man spoke a few words barely audible and the dog relaxed, his tongue rolling brainlessly from his mouth. Stratton patted him on the head and the tongue went to work. When the dog was done Stratton wiped the back of his hand along his trouser seam.
“I should have brought my rod.”
“You should have. There’s plenty to catch in there.”
Stratton took a seat and watched the man fish, cast after cast, with the elegantly slow retrieval, the rubber lure fluttering in the brown water. Patience and commitment to pattern made into its most essential shape.
“If you don’t mind me saying. You look like somebody that ain’t in the right place,” the man said.
“There’s a fair chance,” he said, and despite his desire to say something more to the man, he felt awkward and prohibited. He remembered the ugliness of his father about Black men and what he would say when he would see them sitting beside some bridge or overpass fishing. Street bait niggers, he had called them. Even as a boy, it struck Stratton’s ears with its low violence, its idle hate. But he’d never been able to tell his father his thoughts and now they passed through him with a haste to be gone. He said his farewell and went on.
On farther up the landing he passed a few people out on a midmorning stroll. College boys and girls running in close file, made of little more than lovely muscle and tans. He marveled at the fact that the young women stimulated only the lightest whisper of lust. Was he that far into oblivion that he could sign the receipt on his own broken libido? He sat on a bench and watched the river for the small fishing canoes working in close along the banks, their pilots scruff of face, their paddles tilted like medieval lances. They reminded him of McCarthy’s Suttree, of the man who forsook everything promised for everything abject; he suspected real genius in a man like that, though he would be hard-pressed to say why he thought so.
He ate lunch at a riverside restaurant called Calhoun’s. The waitress seated him in a glass room overlooking the water. His table was cut hard down the middle by a stripe of sunlight from overhead, but he liked the view and the relative quiet. He ordered iced tea and a hamburger and watched a long snaking barge crawl with the current, its burden under black tarpaulins. On the opposite bank big cranes were unmanned but appeared to be staged for demolition of the old hospital. The barge came even and blocked his view with its slow dream of gradual movement, setting all surrounding things into their relative contexts of time.
He finished his lunch and paid his bill, went back up toward campus to tour the McClung Museum, derelict this time of the week. It was cool and dark inside, the exhibits maintained with a kind of clinically imposed silence. He started on the bottom floor, walked past the displays of different primate ancestors, rigidly patient in their artificial skeletons. Next door he found the Civil War display with its sabers and bullet-torn tunics, its soft maps of temporary conquest, proof that progress across the ages had been altogether dubious. He liked the display of indigenous Tennessee gems the best, preferring their resistance to becoming anything more than what they were—beautiful pieces of self-sufficient geometry. On the top floor he found the pottery of Egyptians and scale models of their sacred cities, but it was the exhibit of the Mayans that he liked best and where he lingered. He read of their classical period, saw the stone art and the elaborate calendar.
He wondered what would be made of this time he lived in. What would historians write of this life built around objects glowing with the magic of electric power? A world made up of billions of small parts that most men and women walked through without the faintest idea of how they actually worked. What kind of exhibits could be arranged for men like that?
He realized that he’d lost track of things and was late to meet with Easterday. He hurried out through the front doors and past the sculpture of dinosaur bones, bumping into a security guard and speaking a quick apology. When he arrived at the office, he found the man already gathering his things to leave.
“Excuse me, Dr. Easterday, but we’ve met once before,” Stratton began. “At an exhibit of my wife’s several years ago.”
Easterday crammed a sheaf of handwritten papers into his leather briefcase and snugged it by a pair of belted straps. He had not bothered to glance up.
“And who was your wife?” he asked, stroked the slight whiskers of his chin distractedly as he turned to shut off his computer monitor.
“Liza Bryant.”
Easterday’s eyes rose briefly, made a weak effort at smiling.
“Yes, I believe I remember. It was in Atlanta, wasn’t it?”
“Savannah, actually.”
“Yes, that’s right,” he said, caught in the awkwardness of how to go on. “I know it means very little, but my sincere condolences. I didn’t know your wife but through a few professional contacts, but I was upset to hear of her passing. Her work was important. How can I help you?”
“I wanted to talk to you about her pictures. About donating them.”
“Donating them?”
“Yes, for a collection. For the university to house.”
Easterday seemed to weigh this a moment.
“I was just on my way out for the day, Mr. Bryant, but why don’t you let me buy you a drink so we can discuss your offer.”
A quarter of an hour later they were sitting at the bar of the Bistro at the Bijou Theater drinking whiskey highballs. Stratton had parked his car in an overnight garage and walked down, followed Easterday’s directions. They had the place to themselves this time of the afternoon. Gay Street was all busted concrete and cyclone fencing from some work on the sewer system, so the tourists avoided coming this far down the avenue. Nothing but the dark solitude of the leather stools and the reliable attention of the man behind the bar, the full clash of sun on the facade, while quietness enclosed them.
“You’re making a mistake,” Easterday began. “I hope you realize that. It’s foolish to just give these pictures to us. They’re worth a great deal more than we can afford. Now, I’m not about to turn my nose up at a windfall, but I do want you to explain it to me. Otherwise, my conscience might develop a bit of a rash.”
Stratton felt odd to find himself in defense of his intended charity. It wasn’t what he had expected to have to do.
“It’s about her legacy,” he said finally. “If you were to pin me down about it. I want this part of Liza to have a life of its own. I think it deserves that.”
Easterday absorbed this over a philosophical swallow of his whiskey.
“Yes, well. That certainly sounds good, even if it is only about half of what is going on. Listen. I’ll be willing to take you up on this, get the materials housed here and get you at least an honorarium that saves us from looking like a bunch of cheap criminal bastards. Given one condition. Sleep on it. If this still sounds viable tomorrow morning then I’ll get the wheels turning.”
Stratton could see no reason to not honor Easterday’s request. They agreed over a second round and did not talk of it again.
He made reservations for a room at the downtown Marriott and took a cab over, promised Easterday he would see him the following morning. Though still early, he was exhausted by what he’d accomplished, and he drew a bath for a soak in the deep tub. He turned the water as hot as his skin could endure and eased into it. The heat
