story: Office Hours

Office Hours
by Jarrett Neal

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Cecil apologized to the three students waiting outside his office and closed the door. He unbuttoned his sport coat and crossed his arms. His jaw clinched. His brow furrowed. “I told you about coming up here,” he said.

Curtis placed the framed picture back on Cecil's desk and took a seat. “When mama give you this?”

“What do you want?”

Curtis opened his eyes wide and scratched his beard. “Man,” he said, “can you lend me fifty dollars?”

“Curtis,” Cecil said as he returned to his desk, “why do you come up here bothering me like this without calling? Midterms are this week. I have a hallway full of students I need to see.” He straightened his pictures.

“See man,” Curtis said, “Val 'bout to get her lights turned off and all she need is fifty dollars. She got them kids, man.”

There was a knock on the door, and when Cecil answered, Mary, a diminutive pear-shaped white woman, stood in the doorway. “Am I interrupting?” she asked.

“No, Mary,” Cecil said.

“I wanted to make sure you got the E-mail regarding the tenure committee.”

“Oh, yes. Yes. I've marked down the new time. I'll be there.”

“How you doin'?” Curtis craned his head over Cecil's shoulder and offered his hand to Mary.

Cecil glanced down at the calloused palm and dirty nails. The odors of motor oil, tobacco and marijuana mingled in his nose. He began to perspire.

Mary took Curtis's hand. “I'm Mary Zucker. Are you Cecil's partner Gary?”

“Partner? Nah, I'm his big brother Curtis.” He turned to Cecil. “What kind of partner you got?”

“Cecil's brother?” Mary said. “Oh. Well, it's good to know you.”

As Mary said her goodbyes Cecil saw two more students take seats on the floor beside his office. He closed the door and stood in front of the wall opposite his desk. Four diplomas hung from that wall, and the midmorning sun cast them in brilliant golden light.

“I don't have time for this,” Cecil said, and exhaled a short breath.

“Man look,” Curtis said, “I know how you feel about me but don't let Val and them kids suffer, know what I'm sayin'? They ain't did nothin'.”

“And how do I know this money won't get smoked up?”

“It ain't. Man I swear to God I ain't smoked nothin' in six months. I swear to God, man.”

There was another knock on the door. Cecil hurriedly reached into his wallet and took out three crisp twenty dollar bills.

“Thanks, man. Thanks. I'ma pay you back.”

Moments later Jamal Brinkley, one of only three of Cecil's black students, sat before him holding his last paper which bore a red C+ on the front. He looked at Cecil with patient wide eyes.

“What you must always bear in mind,” Cecil instructed his pupil, “is the Joad's background. They came from meager circumstances which were only exacerbated by the destruction the Dust Bowl left in its wake.”

Cecil glanced out of his window and spotted Curtis sprinting across the university quad. He reached the parking lot and got into a red sedan. The car was dented in several places and expelled a trail of thick smoke as it drove off with Curtis in the passenger seat and several children crowded in back. Cecil closed his eyes for a moment then resumed his talk with Jamal.

“At its heart, this is a novel about a family who love each other so much that they'd rather die in grinding poverty than live without each other. That's what makes this novel universal. It isn't a story about a poor Southern white family in the Depression. It's about all of us.”

Cecil gave Jamal a list of themes he could explore in his next paper before he sent him on his way and received his next student.

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bio: Jarrett Neal holds an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is the author of the forthcoming novel "A Dangerous Man".