Claude.” He leaned across the bar and spoke softly. “But I wish you’d leave your Robin Hood act outside. You’ve scared the bejesus out of some of my customers.”
Bledsoe’s face darkened. Quickly, Doherty added, “Just a request, is all.” He moved down the bar, his back to Bledsoe, keeping a wary eye on him in the bar mirror.
Down the bar a middle-aged man turned to the still shaken student, who was staring wide-eyed at the arrow in the middle of the dart board. “You don’t know about Claude Bledsoe?” the man said. “I guess you’re new on campus. He’s sort of a legend around here.” The student ventured a peek at Bledsoe, who was now sipping his ale and speed-reading a copy of
The Wall Street Journal
.
What the student saw was a man who looked years younger than forty-nine. He also looked different from anyone else the young man had ever seen. A weight lifter at the YMCA where Bledsoe swam laps daily once remarked that Bledsoe was built “like a hairless orangutan.” That statement was made well outside of Bledsoe’s hearing, for the same weight lifter had once seen Bledsoe, showing off, lift up the back end of a Volkswagon Beetle “as easy as you’d pull up your garage door.”
Bledsoe’s physical strength and willingness to display it were well known in downtown Madison. He had never lost an armwrestling match to a member of the Wisconsin football team,
any
Badger team in nearly three decades, embarrassing new recruits autumn after autumn at Doherty’s Den, where their knowing teammates delivered them to be humiliated.
Bledsoe had never lifted a weight in his life. His freakish strength, like his great intelligence, sprang from a gene source not apparent in his family history. The sometimes dark nature of his character was of similarly mysterious origin.
After he’d been graduated the first few times, Bledsoe was assigned a permanent academic advisor. That man, Henry Wing, met with Bledsoe before the start of each semester and recorded the degrees earned, also noting the outside interests Bledsoe said he enjoyed: several of the martial arts, skydiving, music, moutaineering, target shooting. Wing occasionally saw Bledsoe on campus or in town in the company of a woman, but never the same one twice.
Henry Wing retired the year that Bledsoe took his degree in agricultural science, accepting the diploma while wearing Oshkosh B’Gosh overalls and a John Deere cap. In the notes he left for his successor as Bledsoe’s advisor, Wing wrote, “You will find Mr. Bledsoe to be brilliant. He has also long struck me as being exceedingly strange, like those large men who wear dresses, or horned helmets and breastplates, or tasseled hats and lurid makeup, to professional football games, making one wonder what, when the games are over and night comes, they might be going home to.”
***
The man at the bar continued to enlighten the student, who had now replaced his Packers cap on his head and was working on another beer. As he understood it, the man said, Bledsoe had been a student “here since the seventies, on some kind of permanent scholarship from his family. I don’t believe he’s worked a day in his life.”
The man could not have known it, but that was not actually the case. In the long course of his scholarship years, Bledsoe had saved a sizeable chunk of his stipend, for he’d always lived modestly—decent but cheap apartments, used cars, thrift shop wardrobe, the rare gourmet dinner. But four years earlier Bledsoe, until then an extremely conservative investor of his savings, went completely out of character. The results were disastrous. Not long after he’d shifted his assets, along came the economic tsunami known as the dot com crash. Bledsoe was suddenly faced with a new reality: he needed to replace his on-its-last-legs car, a twelve-year-old Honda Civic that had begun flaking rust like dandruff. But Bledsoe had no funds to finance such a purchase.
As a result, Bledsoe offered
Bledsoe’s face darkened. Quickly, Doherty added, “Just a request, is all.” He moved down the bar, his back to Bledsoe, keeping a wary eye on him in the bar mirror.
Down the bar a middle-aged man turned to the still shaken student, who was staring wide-eyed at the arrow in the middle of the dart board. “You don’t know about Claude Bledsoe?” the man said. “I guess you’re new on campus. He’s sort of a legend around here.” The student ventured a peek at Bledsoe, who was now sipping his ale and speed-reading a copy of
The Wall Street Journal
.
What the student saw was a man who looked years younger than forty-nine. He also looked different from anyone else the young man had ever seen. A weight lifter at the YMCA where Bledsoe swam laps daily once remarked that Bledsoe was built “like a hairless orangutan.” That statement was made well outside of Bledsoe’s hearing, for the same weight lifter had once seen Bledsoe, showing off, lift up the back end of a Volkswagon Beetle “as easy as you’d pull up your garage door.”
Bledsoe’s physical strength and willingness to display it were well known in downtown Madison. He had never lost an armwrestling match to a member of the Wisconsin football team,
any
Badger team in nearly three decades, embarrassing new recruits autumn after autumn at Doherty’s Den, where their knowing teammates delivered them to be humiliated.
Bledsoe had never lifted a weight in his life. His freakish strength, like his great intelligence, sprang from a gene source not apparent in his family history. The sometimes dark nature of his character was of similarly mysterious origin.
After he’d been graduated the first few times, Bledsoe was assigned a permanent academic advisor. That man, Henry Wing, met with Bledsoe before the start of each semester and recorded the degrees earned, also noting the outside interests Bledsoe said he enjoyed: several of the martial arts, skydiving, music, moutaineering, target shooting. Wing occasionally saw Bledsoe on campus or in town in the company of a woman, but never the same one twice.
Henry Wing retired the year that Bledsoe took his degree in agricultural science, accepting the diploma while wearing Oshkosh B’Gosh overalls and a John Deere cap. In the notes he left for his successor as Bledsoe’s advisor, Wing wrote, “You will find Mr. Bledsoe to be brilliant. He has also long struck me as being exceedingly strange, like those large men who wear dresses, or horned helmets and breastplates, or tasseled hats and lurid makeup, to professional football games, making one wonder what, when the games are over and night comes, they might be going home to.”
***
The man at the bar continued to enlighten the student, who had now replaced his Packers cap on his head and was working on another beer. As he understood it, the man said, Bledsoe had been a student “here since the seventies, on some kind of permanent scholarship from his family. I don’t believe he’s worked a day in his life.”
The man could not have known it, but that was not actually the case. In the long course of his scholarship years, Bledsoe had saved a sizeable chunk of his stipend, for he’d always lived modestly—decent but cheap apartments, used cars, thrift shop wardrobe, the rare gourmet dinner. But four years earlier Bledsoe, until then an extremely conservative investor of his savings, went completely out of character. The results were disastrous. Not long after he’d shifted his assets, along came the economic tsunami known as the dot com crash. Bledsoe was suddenly faced with a new reality: he needed to replace his on-its-last-legs car, a twelve-year-old Honda Civic that had begun flaking rust like dandruff. But Bledsoe had no funds to finance such a purchase.
As a result, Bledsoe offered
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