Beet (22 page)

He, She, or It could. Lookatme had hardly asked this favor of his Friend, when…
KABOOM!
From the direction of the woods came an explosion that turned the night sky orange. The crowd remained where it stood, since the source of the blast was obscure. No one could tell that it had come from a cave somewhere behind the baseball field. Well, one person could, but he wasn't saying.

The trustees other than Bollovate got off without serving time, since it was determined they had not known of the hidden endowment. They did get probation, however, for being in on the plot to buy the college property. So they lost money, which some in the college called their “capital punishment.” Their careers as developers were permanently impaired as well, since few people wanted to buy land from criminals who actually were criminals.

Joel Bollovate did not get off so easy. He received a fine of $900 million, most of his fortune after Sheila took her share, and was sentenced to five years in Boston's Walpole State Penitentiary, not a minimum-security facility. He'd been terrified that Walpole's residents would turn him into a sex slave, but they took one look and weren't interested.

What happened to Beet College? Who knows? It went on. It certainly went on. In the end, that may be the best thing about colleges. The opinion polls had no effect whatever on Beet or on any liberal arts institution. The crimes, the publicity, the civil wars of the faculty, the furious parents and alumni—none of it put a dent in the place. A good thing Bollovate had been discredited, or his idea of chucking four-year colleges in favor of jobs and trade schools might have taken root. But appealing as the idea may have
been, it probably would have failed in the long run. When it comes down to it, nothing that happened at Beet that fall affected anything in American higher education. Nothing ever does. Good or bad, splendid or inane, colleges go on and on and on. There's nothing like them.

And Manning? He was named president pro tem—not by his colleagues, who decided he was “a marvelous fellow but, I don't know, a bit abrasive”—but rather by state officials, who stepped into Beet's business affairs after the Days of the Bollovate and judged the whole place “a cesspool.” Manning asked Peace if he'd help him do the job. Peace said, “I only
look
crazy.”

And Peace's proposed curriculum on storytelling? Another committee was established to consider it, with Keelye Smythe as chair.

Bliss House posted a notice:
LET THE HEALING BEGIN
.

What happened to Peace? He may have returned to work with the kids in Sunset Park. Livi had been right about his being happy there. He may have left teaching altogether, though it was hard to picture him in something like the law, for example, or in business. Politics? He wouldn't have lasted a day. People like Peace Porterfield don't go into politics. Social work? Maybe. A think tank? Doubtful. A think tank would have all the advantages of a college, minus the feeling of accomplishment.

He may have decided to cultivate a garden—not one of his own, but somewhere that had no gardens, and needed them.

One simply doesn't know what Peace's future contained. His present was good enough. He took her hand, and they walked together from that place.

ROGER ROSENBLATT
's contributions to
Time
and PBS have won two George Polk Awards, a Peabody, and an Emmy. He is the author of five Off-Broadway plays and twelve books, including the national bestseller
Rules for Aging
and
Children of War
, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Lapham Rising
, also a national bestseller, was his first novel.

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