Animals of Faith by Kevin Davidson

Author:Kevin Davidson [Animals of Faith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Helgason Publishing
Published: 2016-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Five

The Mentally Ill were Considered Gods

The strident alarm awakened Kevin. He got out of his spartan bed and turned the annoyance off. A companion bed lay across from him in the single room. The other bed had no sheets or covers, and burn holes appeared in the places where the springs jutted through. His computer sat on the opposite desk and books piled everywhere. Something in his austere character led him to leave the painted cinder block walls in his Darrach Hall room unadorned.

He got dressed quickly, put in his contact lenses and headed for the cafeteria.

As Kevin walked down the third floor of Darrach Hall towards the central staircase, a tall black man who occupied the room adjacent to the central staircase stopped briefly from talking with a friend in the hall and said, “This guy knows how to dress.”

Kevin thought this quite a complement, coming from the debonair centre of the Brandon Bobcats basketball team. He walked quickly past the two men without any acknowledgement. As he came to the main floor, the cleaning lady gave him a lascivious glance. She was fairly young, ruddy and scrawny, and her smile delivered any omission of her eyes. He walked past with a smile.

In the cafeteria, he pushed his red plastic tray down the sterile metal rails. Kevin got his drinks, his cereal and his waffles and he sat down with Bill McTavish, a descendant of Robert Burns. Bill was much more evenly tempered than Robbie, and a fine mind going into Education. He was one of the few in Darrach Hall who was older than Davidson.

“Good morning,” Bill began, with a geniality strained through a kind of brusqueness and mild irascibility.

“Good morning, Bill,” he replied with a cheerful lilt and smile.

“I’ll return that book of yours,” Bill mentioned between bites; “I won’t have a chance to read it.”

“You mean you don’t have an inclination to read it.”

“Yes,” Bill returned, “I only read books for pleasure on inclination.”

“The world and you,” Kevin replied with a smile.

“Yes, but thanks anyway.” He brought his hand to his glasses and his eyebrows rose as he said this. His tone was genuine and considerate.

“As a historian, I think you owe it to yourself to read the Icelandic sagas at some point,” Kevin stated with the good cheer of companionship.

“And I shall,” returned the other, “but you will have to excuse me now.” He rose without ceremony and left the cafeteria.

Davidson finished shortly after, and as he put his tray on the racks by the dishwasher, he fell into the black stare of a young woman who earned the reputation of being the easiest on campus. She had a poor complexion and an unkempt appearance, but a daunting physique, round in all of the right places and firm and favourable in form. He stood expressionless as her dilated eyes wandered over his integument and leveled with his eyes. He walked away without the mildest reply to hedonism.

He went to professor Wishart’s class on Drama in the Classroom, and took his accustomed seat beside Jennifer.

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