Resolve

by Hensley, J. J.

  “It’s simple subject-verb agreement! And that goddamn spell-check! Do they think it is going to catch Latin phrases?” He held up the paper where a red circle surrounded the misspelled Latin phrase.

  Steven’s hazel eyes narrowed and he used his pen-wielding hand to brush his shaggy blond hair away from them as he rambled on.

  “Why won’t they just proofread their papers one time? And this is supposed to be the future of the criminal justice system?”

  He had scrawled the correct spelling under the student’s error in big red letters. I squinted slightly to see from across my desk.

  Without mentioning that Steven was only a couple of years older than most of the undergraduates, I reminded him, “A lot of them aren’t Criminology majors. Even out of those who are, many will end up doing something else.”

  If ever there was a confluence of conflictions, Steven was it. He was an elitist from a poor family. He was quick to condemn others, but couldn’t stand to be judged. He despised jocks, but was dutiful in his kickboxing training. And he hated anyone who was apprehensive about declaring his beliefs, yet he was still in the closet about his sexuality.

  I happened to know about his sexual preference because while on a solitary run near campus one day, I saw him kissing another young man in the doorway of a townhouse. He saw me when he turned around, and later told me that he was in the closet because if his family knew he was gay, they would cut off all communication with him. That was about as close as I had ever come to having a heart-to-heart conversation with Steven. He could be horribly abrasive at times. Okay, actually he was pretty much an arrogant jackass, but I assumed that much of his animosity and abrasiveness must have come from his feeling like he had to hide from the world. I never liked Steven, but I still felt terrible that he thought he had to hide his true self from those around him. In this day and age, it must be torturous to feel as if you have to live in the shadows.

  “Regardless of their major,” Steven fired back without looking up, “they should realize by now that this isn’t exactly high school. It’s time for them to take a little pride in their work.”

  He cast a critical eye back on the paper. “Holy crap! It’s t-h-e-i-r, not t-h-e-r-e!” Steven spat out with an air of disbelief.

  He slammed down the notebook and wiped droplets of spit from his chin. In just a couple of months, he would be on his way to Florida State to work on his PhD. At this point, Florida didn’t seem far enough away for my liking.

  He was right that this wasn’t exactly high school, but this wasn’t exactly Harvard either. The Pittsburgh area is absolutely overflowing with colleges. In addition to the well-known schools like the University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University, and Carnegie Mellon, smaller schools are sprinkled all along Interstate 79 and branch out from the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela rivers. Some of the downtown schools are so close together that a wide-eyed, map-holding freshman could be walking through one campus and accidentally drift onto another.

  For those outside the city, Pennsylvania has more unique ways to confuse the uninformed. We actually have universities named after people or towns that have the same names as other U.S. states. Imagine the bewilderment when an alumnus tells a prospective employer that they went to California University . . . of Pennsylvania. Or a proud parent proclaims, “My daughter got into Indiana University,” and then has to add the requisite “. . . of Pennsylvania.” It’s all very odd. You never hear of other states advertising the “Pennsylvania University of Alabama” or some such nonsense.

  Most colleges in the region do alright in the prestige department. If you were to put them on three tiers, I suppose Pitt, Carnegie Mellon, and the Penn State branch campuses get the most academic respect. A majority of the other schools in the area struggle to distinguish themselves from the crowd. Then there is my distinguished employer.

  Three Rivers University lies just north of downtown and just south of respectable. Originally founded by the wealthy and highly deranged owner of a steel company, the university acquired a reputation for providing a slightly less-than-mediocre education at an affordable price.

  As the story goes, by 1923, the founder—the late Henry Gadson Jr.—had been the mesmerizing leader of a nice little group of the upper-class citizenry in the Pittsburgh area. By today’s standards, I suppose we would categorize Mr. Gadson’s New Strength and Accordance Society as a cult. Inspired by the influx of eastern European laborers and their various beliefs, he and his circle of bored and wealthy associates strongly believed that by meeting in rooms full of candles, drinking prohibited spirits, covering their faces with a peculiar oil, and reciting passages from obscure religious and philosophical texts, they could bring about a new enlightenment during this period of exciting industrialization and unrelenting prohibition. To bring about this period of enlightenment, Gadson needed a platform.

  So he used his resources to create the College of Casting Light and encouraged the Hungarian, Polish, and Czechoslovakian millworkers to learn English and improve their understanding of the world. Although the school was, and is to this day, very blue collar, it was a progressive undertaking that was unheard of in the era.

  In spite of language barriers and cultural differences, by 1927 the college was doing pretty well. Finding people who could communicate in all of the necessary languages was certainly a major problem, but bit by bit the school helped some people improve their situations or, at least, learn a little bit of English. Then things started to head downhill for good ol’ Henry. First, his cult disbanded and left Gadson without the moral support of his closest peers. Then came the stock market crash in 1929 in which Gadson lost a bundle. After traveling to New York to meet with his company’s investors and accountants, Henry returned to Pittsburgh and took a walk into one of his mills. Standing on a walkway over a large vat of molten steel, Gadson decided to enlighten himself and forge a path into history by throwing his body headfirst into the white-hot abyss. Legend has it that his statue in the middle of campus was actually made from that very same tub of molten liquid, but that seems a little crazy even for this place.

  The college’s board members, fearful of the public scandal and tired of Gadson’s eccentricities, understandably decided to create some distance between his legacy and the school. While the name change was an easy thing to do, the university is still basically a blue-collar, career-oriented entity with its share of oddball faculty members and trustees.

  “Dr. Keller?”

  Between being absorbed in the paper in front of me and Steven’s weekly nervous breakdown, I hadn’t heard the knock on the door. Steven had taken his gloomy presence away from my desk in order to retrieve another paper from the box in the corner of my office. His head was buried in the large cardboard box. He looked like an ostrich hiding from a cheetah.

  “Hello, Lindsay. What can I help you with?”

  Lindsay Behram was a senior in my CRIM 012—Victimology class. One of the benefits of working at a small college is that you get to know most of the students by name.

  She looked hesitant. This was bad. This was going to go one of two ways. Either she was going to tell me that she was going to be late on an assignment and needed an extension, or—something I had been dreading for a while was coming.

  “I was hope—hoping . . . I was wondering if I could ask you a question.”

  I swallowed hard and carefully constructed my next sentence in my head.

  I get paid to talk for a living.

  “Sure.”

  Yep. Brilliant as always.

  “Do you . . . I mean . . . What’s the university’s policy about, you know . . . student-faculty . . . relationships?”

  The rustle of papers in the corner caught her attention. The ostrich’s head popped out of the hole and its normally unpleasant scowl had been transformed into subdued astonishment. Lindsay fixed her eyes on him in return.

  Maybe this was a good thing. I had known this was a real possibility. Lindsay was a bubbly, outgoing, flirtatiou
s student who had waited around to talk to me too many times when the other students left the classroom. Aside from that, she was a total knockout and she knew it. I’m talking about the type of girl who even the cockiest of male students doesn’t dare approach until they load themselves up with three or four beers. She was tall and athletic looking, with the ability to shake her head and have every strand of her straight blonde hair fall magically into place. Men loved her. Women resented her. I just didn’t want to deal with her.

  Initially, I told myself that her lingering was legitimate and that her only interest was related to the course materials. Then the questions went from reasonable to basic. Then the questions weren’t really questions, but rather complimentary observations about my presentation. Next, a quick brush on my arm while we talked. Then last week, a touch on the hand. And just yesterday, after all the other students had gone, she blatantly leaned across my desk, smiled, displayed major cleavage, and asked me if I wanted to grab dinner at her place to discuss the course. You know—because the effects of victim impact statements in church-based child molestation trials make for wonderful dinner-time conversation. She had actually boldly stroked my hand with her index finger when she asked me.

  This had to stop. Being completely unprepared for her proposal at the time, I wasn’t sure how to react. I simply pulled my hand away and told her I couldn’t, while hurriedly gathering up my lecture notes. I left the room more numb with disbelief than anything else. Now I had collected my thoughts and I was more prepared to end this.

  First off, I’m married and I plan on staying that way. Second, I don’t think unemployment would agree with me. I get into trouble when I’m bored. And third, I’m thirty-nine years old. Granted, lots of men would ridicule me for not taking advantage of an eager twenty-two-year-old who wants to jump in the sack with a distinguished professor, but it’s just not my thing. I have standards. If I’m going to nail some girl half my age, then I want to make sure I can hand her a wad of cash and send her back out on the street.

  Just kidding.

  “Lindsay, let me make something very clear.” She and Steven were still staring at each other. She hadn’t realized he was in the room.

  “Any relationship between students and professors is strictly prohibited; and if I thought for one second that anybody was pursuing something like that, I would take the issue up with Dean Silo myself.”

  I can sound pretty authoritarian when I want to.

  She was still looking at Steven.

  “Hey! Do you understand me?”

  She returned a confused gaze to me. I was actually glad that Steven was here to witness this. I needed him to back me up in case she made any crazy accusations later. The touching and flirting weren’t overt enough for me to take action until yesterday’s events, but now I had something tangible to point to. At least it was out in the open now.

  “What . . . I . . . I’ll talk to you later.” She quickly vanished from the room and the heavy door swung closed.

  Steven was still staring at the now vacant doorway. I was already feeling bad for her. I didn’t know what kind of reaction to expect. Sadness? Fear? Maybe even anger? But she looked a little puzzled by my reaction. I knew I should have been clearer yesterday, but I was taken aback by her directness. Had I misled her in some way? I knew I was a charming bastard, but I really didn’t think that I had led her on.

  Well, whatever her intentions were, now she could move on to some quarterback or star pitcher closer to her age. Maybe she would go to law school next semester, entice some horny, parasitic ambulance chaser, and use what she learned in his class to drag him—and the school—into a messy sexual harassment lawsuit.

  Maybe I’m too much of an optimist.

  Mile 2

  Things don’t thin out much as we make the turn onto Penn Avenue and head in the opposite direction back toward the convention center. The annoyance builds on the hardening faces of some runners as they try to weave through the crowd. The pairs and groups of runners who run two or three wide on the street in order to maintain a conversation are like picket fences standing in the way of those who have their sights set on achieving a PR. That’s a personal record in runners’ lingo.

  Store owners and street vendors cheer as we pass by. Burly guys carrying crates of vegetables stare in bewilderment at people who exert themselves for fun, not wages. In cities like this there is always the mandatory homeless guy who stumbles out of an alley in a haze and begins running with the crowd. He generally smiles and yells out a short phrase like, “Go Steelers! Whoop them Browns!” or some other expression that is guaranteed to elicit a cheer from the crowd. After about a half block, he gasps for air, steers himself toward the curb, and absorbs the applause from the onlookers with humility and grace, bowing out of the race like a true legend.

  I know from reading the course map that two-thirds of the way down this straightaway are the first water and medical stations. They are generally in close proximity to each other. That’s when the great mystery of how to drink water out of a paper cup while running will once again rear its ugly head. It’s remarkably difficult to do this and manage not to either drown yourself or pour the water all over you. There are a few different approaches: the sip-and-hope, the chug-and-cough, or the popular funnel technique, where you bend the paper cup to create a channel of water flowing into your mouth, those are probably the top three. I usually attempt the funnel technique, with limited success. I’ve run in some races where they’ve used sturdy Styrofoam cups. You can pick out the funnel-loving rookie who can’t figure out why his cup of water just exploded all over his face when he tried to bend it. It’s funny when it doesn’t happen to you.

  “You know what the number one cause of divorce is, don’t you?”

  I bit my tongue, having heard Aaron tell this one before.

  “Marriage!”

  There was rhythmic laughter between footfalls.

  “Randy, the point is that Debbie has been with me for over twenty years, so I don’t think she’s going to leave me now just because I bought another boat.”

  “I’m not saying she’s going to leave you, Aaron. I’m just saying that you make things too hard on yourself. You know you’re never going to hear the end of it.”

  “What about you? Don’t you think a man has a right to buy a bigger bass boat regardless of what his wife says?” He had turned his head from Randy and was looking over at Jacob now.

  There was the slightest tick on Aaron’s face as he realized his mistake. Jacob was a widower who had lost his wife, Tabatha, to an undiagnosed heart condition a few months before. Everybody knew that their marriage had serious problems, but he still felt the loss immensely.

  After a thoughtful pause, Jacob responded with a sly grin, “I suppose so. Just don’t expect your pole to get any action anywhere but on that boat.”

  The crack alleviated the temporary tension.

  That topic was still off-limits. During our frequent runs, pretty much anything was open for discussion: work, sports, politics, the economy—pretty much anything that distracted us from the run itself. Distraction is a friend on these runs in the first weeks of spring when the cold hangs on, only reluctantly loosening its grip. Talking about our relationships was commonplace until Tabatha’s death. That spring, out of respect for Jacob, we mostly avoided the subject and he quietly appreciated our discretion.

  We tried to run together every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday during the fall and spring semesters, at least when the cold and snow didn’t hinder us. We scheduled Saturday as rest day because Sunday mornings were reserved for our individual long runs, which consisted of anywhere between ten to twenty miles depending on where we were in our respective training schedules.

  While I liked running with those guys during the week, I came to appreciate the solitary nature of my Sunday runs. You can really think things through on those days when you have to stay in your own head and there isn’t any chatter to distract you. It’s also more of a challenge sim
ply because of that—no distractions. You have to train your brain to ignore the fatigue and the pain all on its own.

  Those days in late March were the initial ramp-up to the Pittsburgh Marathon for all of us, so that day’s frigid eight-miler was more than enough. Well, at least it was enough for me. We had always done our best to find a common gap in our schedules to make sure that we had time for a six- or eight-mile run along the river trails or through the city streets. The other three established the ritual before I arrived at TRU. Jacob invited me to join the group after repeatedly seeing me running by myself. He’d been my running and professional mentor ever since.

  Most of the sidewalks and paths are wide enough for only two or three people to run side by side; so as the junior member of the group, in both seniority and age, I typically trailed a few feet behind out of deference. That, and I didn’t want Jacob to see me huffing and puffing at this pace.

  The man didn’t seem human. Despite being fifteen years older than me, Dr. Jacob Kasko could stick right with me for a marathon distance. By the day of the race, my conditioning should have improved to the point where I would be a minute or two faster than Jacob; but at that point in our training he was ahead of me.

  “Cyprus, what are you doing?”

  Jacob used the brief moment of levity to change the topic of conversation. I knew what he was asking me, but I worked up my best perplexed expression. I loved messing with him about this.

  “Please tell me you are not eating that crap again,” Jacob said in his playfully exasperated tone. “Out of all of us, you’re the one who should be the most willing to submit to modern advances and not stick with eating habits from elementary school. I’ve told you a hundred times that Pop-Tarts are not proper running fuel.”

  Jacob pulled one of his beloved calorie-filled gel packs out of the pouch on his elastic running belt.