A woman approached, pushing a stroller. I was on my way to teach my morning class. Without something as substantial as a stroller in front of me, I felt exposed, at a disadvantage. Maybe the baby felt that way too, being pushed, nothing to push. The woman had a good face, full of health, buffed by creams and coated in ointments. But in its effort to keep a certain shape, it was starting to look clenched, like a fist—not a bad thing. Some fists are very attractive. I was looking too intently at her face as the distance between us closed, so I glanced at the big clock on the German Lutheran church. I had plenty of time before my first class. I taught writing to undergraduates. Is it too late to say that the woman was pretty? That if her face looked like a fist, it was one of the better looking fists I’d seen?

I saw that her face was doing something for the baby. Taking on shapes and new attributes, aping entertainingly, hanging over the hood of the stroller. That’s what a face does when it has a baby, I guess. Maybe the baby was doing the same for her, but it didn’t seem that way. The baby didn’t seem to care much. I’ve been in relationships like that. The baby was more interested in the sky—overcast, bruised—and watching it pass. And in fact who can blame her? Him? The air had the mood of a gasp before a storm. The heavens were raging, and trying to engage our terrestrial hearts, but I for my part kept mine away, hidden. That’s what a teacher must do, especially a teacher of undergraduates. I didn’t let weather come over me anymore. I stepped off the sidewalk to let the stroller go by. My boot sank into the muddy turf, and I thought the woman (or baby) might at least acknowledge what I had given up to let them have their way.

“Good morning,” I said, mud clinging to my shoe.

But the woman walked with purpose. Her face was a fist flying through the air. And the baby was busy, too, tracking the fast-moving clouds. High-flying shapes in gradients of gray—scows, anvils, thumbs, mushrooms. The baby’s face had an expression of service, of doing a duty for others, like the Navy does with the national time. Water had seeped into my boot. Down and in. Mud on the toe, crusting my laces. We were at the start of a wet December. Already people were saying wet December, wet December. It was near the solstice, the shortest day, the longest night. She walked on, I walked on, the baby rolling. No one said anything about my muddy shoe, the damp season, the declination of the sun.

After fifty yards, I came upon a small stuffed toy the baby must have dropped. The woman must not have seen it fall to the side of the stroller. I’d already noticed she might have a problem with peripheral vision—she turned her head too much, side to side—and the dropped toy sadly confirmed it. I picked the toy up and turned to look at them receding from view. They were moving quickly. The clouds overhead moved with them, a phalanx of vaporous wedges. I decided to catch up with them and return the toy, thinking some light running might squeeze and wick water from my boot, knock off some of the mud. And by now the baby was probably upset. 

It was a nice toy. German-made, or Austrian, Swiss—along those lines. From a country that’s been making fine toys for many years. It was a fox, I thought. Maybe a dog. The foxes, dogs, are different in Germany, Austria, Switzerland. Whatever it was was dressed like a sailor, or something else uniformed. Smart white, institutional blue. Electrician? Postal worker? An important organization, municipally, for certain.

The baby was probably really screaming by now. The woman was probably desperate for the stuffed animal to make it go quiet. I picked up the pace, my boots pounding on the sidewalk, pat-pat-pat-pat, pat-pat-pat-pat. Wet-De-cem-ber. Wet-De-cem-ber. Water oozed from my boot. A small hole in my sock became less small.

◆

It took longer than expected to catch up to the mother and child. I passed a few people—fellow teachers, current and former students. Most of them were carrying baked goods for end-of-term holiday parties, solstice celebrations. I called out a few greetings. Here and there I stopped for a quick chat, a cookie—sugar, Linzer, one of those powdery Mexican wedding balls. These were pleasant interactions.

But I was losing too much ground: the mother and child were getting away. I stopped eating their cookies, picked up the pace, got winded. The boots were no good for running, nor were the rest of my clothes. I thought that maybe teachers dress the way they do (the way I do) so they can’t run away. They’re not meant to be aggressively mobile. Sometimes, accountability is all about a lack of movement. We can hold the stationary to certain standards. Did my profession want me to be burdened by my wardrobe? It would be a warm solstice—a warm short day, a long warm night. I was sweating when I caught up with the mother and child. Heaving and coughing, too.

“Excuse me!” I cried. “Did you drop this?”

She thanked me profusely. Thank you, thank you, thank you, she said. She said it several times, always in threes. The baby was asleep, but the mother assured me, if the baby could be awake, and verbal, the baby would thank me profusely, too. The baby didn’t look asleep; I thought its eyes were just closed. The mother lowered the stuffed animal into the stroller, and the baby grabbed it, pulled it in. It was a fox—I was sure now, though I still didn’t know what the uniform meant. It didn’t have to mean anything, I realized—you buy old uniforms at consignment shops, army surplus stores. The fox could be one of those types. The baby nuzzled it. The woman thanked me again, more firmly, in a way that told me she was going to start walking again. She looked at my one muddy boot with pity, but in an abstract way that took on none of the responsibility. In a way that said men with muddy boots are pitiful. And a man with just one muddy boot? That isn’t better. That’s worse.

As I turned back, she shouted a few more thank yous in my direction, really meaning it. I could tell it was easier for her to be grateful when she wasn’t face-to-face. Some people are like that. She was getting more grateful. The gratitude increased exponentially with distance. She turned back a couple more times to thank me again, more and more each time, louder and louder. She couldn’t help herself; she was getting ecstatically grateful. Pseudo-hysterical. Thank you thank you thank you. She was really belting it now, screaming for me to be appreciated. I was getting nods from colleagues and from students, former and current. Pats on the back, kind words. Additional cookies. More Mexican wedding balls. I had powdered sugar on my lips, my shirt.

Retracing my steps felt like walking through a memory. Here was where we first met, woman and baby and me. Here was my boot-print to the side, my treaded oval. When I got back to the spot where I found the stuffed fox cadet, I was nearly overwhelmed by a nostalgia for the most recent past—but other pasts barged in, too. Foxes, naval demonstrations, animals wearing clothes. An old cartoon of a dog dressed as a milkman. I felt a pang of sadness remembering old cartoons, and hand-drawn animals seductively unzipping their coats of hair or fur to reveal smooth skin beneath. Which meant—I’d figured this out long ago—that their hair or fur wasn’t actually hair or fur, but was in fact a removable suit. Not only was the day of hand-drawn animation and its beautifully hand-drawn removable suits a thing of the past, but so was my youth, irretrievably. I had first made the cartoon-unzipping-suit observation as a young boy, on a wet day, while tracking cloud cover, from the comfort of my stroller. I had been one of those children who grow very attached to their strollers, and demand to sit in them even when they’re too big. My feet had dragged alongside the wheels, my mother pushing me. If we had encountered an adjunct professor on the sidewalk, he would’ve had to step to the side, into the wet soil of the easement.

I was stuck in this mood of missing, and trying to picture a new curve of exponentially diminishing returns of missing as time marched on, so that I wasn’t just missing the encounter with the woman and baby and fox cadet, but missing the missing itself, as it decreased, increasingly, when I was saved from this thought by almost stepping (with my mud boot) on a bright object: a purple pacifier, still wet from the mouth it’d popped out of. 

It was the baby’s, of course. I wasn’t sure how ownership worked with babies, who can’t buy anything, but keeping something in your mouth for long stretches should make it yours. I remember that was a rule as child: if you asked a friend for something, he might pick it up, put it in his mouth, and ask you if you still wanted it. The answer was usually no, you didn’t still want it. I wiped off the purple pacifier and considered putting it in my own mouth—you have to at least consider these things when they present themselves—and turned to see how far away they were. I could still see them, though there was a slight hill between us. It wouldn’t take that much time to catch them, I thought. And it didn’t take long—though this time I passed more of my colleagues, more of my students, all of them looking a little troubled.

“Her pookie!” the woman cried. “She can’t live without her pookie.”

But she, the baby, could, because she was sleeping peacefully. I got a good look at her for the first time. She was older than I’d thought, much older, and, as I had been, too big for a stroller. She was maybe beyond being thought of as a baby at all. She was certainly too old for a pookie. And the woman pushing the stroller was younger than expected, much younger. She was too small to be pushing such a large stroller. Her face, which I’d thought of as a fist, was actually the fist of a much younger woman. The gap in age between woman and baby, which had drastically closed in my estimation, made me reconsider how they knew each other. The baby was still clutching the stuffed fox cadet, which made me feel good. But now she seemed a little too old for the toy. I thought she should be drawing pictures by now. The woman popped the pookie back into the baby’s mouth, even though it had a couple specks of dirt on it.

“I called it a putter,” I said, bringing my fingers to my lips. “Back when I was a baby.”

“We should be on our way now. Thank you!” she said, pushing on, waving. All of a sudden they were quite a distance away. I thought I saw a very small hand wave from the stroller, and I was pretty sure it was the fox cadet’s stuffed hand, not the baby’s. That seemed sophisticated play, and I was happy the baby was making progress, even if she wasn’t drawing pictures yet.

◆

By the time I came upon the third object, which looked to be some kind of medical device with the name “Annabelle” printed on the leather case, I was already cutting into the start time of my first class. My watch had stopped, but the clock on the tower of the German Lutheran church ticked on. The light was changing, the long night threatening the short day, and I was almost feeling bad about not having baked anything for my students, but wasn’t it more appropriate for them to bake something for me as a token of gratitude? I wasn’t paid enough to bake for my students. I couldn’t be buying ingredients and taking the time to bake things. I felt indignant by the mere suggestion, though it hadn’t been suggested by anyone except by me, in my head. But here were my colleagues carrying covered loaf pans, cookie tins, or boxes of store-bought donuts. I had already decided my parting gift to my students would be letting them out of class early—very early, in fact. The class met in the basement of the chemistry building; our room smelled like cooked chemicals. But for this to be a gift, I had to show up on time, so they weren’t just waiting in the classroom, wondering where I was.

I could still catch them, woman and child, and this device seemed important to the baby, in all likelihood named Annabelle. Upon reflection, she had looked a little wan in her big bundle, and probably needed a good shot of her medicine. And considering the size of the baby, and the size of this shot and its needle (I took a look), I wasn’t confident the woman (girl?) pushing Annabelle’s stroller had what it might take in the arm-strength department to uncap the syringe and drive the needle into Annabelle’s arms, which (I’d noted) were quite well defined for someone still being pushed in a stroller. It wasn’t one of those allergy shot things, but something similar. It seemed essential, like an antidote to a dangerous poison she might ingest in the near future. Or maybe she was born with a glandular issue that required regular injections.

As I ran, it seemed like the directions of the clouds had changed. They were certainly flying much closer, on a lower track of conveyance. The colleagues I passed now were those I had complicated relationships with. My older colleagues thought I was too young to be a professor; my younger colleagues thought I was too old to be an adjunct. The former thought I should wait my turn, professionally; the latter, get out of the way. The students I now saw were those who didn’t care for my teaching. They were polite, in a grim-faced way, but behind their eyes flickered a wish to shove me into the mud, where I’d already briefly been, or run me through with a mechanical pencil. They were the ones I’d had to hold after class to discuss their progress and commitment. They would write me poor evaluations in the next few days. Some of them planned to contest their grades, and I, in weakness and apathy, would change them. None of them carried baked goods, and if they’d brought gifts, they were the kind of gifts you would never want, gifts purchased because they were on sale: a shower radio, an aromatic placemat, the signature cologne of a long-retired athlete.

The woman looked scared. But Annabelle had her wits about her, and tried to grab the leather case with the medicine in it. “Is her name Annabelle?” I asked the woman. I couldn’t help myself, I was exhausted: I leaned heavily on the stroller. It was roomier in there than I expected, despite the child’s size. Annabelle opened her eyes. “Your name is Annabelle, right?” Annabelle’s head was far too large to be a baby’s. She had dark hair, and a rather adult haircut. There was a lot of intelligence around the eyes. She pointed forward, telling the woman to push on. The clock on the tower of the German Lutheran church couldn’t be right. A few of my students, the ones who always showed up late, had to step off the sidewalk to get around us. Their shoes sank into the mud of the easement. They looked at their shoes, at the clock on the German Lutheran church. They pondered continuing on, having wet and muddy shoes for the day, or going home to wash them, make a cup of tea. Was it worth it to go on, continue to class? To go into the basement of the chemistry building, to hear their professor give one last speech? Their professor, who, along with a young mother and her large baby and its formidable stroller, had monopolized the sidewalk? Was forcing people, young and old, to step off the walk and onto the easement to muddy their shoes? Their professor who was bent down, leaning in, and saying, “Annabelle? Annabelle? Are you Annabelle?” Their professor who was holding a large syringe, his hand trembling? And the young mother—how young was she?—seemed to be in shock, about to faint. “Annabelle? Is this Annabelle?” Their professor, who was now flicking the tip of the needle, like he’d seen in the movies, preparing to inject the baby, the child. Or perhaps it was the young mother who had gone too long without her medicine: she was Annabelle, she needed the injection, it was her overactive gland that caused her to sway weakly and threatened to overtake her. Their professor, who looked to the clock on the German Lutheran church, looked to them, saw that they weren’t carrying cookies or gifts. “Annabelle? Are you Annabelle?” What should they do? Should they stop and help? Pretend not to notice? Hurry on to ensure that they beat him to the windowless room in the basement that smelled like sulfur? “Annabelle?” They already knew what his speech would be, what he would say about writing, and it would be good, it would be compelling in its way, but then it would end, and they would get up and leave, and in ten years would they remember the basement, the way he paced the front of the room, the glow of the fluorescent tubes, the smell of bad eggs? And was it worth listening to a person who blocked sidewalks, and frantically checked the time shown on clock faces, on the shortest day of the year; who kept the company of young mothers and large babies, who waved an uncapped syringe around in the open air? Who had a bit of powdered sugar on his shirt? Graded papers slipping from his bag, lines of feedback getting wet and bleeding down the page? Was that their name on that bit of paper there, a squiggle of red underlining a sentence, a circled number in the high 80s? Papers blowing away, getting picked up by the hard-charging weather, their professor trying to spear them with the unsheathed needle? “Annabelle?” Who was making himself hoarse from repeating the name? Shouting it into a foldable chair on plastic wheels? Into clouds sinking lower and lower? The time as told by German Lutheran churches ticking away? The longest night ahead? Mud on his one shoe?