(The good parts were, once again, contributed by Norman Stevens — Librarian Extraordinaire — who shook the gravel that I gave him and came up with gold; I couldn’t have found my way out of this labyrinth without him.)
Late the next afternoon, Cynthia and John met at a local bar and started drinking Pinot Grigio. John felt betrayed by his Boston girlfriend Maria who earlier that afternoon had bragged to him on her cellphone about an English scholar she had just met who was as good a feminist as any man she knew. The photograph of her snuggling up to this handsome stranger that she had forwarded from her cellphone had put him in an especially foul mood. He had been drinking heavily since that unsettling call.
Cynthia was equally distressed not so much by the fact that Mary Anne Hanley, the daughter of one of her college classmates, not only had found Mann’s heart on the bonfire but also had wrapped it up and carried it off to the police station, but by the instant five minutes of fame it had brought her. She was officially welcomed into the sisterhood of Omega Omega Delta for having carried out the heart stunt and was christened Ticky on the spot.
Cynthia knew how upset her mother Buffy would be. It was Ticky who attached the note to Mann’s heart; a quotation from Whitman (it was the only thing she had written in her notebook when Mann himself wrote it on the blackboard as he ended what was to be his last class ever). Having dealt with those important matters, they moved on to a consideration of Mann’s death and the potential impact on their academic careers.
John tentatively leaned over to kiss Cynthia on her wine-flavored lips and their investigation, so to speak, was reduced in scope but proved both fruitful and enjoyable.
Meanwhile, back at Kicker’s room, when Muffy playfully called him by his given name while they were having one of their frequent sexual escapades, he hit her across the mouth and split her lip. As she left to return to her sorority house, Kicker decided to return to Mann’s office to make sure that he had recovered. In tears Muffy, with her face streaked to a pink that matched the sorority’s color, told her housemate Shirley Maxwell, aka S-Max, how Kicker had smacked her for no good reason. Outraged, and not in the least concerned that Kicker might be kicked out of school, S-Max called the campus police. The hunt for Kicker was on!
Winkie, when he returned to his office in the Satis Library, was surprised to find that there was no visible police presence and no yellow-crime scene tape across Mann’s office door. Peeking into the office, he saw Mann’s body still upright in his chair so he headed to his own office where he finally called the police. Kicker arrived at Mann’s office still not understanding why nobody had mentioned an assault on Mann. He knocked on the door, which swung open, contemplated The Hillborne Mann’s body, and reached for the note, which was the quotation “Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good” by Emerson that he scribbled on a sheet on Mann’s desk the night before.
The police, led by Mrs. Kunkle, burst in and — killing two-birds with one stone — arrested Kicker for assaulting Muffy and killing Mann. Kicker, surprisingly articulate, explained why Mann had to die. Sure that any jury of his peers, perhaps assuming he would face a jury consisting of student-athletes and maybe even a coach or two, would acquit him, he ranted on. Before finally asking for a lawyer, Kicker announced that he regretted his actions only in so far as they might interrupt his football and academic career, and that he remained committed to the study of American literature despite his disappointment with Mann.
Never discovering that it was Nouleigh Rhee Furbished who had so carefully removed Mann’s heart and used it to create an artistic masterpiece, the police seized as evidence the unique copy of “The Telltale Heart.” Unfortunately it was held in a musty evidence locker at the police station where it rotted and decomposed before Kicker’s trial some eleven month’s later. When interviewed on Entertainment Tonight, she declined comment on whether or not she was already planning her next creation, or simply waiting for the right opportunity.
Kicker eventually pled guilty to manslaughter in the second degree and was sentenced to five to seven years in the New Hampshire State Prison for Men in Concord. He is now actively engaged in a prison-based writing program and is completing his first novel: the story of Moby Dick as told by Starbuck. It will be dedicated to Mann.
Ahmed Farouk took over Mann’s 19th-century American literature classes. Despite adamant and vociferous protestations by a number of students, Ahmed has altered the reading list slightly but significantly. He also has put into place a new system of grading that relies heavily on frequent unannounced in-class exams in place of term papers, thus eliminating the time-honored tradition of recycling long practiced in Hillborne’s fraternities and sororities.
Pleased to have reclaimed Mann’s office for the Satis Library, Peason presses ahead with his campaign to exile them completely. His chief argument is the fact that the endowment established by Mann will bring a newfound prestige to the English Department that should entitle them to their own new building. He even announces that technology will not require additional library space and relinquishes any claim to the land behind the library, which had long been dedicated to library expansion, in favor of that new building. He even suggests that Hillborne might consider commissioning Frank Gehry to design a landmark book-shaped building to house the department.
Cynthia and John go their separate ways except for an occasional relapse when the mood strikes one or the other. Maria becomes a less frequent part of his life. He struggles along with TGBB deciding eventually to recast it for publication through Amazon’s BookSurge program.
Campbell, Farouk, and Jefferies persuade the President to appoint them each to a ten-year term for the administration of the scholarship established by Mann. To compensate for the increased demands on their time, their course load is reduced by one class a semester and each is given $5,000 a year for incidental expenses involved with their new duties.
John is outraged that he has not been asked to serve in that capacity. He begins dating the new assistant dean of admissions, a former student of his who happened into an inheritance of her own.
John thinks Mann was right about one thing: Nobody but a fool ever married but for money.
