Without knowing what she was looking for, Hamel’s wife scanned the area all around the bus stop. She saw nothing else out of place. She looked up the street in both directions, looked down again to where the coffee mug has been placed, shook her head slowly in confusion. Agitated, frustrated, Hamel’s wife turned and re-crossed the street toward the corner grocery, clutching the mug tightly in her hand. She knew, once she got home, that she’d call the police again and report her find. She was just as sure that it would be a waste of time.
CHAPTER TWO: 22 YEARS, 6 MONTHS, 1 DAY BEFORE HAMEL DISAPPEARED
It was a small, urban campus, in an economically declining section of the city. Academic buildings, once stately and imposing, looked tired in the early evening light, their outsides darkened by the exhaust of too many passing automobiles.
Here and there, walls of individual buildings showcased the talents of local graffiti artists. Iron bars covered first floor windows. Sidewalks were pitted and stained; most were spotted with ugly, black blotches, leave-behinds from a generation of mannerless, gum-chewing students.
Occasionally, in his walk from dormitory to library, Hamel would pass a skeleton tree, barren of leaves, or a concrete bench, cracked and crumbling from age.
For many students, February was a dismal, depressing time on the university campus; Hamel, typically, had little reaction to season or scenery. He walked across campus oblivious to them both.
Hamel’s mind was occupied with other things, principally a five-page philosophy paper due in two weeks and, as yet, not begun.
Hamel was, at best, an average student. He studied irregularly, as much from boredom as anything else. His grades, consequently, were unremarkable, consistent with the effort he applied, at odds with his considerable intelligence.
Hamel enjoyed reading, but his tastes were eclectic and rarely in line with the academic courses in which he was enrolled. His professors considered him to be something of a mystery. This was fine with Hamel. As long as his academic results were sufficient to maintain the financial support of his parents for his education, Hamel was unconcerned.
Occasionally, however, Hamel encountered a topic that piqued his interest. Recently, his professor in Ethics, a wild-eyed, wild-haired individual, with a degree from Cambridge, and an accent from Mississippi, presented a lecture entitled The Peak Experience Life: An Ethical Perspective.
Hamel did not understand why this teacher felt it necessary to title each of his lectures. It seemed a little pretentious, like his wearing academic robes to class and insisting that students address him as Doctor instead of his given name.
Most of the class thought the man bizarre; Hamel considered him a buffoon. Others complained about his poor teaching methods; Hamel simply ignored them. Since the course itself was of little interest to Hamel, the professor who taught it was, by default, insignificant. He was an easy grader and, therefore, neither a problem to be addressed nor an obstacle to be overcome. The professor was, in fact, so totally unimportant to him that Hamel would have had difficulty answering even the simplest of questions about the man. A fellow student once asked Hamel if he found the pronounced scar
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
