Andre P. Audette

An Uncommon Tragedy

 

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Dr. Newton Schmidt is still the most brilliant professor on campus. His family named him after Isaac Newton hoping he would become a physicist, but he disappointed them by going into bioeconomics instead. He left Germany after the Second World War to study at top universities, eventually landing in the United States. “Malthusian Catastrophes and Alternative Myofibrillar Proteins” was his award-winning dissertation title, but he misanthropically labored away at a declining regional college because he originally thought he preferred teaching to research. Like many top intellectuals, he had an aloof personality and the students resented him when his handwritten notes flew way over their heads and he was unable to string together a comprehensible explanation in either his theory or lab classes. As the college declined, so too did his course enrollments. He only ever attracted the outcast nerdy types to his classes. When he would get the occasional grant for a research assistant, the only students who applied were the “at risk” students. They would get started, spend late hours at the lab, start disassociating from campus and themselves, and eventually leave the college without notice to the rest of the department. Because of this, it had been years since he published any of his research. It was too bad in a way – there were so many more people who could benefit from his insights – but research supply could not meet demand.  

 

I ran into him one night, dropping by for a late-night working session. He was an emeritus professor by then, so he did not usually roll in until at least 5pm on the days he came in at all. I was not sure what he did on other days. He had no hobbies, was vehemently anti-television, and did not seem to have much of a social network left. He had no family or people who loved him. I guess he just wasted away waiting for death to come but was holding on to the few scholarly projects he had left in his brain.

 

“I got a grant,” he muttered as he walked past me. I was amazed, not only because he tried making small talk, but that any organization would fund a man and his research program that seemed so much to be in demise. But then again, he is brilliant. “Food Studies Association. Chemical convection work. I’ll need a research assistant.” I was not quite sure whether he was asking for help recruiting or condescendingly offering me a job. “I’ll send an email out,” I replied. He swiped his key card and entered his lab. Despite being emeritus, he still had the biggest, most exclusive lab on campus. I wondered what he was using it for these days. 

 

Down the hall I unlocked my office, ready to slog through the last emails of the day before heading home. I could hear Schmidt pounding away in his lab. The grant must have had an instrumentation portion, and Schmidt is a combination of too frugal, too arrogant, and too experimental to just write the instruments into the grant. The office walls are thin, of course, but the labs are generally much better. Not “soundproof better,” but quiet. As I got enough of the inbox cleared for the day, I wrote a quick draft email call for research assistants with the usual boilerplate and work study rate. On the way out I saw Schmidt again, struggling to eat a piece of beef jerky on his way to the restroom. The aging process is so depressing. 

 

The next day Schmidt was in early, 12:30pm, and knocked on my office door before my afternoon lab. “I need the assistant to start soon. I’m on a deadline. Give me some resumes by Thursday.” “I’ll see what I can do,” not wanting to promise that there would be much of a pool of students – if any – wanting to work with him. “What should I put in the description?” “Just put that they need a basic interest in conservation. Need to be available nights and weekends. No kids with girlfriends and families distracting them from the work,” he said. Trying my best to avoid an argument with him or a discrimination claim for his requirements, I hastily typed in “working hours expected to be primarily in evenings and on weekends.” He coughed and left. Sent. 

 

I put the two resumes in Schmidt’s mailbox on Thursday while I printed my class agenda, but he surprised me by walking in to grab them just as I was leaving. “Jerky?” he offered as I walked out. That might have been the first nice thing he had ever done to me, even as I am a vegetarian and did not want to take a piece of sweaty red meat from a man who (surprisingly, for his field of research) could not cook anything else and who the day earlier coughed up my office doorway. “It’s homemade.” I politely declined. “On my way to lab. Thanks though!”  

 

During my lab, Schmidt came by again to knock on the classroom door. “I’ll use them both,” he said, presumably referring to the research assistants. “I’ll let them know,” I said, annoyed that he couldn’t wait until after my class. Both students were there in my lab. Not exactly the top students, in my opinion, and troublemakers too… I had to fight for them to avoid being dismissed from the school after they stole the opposing team’s pig mascot one homecoming for a barbeque. I was not sure if Schmidt was just looking for warm bodies or what. I told them I would confirm by email, but they got the job. They didn’t seem that excited. I was sure they were just in it for the money or to prank Schmidt somehow. I stayed late that day to wrap up grading the lab reports from two weeks ago. Schmidt was still at it working himself to death in that lab. I emailed his research assistants their contracts and employment forms, afraid of what he was going to do with them. The whole venture seemed oddly planned or haphazard.

 

The next week I asked the students what Schmidt was having them do. “Nothing really,” they responded. It figured… “We just go and he plays with his big machines. We kind of sit there and wait.” “I’ll chat with him if I see him,” I added. (It was supposed to be an academic experience too.) “We’re not complaining, ya know!” they said.  

 

Somehow it seemed Schmidt was always there after that. I caught him later that afternoon. “I talked to Kade and Brie. They said that you weren’t really having them do much work for you. Any chance you might be able to find a few tasks for them?” Annoyed that I seemed to be intruding on his plan, he shot back, “their contribution comes later.” I tried to ease the tension by asking more about his project. “Convection heating and alternative food supplies” was about all I could get out of him before he offered me more jerky. I took a piece this time, not wanting to bother him further. At the very least, I would bring it home to the dog. 

 

The weeks went by and my students were still not getting much out of working with Schmidt. “We get paid to sit there.” I inquired a few more times about when they would start doing some work for him, but to no avail. I figured if this was how he wanted to spend his grant money then that was his prerogative. But I became more concerned when he told Brie and Kade that the last day for the project was the coming Saturday night. Was he firing them? I took the unusual step of knocking on Schmidt’s lab door, but for the first time in what seemed like weeks, he was not there. Or at least he didn’t answer. Email was useless – he tried to avoid technology as much as possible – so I would try to catch him later that week. Still, it was to no use. Brie reported after lecture later that week that they showed up Thursday night and it sounded like Schmidt was in the lab working but he did not open the door for them when they repeatedly knocked.

 

Friday passed and then it was Saturday. I woke up to an unusual email; it was from Schmidt. “I’m sick. Left card in your mailbox. Open lab for RAs on Saturday. Thanks for the sacrifice.” Peeved that he just expected me to show up on a weekend, I thought back to the way he phrased that he needed a research assistant. Maybe he thought that I was his unpaid assistant after all. I thought about emailing back to tell him off, but it just was not worth it by that point. Plus, the guy was sick. I decided to call the college and have the weekend maintenance worker let the students in. Later that day it occurred to me that I had his lab card and could check on his lab. I was still curious about what he had going on in there, but I had spent enough time grading that week, so I stuck to my guns. 

 

After Monday’s lecture I asked Brie and Kade to stay around after class to make sure they got in ok. “Yep, it was fine!” said Kade, avoiding eye contact. I asked whether it was their last day and they confirmed it was. Brie said, “It was actually super nice. Dr. Schmidt left a note to say he was sorry for not giving us more to do but that he wanted us to get paid anyways. He left a homemade dinner and everything. Best food I’ve ever had. There’s still some leftovers in the warmer. We put the key back in your box.” They hurried off, not saying anything more.

 

Curious that he was not around to collect his key, and even more so about this uncharacteristic altruistic act, I swiped the key between classes and walked over to Schmidt’s lab. The thought of leftovers on a warmer over a weekend was a safety hazard, so I had good reason to enter and do a safety check. I waved the key on the pad and walked in. It looked like a kitchen of the future. It smelled heavenly. 

 

Still on the table was the note he left for the students, with seemingly random references to his dissertation interspersed with the instructions and spittle drops from his coughing. There were bread rolls, vegetables, and a large vat of meat stew still on the warmer. It looked strangely desirable, unlike any stew I had ever had before. I had not eaten meat for 12 years, but I sat at the table, grabbed the cleanest fork, and took a bite. It was the best thing I had ever tasted. I ate more, and more, and more until my face turned red and I got the meat sweats, having perhaps never eaten that much protein in one sitting. I was embarrassed by what I was doing, but I could no longer help myself. Ashamed, I left the rest on the warmer, walked out, and put his key card back in my mailbox. I went back to my office and plopped in my office chair. An idea hit me, and I pounded out the draft of the first research article I had written in several years, drawing from the early conversations I had with Schmidt and his weird ideas about the world and population control.

 

Afterwards I thought about that moment and that stew a lot. I did not go back in for fear I would run into Schmidt. I could hardly face Kade or Brie again, so it was no loss when they left the college after that year, apparently disappointed that their research mentor had abandoned the project. We thought Schmidt left the state for a much warmer climate or better medical care given his illness, but I held onto his key for whenever he returned. I only wished he had left the recipe for the stew alongside his body of work. 

 

I felt inspired, and maybe a bit beholden, to carry out the chemical convection work. At the time I could not figure out how he built an oven with no discernible controls on the machine. They had the strongest locks I have ever seen. Occasionally I would slip into his office and immediately I was taken back to that moment and the inspiration I drew from his stew. Gradually I gathered the courage to tinker with his machines, and I even finished off some of the beef jerky he left in his freezer. (What, like he was going to eat it after all that time?) I moved a few of my books in and would stop by in the evenings for some quieter reading. Eventually, I scrolled back through the typewritten copy of his dissertation and it dawned on me. I hired a few research assistants, and took up his jerky making hobby in tribute. In my next book, I think I will reveal that I have uncovered the scrumptious secret. Finally, my dear, rare, delicious colleague, Newton Schmidt, will have his name in the record books where it belongs.

 

 

 

Andre P. Audette is a political science professor at Monmouth College in Illinois by day, so much of his writing is published in academic journals. At night, he takes political and social issues and twists them into short stories and poetry, often with a political, psychological, or horror slant. Creative works have appeared in The Chamber Magazine, Wine Cellar Press, Teach. Write., Better Than Starbucks, and failed haiku. He prefers plant-based protein alternatives. Bienvenue au Danse, Andre.

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