Fox’s Game Ch. 13: A Lesson in Rhetoric

Vanderbilt Lecture Hall

Dr. Alyssa Morell eyed her class like a cop administering a breathalyzer. Her stare lasted a full six seconds before she continued, “If we could assign a number value to anything that could ever happen, every event would be contained in pi. The beauty of pi is that it shows up in equations that have nothing to do with circles. It could very well be the most important number in human history.” Morell’s students clicked at their laptops as she spoke.

Morell had not spoken to anyone from Benjamin Hoek’s cookout. In fact, she’d had little contact with anyone from the university besides her summer school students. The brief separation from colleagues had given her a chance to consider her career options without the distractions that arise during the fall and spring semesters.

A former college teammate informed her of a job opening for a Systems Analyst position at Google. She’d visited San Francisco last summer and loved it. The weather, the people, the culture—everything appealed to her sensibilities. She couldn’t justify moving unless a job at Stanford or some other major college became available. She hadn’t considered the business sector. A job at Google, with its flexible hours, generous benefits, and quirky work culture, could be what lured her away from Vanderbilt. She would also have the freedom to merge her interest in theoretical equations with practical application without it conflicting with other aspects of her job like grading tests and joining committees.

Although she enjoyed lecturing, she was disappointed to find that many—students, smart, talented students—lacked the focus she had as an undergrad. When she graded hastily done take home exams or asked a question based on the class readings and saw that half of them had not read, she felt a twinge of resentment at having to spend her time preparing to help them when she could be helping herself. Her ambivalence concerning the Google job wore on her. She had to decide soon whether or not to apply.

She glanced at her watch before concluding the lecture. “Keep in mind that numbers are not abstract images on a two-dimensional plane. They are living, moving entities that reflect themselves in our thoughts and actions. It’s all a matter of re-imagining them. Have a good weekend.” She gathered her stuff and walked down the hall towards her office. She’d already begun thinking of what she’d be cooking for dinner. Her planning was interrupted when she noticed Julian Daniels leaning on the wall next to her office door, arms folded, legs crossed at the ankle.

Alyssa froze and looked at him as if she’d opened the door to her home and found a stranger comfortably watching tv.

“Dr. Alyssa Morell. Let me introduce myself, Dr. Julian Daniels.”

“Hello. Can I help you with something?”

“Yes, I need your help.”

Alyssa waited a beat. “Okay.” Although the word lilted upward on the last syllable, it was more statement than question.

“I need to know what our problem is. I don’t care if someone doesn’t like me. Most of the time, I’m not even interested in why. But in your case, I’m a little curious.”

Alyssa wanted to at least set down her briefcase, but she didn’t want to do it in the hallway, nor did she want to invite him into her office. She knew the conversation would not end if all she did was give one and two word answers. She sighed, unlocking her office door. “After you,” she said.

He sat in a brown, cushioned chair opposite of her desk. He looked around at the University of Maryland paraphernalia. He nodded approvingly at the meticulous decoration, the neatly lined oak book shelf, the evenly spaced framed awards lining the wall above her desk chair. Even the most casual observer would conclude that the owner of the room was precise and goal oriented.

“I didn’t know you were a college athlete.”

“Look, I’m busy. What do you want?”

“I just want to know why you and I have a problem. We don’t have to be friends or anything, but I do want to know since you’d never met me before the cookout at Ben’s.”

“Fair enough. I don’t like guys who cheat. And I don’t like guys who cheat on my friends.”

Julian turned his head as if to look at her with one eye. “Who’s your friend?”

Alyssa shook her head and smiled. “I imagine it’s hard to keep up with all your conquests. Christine Thompson. Remember her?”

He let out a breath and nodded. “I remember her. We dated for eight months. What about her?”

“What’s about her is that we’re pretty good friends. And I don’t appreciate my friends getting lied to and cheated on. I just don’t. Weird, I know.”

“We cheated on each other! I’m not saying what I did was right, but it’s a little different if we’re both doing it. And besides, she cheated first.”

Alyssa was caught off guard. “So you justify bad behavior by pointing at other bad behavior. Really Dr. Daniels, that type of reasoning is beneath you.”

“That’s not my argument. My argument is you can’t play the victim if you, too are a perpetrator. That’s like a car thief calling the cops after finding his car missing. Look, you’re her friend. You should take her side. But if you know me and interact with me, then I’m no longer some abstract ex-boyfriend. At that point, you must be willing to learn the whole story or else you’re being intellectually dishonest.”

Alyssa laughed sarcastically. “Oh wow! You’re good. You’re good. I see why you’re such a successful author. You know how to make even the most outlandish viewpoints work for you.”

“Look, there’s parts to the story that, if you knew, would alter your perception of me. And if you’re going to base your treatment of me on that story, you should be willing to learn as much as you can about it as possible. If not, then you can’t say you’re acting with integrity.”

Alyssa crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. Julian knew he was making her angry. But he knew this was better than her one-worded, stony dismissals. He had to play the situation carefully, applying the right amount of emotional pressure so that she would continue to engage him.

“Aly–Dr. Morell, I’m not implying that you don’t have integrity. I’m saying there’s more to know, and if you’re unwilling to take in new information that could change your position, you’re not being as honest as possible with yourself.” He made her integrity part of the conversation in order to get her attention, then redefined the term in hopes of clarifying his point. Now he needed an example to show that he could identify with her.

“Look at it this way: you’re an economist and an athlete. I know you remember the backlash in the baseball world when Moneyball came out. There’s a section in the afterword where one baseball exec criticized the book in one breath and then, in the next breath, proudly admitted that he’d never read it. There’s nothing wrong with not having read a book. But if he’s willing to make a value judgment on that book based on biased, incomplete information—information that is within his grasp but he refuses to at least look at—then that’s not completely honest.”

Alyssa chewed her lower lip. By referencing her economic background and then couching his argument in that way, Julian made an intellectual appeal. The fact that she was thinking about it meant he could engage her logic, which also meant that she would be more open to what he had to say. He knew that emotions were good, but when someone has her mind made up and refuses to change it, that is a result of emotional resolution rather than intellectual certainty.

“I have nothing against Christine. I saw her a few weeks ago at during a concert at the Ryman. She was with some guy and seemed to be happy. I know that her being civil to me doesn’t mean anything. But it’s evidence that whatever issues that we had have begun to dissipate.”

Alyssa knew that her friend was dating someone new. She knew that some wounds from some relationships never fully healed. But with the vast majority of break ups, time and changing perspectives tended to mollify past feelings. “That’s a good point,” she said.

Julian was careful to appear impassive. Her conceding that he had a point meant she was willing to change her mind. But if he showed that he was emotionally invested in her decision, it would hurt the intellectual appeal he was making.

“Anyway, I know you’re busy. So I don’t want to bog you down with unnecessary details about my relationship with Christine. But for about the last month of our relationship, we both started talking to other people. She’d met some guy named Terrence, I think. And I’d begun texting my ex again.”

“She said you spent the night with her,” Alyssa said, arms still crossed.

“Yes, I stayed the night at her house,” Julian subtly changed the connotation of her sentence, thinking ‘stayed the night’ sounded less sexual. “I slept in her bed, but we didn’t have sex. I don’t expect you or Christine to believe that. Either way, I know that staying at your ex’s is problematic no matter what you did or didn’t do. I told Christine the next day because I didn’t want it to come out later and seem worse than it really was.”

“But earlier you said, ‘she cheated, too,’ which implies that you did cheat on her at some point,” Alyssa said.

“Yes, a week after I stayed the night, I hooked up with my ex.” By that time the relationship with Christine was all but over. Here’s the thing, though—when she talks about me cheating, she’s referring to when I stayed the night. She doesn’t know about what happened that next week. By that time, I hadn’t spoken to Christine for days. She wouldn’t respond to my texts nor return my calls.”

Alyssa began chewing her lip again. “Now you said she cheated, too.”

“Yes, a friend of mine saw her on Broadway. He took a pic and texted it to me.” Julian took out his phone, scrolled to the picture, and handed it to Alyssa.

She studied it. No doubt the girl was Christine. She was at one of the Nashville honky tonks, sitting on a mystery guy’s lap.

Julian continued, “This doesn’t mean she cheated. It’s just a picture. But I texted her several times that night as well as the next morning and got no response. When I finally got ahold of her, she was unusually sweet. She even laughed off the things I do that would normally annoy her. I never told her about the picture. I figured it wouldn’t help anything, but it definitely colored how I approached our relationship. This was ten days before I stayed the night at my ex’s.”

Alyssa unfolded her arms and shifted in her seat. She had no reason to think Julian was lying, and the evidence he gave was circumstantial but plausible. The truthfulness of his version of events was secondary to the fact that she probably should drop whatever grudge she had. If Christine was no longer wasting energy on it, then she had no need to. In this instance, her adherence to the Girl Code had reached its statute of limitations.

Julian could tell by her body language that he’d convinced her to, at the very least, not dislike him. But he knew that convincing her to work with him, Robert, and Kristoff, would have to wait another day. Correctly orchestrated rhetoric was effective, but it also had its limits.

“Well Dr. Morell—Alyssa—I just wanted to clear that up. I’ll let you get back to work.” As he stood up, he extended his hand.

She shook it and said, “Thank you for taking the time to do that. I appreciate it.”

Alyssa waited until she could no longer hear his footsteps down the hallway before she gathered up her work material. She wanted to make sure he was gone because even though her thoughts about him had changed, her attitude had yet to catch up.

**********

Thompson’s Station,
Williamson County, TN

Robert and Kristoff sat in oak finished chairs in Kristoff’s living room. They faced his coffee table where dozens of books lay sprawled on top of each other, covering the wooden, rectangular space. Each created a make-shift desk with a tv food tray where they set their laptops. If either man couldn’t find a particular book in the make-shift study area, he could get up, walk to the dining room where another army of books rested neatly on top of each other.

Both scholars would’ve appreciated the dichotomy between the orderly kitchen and the messy living room—the visual metaphors of between work and rest—were they not absorbed in their research, clicking furiously on their keyboards, sketching in notebooks, and underlining book passages.

Two hours had passed since either man had spoken. They muttered thoughts but knew that the time to read came before the time to speak, thought before action.

Robert ran his red pen under each line of a book titled Medieval Semiotics, a dense, scholarly work written by a Harvard professor of symbols who used images of the past to decode meanings about how people of that time saw the universe and saw themselves. Semiotics, the study of symbols, is a field that for years fell under a litany of disciplines. What field in the humanities didn’t try to coax meaning out of pictures—whether psychologists understanding Freud and his cigar, art historians drawing insight out of spires, or linguists analyzing the changing shape of a letter? But semiotics took the process a step further. While studying symbols was part of those other fields, it was the essence of this one.

Robert enjoyed semiotics because he created meaning through pictures daily. The secret to his ability to recall large amounts of information came through his knack of creating memorable images and storing them in a specific place in his mind. From the memory masters of antiquity to modern educators, the secret to memorizing staggering amounts of information came from using designated spots at specific “memory palace” locations and then connecting them with information one wanted to remember through memorable actions. For example, if Robert wanted to begin a lecture on the influence of Hebraic thought on Western civilization with an anecdote from the Old Testament about Abraham and Isaac, he might picture Abraham Lincoln at his front door ramming his way through it using a giant apple.

The image was nonsensical, yet it possessed all the information he needed to recall his opening lines. The front door is where the entrance or beginning to his home, which served as one of many memory palaces, Abraham Lincoln is a memorable enough figure and the apple represents Isaac Newton, which for Robert’s purposes, would be Isaac in the biblical story. That picture may be nonsensical but it would be memorable enough to cue what he wanted to say.

The more vivid the picture, the more vivid the memory. The picture was simply a cue to jog the memory, a symbol of a given thought. By now, McDonough’s use of symbols to crystalize memories was second nature. And so his interest in studying them had a practical purpose–he used them every day to help him remember names, events, even numbers. But now, he was studying them in a way he was unfamiliar with, to piece together the story of one individual in hopes of solving a mystery. He usually worked inductively, taking the bits of information he gleaned and plastering them to a larger picture. However, he was doing the inverse: using what he knew about the larger picture in hopes of understanding the details.

Only now the information led to such little insight that it was akin to being farsighted and looking through binoculars. All he could do was continue to adjust the focus until the picture turned clear, except he had no idea how long he’d have to adjust or even what the image was, but he knew he’d instantly recognize the picture the moment it came into focus.

He flipped through Medieval Semiotics searching for words that would lead him to anything pertaining to memory cults or underground organizations. The more he searched, the more obscure the research became. Robert kept reminding himself that no secret involving more than three people was completely devoid of evidence. Harvel’s tattoo showed that the Shadow Knights had roots in ancient traditions, but how far back did they go? Perhaps they were a relatively new organization that simply adopted ancient symbols?

The problem was that unlike groups like the Masons or Yale’s Skull and Bones Society, this group seemed to work on the microlevel, with average people like Harvel who were less likely to have their lives recorded for posterity. If a politician joined a secret society, that secret will eventually come to light because he is a public figure—people will talk. But the Shadow Knights seemed to target extraordinary individuals living ordinary lives like a talented criminal who went to prison for embezzlement but in another life could’ve been a mathematician.

A man with a low profile would be hard to track and would leave behind a small historical footprint, especially several centuries ago. Someone like Harvel would have surely melted away into the annals of history, even if he’d killed someone because the details of his life would have been virtually non-existent beyond his military record. There’s no telling how many Harvels have existed throughout the course of human history.

Robert and Kristoff worked for hours, and even their considerable powers of concentration were beginning to wane. Robert was pondering the likelihood of finding evidence of men like Harvel throughout history when Kristoff interrupted his thought process. “Robert! We’ve been going about this all wrong!”

It took Robert a moment to shake out of the fog of thought he’d put himself in. “Wh-what do you mean? How is that?”

“We’re tracing people by looking at evidence of symbols, right? We don’t need to find Harvel or anyone else. We need to look for actions similar to the one he committed. If we study those, we’ll find the Knights of the Shadow. They may only be shadows, but shadow doesn’t equal non-existent.

Fox’s Game Ch. 11: A ‘Keep Out’ Sign is Not to Keep Us Out but to Remind Us that We Want In…and Other Obvious Facts

Vanderbilt University Research Facility

Kristoff Tulowitzki stood at the white board in his office, the symbols from his blue marker that covered the board would be comprehensible to only a handful of people in the world. He stood immobile, arms folded, mouth frowning. Not until the soft taps turned into sharp raps did he notice the knocking on his door, jumping slightly at the abrupt interruption.

“Come in,” he said.

Robert peeked his head in. “I hope I’m not disturbing you Kristoff.”

“Ah, Robert! I did not expect you. You are, in fact disturbing me, but it’s okay. I need to take a break. Our minds need periods of intense concentration followed by short rests. And social rests are the most healthy kind.”

“Good, good to hear. I was hoping you could settle something for me and Julian.”

Kristoff laughed. “I will try.”

“Well, it’s about Hoek’s record player riddle. What do you think? If a glass of water were on it, would it fall off or spill first?”

“Ah yes, I remember. It’s clearly an unsolvable equation.”

“That’s what I told Julian. I want to hear your rationale behind it, though.”

“It’s simple physical science. The centripetal force created by the circular movement is going to act differently on different glasses. A tall, thin glass will have a lower center of gravity and would thus get moved easier than a short wide one.” Robert tilted his head to the side. Tulowitzki continued, “and of course, the amount of water matters, too. A drop differs greatly from being filled to the rim. And how far away is the glass from the actual center of the circle, meaning the recorder?”

Robert smiled. “I agree with your answer. Although the rationale that led me there was remarkably different.”

“Oh, really?”“I took an historic approach. I focused on how the Romans viewed order and power, how they would’ve viewed the glass as something that needed to be controlled, but they would need to know the dimensions of that which they were controlling before they could exert any sort of power.”

“I love the way you see things, Robert. So…so…epistemologically.”

“Thank you, I think.”

“I meant it as a compliment. But tell me, you didn’t come all the way up here to ask me about a riddle. What do you really want?”

“I’m terrible at mind games.”

“Robert, I believe you are incapable of deception.”

“Well, my question is about Ben’s case. Julian and I have a question about secret societies. I figured you’d be able to put us on track.”

“I really don’t want to get into this, Robert.”

“I know, I just want to save dozens of hours of research by asking someone who might know. If you feel uneasy, I won’t pressure you.”

Kristoff knew he could trust Robert and that helping him in this matter would establish a stronger bond between them, which could be helpful in the future. “What’s the question? I’ll do my best.”

Robert unfolded a sheet of paper from his pocket. “Well, here’s a picture of one Harvel’s tattoos. It’s a Renaissance memory wheel. Seems like an odd thing to have. This particular wheel is interesting because it was the one used by Giordano Bruno, who wrote Book of Shadows. It’s a bit of a memory treatise, but it also has some information on the occult. He was also a known conspiracy theorist. He wanted to use his esoteric knowledge to control those in power. Let the Church and the State worry about controlling the masses. He’ll control the Church and the State. Have you heard anything about him?”

“That name is not completely unfamiliar. But I can’t place it. And I have never seen this image in relation to an organization.”

“That’s all I needed to know. Kristoff, I won’t take up anymore of your time. You’ve been very helpful.” Robert folded up the sheet and stuck out his hand.

“A bit of advice, Robert. Just because I don’t know about it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. That tattoo could very well mean something.”

“I know, it’s just that this is all I’ve got. There are some things about the situation that are odd, but I imagine that, if I studied similar instances, I would see the same abnormalities.”

“True. Anomalies are far more common than we think both in the natural world and in human behavior.”

“I’m meeting with Julian tonight. He spoke with Ben’s former student, the Channel 4 producer who came to him with the story. We’ll compare notes. Unless we receive a new flood of information, we’ll try to wrap up our research assignment in the next day or so.”

“That’s probably a good idea. You and I are puzzle solvers, and part of solving them is understanding which ones are worth our time.”

“Well said. I will let you return to yours. Thanks as always.”

“Thank you, Robert.”

Robert closed the door, and Kristoff returned to his statuesque pose in front of the white board.

**********

“Julian, I greatly appreciate the irony of discussing potential secrets in such a public place,” said Robert after ordering his Cherry Coke. They took their usual seats in a secluded corner.

“It’s ironic, but since no one knows we’re working on this, we don’t have to keep it secret,” said Julian.

“Strangely enough, acting secretive often brings secrets to light,” said Robert.

“Sherlock Holmes said it best, ‘there’s nothing so well hidden as an obvious fact.’ It’s like if you act as if there’s nothing to hide, you can hide almost anything,” said Julian.

“People are interesting. Some things are naturally sensitive and need to be hidden. But how much information becomes valuable for no other reason than someone decided it needed to be hidden?” Robert said.

“It’s known in advertising as the Appeal to Snobbery. If you want your product to seem more appealing, simply show that it’s something that only a precious few are privy to. Then, no matter how accessible it is, if you have it, you’re part of a select group.”

“Who was it that said that the fence and the keep out sign is not to actually keep us out but to remind us that we wanted in?”

“I dunno, Robert. But I’ll have to steal that line.”

“So what’d you find after talking with Tiffany Saunders?”

“Well, the tattoo was a dead end. I found out that Harvel’s really good at disappearing. He leaves a boarder patrol job in Arizona shortly after 9/11 and just falls off the radar. He then pops up in Texas in ’04. Six months later he’s gone, and we don’t see him again until ’08. What do you think?”

“It could be part of a pattern. It’s impossible to understand without knowing more about his background. If he has a habit of disappearing for long periods, it could be nothing. But he was in the military where, by all accounts, he was a disciplined and dependable soldier. So that doesn’t really fit.”

Julian sighed. “Unless we get new information, doesn’t seem like we could do much. We’d have to question a large number of people who’ve already been questioned by authorities in hopes of finding something they missed. And I hardly doubt that’s what Ben had in mind when he asked us to do this.”

“Let me ask you: do you think Tiffany Saunders fell into the trap we were just talking about?”

“What trap?” said Julian.

“You know, the fact that things were secretive caused her to take an inordinate amount of interest in the case. As good as I’m sure she is, it’s not like she’s immune. Think about it, you ask a bunch of questions and get stonewalled. That makes you ask more, as if they’re hiding something. But maybe there’s nothing to hide, maybe they’re just making it more secretive because they can. There’s no upside in opening up to the press. Or maybe they’re trying to hide something else completely unrelated. There’re several possibilities. And given what we know so far, the problem is unsolvable.”

“Agreed. I think we should wrap this up. We put in our work. Let’s tell Ben that we simply don’t have enough information to move forward.”

Robert gulped his Coke. “This reminds me. What’d you get for the answer to Ben’s riddle about the glass of water and the turntable?”

“I forgot about that. You know, I think it was incomplete. Look at it this way: the turntable, the glass, the water, they’re all characters in a play. How can we predict how they will act once they’re set in motion if we don’t know anything about them? We’d need to know some backstory before we could move forward. You can’t have a story without conflict. The conflict, of course, is the movement, but you can’t have a story with only movement. You must have characters that we know something about. Does that analogy make sense?”

“Perfect sense. Kristoff had a completely different answer, same conclusion but different answer. I guess I should say he had a different reasoning process. And it’s in the spirit of our current dilemma. Like this case, that riddle has a dearth of facts to make any real sense of. Guess that’s why I like it.”

“We should stop by Ben’s office tomorrow and let him know what we came up with. I’ll call Tiffany and let her know.”

“Well Julian, it was good working with you. We really should collaborate on a project together. Kristoff and I were talking about doing something together, too.”

“I would like that. I admit I’ve been looking forward to these discussions more than I thought. I’m so used to just typing on a blank page that I forget co-authoring has its benefits as well.”

The two finished their drinks and left the coffee shop. Robert settled into his white, ’04 Camry. He took out his phone so he could charge it while he drove. He saw that he had a three missed calls and two voicemails from a number he didn’t recognize.

“I hope there’s not some sort of emergency.” He went to his voicemail feature and turned up the volume.

“Robert, it’s me Kristoff. Benjamin Hoek gave me your number. I found something about that tattoo. You were right, it does belong to a secret organization. We need to talk. I know you were meeting with Dr. Daniels tonight. Maybe I can come, too? Call me back.”

Robert’s heart thumped against his chest like knuckles on a punching bag. He listened to the next message, “Robert, I see I’ve gotten your voicemail again. Call me back when you get a chance.” He set down his phone, closed his eyes, drew in his breath, counted slowly to four, held it for seven seconds, and exhaled for eight. He did this two more times before picking up his phone.

He texted Julian: Kristoff left me two voicemails. We just got some backstory on one of our characters.

Fox’s Game Ch. 10: The Journalist and the English Prof. Discuss Coffee & Conspiracies

Vanderbilt University
School of Journalism
8:30am

Debbie Hudson smiled as Robert walked into the office. She was glad to see someone who made her job easier. As secretary for the Dean of Liberal Arts, Hudson fielded a litany of phone calls and visits that could make her days as hectic and unpredictable.

An angry student looking for someone to blame because her 4.0 was ruined was likely to storm into her office and complain about an American Lit class before realizing that Hudson was merely the go-between. Situations like that made the day adventurous but exhausting. She enjoyed seeing faculty members like Robert who showed her respect. They knew that for every one emergency Dr. Ben Hoek had to solve, she stopped 10 from even going that far.

“He’s in his office, Robert. Just go in.”

“Thank you.”

Ben stood up. “Thanks for coming in. Did you and Julian find anything?”

“We think we have a lead, but we need more information. I want to know how you decided to put the folders together.”

“The folders from the cookout? Let’s see, I just printed off news articles that I found and typed up a brief page on what Tiffany had told me. Jonathan made copies of what the police had, so I added those. Why?”

“Well, we found a tattoo that could indicate Harvel was more than a mentally unstable loner. Again, it could mean nothing. I want more than a brief bio. Is there any way to find out his hobbies or what organizations he was in?”

Ben pressed the tips of his fingers. “There is a way to find out.” He paused for dramatic effect. Robert leaned forward.

“Kristoff.”

“You mean Kristoff Tulowitzki?”

“Of course.”

“I have no problem asking him, but what makes him so qualified?”

“He’s a conspiracy theorist, but he’s such an organized thinker, he can explain his theories without sounding like a crackpot. I’ve heard he can make you think that Lee Harvey Oswald, the CIA, the Cubans, or the Russians assassinated Kennedy.”

“Interesting. Well, if this is his wheelhouse, he probably won’t mind sitting down answering a few questions.”

“I don’t think you have to settle for a few questions. I think you could get him all the way on board. Let me ask you, what answer did you come up with for my turntable question?”

“Turn–oh yeah. It’s unsolvable. You didn’t give us enough information.”

“Go on.” Now Ben was the one leaning forward.

“It’s a variation of a logic puzzle the Romans developed. How fast would a chariot wheel have to spin before it begins to break apart? It’s about order versus chaos. The Romans were obsessed with unification. They wondered how much unifying they could one do before things would unravel. The answer was…it depends. It depends on the size of the chariot wheel and the strength of the tools that forged it. That’s the point. How much order can you bring to the world? It depends on how big the world is that you want to conquer and how strong the tools are that you’re using?

“So back to your question, it depends on what kind of glass you want to use and how much water is in it.”

Ben made a mental note to use that example in the future. “Great answer, Robert. That question is your opening. I feel like each of you will come to the same conclusion but with different types of reasoning. That question was my way of giving you all something to think about even if you said no. Maybe it’d stick with you enough that my request wouldn’t quite leave your mind.

“Call Kristoff. Begin by asking him what answer he got. Then tell him your answer. He’ll appreciate it. From there, ask him about the case. The idea that a small piece of evidence could link to something bigger will more than likely draw him in. At the very least, he can give you a few leads.”

“Thanks, Ben. I’ll call him when I get to my office.”

“Don’t call him. Go see him like you came to see me. He’ll appreciate the effort. Plus the face-to-face contact will make your point more forceful. It’s Monday. He’ll probably be working in his office with the door closed. At first he’ll be grumpy that you interrupted him, but once you get talking, he’ll be fine.”

The two shook hands. “Thanks again, Ben. Talk to you soon.”

On his way out he waved to Debbie Hudson. She smiled, nodded and turned her back to her computer.

***********

 

Tiffany sat at the coffee table on her living room floor. A whole wheat turkey and cheese sandwich lay on a plate, half-eaten beside a bowl of Cheerios next to her computer, a bottle of water next to that.

She wanted to write an article about the need to understand Harvel without sounding too sympathetic. She knew what she wanted to say but not quite how. She took a bite of her sandwich, chewing while her fingers hovered aboard the keyboard. Her phone buzzed and she jumped nervously. She moved the papers that buried it and answered on the second ring.

“Hello, is this Tiffany Saunders?”

“Yes?”

“Hi Tiffany, I’m sure you’re busy, so I won’t take up your time. I’m Dr. Julian Daniels, associate English professor at Vanderbilt. I’m a good friend of Ben Hoek.”

“He’s doing well. I was calling because he asked me to look into the Christopher Harvel story you were working on.”

Julian looked phone to see if he hadn’t dropped the call. Tiffany’s silence meant something but he couldn’t tell what.

“Hello? Ms Saunders?”

“Sorry, yes I’m still here. What specifically did you need to know?”

“Well, long story short, a few professors here are very interested in the details of the case. I was wondering if it’d be possible to meet up with you to discuss it.”

“Sure. I’ve been trying to approach it from some fresh angle, but I can’t find anything worth pursuing.”

“Dr. McDonough from the Classics Department and I would like to meet with you because we may have something. Do you know where Fido’s on 21st is?”

“I do. Will Dr. Hoek be there?”

“No, but if you have any questions, feel free to call his office.”

“Should I bring anything?”

“Bring everything you can. What day and time works for you?”

“Well, since I’m suspended from work, I can meet whenever. How about this evening after dinner around 8:00?”

“If you get there before me, just know that Dr. McDonough has a large beard, and I guarantee you he’ll be wearing a white shirt. You’ll know him when you see him, even if there’re 10 guys who fit that description, you’ll just know. He looks like he spends his days in a library. I mean that in the best possible way.”

Tiffany laughed. Maybe meeting with two crusty professors wouldn’t be so bad. “Sounds good. See you then.” She hung up the phone and looked up the professors on the Vanderbilt website. Robert matched the description given to her, but she was surprised by how young Julian looked. She wondered if he was married but pushed the thought from her mind. She ignored the urge to do any further research, tied her shoes, and went for her run.

 

**********

Tiffany pulled her car into the cramped parking lot behind Fido’s. She stepped inside and scanned the area. She recognized Julian from his faculty picture and walked to where he sat.

“Dr. Daniels, nice to meet you in person.”

“Likewise. And call me Julian.”

“Sounds good. Where’s Dr. McDonough?”

“He couldn’t make it, but he did give me a few questions to ask.”

Tiffany felt a twinge of excitement at the news that it’d just be them. She enjoyed being out with an attractive member of the opposite sex, even if it were strictly professional.

“Well, ask me whatever you want. I brought my laptop. It has my notes as well as everything I collected.” She sat it on the table. “Before we get started, I’m gonna get something. What are you drinking, Dr. Daniels?”

“The Simple Summer. It’s got cucumber syrup, milk, & espresso. Here, try some.”

“Thanks but no thanks. I think I’ll try something sweeter.”

He chuckled, “More for me. Choose wisely.”

She returned holding a mug.

“What’d you get?”

“The Local Latte.”

“Good choice. Honey & cinnamon in a latte, right?”

“Local honey. Makes all the difference.”

“Of course.”

The two laughed and a moment of silence passed as the mood shifted from casual to business. “So is there anything specific you need me to clarify?” she asked.

She glanced at his ringless left hand in spite of herself. She enjoyed meetings like this because she didn’t have to impress him, and everything was about the work. Any romantic energy they felt was muted by the work that they were here to discuss.

Julian set his phone on the table and pressed the record feature. “We’re really interested in Harvel. What’s his background?”

Tiffany pulled up her notes on him. “Let’s see, born 1970 in Muncie, Indiana. Graduated from Muncie High in ’88. Went to Purdue University, dropped out after three years and joins the Marines. While there, he was a sniper who fought in Operation Desert Storm. Spent some time in Kosovo in the mid 90s. Was honorably discharged in ’97. Awarded the Purple Heart.

After leaving the military, he worked in Arizona as a border patrol agent. He also took evening classes at Arizona State, got his degree but continued working his day job. He earned his Masters in History. Then all of a sudden, he just quits. Calls his boss says he’s not coming in.”

“Did he give a reason?”

“No. His boss just said that he called and matter-of-factly told him he was quitting. No yelling or any sort of emotion. This was in November. Apparently, after 9/11 he’d begun to behave erratically. Some of his co-workers believe he was experiencing some PTSD symptoms.”

“PTSD? Four years after being honorably discharged?”

“Yes, from what I gathered, we’re still learning about it. The illness affects people in different ways. Some control it better than others. Some experience it after certain events or hearing certain noises,” Tiffany said.

“Fair enough. So what next?”

“Well, he then showed up in Texas in ’04 where he leased an apartment for 6 months and paid some bills. He got a job adjuncting and working maintenance for Alamo Community College in San Antonio. No abrupt departures this time. He returned his apartment keys, he re-painted his apartment as stipulated by the lease, he even gave the college his 2 weeks notice…Does any of this help?”

Julian finished his drink and signaled to the barista that he wanted another. “Actually yes, we’d gotten some basic information about where he lived and what he did. But it’s sometimes hard to believe what you read online. Hearing it from you makes it much more credible. Also, you’ve been much more detailed about his behavior and the reaction by others to his behavior.”

“Okay good, I just don’t want to be repetitive.”

“No, you’re doing great,” he said.

Tiffany smiled, the two made eye contact.

“He left Texas and disappeared again. Showed up in Woodbury, Tennessee in ’08. He lived there until a week before Bissette got to town. That’s all the factual information I have on him.”

Julian nodded. He pauses a moment before speaking. “Debussy once said that music is in the silence between the notes. The same is true about stories. The brilliance is in what’s unsaid.”

“You’re interested in the years where he’s off the grid.”

“What do you think happened when he left in ’01?” he asked.

“I think he went to Mexico. I don’t think he went deep into the country, I think he traveled just far enough to disappear. If anyone were looking for him, they could’ve found him. You know what I mean?”

“I understand,” he said.

“I think he was following the War on Terror. He knew going back to the military wasn’t really an option, but he wanted to help. And so he stayed close, maybe doing some illegal things to make money but also observing and getting information.”

“Do you think he may’ve been working for our government?”

“I have that feeling. But if he was, the work he was doing wasn’t official.”

“So we have a smart, educated, dedicated, skillful guy possibly working off the grid in Mexico for the United States during a time of heightened suspicion about terrorism.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe,” he echoed.

“So he resurfaced in Texas and took a reputable job in ‘04. Maybe he’s running from someone? If you’re on the grid, you’re easier to keep track of. But also, it’s harder for someone who’s after you to just run up and kill you.”

“I agree. He’s a veteran, so he has some credibility. He uses that to get another state job, one that allows him to lay low. But not too low because if he doesn’t show up for work one day, the police are going to look for him.”

“Okay, so he stays there until ’08. Then for the next three years he’s gone again, only to show up in Tennessee in 2011. You wanna hear my theory about ‘08 to ‘11?” she asked.

He sipped his drink. “Yes.”

“I think he was in Tennessee the whole time.” Tiffany waited the way you do when making a contrarian statement.

Julian took the bait. “Why?”

“I think he was on the run again. Maybe not for the same reasons or even from the same people. But he was definitely trying to keep himself safe. I think he saw that it’s better to get out of Texas but live somewhere rural enough to sustain himself.”

“So where in Tennessee was he at?”

“I think all over. The state’s not huge, but it’s big enough to hide in. I’m from Knoxville. That’s East Tennessee, all kinds of mountains there. And then West Tennessee is flat with plenty of farmland. And Middle Tennessee has a little bit of both. He could travel through the state for years and make no indelible marks and keep himself alive.”

“Fair enough. We’re filling in the gaps, the silent parts. But we have to make it fit with what we do know, the noisy parts. How do you think that works?”

The server returned to their table. As she removed their glasses, she casually asked, “we’re doing last call. Would you like anything else? Also, how do you want me to split the check?”

“Just one,” Julian said.

“It’s okay, make it two,” Tiffany said.

“You came out of your way to talk to me about the work you’ve done,” he said.

“No, it’s great to have someone listen to me about this stuff for once. I probably owe you. Let’s just call it even.” Tiffany wouldn’t have minded him paying had it not been for the eye contact earlier in their conversation. She wanted to avoid any sort of semblance of a date, especially since they clearly would have to meet again.

“One last thing,” Julian said. “Can you pull up a couple pictures of Harvel?”

She showed a headshot as well as the full body surveillance image of him getting into his car.

“That’s the one, the picture that was on the news,” he said. “What do you know about his tattoos?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. There were a few common military style tats, and a few that seemed weird but nothing that would draw red flags, no gang tats or anything like that.”

“Someone like him wouldn’t have gang tats, but could he have tats that could give clues to the unknown parts of his story?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe. Is there something specific you’re wondering about?”

“Yes, look here.” He angled her computer so she could see what he was pointing to. “Dr. McDonough identifies this as a Renaissance Era memory wheel.”

“Memory wheel?”

“A circular object where you would store images, mental images. These mental images acted as pegs upon which you could place things that you wanted to remember. It was a loci or location.”

She nodded. “I think I get it,” she said.

“Here’s what people did before post it notes and cell phone reminders. They thought of a place they were familiar with like their homes. And they attached what they wanted to remember to the furniture in their homes. For example, if they wanted to remember that Harvel was from Indiana, they’d picture their living room and place something associated with Indiana, a basketball or an Indian, something that would help them think of Indiana. And if they wanted to remember that he was in the military, maybe a gun on their favorite table, et cetera, et cetera until they had everything they wanted to know.

“Speakers would use this technique to remember the order of their speeches, which is where we get the term ‘in the first place.’ Well, as you can see, it’d be easy to run out of places. How many buildings could you really be familiar with?”

“Right, so they invented the memory wheel to give them more places,” she said.

“Yeah, you just place things that you’re familiar with on the wheel. You and I might make a wheel that had the 26 letters of the alphabet. That creates 26 extra spots.”

“So he has a Renaissance memory wheel tattooed on his forearm. And you think this is some sort of clue as to what he was doing in Mexico or wherever he was when we couldn’t track him?”

“Yeah, it’s just not something you get a tattoo of unless you’re really interested in that time period. Dr. McDonough said it’s rare and specific, not the type of picture to circulate in tattoo parlors. One’s not likely to see it on a poster, point to it and say, ‘that looks good. Give me that.’ And it’s not something you would just stumble across haphazardly.”

“So you think it’s something you’d get a tattoo of if you were really into studying that kind of stuff?”

“Exactly,” he said.

“I’ll look into it. I have some friends in Metro I could ask,” she said.

“Good. McDonough seems to think that if others have the tat, that it’s rare. It may not turn up in any initial searches.”

“If nothing comes up, I’ll see if they could call in a favor with the TBI or FBI.”

“Thanks, Tiffany.”

They signed their checks and left. As he drove home, Julian thought about how difficult it’d be for him to disappear in the 21st Century. If he wanted to leave tomorrow, how long before he would leave a trace of his whereabouts? And could he just reappear in another state and get a job without arousing questions about his past?

One thing he knew: despite the erratic behavior, Harvel was not crazy. The apparent chaos of his life was not because of an unstable mind. Julian wondered if Harvel’s actions were rooted more in logic than instinct. If so, then what he did—both on the day of the shooting and the years leading up to it—could be understood.

Fox’s Game Ch. 9: A Classicist and a Music Critic Debate Renaissance Symbols in a Nashville Coffee Shop

May 20^th

“So Julian, you read the folder. Anything stand out to you?”

Robert sat across from his friend in a dimly lit corner of Fido’s. A concert had just ended, so it was more crowded than normal.

“You know, the only thing I saw that seemed a little weird was that this guy Christopher J. Harvel seemed so guilty. Know what I mean? It’s like he did everything wrong that you could possibly do. It’s a little too neat,” Julian said.

“Hmmmm…” Robert hadn’t considered that.

“What do you think?” Julian asked.

“No, go on.”

“Well, if you try to kill someone in pure emotion, it’s usually in the moment. You don’t really have time to think, right? I feel like a crime like that wouldn’t be purely emotional. I’m reminded of Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov kills Lizaveta with an ax. It’s a violent murder, but there’s no passion. It was part of an odd social experiment on his part. Lizaveta’s sister witnesses it, so then Raskolnikov has to kill her, too. That murder was unplanned and sloppy. That’s one reason why the Inspector Porfiry catches him.”

Robert nodded.

“That’s what I can’t understand. You plan to meet someone on their travel route, you’ve obviously planned some things. You can’t anticipate everything, so maybe you still get caught. But why even risk it in front of all those people unless you want to get caught.”

“Perhaps he wants to be a martyr?”

“Maybe. That’s the only way it makes sense. But if that’s the case, why risk it by weaving through traffic? Why even worry with a getaway?” Julian asked.

“I don’t know. We humans are capable of both great rationality and great irrationality at the same time. Perhaps he’s both Raskolnikov and Lizaveta’s sister,” Robert said.

“It’s certainly possible. What’d you notice?”

He pulled out a black and white image from his folder. “This seems like a little thing, but I noticed this picture of him as he’s running to his car. He seemed to have lots of tattoos. So I pulled out my microfiche lens in order to get a closer glimpse.”

“Hoping that his body would reveal something about his mind?”

“Exactly. I wondered if there was some sort of outer manifestation of an inner condition.”

Julian reached across his body, grabbed his coffee mug with his left and sipped. His right hand fidgeted with his napkin. “And? What’d you find?”

“Well, it’s probably nothing.”

Julian fidgeted faster. “You found something everyone else overlooked, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know if anyone overlooked it or not. We’d have to ask Captain McRay. But I noticed an interesting tattoo. Here.” He slid the picture across the table to Daniels who stared like he were watching a magician’s hands during a coin trick.

“Look through this,” Robert handed the microfiche lens.

“Sorry, but he has a whole sleeve of tattoos. They all run together. They seem weird, a little gothic, but nothing you can’t find at a biker bar on a Saturday night.”

Robert smiled. “Keep looking.”

Julian stared for 10 minutes. “Again, sorry. I have no idea what you saw.”

“How familiar with you are Renaissance imagery?”

Daniels sipped his coffee and laughed, “now you wanna give me a hint? Look, I’m familiar with Renaissance images—Hamlet gazing at Yorick’s skull, Di Vinci’s Vetruvian Man, God touching Adam’s finger in the Sistine Chapel—but I’m not seeing a connection. He has a skeleton tat on his bicep, but it looks more like an ode to Salvador Dali than a Shakespearean play.”

“You’re thinking too general, too…too obvious. This is a very esoteric symbol. Look one more time, this time at the forearm. Right above Harvel’s left hand is a circle. It’s partly obstructed, but it’s a picture of a Renaissance Memory Wheel, not to be confused with the Medieval Memory Wheel.”

“Of course, it’s like confusing ‘your’ and ‘you’re.’ People do it all the time, but they really shouldn’t.”

“Exactly.” Robert miss the sarcasm, he’d already switched to lecture mode.

“Well, as a Classicist, my eye was immediately drawn to the image. It’s not something that most people would be familiar with let alone get a tattoo of. That got me thinking. So I visited the library to see if this was a particular wheel or just something he thought may have looked cool.

“I looked at several types of memory wheels, Medieval, Renaissance, modern, just to cover my bases. But it wasn’t until I opened De Umbris Idearum that I found a match. It’s a book by Giordano Bruno written in the late 16th century. In it he discusses his version of the art of memory. He has different types of memory wheels meant to remember different things—the signs of the Zodiac, the different angels—almost any list of things could be plugged in.

“Well Bruno has this one wheel that’s not quite Renaissance and not quite Medieval. Seems like a mixture of the two. It has Hebrew, Greek, and Latin lettering. It encompasses the Greek origins, the Christian tradition, and the Cabalistic influence that have shaped the discipline of memory.”

Julian fidgeted again. “Okay, so what does all this mean?”

“Well, it might not mean anything. We’d have to know where he got it from and when. That might lead us to something else. Here’s the thing: it’s not a trendy image that you get in order to seem smart,” Robert said.

“I follow you now. People like talking about their tattoos, but they don’t always want to explain them. It can get tiring, and people lose interest quickly. If you want a tat that reflects your affinity for that time period, you get one of the images I mentioned because people have heard of Di Vinci and Shakespeare and Michelangelo. If you have to provide too much backstory, it’s almost not worth explaining. You need a neat, quick story.”

Robert smiled.

“But Robert he knew about a rare image and got it put on his body. How does that point to anything?” Julian asked.

“Here’s where it gets interesting. Giordano Bruno was a Dominican cleric. But like many people in Europe during that time, or anytime for that matter, his faith was mixed with the pagan influences that were part of his culture. So he was a bit of an occultist. Nothing unusual there, but De Umbris Idearum translates to Book of Shadows. He’s essentially writing about things that are meant to be secret.

“So he was trying to expose these secrets?”

“Not exactly. Remember, this is during a time where few people read and even fewer people read Latin. He wrote to other educated people whom he could hopefully influence. He might as well have been writing in code,” Robert said.

“Makes sense. He wants to see how many out there are like him. Maybe form a subset of a subset of the Catholic faith?”

“Yes, kind of. And this is where I need to catch up on my research. But I think he was reaching out to people who were capable of retaining a great deal of information. He saw how much power the Church had. Church leaders and the rich were the only ones who, for all intents and purposes, could read. But when you get to those who could read Latin, the number gets smaller. And when you think of those who could memorize books, that number gets much, much smaller.”

“So you think he was looking for a way to get an even smaller group to control information?”

“Yes. The fewer, the better. No one can achieve large scale power alone, but the fewer people who help you, the less power there is to go around. He wanted a group of people with whom he could share his memory systems. That way, they could control information more tightly than his superiors in the Church.”

Julian nodded. “It’d be like if only a few people around the world had access to the internet and those few people weren’t academics in universities but midlevel politicians wanting more power.”

For the first time during their meeting, Robert sipped his drink. “Yes, that tattoo could mean all of that…or none of it. We have to go further in order to find out.”

“Fair enough, how do we do that?”

“Here’s what I was thinking: we both went through the information in our folders, right?”

“Of course.”

“Well, there’s little else they can tell us. We should go to our direct sources. I’ll talk to Ben and see what he knows. Like, how did he decide what to put in our folders and what to leave out? I think you should contact the news producer.”

“You think so?” Julian asked.

“Yes. Her job’s on the line, and she worked hard on this. She’ll enjoy talking about it, and she’ll be glad to know she’s not alone. And even if she wants nothing to do with our leads, we haven’t lost anything.”

Julian paused. “You’re right. I’ll call the station and see what I come up with.”

“Let’s meet here same time tomorrow.”

Fox’s Game Ch 8: Five Professors, a Cop, and a Cookout

West End Park Neighborhood

West Nashville

Ben Hoek lived in a three bedroom home in the residential area of Nashville’s West End. The price resulted more from location than actual house value. It was less than a mile from the expensive restaurants and trendy businesses of Nashville’s downtown area. And a mile or so in the other direction led to the safety and isolation of the old money of the Bellevue district. The home stood in a sensible middle ground desirable to those who gathered in the part of town—college students, young adult hipsters, middle age businessmen, and a growing retirement community.

Hoek’s position as senior faculty coupled with his administration work ensured a high salary. And his wife’s position as a consultant to local record companies made living in the area affordable. Of course, you don’t achieve Hoek’s level of professional success by staying content with where you are. As a formal journalist for The Tennesseean and Assistant Professor of Journalism, Hoek achieved success by paying meticulous attention to detail

He approached his home with the same critical eye. The backyard where he would hold the meeting was encased by hedges that formed a perfectly lined rectangle. The bushes lining his patio looked like green spheres orbiting his patio furniture. He had a small island outside the bushes where he kept his charcoal grill. Hoek believed in the principal of minimalism, that if you started with quality materials and worked excellently, you wouldn’t need to replace what you have or redo what you did. This philosophy of simply doing well showed in his work. He repeated to his journalism students like a mantra the old saying, “if you write well, you don’t have to dress funny.” His point was that good work trumped cheap tricks. One may experience some success through gimmicks, one may even get rich. But eventually one would get exposed. Shoddy work always tells on itself.

This thinking informed his habits. So as he prepared the food for the meeting, he knew that if he did his part according to the high standards he’d set for himself, then his four faculty members would not only say yes to his proposal, they would have no problem saying it. He couldn’t make them feel as if they were simply doing him a favor. He had to present it in a way that created a sense of eagerness. He checked his watch and realized that his guests would arrive in half an hour. He closed the grill, set a timer, and went inside to change clothes.

At 6:00 he headed down back to the grill. The scent of spicy shrimp, charred sausage, and medium cooked ground beef made him smile. As he unloaded the food into a tin foil tray, he heard 3 crisp knocks on his front door. “Jonathan,” he said as he turned around and headed back inside.

“Ben! So good to see you! How long has it been?” Jonathan said.

“Five, no six years. Harry’s retirement party. How’s he doing?”

“Good. He and Vicki’s been doing a lot of traveling. I think he enjoys Hawaiian shirts and flip flops more than he thought.”

“I’m glad,” Hoek said.

“Time’s a crazy thing,” Jonathan said.

“Yep, well c’mon in! Let’s get you some food. I can’t wait to hear what you’ve been up to.”

The two went to the backyard. Police Captain Jonathan McRay was tall and lean with a full head of hair. He was no longer a young man, but the way, the sleeves of his Music City Marathon t-shirt hugged his arms, showed he still had plenty of vigor.

The two men discussed how they’d conduct the meeting. “I’ll take the lead, Jonathan. You really won’t have to say much. I just need you here for authenticity’s sake. I want what I’m asking to seem less abstract. I just want to be honest with them. I’m not worried about getting them to do it. I want them to want to do it. These are professionals at the top in their fields. They’ll dig up stuff that we’re not even interested in, that we don’t even want. But enthusiasm helps creativity. It’s not always necessary, but it helps. With something like this that they’re not intrinsically interested in, it could a long way,” Hoek said.

“Ben, you don’t have to do this. We just need a few questions answered.”

“I know. I just want them primed to do their best if they’re going to take time from their schedules to do it.”

McRay smiled as he placed a firm hand on his friend’s shoulder. An abrupt knock ended their reunion. “Well, the first of our honored guests is here,” Hoek said.

Robert McDonough stood at the door, holding a store bought pound cake. “Robert, thanks for coming. Here, let me take that from you. Right this way.” Hoek placed the cake on the kitchen counter and gestured for McDonough to lead the way out the backdoor.

“Hello? Ben?” Tulowitzki had knocked and half opened the screen door leading into the Hoek living room.

“Come on in, Kristoff!” Hoek said, jogging towards his colleague. “I know we’ve met but never really spoken. Glad you could make it. I want to talk, but let’s get you a cold beer first.”

“Well, what do you have?”

“How do you feel about a Yazoo Gerst?”

“It’s refreshing. And I love supporting local breweries.” Tulowitzki said.

Hoek pulled a chilled beer glass from his freezer. “The bottle opener is outside next to the cooler.” His words were interrupted by another knock. Feel free to make your way outside. Let me get the door.

Morell and Daniels showed up at the same time. The pair looked as if they were on a date. Daniels had on gray slacks, perfectly creased down the center of the leg, a fitted light blue shirt that outlined his shoulders and tapered perfectly at his waist, and a red tie knotted into a neat double windsor. Morell wore the discounted Ann Taylor outfit with black pumps.

“Ah, the future of Vanderbilt,” said Hoek. “Hopefully we can afford to keep you over the next ten years or so. Julian, wasn’t it Oscar Wilde who said that said only shallow people judge by appearances?”

“Yes. In Act I of The Importance of Being Ernest,” Julian said.

“Well, pardon my lack of shallowness, but you two look great. You make me want to go upstairs and change into something less comfortable.” He led them through the kitchen to the back door.

“Our last, and by the looks of it, classiest guests have arrived. Julian, Alyssa here’s Robert McDonough, a first rate classicist professor. Reads Latin better than most people read English. And he has the most remarkable memory. This is Kristoff Tulowitzki, a well-known, well-traveled biochemist. This gentleman over here is Captain Jonathan McRay of Metro Police. He’s a long time friend, and one of the true good guys of this city.”

“And I would like you all to meet Dr. Julian Daniels, Associate Professor of English and New York Times bestseller writer. And Dr. Alyssa Morell, a highly respected economist. We should appreciate her while we can before Wall Street or Silicon Valley offers more money than she can say no to.” Hoek’s way of speaking glowingly of others was one of the things that made him so well liked. The cookout guests were used to words of praise, but hearing Hoek’s enthusiasm—as if he were the best man at your wedding—gave an added measure of pride.

The four professors recognized each other. Tulowitzki and McDonough shook hands. The two were more acquaintances than friends, but in 2006, they had collaborated on a panel at a conference that focused on the modern relevance of ancient symbols. Tulowtizki remembered being impressed by the classicist’s grasp of Newtonian calculus. Most liberal arts people turned off their brains when it came to math, claiming that they were words people, as if one had access to only half his mind.

Tulowitzki remembered how interesting McDonough made Renaissance numerology sound and how surprised he was when he tied its concepts into modern code breaking principles. The chemist took notice whenever he saw McDonough’s name on emails or publications. Though the two were able only to speak in passing, he sensed a mutual respect that comes from experts who work in different aspects of the same field. Like the ground soldier admiring the pilot who steers him safely behind enemy lines, Tulowitzki knew they were like-minded men who worked towards the same goals but approached it from different perspectives.

McDonough also recalled the meeting. “You may not remember but back in ’06 we were part of the same panel at the Language of Mathematics Conference.”

“I do remember! I still think about what you said about the history of numerology.”

“Thanks, much of it’s been debunked, but the insight into how we try to understand the world is still relevant and interesting. What about you? Your presentation on Avogadro’s Number and The Flow of Information forced me to buy several pop science books. I admit I try to follow your work up until the point it gets too technical.”

“I thank you. I believe you have the patience and intelligence for my work if you weren’t busy with your own studies,” Tulowitzki said.

The two men, loners by nature, connected. Both viewed their work as a means of discovering order in the midst of chaos. They saw themselves as inhabiting opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum.

“Many great scientists used their understanding of the liberal arts to make great discoveries.” Tulowitzki said.

“When’s the next Language and Mathematics Conference? We could head up a” McDonough said.

“Yes, I’ve been looking for a new direction to take my work in. Perhaps you could help me with that.”

“Absolutely.”

Hoek watched as the scholars got along. He’d anticipated this, but his optimism was tempered as he watched the stiff interaction between Daniels and Morell. The two spoke politely, but he could tell they weren’t comfortable interacting, which surprised him. They were both young, attractive, brilliant academicians. If nothing else, the common ground should provide them something to converse about.

He was aware that they might not have known each other. University faculties were often made of several autonomous units that, in turn, were made up of smaller autonomous units. College professors generally worked alone. Their classes were their fiefdoms, which they governed as they saw fit. Their research incorporated some collaboration, but ultimately culminated in one person either typing ideas onto a blank computer page or experimenting in an empty lab. They interacted most with those in their respective departments. In that sense, colleges mirrored other environments. Proximity dictated social interaction.

That aside, Hoek figured Daniels and Morell would have gravitated towards one another the way people around the same age and who have similar interests tend to do, especially in Nashville where an aspiring guitar player could move to Nashville on a Monday, be part of a band by Wednesday and not find a place to live until Friday.

The tension he sensed was real. Six months prior, Daniels dated one of Morell’s friends. The relationship didn’t end well. And she needed to behave frostily towards him. He knew his -ex had a faculty friend. But he didn’t make the connection.

“So you’re an economist?” he asked.

“Yes.”

The pause after her answer lasted a beat too long before he continued. “What’s your specialization?”

“Civic and International Finances.” Normally, he would be put off by her curtness. But her attractiveness and intelligence made him curious.

He probed further. “ You working on anything currently?”

“Yes. A book.”

Hoek and McRay furtively observed the conversation as they prepared the food.

“So am I. But I put it on hold because I’m doing a paper for a Military and Literature Conference. I discuss Berlin’s The Hedgehog and the Fox, which is a categorization on how people think and behave. It’s more philosophy than English, but some of the ideas are found in literary theory,” he said.

She only partly took the bait. “That’s good. I have a conference coming up in Toronto. I should probably work on my paper as well.”

Hoek handed them a plate but was careful not to interrupt them. Daniels felt encouraged and continued with open-ended statements rather than questions that could be easily dismissed. “I visited Toronto when I lived in New York. Great international city. Wouldn’t be a bad place to live.”

“I lived their for 6 years while doing my PhD.”

“That’s good,” he’d finally lost patience. “Dr. Hoek, I want to thank you again for this invite. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you. I was starting to think you didn’t like me anymore.”

Hoek laughed. “Yeah, I don’t make it to Fido’s as often anymore ever since my wife got me a Keurig for the office. How’s the writing going?”

“Good. You know how it is. Write words ‘till you get a page. Write pages ‘till you get a chapter. Write chapters ‘till you get a book.”

“That’s right. Keep it up. Look, I’m sure you’re wondering what we’re doing here. Finish up your burger, and I’ll get things moving,” Hoek said.

Ten minutes later, everyone had eaten. Hoek handed a folder to each professor.

“Thank you again for taking time out to come. As you can see, this is not a normal meeting because this is not a normal committee. As stated in your invites, it’s a special research group that hopefully won’t take too much time away from your university work.

“I’m sure you remember the AquaCorp incident from last week. Well, a former student of mine who now works at Channel 4 came to me with some doubts about the case’s details. I allayed those doubts to Captain Thomas here. He informed me that he couldn’t use manpower to go behind the FBI and investigate something with such tenuous information. But he said that the questions being brought up were good ones.

“He suggested that I look into it. That’s where you come in. I wanted to form a think tank to help me—us—make sense of everything.”

McDonough raised hand.

“Yes Robert.”

“Why us? Why not a group of journalism grad students? Or a different collection of professors?”

“I’ll answer your second question first. I wanted a group who would work together and work efficiently. None of you are divas. There’s a lot of talented people I could’ve called. But not all of them are team players. With some people, it’d be less about getting the job done and more about who’s the smarter than whom.

“Also, I wanted a myriad of fields looking at this. I don’t need four psychology professors giving me four different analyses of Christopher J. Harvel’s mindset when he pulled the trigger. I have a physicist and economist who, between them, can handle the scientific and mathematic angles and a classicist and linguist to handle the humanistic elements. Between the four of you, I figure it won’t take you long to see past the blind spots that blocked me.

“As for why no journalism students, Tiffany was one of the sharpest I’ve ever seen. She has that angle covered by herself. A group of journalist students aren’t going to make anymore headway than she already has.” Hoek finished and folded his lips as if he were applying chapstick.

Alyssa rifled through the pages in the folder without looking up. “So what exactly do you want us to do? Conduct our own investigation?”

“Yes and no. I don’t want you to go around interviewing people. So in a law enforcement sense, you won’t be investigating. I just know that what makes each of you successful is that you can make connections that aren’t immediately apparent. That’s all what I want you to do here. Bring some closure to this by threading together the missing fabric of the story. Other questions?”

“So how exactly do you want us to go about this?” Daniels asked.

“I don’t want this project to consume your summer. In fact, we only have two weeks to come up with something or else my student gets fired. Just come to some satisfactory inferences, and we’ll take it from there. I suggest getting together and discussing the details of the case. You each have unique training that allows you to see the same thing from different perspectives.” Hoek eyed Tulowitzki, noticing that he’d yet to open his folder.

“So what’s the captain’s role in all of this?” Tulowitzki asked.

Hoek gestured towards the officer. “Captain McRay is here to lend credibility to what I’m asking. I know it’s unusual, and he’s here to verify what I’m saying. Jonathan, do you have anything to add?”

“Yes, briefly. The police is not associated with this at all. You’re here strictly as a favor. If I understand it correctly, Ben is just asking you to think and talk. That’s it. No need to question anyone or put yourself in any kind of suspicious or uncomfortable situation.”

Tulowitzki smirked. “Okay, thank you.” His imagination raced with probable but unlikely scenarios where this meeting was the first of several events used to set him up for something.

Hoek anticipated the skepticism and wanted to mollify it. “Look, you’re all busy. And it’s the summer. I know I’m asking you for a favor that I can’t really pay back. This is off the record. If you don’t want to do it, then you don’t have to. I won’t hold anything against you. Jonathan and I are going head inside for a bit. I want you to stick around and think about it.”

The two men went inside. As soon as the back door shut, Tulowitzki walked to the cooler. “Would anyone else like a beer?” Daniels and Morell motioned, and he grabbed three bottles.

“This sounds interesting,” McDonough said.

“I’m with Robert,” Daniels said.

“I don’t know,” said Tulowitzki. “What’s with the cookout and the police guy? Something about all of this just seems weird. Weird ideas are one thing, weird feelings are another.”

The three men turned to Morell. She sighed, “I think I’m out. There are other things I’d rather do. We know the guy did it. We know he’s dead. I don’t want to do this for the same reason why the captain can’t waste manpower on it.”

McDonough let a brief silence settle onto the group. “So we’re at an impasse. Look, I’ve known Ben Hoek the longest. I’ll tell him Julian and I are in. You two are out.” He walked inside the kitchen while the other three finished their drinks.

“Dr. Hoek, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Good news is Julian and I will help. Bad news is Alyssa and Kristoff won’t.”

Hoek pressed his lips together and nodded. Thank you Robert. Jonathan, let’s go back out there.

“I want to thank you for your time. Julian, Robert, we’ll be in touch. Just get together on your own and contact me whenever you have something to report. There’s plenty of food and drinks. No reason to leave.”

The four professors felt welcomed to stay but knew that doing so would lead only to forced conversations.

“I’d love to stay, but I have a few errands to run,” Tulowitzki said.

“I have a few things, too. Thank you Dr. Hoek. Everything was lovely. And I’m sorry,” Alyssa said.

“No need to apologize. I’d rather have you all the way on board than doing it out of politeness. I’m sure we’ll see each other around.”

“Wait! Before you go, while I still have all four of you here, could you settle a dispute Jonathan and I have? Before you came we were debating the answer to a riddle: you put a glass of water on a record turntable and begin increasing the speed slowly. What will happen first–will the glass slide off, will it tip over, or will the water splash out?”

The four exchanged glances.

“Could you say that one more time?” Julian said.

Ben chuckled. “You put a glass of water—you know what, it doesn’t matter. These two have to go, and I’m sure you have somewhere to be, too. Email me, and I’ll send the question to you.” He shifted his attention back to the group.

“Thank you so much. This has been my most enjoyable faculty meeting in quite a long time.”

“Definitely the one with the best food,” Kristoff said.

“That means a lot coming from a foodie like yourself. I’m planning a beer tasting night in the near future. I will let you know once I get the details.”

“Yes, please,” he said.

The four made their way through the house and out the front door. After the last one drove off, Ben turned to Jonathan and said, “I hope my little riddle was enough of a bait to bring them together.”

“How’s that supposed to work?”

“I’m not really sure. I just think that if I can get them talking away from here, or even just thinking about the others in the group, I might have a shot at getting all four. If not, two thinkers are better than none, right?”

“I suppose so.”

Fox’s Game Chapter 6

Foxes vs Hedgehogs 

Fido’s Coffee Shop
21^st Avenue

Julian Daniels sipped his coffee while studying what he just typed:

“The scope and manner of Jack White’s decision to parlay his music to that of international business mogul reflects his desire to not just entertain well but to exceed what society thought was possible. This thought process is reflected in detail through his lyrics.”

He yawned and rubbed his eyes. He knew the article he was writing for The Nashville Scene just needed to be informative. But that wasn’t enough. Once Daniels began looking at his writing as a craft, he couldn’t just “provide information.” He had to as Samuel Taylor Coleridge said put “the best words in the best order,” especially after writing a New York Times bestseller.

He was worried less about the article and more about his reputation. He had established high standards for himself. And he didn’t want to put his name on any writing that didn’t possess his clean, prose style. Words normally came easily, even the wrong ones. But today something didn’t feel right.

He sat in his usual spot at Fido’s Coffee Shop down the street from the Vanderbilt library. His routine was in place. But he was still out of sync. Daniels decided to work on a different writing project. He took out Isaiah Berlin’s The Hedgehog and The Fox, an 81page essay about intellectual history discussed through the prism of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Daniels used Berlin’s book as a basis for discussing martial rhetoric in fiction, which he’d present as a paper at a Military and Literature Conference in Annapolis, Maryland.

He wrote more comfortably after switching topics. He decided that Berlin’s book would also be the topic he’d discuss as small talk at Dr. Hoek’s get together whenever the conversation drifted towards academic work. Julian knew Dr. Hoek professionally, the two had worked together on faculty council during Julian’s first year at the university. He found Benjamin to be thoughtful, quiet, and amiable. But they only really interacted in small doses, so it was difficult to get a true gauge on his personality.

Daniels was eager to sample the homemade hot chicken Ben’s email had promised. And any opportunity to network with colleagues outside of school was as good as any to cancel his plans of watching the NBA playoffs in his Hillsboro Village condo. Besides, he’d be able to discuss the ideas for his conference paper with people from other disciplines. The fact that many of them may not have heard of Berlin’s book might help him see his topic from a unique angle.

Daniels liked that writing provided a means of classification, a way to draw order from the slippery nature of ideas. And Berlin’s essay provided an order of sorts. He divides intellectuals—indeed all people—into two groups: hedgehogs and foxes. Berlin states that thinkers can be put into two categories: hedgehogs and foxes. Just like the hedgehog that survives by doing one thing—burrowing—well, intellectual hedgehogs relate everything they experience into a central vision, an idea that allows them to find order in a seemingly chaotic universe. Hedgehogs often return to the same ideas, albeit in different ways.

Foxes, however, search for truth on many paths, sometimes even pursuing conflicting beliefs in hopes of making sense of the world. Figures like Plato, Nietzsche, and George Washington are Hedgehogs. Aristotle, Shakespeare, and Thomas Jefferson are Foxes. Julian found the taxonomy fascinating, even if it were a little incomplete. He thought of himself as a fox, not because he lacked any guiding principles but because he refused to think of himself as someone with just one way of seeing things.

Daniels was the youngest member of the Vanderbilt faculty. He was a Nashville native who attended Vanderbilt as an undergrad. He made a name for himself as a Yale PhD student when he expanded his dissertation into a New York Times bestseller. The dissertation, “Poetic Rhetoric: The Complexities of African American Language Through the Prism of Hip Hop,” became the book Poetic Rhetoric: Hip Hop’s Hold on Language. He became a minor celebrity in 2007, doing interviews with media outlets ranging from NPR to Newsweek. He even spoke briefly by phone to presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

His surprising success led him in a direction he hadn’t intended: the pop academic. He could be a scholar who gained fame outside of academia like Cornell West or Brian Cox. He could slide his way into mainstream culture through cable news interviews and intellectual books aimed not at other intellectuals but at the layman interested in learning more.

Here’s the rub: in academia as many other professions, there’s a tension between purists and popularists. In the field of English, it’s characterized as the philologists versus the dilettantes. The former work to further scholarship through detailed research and debate within the scholarly community, the latter wish to further the field by making it more accessible to the public through entertaining presentation and understandable yet incomplete analogies. Popularity is not always accepted at the highest levels where the most talented work. Just as musicians like Taylor Swift can gain fame while loosing respect if they aim more at producing ear candy than pushing artistic boundaries, professors could lose in respect what they gain in fame if they’re seen as doing the equivalent in their fields.

Academics, even if foxes, tended to be hedgehogs when it came to their careers. Professors could lose in respect what they gain in fame if they’re seen as doing the equivalent in their fields.

Academics, even if foxes, tended to be hedgehogs when it came to their careers. The nature of higher education led people to label themselves and label others with easily recognizable terms. This could be challenging. Daniels wanted to approach his life like a fox, not just his research. He wanted more than one avenue to success, more than one means of income, more than one way of defining himself.

         He checked his phone and saw that he’d been at Fido’s for just over 2 hours. He’d long surpassed his self-imposed daily 1,000 word minimum. As his mind eased out of the writer’s trance where the subconscious mind produces words and the conscious mind orders them, he began wondering who else would attend this off campus meeting.

There was an oddness to it. The location, the time of year, the formal invite, something that made him both anxious and expectant. Whatever it was, Daniels hoped it wouldn’t interfere with his writing.

Fox’s Game Chapter 5

An Economist Goes Discount Dress Shopping

Alyssa Morell drove slowly behind the young man walking in front of her. His crisp white shirt and black pinstripe pants indicated that he had money. He was too good looking and too confident not to be a player. The care-free way he spoke on his phone indicated He was neither worried about time nor aware of her presence. The lights in his white convertible BMW flashed as he shifted the bags in his hands. It was at this moment he noticed her. He looked into the windshield of her Camry and saw an attractive woman. He smiled and tried to wave, juggling the items in his hands. She smiled but did not wave. She wanted his parking spot, not his phone number.

As a woman in the field of Advanced Analytics, she was used to commanding attention with her confidence and intensity. She was also attractive, which helped, but she was well aware that relying on beauty when trying to gain respect hurt more than helped.

As an undergrad at the University of Maryland, she understood that if she wanted to compete in a field dominated by men that she would have to be as aggressive in the classroom as she was on the soccer field. Her tenacity earned her a scholarship. And she knew that the traits developed on the field were transferrable to her future career. She’d maintained the smooth movements and lithe frame of her sports days. But she knew her looks would only be an advantage if she could demonstrate her intelligence. One way she knew to do this was to infuse her writing and conversations with an apt quote, a relatable anecdote, or little known fact that could illustrate the point she was making.

Morell wanted to reflect technical expertise and polymathic learning. Her beauty and personality disarmed people, her intelligence kept them off balance. For instance, she would quote from King Lear “Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy laws / My services are bound” during a discussion on the Bayesian worldview. She enjoyed even more watching a surprised colleague nod solemnly in hopes of seeming like he was aware of the Shakespearean line.

Her dark brown hair that went just below her shoulders and well-toned frame complimented her business casual fashion sense. Her pencil skirts, high heels, and well-pressed shirts drew the attention of males invested in their libidos. As one colleague said, “It’s not that we think we have a shot with her or even want to. It’s just good to have someone nice to look at.” Many female colleagues viewed her with a begrudging ambivalence. It seemed unfair that a woman could have good looks, social adaptability, and be able to achieve success in a man’s world. She represented that which was good about the 21st century woman. But it was too easy to think, “why her and not me.”

Morell enjoyed shopping because it was economics at its most obvious level. The mall added an extra level of interest because, unlike grocery shopping, you dealt exclusively with luxury items. Yes, shoes and clothes were necessary, but when you went to the mall to get things, you were shopping for more than just necessities. Even when you went for value, it was a value relative to your class standards, not the type of value that the truly poor must consider.

As she walked through Green Hills Mall—the mall centered in the area of Nashville that melded old money and new—she couldn’t help but think about how financial economics was an odd art that blended the certitude of numbers with the unpredictable psychology of humans. For example, she new that she didn’t need a new outfit for this faculty party she was invited to, but she felt compelled to get one. The confidence she would have wearing something she’d just bought was worth paying for. And if that confidence could help make a stronger impression, then what she bought was a valuable investment. But how much worth does that investment have?

After a quick walk through at Express, she decided that if she were buying something special for a specific event, she should invest more. She could get a new outfit there for $30. But she felt she needed to pay more. She walked past Juicy Couture without even glancing towards it because a new outfit would cost $300 on sale. That was too much. She knew she needed something between $30 and $300. The difference, that middle ground, reflected consumer surplus. Her goal was to get as close to $30 as possible while trying to find an outfit that they could have sold for $300. The clothing stores wanted the inverse, to get her as close as possible to $300 for something they could have sold for $30.

This type of cost-value analysis applied to many situations, from dating to drafting a football team. Most of her friends enjoyed the chess match of maximizing profits while minimizing labor. This is what frustrated her about her field of study. So many women found interest in the theoretical aspects of economics, especially when it came to spending money. But men overwhelmingly dominated the field. She knew this stemmed from an antiquated notion that women couldn’t do math. Obviously, some men also shied away from economics for the same reason. But the point was that the building blocks shouldn’t scare you away from the actual building. For instance, learning to read is hard, but once you learn, the work is worth it.

Morell shook those thoughts from her mind in order to focus on the economics at hand. She walked into Ann Taylor Loft not knowing what she was looking for but conscious she’d know it when she found it. She perused the sale items noting they reflected an excess of supply and that companies lowered the prices in order to avoid a complete profit loss. It was the closest a consumer could get to taking advantage of the companies.

Even with a sale Ann Taylor Loft made profits many times the cost of the clothing sold. Morell spotted a black skirt-white blouse out. She recognized it from the spring catalogue and noticed there was no price tag. She shrugged, walked to the changing rooms, and tried it on. Morell liked the color black because of its simplicity. The higher up you go, the less you needed to say. But she knew a powerful woman dresses her pay. A man could wear a Hawaiian shirt to a business meeting. A woman could not.

The girl working the register rang it up as $140. Morell blinked in disbelief, “Excuse me, there must be some sort of mistake. This item’s on sale, right?”

“No ma’am. It’s $140, full price. Now, will you be paying with cash or a card?”

Morell’s eyes narrowed. She examined the girl, a blonde close to her in size but whose frame, Morell figured, was due more from genetics than Division I college sports.

“What size do you wear?” Morell demanded.

“I’m sorry?” the worker said.

“Your size. Are you size 4 like me? About 115 pounds?”

“I…Yes…No…It depends. Why do you even care?”

“You said this outfit was full price. But all the other items I saw in the spring catalogue were in the front of the store on the sales rack. If this skirt and shirt combo were so popular that it were still full price, you would have more than one in this size. Your boss–I’d like his or her name by the way—would have them overstocked like the rest of the outfits in that area of the store.

Large, successful companies are in the business of overestimating demand, not underestimating it. The profit in selling the outfit is so much greater than the cost to make it, it only makes sense to order too much than not enough, especially for a place like. If it were popular enough to re-order, it’d be popular enough to over-order. My guess is that you wanted the outfit for yourself.

Maybe someone returned this earlier today. Anyway, you saw it on the sales rack, which means once you used your employee discount, you would be buying it for less than a quarter for what it was worth. Because of that, your manager–I’m still waiting for you to give me that name by the way—probably didn’t want you reserving it for yourself. If that outfit made it to the end of the day, it was yours. But you had a feeling it wouldn’t. So you decided to hide it and ‘punish’ anyone who bought it by making them pay full price. C’mon. Am I right or am I right?”

The girl stared at Morell as if the professor had just juggled fire.

“L-l-l-ook,” she stammered. “I…uh…am sorry. Let’s not make a big deal of this.”

Her hands shook as she scanned the tag and $70 appeared on the register. The girl typed for a few moments and then $45 appeared. “Wow…ha…bigger sale than you thought, right? Forty-five dollars.”

Morell saw the girl couldn’t be older than 20. And something about her nervousness and disappointment reminded the professor of her struggling undergrads, “Look, you don’t have to do that. I just–”

“I know. I want to. I don’t know who you are. But that was amazing. My name’s Jessie. How’d you do that?”

“I’ve got a PhD in Economics. That’s the study of how everything flows: money, information, ideas, everything. It’s a good field of study. Lots of jobs, lots of opportunities. There’s some math, but nothing you can’t handle if you work at it. You should think about it. We could use more women.”

“I don’t know…School…I don’t really…”

“My name’s Alyssa Morell. Here’s my card. Think about it. If you change your mind, we can talk.”

Jessie nodded slowly as she read it. Morell checked her watch. “Look, Jessie I gotta go. Thanks for the discount. Hopefully, I’ll see you later.”

Morell exited the store and got in her car. She sighed as she realized the irony of wanting to buy an outfit to increase her confidence when it was her confidence that saved her over $100.

Fox’s Game Chapter 4

Dr. McDonough and the Art of Memory

Vanderbilt Library

Dr. Robert McDonough sat in a cramped college library cubicle crouched over microfilm, struggling to make sense of the Greek manuscript under the scope. He winced while shifting his weight, and for the first time, he noticed how sweaty he was.

But all this: the heat, the sweat, the sore bones were a minor distraction. He read on, stopping only to calculate the myriad English translations that could be inferred from the Greek phrasing. He typed quickly into his laptop before returning to the microscope. The ancient writing juxtaposed well with the modern technology.

As a classics professor at one of America’s elite universities, McDonough was aware that the work in front of him could either justify months of research or could lead to a dead end. There was no way to know other than to formulate a theory and assume it to be true until evidence proved otherwise.

This was the life of a scholar. Long periods spent alone in deep concentration, working on a project that may or may not come to fruition. Too often television made college professors appear as if they wrote incomprehensible symbols on a white board until they brilliantly made some connection between the theoretical world they were a part of and the reality in which they lived. Real scholarship was slower and played less well on camera. Real research did not so easily lend itself to attractive actors with impeccable hairstyles wearing tailor-fitted sports coats.

McDonough was a scholar of the poet Simonides, the inventor of memory. According to legend, Simonides attended a banquet where he was called outside by two young men. Just as he left, the structure collapsed, killing everyone inside. Simonides used his memory to identify all the dead bodies. The techniques he used to remember the names and seating arrangements of the other guests became the foundation of linking and imaging. Though probably untrue, it encapsulated everything McDonough believed about the nature of learning.

A story existed that reflected a larger truth. That story was grounded in reality—Simonides almost surely existed—yet it had elements of myth, the young men were reputed to be gods. And from that myth-based truth, information sprang forth and could be augmented. Mastering this ancient memory system, one could theoretically learn anything. And here’s where the nature of learning became complicated: learning and memorizing are related, but one does not necessarily lead to the other.

Simonides was a poet. This told McDonough that there is a creative element to true learning, that when you really make knowledge part of you by linking it with that which you’ve already learned, you’re not simply storing information so that it can be pushed out at a later date by newer information. You are gathering information and contextualizing it in such a way that it becomes knowledge. Consciously creating a memory is an imaginative process.

And McDonough looked to make sense of this knowledge paradox. He had devoted his professional life to understanding how the Ancients used story and memory to make sense of the world. In his own way, sweating in a hot, wooden, undersized study area he was doing what Simonides did over two millennia ago–he was using myth, memory, and imagination to illuminate something that is both ancient and new, something both in plain sight but not quite seen.

McDonough’s studies took him to a fringe sect of learning. He often found himself reading Medieval tracts on alchemy or witchcraft. This was another paradox of education: too often truth took heretical turns. Sitting in the comfort of the 21st century with over a 1,000 years of enlightenment and scientific exploration providing comfort, it was easy to see how an 8th century druid could find himself chasing ancient secrets that revealed themselves to be nothing but ancient hoaxes. The question he constantly asked himself was how would future generations view my work?

Would they feel an amalgam of pity and frustration when reading my writing? Would they see how he sees now that so many men wasted their best years uncovering secrets that didn’t exist? It’s one thing to be limited to the knowledge of your age because much can still be learned from it. Yet to be limited by your own blindness is another.

McDonough wanted future gatekeepers of knowledge to read his research and not be led down a sterile path of barren knowledge. Of course, he couldn’t predict what future generations would discover.

His ability to observe and remember was developed over time through practice that most anyone could do with a few trips to the local library. One could argue that memory was the first art, that without it we have no history, no sense of being upon the backdrop of time. He loved that he practiced and preserved an art that erodes just a little bit more with each passing generation.

But the confidence of memory leads to other thoughts. McDonough understood that nearly all learning is available to an organized mind. He wondered what ancient secrets that are being forgotten, or worse, already forgotten. The inkling of this thought made him wonder if the occult has treasures that have been obscured by too much comfort and common sense.

As McDonough typed, he noticed that his watch read 4:44. He’d been at the library for 3 hours since lunch and scarcely noticed. He often fell into a deep concentration that thinned out time.

McDonough collapsed on his couch and turned to CNN while he sorted through papers on his coffee table. He reminded himself that every piece of paper on his desk was a decision he hadn’t made

His mind and office were orderly. His home wasn’t. He took pride in knowing that he was not the only intellectual whose exterior messiness was incongruent with his internal efficiency. One of his heroes, Dr. Samuel Johnson, the man credited with the Oxford English Dictionary, was notoriously slovenly. Although McDonough knew he didn’t reach Johnson’s level of eminence, he comforted himself in knowing that he also didn’t reach his level of hygienic negligence.

The buzzing of his cell phone interrupted his thinking. He scrolled to his email app and saw it he’d received a message from Benjamin Hoek. “I just saw him today,” he thought.

Dr. McDonough:

You are cordially invited to a get together this upcoming Tuesday evening. I must warn you that this is not just for social reasons but for work as well. Don’t get me wrong: a Cajun-themed dinner will be served followed by a variety of desserts. But the purpose of the meeting is to discuss a new research committee upon which I hope you will consider serving. I shall provide greater detail on the responsibilities (and incentives) on the 18^th. I sincerely hope you will consider.

Sincerely,

Dr. Benjamin Hoek
Full Professor, School of Journalism
Vanderbilt University

McDonough hated sacrificing his Tuesday nights because that’s when he met with a group of friends for role playing games and logic puzzles. Like parents who hire a babysitter so they can leave the house, his friends gave him the opportunity to be more than just a scholar and teacher.

He considered inventing some excuse. But snubbing a superior in a social situation could result in a denied favor later on. McDonough’s motivations for attending went beyond office politics. Though his living room didn’t reflect it, he viewed himself as a professional who adhered to the etiquette and expectations of his career field.

As he typed his response, he wondered allowed, “who else was asked to be on this committee?”

He knew his book Mentalists and Magicians: A Brief History of Memory Tricks and Mental Games put him in the upper tier of the campus faculty pecking order. He didn’t care enough to call around. Instead, he focused on what was the Dean meant by “Cajun-themed dinner.” As a Louisiana kid who grew up on crawfish and gator, he’d learned to lower his standards whenever he heard that word used outside of his home state.

Fox’s Game: Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Email From an Old Friend

May 15^th

West End Apartments,

Hillsboro Rd

 

Tiffany woke up and glanced sleepily at her tear-stained pillow and shut her eyes. She somehow felt numb and angry. Her iPhone began playing a fast-paced Tink Tinks song, which she skipped, preferring a slow moving Civil Wars ballad.

She lurched half awake to the kitchen and started the Keurig. She cleared away her roommate’s dirty plates off the coffee table and set her laptop in their place. She began her day the way she began most days: devouring the news. She watched the local news on tv while reading about world and national events online. She would begin by scanning Huffington Post then Politico and finally NPR, clicking on and reading articles whose titles seemed interesting, except this time, she couldn’t do it. Less than a minute passed before she shut off the tv and closed her computer. Nashville was teeming with reporters from all over the world, and she was stuck at home unable to do anything but watch others do well what she could do better. She fought the tears that built up, but on this day, they were like everything else that was beyond her control.

Vanderbilt University

Dr. Benjamin Hoek sat in his office at Vanderbilt’s Business College reading as much as he could about the shooting that occurred less than five miles from where he sat. As a well-traveled journalist, he knew every news story had an information ceiling. If he read enough articles and watched enough television, he would know as much as was possible to know short of having an inside source. He believed he’d reached that point.

He called a few of his friends from the local media, but they had yet to return his messages. After working as chief editor at The Tennessean, he also knew that any Metro police officer who had real information would be too busy to talk. He had no reason to contact anyone other than to satisfy his own curiosity. And that wasn’t a good enough reason for him to interrupt someone from doing her job. In his decade as a college professor, he rarely missed the grind of journalist life. He could still write and travel, but he didn’t have to worry about the deadlines, conflict, and general headaches that came from having to produce a new news story. Today was an exception. He felt like a former athlete whose competitive juices coursed through his veins on game day but who could only sit and watch since the sport had passed him by.

Nowadays, the columnist-turned scholar received his journalistic excitement vicariously through his students—smart, idealistic, hopefuls ready to change the world with their words. He loved watching them with their iPads and Twitter pages. Their everyday tools would have been sci-fi inventions when he was their age. Yet the basics of good journalism had not changed. The best of his students could have covered Vietnam with him in the ‘60s using only a notepad and a pencil. And the worst will have left journalism in less than five years no matter what technology they had access to.

He glanced at his watch and headed to class when his office phone rang. He hesitated. He hated being late to class. Timing is more important in some careers than others, but in media, it’s as important as any. He wanted to set the example. But he also taught that every rule has its exceptions. And today he’d be invoking the time honored college rule that the professor can’t be late; class didn’t start until the teacher arrived.

“Hello?”

“Dr. Hoek?”

“Umm…Yes?”

“Tiffany Saunders. Remember me?”

“Ah! Tiffany! How are you, ma’am?”

“Uh…not so good. Do you have a moment?”

He glanced at his watch again. He knew what that type of question meant. He placed the receiver on his shoulder and thought. All Tiffany heard was three seconds of quiet. But those three seconds will tell you all you need to know about teaching.

Hoek turned his head towards the door. “Debbie, I need you to cancel my class for the day. Tell them I will post a write up online of what we were going to discuss in class. And remind them to read that as well as the next chapter in the textbook.”

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Hoek asked.

“Yes, I…I think I’m going to get fired. I just don’t know what to do.”

“Just relax and tell me what happened.”

Dr. Hoek listened quietly.

“I’m not sure what advice to give, but while I think on that, let me offer some words of comfort: you’re gonna be fine. If they really wanted to fire you, they would’ve done it. Like most things in life, it’s a test. They don’t know they’re testing you, but they are. If you respond well, you’ll be fine.”

“What do you mean by respond well?”

“Find something no one else has found. If not, admit you were wrong and offer another story that’s different from but related to this Harvel situation, something that reminds them of it.”

“Like a peace offering?”

“Tiffany, you have a way of phrasing things that I do not. Yes, like a peace offering. That way, you show them you’ve been working hard and even though you don’t have what they were looking for, you have something to show for it.”

“I think I can do that.”

“Of course you can. And if you can’t…well plenty of fine journalist have been fired. You’ll be neither the first nor the last.”

“Thank you,” she said. “When do you think I should stop working on the primary story and begin doing the peace offering?”

“That, Ms. Saunders, I can’t tell you.”

She could hear the smile in his voice, and it made her smile. “Okay Dr. Hoek, I’ll get to work. Thanks for everything.”

“Just pay it forward to someone else.”

Dr. Hoek hung up the phone. He knew these situations were often dead ends. The more media pursuing a story, the less likely one would break through with an original angle. It required investigative reporting that would take more than the two weeks allotted her. Hoek knew that Tiffany understood this; the key would be how she would go about solving a seemingly unsolvable problem. The experience she’d gain from this would come from the way she went about finding the answer—not the answer itself.

Tiffany re-opened her laptop and went to her notes. She double-checked the sources she’d used to write her original production piece. She found nothing that would led her to alter her original approach. She then spent the next two hours online reading anything she could find on the story. She turned on her tv, but it was the same as what she’d just read. Given the repetitiveness of the CNN crawl and the unoriginal words of the pundits, she began to doubt the usefulness of her career. Maybe she’d be more effective in a field less inundated with information. It’s like if you weren’t there to break the story, you’re relegated to regurgitating the words of those who broke the story.

She occasionally wrote a featured blog for Channel 4’s website, but that was only when a contrarian thought struck her. Most of the time, she focused on making the shows she produced run so smoothly that she could navigate the studio blindfolded and know where everyone would be and when.

She enjoyed writing, but her words were used to sell already known information, not make something new. She walked to her bookshelf, hoping the wood of the shelf held knowledge inside the wood of the pages. She kept Strunk and White’s Elements of Style for technical writing advice. But what about creative? She decided to start with Stephen King’s On Writing.

She read about how when completing The Stand King overcame the one and only time he had writer’s block by simply going for a walk, she saw the implications of his words. It wasn’t about the walk, it was about getting away from his routine so that his mind could get out of whatever track it’d been trapped in. But how could she do this? She had to laugh at the irony of brainstorming about how she should brainstorm.

Tiffany often went for runs to reset her mind, but this was something different. The idea of calling Dr. Hoek again wasn’t a real possibility. The man had things to do. And besides, one of her strengths was her ability to work independently. She couldn’t simply go back to him, at least not yet.

Or could she? What if she called because she was wondering how best to take a different approach to the problem? Maybe he could put her in touch with a writing professor who could provide her a different narrative angle. It was worth trying.

She decided to email instead:

Dr. Hoek,

Sorry to bother you again. But what do you think of this: I get with a literary professor and attack the story from a non-journalistic perspective while, of course, following journalism law and etiquette. Maybe I can tell the same story in a different way. A new perspective can be the same as new information, right?

Just curious,

Tiffany

With the uncharacteristic free time from his canceled class, Hoek decided to grab a leisurely lunch down the street at Nöshville, his favorite deli where he could enjoy what he boasted was the best sandwich in the city: the open-faced brisket with gravy. The New York style deli had much in common with the Midtown section of town where it was located. Midtown Nashville is the section between Broadway and Music Row where local Nashvillians go for an evening out. Like much of the music industry that drives its parent city, Nöshville has out-of-town roots but is a fixture in the Music City.

On a given day, one could find music execs networking at a table beside Vandy students discussing feminist theory while young adults ate heartily in anticipation of a long night of drinking. The eclectic mix belied the homogenous country stereotype associated with Nashville, or any city known primarily for one thing.

While standing in line, Ben noticed Dr. Robert McDonough, professor of the classics. The two exchanged a friendly nod because they’d seen one another around campus. But they weren’t friends. In fact, Ben only remembered his name because when he saw Robert’s name and picture on the faculty website, he couldn’t help but think that the man looked like a Robert. Though they’d never spoken, their reputations garnered mutual respect. One student even remarked that Robert reminded her of a younger, taller, hairier version of Hoek. He assumed it was a compliment, but you could never be sure with students.

He returned to his office and was surprised to find a message from Tiffany so soon after speaking with her. He clicked on it and unwrapped his sandwich while reading.

He finished his sandwich, rubbed his hands with sanitizer, and responded:

Tiffany,

I think a different direction sounds great. But what’s your end game? Are you changing angles with the Harvel story, or are you going with the “peace offering?” If you’re looking for someone to give you writing ideas like some sort of talisman, you could be heading in the wrong direction. But if you’re looking for a new way to see the story, then I think you’re walking down the right path. I have someone I could contact, although I don’t know him too well. But you want to make sure that you have a clear direction first.

Sincerely,

Dr. Benjamin Hoek

He pressed send and listened to a podcast about the 50^th Anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination. Ben thought about that day in school. Some of his teachers were crying, some were actually smiling. He remembered how distrusted and even hated Kennedy was during his life. Now it seemed as if he were universally beloved. Surely, some of those who were glad he was dead are still alive?

He thought of how Kennedy’s assassination changed the way Americans viewed conspiracies in general and government trust specifically. Ben believed that the seeds of Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate investigation on Nixon could not have been possible without the incessant coverage of Kennedy’s death. It seemed as if the more time that passed, the more layered the narrative, making the information of the actual events less clear.

Ben couldn’t help but think about how we know the Zapruder Film was edited before getting released to the public. Ben chuckled at the thought of something like that happening today. Camera phones and websites have made controlling something like Babineaux’s death virtually impossible. Any 2013 official version would have even less teeth than any “official” Kennedy Report. He rethought his advice to Tiffany. Perhaps a clear direction wasn’t the best direction. If you’re a conspiracy theorist, you’re going to see a conspiracy. If you’re rightwing you’ll see it as an attack on American safety, if you’re leftwing you’ll see it as an attack on progressive America. Either way, you will see what you want and report from there.

Perhaps what Tiffany needed was help developing a narrative direction. But she would need a non-conventional way of seeing the ordinary.

She needed someone to help her understand it in a new way. But to do that effectively in this blogosphere world, she would need more than “someone.” She’d need multiple someones so that she could create a pastiche of viewpoints threaded together by a consistent narrative.

Fox’s Game: Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Bridgestone Arena sits in the center of downtown Nashville on the corner of 5^th and Broadway Street. Home of Nashville Predators hockey, the building also serves as a concert venue and locale for large assemblies. The arena is merely the latest and largest hub of an historical strip that is to Nashville what Beale Street is to Memphis. If East Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry helped birth country music, then downtown Nashville helped raise it.

It was here the Meredith Corporation helped disseminate country music from a regional bluegrass compliment to a national branch of pop culture. Names like Pat Sayjack and Robin Roberts came from WSMV

“I spoke to my bosses. Nashville is growing. It’s a major US city. But nationally, it’s still seen as a really big small town. There’s just too much negativity here in the South. A word like ‘assassination’ just brings to mind too much of the recent past.

“Let me start by saying I love your energy and your penchant for making a story out of information. But there’s a balance. Just like we’re not just information givers, we’re not just storytellers, we’re mouthpieces, we’re liaisons, and sometimes PR firms. Until you learn that, you’re going to keep bumping heads with your bosses.

Today, Nashville needed us to not just tell what happened but to also provide a measure of comfort and stability, a voice to say that even though this terrible thing happened, it’ll be okay. But if the terrible thing is too terrible, then they won’t believe us when we offer comfort.”

Tiffany listened intently. “Taylor, I—I understand. I don’t know if it’s the day’s sobering events or if it’s because I’ve already flown too close to the sun, but I see what you’re saying. I do feel as if I focus too much on the story and not enough on the implications of the story.”

“But?”

“But I do feel my word choice was correct.”

“Is that right?” He pulled out a dictionary from his bookshelf. Let me read to you the definition of assassination. Assassination, noun. The murder of a prominent or political figure by surprise attack.

“Andre Babineux is neither a prominent nor a political figure. He’s no minor figure to be sure, but his death was not an assassination. Had Harvel shot former Vice President Gore, then that would be an assassination.”

“I know it’s debatable.”

“No, it’s really not.”

“Hear me out. You definitely have a point. But dictionary definitions can be incomplete. Babineux might not be a prominent or political figure to the average Nashvillian. But his death is significant. I think we’re also teachers. People need to know that the death of AquaCorp’s CFO has meaning whether it happened in Nashville or Paris. Think about it: AquaCorp has about as much political influence as any French politician—that includes their president. How could their second-in-command not warrant that definition?”

“But wouldn’t you agree that some words have more emotional connotations than others? Couldn’t you have just said ‘murder’ and the same meaning would’ve gotten across?”

“Could I have used murder? Yes. Would it have been the most accurate word possible? No. I don’t want to be sensationalist. You know that. And if I could do it over again, I would probably compromise and use a different word. But I still think it’s an assassination. And I think time will bear that out.”

“I admire your conviction. In the next few weeks, a lot of information is going to get reported. For some, it may be an assassination. The only thing worse than reporting a murder as an assassination is firing the person who reports an actual assassination. It would seem like censorship, which is worse PR. Look, if they come back with evidence that says it’s not an assassination, then you keep your job. If not, then I’m sorry. If I have to get in trouble with my bosses, you have to get in trouble right along with me. I know you don’t want to sit on your hands, so do your best to see what you can find. If nothing concrete comes up over the next two weeks, then you’re fired.”

“When’s the drop dead date?”

“May 28^th. Two weeks from today.”

“Give me three weeks.”

“Two. Final answer.”

Tiffany breathed deeply and stood up. She walked out of Taylor’s office exhausted, wounded. As the door closed behind her, Taylor shut the dictionary and said to himself, “Good luck, Tiffany.”

She walked down the hall as if in a trance. She saw Anthony and knew she could talk to him. “Anthony.”

“Hey Tiff, you okay? How’d the meeting go?”

“I’m gonna get fired unless someone can provide evidence that it was an actual assassination.”

“Woah.”

“You don’t have to say anything. I—can we just talk after you get off?”

“Ummm…I’m not sure. Can I call you later?”

“Sure.” She knew what that meant. He would not call. Any hope of him being her boyfriend ended at that moment. She walked to her car. Before shifting into drive she started giggling. The giggles turned to laughter, the laughter turned to coughing. There was something overwhelmingly humorous about losing her job without actually losing it and losing her boyfriend ever actually having him. How could she not laugh. “I’ll cry later,” she thought.