In the past he had always enjoyed it—all the activity on campus, the new faces, the fresh challenge of trying to cram familiar historical material into young minds that might, in a scant few cases, find it as exciting as he did. The prospect of facing this one had almost led him to call in sick that morning. But the need to occupy his time and his mind had been greater than his reluctance, and so he'd driven up to the university just as if this were another normal fall opening. He didn't regret the decision as the day unfolded. But getting through each segment was still a trial. Department faculty meeting first thing, at nine o'clock. Not much point to it, except that it allowed everybody to “get their game faces on,” as Elliot liked to put it. It also allowed Elliot to deliver, for the benefit of new faculty members—an associate professor of medieval studies this year—and any administration spies, his “department chair's motivational speech.” It was the same every semester; Dix could have recited parts of it verbatim: “History is holistic, involving humanity in all of its dimensions, interests, and activities, from the economic and political to the psychological and cultural.
