Free Vineyard Fear by Philip Craig Page B

instead of drink. Probably it’s for the best. The drinkers can always meet later down at the Duke of Ellington, and usually do. Anyway, the meeting will probably last for a couple of hours, so I thought you could drop me off at the college and then go on up to the house and get yourself settled in.”
    â€œSounds okay to me.”
    â€œOf course, if you’d rather come to the college, I’m willing to pass you off as a visiting scholar. You can walk the ivied yards and ogle the women like the rest of our younger colleagues.”
    â€œNo thanks. I’ll go to your place and then maybe take a stroll around town. It’s been a while since I was up here.”
    â€œA wise decision. This evening, I’ll take you to supper at the Duke and afterward we’ll go upstairs to the Higher Realm and play some poker with the chaps.”
    â€œMy poker-playing skills are pretty rusty.”
    â€œYou’ll be in good company. Most of the gang who play are good scholars but terrible poker players. They leave their brains in their briefcases and are easy picking for guys like Lute Martingale. You’ll meet Lute tonight, if you decide to play. He’s a sort of permanent part-time teacher and grad student here, but actually supports himself playing poker with rich undergraduate kids who’ve had a floating game on campus for as far back as I can remember. As long as you don’t let Lute sucker you into a big pot, you’ll be okay. The rest of us are suckers.”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œYou can trust me, I’m a professor!”
    Two hours after leaving Woods Hole, we turned off 495 and drove north into Weststock, a lovely little village nestled near the large mill towns along the Merrimack River but untouched by the grime and smudge of those oncethriving industrial centers. Instead of great abandoned mills and rows of sagging tenement houses, Weststock’s winding streets were lined with clean brick homes, white houses with flower gardens and green lawns, and small stores catering to the college community which dominated the town.
    The college itself was a Georgian collection of brick and frame buildings built around yards and scattered with green playing fields. It had been established almost two hundred years before by enterprising New Englanders who thought they could produce a college at least as good as Harvard and Yale and who had been right. Weststock College was much smaller than either of its famous rivals, but bowed to neither in its claim to academic excellence, particularly in the liberal arts. It was, in fact, almost idiosyncratic in its insistence upon studies which, in John Skye’s words, “taught its graduates nothing whatever which would help them earn money,” but which nevertheless produced notable figures in the humanities and theoretical sciences.
    It was not quite my kind of place, but it was ideal for John. I followed his directions to the college building of his choice and accepted the key to his house.
    â€œI’ll walk home after this is over,” he said, getting out. “I’ll see you there, probably about three or so. Stick the vodka in the freezer. Your room is the one in back, by the garage.”
    â€œGotcha.”
    I drove across the campus, looking at the summer students in their shorts and sandals, books under their arms, small packs on their backs. Some walked the brick sidewalks, some sat on benches; others lay on the green lawns, books and satchels beside them. They talked, studied, lazed, and looked young and healthy. I tried to remember what it had been like to be that age.
    One reason that it was hard for me was that when I had been that age, I’d been going to, living in, or beingshipped back from Vietnam. I’d come home after a very short tour with some metal in my legs, the gift of a Vietnamese artillery man or mortar man who had lobbed a shell right next to me while I was blundering around in the dark