up and led him outside to my automobile. Still bent over and breathless, he mumbled that my assault was a classic primate ploy—especially typical of baboons or chimpanzees—to establish dominance through intimidation. I told him to shut up. He did. Thereafter he kept his eyes averted; and as we left Paradise Farm, rolling from crunchy gravel onto pothole-riven asphalt, I saw Adam staring out at us from the leafy picket of holly trees between RuthClaire’s property and the road. The half-hidden habiline, I glumly took note, was wearing one of my old golfing sweaters.
It did not flatter him.
At six o’clock that evening, the sullen anthropologist boarded a Greyhound bus for Atlanta, and I supposed that our dealings with each other had formally concluded. I did not want to see him again, and did not expect to. As for RuthClaire, she had every reason to feel the same way about me. I tried, therefore, to resign myself to her bizarre liaison with the mysterious refugee from Montaraz. After all, how was she hurting Adam or he her? I must get on with my own life.
About a week later this headline appeared in the Atlanta Constitution , which I had delivered every morning to the West Bank:
RENOWNED BEULAH FORK ARTIST
HARBORING PREHISTORIC HUMAN
SAYS EMORY ANTHROPOLOGIST
“Oh, no,” I said aloud over my coffee. “Oh, no.”
The story featured a photograph—a color photograph—of Adam dismembering a squirrel in the downstairs bathroom at Paradise Farm. Not having reproduced very well, this photo had the dubious authenticity of pictures of the Loch Ness monster—but it grabbed my eye like a layout in a gore-and-gossip tabloid, afflicting me with anger and guilt. About the only consolation I could find in the story’s appearance was the fact that it occupied a small corner of the city/state section rather than the right-hand columns of the front page. The photograph itself was attributed to Brian Nollinger.
“I’ll kill him.”
The Constitution ’s reporter had created a tapestry of quotations—from Nollinger, from two of his colleagues at Emory, and from RuthClaire herself—that made the anthropologist’s claims, or charges, seem the pathetic fancies of a man whose career had never quite taken off as everyone had anticipated. The press conference he had called to announce his unlikely discovery included a bitter indictment of a “woman of talent and privilege” obstructing the progress of science for selfish reasons of her own. RuthClaire, in turn, had submitted to a brief telephone interview in which she countercharged that Nollinger’s tale of a Homo habilis survivor living in her house and grounds was a tawdry pitch for notoriety and more government research money. She refrained quite cagily, I noticed, from an outright declaration that Nollinger was lying. Informed of the existence of photos, for instance, she dismissed them as someone else’s work—without actually claiming they had been fabricated from scratch or cunningly doctored. Moreover, she kept me altogether out of the discussion. And because Nollinger had done likewise (from a wholly different set of motives), no one at the Constitution had tried to interview me. Ah, I thought, there’s more consolation here than I first supposed. My ex can take care of herself. . . . She would blame me for this unwanted publicity, though. She would harden herself to all my future efforts at rapprochement.
Despite the early hour, I telephoned Paradise Farm to apologize for what had happened and to offer my shoulder either to cry on or to cudgel. A recorded message informed me that RuthClaire’s previous number was no longer functioning. I understood immediately that she had applied for and received an unlisted number. This unforeseen development hit me harder than the newspaper article. Paradise Farm now seemed as far away as Hispaniola or the court of Sayyid Sa’īd.
Before the hour was out, my own telephone began ringing. The first caller was Livia
It did not flatter him.
At six o’clock that evening, the sullen anthropologist boarded a Greyhound bus for Atlanta, and I supposed that our dealings with each other had formally concluded. I did not want to see him again, and did not expect to. As for RuthClaire, she had every reason to feel the same way about me. I tried, therefore, to resign myself to her bizarre liaison with the mysterious refugee from Montaraz. After all, how was she hurting Adam or he her? I must get on with my own life.
About a week later this headline appeared in the Atlanta Constitution , which I had delivered every morning to the West Bank:
RENOWNED BEULAH FORK ARTIST
HARBORING PREHISTORIC HUMAN
SAYS EMORY ANTHROPOLOGIST
“Oh, no,” I said aloud over my coffee. “Oh, no.”
The story featured a photograph—a color photograph—of Adam dismembering a squirrel in the downstairs bathroom at Paradise Farm. Not having reproduced very well, this photo had the dubious authenticity of pictures of the Loch Ness monster—but it grabbed my eye like a layout in a gore-and-gossip tabloid, afflicting me with anger and guilt. About the only consolation I could find in the story’s appearance was the fact that it occupied a small corner of the city/state section rather than the right-hand columns of the front page. The photograph itself was attributed to Brian Nollinger.
“I’ll kill him.”
The Constitution ’s reporter had created a tapestry of quotations—from Nollinger, from two of his colleagues at Emory, and from RuthClaire herself—that made the anthropologist’s claims, or charges, seem the pathetic fancies of a man whose career had never quite taken off as everyone had anticipated. The press conference he had called to announce his unlikely discovery included a bitter indictment of a “woman of talent and privilege” obstructing the progress of science for selfish reasons of her own. RuthClaire, in turn, had submitted to a brief telephone interview in which she countercharged that Nollinger’s tale of a Homo habilis survivor living in her house and grounds was a tawdry pitch for notoriety and more government research money. She refrained quite cagily, I noticed, from an outright declaration that Nollinger was lying. Informed of the existence of photos, for instance, she dismissed them as someone else’s work—without actually claiming they had been fabricated from scratch or cunningly doctored. Moreover, she kept me altogether out of the discussion. And because Nollinger had done likewise (from a wholly different set of motives), no one at the Constitution had tried to interview me. Ah, I thought, there’s more consolation here than I first supposed. My ex can take care of herself. . . . She would blame me for this unwanted publicity, though. She would harden herself to all my future efforts at rapprochement.
Despite the early hour, I telephoned Paradise Farm to apologize for what had happened and to offer my shoulder either to cry on or to cudgel. A recorded message informed me that RuthClaire’s previous number was no longer functioning. I understood immediately that she had applied for and received an unlisted number. This unforeseen development hit me harder than the newspaper article. Paradise Farm now seemed as far away as Hispaniola or the court of Sayyid Sa’īd.
Before the hour was out, my own telephone began ringing. The first caller was Livia
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