in and break off pieces of the bricks, handling the yellow gold in their hands as if cradling a baby. When each of the colleagues has taken their handful, they turn to you as one.
You know it is not right. It is a defilement, a spit in the face of this man’s illustrious career. He was a precious resource, not the source of a precious resource. He was kind to you at the beginning of the semester, relaying tips on teaching methods, on syllabi, on internal college politics. There was a gleam in his eye as he passed on his wisdom, as if it were a secret confidence.
This could be you one day. If you continue to teach, to impart your limited learning to students throughout the years, all the while inhaling the dust of your teachings. One long distant day, you might be the one overcome by the wracking and hacking, watching as the vultures do nothing but wait for you to quit this life. The vision is sudden and real.
But then you remember the vacant gazes of your students, the vapidity present as you tried to explain simple grammar, and it is this vision that dominates. These students with minute attention spans and unearned self-importance, who prefer to coast rather than excel, marking time until their academic prison sentence is over, these students need you. As one of the defenders of knowledge, one of the soldiers against indifference and ignorance, it is up to you to engage in the Sisyphean task of educating these young minds, and you cannot do it with such a paucity of teaching resources.
You reach into the man’s bloodless chest cavity, of course you do, and take your share.
One Big Crunch
Dashed yellow lines strobe past in my headlights, rolling to the left under the car, dividing the asphalt into neat little lanes. The trees flash by in the darkness, blurred purgatory grey. I pull the Mustang out of my lane, line up those pulsing yellow dashes dead center in my grille. I edge the wheel to the left, back to the right, taunting, teasing. The beltline around Raleigh, North Carolina is desolate at 3 a.m., free of witnesses. White Zombie roars out of the speakers: “. . . eye for an eye and a tooth for the truth . . .” I nose the Mustang past sixty, past seventy, past eighty. I’m all over the road now.
Flashing blue lights appear behind me and I smile.
I slow down and pull over to the shoulder. As I wait for the highway patrolman behind me to get out of his car, I flip open the small panel next to the clutch with the toe of my boot, exposing the red button. I unlock my seatbelt and roll down the window, inhaling all the smells of the night, brought into crystal clarity by the bitter cold.
I watch in the side mirror as the cop slams his car door and lumbers toward me. He walks with authority, his steps stiff, his arms straight down at his sides. He approaches my window with a scowl on his face, apparently annoyed just to be working at this godforsaken hour. The badge on his jacket tells me that his name is Ken Tyler. I grin up at him.
“Yes, officer?” I say in my most innocent voice. “What can I do for you?”
The outline of a bulletproof vest stretches out the cop’s thin jacket, but it won’t save him tonight. “Sir, place both your hands on the steering wheel,” he says in a rumbling tone. I do so, with a hearty slap of meat on vinyl. “Do you have any idea how fast you were going back there?”
“Absolutely none.”
“I had you clocked at eighty-two. That’s twenty-seven over the speed limit. Where were you going to in such a hurry, sir?”
“Nowhere in particular. Just out for a drive.”
The cop fills my window; his breathing steams in the night air, vanishing as it crosses the threshold into my car.
“License and registration please.”
When I lean over to open the glove compartment, I stomp the red button on the floorboard. I dive to the floor of the car, bruising my ribcage against the steering wheel, and cover my head with my arms. There’s a loud pop, and the car rocks to the
You know it is not right. It is a defilement, a spit in the face of this man’s illustrious career. He was a precious resource, not the source of a precious resource. He was kind to you at the beginning of the semester, relaying tips on teaching methods, on syllabi, on internal college politics. There was a gleam in his eye as he passed on his wisdom, as if it were a secret confidence.
This could be you one day. If you continue to teach, to impart your limited learning to students throughout the years, all the while inhaling the dust of your teachings. One long distant day, you might be the one overcome by the wracking and hacking, watching as the vultures do nothing but wait for you to quit this life. The vision is sudden and real.
But then you remember the vacant gazes of your students, the vapidity present as you tried to explain simple grammar, and it is this vision that dominates. These students with minute attention spans and unearned self-importance, who prefer to coast rather than excel, marking time until their academic prison sentence is over, these students need you. As one of the defenders of knowledge, one of the soldiers against indifference and ignorance, it is up to you to engage in the Sisyphean task of educating these young minds, and you cannot do it with such a paucity of teaching resources.
You reach into the man’s bloodless chest cavity, of course you do, and take your share.
One Big Crunch
Dashed yellow lines strobe past in my headlights, rolling to the left under the car, dividing the asphalt into neat little lanes. The trees flash by in the darkness, blurred purgatory grey. I pull the Mustang out of my lane, line up those pulsing yellow dashes dead center in my grille. I edge the wheel to the left, back to the right, taunting, teasing. The beltline around Raleigh, North Carolina is desolate at 3 a.m., free of witnesses. White Zombie roars out of the speakers: “. . . eye for an eye and a tooth for the truth . . .” I nose the Mustang past sixty, past seventy, past eighty. I’m all over the road now.
Flashing blue lights appear behind me and I smile.
I slow down and pull over to the shoulder. As I wait for the highway patrolman behind me to get out of his car, I flip open the small panel next to the clutch with the toe of my boot, exposing the red button. I unlock my seatbelt and roll down the window, inhaling all the smells of the night, brought into crystal clarity by the bitter cold.
I watch in the side mirror as the cop slams his car door and lumbers toward me. He walks with authority, his steps stiff, his arms straight down at his sides. He approaches my window with a scowl on his face, apparently annoyed just to be working at this godforsaken hour. The badge on his jacket tells me that his name is Ken Tyler. I grin up at him.
“Yes, officer?” I say in my most innocent voice. “What can I do for you?”
The outline of a bulletproof vest stretches out the cop’s thin jacket, but it won’t save him tonight. “Sir, place both your hands on the steering wheel,” he says in a rumbling tone. I do so, with a hearty slap of meat on vinyl. “Do you have any idea how fast you were going back there?”
“Absolutely none.”
“I had you clocked at eighty-two. That’s twenty-seven over the speed limit. Where were you going to in such a hurry, sir?”
“Nowhere in particular. Just out for a drive.”
The cop fills my window; his breathing steams in the night air, vanishing as it crosses the threshold into my car.
“License and registration please.”
When I lean over to open the glove compartment, I stomp the red button on the floorboard. I dive to the floor of the car, bruising my ribcage against the steering wheel, and cover my head with my arms. There’s a loud pop, and the car rocks to the
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