Beet (11 page)

“Professor Porterfield?” asked Jane of the dramatically long blond pigtail. “You're always talking about original language. But I don't really understand.”

Peace nodded, acknowledging his use of the term might have been vague. “All these poets we study,” he said. “They reached into themselves to find words that were theirs alone. They took the effort to do this, not because they wanted to show off, or to baffle readers with strangeness for its own sake. They wanted to discover who they really were, what they really believed. And their own language would tell them. The words they used—the words we're talking about today—they could have come from no one but Moore and Wilbur.”

Jane was still searching. So, evidently, was Max, and if he was not getting this, no one would. On the spot, Peace came up with an exercise deliberately geared toward heartbreak.

“I am going to do something now,” he told them. “And when I do it, I want you to write. Don't think about it. No throat-clearing. Go with whatever comes to mind.”

With that he stood, walked to the classroom door, opened it, and closed it. Then he looked back at the students looking at him. He opened the door again, and closed it again. The tumblers in the lock were heavy, clear, and loud.

“That is what I'd like you to write about,” he said. “The sound of a closing door.”

They went right at it. When fifteen minutes had passed and the class time was nearly over, he called upon several students to read aloud what they had put down.

Robyn wrote something that began: “In my father's house there were no doors.” She went on to tell that she had grown up on a navy base, and she and her mom lived in a trailer. “No walls,” she said. “And no doors.”

Lucky, not a joke in him now, wrote of clinging to his father's
pants cuffs as the old man was walking out on him and his mother, brothers, and sisters, for good. He had left on a Sunday. After the door had closed forever, the family had sat down to eat blueberry pancakes.

Lucille wrote of having been hauled off to a police station in her hometown in Louisiana when she was twelve; she had heard a jail door close. Prentice wrote of the breakup with his partner, who had told him, “We just don't click.” But, “The door clicked.”

Peace leaned forward and gave them a hard look. “Original language, you see, has nothing to do with arcane or fancy words,” he said. “Most often it is composed of the simplest words. But they come from you, only from you.”

At ten to one the class was over, but everyone kept his seat a moment longer. “That's another thing about the mind,” said Jenny, gathering her books and talking to no one in particular. “It can make itself sad.”

“Yes, it can,” said Professor Porterfield.

IN THE WEEK BETWEEN THE INCIDENT AT MACARTHUR HOUSE
in campus folklore the seizure of the building was downgraded to an incident) and the class in Modern Poetry that Professor Porterfield had just taught, a number of things happened regarding Beet College that struck those who observed them as out of the ordinary. There were other events that went unobserved—equally odd, if not plain weird. And they all occurred in a remarkably short span of time.

On one occasion, men and women bearing tripods, theodolites, and miniature blue and orange flags on metal sticks were seen pacing out steps on the campus periphery, where they planted their flags. When asked what they were doing there by reporter Ferritt Lawrence, who tended to ask that question of everyone, they explained they were measuring the shoulders of the college roads in order to dig more trenches for the rainy season. This explanation satisfied Lawrence, who did not think the event worthy of a story for the
Pig's Eye.
But it was considered unusual by others, since the strangers with tripods and tiny flags were doing their work hundreds of yards from any of the campus roads. And in New England all seasons are rainy.

On another occasion, small parties of men in suits and recent
haircuts were noticed being led on what appeared to be a walking tour of the campus. Behind them trailed a hard-looking blonde in red tights and a black leather miniskirt, holding a clipboard. The tour guide was President Huey himself. And though no one could hear what he was telling the group, he was clearly happy and overexcited, making the exulting noises of an appliance salesman. He flapped his arms like a gull on a trash bin, and one could even make out a faint yet ecstatic screak.

In autumn on a college campus most everyone is too busy to pay sustained attention to such sporadic irregularities, so while these events might have been mentioned in passing once or twice, more urgent topics were being discussed, such as how clownish Dean Henry Muddler looked on his Moped, whether or not the galootish Dean Smitty Smith was a true albino, was Dean Jenina McGarry a dyke or a wannabe, and wasn't Dean Wee Willy Baedeker a horse's ass. The CCR's progress or lack of it bore deep into everyone's minds, which was why it had become more the subject of brooding than of chatter, though some faculty members, armed with basic survival instincts, made plans to work elsewhere.

And yet there were more extraordinary occurrences.

One day over lunch at the Faculty Club, Keelye Smythe was wondering, in the presence of Professors Lipman, Kettlegorf, Booth, Kramer, and Heilbrun, about a certain matter for which this rump meeting of the CCR had been convened. The Faculty Club had served as an abattoir in the 1880s, and though the structure's walls were taken down and replaced a dozen times in the interim, and were now covered in mauve fabric erupting in hydrangeas, still, every so often someone complained of smelling blood.

What was unusual about this CCR meeting was the absence of the chairperson. And the subject about which Professor Smythe was wondering, since they were running out of time, when all things were considered, when one really faced facts, when one took into account, after due deliberation, the competing pros and cons of the matter, was whether—he was just wondering—Professor Porterfield were the right person to serve as chair.

“He's very amiable, and of course he's a personal friend of mine—why, I believe I was the first to welcome him to the department four years ago. I think it was I who proposed recruiting him from Yale. Yes, I'm sure of it. I might venture to say I am his closest friend in the college. And I really, really truly like him.”

Smythe would have gone on like this for a dozen more such sentiments, but the scientist Booth, impatient for the end of the equation, waved him toward a finish.

“I'm simply not certain,” said Smythe, “if he's in touch with the times.”

“Exactly,” said Lipman. “I'm sure he's a fine teacher, and a fine scholar, though you gentlemen, and lady [Kettlegorf beamed], would know more about that than me…I.” (Lipman's only advanced degree was from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she had written her master's thesis, “The Media: Is It in Trouble?”) “But,” she said, “the way he runs our meetings, he's a bit old-fashioned.”

“Exactly,” said Heilbrun, who was dressed in a Brocton—a gray double-breasted lounge suit and a shirt with a white wing collar.

“Exactly,” said Kramer at nearly the same time.

“What our esteemed colleague does not seem to realize,” Smythe went on, taking a quick, surreptitious glance around the club to assure himself that the esteemed colleague was not nearby (he need not have bothered; Peace never went near the place), “is that we require a curriculum with some zip to it, pizzazz, something new. Innovation!” He banged the table lightly. “That's the ticket. That's what the trustees are looking for. I mean, Peace is a very nice man—”

“Very nice,” said Heilbrun. He dabbed on a touch of lip balm.

“Exceptionally nice,” said Kramer.

“But,” continued Smythe, “I just don't know. Something is missing.”

“Missing,” said Kramer.

“I mean, he's very intelligent,” said Smythe.

“Very intelligent,” said Kramer, whose echolalia had begun to get on the group's nerves three weeks earlier.

“And very nice,” said Heilbrun.

Kramer was about to say, “Very nice,” but Smythe cut him off. “I just don't know,” he said, as if actually contemplating the matter. “Something is different about him. I didn't see it at first.”

“A bit standoffish,” said Booth.

“A bit standoffish,” said Kramer before anyone could stop him.

Before anyone could stop
her
, Kettlegorf made it through the opening bars of “I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair”—causing people at the other tables to turn their heads in alarm.

The group continued in this vein through the consommé, into the salmon fillet, past the seasonal fruits, and toward the decaf cappuccino. By the time they stood to leave, they had reached no firm conclusion save that Professor Porterfield was a very nice, very amiable, very intelligent fellow, and that they all liked him tremendously.

So there was that unusual event, to be added to the others, if anyone had been doing the adding, that is.

And there was Akim's random numbers-and-letters generator. Like a cyclopean eye, his laptop shone in the dark of the cave. The numbers rolled, the letters rolled. Hour after hour, day after day, the generator kept searching for the Homeland Security Department code without success. That was unusual.

And then there was this event, which occurred off campus during a gray mizzle.

Joel Bollovate and Matha Polite met in town for drinks at the High on the Hog Lounge in the Pigs-in-Blankets Bed 'N Breakfast. Now, this was
very
unusual, both for the fact that the chairman of the board of trustees had invited an undergraduate for a drink, and because no one ever had drinks at the High on the Hog until after ten at night, when the locals showed up for pinball, sang along with “Roxanne” on the jukebox, played with action figures, and compared symptoms of PTSD. Bollovate and Matha had the lounge to themselves, except for one barely visible
ectomorphic figure, half draped by shadows, who remained very still in the corner and to whom they paid no attention. They sat under the print of the dogs playing poker and drank cabernets.

“You interest me, Miss Polite,” said Bollovate. He grabbed a dozen salted peanuts.

“You interest
me
,” said Matha. The two of them had just exclaimed “Cheers!” and were surveying each other, as if for size.

“Why do I interest you?” asked Bollovate.

“You fuhst,” she said, hearing herself sliding back into southern.

“Well, for one thing, you're a leader,” said Bollovate. “I watched you during the MacArthur House bullshit. The other students listen to you.” Matha smiled demurely. “I'm a leader too.”

“That's why Ah interest you?” asked Matha.

“That is one of the reasons. I also noticed that you don't care much for Beet College.”

“And that appeals to you?”

“Maybe you're wasting your time here,” said Bollovate. He signaled for two more cabernets, and scooped up a fistful of pretzel sticks.

“If yuh don't mahnd mah askin', Mr. Bollovate, what are yuh gettin' at?”

Bollovate downed his second wine, ordered a third, and encouraged his guest to do the same. “As you know, Miss Polite, Beet College is in bad shape. It pains me to say so, but there might not
be
a Beet College come spring.”

“That would be awful,” said Matha. They looked straight at each other, innocent as larks.

“So,” Bollovate went on, “you might be faced with the choice of transferring to another institution, or taking employment. Frankly, I must tell you, I think you're ready to go to work right now.”

Once again, Matha was torn for two or three seconds. She was a great if underappreciated poet and an important radical feminist, that she knew. But Mr. Bollovate seemed to be offering her a real job.

“Of course, one of your demands was my dismissal.” He dug into a dish of oyster crackers.

“Oh, don't pay any mind to that, Mr. Bollovate. We were just funnin'.”

“Miss Polite”—taking her hand, which had been left on the table for the taking. “Miss Polite, I would like you to think about something. You don't have to make up your mind right now. But I'm setting up satellite corporations to develop quite a few large properties on the East End of Long Island. Very large properties, I kid you not. Tens of thousands of acres in all, where they used to grow ducks and potatoes. A waste of space, if you ask me. The plantings I have in mind will have three-car garages and cost from four to ten million apiece, each occupying a plot under an acre. You do the math. The point is, we will be needing people to sell those houses, smart people, born leaders who know what side is up, if you get my drift.”

Matha studied the entirety of Joel Bollovate, mentally weighing him from nape to base. “Real estate,” she said at last. “You know, Mr. Bollovate, back home mah daddy's in real estate. And mah sister Kathy has a thrivin' real estate business in the very location you're interested in.”

“Perhaps it's in the blood, Miss Polite,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze, to feel the blood.

“Well, Ah certainly
will
think about it!” Now it was her turn to order up the drinks.

In a short while the two of them wobbled out of the bar. They did not need to find a place to wobble to, since Bollovate had taken the liberty of reserving a room at the inn. So they went upstairs to continue taking liberties. Matha, who knew what side was up, insisted on being on top.

These disparate events—the people with the flags, the tour party, the CCR secret lunch, the coming together of Matha Polite and Joel Bollovate, as well as the missing African artworks that the museum director had called Peace about—oh yes, and a vanished Calder stabile that had stood on the lawn outside the History Department—all of them, viewed independently, might have
remained isolated incidents. Taken together, however, they added up to a definite change in the emotional weather at Beet College, one that had come on fast, and noticeably different from the usual collegiate mass neurosis. It was hard to put one's finger on it. It was not yet a full-fledged nervous breakdown, but it showed promise.

Five additional contributing occurrences deserve mention. They also were disparate, yet connected, directly or indirectly, to the personage of Chairman Bollovate.

Late one afternoon, the November gloom was relieved by the sight of a mobile unit of Chuck E. Cheese's that had set up shop smack in the middle of the visitors' parking lot. The trailer played a little Chuck E. Cheese's tune of enticement with bells, and at once the students ran toward it. It seemed—as Ferritt Lawrence learned after some crack investigative work—the college trustees had decided to lease a portion of the lot to the fast food chain to improve cash flow. The kids loved it, at least at first sight. Many found the games more challenging than their courses. And even the faculty, though there had been some reflexive grumbling in the beginning, seemed to take to it too. They seemed especially impressed with the robotic mouse. Speaking for Fine Arts, Professor Kettlegorf gave the franchise her blessing. “I just adore the yellow!” she told one of her classes. Then she sang “Yellow bird, up high in banana tree.”

The second was a correspondence among several parties best presented verbatim: