touchdown celebration.

Bugs Bunny seemed emboldened by all the chicanery. He was no longer in his seat, and without warning he emerged from a rabbit hole behind the professor.

“Say Doc, what’s with all them fancy books you got there?” the rabbit intoned.

“With your gargantuan ears I’d wager you must have heard at some juncture that this, my good sir, is a place of erudition, of scholarship,” St. Timothy stammered.

The rabbit was not paying attention. In fact, while Vincent spoke Bugs had slipped a Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit over the instructor’s head in a single motion, handing him a big colorful lolly to match.

“Say, nice outfit Mr. Scholarship,” said Bugs, taking a bite from his signature orange carrot with the little green part on top.

Vincent’s face turned red and steam began to billow from his ears. He nearly shouted “BUUUUUUUUGS!!!” but his interjection was cut off by the arrival of a new student.

Lola Bunny stood in the doorway wearing her Space Jam uniform with a stack of books clasped under one hand. The books had nothing to do with this class. One was a quantum physics textbook. Another was Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Kennedy. One was the January 1957 edition of National Geographic. One of them just said “BOOK” on the spine and was probably filled with empty pages.

“Sorry I’m late fellas,” the sexy rabbit said.

All of the fellas went wild, except of course the Hudson boys, who had enrolled at the university to get an education, not to have sex with a hot animal. Gorf Branson began thumping his right foot against the ground uncontrollably. Wart Branson (short for Wartholomew Branson) was doing a wolf howl. Even Vincent was flustered, which did not go unnoticed by Lola.

“What’s got you worked up, professor? You don’t look so good,” she said.

Bugs came in for the slam dunk. “Yeah, she’s right ya know. Must be all that woman’s erudition,” he said. He looked directly into the camera and wriggled his eyebrows when he said it.

At this point, the Branson boy who lost the earlier struggle over the piece of bacon was now roleplaying as a short order greasy spoon cook relaying an order.

“Gimme two green eggs, Grinch-style! And two slices of bacon, still squealin’!” he yelled at no one in particular.

Although the Hudson boys were known throughout Terre Haute for their manners, grace, and patience, even they had lost focus. They had pulled computer towers and monitors from their backpacks and were setting up a LAN game of Fortnite.

Just as St. Timothy was about to unload on his students, condemning their insufficient deference to the solemn practices of writing and appreciating great literature, the bell rang. Bugs, Lola, and the Branson boys all disappeared with a comic whoosh sound effect. The Hudson boys packed up their belongings and left cordially. This was their first class at a public institution. Their homeschooled demeanor caused them not to acknowledge the professor’s plight.

And so there he stood. All the world’s richest thoughts and words still locked safely in his mind. In his hand, a big lollipop.