In The Mind's Eye

Office Hours

Office Hours

For the first time in the twelve years of his musty tenure, the cell they called an office comforted him. Galen Ferris had acquired significance in his life. Maybe, finally, one thing in a long series of beginnings had concluded fruitfully. No other accomplishment, not even his successful running of the gauntlet to become assistant professor, had yielded this balming satisfaction. The letter had arrived, and he would be lecturing on Hawthorne to a conference of his peers. So Galen felt good, and he had no one to tell it to. Fortunately.

The best part about the sterile beige office that day, and for the past seven weeks, was his office mate’s sabbatical leave. Though he shared Galen’s space, as they say, Jason P. Galloway, PhD. Professor of English most definitely had never considered Galen to be his peer. Not as a teacher, not as a colleague and especially not as a scholar. And Galen had grown to value Jason’s prejudice. Jason, a typical drone of secondary sources, was the type of scholar who would flit to the library, ignore the primary text’s human story and buzz for hours among what other scholars had already unearthed. No matter what he thought of Jason’s scholarship, Galen was now happy that it allowed for Jason’s sabbatical.

During his drinking days, Galen had once succumbed to Jason’s offering him the manuscript to read. It was typical of Jason’s faux largesse. He thought it might be a spur to get Galen back into the collegial flock. Galen, in a moment of weak stupor, acquiesced and found the experience dreadful. He managed not only the whole bottle of tequila gold but also a couple of seconals that Saturday night. An obliging undergraduate, a mildly demonic street hustler who was flunking Galen’s section of Introduction to Critical Thinking had, as they say, copped a couple of reds for the prof. The perfunctory manuscript, a treatise on the analogs of floral imagery in Hawthorne’s tales served to deepen and broaden Galen’s galloping sense of remorse and self-pity. If some lumpen yahoo in his most aberrant ritual to burn books had tried his damnedest, he could not have so thoroughly assassinated literature, as did Jason’s brutal flame of academic arson. But Jason had got it published. And Galen remained among the unpublished and unknown.

Even so, Galen would not allow himself hatred for Jason. Too much feeling would be misplaced and ill spent. Outwardly he showed Jason collegiality, and inwardly he catalogued Jason as the personification of the slow death of higher education. Jason was arrogant and slipshod in the classroom, petulant and opportunistic among the faculty and, as they say, a brown-noser with the administration. Besides, he was taller than Galen. Nevertheless, as a result of that bathetic manuscript, Galen was indebted to Jason for igniting his curiosity in Hawthorne. And he knew he could do better, so he did.

His stubby hand patted the back of Jason’s swivel chair in qualified thanks, as he eased his chubby body by to get to his desk. He thumped into his chair, folded his hands on his belly, swiveled to face the window and clumped his feet on the sill.

Late Friday afternoon in early spring had never before offered quite this glow. When Galen designed his schedule for this semester, he had hoped things might develop this way. He left the last two of his mandatory office hours for 3 to 5 o’clock on Friday afternoons. The campus would be virtually empty, especially of students. He would be clean on the contract and would be allowing himself the possibility of reflection and an opportunity to do some of his own work.

But for this moment he wanted to languish in the blessing of his success. For the only time in his life he had received some peer recognition of his scholarship. He turned slightly and eyed the envelope centered neatly on his desk pad. It contained the gracious and enthusiastic invitation for Galen Ferris to deliver his paper on Hawthorne’s love theme at the summer conference of the New England League of Retired Women Professors of American Literature. A fringe group, perhaps, but one accepts praise from whatever legitimate source. He smiled into the face of the setting sun, leaned back, lit a cigarette and closed his eyes.