Sons of Fortune Read online

  16

  Professor Karl Abrahams entered the lecture theater as the clock struck nine. The professor gave eight lectures a term, and it was rumored that he had never missed one in thirty-seven years. Many of the other rumors about Karl Abrahams could not be substantiated, and so he would have dismissed them as hearsay and therefore inadmissible.

  However, such rumors persisted, and thus became part of folklore. There was no doubting his sardonic wit should any student be foolish enough to take him on; that could be testified to on a weekly basis. Whether it was the case that three presidents had invited him to join the Supreme Court, only the three presidents knew. However it was recorded that, when questioned about this, Abrahams said he felt the best service he could give the nation was to instruct the next generation of lawyers and create as many decent, honest counselors as possible, rather than clear up the mess made by so many bad ones.

  The Washington Post, in an unauthorized profile, observed that Abrahams had taught two members of the present Supreme Court, twenty-two federal judges and several of the deans of leading law schools.

  When Fletcher and Jimmy attended the first of Abrahams’s eight lectures, they weren’t under any illusion about how much work lay ahead of them. Fletcher was, however, under the illusion that during his final year as an undergraduate, he had put in sufficiently long hours, often ending up in bed after midnight. It took Professor Abrahams about a week to familiarize him with hours when he normally slept.

  Professor Abrahams continually reminded his first-year students that not all of them would attend his final address to the law graduates at the end of the course. Jimmy bowed his head. Fletcher began to spend so many hours researching that Annie rarely saw him before the library doors had been locked and bolted. Jimmy would sometimes leave a little earlier so that he could be with Joanna, but he rarely departed without several books under his arm. Fletcher told Annie that he’d never known her brother to work so hard.

  “And it won’t be any easier for him once the baby arrives,” Annie reminded her husband one evening after she had come to pick him up from the library.

  “Joanna will have planned for the child to be born during the vacation so she can be back at work on the first day of the term.”

  “I don’t want our first child to grow up like that,” said Annie. “I intend to raise my children in our home as a full-time mother and with a father who will be back early enough in the evening to read to them.”

  “Suits me,” said Fletcher. “But if you change your mind and decide to become the chairman of General Motors, I’ll be happy to change the diapers.”

  The first thing that surprised Nat when he returned to the university was how immature his former classmates seemed to be. He had sufficient credits to allow him to move on to his sophomore year, but the students he had mixed with before signing up were still discussing the latest pop group or movie star, and he’d never even heard of The Doors. It wasn’t until he attended his first lecture that he became aware just how much the experience of Vietnam had changed his life.

  Nat was also aware that his fellow students didn’t treat him as if he was one of them, not least because a few of the professors also appeared somewhat in awe. Nat enjoyed the respect he was afforded, but quickly discovered there was another side to that coin. Over the Christmas vacation, he discussed the problem with Tom, who told him that he understood why some of them were a bit wary of him; after all, they believed he had killed at least a hundred Vietcong. “At least a hundred?” repeated Nat.

  “While others have read what our soldiers did to the Vietnamese women,” said Tom.

  “I should have been so lucky; if it hadn’t been for Mollie, I’d have remained celibate.”

  “Well, don’t disillusion them would be my advice,” said Tom, “because my bet is that the men are envious and the women intrigued. The last thing you want them to discover is that you’re a normal law-abiding citizen.”

  “I sometimes wish they’d remember that I’m also only nineteen,” Nat replied.

  “The trouble is,” said Tom, “that Captain Cartwright, holder of the Medal of Honor, doesn’t sound as if he’s only nineteen, and I’m afraid the limp only reminds them.”

  Nat took his friend’s advice, and decided to dissipate his energy in the classroom, in the gym and on the cross-country course. The doctors had warned him that it could take at least a year before he would be able to run again—if ever. After their pessimistic prediction, Nat never spent less than an hour a day in the gym, climbing ropes, lifting weights and even playing the occasional game of paddle tennis. By the end of the first term back he was able to jog slowly around the course—even if it did take him an hour and twenty minutes to cover six miles. He looked up his old training schedule, and found that his record as a freshman remained on the books at thirty-four minutes, eighteen seconds. He promised himself that he would break that by the end of his sophomore year.

  The next problem Nat faced was the response he got whenever he asked a woman out on a date. They either wanted to jump straight into bed with him or simply turned him down out of hand. Tom had warned him that his scalp in bed was probably a prize several undergraduates wanted to claim, and Nat quickly discovered that some he hadn’t even met were already doing so.

  “Reputation has its disadvantages,” complained Nat.

  “I’ll swap places with you if you like,” said Tom.

  The one exception turned out to be Rebecca, who made it clear from the day Nat arrived back on campus that she wanted to be given a second chance. Nat was circumspect about rekindling that particular old flame, and concluded that if they were to rebuild any relationship, it would have to be done slowly. Rebecca, however, had other plans.

  After their second date, she invited him back to her room for coffee, and started trying to undress him only moments after she’d closed the door. Nat broke away, and could only come up with the lame excuse that he was running a time trial the following day. She wasn’t put off that easily, and when she reappeared a few minutes later carrying two cups of coffee, Rebecca had already changed into a silk robe that revealed she was wearing little if anything underneath. Nat suddenly realized that he no longer felt anything for her, and quickly drank his coffee, repeating that he needed an early night.

  “Time trials never worried you in the past,” teased Rebecca.

  “That was when I had two good legs,” replied Nat.

  “Perhaps I’m no longer good enough for you,” said Rebecca, “now that everybody thinks you’re some kind of hero.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with that. It’s just…”

  “It’s just that Ralph was right about you from the start.”

  “What do you mean by that?” asked Nat sharply.

  “You’re simply not in his class. In or out of bed.” She paused.

  Nat was about to respond but decided it wasn’t worth it. He left without saying another word. Later that night he lay awake, realizing that Rebecca, like so many other things, was part of his past life.

  One of Nat’s more surprising discoveries on returning to the university was how many students pressed him to run against Elliot for the president of the student senate. But Nat made it clear that he had no interest in fighting an election while he still needed to make up for the time he’d lost.

  When he returned home at the end of his sophomore year, Nat told his father that he was just as pleased that his cross-country time was now down to under an hour as to discover he was placed in the top six on the class list.

  During the summer, Nat and Tom traveled to Europe. Nat found that one of the many advantages of a captain’s salary was that it allowed him to accompany his closest friend without ever feeling he couldn’t afford to pay his way.

  Their first stop was London, where they watched the guards march down Whitehall. Nat was left in no doubt that they would have been a formidable force in Vietnam. In Paris, they strolled along the Champs Elysées and regretted having to turn to a ph