Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend Read Online Free PDF Page A

responsibility. That’s rubbish, of course, but it gets me by if I dare to reflect too
     much on what I’m doing.”
    “Well, at least you’re honest about it. Don’t you wear a suit and tie when you’re teaching?”
    “No, I used to when I first started. Damn chalk dust gets all over the good material. Besides, this climate’s just too deucedly
     cold in the winter to dress very fancy. Somehow I never felt right wearing long Johns underneath pinstripes. As the tailors
     say, the cloth doesn’t hang properly. Jeans and sweaters work out okay. That also bothers the dean, but then just about everything
     I do bothers the dean, whether I’m trying to bother him or not.” Michael tapped a pencil on the desk and grinned at her. “I
     once designed a uniform for the dean, but he didn’t take to the idea.”
    Jellie grinned back. “Just what would a dean’s uniform look like?”
    “A jumpsuit plus face paint done in what I called ‘manager’s camouflage,’ mottled tones of brown and gray to blend in with
     filing cabinets and other office equipment. I told him, ‘Arthur, you’d be able to skulk around and do all kinds of secret
     things, check up on us to make sure we’re not dancing through the first-floor lobby with garlands in our hair.’
    Jellie’s grin twisted into a little crooked smile. “Exactly what did the dean say about your idea?”
    “He didn’t say anything. Just shook his head and walked away. That was after I went on to tell him how the uniform could be
     coupled with what I called the ‘administrator’s go-squat,’ a modified duck walk that would keep him down at desktop level.
     I demonstrated the go-squat for him in the hall outside his office and guaranteed him he’d have the ultimate in close supervision
     if he’d adopt the uniform and the walk. Guess he didn’t grasp the concept. Carolyn liked the idea, however.”
    Small talk, nothing talk. It went on from there. Jellie began dropping by his office once a week or so, and she and Michael
     whacked their way toward each other through the old thicket of ignorance separating strangers. Sometimes he had a partial
     erection just talking to her and was glad he wore his jeans snug, which kind of held events under control. He’d given up on
     organized religion years ago, but it’s handy when you need it, and he said over and over to himself, “O Absolute, give me
     Jellie Braden; somehow You must do as much for a simple man.” The words became a mantra that never left his mind.
    At the fall picnic on a Sunday, Michael sat on one end of a teeter-totter in a park along the river, languidly watching the
     accounting department take on the marketing department as part of an exciting volleyball tournament organized by the dean
     and his secretary. His secretary liked Michael even less than the dean did, calling him impertinent. Michael thought about
     impertinence and factored in cigarette smoking, which the dean complained about. The result popped out:
Be gladdened in your heart you have tenure.
He was glad, and the sun was late-September pleasant.
    The economists were anxiously waiting in the wings for their second crack at the marketeers, part of a double-elimination
     scheme designed by a sports fanatic in the operations research area. The genius had used some fairly high-powered mathematics
     to make up the pairings based on the departmental won-loss records from the last three picnics and had run off a four-color
     diagram on one of the Apples.
    The dean shot up into the far reaches of delirium when he saw the printout and insisted everyone look at “Don’s good work,”
     as he called it (an extra two hundred for Don at salary time, Michael guessed). Michael thought it was using a sledgehammer
     to drive a tack and said so when the dean asked his opinion of Don’s brilliance. What he said was, “I think Don-Don applied
     high thinking to low living.”
    Jesus, the faculty was out of shape. Flabby bodies whacking a volleyball