Nobody's Fool

have bolted, maybe up into the Adirondacks someplace into the deep woods, until he was sure she was gone again and it was safe to return. And Ralph didn’t consider himself a coward either. A man had a right to be scared of such women. A moral duty to, probably.
    â€œYou ain’t really going to quit your teaching, are you?” Ralph said. He’d been almost as surprised as Vera when Peter announced that maybehe’d just make a clean break—from Charlotte, a woman who hadn’t cared for him much until she’d discovered there was someone else; from Deirdre, the woman from the poetry reading; from college teaching, which had turned out to be the worst kind of servitude, the most unrewarding work he’d ever done; from West Virginia, which was, well, West Virginia. Besides, Peter said, Sully could use his help if he decided to stick around, and maybe they could use some help too, meaning Vera and Ralph.
    â€œI don’t know, Pop,” Peter said now. “I’ve only got the one more semester anyway. This way I have the pleasure of quitting.”
    â€œI guess I never did understand that whole tenure deal,” Ralph said. Peter had explained, more than once, that he’d been turned down the previous spring and given one academic year to find another position, but that didn’t make any sense to Ralph. How could you fire a man who’d done his job for five years? According to Peter, his boss (his department chairman, Peter had called him) admitted that Peter’d gotten a raw deal, that he’d been a good teacher and had high ratings or whatever you got when students liked you. But the college was going to let him go anyhow, because there’d been some way or other he hadn’t measured up and they could use that way to hire some new young professor cheaper than they could keep Peter. Vera had been furious, but Peter had told her not to be. The truth was, he said, that he wasn’t that great a teacher and he was no great scholar either, and they’d expected him to be both. That Peter would say such a thing had infuriated Vera—a woman who never granted a concession—almost as much as the tenure denial itself. And Peter’s announcement last night that he’d decided not to go back for his final semester had been proof positive that he was giving up his life, conceding defeat. She couldn’t believe he was any son of hers, she said. She couldn’t believe he was Robert Halsey’s grandson.
    Peter had only smiled ruefully, said he wasn’t surprised he hadn’t measured up, in her eyes, to Robert Halsey, since no one ever had. And he told her the rest of what she’d said was off base too. He assured her he hadn’t any bridges to burn; they’d already been burned for him. He wasn’t turning away from teaching; he’d been terminated. He wasn’t even ending his marriage; Charlotte had done that. As soon as she’d returned to Morgantown, she’d withdrawn what little money they had from their savings account, rented a small U-Haul truck and returned with Wacker and little Andy to Ohio and her parents. The only thing waiting for him in West Virginia now was his landlord and the first-of-the-month bills he didn’t have the money to pay.
    â€œI’m not giving up much by quitting now,” Peter assured his stepfather.“Once you’re denied tenure, you’re a leper. About the best I could do is teach in some Baptist college in Oklahoma. A community college in South Carolina, maybe. I’d rather not.”
    Ralph shuddered at the mention of South Carolina. “At least that’d be something, wouldn’t it?”
    â€œDepends on your definition of ‘something,’ ” Peter said.
    Ralph nodded. “Well, I don’t blame you if you don’t want to. Your mother can’t quite understand, is all. You know how proud she is. First doctorate in the family. All your honors. Seems to her they should count for something.”
    â€œI’m sorry to disappoint her,” Peter said. “I’m a little disappointed myself.”
    â€œI would be too,” Ralph sighed. “You worked awful hard. I couldn’t sit and stare at books half as long as you did. Your mother’s right, though. There isn’t much opportunity around here.”
    Peter shrugged. “Maybe I’ll teach a night class or two at Schuyler CC.”
    Ralph nodded, trying