The Crack-Head Professor

I use to teach quantum physics at Harvard, that is, until the other professors with their pompous windbaggery, proposed to the dean that I be removed from the institution. Their ambitions – as obvious as a cap and tassel on a Mastiff bitch; their jealousy – a deep and icy Atlantic fissure, they injected their insidious concoction of concern into the student body and watched it course through every minute capillary, permeate each corpuscle. Only the most devout of my students stood by until the end when the Dean’s hand was force against me.

In hindsight, I have recognized the folly of my actions to trust the singular most important discovery of mankind since fire to such intellectual whelps as the Harvard staff, whom themselves are barely able to understand the difference between hypotenuses and hippopotami. No, I did not expect them to understand, however the Dean was a man forged from sterner stuff. I respected him, would even dare to say revered him. He would have been strong enough to make the trip. If the students had, certainly then this man of sterling character and bronzed will. I thought of him as a man true to the cutting edge of science, a visionary and not one to pass up a journey such as this, for I had found what lies at the center of a black hole! But, alas the diplomatic crab cakes and flavored ices of well-to-doness offered by the societies overwhelmed him. I have never felt bitter about the circumstances, the axe fell and I fell away like a flank of spiraled ham. All to the better I suppose, my ingenious discovery need not be shared with milquetoast ivy leaguers, but until now my story has yet to be told.

It was the first crisp day of autumn, when the dews of the morn, draped and clinging to grass blades are exchanged for their hoarfrost cousins. Summer cottons gave way to corduroy and tweed wool. Even I had given into the changing of the guard, like a whitetail sharpening his antlers amid the pine, and indulged in a westerner. The halls buzzing with nervous freshman energies, also held the assured airs of upperclassmen, which held in check the university’s barometric pressures, less the freshman heads burst. Through this heterogeneous atmosphere I ventured to the library, when nature called and I found myself patronizing the student lavatory. I had worn my soft-soled loafers, so my entrance made no sound upon the linoleum floor and with the lad exiting before I entered, the door gave no indication with a second squeak that I was there. This is, I’m sure, what led to the classic and time honored interaction of a professor catching a student smoking in the bathroom. I could hear the zlick, zlick, zlick of his failing lighter. When I rounded the corner about to give my thoughts on the dangers of smoking, I recognized the delinquent as none other than Junior Helmsby, the last person on campus I thought would partake in such rule breaking. He held a transparent pipe to his grave, thin lips and when he saw me he fumbled it. He recovered his grip on the pipe, but what did fall astonished me more than this sophist paradox – a chunk of crack rock!

“Professor M., let me explain. I –”

“Give me the pipe Helmsby.”

“If my father finds out, I’m done for.”

“Give me the pipe Helmsby.”

He licked his lips and across his slender face a sheen of perspiration glistened. Thank goodness the window he leaned next to was closed. I had no doubt he would have jumped. Now, however, he bent over to recover the crack rock.

“Leave that there Helmsby.” I had heard of people with crack addictions hands being quicker than the eyes of onlookers and the last thing I needed was him knocking off a piece of crack before I could recognize him doing so. He froze and made no additional moves towards the crack, but this seemed harder than it should have been for him to do, like some force was disallowing him to take leave of its presence. This young man had a serious problem, or so I thought. He stepped over the contraband and placed the pipe on my palm. “I need to see you in my office first thing tomorrow.”

“Yes Sir.”

He bowed his head, letting his motley colored hair fall over his face, and rushed past me out the door. I took out my handkerchief, covered the crack and lifted it from the floor. The vertebrae in my back popped and groaned as I straighten out. I had to steady myself against the radiator below the window. Spry, I was no longer and that fact had manifested itself in my loins, or so I thought.

***

Later, in the afternoon, I stood at the helm of my laboratory marring the black board with my attempt to corral chaos theory. The pipe and crack rock lay on my desk and looked no more out of place then the beaker and Bunsen burners strewn about the room. Chemistry is my first love, and no one would question a professor of the high-science for possessing a controlled substance in a laboratory setting. My plans were to break it into its base components, to show the young Helmsby the danger in which he was partaking by smoking the additives that were bound to be there for the purpose of stretching the dopeman’s profits. Also to destroy the evidence of his trespass as long as he agreed to drug treatment. For now, however I racked my brain with numbers too voluminous to comprehend intimately. Then after innumerable calculations, I took leave of my studies and rested in my lounger – a much needed reprieve for my overwork brain. Yet, I found myself staring intensely at the asymmetrical shape of the crackrock. It was large as the meat of a walnut, resplendently crystalized and sheared away cleanly on one side from the dopeman’s razor. Sunlight broke the plane of my laboratory window and struck the crack with such warmth and color, that I was moved to pick it up to witness closer such vibrancy. I tumbled it over and over in my hand and like magnetic opposites realigning themselves, it rolled out of my hand and into the belly of the pipe with a faint tinkling sound. Surprised as I was that I had acquired the pipe in my left hand, it was nothing given my astonishment when I found myself extending it to the Bunsen burner’s flame. The fire licked at the belly of the crack’s vessel and blackened it at every second. Smoke roiled and billowed inside its cavities and just as the grey spirits were want to escape, I with the weight of the universe in my hands, lifted and placed the pipe upon my lips.

***

Terra Firma took away its meager repast of verdure and the heavens rolled back their pale blue visage leaving me to imbibe the virgin grandeur of the cosmos much the way John might have on the Isle of Patmos. As overwhelming as it was to host every bumbling bee, frolicking foal, and flickering edge of raptor feather in my consciousness, I began to focus. I elongated my incorporeal form through our solar system. Past our terrestrial sisters and the mighty Jovian King I shot with purpose and Godspeed. Long had I doubted the interloper Hawking’s, and it had come to past that I should stage my one-upmanship and erase his adolescent scribble from the halls of higher learning. I veered for the black hole, where time and energy folded in upon itself and redoubled again and again.

I approached the immense funnel. Matter boiled and churned from the great pressures. Molecules bubbled and seethed within their covalent bonds and resembled the bumpy underside of a Nestlé’s Crunch Bar, a galaxy locked away within a grain of puffed rice. I took my time (though time was an outside force while I assumed this insubstantial form, or so I thought) noticing every aspect of the hole’s features for later recording in my journal. Down the hole I descended, thousands of light-years spanned in mere nanoseconds, and then, I saw it. A light so pure, so bright, one could behold it otherwise at the supernova of a million million stars. A light so harsh, had I been flesh it would have incinerated me instantly, yet it only burned away my shawl of ignorance. I approached the light and reached for it. Unbelievably, it responded to my touch and trembled with eons of anticipation. There in the center of the black hole, is one infinity singular, piece of crack rock! My mind turned to the pipe, but my physical self had dropped it at the laboratory on earth. I tried to retrieve the pipe and that is when I lost focus and was pulled back into my bodily form. Had I the presence of mind, I could have summoned the pipes higher form, the essence of the pipe, and partook of the ambrosia of the gods. No matter, I had found the key to the universe. At the sink, I washed my face which now had weeks’ worth of beard. My watch confirmed that I had elapsed twenty days’ time with my trip. I rushed from my laboratory, into the halls of the university, where I glimpsed Sybil Witherspoon. I came upon her, took her by the shoulders and asked:

“Helmsby, where is Junior Helmsby?”

“Eww, Professor M. you stink!” She cupped her hand over her mouth and nose.

“Never mind that child! I’m on the verge of a major scientific discovery and I need to know where Helmsby is!”

“He’s probably at Wings and Kings.”

With that imparted information, I was able to take leave of her and not a moment too soon. She was turning a sickly green from my reek and I could hear the retching of many of the student body as I passed them in the halls. There was simply no time for my daily ablutions.

***

In the lecture hall, the most devout of my students and I sat in a circle preparing ourselves for the trip to the outer cosmos, when the dean stormed through the doors in a fit of rage. Someone had fibbed and told him we were merely indulging in extracurricular recreational drug use. The way he looked at my protégés, sitting in the round, pipes in front of them facing towards center circle, eyes gleaming, thirsting for the knowledge of the universe, one would believe and insurrection had broken out on campus. I gathered my pipe in my hands and stood to bear the brunt of his verbal strafing.

“I need a word with you Professor!”

“Ah, Dean Chamberlain you are just in time –”

“Now!”

He continued to stomp down the aisle and made straight for my office. Inside, he dropped into my chair and told me to close the door.

“What in the hell is going on here Professor!”

“Sir, a new and glorious age is upon us. I have discovered a method of intergalactic travel and –”

“You are smoking crack! Crack, Professor and on top of that you have the audacity to tangle these youngsters up in your filthy vices!”

“Well, Sir, I am aware that the initial astral transformation requires the use of an unorthodox catalyst –”

“Crack Professor?” His voice raised and octave and he lifted his hands in a pleading manner. The patches on the elbows of his blazer against the dark wood of the desk separated his arms from the rest of his body like a shadow puppet show.

“It’s not what you think!” I slammed the pipe down on the desk and pushed it towards him. “If you can show me a better way of achieving intergalactic travel then by all means show me.”

“What? You mean for me to –”

“Just try to open your mind Sir.”

“But crack is –”

“Shhhhh.” I nudged the pipe closer. I could see sweat beads forming on his brow. His shoulders relaxed and one, then two fingers appeared from under the table, then a hand that crept towards the pipe. Then he snatched his hand back, like the pipe was a viper, coiled and ready to strike. “They have been lying to us Sir. Someone all these years has had this knowledge and they have been wanting to keep it to themselves.”

A string of doubt loosened in the Dean’s face and a question broke through the humus of his mind.

“But –”

“Sir, trust me.” I leaned in close to him. “This is the cosmic walking-stick of the Mayans. Why do you think they are no longer here?”

Suddenly there was clamor behind me and a banging at the door.

“Professor M.! There’s reporters out here!”

The dean jolted up from the chair and stood ramrod straight. His grey eyes searched my face as if I had betrayed him and was looking for the logic in my actions.

“I want your things packed and cleared out by the end of the day.”

He rushed passed me, wiping his face with his handkerchief and when he opened the door the flashbulbs and camera shutters were blinding and deafening, a perfect exit for one so close to immortality.

That my dear chap, is how I wound up here in Shreveport, Louisiana, a far cry from my New England residence and an alien landscape in comparison to my Manchester roots. But I had always been intrigued with America’s deep south and my leave from the university provided me with an opportune chance to explore its intricate, if not somewhat backwards, culture that were grafted from my forefather’s gallantry.

I was, at first, taken aback by the botching of the King’s English, which sounded to me one step above the infernal clicking and popping of Bushmen, but I learned the pidgin as my many transactions brought me repeatedly to the Nubians’ neighborhoods.

The non-Nubians spoke similarly with their drawls, ‘ya’lls’ and ‘yern’s’. I doubt I’ll ever endure a conversation longer then five minutes with such vernacular without wanting to bite my tongue. I must say the cuisine here surpasses anything I have tasted on the eastern seaboard, although communicating well enough to order the food remains a challenge. That was of course, when I still had need for food.

My home has evolved into something much simpler and contemporary. I have never believed the Chinese style suited me, but I am finding my new home to be comfortably fung shei, for balance is what it takes to live here. I have designed the accommodations to a custom fit and though I don’t have a Walden Pond, a nearby soul food restaurant throws away enough fish fillets in a dumpster to make up for that fact. My walls and floor consist of the finest triple-thick plywood and cardboard and my candlestick furnace keeps the chill of autumn nights at bay. The fairgrounds are but a block away from my home and even having interstate twenty as a roof, I can usually find solace when reading. I’ve learned to sleep with the gentle vibrations of Jake-brakes slowing their loads to make the off ramp at Jewella Ave. During the night the highway’s sporadic traffic goes unnoticed. On dreary, rain-drenched nights, I like to think of the sounds of the Jake-brakes as the mating call of the Alligators who inhabit the swamps south of here. The winged Pollack’s who share the rafters with me, come round every morning peeping in my doorway with their orange eyes and grey hoods. They blink, shift, shift, blink and shift again, gathering if I am hale or not. I think they are secretly admiring their own artwork. Honestly, I fear for their mental health. I believe a few of them are becoming senile, or either they are true perfectionist about the mural I’ve let them paint on my outer walls and do not know when to let an art project alone. My new home has a much less restrictive feel than the stuffy Sheridan Hotel I stayed in downtown. They too took offence to my intergalactic travels, so I left. I could not achieve my perfected state with their negative energies hovering about. Also the crack paled in comparison to what I had acquired from Helmsby, but that was all gone now.

I had followed up on my thoughts to break down the crack into its base components and found no additives, except the merest amounts of baking soda to help hold its hardened form. Lacking access to the university’s laboratory, I had no choice but to depend on low budget dealers to not – I believe the slang is – ‘woo’ me.

On a tip from a man seeking enlightenment, I travelled back downtown to find an indigenous man in a starter jacket who sold pure China White that I could cut at my own leisure. Deciding to travel incognito I caught the Southmoor bus at DuPont St. and Hearne Ave as it wound its way to the riverfront. The bus had standing room only when it reached ‘The Bottom’ a dilapidated neighborhood just outside of downtown with uneven sidewalks, police barricades, and cinderblock-riding vehicles on every block. There an overly-large Nubian woman boarded the bus. She had on thick brown stockings, a red long coat, a black coach bag and a stylish black hat and pin combo. A few gentlemen offered their seats but she preferred to stand. The bus pulled forward and she adjusted the breadth of her stance for stability, when I noticed by her high heel a medium-sized ornately adorned pipe. The bus coasted down a hill and the woman adjusted her stance again, this time placing a foot at the edge of the pipe, her stiletto just inches away from its lip. I could tell her next adjustment would damage it. I tried to make my way through the throng, but no one would give way. The bus approached a red light, and I made a more concerted effort to reach the pipe.

“Excuse me. Pardon me, oh excuse me.” No use, the pipe was sliding directly under her foot from the bus’s inertia. I shoved as hard as I could through the crowd. Finally, I dove. “Watch your foot, you’re going to crush it you spike-wearing behemoth!”

When I landed, I had procured the pipe, but there, in the back of my left hand, a searing pain, more sharp and acute than the knocks I received from the elbows and knees on my way down. One black and shiny stiletto had pile-driven itself above my wrist and the blood in my veins pulsed around the base of the heel like lights surrounding a bumper in the middle of a pinball machine. I gazed up and around at the Kaleidoscope of Nubian faces, hot and dark they glared down at me.

“What did you call me you little peep-freak?”

“Madam – I – I meant no harm, I –”

More knees and elbows and now knuckles followed. Yes, I definitely remembered knuckles and rings. Big rings with multisyllabic names engraved into them like LaQuisha, LaDamien and Jamarion. Somehow I managed to get off the bus. I ran from the raging Nubian crowd, all the while never releasing my grip on the pipe. I ran, my heart jumping hither and thither in my chest from exertion and knowing there is no out-running a Nubian. I zigzagged through the neighborhood, not knowing if they were on my trail or not and too afraid to look back to find out. Every three blocks I swore I could hear the big one, her stilettoes splitting the concrete behind me. Her expletive ‘peep-freak’ was still ringing in my ears and soon the Jays in the trees were singing and cavorting along with the din in my head. The Nubians sprang from everywhere, corners and stoops, looking out their windows and hanging out their doors. I found myself asking, ‘how fast does word travel?’ ‘Could they all know?’ or ‘Am I just a conspicuous Brit running through neighborhoods and from nothing?’ A murder of crows flew overhead cackling, pit bulls barked at me through chain linked fencing, and yet I ran. The cool wind rushing by my swollen eye felt exquisite. Then, finally I was home. I collapsed.

***

In the distance the wee o wee o wee o wee evening serenade of cicada gave me a sudden start. They must have begun during my sleep. I fled from a dragnet of Nubians in my dreams. I could hear feathers ruffling in the rafters, the sound of a cooing pigeon-mother intermittently drowned out by the speeding vehicles. I felt about my face, the lumps had receded a bit from the floor’s coolness. I had no cold packs or anti-inflammatory to speak of, but I did believe that I had stashed away some small portion of crack in a crevice along the back wall. I searched by the evening’s twilight and was delighted when I held the marble-sized piece in between my fingers. My heart almost stopped. Up until that point I had forgotten about the pipe. I searched the room frantically over-turning furniture and creating quite a ruckus, then I saw it laying by the entrance. I must have dropped it there when I pulled myself up onto my porch. I snatched up the pipe and sat down next to the door to catch a bit of the breeze and calm my nerves.

I cradled the pipe in my hands and looked over its wonderfully wrought contours. It was an oddity in the way of pipes. The pipe was an amalgamation of silver lattice, porcelain, and glass, with lines throughout its surface, like that of the decoratively welded cast iron that adorn the buttresses of the French Quarters. However, the most intriguing feature of the pipe was its sandpaper texture and the word embossed on its neck – Richard. Who, I thought, would place their name on a crack pipe? It was almost as asinine as leaving a business card next to a murder weapon. I shook such frivolous thoughts from my mind and returned to the business at hand of soothing my wounds. I dropped in my crack and it found its way to the center of the pipe. The sound it made was whimsical, almost musical. I panned around my pocket and retrieved my lighter which suffered no damage from the stomping I received from the Nubians. I warmed the bulb and when the pipe reached capacity, I lifted it to my lips. That is when I saw him, crouched against the front wall.

He was a Nubian with a broad flat nose, big dark eyes that shifted in the light of my flame. He wore an awfully stained hooded sweater and blue sweatpants.

“Who are you? What do you want?” He said nothing and sat there with his arms wrapped around his legs, looking at me out the corner of his eye. “If you’ve come for the pipe, you shan’t have it!” He smiled at me displaying a deep dimple and jagged, yellow, disheveled teeth. I put the pipe in my pocket and pounced on him, furiously engaging him in fisticuffs. He just tucked himself into the folds of his arms as I swung and hammered down blow after blow, trying to find a weak spot in his unconventional crab-shell defense. Then, he began to laugh. I heard his muffled chuckles though his hooded sweater which had ridden up above his head. I disengaged. Breathless, I fell against the opposite wall and he continued to laugh his high glass-tinkling laugh. He pulled his head out of his sweater, wearing the same wide, toothy grin. My knuckles were a bloody mess and he looked no worse for wear. “I won’t – let you – let you have it!”

The man shrugged and kept smiling. After I had gotten my wind back, I began to nurse my bleeding fingers and my thigh that had received a rather nasty burn from placing a sizzling pipe next to it. The light drizzle of an evening storm could be heard, the temperature dropped, and we continued our staring match long into the evening until I finally said:

“Look, I’m not as mean of a bloke as you may think and I’ll not kick you out in this weather, but do not get any ideas about my pipe and do not ask me to share.”

The man shrugged.

“Do you have a name?” He smiled at me. “Well, what is it?” He just smiled and shrugged. “Great, the first person I have had in my home and he is not a conversationalist. Well, you just stay on your side of the room and do not try anything ignorant.” He shook his head excitedly in agreement.

At this time I decided I could relax and enjoy a smoke. I retrieved the pipe and lighter and began to warm my load. Entranced, the man stared at me.

“What? You act as if you have never seen someone smoke crack before.” He was silent. Either out of onerousness or pure boredom, I blew a line of smoke in his face. Thick and hot it was, yet he neither flinched nor coughed. “Oh a Barney-bad-ass hmm?” A term I picked up from one of the local dealers. I blew several charges in his face, none of which affected him in the least. Finally, I could no longer keep my eyes open and the room spun around me to no end. I slid down my wall and laid on the floor with the pipe clutched to my chest.

***

In the morning, the air hung heavy with the smell of moist grass. I could hear the Jays making mischief, and further still the moan and sob of a broken-hearted locomotive. I rolled onto my back and stretched out, recovering from the best sleep I had in months. Then, I remembered. I shot up straight away, bruised my head on a rafter, and looked around for the man who showed up last night. He was not to be found and neither was the pipe.

“Blasted, confounded, Son of a –” Then something caught my attention in the corner. Total elation followed when I saw the pipe laying on a piece of paper alongside a small heap of crack. On the paper, in scribbled handwriting the words:

‘Thank you for your kindness – Dick.’

I placed the pipe in my pocket, looked over my shoulder and saw a ragged blanket that lay jumbled on the floor where I had laid. The fellow must have covered me through the night while I slept. My heart filled with a warmth more potent than any amount of crack smoked could ever produce. Even with my superior intellect I had managed to miss the most interesting thing that made these people unique, the unwavering kindness of southern hospitality.

The End