“It’s more than okay with him. He’s overjoyed. He’s thrilled. Some people appreciate the efforts made on their behalf.”
“Well, I’m glad for him, Lester, and for you. I hope the book’s a big success.”
He said good-bye and hung up with another sigh. “According to Lester, a hundred newspapers have picked the article up. It’s going to be all over the place. LeMoyne and the others are going to have a ball with this, Julie. So are my students. Life is going to be hell for me for a while.” All the same, he couldn’t help chuckling. “Still, I guess it’s pretty funny, in a way.”
“It is, really. ’It’ll leave Piltdown in the dust,’” she said, shaking her head. “Quite a statement.”
He grimaced. “I really wish you wouldn’t keep repeating that.”
She glanced at her watch. “Gotta go. Well, you know what I think? I think you should think about what Abe might have said at a time like this.”
“That’s a good idea.” Abe was Abraham Goldstein, the impoverished, persecuted, Jewish immigrant from Russia who had made an improbable place for himself in America as an eminent professor of anthropology. At an advanced age, as Gideon’s major professor at the University of Wisconsin, he had been Gideon’s mentor in life as in anthropology, and his presence was still very much missed.
Gideon smiled. “So what would Abe have said?”
“ ‘Oy,’ ” said Julie, draining her coffee as she stood up.
He responded with a full-throated laugh and lifted his cup. “I’ll drink to that.”
TWO
It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. Inasmuch as he didn’t have a teaching load during the summer session, there were few students to contend with, and the faculty that he ran into on his visits to campus tended to be sparse. Oh, Rupert Armstrong LeMoyne couldn’t resist his little jab (“Don’t tell me… please don’t tell me… that you’re going to… gasp… tell us that there is no… gasp. .. Bigfoot!”) and one of his better graduate students, depressingly, swallowed the article hook, line, and sinker, and asked if he could possibly be let in on the secret. He would tell no one, he promised.