Young Writers Society

This is an early piece of work I did, so it's kind of. . .blah, but here goes.

The coppery-haired boy gazed up at the professor, his eyes alight with aspiration. For over a month now, the little nameless boy had looked up at him that way, with those unfathomable blue eyes and that captivating smile that never seemed to completely go away. Professor Wilkins met with the boy every Tuesday at nine in the morning, no matter what. He didn’t even know his young student’s name, or why he was so set on becoming everything that Professor Wilkins was, but it didn’t seem to matter. He just smiled his wonderful smile and lapped up whichever lesson the Professor had chosen for him.

Then one bright April Tuesday the coppery-haired boy arrived at the Professor’s doorstep with a brown-haired young girl in tow, and eagerly explained that Nancy wanted to learn things also and he would be much obliged if the Professor would teach her, too, even if it was only for that one day. So it happened that Professor Wilkins taught Nancy and the coppery-haired boy to read and write and figure numbers, and Nancy did keep coming back, standing behind her coppery-haired boy at the doorstep every Tuesday, no matter what. The years passed, and the coppery-haired boy grew into a coppery-haired young man. Every Tuesday at nine in the morning the coppery-haired young man and Nancy would come to his timeworn and ivy-lined doorstep, and he would invite them in for tea and studies.

It was a dreary Tuesday the day that the coppery-haired young man changed Professor Wilkins’ life. It started like any other lesson, with a cup of tea (no cream and one sugar lump for him and cream but no sugar for Nancy.) The coppery-haired boy sat in the tiny desk that he sat in every Tuesday for nearly ten years and had outgrown nearly five years ago; Nancy took up her position in the overstuffed love seat. The coppery-haired young man looked up at the Professor, and he spoke three simple words. “What next, Father?”

Professor Wilkins looked into the coppery-haired young man’s blue, blue eyes, and saw in them every lesson he had ever taught, every bit of knowledge he had passed on. He saw the coppery-haired young man’s lust for knowledge and his unyielding thirst to be everything that the Professor was. It was the same look the coppery-haired boy had given him so many years ago, before he had become a coppery-haired young man. The Professor looked at Nancy, her legs tucked underneath her and her gaze resting lightly on him. She smiled, shrugged and uncapped her pen.

After Nancy and the coppery-haired young man left, the Professor erased the chalkboard, cleaned up his pupils’ teacups and replaced their textbooks back on the shelf beside the college-level ones he used with his paying students. And then he sat, remembering those three almost careless words. “What next, Father?”

It had been years since he had bothered wondering where Nancy and the coppery-haired young man were from, or why they had no public school education like every other child he had ever known. It had always been enough that they wanted to learn and he wanted to teach. He had hardly noticed his fondness for the two, or even realized how much he looked forward to every Tuesday at nine in the morning.

The next Tuesday, Professor Wilkins set out the tea things, dragged out the torn-up old textbooks and cleared the coppery-haired young man’s desk of the clutter that occupied it the other six days of the week. He waited. They had always arrived no later than five minutes after nine o’clock, but the Professor waited until nearly ten. He was just packing his things to head for the university when the doorbell rang. The coppery-haired young man always knocked, always five sharp raps. It was Nancy, carrying a black-and-white photograph of the coppery-haired young man.

“He’s gone,” she murmured, and handed him the photograph. She took a deep breath as if she was about to explain, but turned around and headed back down the walk.

Nancy still came the next Tuesday, but after only two more lessons she stopped coming. The Professor left the coppery-haired young man’s desk in the living room, and never put his clutter on it again. Years passed, and the Professor became an old man and stopped working at the university. Still, he kept the coppery-haired young man’s desk cleared, and never threw away the old textbooks he knew he would not use again.

And then one Tuesday morning, and exactly nine o’clock, someone knocked five times on the door. The Professor answered it to find a coppery-haired man standing there. He was perfectly identical to the coppery-haired young man who hadn’t showed up for the lesson so many years ago, except for the sag under his eyes, the coppery stubble on his cheek, the dark scar on his forearm. But worse, there was no light in his infinitely blue eyes, no passion for learning. The Professor drew the coppery-haired man into an embrace, reaching up beyond the capacity of his arched back to grasp the sturdy fellow by the shoulders. Had the coppery-haired man always been so tall?

The coppery-haired man drew in a deep breath and began to speak. “My name is . . . ”

The Professor shook his head. “Don’t. I know everything I need to.”