by Rob Schnelle

Stooping to clear the corrugated steel overhang of an 8-by-30-foot cargo container, Leo Hemridge exits his new office, shielding his eyes in wan October sunlight. He wears the haunted expression of a man who expects imminent eviction, perhaps because his quarters were formerly occupied by migrant asparagus pickers. Hemridge works as an instructor in psychology at Darwin State University in Darwin, Kansas, where administrators have found a novel solution to the school’s shortage of faculty office space.
“When the adjunct offices were converted to a student casino,” Hemridge explains, “they moved us out here.”

“Out here” is a strip of trash-blown cheatgrass hard up against Interstate 70 and bordered on two sides by a 300-acre soybean field. Forty-two rectangular cargo vessels, identically labeled “Fresh Oysters,” occupy the site. It is here on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays between 3:00 and 4:30 that students in Hemridge’s classes may consult with him. The interior of the structure contains office furniture, filing cabinets, and computers (their monitors darkened in the absence of electrical hook-up) but no sign of the colleagues or students who might presumably use them.

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