The Pot Thief Who Studied Edward Abbey

by Orenduff, J. Michael;

  Still what? I thought to myself. Still tasting faintly of the Rio Grande? What I said out loud was “Sparkling, with a twist of lime please.” One must try to fit in with the club set.

  Layton’s water also had bubbles. His twist was lemon. “I know one of your students was murdered. I know you were suspected of it.”

  I started to say something but he raised a palm to silence me. “I also know you have not come here to seek my assistance in extricating yourself from a murder charge as you have done in the past.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “I know this because the district attorney told me you are no longer a suspect. So what bizarre predicament brings you here?”

  I told him about my students’ plan to stage a Salon des Refusés.

  “Are their pieces worthy of display?”

  “Good enough even for Mrs. Kent.”

  He raised his eyebrows. Oddly, no wrinkles appeared. Despite his bulk, he has no flab and no wrinkles. It is as if his skin is a size too small and serves as an all-over girdle. His complexion is as smooth and flawless as a cover girl’s. His teeth are perfect. If he were a photo, you would suspect Photoshop.

  My guess is he has both a dermatologist and a dentist full-time on retainer.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  “I think the faculty may try to prevent the students from staging their Salon des Refusés. We’ll need to move quickly if they do.”

  “We?”

  “You are a patron of the arts.”

  He raised his eyebrows again but did not dispute me.

  49

  Whit Fletcher gave me his cop stare. “One way you coulda known it was cyanide was you sprayed it up those straws.”

  “And the other way,” I replied, “is what I just told you. Susannah figured it out.”

  “From reading murder mysteries,” he said contemptuously.

  “Exactly. And she must have been right, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  I’d called him about Susannah’s theory immediately after we ran the experiment. He said it was malarkey. But he showed up at the condo after I returned from the country club, skipped “hello” and went directly to “One way you coulda known it was cyanide was you sprayed it up those straws.”

  His professional pride was wounded. “So now what?” I asked.

  “Footwork. We start checking on all the fruits and nuts in the art department to see if any of them bought some cyanide.”

  “Even if they didn’t buy it, they all have access to it.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “It’s used in the photography labs and the jewelry-making studios.”

  “They let those kooks have cyanide?”

  “It’s in different compounds. Sodium cyanide and potassium cyanide. I’m no chemist, but I know either of those can kill you if you’re not careful, and there may be some way to make it even more lethal by purifying it, concentrating it or whatever.”

  “I’ll have the lab boys check into it.” He looked around the condo. “So that really was her father I saw?”

  “It was.”

  “And now that he’s gone, you snuck back in.”

  “I didn’t sneak in, Whit. I live here.”

  “’Cept when her father is here.”

  “Would be a bit awkward.”

  50

  When Sharice got home, I pointed to the dish on the kitchen counter. “Dessert tonight is courtesy of Miss Gladys.”

  “After she and Glad get married, do you think she’ll drop the miss part?”

  I shook my head. “She was married to Mr. Claiborne for thirty years and was always called Miss Gladys.”

  “Even by him?”

  “Probably. I think it’s a Southern thing.”

  She peered warily at the dish. “What do we call this?”

  “The Next Best Thing to Robert Redford.”

  She gave me an impetuous kiss. “You’re even better than Robert Redford.”

  “And younger,” I said.

  Something I don’t get to say as much now that I’m nearing the big five-o. Actually, I rarely think about my age, even less so now that Sharice and I are together.

  She cooked a “meatloaf” made entirely from mushrooms and carrots.

  I’ve never been a vegetarian, but I understand the appeal. Seeing a cute piglet gives me pangs of guilt for eating bacon. But I rationalize it. It’s a bargain we have with livestock. We care for them and then eat them as our part of the bargain.

  I’m not sure that would stand up to rational analysis. So I don’t try to analyze it.

  Speaking of bacon, I thought the mushroom-carrot loaf would have been better with a few crisp strips crumbled into it.

  With regard to the Next Best Thing to Robert Redford, all it needed was some cold Gruet and the ability to forget all those chemicals.

  I told her about my students and their plan for a Salon des Refusés.

  “You think the faculty will let them do that?”

  “The students have a right to be in the hall. All they’re planning to do is hold the pots they made with a sign saying they were rejected.”

  “But the faculty might drum up some excuse, saying the students are blocking traffic or something. They might even call the campus police to have the students physically removed.”

  “That’s why I talked to Layton Kent.”

  “It would probably take three of them to lift him.”

  “True. But it’s not his heft we need. It’s his ability to get an injunction at warp speed from Judge Aragon.”

  “When does the show open?”

  “Tomorrow evening at six.”

  “Great. I get off work at five and we aren’t doing the free clinic.”

  “You want to go to the student/faculty show?”

  “No. I want to go to the Salon des Refusés.”

  51

  We met in the pottery studio half an hour before the grand opening of the student/faculty show. Sort of a dress rehearsal combined with a pep talk.

  Alfred had made a copy of the genuine Tularosa pot he’d hugged the first day of class. It wasn’t as good as my copy, but I’ve been doing it for a quarter of a century.

  Aleesha’s pot was perfectly shaped. The face she decorated it with looked like one of the African masks in Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Appropriation, I guess.

  Not surprisingly, Nathan’s pot had a snake coiled around it matching the tattoo on his arm.

  Bruce used the raku firing technique and got spectacular turquoise hues on his wide shallow bowl.

  Raúl did an exact copy of a small Acoma thimble jug.

  Apache knocked a hole in his piece to symbolize the harm done by colonization. I knew that because it was on the sign he was planning to hold.

  Marlon’s pot was twice as large as the biggest ancient piece ever discovered.

  Mia never got the hang of it. Her point-and-click skills didn’t transfer to 3-D. So she formed a clay rectangle and attached a picture of Ximena using a design program she had mastered in her interior-design courses.

  Carly did a pair of pots with their handles intertwined. Unfit for any practical use but fascinating to see.

  After looking at all their works, I made my pep talk. “The first day of this class, I showed you a copy I made of an ancient Tularosa pot.”

  “Apache complained about it,” said Aleesha.

  “I was wrong,” he said, “but my heart was in the right place.”

  “Yes,” I said, “you thought it was disrespectful. But now you know it was just the opposite. The people who made those pots have been wronged by history, their story told only by professional archaeologists. By liberating their work, I make it possible for them to tell their own story. Their story is in those pots.” I looked at each of them in turn. “Your wor
ks also tell your story. You put some part yourself into them. Maybe a bit of your soul. But like the ancient potters, you want your work to be seen.” Then I got a bit carried away. I’m not used to making speeches. “You are fearless. No rejection will stop you from showing your work. The gallery committee will not be your judge. The people will be your judge!”

  “You sound like Coach Keys in the pregame meeting,” said Marlon.

  “I do?”

  He nodded.

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “Hell yes,” he said. “Let’s march down the hall and kick some butt!”

  “One thing first.” I held out the box they had seen many times. “Cell phones in here. We don’t want rings, buzzes and clangs interrupting our Salon des Refusés.”

  They all dutifully dropped their cell phones in the box.

  “Aleesha, you can keep yours.”

  She stared at me wide-eyed.

  I handed her a paper. “I want you to put this number in your phone so you can dial it with one touch. The person on the other end will recognize your number, because I gave it to him.”

  52

  Manet would have been happy for us.

  All the people on their way into the gallery stopped to look at the work by my students. Even better, many of them left the gallery after a brief walk-through and returned to the hallway to spend more time at the Salon des Refusés.

  The euphoria lasted about ten minutes.

  Junior Prather yelled at me. “You need to get your students out of here!”

  “I thought you weren’t talking to me.”

  “I’m not talking to you. I’m yelling at you.”

  “That’s the first thing you’ve ever said to me that makes sense. But my students are not leaving. They have a right to be in the hallway.”

  “They’re blocking traffic.”

  “You need to yell that. Otherwise, you’re talking to me.”

  He raised his volume again. “Get them out of here right now!”

  He was good at yelling. He stomped off.

  The students enjoyed our exchange.

  Jollo Bakkie showed up and asked us to leave. I told her we were staying put until the gallery closed. She said we were violating the fire code. I asked if she had a copy of it handy. She stomped off.

  Helga Ólafsdóttir showed up late, explaining that her work had also been rejected.

  “If I’d known this was planned,” she said, “I would have joined in.”

  “Please do.”

  “I don’t have my work with me. But I have a better idea.”

  She entered the gallery and clapped her hands together loudly. “Ladies and gentlemen. My name is Helga Ólafsdóttir. I’m a member of the art faculty. I wish to state publicly I am not affiliated in any way with this show. I was not on the selection committee. I have no pieces in the show. If you want to see genuine art, you are in the wrong place. Go out in the halls and enjoy the pieces done by the students in Mr. Schuze’s pottery class.”

  Melvin Armstrong stomped out.

  The campus police stomped in with Junior Prather pointing at me. I gave Aleesha the high sign. She punched her cell phone.

  The cops looked scary but were actually nice.

  The lead policeman’s name tag said Burke. He asked if I was in charge of the students.

  “They are in my class. I don’t claim to be in charge of them.”

  “The faculty members hosting the gallery event say the presence of these students and their artworks are a distraction. I’d like you and them to clear the building.”

  “The hall is a public space. We have a right to be here.”

  “Professor Prather says the gallery committee reserved the entire building for tonight’s opening event.”

  “Even the halls?”

  “The entire building,” Burke repeated.

  “Even the bathrooms?”

  “The entire building.”

  “What about my office? They can’t reserve my office. It’s reserved for me.”

  “It isn’t your office,” said Junior.

  “There you go—talking to me again.”

  He clenched his teeth and spoke to Burke. “It isn’t his office. It’s used by all the adjuncts.”

  “That would be me,” I said. “I’m the only adjunct.”

  I knew that because all the drawers Shorter hadn’t assigned to me remained empty all semester long. Not only did I never see another person in the office, I never saw another object. Except for my grade book and red pencil, neither of which had been touched.

  “Look,” said Burke, “why cause trouble? You can set up in the student union. Or another classroom building. We’ll escort you to the location of your choice.”

  “We aren’t leaving.”

  He shook his head. “We’ll have to move you.”

  Raúl shouted, “Everyone down on the ground.”

  The crowd that had been watching the exchange gasped as the students first sat then lay flat on the floor with their pots resting on their chests.

  Officer Burke turned to his assistant. “Call for backup, Wes. Three more officers. And the wagon.”

  A wrinkled old guy in the crowd turned to his wife and said, “God, this takes me back to the good old days.”

  “The sixties were not the good old days, Harold. You only think so because you spent the whole decade stoned.”

  Layton Kent arrived sooner than the backup policemen, so I didn’t get to experience being dragged away from a protest. He showed Burke the restraining order. Burke looked at Prather, “Looks like they get to stay. C’mon, Wes, let’s get a doughnut.”

  Prather waited to grab me until Burke and Wes left the building. His eyes were bulging, the veins on his forehead like jungle vines and his cheeks purple. He’s a skinny guy, but his long arms gave him leverage. The next thing I knew, Junior had me headed toward the door at a perilously low angle.

  Marlon moved fast for a guy his size. He pried Junior’s hands loose. Unfortunately, Junior was all that was holding me up. I broke my fall with my face. My vision blurred.

  Something was hovering above me. I closed my eyes tightly. When I reopened them, I could see Junior’s arms and legs flailing in the air. Marlon’s right hand held Junior’s belt buckle. His left hand held Junior’s beard. Junior was slapping ineffectively at Marlon and trying to yell. It’s hard to generate force when you’re suspended in the air and even harder to yell when your mouth is pulled wide open by your beard.

  The duo was headed to the door. Bruce was trailing behind, perhaps as backup if needed. After they exited, there was a shriek followed by a thud.

  Everyone in the hall was staring at the door. Marlon reentered to see all eyes on him.

  “I handed Mr. Prather to the campus police,” he said calmly.

  “More like tossed,” said Bruce.

  “Yeah,” said Marlon, “and they missed him.” He shrugged.

  Sharice brought damp paper towels from the restroom and cleaned the blood off my face. Then she pulled my lips apart. “Thank God none of your teeth are broken.”

  Marlon pulled me up and held on to me while I steadied myself.

  “You okay, Mr. Schuze?”

  I told him I was and turned to Sharice. “Let’s go home.”

  She took my hand and turned me to the door just in time to see the camera flashes.

  53

  The smell of roasting coffee woke me up and the hot shower eased the soreness of having been manhandled by Junior Prather.

  After brushing, flossing and gargling, I grabbed my razor, looked in the mirror and saw—to use an old chestnut of an expression—the goalie for a darts team. Running a blade over all those welts and scabs was not a good idea.

  No problem. The scruffy look is in. And I was almost proud to be b
attle scarred.

  It was then I realized I hadn’t reflected on the success of the Salon des Refusés. Just as in the first one with Manet, our salon proved more popular with the public than the official gallery show. The publicity that would surely result from the confrontation with the campus cops and the assault on me would draw big crowds to Spirits in Clay for the sale benefitting the Ximena Sifuentes Memorial Scholarship Fund.

  Sharice filled my now-notorious cup with fresh brew and handed me the morning paper. The headline read unm professor arrested for assaulting colleague.

  I told her I was hoping it would say “arrested for murder.”

  “You think he killed Ximena?”

  “Of course. He was the one who chose her as the model. He was the one who put her in a defenseless situation. And although theoretically anyone could have walked in off the street and shut off her air or poisoned her, he’s the only one we know for sure was in there. Furthermore, he demonstrated last night that he’s willing to harm other people. Namely, moi.”

  “What about motive?”

  “Remember the guy Charles told us about who assaulted a deaf person in the Library of Congress just because he was deaf? Maybe Junior hates deaf people.”

  “I know he’s a nut case, but murdering Ximena seems like a stretch without a stronger motive.”

  “Maybe she rejected his advances.”

  “With his looks, if he killed all the women who rejected his advances, he’d have to be a serial killer.”

  I shrugged. As I’d told Susannah, it wasn’t my job to discover a motive.

  54

  After the hubbub of the Salon des Refusés had calmed down and classes had returned to normal—or what passes for normal in the art world—it was time to sell the works the students had made. Sharice went with me to Spirits in Clay. She helped me wrap and box my own inventory, which we stored in my former residence at the back of the building.

  The first thing Aleesha said after all the students showed up, was, “How are you going to decide who gets the choice spots to display the work.”