Free IBID by Mark Dunn

neck. And then another and yet another while a sincere effort was launched by my fellow faculty members to do absolutely nothing to stop the assault. You will remember that they sat—each of them—quietly, with arms folded, not willing to move an inch, except for professors Rabdau and Gilbert who shifted and squirmed in most animated fashion as they debated whether the tomato was a vegetable or a fruit. Such a night of debasement and abashment it was to become for me. But such a night of heroism it became for you, as you sprang from your seat and took a tomato or two yourself (to the rump, I do believe) in the course of helping me from the red-plastered podium and off that slippery stage. I shall never forget your concern for me at that moment.
    You are poised for great things, my dear young friend. I will stand in the wings and prompt if needed, but will mostly, I daresay, commend your time upon this world stage. It was a joy to have you as student and it will be a joy to have you as lifelong friend.
    With sincere affection,
    Andrew Bloor
    11. Jonathan unfortunately missed his graduation. There are several theories as to why Jonathan was unable to attend graduation ceremonies at Devanter. His diary is strangely silent, stating only “I did not go.” Some, including Glover and Cyril in his unfinished biographical manuscript
The Story of Jonathan Blashe—
, believe that Great Jane was so distraught over the fact that Jonathan would soon be returning home and thus out of her life, that she made a clumsy attempt at suicide which Jonathan had to foil. Lucianne Flom theorizes that Jane probably chose the then popular arsenic-incremental method—a painful and ultimately harebrained way to kill oneself—which involved taking larger and larger doses of the poison over a period of several hours. Flom imagines that Jonathan’s heroic efforts involved intermittent dashes to the kitchen to restrain Great Jane from stirring arsenic into her freshened tea, followed by an ebb of casual conversation, and then another mad dash for the kitchen, upon Great Jane’s sudden announcement, “I believe I’ll have another spot of tea.” Flom and Furman surmise that this pattern played out for hours and did not end until Jonathan thought to toss the vial of arsenic out the window.
    Another theory, this one posited by Odger, is that Jonathan got his third foot caught in a loose floorboard and it took several hours to pry it out.
    I find both theories ludicrous. My guess is that Jonathan was making a statement of protest regarding Bloor’s dismissal.

7
SO BEWARE, SAY A PRAYER
    1. For Jonathan it was a summer of disappointment. Cyril Furman
, The Story of Jonathan Blash—[ette].
With the family farm back on uncertain financial footing due, in part, to Addicus’s latest accident and Emmaline’s not infrequent participation in a local quilting circle in which morphine was freely dispensed by the wife of local physician R. J. Blanton, it is no wonder that Jonathan sought emotional solace through reconciliation with Mildred. It came as a severe blow, then, for him to learn that his high school sweetheart had been secretly married to her alcoholic cousin Clyde for two years.
    The threads of the rich tapestry of personalities and events that draped Jonathan’s early years were tightly interwoven during this period. Within six years, Dr. Blanton would earn national notoriety as perpetrator of a scandalously unsuccessful experimental tran-species organ transplant—one that involved none other than Mildred’s cousin/ husband Clyde. Clyde Haywood became, for three days, the proud owner of the liver of a chimpanzee, introduced by the morphine-careless Dr. Blanton for purposes of reversing many years of alcohol abuse.
    In 1919, two years after the death of her husband from massive organ rejection, Mildred, hearing of Jonathan’s own tragic personal loss (see Chapter 8 , note 5), wrote her former beloved to express her condolences, as well as her