Pages 35-38
Levin, concerned about the time, hoped they were going straight to Professor Fairchild’s office, but the director of composition, without warning, reversed his field and walked quickly up the hall to a door opposite the comp room.
He fished a key out of his pants pocket. “We used this for storage last year but Marv has just cleared it and neatened it up.”
The new instructor secretly looked at his watch as Gilley opened the door and snapped on the light. The office was a small one with a single window and was furnished with a new desk, file case, and two chairs. Through the window Levin caught a view of the long green quadrangle, and beyond that, above the fir trees at the edge of the campus were the western mountains.
“Beautiful.”
“This is yours, Sy.”
“Mine? Holy smoke, I—”
“Don’t say a word,” Gerald said. A muscle in the corner of his mouth flickered.
“Whoever expected anything so wonderful? I figured I would have to share a place with somebody.”
“That’s usually the case with a new man, but you’re a lot more mature, especially with your beard, than some of our crewcut boys upstairs, so I thought I would keep you down here with us.”
“That’s very kind. I’ve dreamed for years of being a college professor. This is so—” He could say no more.
“Glad to help those dreams along.”
Gilley remarked, after an emotional minute: “This office used to belong to someone by the name of Leo Duffy, and the less said the better, but you’ll probably hear about him so I’ll just say who he was. He was here for a year in ’48-’49, a sort of disagreeable radical who made a lot of trouble. Among his wackinesses was the habit of breaking his window panes and I finally put one in of thicker glass which, you notice, he cracked anyway—don’t ask me how or why. When he first came here, Orville took a shine to him and assigned him this office. He treated him like a son and for all his pains got headaches. I was more than thoughtful to him too.” He had to work his throat clear of hoarseness. “After he left—by invitation, I should say—the only man this department has ever employed who got publicly disgraced, Orville had this office turned into a storage room, but he agreed to reconvert it when I told him how tight space was getting. Ferris Farper and someone else upstairs had their eye on it but I kept it for you.” He handed Levin the key.
“I am most grateful.”
“We want you to like it here.”
“I know I will—”
“While we’re at it,” Gilley said, “your department assignment is you’re chairman of the textbook committee. Bucket, Jones, Millard Scowers and Carson Fitch are on it too. I’ll send you a memo next week.”
“Me?” Levin said, uneasily. “Thanks very much but I—I really don’t know the first thing about college textbooks. To perform—er—competently on this committee, I’ll have to make a study of available texts in the field. Couldn’t you for the time being make me just a regular member of the committee, and then after I get to know the books, why maybe then I could—”
“You’re obviously conscientious,” Gilley said, “and I wouldn’t advise you to worry at all about the textbooks. You’ll get to know them as you go along. The salesmen call and they’ll send you what they hope you’re looking for. What with The Elements and Elements Workbooks, Forms A, B, C, for regular, and D for remedial classes, in use, all we really have to worry about is a new freshman reader once in a while. We’ve kept Science in Technology as our reader for the last five years because it’s been popular with the students. For the lit classes Orville usually picks the texts himself with an occasional assist by Bullock, Kuck, or Merdith Schultz—his is the office next door to yours, opposite Bucket’s, but his wife has been seriously sick and he isn’t around much more than he has to be. Anyway, if you take the time to examine the books that come in the mail—just thumb through them—you’ll more than do your job.”
“I will and thanks for everything.” Levin looked at his watch. “Wow, it’s ten after. My appointment was for two.”
“Nothing to worry about,” Gilley said calmly. “I told Orville I’d be showing you around first.”
“I like to start out right.” He tried not to laugh but did.
“You have. We’ll go right away. Since talking with you I have confidence in your ability to do a good job. As I said, we’re looking for people who can hold up their end of it and keep the department running smoothly. This is a fine place to start your college teaching, and if you’re our type, it’s a good place to stay. We don’t pretend we’re anything more than a typical American state college. The atmosphere is relaxed. There’s no ‘publish or perish’ hanging over everybody’s head. There are no geniuses around to make you uncomfortable. Life is peaceful here—people deserve that after all we’ve gone through in the last generation. We don’t ask more than that a man does his work conscientiously—his share of it. What we don’t want around are troublemakers. If someone is dissatisfied, if he doesn’t like what we do, if he doesn’t respect other people’s intimate rights and peace of mind, the sooner he goes on his way the better. If he likes it here and wants to stay on, at the rate we’re growing I’m sure we can keep him. We don’t offer the best of salaries but we do advance people in not too long a time, and once you become an assistant professor you’re on permanent tenure. If you’re the type I think you are, Sy—and so, incidentally, does Pauline—you can be sure of a worthwhile career here. On the other hand, if you don’t like the climate, let’s say, and want to go elsewhere, the experience you get here will make it that much easier for you. That’s up to you and all right with us.”
He said in afterthought, observing his shoe, “We’ve got a new dean, the man who replaced Dean Feeney, and I guess he seems to want to make some changes here and there. Well, they may be good ones and they may not, but I’ve heard him say we’ll need some first-class people for the responsible jobs.”
Levin felt oddly wrung out. “Thanks, but could we go in now? I hate to be late—”
“Righto.”