Eating Crow by Jay Rayner

Author:Jay Rayner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

“Jennie, he’s vile.”

“We did try to keep you away from him.”

“He’s paranoid. He’s raving.”

It was the next morning and she was sitting on one of the sofas in my office, her hands clenched nervously in her lap. I paced up and down in front of the window, my gaze fixed on the view of the river.

“I really don’t think you should worry about Professor Schenke.”

“He seemed so angry about everything.”

“Yes, anger is one of his problems. I believe he came up with the first draft of his apology laws as part of the homework for an anger management course he was sent to.”

“Sent to?”

“By the courts. He was the subject of a restraining order. It was a while ago, though.” She crossed one leg over the other.

I stopped and stared at her. “You’re telling me that the founding father of Penitential Engagement is mentally unstable?”

“It doesn’t undermine the quality of his scholarship.”

“No?”

“Absolutely not. His blueprint is still valid. It merely means the Professor isn’t the right man to be involved in the process. Which is why you’ve got the job.”

I turned back to look at the East River, sparkling beneath an early summer blue sky. I watched the tugs drag themselves through the water and the smoke billow from factory chimneys in Queens on the other side and thought about this furious man in his mountain aerie, raging at the world through the mocking sunlight. Angry at everything and nothing at all. Furious with me. And then retiring to his desk in his book-infested study to write works of great moment.

That was when it struck me. Going to see Professor Schenke hadn’t been a mistake. On the contrary. It had been exactly the right thing to do. By discovering what a monster he was, I had given myself the freedom to pursue my apologies however I saw fit. I wasn’t beholden to Schenke. He wasn’t my master and I wasn’t his slave. The mystery had gone. It was as if he had ceased to exist.

I turned to Jennie and said, “Let’s get the team together again.”

She threw me a wink. “That’s my boy.”

Later that day Joe Phillips came up from Psychology, still looking like a Gap billboard, all loose denim and unironed plaid, clutching hours of videotape of Lewis Jeffries III in action: giving lectures, taking meetings, milking cows …

“Milking cows?”

“Yeah, sure,” Joe said. “He owns a few purebred Friesians down at Welton-Oaks. Makes his own cheese and butter, apparently.”

“He wrote a book about it,” Satesh said, flipping through a pile of paper. “Here it is. The Deepest Furrow: An African-American on the Land. It was, er—hang on …” He read the summary quickly. “It describes it as a, quote, polemical memoir reappropriating for African-Americans their traditional role as custodians of the land rather than merely slave labor working upon it, etc., etc., unquote. Published four years ago.”

Joe nodded as if he knew all this already. “Jeffries is a complex chap, Marc, who has managed, quite remarkably, to keep a

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