sap.

listen, ernest, i don t know what you came back for, but i sincerely hope it s
not to
bother me." white looked at her, but she stared back at him until he felt even last
empathetic impulse of
his mind retreat. he put his checkbook back in his pocket and straightened his tie.
"i wish you well," white
said and walked back toward his car. "come on, otto." otto thanked the woman for
the time and gave a
little deferential bow, but she just stared at him until he was glad to turn and
follow his employer. the
air felt cooler once they were off the porch and walking across the soft bluish
grass. ernest started the car
in silence and they drove away. as they shot between stands of trees and yellowed
fields otto turned to see
mr. white take something out of his wallet. it was a picture of constance as she
had been years ago.
otto could see she was poised, happy and beautiful, with a spark of irony and
intelligence in her eyes. white
tore it up and tossed it out the window. "thanks," ha said to otto. "for what?"
"for standing behind me.
if i hadn t known you were there, i might ve run off screaming." "it was nothing,"
ottosaid. "no,"
white said, stabbing his finger at the dashbread. "it was something i had to do.
there are some things a
man must forcibly put behind him if he s ever going to get any work done." "so,
that was you
putting her behind you? he shifted gears roughly as they climbed a shallow hill. "i
had to be certain there
were no mixed signals." "she seemed sure enough." ernest lit cigarette, puffed some
smoke, stared at him, but then
looked back at the road. "message delivered - duty done. i ve made one crucial
advancement in defusing the larger
problem of returning here." he drove roughly but not unhappily the rest of the way
home. * the next day
mr. white and otto went into the west end of the house and opened a door into a
long-unused room.
it was dusty and dark. otto parted the gray curtains so that the air lit with dust
motes. the room
was spartan - one small desk against an empty wall, with two walls of shelves
loaded with farm implement catalogs,
give-away almanacs and county extension tomes. "let s get some air in here," white
said. "this used to be my
father s study." otto struggled at a window until he finally hoisted it with a loud
cracking noise that made
him think he had broken it. he repeated the process on the other window and then a
slight breeze began
to stir. mr. white set a book on top of some old papers to hold them down. then he
turned
to otto. "we ll have to clear this place out, clean it up, and put a real desk in
here.
then it will do well enough for my research." over the next several days otto got
the room in order,
and then mr. white sealed himself inside it to make a run at his scholarly project.
he sat walled in
by box after box of his monographs-in-progress and his codices of ancient tongues.
after an initial burst of energy, however,
he found himself mostly staring out the window, and when an embossed invitation
from the ladies guild arrived in the
mail, he practically leapt at the opportunity to give a talk on the designated
topic: "many races, many places, many
faces." he spent days cribbing notes for his speech. he stomped up and down the
hall practicing the cadence of
his delivery, its fervor, its candor and emotion. but when the event actually
arrived and he had delivered his oration
("key indicators of an indo-european ur-kultur and the potential for revitalization
of a dignifying world view in a post-industrial millennium"),