The Orange Professor
by Thomas Lee Joseph Smith
As soon as I got the call I should have headed for the mountain. Especially when I realized he’d been out for almost two hours. I slapped on some clothes and some shoes, got a flashlight, and grabbed the world’s least adequate fire extinguisher, and then jumped into the car.
My first stop was going to be a strip joint, not because I like that kind of thing, but because Professor Harnwig had a brother I knew about, and the professor’s brother lived in the valley.
It was only after driving five miles that I got mad. Why did the nursing home think I was someone they should call? I wasn’t family. I wasn’t a detective. Well, I knew Professor Harnwig. I did visit him a couple of times. But I’m not responsible for the old guy. He got me my job at the observatory, but that was twenty years ago. Those kinds of debts last ninety days, tops... everybody knows that.
I looked at my watch. It was only eight-thirty and the sky was getting dark and the sun was starting to go down. But the sky stayed red. It looked eerie. I pulled into the parking lot of the “Naked Lunch.” Right when I pulled in the sign came to life... if you can call six letters glowing out of ten coming to life.
I went inside.
Harnwig’s brother hadn’t had a professor’s life. His face showed signs of struggle. His face had been through fifty hard arguments and had only won twice. His arms had scars. I walked closer and identified myself.
It couldn’t be helped, the surroundings influenced my speech.
There was a shot glass on the bar with round wooden toothpicks in it. I took one and let it wander the right side of my mouth. I tried to look tough. It’s hard to pull off when you have a calculator in your shirt pocket. “Had you seen your brudder latelys?” I said.
“I knows what he looks like.” That’s what he said. He was used to being evasive.
“That’s no kind of answer,” I said. “No structure in the edifice.”
“You want structure, you should meet Adrian, she’ll be here any minute.”
“I know about your dealings with the professor,” I said. “I know all about him helping you at the dog track, giving you names...”
He said. “He’s my brother. He ought to look out for me. He crushes the numbers and I place the bets. He gets some dough. He sees some action.”
“Number crunching,” I said, “not crushing. And I need to find him before he gets hurt. He’s an old man.”
He still didn’t say anything. I decided to go ‘Mike Hammer’ on the guy. I reached out and grabbed the toothpick container; I turned it over and spilled the wood. With his big hands it was going to take him hours to pick them up. Some rolled into the seams of the bar where they’d be staying forever, staring up at him like wanted posters or prize money he was promised but that slipped though his fingers.
“Did you have to do that?” he asked, his thin veneer of courage wearing thin.
We both turned and looked down the bar. There were three more shot glasses waiting, long white splinters in each. Like the bones of the spineless.
I pulled out a tiny notebook that was behind my calculator.
It was a quick confession when it came. “I loaned him my car,” he said. “A grey two-door hatchback. The license says, ‘dog gone’. It’s spelled D O G G O N It’s about racing dogs.”
I wrote it down. I’d puzzle out the spelling later.
“Did he say anything? Did he leave a message?”
“He said I should look for a tiny machine and a red couch and a bent cigar traveling through time.”
“Will you?” I asked.
He nodded.
On the way out I saw Adrian. I held the door for her. As she brushed past I pictured an angel; when she said, “Thanks,” I pictured Barry White.
* * *
Now I knew he had a car. Now I knew where to begin my search. I went down Route 3 heading east and turned in at every 7-11. I knew his habits and knew what he wanted. He wanted a big frozen cola and some beef jerky. It was the third stop that paid dividends.
The kid behind the counter was young. Next to him was an algebra book. Next to that was a binder. Both were closed.
I wandered down one aisle, picked up a Twinkie and then went to the front of the store. “What time did you start work?” I said when I got to the counter.
“What’s it to you?” he said.
I pointed at my calculator and then at his books. “We’re in the same business,” I said.
“Maybe I just got here. Maybe I started at nine,” he said. “I still don’t know what you want.”
“Did an old guy come in here? A professor?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I know he came in here,” I said. I swiped at the counter and tasted some brown liquid from a little wet crescent. “That’s cola. Frozen cola,” I said, pointing at the puddle. And then I ate some dark fragment from under the cash register. It didn’t taste like beef jerky and looking closer I noticed some legs. I was about to doubt myself when the kid crumbled.
“He was here. He helped me with my equations. He was wearing a robe and a hospital gown. He looked confused.”
“Do you keep tape?” I asked.
“Duct or electric?” he said.
“Evidentiary,” I said.
We went to the back room. I watched the whole thing on the security system. Harnwig strolled through every aisle, opening gallons of milk and taking some and closing them back up and biting on apples and putting them back in the basket. He was scuffling along in bunny slippers and a bathrobe and on the tape he was passing by some people who looked even less reputable.
We turned off the tape. We went out front.
“Did you see which way he went?” I asked.
“He went east, towards the fire.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Just some strange phrases...” He said, ‘Watch the skies’ and ‘Soylent green is people’.”
I went out chewing golden cake and cream filling.
“Are you going to pay for that?” he asked.
“Had it when I came in,” I said.
‘Sorry,” he said. He looked contrite, so I let it go.
* * *
I stood in the parking lot, looking East. A red glow covered everything. It was another in a long series of fires scorching southern California. I knew there were three thousand firefighters up in the hills shoveling dirt and praying for rain. I didn’t want to go east but I had to. Maybe my gratitude was lasting longer than the requisite ninety days. Maybe the old guy meant something more than a paycheck.
At the turnoff I ran into a road block. Two officers approached my car.
“Where you goin’?” one asked.
“You see a grey two-door hatchback?”
“Sure did.”
“I work at the mountain. I was going up to see how the telescopes are doing. I want to make sure the sky door is closed.”
“Professor Harnwig beat you to it. We let him through about five minutes ago.”
“Didn’t you notice anything unusual about Mr. Harnwig?” I said.
“He was wearing a bathrobe and slippers but I’ve got to tell you, that’s not so unusual with those scientists. I’ve been doing traffic on this road for years and I’ve got used to lots of strange things.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“He said not to worry about the army of the twelve monkeys.”
I thought about that for a moment. “That’s good advice.” I said.
They moved the road block. “First sign of trouble and you get right back.”
I started up the road. It was very dark outside. There were twists and turns. Off to the right the road slid off into chasms. In the distance there were huge flames and dense smoke and tiny yellow trucks and streams of water like small waterfalls, only too tiny, like the tiny strands that tried to hold down Gulliver.
For just a second I took my mind off the road and I took a turn and almost ran into the grey car. It was sitting in the middle of the road. Only it wasn’t grey, it was orange like a school bus, orange like the vest on a construction worker. It was orange all over, even the glass and the tires and the inside where the window was down.
I got out and walked over to see if the professor was inside. It was powder everywhere. Ankle deep. Fire retardant. It looked like Tang but smelled like ground-up pink erasers. I hadn’t walked ten steps before it was on me up to my knees. It looked like I had on orange vinyl boots like Ann-Margaret used to wear. I did the pony for a minute trying to shake off the protection. Ann-Margaret would have been proud. I started walking up the mountain.
I followed the professor’s footprints. It was like following a giant bee. A bee laden with too much pollen and shedding it with every step.
Mount Palomar has a dozen telescopes. It has hundreds of optical instruments and computers and prisms and mirrors and sheds and big silos storing galaxies, not corn. I expected his steps to lead to the right, where his desk used to be, where the middle-sized telescope waited, but he had turned left, heading for the big monster telescope in the big cylinder. Before I ventured inside, I did one more look around.
Fires. Fires down in the valley. California burning. It was a battle. Fire was making its way up the canyon. Helicopters were flying above like angry wasps and they were dropping red and orange and yellow fire retardant. Low-flying planes were dropping five thousand gallons of water. One small change in the wind direction and I’d be in the fire’s path. Inside there was one small red light burning. The light was high up on the wall.
I called out. “Anyone here?” No one answered. I walked deeper into the darkness.
There he was, sitting in a tall chair with his eye to the small lens. His head was tilted back. Above him were six tons of steel framing and a hundred billion galaxies.
I walked closer and put my hand on his shoulder. Without looking at me he said, “I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe.”
I knew my line. “Attack ships off the shoulder of Orion.”
“Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“I know.”
“I was talking to the stars,” he said.
While the outside world burned we turned the instrument left and right and watched as dark spots swallowed galaxies and dusty shadows gave birth to stars.
Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Lee Joseph Smith
