Elisha's Bones - Don Hoesel [8]
“Don’t count on it.” Duckey looks at his watch—a luxury afforded by the books he’s written. Some of them have even avoided the derision built into the peer review system, although I’d never give him the satisfaction of acknowledging that. “I’ve got to get going, Jack. We still have some packing to do and you know how the airport’s going to be.”
“Have a good trip, Ducks,” I say. “And thanks.” I gesture at the unopened present.
“You’re welcome. See you in three.”
After he’s gone, retreating with the near-silent footfalls that are among the last vestiges of his CIA days, I finish my lukewarm coffee and then gather Duckey’s tray as well as my own and deposit them on the grill counter on my way out. I’ll miss Duckey, but he’s right; I’ll be content here by myself, cloistered with old books and good cigars. With that thought in mind, I begin tearing the red foil paper away from the present, until I see it’s Cubans. Duckey orders the cigars from a shop in Spain and he slips me a box now and again, though usually they’re the lower-end ones. But these are Hoyo de Monterrey Double Corona, arguably one of the best, and probably running somewhere near six hundred dollars. I stroke the gift lovingly as I step outside.
It is a good cold that hits my face and fills my nose as I traverse the uneven sidewalk between the university and my apartment building. Even though it’s still Friday and there are officially two more days left in the semester, I feel an impending liberation—a freedom from any responsibilities more involved than watering my single plant. And since that’s a cactus, I can even be forgiven that one duty. True, I will likely get to work grading four classes’ worth of term papers sometime during my first week of vacation, when boredom comes calling, but for now I can enjoy the anticipation.
I hold my briefcase in one hand and cradle the present from Duckey in the other. It will be nice to relax with a book, to throw myself into some light reading. I have a new text that details the excavation of an ancient civilization on the Yucatan Peninsula, which I’ve been looking forward to starting as soon as the semester ended.
Carter Village, my domicile, is composed of a single building, rising six stories above the sleepy college town of Ellen, North Carolina. Those six stories make it the highest structure for sixty-three miles in any direction, besting the Mendel Science Center by three floors. My apartment occupies the southeast corner of the fifth floor, and from one of my windows I can look down on the whole of the college campus, a comparatively small hamlet of learning in the center of a baser geography. There have been many nights in which I have stood at that window and looked down on the campus, its walkways lighted to keep the student body inviolate from the wild darkness, and wished a plague down on the entire thing: a single fell swoop of Old Testament wrath that would level the place and set the survivors to grappling with something pragmatic instead of academic. Of late, those instances happen with less frequency, and the jury’s still out on whether or not that’s a good thing.
I take the five weathered stone steps to the heavy oak door at the top and tug at one of the brass handles. I pass through, stopping at the mail station and retrieving three items from the small box: the water bill, a piece of junk mail advertising satellite television, and—my smile grows a bit wider—my National Geographic. I don’t care how many serious texts I read, how deep erudition burrows into my skull, this magazine will always mean something special to me, even in an era when the glut of nature and science and history channels makes it anachronistic. In my opinion, no amount of video footage can provoke the imagination like a single brilliantly colored photo from this periodical. And there’s always the sentimental element.
I will that thought away and, as I turn from my mailbox, Angie exits the stairwell, the door giving a loud creak.
“You’re early,” she says as she checks her mail.
“It’s one of the