"Her beauty took his mind prisoner …"
- Book of Judith, Old Testament
The professor scanned the classroom from the rampart of his enormous oak desk, situated on the heights of a wooden platform two feet off the floor. This was his room. No one else taught in 209. He fought and won this battle with the registrar every semester.
Leo Tyne had been teaching at St. Brigid's College for almost thirty years, yet the thrill of the first day of a new term never lost its edge. From his towering lectern he had watched hordes of students struggle and squirm their way through his classes. There was no place else in the world he'd rather be, for he was a notorious, tenured faculty member at one of the few remaining women's colleges on the East coast - or in the country, for that matter. Year upon year brought a new crop of feminine virtue, intuition and charm. However, Tyne considered himself immune to the last. He had learned right from the start that the classroom was like a sailing ship - it could have but one master. He was that master – and would allow nothing to deflect his ship from its charted course.
He wielded his power like a feather, or a club. It all depended on the ladies. A quick perusal of the upturned faces of this new lot told Tyne that he had inherited a fairly meek crew. That was fine with him. Better not to have a difficult class first thing in the morning. Made the rest of the day an ordeal if he had to constantly thunder at eight in the morning.
Still browsing the room, his ruthless gray eyes paused when he noticed an empty desk. His classes were always full, at least at the start. Especially this one, Harsh Witness: Force & Fury in Biblical Narrative, AKA Tyne's Testament – as it had become known in legends told by survivors. Never an empty chair on first day.
Till now.
Tyne opened his grade book, removed his class roster, and let loose the first rumbling bolt of the morning, "Ladies, you will now be seated in alphabetical order. As I am the Alpha, I remain where I am. The rest of you will line up around the walls, until you are replanted." He flashed a condescending grin. To the students he resembled a sober, sadistic Cheshire cat, looming above them in his oaken citadel.
His voice had lost none of its timbre over the decades. He could still command them, or scare the hell out of them, whichever was necessary. The beginning of the first class was the time to remind them of their proper place – first in the alphabet, and then in the cosmos of his classroom.
In no time everyone was reseated and copying the notes Tyne had scrawled on the blackboard during the sorting. The professor sat on the edge of his monolithic perch, observing, sizing up his students the way a bird of prey selects appropriate victims. He had found the owner of the empty seat on the roster – one Sarah Pollack. There was an asterisk next to her name on the computerized printout, which was a signal that he should contact the dean or the registrar. Tyne, of course, wouldn't bother with all that. 'Special circumstances' didn't concern him. No excuses in his world, no delays on his ship. He sailed with or without you. The gray eyes paused again, having spied a redhead at the back of the room gazing out the window, daydreaming. Her hair shone in the dusty light that streamed in through the dusty panes.
"Miss," Tyne glanced at his freshly drawn seating chart - ink not yet dry - "Miss Lawford! If you wouldn't mind sharing your free time, why not come to the front of the room and explain to the class why we shall start with the apocryphal works tacked on at the end of the Old Testament?" He spread his arms in a beckoning gesture, but seemed more inclined to swoop down and grab.
"Uhm, I didn't … "
The redhead had started at the sound of her name, her mind eons away. She had been at a dorm party till shortly before the start of class, and felt rather hazy. Worse than being caught doing nothing, however, was the fact that she hadn't even heard Tyne's question.
"You didn't think my meager thoughts on the board were worth noting?" he asked, voice sharp enough to cut glass.
"No, I didn't mea … " she began to stammer in reply, but Tyne's eruption blasted her silent.
"So you did not! You are an expert perhaps? A textual scholar slumming with the nobodies – like me?" he bellowed, hands shaking, face reddening. He could manage this performance in his sleep, but never missed an opportunity to rehearse the part. However, while the theatrics were staged, the flush of excitement was real and all too tangible. He buttoned the front of his blazer, discreetly coverered the evidence. The young girl sat in stunned silence, eyes staring at him now. Tyne eagerly noted the faint line of freckles across the bridge of her nose, as well as those that ran down her blushing white neck and disappeared into the faded blueness of her blouse.
"Perhaps you might share your genius with the unenlightened," he said, adjusting his rigid intentions before stepping off the platform and cruising down the aisle. "Come, tell us, do you agree that Susannah belongs separate from the Book of Daniel?"
He had stopped by her desk and roared the "Daniel" inches from her small, freckled nose. He glared, and wondered how freely that blush and those little brown dots roamed the pearly skin beneath the clothes. Were there freckles and red hair everywhere? A joke about a burning bush flashed through Tyne's mind. Miss Lawford shivered, as if cold, and one tear crept down her right cheek. He wondered how red her other plump cheeks would flush under the slap of his hand. God how I love it when they cry, he thought, and decided to venture a few more shots which would surely go unanswered.
"Can you even name the books of the Apocrypha? Can you explain why they are apocryphal?" He paused before issuing the final thrust, "Can you please tell me why in hell you are wasting my time in this classroom?" He took his time, enunciating each word, relishing each smack of his hot breath across the crimson face of his victim.
Tyne suddenly grew bored with the slaughter. He turned his back on the frozen wreck of the redhead, soared back to the front of the room and returned to his nest. Just one more, he thought.
"Here's an easy one for you, Lawford," he said, lowering his pitch to an almost human level, offering what he considered his most concerned, avuncular smile. "Do you think you have a better chance of passing this class than, say, the citizens of Sodom had of surviving the unbridled wrath of their god?"
The red head dropped to the desk, muffling the girl's short desperate sob.
"Well, at least you have the sense not to look back upon the devastation. End up a pillar of salt, eh?" he asked, deciding for the millionth time that he loved his profession. "Now class, what you have just witnessed – witness, also known when it's at home as 'testament,' is the merest taste of the unchecked rage of the ancient narratives …"
Never look back and full speed ahead he said to himself as he swayed to the rhythm of own voice and preached his infallible doctrine from his pulpit.
~
