The phone rang only once on its little table before John answered.
“Hello?”
“Johnny?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Senta, baby. How are you?”
“Uhm, uh, fine. How did you get this number?”
“Nesta works for the phone company. I was so sad about you being in trouble that she set up her computer to get news alerts on you, both names. Then when we found out that you were free she used her access to get your mother’s number. You remember... you told me your mom’s name.”
“And this phone is still listed under that?” John said. “Of course — in case she ever wanted to go back to her old life.”
“Huh?”
“How are you, Senta? How’s Nesta?”
“She’s a wonder. Every day I thank God we’re together again. I don’t work for Lou anymore. That was just too weird. Taking classes for my real estate license. But I’m calling because I wanted to know if you needed anything.”
“This call is the best thing you could give me.”
“That’s sweet,” Senta said. “I’d come out there and tie you down but Nesta and me are working on the house. You could come stay with us for a while if you wanted. We have a room for visitors.”
“Um... that’s really nice, Senta. Actually it’s a wonderful offer but I should probably stay put for the time being. How’s the house coming along?”
John sat back, closed his eyes and for the next hour listened while Senta told him about her dream house. Every ten minutes or so she’d say, “But what about you, baby?” He’d tell her that it was too soon to talk about it.
When John hung up the doorbell sounded. For a moment he felt that these two events must have been connected.
“Who’s there?” John asked through the door.
“Morton Brown,” a man said.
“What do you want, Mr. Brown?”
“May I come in, Professor Woman?”
“Maybe after you answer my question; maybe not.”
“I’m dean of the social sciences department at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn.”
“City College?”
“It’s in that system.”
“What do you want with me?”
“To offer you a job.”
33
“... Felton Lewis teaches journalism at Medgar.” Morton Brown and John faced each other in the chairs at the bay window.
“He said that he’d talked to you,” the dean continued, “and studied online recordings and videos of your lectures at NUSW. He’s very impressed with your process, taking on the function of the study of history as well as the meaning of historical forces in everyday life.”
“I don’t know anyone named Felton.”
“He calls himself Sharkey when he’s working.”
“Oh.”
Morton was a tall, fleshy man with gray-brown skin and murky gray eyes. His hair comprised the colors dark copper, dull gold and lusterless gray. John wondered how many races it took to create the academician’s features.
“And what kind of job did you have in mind?”
“A visiting lecturer.”
“A temporary resident deconstructionist historian?”
“Exactly.” Morton Brown smiled revealing a space between his front teeth. “We’ve already asked the best students in the department. They are very excited.”
“I faked my records in the City College system in order to get into Yale,” John said. “I can’t imagine that I’d be welcomed with open arms.”
“We’ll be hiring you as a guest. The central bureaucracy has nothing to say about that.”
“But why would you want me, an accused murderer, in the classroom?”
“We believe that you will be a valuable addition to our curriculum,” Morton said with emphasis.
“But you don’t know me.”
“I know Professor Lewis and I’ve also seen your lectures. I was especially intrigued by the Trash Can Talk.”
John thought about the man he had slashed a few hours before. He was bleeding heavily; maybe he’d died. It was clearly self-defense even though John was unaware of the pistol in his attacker’s hand. Because of this ignorance he was morally culpable if not legally so.
And now there was a man offering him a job...
“Is there a community newspaper that serves the neighborhoods around your school, Professor Brown?”
“Yes. The Clarion.”
“You know I confessed to the crime of manslaughter?”
“Of course I do,” Morton allowed. “You’re a kind of hero among us.”
“Us?”
“Black college teachers, men and women, who want to, want to actualize the education we’re giving our students. I bet even white professors like you. I mean how many teachers since Socrates actually lived what they taught?”
“Socrates wasn’t a murderer.”
“Neither are you.”
“I would have thought I’d become a pariah at places like Medgar Evers.”
“No, sir. For many of us you are a herald.”
John thought again about the man he’d slashed, about the violence seething in himself. Maybe he needed the protection of a university. There the world might be safe from him.
“I will agree to teach a course I had been thinking about before my troubles out west,” he said. “The name of the class is The School of Suspicion.”
“What is it about?” Brown asked.
“The subject is suspect.”
“Is it how one interrogates their world?”
“More how they fail to understand the world — even as they create it.”
“And what does that have to do with the local paper?”
“I will admit thirty students to the class,” John said. “Fifteen can come from the student body but the other fifty percent needs to be people from the community who will have to apply directly to me.”
“What will be your criteria for acceptance?”
“I won’t know until I’ve read what they have to say.”
“You’ve been thinking about this for some time,” Professor Brown concluded.
“Not at all. I do have a question though.”
“What’s that?”
“Are you acquainted with an organization called the Platinum Path?”
“That rich man’s cult?”
“Yes.”
“What about it?”
“Are you a member?”
“Do I look like a rich white man?”
“Your race eludes me, Professor Brown, but that’s not what I asked you.”
“No, I wouldn’t even know how to find them.”
“Good. It is now July,” John said. “I’d like my class to start in the spring term.”
By late September John had received two hundred eleven applications from community members wanting to attend the infamous professor’s class. The college students would go through the same admission process.
There were one hundred eighty-six student applications but only one of these interested John.
The class was titled The School of Suspicion: The Interpretation of the Formation of the Modern World, Created by Forces Unknown and Undeniable.
The application form consisted of just one request: In one page please write, type or word process a thumbnail biographical statement of your life as it pertains to your desire to take this course.
John spent October alone in his mother’s old apartment poring over the applications. Any document over one page was automatically discarded.
Mary Freeman at thirty-one years of age had five children and no husband. She’d been a straight-A student through high school and expected to go to college, there to become some kind of great thinker. Instead she fell in love with a boy named Alonzo. Twelve years, three arrests, one conviction, two addictions (not including love) and one restraining order later she requested admission to John’s class in hopes of finding her way back.