Two
The large room was beginning to feel stifling, and Jameson tried to surreptitiously loosen his tie as he strode up and down the front. Because this was an undergrad course, it was held in one of the lecture halls, but on a Friday, the lower-classmen were bound to be slacking off—hiking near the beautiful Whiskey Lake, or relaxing in one of the many coffee shops in Helene.
Only the truly dedicated, or those fearing a failing grade, had shown up for today’s lecture.
“And what rough beast,” Jameson quoted. “Have any of you thought of what Yeats might be saying here? That the rough beast is a representation of a dystopian world, or anarchy, or something else? Do you have some other form of beast in your mind?”
No answer. One of the girls in the front row appeared to be half asleep.
“Tell me about modern-day beasts,” Jameson said.
“Our new president,” one of the boys shouted, and a few of the other students laughed.
“X-Men has one,” someone else said.
“Okay,” Jameson said, nodding. “Beasts in comics. Beasts in politics. Anything else?”
“Something brutal,” the girl in the front row said, blinking. “Something unanticipated that just…shakes everything away. Something evil.”
Several of the students in the room nodded.
“Now, when Yeats wrote this poem, he wasn’t talking about comic books, obviously,” Jameson said. “And the current president wasn’t born at the time. Do you think he was talking about politics? Evil? Some scholars have posited he’s describing a conflicting view of the world—the opposition of mysticism and science.”
He’d lost them again. No wonder. It was the afternoon, and the sun shone warmly through the paned windows. Hartford Hall was an old building, and the large trees outside gave off a somnolent, green-tinted shade. Jameson wanted to be outside napping, too.
“Let’s move on,” he said, “to the other Yeats poem in the reader. When you are old and grey and full of sleep…” Jameson finished reading the poem.
The young woman in the front row blinked again, this time dreamily, and sighed. Jameson stared at her, confused. Was she sighing at him? Oh hell, he had to get out of here—this wasn’t what he’d intended. It had happened before that smitten students came to his office hours, but usually his gruff demeanor scared them away. Better nip any developing romance in the bud.
Thankfully, there was just enough time to remind them of next week’s midterm papers being due, and then class was over. He wished the freshmen a good weekend and started gathering his notes. When he went to tuck them into his briefcase, he noticed a missed text on his phone, which had been on silent.
Rex: You’ll never believe what the cat dragged in.
Jameson stifled a groan of irritation. Rex never could just tell Jameson what was up. He had to be all cryptic and shit. Jameson shoved his phone in his pocket. If this were something really important, Rex would say so.
Besides, Jameson had office hours. He’d purposefully set them on a Friday afternoon so that only the students who actually needed his help would come in. He also had hours on Monday and Tuesday, so that more students could come by to talk if they needed to, but this hour on Fridays was usually a quiet one.
Once inside his office, he settled into the old chair he’d commandeered from the faculty storage closet. The chair creaked if he leaned to one side, and the stuffing was held together by duct tape. Jameson loved it.
He leaned back and thought about poetry, and Yeats. When you are old and grey… Willow hadn’t had a chance to become old and gray. That had been taken from her, and he hadn’t been able to stop it. Before her death five years ago, Jameson had written poems for her, scrawling them out on scraps of paper, stuffing them into her cookbooks, taping them to the bathroom mirror, or tucking them into her dresser drawers.
He hadn’t written down a single line since she died.
He had so many poems in his head now, he didn’t know what to do with them. He felt like the words and stanzas would explode outward, taking over the clouds, writing themselves in the stars, blinding him like the sun. But nothing ever happened. He swallowed the poems, and they disappeared.
Willow had told him that she wanted him to be happy. That if something ever happened to one of them, the other should move on. Take time to grieve, she’d said as she lay dying, and then be happy. She’d cupped his cheek in her slender hand before taking her last breath, and then the life left her eyes.
Jameson shut the image out of his mind. He’d taken time to grieve—he’d done that part right. Then be happy? How? He didn’t know, and he didn’t care to figure it out.
His phone buzzed in his briefcase again, and Jameson muttered a curse under his breath. But he had to check. As alpha, it was his job. They knew when his class hours were, and they didn’t disturb him then unless there was an emergency. But office hours were fair game for texts and calls.
Another message from Rex, just like he’d guessed. It’s very shiny.
He jabbed out a text of his own. If you don’t have any real information to share, leave me alone.
He saw the three dots on his phone screen as Rex replied. He turned the phone over. Not worth it. Not worth getting grumpy about.
The minutes ticked by as Jameson watched the sun playing against the leaves outside his window, spring in the air, people wanting to get out, move around. His grizzly wanted out, too, wanted nothing more than to go back to the Ring of Fire and roam around their territory, forgetting the human things that plagued them. He’d tour the perimeter of the property and think about how best to handle the problems in the clan. No unity, no community. Asshole Jake, as Gemma and Rex called the problem. Jake had been a problem for two years, and Jameson kept hoping things would improve on their own.
Just this morning, though, another one of the clan members, Nolan, had confessed his most recent premonition to Jameson. “Things are gonna change,” Nolan had said, “and it ain’t gonna be pretty.”
Two years was long enough. Whether the change was pretty or not, it was time for Jameson to take charge of his clan.