Regina’s Song. David Eddings

fairly simple. It’s called swing shift. One sawyer would have to work from four in the afternoon until half past midnight. There’d now be five sawyers instead of four, and the boss wouldn’t have to buy a new saw or pay overtime.

      Guess who got elected for swing shift. And guess who’d now have all kinds of free time during the normal daytime hours at Everett Community College. And guess who was coerced into taking a full course load. And guess who was the only one in the room who didn’t know this was coming.

      You guessed ‘er, Chester.

      I think the Twinkie Twins got more entertainment out of this elaborate scam than anybody else did. They were high-school freshmen now, but they’d reverted to whispering in twin-speak, giving me those sickeningly cute smirks, and giggling.

      I carried a full course load in both the winter and spring quarters in 1993, and that satisfied the requirements for graduation. It’d taken me four years to reach the point that a full-time student achieves in two, but I was now an Associate in Arts and Sciences—with honors, no less. And I had a major in English, but with a lot of those “everything” courses that didn’t apply.

      I went through the cap and gown ceremony with the Austins and Greenleafs in the audience, and after the ceremony we all went back to Greenleaf Manor for another of those “let’s steer Mark in the right direction” sessions at which I was usually outnumbered six to one.

      Inga Greenleaf led the assault. “What in the world were you thinking of, Mark?” she demanded, waving a copy of my transcript at me. “Your grades are very good, but half the courses you took weren’t even remotely connected to your major.”

      “I didn’t have a major when I started, Inga,” I explained. “I was just browsing. It was only after a year or so that I finally settled on English.”

      “There are some definite holes in this,” she told me, still brandishing my transcript. “I’ve checked with the University of Washington, and you’ll have to take a couple of courses this summer to fill in the gaps. Les has contacts with some local banks, and your grades are good enough to qualify you for a student loan.”

      I threw a quick look at my dad. We’d already discussed that at some length. He shook his head slightly.

      “I’m sorry, Inga,” I said flatly. “Let’s just forget that student loan business. Sooner or later, I’m going to have a mortgage on a house biting chunks out of my paychecks, and probably car payments as well—that ol’ Dodge can’t run forever. I’m not going to add a student loan on top of that. I won’t hand three-quarters of my paycheck to the Last National Bank to pay interest. I’ll look for a part-time job, but no jobbee, no schoolie, and that’s final.”

      “Oh, goodie!” one of the twins said, clapping her hands together. “We get to keep him!”

      “Shush, Twink,” her mother snapped. I don’t think she even realized that my Twinkie invention had crept into her vocabulary.

      The boss was squinting at the far wall. “When you get right down to it, Mark, you’ve already got a part-time job.”

      “It’s full-time, isn’t it?” I replied.

      “Of course it is,” he replied sardonically. “A guy who works by the hour paces himself to make the job fit the time. If you bear down, I’ll bet you could finish up in four or five hours a night, and if it starts to pile up, you could clear away the leftovers on Saturday.”

      “And if you’re really serious about getting an education, you can live at home and commute to the university,” my mom added. “Your dad and I can’t send you to Harvard, but we can give you a place to live and regular meals. That way, you won’t have to rent an apartment or buy groceries.”

      “Our big brother’s going to get away from us after all,” one of the twins lamented in mock sorrow.

      “Nothing lasts forever, Twink,” I told her.

      “Who’s going to tie our little shoes?” the other twin said.

      “Or glove our little hands?” the first girl added.

      “You’ll both survive,” I told them. “Be brave and strong and true, and you’ll get by.”

      They stuck their tongues out at me in perfect unison.

      “This is going to crowd you, Mark,” Les warned me. “You won’t have very much free time. Don’t make the same mistake I made when I went there. I managed to party my way onto the flunk-out list in just two years.” “I’m not big on parties, boss,” I assured him. “Listening to a bunch of half-drunk guys ranting about who’s going to make it to the Rose Bowl doesn’t thrill me. We can give the university a try, I guess, and if it doesn’t work out—ah, well.”

      I filled in the gaps on my transcript that summer, and on a bright September morning, I drove down to the University of Washington to register. After I’d plodded through all the bureaucratic nonsense, I wandered the beaten paths to knowledge for a while—long beaten paths, I might add, since the campus measures about a mile in every direction. I finally found Padelford Hall, home of the English Department. After I’d located my classrooms, I drove back to Everett to get to work.

      I took a stab at the “full-bore” business the boss had mentioned, and I found that he was right. I cleared everything away in just under five hours. That made me feel better.

      Classes began the following Monday, and my first class, American Literature, started at eight-thirty. There was a kind of stricken silence in the classroom when the instructor entered. “It’s Conrad!” I heard a strangled whisper just behind me.

      “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” the white-haired professor said crisply. “Your regularly scheduled instructor has recently undergone coronary bypass surgery, so I’ll be filling in for him this quarter. For those of you who don’t recognize me, I’m Dr. Ralph Conrad.” He looked round the classroom. “We will now pause to give the more timid time to beat an orderly retreat.”

      Now, that’s an unusual way to start a class. I thought he was just kidding around, so I laughed.

      “Was it something I said?” he asked me with one raised eyebrow.

      “You startled me a bit, sir,” I replied. “Sorry.”

      “Perfectly all right, young man,” he said benignly. “Laughter’s good for the soul. Enjoy it while you can.”

      I glanced around and saw that fully half the students were grabbing up their books and darting for the door.

      Professor Conrad looked at those of us who’d remained. “Brave souls,” he murmured. Then he looked directly at me. “Still with us, young man?” he asked mildly.

      His superior attitude was starting to irritate me. “I’m here to learn, Dr. Conrad,” I told him. “I didn’t come here to party or chase girls. You throw, and I’ll catch, and I’ll still be here when the dust settles.”

      What a dumb thing that was to say! I soon discovered just how tough he really was. He crowded me, I’ll admit that, but I stuck it out. He was obviously an old-timer who believed in the aristocracy of talent. He despised the term “postmodern,” and he viewed computers as instruments of the devil.

      He had his mellower moments, though—fond reminiscences about “the good old days” when the English Department resided in the hallowed, though rickety, Parrington Hall and he was taking graduate courses from legendary professors such as Ebey, Sophus Winther, and E. E. Bostetter.

      I maintained my “you throw it and I’ll catch it” pose, and that seemed to earn me a certain grudging respect from the terror of the department. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I aced the course, but I did manage to squeeze an A out of Dr. Conrad.

      I was a bit startled at the beginning of winter quarter when I discovered that I’d been assigned to a new faculty advisor—at his