trying to pull your face off, the world was your closet."
Pat finished his drink and tossed his paper cup on the ground.
His mother told him to pick it up and put it in the litter basket, a task he performed with immense good cheer. Then she took his hand and they began to walk slowly out of the park.
Ralph watched them go with a feeling of trepidation, hoping the woman's fears and worries would turn out to be unjustified, fearing that they wouldn't be.
"When I applied for a job in the Derry High History Department-this was in 1951 -I was fresh from two years teaching in the sticks, way to hell and gone in Lubec, and I figured if I could get along up there with no questions being asked, I could get along anywhere. But Bob took one look at me-hell, inside me-with those X-ray eyes of his and just knew. And he wasn't shy, either.
"If I decide to offer you this job and you decide to take it, Mr.
McGovern, may I be assured that there will never be so much as an iota of trouble over the matter of your sexual preference?"
"Sexual preference, Ralph! Man oh man! I'd never even dreai ed of such a phrase before that day, but it came sliding out of his month slicker than a ball-bearing coated with Crisco. I started to get up on my high horse, tell him I didn't have the slightest idea what he was talking about but I resented the hell out of it just the same-on general principles, you might say-and then I took another look at him and decided to save my energy. I might have fooled some people up in Lubec, but I wasn't fooling Bob Polhurst. He wasn't thirty himself yet, probably hadn't been south of Kittery more than a dozen times in his whole life, but he knew everything that mattered about me, and all it had taken him to find it out was one twenty-minute interview.
"'No, sir, not an iota," I said, just as meek as Mary's little lamb."
McGovern dabbed at his eyes with the handkerchief again, but Ralph had an idea that this time the gesture was mostly theatrical.
"In the twenty-three years before I went off to teach at Derry Community College, Bob taught me everything I know about teaching history and playing chess. He was a brilliant player... he certainly would have given that windbag Faye Chapin some hard bark to chew on, I can tell you that. I only beat him once, and that was after the Alzheimer's started to take hold.
I never played him again after that.
"And there were other things. He never forgot a joke. He never forgot the birthdays or anniversaries of the people who were close to him-he didn't send cards or give gifts, but he always offered congratulations and good wishes, and no one ever doubted his sincerity.
He published over sixty articles on teaching history and on the Civil War, which was his specialty. In 1967 and 1968 he wrote a book called Later That Summer, about what happened in the months following Gettysburg. He let me read the manuscript ten years ago, and I think it's the best book on the Civil War I've ever read-the only one that even comes close is a novel called The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara. Bob wouldn't hear of publishing it, though. When I asked him why, he said that I of all people should understand his reasons."
McGovern paused briefly, looking out across the park, which was filled with green-gold light and black interlacings of shadow which moved and shifted with each breath of wind.
"He said he had a fear of exposure."
"Okay," Ralph said. "I get it."
"Maybe this sums him up best of all: he used to do the big Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle in ink. I poked him about that once-accused him of hubris. He gave me a grin and said, 'There's a big difference between pride and optimism, Bill-I'm an optimist, that's all."
"Anyway, you get the picture. A kind man, a good teacher, a brilliant mind. His specialty was the Civil War, and now he doesn't even know what a civil war is, let alone who won ours. Hell, he doesn't even know his own name, and at some point soon-the sooner the better, actually-he's going to die without any idea that he ever lived."
A middle-aged man in a University of Maine tee-shirt and a pair of ragged bluejeans came shuffling through