The Ghost Apple (18 page)

Executive Director Beckford snapped his fingers and emitted a vocalization not unlike a pig call, as a result of which he transformed himself back into Acting President Beckford. Then he crossed his arms and said that he’d wondered when we’d be hearing from Professor Simon. He explained that anyone who had been following the story would know that Big Anna® had long been the victim of absurd rumors and conspiracy theories.

The secretary was transfixed by the acting president’s extraordinary teeth. They looked like porcelain, and this reminded him of his own upstairs bathroom. It was still, as noted, open to the winter winds.

Professor Simon asked for clarification. Could the acting president please just answer the questions?

Indeed he could. He would even give his answer in the form of a story:

He had spoken recently with two students—Johnny Singer and Bethany Page-Exley—who had gone to study on St. Renard last semester. Ms. Page-Exley had become romantically involved with a local man employed as a ditch digger for Big Anna®. Mr. Singer had become friends with some of the cane cutters. Both students had been drinking rum in a local restaurant when a “labor-related” disturbance had broken out . . .

And this, to be sure, was at least the beginning of a story, but the secretary can’t have been alone in feeling that the acting president’s narrative now began to shed significance as a snake sheds its skin. For instance, he pointed out that St. Renard had a small but significant Danish population. He then reminded us that the island nation had been, until Big Anna® saved the day, massively indebted to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He said that he admired the Renardenne custom of not eating more than was necessary to sustain life, and sometimes not even that. He himself had eaten only three Chocolate Puff Pieces® that day, and there were some days when he consumed only a thimbleful of Big Anna® brand Coconut Wine™.

Here was a tip: Extend your life by chilling those parts of your body that were not in use. And who said humans couldn’t photosynthesize? All it required was an act of will. Bristlecone pines lived five thousand years.

Plenty of labor disputes on St. Renard had been settled peacefully.

Don’t grow new hair in the summertime. Why would you?

It was only in the celebration following the successful resolution of a labor dispute that some Big Anna® employees had been cut to ribbons.

Were there any questions?

There was a period of silence, perhaps almost ten seconds, while faculty members absorbed this information. Then Professor Hampton said that she still didn’t understand how Big Anna® brand food products could possibly be low in calories. Were they low in sugar? If so, why did Big Anna® maintain such large sugar plantations?

The acting president began to recite the dates of significant slave revolts on St. Renard. February
1748
. June
1791
. April
1923
. Then he said, “I imagine you can carry on from there.”

Were there any other questions?

Perhaps there were, or perhaps not, but now was not to be the time to address them: Without waiting for an answer, the acting president strolled briskly out of the room, leaving the faculty deflated and discouraged. Professor Amundsen attempted to strike the table with his gavel and instead struck his own thumb. His cry of pain brought the meeting to a close.

It had not been an auspicious start to the semester. The secretary, who had been in a kind of trance since his midmeeting Malpraxalin® tablet, tossed his pen onto the table, wadded his notes into a coat pocket, and stumbled down the stairs and out into the wind.

Undercover Dean: Blog Post #5

I’m writing from St. Renard, where I’m staying at a bed-and-breakfast called A Piece of the Indies. Not surprisingly, my application to the Field Studies Program in Tropical Agriculture was denied, so I ended up coming down on my own steam. But before I go any further, I have to describe the circumstances of my departure from Tripoli. Sensitive readers be warned: It’s not a story for the faint of heart.

As of the new year, I’d moved my things out of the dorm and I was living in my own house once again. After the excitement and camaraderie of the fall, I could hardly bear to be alone with my memories. It was even harder than before.

I hadn’t gone back to work and I doubted that I ever would, but I was still in contact with Burke and Lehman, and from them I heard some bizarre rumors: Beckford was living in the art museum, which he’d trashed. He’d put student-athletes to work cleaning bathrooms. He’d been pushing a drug called Malpraxalin.

One day I went back to campus to see for myself, but the place seemed quiet and serene. In the library, where I went to warm up, some students were discussing an article on the
Telegraph
’s
website. The president of Keesy College had reportedly said that you could lock a young person in a closet for four years and they’d do as well on the job market as they would if they’d spent those four years at Tripoli.

“But it’s absurd,” one of the students was saying. “He doesn’t even consider the psychological damage that being locked in a closet would do to someone. Trust me, you’re not going to do well on the job market if you’ve been standing upright in the darkness for four years, eating whatever your captors allow you to eat and eliminating waste under who knows what circumstances.”

I tightened my scarf and went outside thinking that nothing had changed. It was business as usual at Tripoli.

But as I walked east across the quad, I saw a crowd of students and professors that had gathered around the big bare oak in front of Pinkman Hall. Since there was a crust of ice on the flagstone paths, I was concentrating on my footing and at first I didn’t see the pale stubby man under the oak, but there he was: Bish Pinkman III. He was stripped to the waist and his hands were tied to a low branch above his head. The rope was pulled so tight that his toes were only just touching the ground, and he rotated slowly as he struggled to free himself. He was much thinner than the last time I’d seen him, although you still wouldn’t call him thin. His soft body looked sad and vulnerable in the frozen afternoon.

Acting President Beckford was standing on the steps a short distance away. He was wearing a black trench coat and sunglasses, although there was only a diffuse gray light in the southern sky. I marveled at how his teeth seemed to be getting bigger and stronger and whiter every year. How did he do it? I was at a point where I felt like my own teeth would shatter if I tried to eat a pecan.

Beckford was attended by his lackey, Professor Amundsen. Both of them were saying something to a tall student whom I recognized as the football player Depatrickson White.

At a signal from the acting president, Professor Amundsen clapped some wooden blocks together. Everyone fell abruptly silent, and for a moment the only sound was the whistling of the frozen wind. Depatrickson White looked up at Beckford, who nodded, and then, taking a deep breath, he drew a short rawhide whip from his coat pocket.

At first, I was struck most of all by the focused intensity with which he went about his work. He took short, efficient, powerful strokes, driving from his back foot and snapping his hips to get all of his weight behind each blow. His coordination was perfect. He was truly a gifted athlete.

But then, as the blood began to flow, poor Depatrickson White seemed to unravel. His strokes got sloppier and went wide of the mark. He looked suddenly like the college kid he was. And he began to cry. This was particularly affecting because he’s such a large and imposing person. He looks like he’s never cried in his life. The Tripoli Tyrants have turned out to be especially sensitive young men, although I suppose anyone might have wept in his place.

With each stroke, Mr. Pinkman III rotated about five degrees, and after a while he had rotated far enough that he was facing me and I could see his round face, pinched in agony and red as a tomato. It was a terrible moment. White struggled to muffle his sobs, and no one else said a word. You could hear the wind stirring the bare branches of the trees. The whip broke the silence with an indistinct, meaty thump, like a gun fired into a pillow.

After a while, Professor Amundsen began to clap the wooden blocks together again, and White took a few steps back, dropped the bloody whip, and began to vomit. Mr. Pinkman III was unconscious by now. Beckford cut his bonds and he collapsed in the pink snow beside the traumatized football player.

If I’d had any doubt about heading down to St. Renard, this incident helped me make up my mind. I went home, packed my duffel bag and carry-on, and bought a plane ticket that very night. I was going out of a sense of responsibility, to be sure—so that I could be on hand in case Megan needed me—but like her I was also going because I couldn’t bear to remain at Tripoli any longer!

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The research team at GENUTREX® Nutrition has done it again with MALPRAXALIN®, an all-natural dietary and mood additive designed to amplify productive thought volume, improve vasodilation, diminish political anxiety and moral fatigue, and restore the healthy functioning of emotions, metabolism, and feelings! Are you worried about so-called global warming? Do you grind your teeth at night? Has it occurred to you that you might be able to experience the sweetness of life only in retrospect? By using optimized, clinically authenticated herbal analogs of the actual chemicals found naturally in the sap of the Carawak or Ghost Apple Tree (
Hippomane renardennia
)
, which grows only on the Caribbean island of St. Renard, MALPRAXALIN® is guaranteed to provide you with an intense sensation of enhancement, disaffection, brio, clarity, and appetite suppression, with absolutely no “dread” or annoying tremors! But don't listen to us: Once you try MALPRAXALIN®, you'll immediately feel what it does!*

 

* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to treat, diagnose, cure, or prevent any diseases.

 

HISTORY

The Carawak people were the original inhabitants of St. Renard. They were a peace-loving tribe who flattened their skulls by tying pieces of wood to the foreheads of their infants. Having lived on the island for thousands of years, they knew all the secrets of the tropical forest, including the medicinal and supplement virtues of every tree, root, grub, fruit, and flower. For instance, the Carawak captured local parrots by burning dried Renardenne peppers beneath the trees where these clever birds were roosting. When the parrots fell to the ground, they were stupefied and drugged, enabling the Indians to tie them up and train and/or eat them. But when Spanish mariners first landed on these shores, the idyll came to an end, and the Carawak were forced to confront new and sometimes troubling situations and realities. Small wonder that they turned increasingly to the natural mood enhancement provided by the psychoanalgesic fruit and sap of the Carawak Apple Tree, which they brewed into a tea and drank from dried gourds whenever the stresses of the modern world were too much for them. John Morehead Tripoli, British adventurer, Indian sympathizer, and notorious troublemaker, was the first European to taste this revolutionary New World brew. Having led a mutiny on board the merchant vessel
Tatterdemalion
, Morehead Tripoli was put ashore on St. Renard in the year 1700 and lived among the Carawak for a year until British sailors returned. He would speak for the rest of his life about the magnificent properties of that beverage, and later he would even say that he regretted leaving the island!

 

WHY SHOULD IT WORK FOR YOU?

MALPRAXALIN® is bioequivalent to the active psychoanalgesic derived from the Carawak Apple Tree, which has been proven to interact with numerous biochemicals in the human body in order to relieve discomfort associated with nonoptimal levels of psychosensation and/or knowledge. MALPRAXALIN® is formulated to include highly bioavailable vitamin cofactors, making it even more effective than the Carawak's original tea beverage. Not only is it hypersilicum-free, but it deregulates kinetic pathways without mobilizing tropospheric pollutants, helping the body to harness the adrenaltropic power of the adaptogen Tryptosine™. It's even manufactured right on the island of St. Renard, close to the source of its original inspiration!

 

INDICATIONS

If you are experiencing any of the following symptoms, you may have a psychological and/or dietary problem. MALPRAXALIN® can help. Take MALPRAXALIN® if you

 

• Frequently say “Oh no!” first thing in the morning.

• Sometimes feel anxious or have neck aches.

• Long to feel your teeth rattled once again by the wind of youth.

• Are suffering from depression due to emotional disharmony, chest oppression, loin pain, alarming taste in mouth, painful wind, esophageal ulcers, sluggish Kidney Action™, dropsy, or phlegm entanglement.

• Can't find the television remote!

• Are experiencing difficulty swallowing and speaking due to catecholamine deficiencies.

• Are experiencing shifting political allegiance.