Jean Francois sat on his front porch watching the rain fall from the shelter it provided.
It
had been a quiet day at Augsburg even with students beginning their return to
campus. The late summer heat and the impending storm kept the sound of traffic
on riverside muted.
Jean
had weeded his garden in the morning, afterward he swept the sidewalk; then he scrubbed
his front steps. Now he sat on his porch at his home on campus, smoking his
pipe and sipping brandy.
He was enjoying a quiet afternoon, just as he had
always imagined when he was beginning his long career working for the Park Board.
Today, Jean had been hoping to spend the day
watching a bevy of blonde-haired Lutheran’s returning to school or arriving on
campus for the first time. He never grew tired of autumn’s annual peregrination,
of the commencement activities with all the students dressed in their best, and
the girls showing a little more leg every year…it was why he built his house in
this location, across the street from the theatre arts building and the
athletic field.
As Jean rocked in his chair to the sound of
the rain, he stared at a patch of peeling paint on the bay-window that faced
the morning sun. He kept a rigid maintenance schedule on his home, scraping and
painting one side of the house every year, so that the cycle completed itself
every four. He had not planned on beginning to paint the east side of the house
until next spring, and now he felt a pit goring in his stomach as a sense of dismay
began to encroach on his peace of mind.
Perhaps it was due to the excessive heat and rain
we have endured over the summer, Jean thought, though in his heart he blamed himself for a job poorly
done.
As he contemplated the disorder in front of
him he watched a nice sedan pull up and come to a sudden stop across the street.
He recognized Dr. Johnson behind the wheel. He was a professor of antiquities
and a distinguished member of the faculty who had joined the college in the
previous year.
Jean was glad to lay eyes on him because he had
been instructed to monitor the professor’s comings and goings for his former
employer, Ermes Batelier, the Commissioner of Parks, a very powerful man in the
city.
When Dr. Johnson had first come to campus, he received
a call from the Commissioner who had asked him to keep tabs on the man, and
make regular reports of his activities, including the company he kept.
He told Jean that he would call from time to
time with more explicit instructions for his surveillance, and Jean was happy
to do it, even happier to see an extra ten dollars a week appear in his pension
check for his troubles.
It wasn’t a bad life, he thought. As he watched the tall and
slender, bird-like Dr. Johnson get out of his car and rush through the rain into
the building where his offices were.
Jean thought he looked disheveled, his clothes
were already damp, if not from the rainfall, then he had soaked himself through
with perspiration.
Jean had never seen the professor in such a
state, though he nearly always radiated a sense of nervousness. He had spoken
to him a couple of times and had concluded that the professor was the type of
fellow who expected the worst, and as a result he was never satisfied with
anything, because he believed that the worm was always about to turn against
him.
Jean shook his head in judgement, that is an unpleasant man he thought.
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