The Pot Thief Who Studied the Woman at Otowi Crossing

by J. Michael Orenduff

  I am jolted back to the present when I hear my name. They have finally done something about the minutes and have turned to the selection of an interim department head.

  Helga has nominated me.

  Armstrong is on his feet. “He can’t serve as interim head. He’s just an adjunct.”

  “No,” replies Helga. “Dean Gangji issued him a contract as a full-time temp to replace Junior Prather. As a full-time faculty member, he is eligible to serve as interim head.”

  “Outrageous,” yells Armstrong. “He doesn’t even have a degree in art.”

  “Neither do I,” says Ann Abeyta. “But I am more acclaimed as an artist than most people who do have degrees. Hubie is a skilled potter, much better than the person he is replacing.”

  “Nonsense,” says Armstrong. “Junior was a fine potter and a good colleague. Schuze is a criminal!”

  Bakke is yelling for order, but no one is paying attention.

  Hockley chimes in. “You seem confused, Melvin. Junior is the criminal. He pled guilty to assaulting Hubie and escaped a jail term only because Hubie agreed to probation in the sentencing hearing.”

  “But Schuze is a pot thief!” Melvin is now shaking and pointing a finger at me.

  “He has never been convicted of a crime,” Hockley responds calmly.

  “Only because he hasn’t been caught.”

  True, I think to myself. But the more pressing issue is why Helga would nominate me as interim chair. Given her low opinion of most of her colleagues, she probably did it just to rankle them. But why would Abeyta and Hockley come to my defense unless they thought the nomination was serious? And now I hear Wally Pence seconding the promotion.

  “Are there any further nominations?” asks Bakkie.

  Armstrong shouts, “I nominate myself.”

  “Professor Armstrong has been nominated,” says Bakke, happy to be back in control. “Is there a second?”

  Melvin’s head swings back and forth, spittle flying from his drooping jaw.

  “The nomination of Professor Armstrong dies for lack of a second,” says Bakkie. “Are there any further nominations?”

  Melvin stomps out.

  “Seeing as how there is only one nominee,” says Helga, “I move that we select Hubert Schuze by acclamation as interim department head for the spring semester.”

  “I have not recognized you,” says Bakke.

  “Sure you have. I’m the gorgeous tall blond from Iceland.”

  The gorgeous part is true. The tall part is true. The blond part is mostly true; there is a lot of grey mixed in. She must be close to fifty, but she is lean, fit and energetic. And the waiting list for her figure drawing class—almost all young males—would fill the Lobo football stadium. Which is more than can be said about the football team.

  Bakkie rolls her eyes and says, “Professor Ólafsdóttir has the floor.”

  Helga repeats her motion to elect me by acclamation. Ana seconds Helga’s motion, Bakkie calls for a vote, and in less time than it would have taken me to read another page of The House at Otowi Bridge, I am now interim head of the art department.

  Chapter 7

  I walked west on Central in a daze. I walked past the old Albuquerque High School I graduated from long ago. It has been converted to condos. I passed under Interstate 25. I looked to the left and spotted a RailRunner boarding passengers at the train station. I came to the Kimo Theater and noticed that Tarde de Oro, a musical about Albuquerque’s history, was being presented again. The familiar landmarks were reassuring and seemed to help me out of my daze.

  I started thinking about Edith Warner. And continued doing so until I reached Dos Hermanas where I hoped sanity might be restored. Or, failing that, where it might be drowned.

  Susannah saw me arrive from the direction of Central. When I sat down, she asked, “Where’s the Bronco?”

  It seemed an odd question until I remember I drove to the university.

  “I left it at the university.”

  “Why?”

  I shook my head. “Because I forgot it was there.”

  “Early onset Alzheimer’s,” she said and signaled Angie to bring two margaritas.

  “I usually walk there, so naturally I just walked back like I normally do.”

  “Lame excuse.”

  “I have a better one.”

  “Which is?”

  “I was there for a meeting of the art faculty. The main agenda item was selection of an interim head of the department.”

  “Because Shorter is dead.”

  “Why does everyone keep mentioning that? I know he’s dead. I was in his office when his brains were blown out!”

  “Geez, Hubie. Don’t bite my head off. You do need a drink.”

  “Sorry.”

  And right on cue, Angie arrived and placed the one with a salted rim in front of me and the one without in front of Susannah. She centered the chips and pico de gallo on the table.

  Susannah loaded a chip with pico de gallo and held it up—elbow on the table, chip in the air—as she often does, as if doing so somehow enhances the taste. Maybe it’s a gender thing. When I scoop up pico de gallo or salsa, I immediately eat it.

  “So what’s the good excuse you have for forgetting the Bronco?”

  “They elected me interim department head.”

  Her loaded chip dropped to the table, and some of the salsa ended up on the side of my margarita glass. I licked it off and washed it down with the best swallow I ever had. Or maybe just the one I have needed more than any other.

  “An adjunct can’t be department head,” she asserted.

  “I’m no longer an adjunct; I’m a full-time temp lecturer.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “Dean Gangji met with me alone just before the meeting. He said I had the best student evaluations he’s ever seen.”

  “He gave you a full-time appointment just because you got good students evals?”

  “And also because they need another ceramicist since Junior Prather—”

  “Was fired for assaulting you.”

  I nodded, staying calm this time about her finishing my sentence.

  “Did you want to be department head?”

  “The thought never crossed my mind.”

  “Then why did you take it?”

  “I didn’t take it. It was thrust on me.”

  “Right. A groundswell.”

  “More like an unexpected tidal wave. I was sitting at the back of the room. First they debated whether to serve tea. Then they debated the minutes of the last meeting. Despite such weighty matters hanging in the balance, I started reading my book. Then I heard Helga nominate me. By the time I caught on to what was happening, it was done.”

  “Are you prepared to do the job?”

  “No.”

  “So you have a job you didn’t seek and are not prepared to do.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’ll have to tell them you decided not to accept the job.”

  “That’s what I thought at first. But then I started thinking about Edith Warner. You know who she is?”

  “Of course I do. We read about her in the 8th grade. She’s one of my heroes.”

  “Then you know that, like me, she got a job she didn’t want and wasn’t suited for.”

  “She mothered all the weird male scientists at Los Alamos while they were making the atom bomb. They made her chocolate cake famous in their various memoirs. That hardly required an MBA. Any woman of gumption could have done it.”

  “I’m talking about the job she had before that.”

  “Which was?”

  “Freight agent and post mistress. The house where she eventually ran a tea room, baked cakes, and mothered all those scientists was next to a stop on the Denver & Rio Grande narrow-gauge r
ailroad. Years before the Manhattan Project, that station was where all the mail and supplies arrived for the San Ildefonso Pueblo, the Los Alamos School, and the handful of farmers and prospectors scattered across Pajarito Mesa. The cargo was unloaded into a small shed where it stayed until people came to pick it up. Most of it was for the school which sent a truck down to Otowi three times a week. Someone had to live there to handle mail and to oversee the unloading of the freight and keep watch over it.”

  “That was a job she didn’t want and wasn’t suited for?”

  “Yep. She was a sickly young woman sent west in the hope that the dry air would bolster her health. She fell in love with New Mexico and was determined not to return east. But the money her family gave her for the trip was running out. Then, like in my case, fate took a hand.”

  “Oh brother. First the job was thrust on you. Now it’s fate.”

  “Right, it was fate that did the thrusting. In Warner’s case, it was a chance meeting with the guy who ran the Los Alamos School. He was desperate to find someone to mind the freight at Otowi because the last guy who had the job disappeared. And you might be interested in him.”

  “Sure, why not? A lot of men I’ve known have disappeared. What was interesting about him?”

  “He was Basque. He was a retired lumberjack, and his name was Shorty.”

  “Doesn’t compute. First, Basques don’t name their sons ‘Shorty’. Second, they were herders, not lumberjacks. And third, if he were a lumberjack, he wouldn’t have made enough money to retire during the Great Depression.”

  “Maybe they called him Shorty because he was a Basque-ette. Get it?”

  “Groan.”

  I returned to my story and told her that when Warner told the guy who ran the school that she wanted to stay in New Mexico but couldn’t, he tried to convince her to take the freight job.

  “Listen to this great passage,” I said and pulled the book out of my pocket:

  “You can rent the house for very little,” he told her. “María and Julián own it. Their son, Adam, will come over to unload the freight for you. All you have to do is see that he gets there on time. We will pay you twenty-five dollars a month.” He sounded as though he thought it was a princely sum. At least it would be better than nothing, she told herself. With her long experience in frugal living she might make it do. “That will cover the rent and Adam’s wages,” Mr. Connell continued. Edith’s heart sank. How did he expect her to live, she wondered? Did he think the birds would feed her? “Of course the profits of the store will all be yours,” he had added quickly. “And with you living there, no one will attempt theft.” Surely desperation had addled his wits a little, she thought. Frail and reticent as she had always been, how could anyone possibly take her for a watchdog? At the bridge she would be entirely alone except for the few passersby, Indians, sheepherders, an occasional tourist, no other human being within shouting distance, not even a telephone except the railway instrument which was unavailable for private use. Her only link with the world would be the truck from the school, and the trains that often whistled past without stopping. Her nearest neighbors would be the Indians at the pueblo, a long walk on the other side of the river. The whole plan seemed completely fantastic. Surely there could be no one as little suited for such a job. Yet to wait for another opportunity would be too great a gamble. The meager resources with which her family had been helping through her illness had been exhausted. A decision had to be made at once. Return east she would not, of that much she was certain. This offer would tide her over for a little, would give her time to look for a better solution. “How soon can you take over?” the determined voice was asking. “I can start any time,” she heard herself say, amazed, as though she listened to some stranger.

  “See the similarity? I can no more be a department head than she could be a watchdog. But fate foisted those jobs on us in the guise of Connell in her case and Helga in mine. And I thought if a frail young woman can succeed as a watch dog and railroad agent in the wilds of New Mexico in the 1930s, I can surely succeed as a department head in the twenty-first century.”

  “What does the twenty-first century have to do with it?”

  “She didn’t even have a telephone!”

  “Neither do you.”

  “Of course I do. You’ve called me on it many times.”

  “That’s a land line in your shop. Since you moved in with Sharice, you might as well be in the witness protection program. You need a cell phone.”

  We’ve had fun with the cell phone argument for years. To me they’re like that chip people have a vet implant in their dog so they’ll always be able to find rover when he’s roving. The phone company knows where you are and who you talk to twenty-four seven, three hundred and sixty five.

  She had another loaded chip in the air and was thinking. “Was the dean at the meeting?”

  “No.”

  “Then how did the faculty know you were eligible to be interim head?”

  “Helga Ólafsdóttir told them.”

  “But you said the dean gave you the new position right before the meeting. How would Helga have known about it?”

  Good question, I thought to myself.

  “I’ll tell you how,” she said. “It was a set up, and Helga was in on it.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Only the dean could have managed this. In theory, he could have gone to the meeting and announced that he was appointing you interim head. Deans have the authority to appoint department heads, especially interim ones, without any consultation, but it’s bad politics to do that. So he arranged for the faculty to elect you.”

  “Hmm. You might be right. As I understand it, Pakistan is an authoritarian place, but also full of political intrigue. So it might fit with Gangji’s background.”

  “Gangji is from India.”

  “But his first name is Mohammed.”

  “There are Muslims in India, Hubert.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “So,” she explained, “Gangji tells Helga in advance that he is going to make you a full-time temp so that she can inform the faculty at the meeting. And he must have talked to some of the others, maybe even most of them, to make sure they would support the plan. How many of them voted for you?”

  “All of them. It was by acclamation. Well, except for Armstrong who had stomped out of the meeting before the vote was taken.”

  “There you have it. It was a backroom deal.”

  I was about to challenge her explanation as a typical conspiracy theory when proof that she was correct walked into Dos Hermanas in the guise of Helga Ólafsdóttir, Harte Hockley, Ana Abeyta and Wally Pence.

  “We’ve come to congratulate our new interim department head,” said Ana as they pulled chairs up to our table.

  Angie showed up without being summoned and said, “I’m assuming two bottles of Gruet Blanc de Noir?”

  “Double that,” said Harte, and everyone nodded agreement.

  After the Gruet was poured, Harte raised his glass and said. “To our new department head. Best of luck.”

  “He’ll need it,” said Helga, and everyone laughed. Even me, but only to be polite.

  “Hubie,” said Wally, “want to say a few words?”

  “Yes. Why did you do this to me?”

  After the laughter died down, Ana said, “We knew the only persons who would want the job were Armstrong and Bakke. She couldn’t nominate herself since she chairs the meetings, and we knew no one else would. So that would leave Armstrong as the only contender. We needed another candidate. But no one else was willing to do it. Then Helga suggested you. It made sense except for the fact that you were an adjunct. So Helga convinced the dean to make you a full-time temp. The official reason is to replace Junior Prather. But the real reason is so you can serve as head while we run a search. We hope to attract some good candidates.” />
  “And the dean went along with it?”

  They eyed each other. Harte was the one who finally spoke. “Gangji tried to get Helga to do it. Then he tried me. He was about to try Wally when we just laid it on the line and said none of us would do it.”

  Not exactly what Susannah had guessed, but close enough. All the buttering up about my student evaluations was just window dressing. So what? I still had the salary, and that was good. And I still had no idea how to be a department head, and that was bad.

  Susannah said, “Hubie was telling me before you arrived that he has no idea how to be a department head.”

  They all laughed, and Helga said, “Neither did the last two guys.”

  “It’s an impossible job,” said Harte. “The faculty are all tenured, so you have virtually no influence on them. They theoretically report to you, but you’re actually like the guy who mows the cemetery—there are a lot of people under you, but none of them are listening.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Ana. “We’ll help you.”

  Chapter 8

  Susannah offered to drive me to the university to retrieve the Bronco, but I told her just to drop me at the condo.

  Sharice looked at me and said, “Did someone die?”

  “I look that bad?”

  “You look shell-shocked.”

  “I guess I am.”

  She led me to the love seat. “What happened?”