Epilogue #3
Now the Jeremiah Wylkes Society had not one but four new members, including the first two junior members in its history, and the second animal member if we count Whiskey, as we should.
For Miles no longer had to hide his friends from Kate.
Indeed, she could feel nothing but goodwill—love, actually—for the Wylkesians, and the more she thought about it, and the more Miles laid the history before her, the more she found it rich with resonance for her own work.
At the next meeting, she gave a brilliant talk on the history of the concept of a hollow Earth in fiction, not only the underworld in Blake and Milton, but Dante, Verne, Poe, Tolkien, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alice in Wonderland, and Hell generally.
This was all far from her professional scope, of course, but then Hugh was not an actual geologist, Earl drove a cab, and God knows where Kayleigh got her depth data on Arctic boreholes.
Still, her talk was well received by all who attended, though most secretly resented comparing the Colloquies to works of fiction, even classics.
After her Society presentation, when she had returned to her seat, her husband took her hand.
For Olive’s disappearance and discovery had prompted not only a conversation about the Jeremiah Wylkes Society, but also about Bjorn Nordqvist, infernal Serpent, who, Kate acknowledged, had been giving her private skiing lessons, but certainly not double-dancing her.
The text message, she explained to Miles—and backed this up with evidence of the entire text chain preceding it—had to do with a certain emotional neediness on behalf of the former paratrooper, who was going through a painful separation from his wife, also a former paratrooper, not that this was particularly unusual in Norway, where military service was mandatory, and many couples met in winter maneuvers.
Kate had made the mistake of asking Bjorn for some pointers; this had led to a conversation about her teaching at the college, which in turn had led to a conversation about what it was like to move to a new place, and the effect that it had on relationships, and Kate must have said something about the challenges, because Bjorn just let it out and didn’t stop.
In the beginning, she had tolerated it; she was even a little flattered to be the confidante of such a hero, and it gave her a chance to do some chaste but up-close Bjorning.
And who wouldn’t want the inside scoop on the marital ups and downs of two seemingly superhuman people?
But, wow, was that man needy! Three days a week, as she dutifully carried out her role as substitute parent coach, she endured his heartbreak, until he started calling her to talk.
“You could have told me,” said Miles.
“I was going to tell you,” said Kate. But now it was his time to tell her about why Paloma had seen his car parked one night on Main Street near the apartment of the new drama teacher who dressed like a medieval tavern wench at an Aerosmith concert.
And Miranda had seen them out to lunch, playing footsie in the booth in back.
—
And he told her everything; there was no sense in hiding temptation from the woman whose dissertation was on Eve.
But Nausica? was only a very small part of the story, which went back years, to the seminar where he and Kate had met, and wound through the very history of books and words, with which, he’d come to understand, he and his wife had a very different relationship.
He did not know what he would do, he told her, that evening as they lay in bed, talking until the wee hours, but he had come to feel the world had enough Russian folktale dissertations, or, more accurately, that perhaps the next Russian folktale dissertation should be written by someone else, that his Russian folktale dissertation was no longer meant to be more than a form of private worship.
That he’d come to the stories for the descriptions of the woods, the fields, the Mystery, but that they would exist without his worrying over them.
He said that, though he tried to tell himself, every day, there were other reasons to keep reading, to keep writing, it was because of her he hadn’t given up.
That even when he’d met her, back in school, he’d thought of quitting, but he had stayed to be with her.
“There are probably better ways of being in love than trying and failing to write eleven Ph.D. dissertations,” he said.
“Worse ways, too,” said Kate.
He’d need to find some other way to contribute to the family, he said, if she would have him.
Of course she’d have him, Kate said. Sharpener of Chainsaws, Snath Repairer, Scytheman, Setter of Humane Traps, Storyteller, Parent Coach.
She kissed him: Don’t be ridiculous. And though they couldn’t know then, they only had to wait three weeks until some other way arrived, in a phone call from Greensbury Elementary, in the middle of the day, the kind of call that stirs the heart of any parent, especially one who has lost their daughter in a solutional cave network once already.
It was the principal. Miles knew her voice: no “t”s, that little puff.
She was calling with a question. As he knew, Miss Kayleigh had just had her baby, and though they had a substitute until the summer break, Miss Kayleigh had informed them that she would not return the following autumn.
Miss Kayleigh, the principal reminded him, in addition to her teaching, her baby, her work with the Wylkes Society, had successfully run a grassroots campaign to set up a wildlife preserve in the contested zone, by arguing it was Bigfoot habitat, succeeding where two decades of environmental activism to protect the endangered dwarf wedgemussel had foundered.
And now she was running for Congress, a lovely and surprising career turn, but one that put them in a bind.
It was not that they couldn’t post a job, but Miss Cooper was also leaving, and three other teachers had been priced out of the valley due to a surge of second-home purchases during the pandemic.
Because this is what they had come to, she said, her voice rising, homes for the out-of-towners, while the locals lived in the motels.
Anyway. She took a deep breath. Anyway, it had come to her attention that Miles was beloved by the children, and though they had many parent volunteers, he’d set a standard against which Anita’s pipe cleaners couldn’t hold a candle.
The point was, she was wondering what his plan for next year was.
If they were staying. If he might consider teaching third grade.
Because, if so, then it was just a matter of credentials.
“I’ve taught college for eleven years,” said Miles, who was under the full assumption that his family was returning to California, and had not discussed otherwise with Kate.
“And I assume you have some kind of teaching credential?” said Principal Tanner.
“Well, that’s a long story,” said Miles.
“You are going to need some kind of teaching credential,” said Principal Tanner. “I can work magic, but I need something to work my magic with.”
“I taught English in Thailand,” said Miles, who now really should have said, Well, this is a surprise, and very generous, but first let me talk about it with my wife.
“Did they give you a certificate?”
“I guess you could call it a certificate? There is a piece of paper, somewhere.” For he had attended a cultural-sensitivity training course, he said, learning not to point his feet at people or eat with his left hand, which was traditionally reserved for cleansing…
“I can work with a piece of paper,” interrupted Principal Tanner.
And she went on to explain that, with a certificate in hand, she could exploit a loophole in the Vermont Education Code Paragraph 17 on emergency hiring, and—long an open secret of rural school administrators—file a long form in accordance with the 1987 Rural Education Act, Part C, which had a waiver for non-M.Ed.
credentials. By summer, they’d have preliminary approval from Montpelier.
Typically, a Paragraph 17 was a six-month process, but her cousin sat on the Commission for Accreditation.
“What do you think?” she asked.
—
“What do you think?” Miles asked Kate as they sat on the tattered remnants of Professor Rumphius’s couch. Outside, bright-green leaves were appearing on the trees, and flowers on the crabapples, while birdsong rose from the awakening fields.
“Well,” said Kate. For there was also something she had been meaning to ask him.
The Department of English, after much flirtation, had expressed its interest formally.
The donor who’d funded the visiting professorship had long dreamed of endowing a chair in English.
As he had told the president of the college over racquetball, his daughter, now a student, a bit of a lost soul, had taken Kate’s seminar, finding it so transformative that she had started dressing in clothing other than pajamas, decided to apply to law school, and even was dating a boy she met in class, an Eastern European.
It had been Milton that had done it, Milton who had taught her to look for paradise not outside herself, but in her heart.
For some years, this donor had been mulling over such a possibility; it was, in fact, one of the reasons Kate had been invited. Now the offer was official, if the family might consider moving…
In a certain kingdom, in a certain land.
—