Walter moved into the dormer. His back turned, he looked into the woods, dark now that the sun had set. If the moon was up, it had yet to rise above the mountains and spread its meek light.
I moved across the room to my friend.
'Walter,' I said, but he didn’t turn around. 'What? You scared?'
'We can’t fuck anything up,' he said. 'Not one thing.'
Staring out into the Vermont night, the foreign darkness lodged a splinter of homesickness in my heart. A child again, I acknowledged the nostalgic pain, and then it passed.
'Thank you for coming,' I said, my hand on his shoulder. 'You didn’t have to do this, Walter. I’m never gonna forget it.'
He turned back and faced me. 'It has nothing to do with you,' he said. 'Nothing.'
On a cold, cloudy Thursday, at eleven o’clock in the morning, I parked Walter’s Cadillac in downtown Woodside and set out at a keen pace for the campus. Two-and three-story buildings lined both sides of the street, which was quite busy for a small town. People filled the sidewalks, sitting on benches, gliding along on Roller- blades, on gazing into storefront windows. Most were students, and they vivified the town, easily identifiable by their backpacks and the unbridled, merry apathy in their faces.
I passed a drugstore, the Woodside General Store, the Valley Cafe, several apparel stores, and a coffee shop called Beans n’ Bagels, in front of which, canopied tables cluttered the sidewalk. It was the liveliest store by far, brimming with caffeine junkies and quirky music. The rich smell of roasted coffee beans mingled with the air outside the open vestibule. I would’ve bought myself a cup had I not downed two at the Woodside Inn, where Walter still slept in our room, drained from the previous day of driving.
The buildings ended, but the sidewalk continued from the downtown toward the wooded campus. I could now see the mountains that surrounded the town, the highest slopes already white with early snow. I wondered how many students had skipped classes for a day of skiing. A steely wind made my eyes water and I zipped my leather jacket all the way up to my chin and dug my hands into the warm pockets.
A brick walkway veered off from the main sidewalk toward a group of brick buildings. Heading up the walkway, I reached a hexagonal white gazebo within several minutes. It appeared to stand in the exact center of campus, as most of the buildings, each not more than forty yards away, surrounded it. Plaques had been nailed to each side of the gazebo, engraved with WOODSIDE COLLEGE, EST. 1800.'
I passed beneath the portico of a stone-columned building, the largest of the ten or so in the vicinity, and walked up the steps. A great clock surmounted the roof, surrounded by scaffolding, its black hands stuck suspiciously on 4:20.
Inside, the building was dim and stale. The floor was constructed of burnished marble, and the walls of the foyer, wooden and intricately carved, were adorned with large portraits of former deans, founders, and dead professors. A life-size statue stood in the center of the circular room, staring vacuously at me. I didn’t stop to see who he was.
Glass double doors led into the office of the university registrar. I caught my reflection as I pushed them open — my hair and recent beard now brown, a pair of wire-framed spectacles on the bridge of my nose. In jeans and wearing a faded denim shirt under my jacket, I looked nothing like myself.
In the bright windowless room, there were several open cubicles, each holding a desk and portioned off from the cubicle next to it. I walked to the closest one, where a woman typed fervidly on a computer. She looked up from the screen and smiled as I approached.
'May I help you?' she asked. I sat down in the chair before her desk. The constant pecking of fingers on keyboards would’ve driven me insane.
'I need a campus map, a class directory for this semester, and a campus phone book.'
She opened a filing cabinet and withdrew a booklet and a blue pamphlet.
'Here’s a map and here’s the phone book,' she said, setting the items on her tidy desk. 'I’ll have to get a class directory from the closet.' She walked across the room, mumbling something to another secretary as she passed. I opened the phone book. It was only fifty pages thick, with the faculty listings in the first ten pages and those of the two thousand students in the remaining forty. I thumbed through it to the P’s.
I skipped over the entries for Page and Paine, then spotted 'Parker, David L.' The information given beneath the name was sparse — only an office number — Gerard 209 — and a corresponding phone number.
The woman returned and handed me a directory of classes. 'Here you are, sir.'
'Thanks. Are the students in class today?' I asked, rising.
She shook her head doubtfully. 'They’re supposed to be,' she said, 'but this is the first cold snap of the season, so a fair number probably played hooky to go skiing.'
I thanked her again, then walked out of the office and into the foyer, where I passed three college girls standing in a circle beside the statue, whispering to each other. Exiting the building, I walked through snow flurries to the gazebo and sat down on the bench that circumnavigated the interior of the structure. First, I unfolded the map and located Gerard Hall. I could see it from where I sat, a two-story building that displayed the same charmingly decrepit brick as the others.
With hot breath, I warmed my hands, then opened the directory of classes, a thick booklet, its first ten pages crammed with mountains of information regarding registering for classes and buying books. I found an alphabetical listing of the classes and their schedules, and flipping through anthropology, biology, communications, English, and French, stopped finally at the roster of history classes for fall ’96. There was a full page of history courses, and I skimmed down the list until I saw his name:
Hist 089 History of Rome LEC 3.0 35
26229 001 TR 11:00AM-12:15PM HD 107 Parker, D.L.
It appeared to be the only course he taught, and, glancing at my watch, I realized that it was currently in session.
According to the building abbreviation key, HD stood for Howard Hall. I found it on the blue map. Just twenty yards away, it was one of the closest buildings to the gazebo. An apprehensive knocking started in my chest as I looked down the walkway leading to its entrance.
Before I could dissuade myself, I was walking down the steps, away from the gazebo, heading toward Howard Hall. To the left of the registrar’s building, it made up the eastern wall of the quasi courtyard surrounding the gazebo. Two students smoked on the steps, and I passed them and touched the door, thinking, What if this isn’t him? Then I’ll go to prison, and Walter and his family will die.
As the door closed behind me, I heard his voice. It haunted the first floor of Howard Hall, its soft-spoken intensity reeling me back to the Wyoming desert. I walked slowly on, leaving the foyer, where political notices, ads for roommates, and a host of other flyers papered the walls. In the darker hall, light spilled from one door. I heard a collection of voices, then an outburst of laughter. Orson’s voice rose above the rumblings of his students, and I turned right and walked down the hallway, taking care my steps didn’t echo off the floor.
His voice grew louder, and I could soon understand every word. Stopping several feet from the doorway, I leaned against the wall. From the volume of laughter, I approximated the class size at thirty or forty students. Orson spoke again, his voice directly across from me on the other side of the wall. Though I wanted to run, to hide in a closet or a bathroom stall far from that voice, I remained to listen, trusting he’d have no reason to step into the hall.
'I want you to put your pens and pencils down,' he said, and the sound of writing implements falling onto wood engulfed the room. 'To understand history, you have to see it. It’s more than words on a page. It happened. You can’t ever forget that. Put your head on your desk,' he said. 'Everybody. Go on. Now close your eyes.' His footsteps approached the door. He flipped a switch, the room went black, and the footsteps trailed away.
'Megalomania,' he said. 'Somebody tell me what it means.'
A male voice sounded in the dark. 'Delusions of omnipotence.'
'Good,' Orson said. 'It’s a mental disorder, so keep that in mind, too.'
The professor kept silent for half a minute, and the room was still. When he spoke again, his voice had a
