Foibles

by Elizabeth Hakken Candido

Dr. Larry Tansil’s head snapped up at the knock on his office door frame. The sharp rap was uncommon in the History Department where quiet reigned. Framed by the weak fluorescent lighting of the hallway, Elaine’s prim black blouse was as severe as the expression on her face. She side-eyed herself in the mirror next to the door, fixing a fly-away strand of her bottle blonde hair.

When she noticed Larry noticing her, she asked, “Have you seen Cecil?”

“Not since the faculty meeting.” Larry returned to stroking the stubble on his neck. He fingered a minute bulge in his throat. “I feel a bump. Maybe an infection?”

Elaine rolled her eyes. “You aren’t sick. You’re tired or stressed out, but you aren’t sick.”

Larry ignored Elaine. She was from the Classics Department. An excellent gossip, good at banter, but not trustworthy. Plus, she was vain, always checking and rechecking her appearance.

Larry swallowed. Briefly he considered calling Health Sciences to see if someone would inspect his larynx but decided against it. He didn’t want to owe any favors.

“Cecil is on the quad, acting like a dog.”

Elaine pointed to the window.

Larry’s third floor office looked out over the grand university quadrangle. Or what the architects must have intended to be a grand university quadrangle. Given the climate of rural Maine, the quad was less grand and more like scrub grass succumbing to mud, crisscrossed by paved walkways. Several dozen ancient oaks offered shade in the brief window of summer. Most of the year, like today, the oaks were old men, their leafless limbs raised toward heaven in wordless screams.

“Cecil is acting like a dog?” Larry asked.

“Running around on all fours, tongue hanging out of his mouth. He’s finally cracked.” The corners of Elaine’s mouth jerked into an almost-smile. “I shouldn’t joke, mental health and all that...”

Larry tried to imagine Cecil Williams, Distinguished Parfet Chair of European Languages, acting like a dog. He’d been a mentor since Larry’s arrival at Hampshire Rhodes College. Larry had always admired Cecil’s ability to put on authority like a suit. When Larry had broken his ankle, Cecil brought dinner for weeks, sharing multiple bottles of Château Brienne late into the evening.

Cecil, acting like a dog?

Larry lurched from his chair, spilling ungraded midterms to the floor. He pulled at the yellowing blinds and searched the grounds visible from his window.

No Cecil.

Larry looked at his watch. 11:20am, in the middle of a classroom block.

“Huh,” Larry said, noncommittal.

Elaine silently stalked up behind him and angled alongside to look out the window.

“He’s down there. I saw him with my own eyes.”

“What did you say? Was it a joke?”

“Didn’t say anything. You’re his friend. You should go get him before somebody calls campus security.”

*

Larry’s parka was too big. His wife had bought it from a close-out rack at Filene’s Basement a decade ago. The burnt orange coat gave Larry a queasy feeling of always being on the edge of an emergency. Tenured faculty hadn’t gotten a raise in three years though, and he couldn’t afford another. He raised the zipper, pulled on his itchy wool cap, and stepped into the glaring midday sunlight. He used one of the crisscrossing concrete pathways to make his way to the center of the quad.

His building, Hodge House, formed the eastern border of the quadrangle. All the buildings on the quad had been built in the style of some imagined British boarding school, red brick and slate roofs. All, except for the southern base, the Student Union. It had been funded by a grant just five years ago and was sleek black glass and faux Corinthian columns.

No Cecil.

Larry tugged at his orange parka and shaded his eyes. A gust of wind buffeted him, and Larry shivered. The quad remained empty except for the occasional backpack-wearing twenty-year-old. The whole place seemed deserted.

Larry reached up to stroke his throat. The lump on his neck was getting larger. Maybe the infection was spreading?

As he turned back toward Hodge House, he tried to imagine what exactly Cecil was doing to act like a dog?

Barking? Impossible.

In Larry’s mind, Cecil wore a smoking jacket with patches at the elbow. It didn’t matter that he’d never actually seen anyone wearing such an outfit. It was exactly the sort of thing that Cecil should wear.

A dog costume? Unimaginable.

*

Larry slumped back to his office and was just shirking off his coat when Elaine burst through his door for a second time. Her cheeks were rosy, and her chest heaved. She must have run all the way from the second floor. She took a breath, side-eyed herself in the mirror, and started speaking, “He’s back! Look!”

This time, when Larry followed Elaine to the window he saw an unrecognizable man, down on all fours, bounding awkwardly across the quad. Dressed in dark brown khakis and a white collared shirt, grass stains and black mud splattered the man/dog’s sides as he frisked and rolled near the center of the quad. He moved with awkward motions that reminded Larry of an arthritic orangutan.

“Is he insane?” Larry asked no one.

“I heard Anne left him. He’s definitely cracked.” Elaine smirked.

Larry tried to conjure a face for Cecil’s wife, Anne. They’d met once before, years ago.

The man/dog leapt at a leaf blowing in the wind, tossing his head vigorously from side to side. Watching him, despite the awkwardness of it all, Larry felt a sense of abandon, a freedom. The man/dog wasn’t pretending.

He was, however, deranged.

Tied to the man’s back was something that looked vaguely like a carpet square. 

“Is that a bathmat?” Larry asked, squinting.

“A latch hook rug,” Elaine answered. “Made one like that in the fifth grade.”

Larry wasn’t sure what a latch hook rug was, but he recognized the strap holding the rug to the man’s back. It was the red ratcheting strap that Cecil used to cart boxes of books. With that recognition, the insane man snapped into focus, recognizable as Cecil, down on his hands and knees.

A wave of panic rolled through Larry, and he grabbed at his coat.

*

“Ummm, Cecil,” Larry pleaded, once again bundled in his emergency parka and standing in the center of the quad. The Distinguished Parfet Chair of European Languages circled one of the massive oaks.

  “Come talk to me,” Larry urged, trying to sound sympathetic and not at all concerned that his colleague had lost his mind.

Cecil cocked his head in a very good imitation of a dog. 

“Hold out your hand,” Cecil instructed in his familiar bass timbre.  

Larry sighed with relief to hear human speech. If Cecil was talking like a person, he couldn’t be too far gone.

Larry obediently thrust his hands up, palms out to show he wasn’t carrying anything.

“No, not like that! Like you greet a dog,” Cecil grumbled.

Larry lowered his hands, palms outstretched in greeting. Cecil bounded toward him and tepidly sniffed.

“What the hell is going on, Cecil?”

“I’m a dog now.”

“Are you having a breakdown?”

“Not in the traditional sense. I believe I’m perfectly sane. Making a rational choice. I’m no longer human. Instead, I’m a dog, un chien, un cane, um cachorro.”

Cecil sat back on his heels, rubbing at the palms of his hands. The latch hook rug bunched up on Cecil’s shoulders as he sat and the ratcheting belt smashed into his belly giving him the look of a water balloon with a rubber band around its middle. The palms of Cecil’s hands looked red and raw.

“You’ve gone nuts! Rational choice?”

“No crazier than trying to explain the absence of copular verbs in Creole to nineteen-year-olds for the twenty-sixth time. I’m not doing it anymore.”

“Stop this. Cut it out!” Larry ordered.

Cecil met his eyes but didn’t respond. The flush in Cecil’s cheeks reminded Larry of Santa Claus.

“Take early retirement!” Larry pleaded. “Give up teaching, but don’t crack up.”

“I’m no crazier than everybody else around here. We’ve all got our foibles.” Cecil smiled, knowing.

“I’ll call the counseling center. Or maybe you have a therapist? You should see someone. Really Cecil, this isn’t okay.”

“I want this.” Cecil made a sweeping gesture at the quad, then went back to rubbing his sore hands. He tugged down on the rug climbing up his back. “I’m choosing me.”

Larry didn’t know what to say. He shoved his hands down into his coat pockets and braced himself against another burst of wind. 

Larry shivered. “I’m getting sick.” He rubbed at his throat and wondered if one could feel cancer growing. “Come inside. We’ll figure out who to call.”

“Later. You can take me home for dinner.” Cecil smiled at Larry, a genuine, happy smile that recalled glasses of Château Brienne. Tiny pieces of broken leaves stuck to Cecil’s salt and pepper hair and a twig poked out of the back of his neckline.

“Right,” Larry conceded. “If you’re certain you’re choosing this…”

Larry fingered his throat. The lump was definitely larger. He coughed and wondered if coughing exacerbated cancer.

Cecil leaned forward again, gingerly placing his hands in the mud. Larry offered a pair of gloves from his pocket, but Cecil ignored him. The man/dog gave a whiny bark and started off toward one of the giant oaks.

“I have class until 2:40pm. I’ll come get you then,” Larry shouted.

He checked his watch. Ten to noon. He needed his notes. He was lecturing on hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic today. Students always conflated the Weimar Republic with Nazis. For a moment, Larry felt a wave of what?… fellow-feeling for Cecil.

Still, he wasn’t about to strap a rug to his back.

Larry fingered the bump in his throat and headed back inside.

*

At 2:45pm, when he finally exited the lecture hall, exhausted by questions that didn’t have answers, Larry was greeted by flashing blue and red lights on the quad.

In the weaker light of the afternoon sun, two uniformed officers stood eyeing the mud of the quad and talking into radios strapped to their breasts. A gaggle of undergraduates hovered on the student union patio, giggling and pointing. Larry could smell wood smoke and wondered if someone had set up a barbecue. Rap music blared and a half dozen football players stood in the middle of the quad making barking noises. Everyone was watching Cecil. The man/dog sat back on his haunches, focused, as he eyed a chittering squirrel in the branches of a tree.

“Stop!” Larry bolted from the building and rushed toward the officers. En masse, all attention shifted to Larry, and it occurred to him he wasn’t sure what he was intending to halt. “That is Professor Cecil Williams. He’s not crazy!”

Cecil began frantically barking at the squirrel, pacing back and forth. His bark sounded hoarse, and Larry realized he must have been at it for a while. Both officers stared blankly at Larry.

“Can you convince him to get into our cruiser?” The larger officer wiped his hands on the blue pants of his uniform and raised an eyebrow.  “He looks rabid.”

“He’s just going through something.” Larry tried to sound reasonable.

Cecil resumed barking.

“I’ll release him to you if you get him outta here. But if we’re called again, he’s going to the hospital on a psych hold.”

Larry took the walkway to the center of the quad near the football players. He called Cecil, who ignored him. Tentatively, Larry stepped into the mud and felt his loafers sink. He tried to dart between lumps of grass. Still, dark mud splashed up Larry’s ankles and water seeped into his shoes.

Glancing toward Hodge House, he saw Elaine amidst a cluster of senior faculty. Huddled inside her oversized, fur-lined coat, she adjusted her hat, trying to keep her coifed hair from flying in the breeze. Like everyone else, she alternated between watching Cecil and leaning in to laugh. Larry was certain whatever was being said was unfair, snide.

Cecil hopped at the bottom of a tree. He looked over his shoulder at Larry. The latch hook rug, soaked in mud, was askew, sliding slightly down the side of his body. For a second, Cecil held Larry’s gaze and it looked as if he might say something, but then the dog/man shook his head slightly and went back to staring at the squirrel.

What happened next moved at such a pace, Larry almost couldn’t make sense of it. From Hodge House, a giant peal of laughter drew Larry’s attention. It drew Cecil’s, too. Both pivoted to see Elaine wave in greeting. A tall woman, one of the campus biologists, pushed an overly large stroller into the crowd. Elaine, bouncing on the balls of her feet, cooed down at the baby bundled in a large blue quilted baby blanket. A dramatic gust of wind burst across the quad. A corner of the blanket caught. Like a sail, the pastel blue blanket pulled up and away, flying into the thick black muck of the quad. 

Cecil, more dog than man, darted with fury at the offending blanket, diving into the sludge, pouncing on top of the blue blanket, grasping at the silky edge with his teeth, making a thick growling sound. 

Larry also ran. Though intellectually he knew there was no way to catch the blanket before it hit the mud, Larry had visions of himself saving it. He grabbed at air, grasping toward the blurry blue shape even as Cecil let out a growl. 

For a split second, Larry and Cecil grabbed opposite ends of the mud-stained blanket. A tug of war took place, Larry grabbing at the cotton with both hands while the silky edge of the blanket tore through Cecil’s teeth.

Larry yanked the blanket free.

Cecil lunged at Larry.

His teeth tore through Larry’s pant leg, a terrible rumbling growl emanating from him. When Cecil fell backward, he left behind a half-moon shaped gash in Larry’s leg.

“What the hell!” Larry rubbed at his leg. A stream of blood began seeping from the quickly reddening teeth marks.

One of the two police officers sprinted toward Cecil, tackling him to the ground, spraying muck in a two-foot radius. The second officer followed close behind, removing a pair of handcuffs from his belt. The two men pinned Cecil, face down in the dirty grass, and bound him, hands behind his back.

“Leave me alone! Tell them Larry! Tell them I’m a dog!” Cecil cried as the two officers hauled him to his feet.

“Help!” Larry wailed at no one. “I need a doctor!”

The baby, exposed in the stroller, let out a terrified wail, louder than seemed possible from something so small.  The biologist quickly bundled the baby in her own coat while Elaine glared at Larry and Cecil both. Elaine kept touching her hat and shoving invisible strands of hair back into place.

Larry wasn’t sure why Elaine was mad at him. “I’m the victim!” he called to Elaine, who continued to shoot daggers at him with her eyes. “I need a doctor. Take me to the emergency room!”

Elaine exchanged a look with the tall biologist and then carefully threaded her way along the paved walkway until she stood parallel to Larry, safely on the concrete. She held her hand out for the muddy baby blanket, though Larry made no attempt to hand it to her.

“You don’t need to go to the emergency room,” Elaine sounded irritated.

“I’m bleeding!” Larry pointed at the thin track of blood making a trail down his mud-spattered pant leg. “What if he’s rabid? I need shots. It's a series, I think…In my stomach.”

“Shots?” Elaine rubbed her temples.

“For rabies!”

“He isn’t rabid. He’s Cecil.” Elaine rolled her eyes.

A sharp howl came from the police cruiser where Cecil was resisting arrest by lying down on pavement. Elaine turned to watch as the shorter, stockier officer yanked Cecil to his feet and shoved him into the car in one swift, efficient motion.

“Please Elaine,” Larry pleaded. “I don’t want to die of rabies.”

Elaine followed the police cruiser with her eyes. Larry could see Cecil’s head peering out the back window at an uncomfortable angle.

“Off to the madhouse,” Elaine murmured as the car pulled out. “I shouldn’t say that. Not very woke of me…”

Larry whimpered and dabbed at the gash in his leg. “I might die.”

“Can people get rabies?” Elaine asked. “Aren’t you being dramatic?”

“I need to be checked out by a professional.” Larry fingered his neck, feeling the bump on his throat.

Elaine brushed a fleck of mud off the hem of her fur-lined coat. “Better safe than sorry,” she agreed. Then she shrugged. “Hard to believe Cecil went off the deep end.”

Larry nodded. He fingered his throat again and wondered if having cancer made it harder to fight off rabies. He made a mental note to ask when they got to the hospital.

He wondered if the end always came like this. Did Cecil wake up this morning and intuit that today was the day he’d go insane? Or had insanity been a surprise?

Larry thought about his own morning. He’d been completely ignorant that by the afternoon he’d need to seek medical intervention. Hell, he might die… He wondered how fast one could die of rabies?

“Never saw it coming,” Elaine continued, staring into the distance. “Everyone around here is just so… normal.”