Beet (13 page)

“We're not breaking up. Lots of families have split locations. One parent works one place, the other—”

“And that's your idea of a family? A jerry-rigged commuter marriage?”

They weren't raising their voices, but they had never spoken to each other in grimmer tones.

Livi studied the planks of the kitchen floor. “Look, I'm sorry if you think I engineered this offer just to push you around. You have to know I wouldn't do that.”

“That's good, 'cause I'm not pushable. If I leave Beet College, it will only be after I've tried to do what they've asked of me. And it's not because I'm the good boy doing what he's told—though that's probably what you think. It's because trying to help the college is right. The place deserves to be saved.”

“Do you honestly think you'll do that? Even if those clowns on your committee come up with the most wonderful plan ever devised, a real rainmaker, would Beet College ever be safe with people like Bollovate in charge? Manning's right. Once money alone drives these institutions, they're goners.”

“So what do you do? Run, hide, and go work for GM? If you can't fight 'em, join 'em? Do you really believe those people who say let the liberal arts colleges go under know what they're doing? They're not thinking. And Manning is only half right. The theory is fine, but he's not acting on it. Sure, he has a point about the bottom line. But that doesn't say there's no recourse. He had a liberal arts education, you had one, I had one. What's it for, if not to enable us to beat back people whose only values are dollars?”

“The liberal arts are dead, sweetheart.”

“The hell they are. They're just playing dead.” He stood to leave. “You're a smart lady, Livi. Brilliant, sharp, all that. But this is something you don't get. You like to say ‘when pigs fly,' because you think they don't fly. But I make them fly. All humanists make them fly. That's what a liberal arts college is about—making pigs fly. And the fact that pigs don't really fly makes our work the more satisfying.”

She sat very still. They weren't arguing about pigs.

After a minute of silence—“I've got to get back.” They hadn't touched their sandwiches.

“Peace, this is a good job for me, a rare chance. Of course, I want you to come with us and get out of this sinkhole. It's what I've wanted for years. Shoot me. But I want you more than anything. If you stay here, we'll make the new arrangement work. I swear to God. And if it isn't working, I'll quit.” She stood in front of him and took his hand in both of hers as if examining it for damage.

“I hate this,” was all he said. Their lips brushed in what passed for a kiss.

Heavyhearted, Peace returned to the campus to participate in his own faculty panel discussion, “How Many Cultures in Multicultural? How Far to Go?” But as he drove the Accord past Gregory—who had deteriorated in the past months and was now so out of it that without stopping a single car, and motioning like a bullfighter with a cape, he waved everyone past the gates—Peace decided the hell with it. He made a U-ey at the top of the entrance driveway and exited, to another flourish from Gregory. He bagged the panel—something he would not have thought of doing a mere three weeks ago—and drove home.

“Did you come back to ask for a divorce?” asked Livi, with genuine fear, when she saw her husband at the door.

“Nope,” said Peace, giving her a squeeze. “It's Parents Weekend. Let's be parents!”

So the anger fled and the working couple did what working couples do if they want to be a family once in a while; they stole time. They thought they would steal it at Crane Beach in Ipswich, which would be blustery and empty in November, and perfect for the four of them to run about in the swales of the dunes. Not much to report about the rest of their afternoon, really. Mother, father, son, and daughter did nothing more interesting than to play tag and toss around a dog-chewed yellow tennis ball on the hard flat sand at the edge of the ocean. The sky was blue. The water gray. The sand was brown, or maybe tan. The children were so happy with this uninteresting situation, they hugged each other, albeit
just once, and though the hug ended with them shoving each other away, they were sufficiently embarrassed by the act to tickle their parents.

Nothing more was said between Peace and Livi about her new job or the New York move. Nothing was mentioned of Beet College, or was thought about it, either—a personal best for Professor Porterfield, who had ingested the college whole since mid-October and often felt he had become what he'd eaten. He did not even recognize the fact that for those few hours the institution and its woes had vanished from his system, though anyone observing him, Livi definitely, could see the burdens lifted from his face. He was thirty-six, for chrissake. Today he looked thirty-six.

After the beach, the Porterfield family moved on to the Lobster Shack, where they chomped on lobster rolls made the way lobster rolls are supposed to be made, with huge chunks of meat and the rolls toasted and submerged in artery-clogging butter. The parents drank beer, the kids root beer. Robert raised his glass toward the others, but then said nothing.

“Do you want to make a toast?” his mother asked the seven-year-old.

“No,” said the boy. “I just wanted to raise my glass. They do it on TV.”

And so they did it in the Lobster Shack as well. Peace raised his glass, Livi and Beth theirs. And the guy behind the counter, too. And two more guys at the bar. And a woman with a rugulose face and slathered makeup, she raised her glass. And a plump older woman in jeans and a Sox cap worn backward, she did also. And two fishermen in their fifties, with red scars like lightning on their forearms, and buried eyes. Outside the window, the sun dug into the sea. And they all raised their glasses, saying not a word.

In the evening back at the house, Livi said the kids could stay up and watch a DVD. Beth picked out
Horse Feathers
. From early on their parents had taught them not to fear black-and-white movies, and introduced them to the Marx Brothers, with whose anarchies the children eagerly identified.

“Yeah!
Horse Feathers!
” shouted Robert.

They sat in the corner of the living room they called the den, all four bundled together on the couch, laughing from the moment the movie began. Soon came the part where Groucho is standing in front of a classroom and Chico and Harpo are heaving chalk and erasers at him. Livi and the kids laughed even harder, but none as much as Peace, who was so taken with the scene he clicked back the DVD to watch it again. Noting the force of his hilarity, Beth and Robert were sort of frightened. Livi, too. But Peace just laughed, in deep and heavy gales.

“WE'VE GOT IT!” PROFESSOR HEILBRUN ANNOUNCED. FOLLOWED
by Professor Kramer, he leaped up the wooden staircase, wearing a scarlet Inverness cape wrapped about him like a cloak, and an Oswestry—an ivory brocade Edwardian jacket, striped waistcoat, and black dress trousers with a chamois codpiece. “A touch of whimsy,” he explained. The two men celebrated their own entrance like strippers geysering from a cake.

The date was November 20. This meeting in Bacon represented the twenty-fifth in the CCR's brief yet enervating history, and the other committee members, Chairperson Porterfield included, sat around the refectory table, stunned with fatigue. Meeting after meeting had produced nothing but a series of crackpot ideas interrupted by spasms of gossip, and as Thanksgiving approached and the curriculum report was due in three weeks, Peace was wondering if Livi had put a curse on the project, and if Beet College might close its doors after all.

Peace had tried several tacks in the interest of equal participation. He asked the committee members to define the meaning of a liberal arts education personally. Then he asked them to come up with a common definition as a group. He studied the more successful curricula in colleges similar to Beet in size and traditions.
He e-mailed professors in other places who had experience in this sort of project. He asked his six colleagues to do likewise. He moved disciplines around like modular furniture. He made a good-faith effort to get the committee to consider atypical combinations, even though he was pretty sure that such inquiries would result in the usual multi-this-or-that sausage. He tried a host of different centerpieces for a new curriculum—programs of study organized like the spokes of a wheel around a hub of government or history, literature or philosophy, the social sciences, even math and physics—with the thought that one area would be made to lead creatively to another, and expose the entire realm of learning to students as a rational construct. Hope had flared briefly with an offshoot of such an idea—a proposed curriculum divided among studies of discrete epochs such as the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the periods of Romanticism and Modernism. But in the end that plan crumpled as well, as did so many other ideas, when concrete practice was envisioned.

Naturally, Peace blamed himself for the committee's failures, and his fellow committee members agreed; they blamed him too. But to be fair to them all, the task simply might have been too enormous and too much to ask. Perhaps no solution could do all that was expected—to satisfy the highest intellectual standards, to be intrinsically interesting, and to have mass and commercial appeal to boot. In any event, time was certainly running out. And the last few meetings, including the one of the present afternoon, had opened with a drowned, world-weary silence; that is, until Heilbrun and Kramer burst upon the scene.

“What have you got?” asked Smythe listlessly.

“The answer!” said Heilbrun. “We—Kramer and I—have solved the problem of the new curriculum!” The two men plonked themselves down in their seats, flushed with anticipation. Peace, hopeful to the last, gestured for Heilbrun to continue.

“Well, we were asking ourselves—Kramer and I [Kramer nodded rapidly]—what is the one thing truly fundamental to Beet College? What lies at the heart of the meaning of the school? Its
deep-seated intentions, its essential purpose, its—how shall I say—raison d'être?”

“Why not say raison d'être,” yawned Smythe. Heilbrun ignored him.

“Well?” said Booth, who'd had it up to here with the babble of humanists. “What is it?”

Heilbrun looked to Kramer, who looked to Heilbrun. They spoke in unison. “Pigs!” they said. Then Heilbrun said it alone. “Pigs!” Then Kramer. “Pigs!”

Peace tried very hard not to look as if someone had rabbit-chopped him in the back of his neck. The table hunched forward, seemingly aware that it was about to be treated to yet another demonstration of insanity. Someone asked the obligatory, “What are you talking about?”

“Until now,” Heilbrun continued, “we have been approaching this matter of a curriculum as if it pertained solely to the mind, unconnected to more basic aspects of life.” Kramer nodded more rapidly, and continued to nod nonstop during Heilbrun's presentation. “But last night, as I was dozing over a terribly boring history of Croatian mime theater, an old song came into my head—‘Come on people now / Smile on your brother…'” He repeated the lyrics, this time singing.

Kettlegorf leaped at the chance to sing along with him. Then Lipman and Booth and the rest, except for Peace and Smythe, all singing together: “…‘right now!'”

The blood drained from Peace's face—that being one of two songs his parents sang mercilessly to him when he was still in the crib. The other—and he stiffened at its recollection as well—was…but Heilbrun suddenly sailed into that one too: “‘This land is your land, this land…'”

“Are you getting at something?” Peace asked.

“It's the land,” said Heilbrun. “Your land, my land—”

“Our
land?” asked Smythe, with a snigger.

“Our land, yes,” said Heilbrun. The group seemed happy, if bewildered. “You see, the song brought me back to the consideration
of original purposes, of the consciousness Charles Reich talked about in
The Greening of America
. [Again Peace paled.] What was Beet College in its origins?” asked Heilbrun. “Two simple things, if you don't count God. A pig farm and a library. And for many years it thrived as a single entity composed of books and attention to the soil.”

“The pigs soiled, all right,” said Smythe. “Anyone seen Latin?” He tended toward jealousy as well as a desire to fit in, lending him a leer that was both with it and without it.

“So I came up with a thought,” Heilbrun went on, “and phoned Professor Kramer at once [Kramer confirmed this with jackhammer nods]. Why not create a curriculum by going back to the land, and establishing a pig farm?”

“You're not serious,” said Smythe.

“Quite serious,” said Heilbrun. “You see, the students, our students, have been educated in a vacuum. They have no connection to the life of the earth. They have no kinship with the land. And yet, this land is their land, this land is our—”

“Please!” said Peace.

“The sad truth is that none of us has any connection to the land either,” said Heilbrun, looking sad. “We have forgotten our roots. And the students have forgotten theirs. Most of all, they have forgotten how to work with their hands. So [he smiled to Kramer, who smiled back] here's the plan: We create a wholly new course of study that has our students take classes and do farm-work. They could build the sheds for the pigs, and the sties. They could repair the fences and lay the roads. In short, do all the work of the farm. A curriculum of hand and mind!”

“Pigs!” said Kettlegorf, as if goosed by an electric prod. “The students could study the pig as a being, a cultural figure. I don't know, but there must be a great deal of literature on the pig.”

“The etymology is Anglo-Saxon,” said Smythe, appearing interested for the first time, since the turn in the conversation afforded him an opportunity for erudition. “The Anglo-Saxon
pecga
and the Low German
bigge
, both meaning pig. Then there's the medieval Dutch, and finally the Middle English
pigge
.” Everyone
save Peace seemed impressed, mesmerized actually, so he continued. “‘And whether pigs have wings,'” he quoted. “Does anyone know where that comes from?”

“Alice in Wonderland
,” all but Lipman said at once, plunging Smythe into a momentary gloom. He soldiered on nonetheless. “And there's
Charlotte's Web
. And Dylan Thomas—‘Pigs grunt in a wet wallow-bath and smile as they snort and dream.'”

“Snort and dream!” said Kettlegorf.

“And there's Beatrix Potter,” said Booth, suddenly enthused. “
Little Pig Robinson
.”

“And Samuel Butler,” said Smythe. “‘Besides 'tis known he could speak Greek as naturally as pigs squeak.'” Kramer tittered.

“And A. A. Milne,” Kettlegorf chimed in. “Piglet. And Edward Lear.”

Smythe: “‘Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling your ring?'”

Back to Kettlegorf: “‘Said the piggy, I will!'” She sighed. “I will! Just like that! The piggy is asked to part with his ring, out of nowhere, mind you, and he simply says I will! Is there a more generous figure in all of literature? I think not.”

“And Miss Piggy!” said Lipman, who did not know as many literary references as the others but wanted in on the discussion. She also mentioned the movie
Babe
.

“Don't forget
Animal Farm
,” said Booth. “Which reminds me. We're not only talking about pig literature. There must be a very extensive pig history. I mean, all the pig farms in Europe and America.”

“The Allies slaughtered pigs in France,” offered Kramer. “Chopped their heads off with bayonets.” He pursed his lips knowingly.

“And biology,” said Heilbrun. “Why study crustaceans when we could do the same thing with pigs?”

“And economics,” said Smythe, who now was clearly aboard. “A pig farm is a business. I am sure that basic economic principles apply. Industrial farms. Conglomerates driving out the smaller operations. Consolidation versus independents. That sort of thing.”
Having not a whit of information on the subject, the others vigorously agreed.

“And languages!” said Kramer. An amateur linguist as well as a militarist, he rattled off the words for pig in different languages: “French—
cochon
, German—
schwein
, Czech—
vepr
, Finnish—
sika
, Afrikaans—
vark,
Croatian—
svinja
…” The others attempted to stop him, but he was supercharged with excitement. “Danish—
svin
! Bulgarian—
svinia
! Polish—
prosiak
!” He had delivered the Sanskrit (
varaaha
) and was approaching the Maltese (
qazquz
) when Heilbrun put his finger to his lips, and Kramer finally calmed down.

“You've made your point, dear boy,” Heilbrun told his colleague, who was sweating like a
kwiskwis,
pig in Mingo, which he whispered to himself.

“And songs!” exulted Professor Lipman, who fancied herself an expert on contemporary groups. She cited Eminem's “Chokin' This Pig,” Dave Matthews's “Pig,” and Nine Inch Nails's “March of the Pig,” as the others wondered what she was talking about.

Though they knew it was coming, they could do nothing to stop it. Kettlegorf launched into “Piggies” from the Beatles's
White Album:
“‘Have you seen the little piggies / Crawling in the dirt…'” She made it two-thirds of the way through.

Faster and faster the committee members talked, with Professor Booth, the lone scientist on the committee, seizing the floor to get down to brass tacks. “You know, if this is to be a real working farm, we need to decide on what breeds to raise.”

“How many breeds are there?” asked Kettlegorf.

Now it was Booth's turn to show off. “There are weaners,” he said, searching the air for more specifics. “There are Stock Boars and Tamworths and Iron Age Pigs, which are a cross between the Tamworth and the wild boar. There are the Large Whites, of course, like Latin…” He paused, considering what an entire farm of Latins would do to the plant life. “And the British Saddlebacks. Pietrains and Landraces—you've seen them, with their lop ears that cover most of their faces.” No one had, but they all nodded. “And there's the Duroc, which I like very much, that reddish brown color. I nearly forgot the New Zealand Kunekune.”

“Kunekune!” said Kettlegorf. She clapped in ecstasy.

“But who will tend to the farrowing?” said Booth, who saw that the others did not know what he was referring to. Everyone but Peace was rapt. “When the little pigs begin to appear,” he said coyly.

“The students!” said Heilbrun again. Kramer, too.

“And the feeding?” said Booth, who was becoming a sort of evangelist to the group. “Who will grow the clover, the alfalfa, the chicory and turnips?”

“The students!” Lipman and Kettlegorf cried as one.

“And what about the business of the farm?” said Booth. “It's very important that the enterprise be more than self-sustaining. It's got to make a profit. The college endowment is all gone, you know. I've been paying attention to Mr. Bollovate—reading what he tells the papers. And if I understand him aright, the days of the nonprofit college are long over. Every tub on its own bottom. That's the way Mr. Bollovate describes it.”

“And he's the tub to know,” said Smythe. All laughed, except Peace.

“So the pig farm has to pay for itself and then some,” Booth went on.

“You know?” said Kramer, about to come up with his first original thought, “this may have been Nathaniel Beet's plan all along.
Deus Libri Porci.
God leads to learning. Learning leads to money.” How Peace wished Manning could have heard that.

“But who'll run the business?” said Kettlegorf.

“The students!”—everyone but Peace.

“And the slaughter of the pigs for ham and bacon and sausage?”

“The students!”

“And who will package the meat?”

“The students!”

“And manage the sales and the accounts?”

“The stu…”

There was no stopping them. Peace wandered into two lines of thought. The first was that soon, he knew, the now hepped-up
committee members would hit a snag and run out of gas and grow surly and destructively witty, as they'd been doing for the past five weeks, and yet another meeting would come to nothing. The second was, Livi had been right about one thing. He sank deeper into his chair and vowed to go home and draw up the new curriculum himself.