Visiting Professor Read Free Page A

us the woist ice storm since 1929—rained
     cats ‘n’ dawgs mosta yesterday, huh? Last night the temperature went an’ plummeted on down to five.”
    “Five degrees Fahrenheit,” Sebastian Skarr notes, “is the equivalent of minus fifteen degrees Celsius.”
    “Cats? Dogs?” Lemuel, bewildered, asks.
    “That’s an American idiot,” Charlie Atwater explains. He hiccups sheepishly.
    Up ahead, a pulsating light atop a vehicle sends tiny orange explosions skidding across the ice-lacquered pavement. The minibus
     catches up with a truck spewing sand over the highway. Squinting through his window into the night, Lemuel begins to make
     out the branches and power lines coated with ice and sagging under its weight. Slipping into a tantalizing fiction, he conjures
     up a night moth batting its wings somewhere in the vast wasteland of Siberia. The trivial turbulence created when its wings
     flail the air sets off tiny ripples that amplify with time and distance to produce the swirling tempest of ice paralyzing
     the east coast of America the Beautiful.
    Another footprint of chaos!
    D.J. points out the road sign planted at the spot where the countryside ends and the village begins. The sign, encased in
     ice, reads: “Backwater University—founded 1835.” Underneath is a smaller sign: “Home of the Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary
     Chaos-Related Studies.” Moments later Perkins eases the bus to a stop in front of a green clapboard house with a wraparound
     porch set back from Main Street. A gust of icy air invades the bus as Perkins, his mackinaw buttonedto his jawbone, his earflaps down, opens the door and, gripping the rope handle of Lemuel’s cardboard valise, picks his way
     along the sanded path toward the house.
    The Director twists in his seat. “What with the cold et al., I think I’ll pass up the chance to go in with you.” Leaning toward
     Lemuel, he lowers his voice. “Who cuts your hair? You don’t mind my asking?”
    “I cut my hair. In a mirror.”
    The Director slips an envelope into a pocket of Lemuel’s faded brown overcoat. “Some cash to tide you over until you deposit
     your first paycheck.” He clears his throat. “Uh, you won’t resent a suggestion?”
    “If you please.”
    “There’s a barbershop in town over the general store.” He treats Lemuel to a conspiratorial wink. “It’s open mornings until
     noon.” The Director speaks again in a normal voice. “The professor you’ll be sharing the house with is expecting you. Tomorrow
     there’s a faculty luncheon in your honor, after which I’ll show you your office and introduce you to your girl Friday.”
    “That’s what we call a secretary,” D.J. explains in her Serbo-Croatian.
    Wondering who will take his letters Monday through Thursday, Lemuel makes his way up the aisle, mumbling his thanks, shaking
     hands right and left, thinking, as he approaches the door, that he is about to parachute from a plane into an icy abyss. He
     gives his khaki army-surplus scarf another turn around his neck, tightens the straps on his Red Army knapsack and steps into
     the void. Making his way up the footpath, he crosses Perkins duck-walking back to the bus. Perkins attempts to high-five Lemuel,
     but gets only a puzzled look for his trouble.
    “Don’t they high-five folks in Russia, huh, professor from Petersboig?” the chauffeur calls cheerily.
    Lemuel pauses on the front porch to watch the minibus pull away from the curb. The red brake lights flicker and vanish around
     a corner. In the stillness, Lemuel raises his right hand over his head and stares up at his fingers.
    High. Five. Ah! High-five.
    The whetted air knifes through Lemuel’s corduroy trousers, numbing his thighs. He turns and reaches for the corroded brass
     baseball, but the door flies open before he can rap the baseball against the corrodedbrass catcher’s mit. A hand shoots out from a starched cuff. Powerful fingers grip Lemuel’s khaki scarf and haul him