you at the gym Wednesday dawning?”
“Of course, and this time I’ll squash your butt, so to speak.” When the others had left, Winchester asked Mead to remain behind for a moment. “James,” he said, “Frank Griffin is a rather sour man . . . different. He is abrupt, he thinks he’s the only busy person with a grant and a lab to run, and he is entirely absent of humor, as far as I can see. Plus, he bears a load of resentment. For all that, as Phelps said, he’s a fine scientist.”
“Resentment over what, sir?” Mead asked.
“No need to air dirty laundry so soon. But in the barest terms, he was passed over for department chair twice. Both times, the deciding faculty votes came from Osborn Lab. That sharpened his basic distrust of ecology and ecologists. He knows whole animal biology is in a secondary position, and he likes to whip the underdog—kick it, too.” Winchester raised one corner of his mouth. “I’m afraid he may prove a challenge for you, not to say a roadblock.”
“But the catalogue states that I can dismiss committee members if I wish . . .”
“And so you may. But the department wants a diversity of faculty interests on each advisory committee—that’s why he was appointed in the first place—and his replacement might be worse. Besides, to dismiss Frank would only alienate him, and he heads the departmental grants committee—a sop to him last time he was passed over for chairman. You might find you need that support. It may be better for now to try to work with the man.”
“Hmm,” said James.
“Who knows? His attitudes might even soften from the experience when he sees you doing good work. We can expect some pressure from him to settle on a thesis topic sooner than you might wish, and on a lab study rather than one in the field. But don’t be intimidated. It’s your PhD. Here, let’s look over your classes.”
Winchester peered over his half-glasses at Mead’s proposed course of studies for the fall semester. “That Computer Methods course can’t hurt; more and more students are using the mainframes, which are getting smaller and more approachable all the time. Saves a lot of time over a slide rule when you get to your statistics. They say personal computers might be next—imagine! And Evolution is my own favorite class to teach; I hope you’ll enjoy it too. I’m interested to see that you’ve selected Runic Lit. for an elective. I’ll look forward to glancing over your shoulder. And with Phelps’s Advanced Population Biology, you’ll have a very full term.”
“Yes, I have a bad habit of taking big bites from the smorgasbord.”
“One or two more like that, and you should be ready for full-time research. Here, let me sign that.” Once again, George Winchester had managed to banish his new grad student’s fears, at least for the time being. Then he assigned Mead a workspace of his own, an office-cum-laboratory; explained the curatorial assistantship at the museum, which was paying part of his way; and wished him good day. And by the time Mead made his way back to Limewood Beach, he almost felt as if he might make it in New Haven after all.
Mead began his coursework. At odd times he explored the wondrous Yale libraries, prowled the campus, and explored the individual colleges. Their beautiful courtyards and cloisters softened the harshness of the industrial seaboard city, with its edgeward sprawl, interior decay, and ever-present crime. The campus shone in its mellow Federal bricks and college-Gothic masonry from the 1920s. He thought the paternal gaze of the green copper weathervane, a six-foot owl perched atop Sterling Library, conveyed the intended atmosphere of Jefferson’s “academical village,” though the streets of poverty huddled just beyond. Mead’s studies prospered, and one night on his way to one of the college dining halls he realized that he was just a face, like any other. By Halloween, he felt he belonged.
When the frosts came and the katydids didn’t anymore, the nights fell strangely silent. Then a new sound took over the night—the rush of thousands of oak and maple leaves swept by wind. Never having seen a northeastern fall and its many hardwood hues, he thought of paint chips in a hardware store. The cottonwoods and aspens in the Rockies had not prepared him for an incandescent autumn in New England. When the colors faded in the shortening evenings, Mead left off tramping through the leaves and withdrew to the cellars of the museum.
His assistantship consisted of helping to curate the entomological collections in the Peabody Museum of Natural History, a resource Winchester had brought to international significance. After dinner in a nearby café, Mead worked for an hour or two, spreading, labeling, and arranging specimens, before catching a late bus to Branford. One night in late November, between mounting batches of African butterflies, he was topping up preserving fluid in glass specimen containers. More to his liking than jars full of yellowed, clenched, and bulbous-bodied spiders were trays of arthropods preserved naturally and perfectly in lumps of Baltic amber. A large body of work had been done on these gemmed sarcophagi by the great Yale spider man, Alexander Petrunkevitch. Mead saw what it had gotten him; this cozy corner in the museum’s bowel was no anonymous nook nor nameless cranny, for it bore a plaque on which he read in the gloom: the alexander petrunkevitch arachnology alcove.
“A fine tribute,” Mead announced to the general company, but no one replied, pro or con. He took down a tome on amber spiders and marveled at the many species Professor Petrunkevitch had found immured in the fossilized pitch of Baltic trees.
Reaching up to replace the book in its rank of dusty black volumes, he spied behind it a singular volume that didn’t seem to fit among the rest. He gathered it down and saw that it was a blue, clothbound record book, much stained and used, with manuscript text between the covers. He spread the crackly pages and read the title page, written in a steady hand in soft pencil: “Field Book and Journal: Volume Twelve.” And down in the corner, in smaller script, the name of the writer: “October Carson.”
It was late, so Mead put the odd volume back in its place. In so doing, he dislodged a spider book and saw that the entire shelf was double stacked. Quickly now he pulled down the first row and found a baker’s dozen of this Carson person’s journals crouching there in the pale amber light. His curiosity aroused beyond his craving for sleep, he selected the first volume of the notebooks and began to read. Outside, the first snow swirled about the museum’s tower.
6
October 31, 1969. Crossed the Columbia River into Washington State today, in a constant curtain of rain. What a very wet, green land. Conifer hills broken up by yellow maples, their leaves dropping like big floppy washcloths, ground to a brown pulp on the highway by the interminable train of logging trucks. These low hills are pretty, or would be if they weren’t chopped to hell for logs. The ships down under the high bridge from Astoria are piled high with logs bound for Japan, even though the chat in the coffee shop back in Hebo was all about the local mills shutting down—go figure. These lumpy hills look like the latest load of draftees skinned by a bad barber. My last ride was with a kind log-truck driver who pulled over in the rain, so I kept such thoughts to myself.
He asked what I did for a living, and I said I was looking around. “For work?” he asked. “Good luck!”
“No, not really,” I said.
“Then what for?”
“Ahh, something nothing,” I replied. He stared at me strangely, and I explained. “Sorry. That’s New Guinea pidgin for ‘whatever.’ ” I thanked him for the ride when he turned off toward Longview, and I hopped down. He still looked puzzled—thought I was on something, I think. Something, nothing; whatever. Hemlock boughs and cedar bark blew off in his wake, their sweet smell mixing with the sour diesel
