THE DEAN RETURNS From the Dead

Chapter One Three weeks into the semester Donahue looked around the campus and sighed. Another summer and autumn had passed into early winter. 1996 was now a memory, having fled before his eyes, not even leaving the occasional dust devil as proof of its swift passage. All summer rain would have been welcome, but now there was rather more than convenient; Christmas went without mistletoe and New Year’s without a date. That’s the way it was. Mary C, having faced the likelihood of leaving for Latin America again without visiting her mother, had decided that, since that unwelcome opportunity for research in the jungles and mountains was removed—a sword of Damocles, she had called it, “without the pleasure of governing under its shadow”—just such a visit was now called for. Donahue had not been invited to accompany her. Ah, well, better to think of the lost potential of the summer of 1996 than the reality of January, 1997. He’d hardly seen her since classes started. The first weeks of the fall semester had dragged, with his mind divided between classes and his unsuccessful effort at courtship. There had been intense heat in August, but the weather soon changed suddenly, being far cooler and wetter than customary, after which normal temperatures returned. He hardly had time to notice these changes, much less enjoy them after the disappearance of Miss Bambi Prudence Purdy, the college financial officer, claimed his attention. When Miss Purdy reappeared, having been on a business trip to investigate financial irregularities, it came out that President Flo Boater had thrown away the note informing her of the trip. Flo Boater never read notes from staff, faculty or students; this was a lesson that she seemed slow to learn, preferring a clean desk over information. Miss Purdy had left to avoid a subsequent embarrassment, having been discovered in the wee hours of the night, perhaps clothed and perhaps not, in the clutches of Professor Stout, or vice-versa. In those weeks Mary C had worried about being exiled to South America, the only way that Flo Boater would promise her tenure—a status that guaranteed her life-long employment unless she did something very out of character, like sticking up a bank or selling grades. The anxiety now passed, only to be replaced by the need to write up her past research on Andean cultures into a scholarly publication—and Mary was suffering from a writer’s block of mountainous proportions. “God, I can’t do this! She complained to Donahue. “Sure you can. You just need to put something on paper.” “What, for example?” she replied, a bit of hostility in his voice. Writing came so easy to him. It wasn’t fair. “Well, maybe your main idea.” “The introduction or the conclusion?” “Either one.” She almost cried, “I don’t have a main idea.” He paused for a moment before making his next suggestion, “Then perhaps an anecdote. Something you saw in the village. Something interesting.” “And where would I use it?” “Oh, it’ll come. If not, you haven’t lost much. But it’ll get the manuscript started.” She hardly paused before replying, “Maybe. After I get my exams graded.” He sighed. There was always something else to do first.