Chapter Four

"Dr. Marsden, so good of you to join us."

This is only part of why I disliked attending these meetings. Chance Regnerus was a township trustee, a noted wit as he would be happy to tell you, and an heir of a fortune with a truly obscure origin and disreputable antecedents. He covered such discreditable history by always being on the offensive with jibes and digs and cheery unpleasantries, considered by many to be an amusing man but, to me, always an offensive one.

If I was even a minute late, it would be an overstatement. At any rate.

Sitting down, I looked around at my compatriots on the Memorials Committee. A farmer, a widow, an accountant, a retiree from some form of public service (the postal service, I believe), and Chance himself, in half glasses that I suspect are an affectation, a knit pullover even on this warm day, and some sort of mountaineering pants with zippers around the knees. He was a man of action, or so he presented himself, although I suspect his action was entirely in the care of skilled guides and paid porters.

"We have received a call that will be of interest to you, I believe," Chance declared as I took my seat.

"Let us hope so," I responded mildly.

The widow spoke up as she often did at the beginning of these meetings, and I truly regret that I can never quite remember her name. "Shall we open in prayer?"

Chance nodded gravely. "Yes, of course. Would you do us the honor?" To which the lady did a nice job of invoking the Deity and calling us to accountability, and then we were ready to get on with our work.

"Having no other business before us," Chance said, "let me move directly to the very interesting call I received last week."

"You all know Mr. Schlieven," to which we all nodded. A noted philanthropist and do-gooder of the area. "He has a simple offer to make, based on but a single request."

The unnecessary silence that followed was clearly a stagey opportunity for Chance to draw even more attention to himself. With a smile that made this presumption even more obvious, he finally continued: "If the village and the college will go smoke-free outside entirely, he will make a gift of some six to seven figures to our mutual coffers."

The silence that followed was a bit more sincere. The offer was undoubtedly serious, but the implementation had the potential to become tragi-comic. Mr. Schlieven's interest in ending outdoor smoking was based in a number of deaths in his own family, and a very real distaste for the practice of smoking, a habit I am indeed thankful to never have taken up, but to get the students and local citizens to give up casual outdoor smoking . . . that was quite another challenge. Not to mention that smoking was the students' preferred way to ingest their favorite intoxicant, grown in many cases right here in the vicinity. Yes, in our greenhouses. I'm not happy about it, but I am when all is said and done a realist.

"How does this effect the church?" asked the farmer, whose name I do not feel bad about forgetting, given how forgettable most of his questions and comments were.

"We have been asked to be . . . stewards of this request, if you will. Mr. Schlieven would like us to lead this effort to clear the air around Upper Sharon, in return for which he will present a love offering to our endowment."

"Clear the air . . ." I could not resist.

"Yes," Chance answered. "He would like us to press the village council and the trustees of the college to declare the locality 'smoke free' and secure such legal guarantees as are feasible under state law."

"How," I asked with, I must confess, a certain level of false deference, "does he think we should enforce this proposed ban? Because I must confess that we've found it difficult to keep students and even some staff from smoking even nearby to our firetrap wooden buildings. We threaten fines and sanctions and expulsion and termination, and still they burn for their inhalants."

"Perhaps the answer is to no longer threaten," Chance smiled, as if he had expected exactly this objection. "If there is the security of financial as well as moral support behind the enforcement, might the college, let alone the village, be more willing to impose what to date they have only implied?"

We were silent together again. I reflected on what it would mean on our campus to more vigorously impose penalties on students caught smoking, and thought about an even smaller student body than we had now, which is a very small number indeed. And I thought about Mr. Schlieven's money, which was a number far from small.

The others thought whatever it was that they thought, if indeed they were thinking at all. Chance simply smiled, I am quite certain without any thoughts whatsoever.