“If you read the assignment, there shouldn’t be anything mysterious about any of this,” and Chance waves one hand in the general direction of the blackboard. “In 1859, Charles Darwin proposed a mechanism that would account for how new species arise from preexisting species, explaining Earth’s present biodiversity and the fossil record. Or, as he so eloquently wrote, ‘As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.’”
The sound of seventy or so pencils and ballpoint pens scritching down her every word, and Chance braces her elbows on the corners of the lectern, sighs, and gazes out at the class over the tops of her spectacles.
“You don’t have to write all that down. It’s in the book,” she says, but most of them keep scribbling anyway. “I want you to grasp the concept here, the elegance of Darwin’s argument, not memorize the precise words he used to express it. I want you to see how his observations, of artificial selection by pigeon breeders, for instance, led him to the theory of natural selection.”
And near the very back of the room, high up, near the doors, a thick-necked boy with auburn hair cut close to his scalp raises his hand. He’s leaning back in his chair, tapping arrhythmically, deliberately, on his unopened textbook with the eraser end of an unsharpened pencil. Chance takes a deep breath. So much for an easy last day, so much for hoping she could get through this one lecture without a duel. She takes another swallow of her Sprite, and “Yes, Larry,” she says. “Do you have a question?”
“You really think people and pigeons are the same thing, Dr. Silvey?” he asks and taps a little harder at the cover of his textbook. There’s a nervous smattering of laughter, and Chance smiles and nods her head.
“In that human beings and pigeons are both animals subject to the process of natural selection,” she replies and stares resolutely back at the auburn-haired boy, hoping that she’s said enough to shut him up and knowing that she hasn’t.
“Animals don’t have souls,” the boy says, staring stubbornly back at her. He leans forward, letting the front legs on his chair rock back down to the floor. “My creator gave me an immortal soul. That’s what separates me from animals like pigeons.”
The rest of the class is waiting quietly, expectantly, for whatever Chance is going to do or say next; all eyes on her or Larry, grateful for any diversion that might possibly shorten the lecture. She glances down at her carefully typed notes, but there are no answers there, and she tries to recall all the things that Alice has told her about dealing with creationist students, the value of a witty comeback to break the tension, humor to turn the tables.
Never let them see you sweat, kiddo.
“Larry, are you familiar with Inherit the Wind? It’s a play.”
“Yeah. We had to watch that movie in high school,” the redheaded boy says and watches her suspiciously.
“So, do you remember when Matthew Brady’s on the stand, and in response to one of Drummond’s questions about the age of a fossil, he says, ‘I am more interested in the Rock of Ages, than I am in the age of rocks’?”
“Yeah,” Larry says and taps his pencil against the cover of his textbook. “I remember that. That was right before Brady explains how Archbishop James Usher calculated the true age of the earth by—”
“That’s right. So, what do you think Brady meant when he said that, about the Rock of Ages and the age of rocks? What do you think he was getting at?”
Larry stares dubiously at Chance for a moment, then stops tapping his pencil and says, “That what mattered to him is not how old rocks are, but his faith in God.”
“Right, I think that’s exactly what Brady was saying. We can agree on that?”
“Sure,” Larry grunts and shifts uneasily in his seat.
“Okay. Now, what I need you to understand is that in this class, which is a biology class and not a religion class, I am concerned about the age of rocks and not the Rock of Ages.”
A girl near the front of the room snickers softly, and Chance glares at her until she stops.
“But you want us to believe that people are just animals,” Larry says. “You want us to believe—”
“I honestly don’t care what you believe, Larry,” Chance tells him, careful to hide her impatience, careful to sound reasonable. “If you’ll stop trying to disrupt class and as long as you learn what I’m trying to teach you, whether you believe any of it or not is really none of my business. If you don’t want to be in here, you should consider taking another course. You might try Dr. Parker’s excellent introduction to astronomy, or maybe a chemistry course for non-majors.”
“What’s the difference?” Larry asks, finally opening his textbook and looking down at it instead of at her. “You’re all atheists, all you scientists. None of you believe in God or try to show both sides of things.”
“I happen to know that Dr. Parker is also an ordained Unitarian minister,” Chance says, and Larry snorts derisively and leafs through the pages of his copy of Biology: Diversity and Function.
“You’re all evolutionists,” he says. “And you’re all afraid to give creation science equal time in your classes. You’re all afraid to tell us the truth so we can decide for ourselves what’s right.”
Chance sighs and takes another sip of her Sprite, which is beginning to get warm and go flat. Larry stops flipping pages and frowns down at the textbook, pretending to read something printed there.
“Larry, let’s just cut the crap, okay? We both know that the very last thing you want is for people to make up their own minds about anything, much less evolution. When’s the last time your Sunday School teacher gave a lecture on population genetics or geological time?”
“When’s the last time you went to church, Dr. Silvey?”
“That’s none of your business, Larry.”
“Oh, I see. It’s okay for you to question our religious convictions, but it’s not okay for us to question yours?”
“I haven’t questioned your convictions—” but then Chance stops herself, hearing the anger beginning to creep into her voice, and she looks back at the blackboard, reading over what she’s written while she tries to clear her head.
“Maybe it doesn’t seem that way to you, Dr. Silvey,” Larry says, “because you don’t have any convictions. The Bible tells me that I’m not an animal, that I was created in the image of my God, not evolved from a bunch of monkeys.”
Chance turns back to the class, and now almost everyone’s watching her, like the auditorium has become a chessboard and it’s her move. The first day, she passed out copies of a questionnaire to gauge their knowledge of and attitudes towards biology and paleontology, so she knows a lot of them are probably enjoying this; more than half these kids fresh out of local high schools where evolution isn’t taught at all, or only presented by nervous teachers as a nonthreatening, dumbed-down “alternative” to creationism.
Chance takes a swallow of the flat Sprite, sets the green-and-silver can back down on the lectern, and gazes at Larry across the sea of curious, watchful faces. The auburn-haired boy is smiling confidently, triumphantly, still pretending to read his textbook.
“Larry, I’m not trying to undermine your faith or anyone else’s,” Chance says, trying to choose her words carefully. “I’m here to teach you what science has learned about the history of life, not argue religion.”
Larry nods his head and glances at her, glancing down on her from his seat on the top row of the auditorium, and now his smile has melted into something more like a sneer.
“What are you going to tell your baby about God?” he asks. “Aren’t you afraid?”
“Afraid of what, Larry?”
“Aren’t you afraid it’s gonna go to Hell because you’re going to teach it that it came from monkeys and has no soul? Doesn�
��t that bother you, Dr. Silvey, that you’re going to send your own baby to burn in Hell for all eternity?”
A surprised murmur from the class, then, perhaps everyone getting just a little more than they bargained for, and Chance grips the edges of the lectern and doesn’t take her eyes off the boy.
“Larry, I’d like you to leave now, please,” she says calmly, straining to hide the shaky edge in her voice, loath to give him the satisfaction of seeing that he’s gotten to her. “We’ll continue this conversation in my office after class, if you like.”
“Don’t bother,” he says, standing up, gathering his things. “I’ll just drop. There’s nothing you have to say that I want to hear, anyway.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that,” Chance says, though she isn’t, and all she really wants right now is for him to leave the room before she says something she’ll regret. “Bring me the drop slip after class, and I’ll sign it.”
“Whatever you say,” the auburn-haired boy mutters, picking up his backpack from the floor. He slings it over his left shoulder and walks halfway to the doors, then stops and looks back at her again. “But one day you’re gonna have to answer to God for all the lies you’re telling,” he says. “One day you’re going to have to pay for trying to make people doubt His word. I wouldn’t want to be you when that day arrives—”
“Good-bye, Larry,” Chance says and goes back to her notes, the straight and sensible lines of text, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, the Argus pheasant and Galápagos finches. In a moment, she hears the auditorium doors open and swing closed, and she apologizes to the class for the disruption and begins her lecture over.
After class, Chance takes her time walking the short distance across campus from the lime-sherbet auditorium in the Education Building to her tiny office in the Earth Sciences Annex, nestled among a few dogwood and crape myrtle trees behind the Physical Sciences Building. The annex is a hasty afterthought of brick and glass, built during the oil shortages of the 1970s, when geologists and micropaleontologists were in short supply and high-paying jobs were plentiful. Those days are long gone though, and the university has been making noises about cutting the program altogether, money that might be better spent elsewhere, and already the geology department, faced with indifferent or hostile administrators and state proration, has had to cancel a couple of courses and subscriptions to several journals. Something else to make Chance wonder if selling the house was such a great idea, one more thing for her to worry about.
She checks her mail—a new Ward’s catalog, fliers from Columbia University and Academic Press announcing books she can’t afford to buy, a dues reminder from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology—and then ducks into her office and shuts the door behind her. Chance squeezes awkwardly around the corners of the desk that takes up most of the room and then eases herself into the chair wedged in against the back wall. There are galley pages waiting for her on the desk, a long paper on vertebrate biostratigraphy in the Carboniferous rocks of Alabama that she needs to proof quickly and get back in the mail to Palaios, and she sits down and stares vacantly at the photocopied pages.
Chance reaches for a red pen, is pulling the cap off, when she starts crying, a sudden, hot rush of tears, all the emotion she’s been swallowing for days now bubbling suddenly to the surface, and she throws the pen at the office door. It leaves a jagged crimson streak across an old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon taped there, Calvin fashioning a “dinosaur” skeleton from bottles and tin cans and discarded silverware he’s dug up in his backyard, while Hobbes watches on doubtfully.
“Fuck it,” she growls, looking frantically about for something else to throw, when there’s a knock on the door, and it takes her a minute to calm down enough to ask who it is.
“Alice,” the someone replies, and Chance wipes at her eyes, her runny nose, quickly dries her tear-and-snot-damp hands on her jeans.
“Yeah,” she calls back. “Come in,” and Alice Sprinkle opens the door and stands there a moment, staring at Chance.
“I just heard about what happened with that Larry character,” she says.
Chance takes a deep, hitching breath and wipes at her eyes again, shrugs her shoulders. “Oh,” she says. “That was fast.”
“Well, from what I heard, you did the right thing.”
“Did I?” Chance whispers, the tears still so close, and she covers her face with her right hand.
“Oh, hey. Come on now,” Alice says. “Don’t do that,” and she steps into the office and shuts the door.
“I’m sorry,” Chance mumbles through her fingers. She can smell and taste the salt from her own tears, and that reminds her of the exhibit banner at the Fernbank—AT THE OCEAN’S EDGE—and she starts crying again.
“That little shit’s not worth it,” Alice says and knocks over a stack of books trying to get around the desk to Chance.
Chance wipes at her eyes and shakes her head. “It’s not him. It’s not only him. Everything’s so fucked up. I swear Alice, most of the time I don’t know if I’m fucking coming or going.”
“It’s just your body, all those hormones,” and Alice squats down to retrieve the fallen books; she picks one up and stares at the cover. “You know that.”
“My body,” Chance says and frowns forlornly down at her stomach. “Is that what this is?”
“I’m afraid so, darling,” and Alice sets the book on the corner of the desk, picks up another and reads its cover.
Chance pulls open a drawer and rummages about until she finds a packet of tissues; she blows her nose loudly, then tosses the damp wad at the wastebasket and misses.
“Half the time I look in the goddamned mirror, I don’t even recognize myself anymore. I feel like someone’s stolen my body, and now I’m stuck in this bloated…” and she trails off, reaches for another Kleenex and blows her nose again. “I’m absolutely disgusting,” she says, staring into the Kleenex.
“You’re not disgusting, and it’s almost over.” Alice returns the last of the books to the desktop, then sits down on the floor and smiles up at Chance. “You are a beautiful, radiant paragon of femininity, a marvel of nature, Mother Gaia incarnate.”
“You’re full of shit, you know that?”
“Always tell the ladies what you think they want to hear,” Alice says. “That’s what my daddy always said.”
“I don’t want it to be almost over, Alice. I want it to be over now. I want my life back.” Chance drops the soggy, crumpled tissue on the desk, picks up the paper-clipped galley pages and stares at them. She finds another red pen and tests it on her palm.
“I’m afraid it’s a little late to be getting cold feet. The only way out is straight ahead.”
“I have to get this thing proofed and back in the mail today,” Chance says. “Look at that. I misspelled ‘Famennian,’ right there in the damned abstract. I tell you I’m losing my mind,” and she taps the paper once with an index finger and then turns the pages around so Alice can see.
“Yeah. You’re getting stupider just sitting there.”
Chance ignores her and goes back to reading the first page of the galley silently to herself. “When this is all over,” she says, “I’m spending a whole goddamn month in the field.”
“Whatever you say, Momma Bear.”
“I mean it. I think my legs are atrophying. Pretty soon, there won’t be anything left of me but a belly and a pair of leaky tits.”
“So, what’re you gonna do about Mr. Larry?” Alice asks, changing the subject. Chance shrugs, marks a comma splice, and turns the page. About the only thing she wants to think about less than being pregnant is the ugly scene in the classroom, the arrogant sneer on the boy’s face, the spite in his eyes, as he told her that she was damning her baby to Hell.
“He says he’s bringing me a drop slip. I’ll sign it and hope I never have to see his face again.”
Alice bobs her head thoughtfully. “If he said what I heard he said to you, I think it qualifies as harassment. Maybe you shoul
d think about taking disciplinary action.”
“No,” Chance says and inserts a missing period. “I just want him out of my class. I’m not in any shape to get involved in something like that, not now.”
“It’s your decision. I just feel sorry for whoever gets him next time around.”
“Whoever gets him next time around won’t be eight months pregnant.”
“This isn’t the first time he’s done something like this, you know,” Alice says, and Chance stops reading and looks at her. Alice nods and continues. “That’s right. Last semester he signed up for physical anthropology with Joan Forty and dropped out three weeks into the course. She calls him Holy Larry.”
“I think Scary Larry would be more accurate.”
“Yeah, well, get this. He actually told her that whites were created separately in the Garden of Eden, that blacks are the children of Cain, and teaching evolution leads to miscegenation.”
“I doubt he can even spell ‘miscegenation.’”
Alice laughs and presses the soles of both her tennis shoes against the side of Chance’s desk. “When you’re one of God’s chosen people, I don’t think it much matters whether or not you can spell.”
“Then maybe there’s hope for me yet,” Chance says and reaches for the paperback Merriam-Webster’s on her cluttered desk.
“So you’re going to be okay?”
“I’m fine,” she says, whether it’s true or not, because it’s what Alice wants to hear. “I’m just tired, that’s all. I just didn’t need that creationist crap today.”
“Good,” Alice replies, getting up from the floor. “Let me know when you’re finished in here, and I’ll give you a ride home, okay?”
“Thanks, but I have the car. As soon as I finish with these corrections and get this ready to go back in the mail, I’m out of here.”
“Okay. But be careful, and don’t you wait around here for Scary Larry to show up. He told Joan he was going to drop, too, but he never did. He took an F instead. I expect he’ll do the same with you.”
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