Visiting Professor (10 page)

Rain, her bare feet resting on Mayday, is listening to the news on the clock radio in her kitchen when Lemuel turns up. The
body of a graduate student at a nearby state university has been discovered chained to a pipe in a subbasement, a plastic
bag over her head, a .38 caliber bullet hole in her ear. Rain is so terrified she forgets she has put a slice of whole wheat
bread in the old-fashioned toaster with the sides that come down like flaps. She remembers when the bread bursts into flame.
Mayday staggers to her feet and watches the smoke billowing from the toaster.

“I can’t even do goddamn toast anymore,” Rain wails. “From now on,” she vows, beating at the flames with a kitchen towel,
“anybody I don’t know comes into Tender To, he gets a shot of laughing gas in the kisser.”

Suddenly the towel in Rain’s hands is ablaze. With a shriek, she flings it across the kitchen. It lands on a carton filled
with paper towels and napkins. In an instant the carton is aflame. Rain grabs the container of milk on the table and tries
to pour milk on the fire, but the container is almost empty. She darts to the sink, fills a glass with water and in her panic
flings both the glass and the water in it at the carton, but the fire only spreads to some newspapers piled nearby. The kitchen
begins to fill with smoke.

‘Jesus Christ, do something!” Rain cries.

Lemuel opens his fly, takes out his penis and urinates on the fire. The flames subside, then sputter out. Rain throws open
the window. Cold air invades the kitchen, which smells of smoke, urine and burned paper. She hugs herself and regards Lemuel
with something akin to admiration.

“On second thought,” she remarks, “your equipment leaves nothing to be desired.”

Lemuel mops the kitchen floor with ammonia while Rain douses the walls with rose-scented toilet water. Later, they both collapse
on the couch. Lemuel mentions an advertisement he saw in the
Backwater Sentinel
for a Nikita Mikhailkov film being shown that night in the original Russian, with English subtitles. He remarks that he longs
to hear the sound of Russian again, but Rain says she absolutely has to attend a meeting at the Seventh-Day Baptist Church,
there is no question of not going; likewise there is no question, with a random killer
stalking the county, of her strolling down North Main Street without an armed guard.

Lemuel dryly points out that he is not armed.

Rain’s face is drawn and serious as she tells him, “Hey, I know you don’t actually go around with a goddamn pistol in your
pocket. When I was a parole officer I hung around cops a lot, which is how I discovered that dudes who are armed look at dudes
who aren’t in a peculiar way. The first time I saw your wild head of hair pushing through the curtain into Tender To, I knew
right off you weren’t armed, right?”

Her eyes open wide in discovery. She is thinking about how he put out the fire. “With the usual weapons,” she adds thoughtfully.

D.J. Starbuck removes
a shoe and pounds the high heel on the lectern, but nobody pays attention.

“We’ve signed petitions until they’re coming out of our ears,” Matilda Birtwhistle shouts over the din. “We owe it to the
next generation to escalate.”

“Here’s the deal,” Rain yells, clutching Mayday under an arm. “We need to draw the line.”

“This far and no farther,” the Rebbe cries into one of the remote microphones. His voice booms from the two loudspeakers attached
to the wall on either side of the wooden Jesus Christ crucified.

Shirley, sitting on Dwayne’s shoulders, shrieks, “If they come sucking around Backwater looking for trouble with a capital
T, let’s give ’em trouble with a capital’T!”

Lemuel shouts into Rain’s ear, “Who is coming to Backwater? And what kind of trouble with a capital I are they looking for?”

An elderly professor of art history with a neatly trimmed gray goatee snatches the microphone from the Rebbe. Brandishing
his cane, he shouts in a frail voice, “We must declare war. We must transform Backwater into the front line.”

“Carpe diem, Professor Holloway,” cries one of the football players standing under the stained-glass window. The other football
players pick up the chant: “Car-pe di-em, car-pe di-em.”

Half a dozen cheerleaders, fresh from a practice session and still wearing purple tights and short, pleated, gold-and-crimson
skirts, scramble onto benches at the back of the church and begin chanting, “Roll ‘em back, roll ‘em back, roll ‘em waaaaay
back!” The hundred
and fifty people jammed into the Seventh-Day Baptist Church take up the cry. “Roll ‘em back, roll ‘em back, roll ‘em waaaaay
back!”

“Roll who waaaaay back?” Lemuel demands plaintively.

“The bulldozers,” Rain shouts into his ear.

“Can we pleeeease have some order here,” D.J. cries shrilly into the lectern microphone.

“Simmer down, for Chrissake,” bellows Jedediah Macy, the balding Baptist minister sitting on the organ stool to the right
of the altar.

Gradually the bedlam subsides. The cheerleaders climb down from the benches. People settle into their seats.

“I move we put the question to a vote,” D.J. shouts into the microphone.

“I second the motion,” the Rebbe, his eyes bulging dangerously, calls into the remote microphone.

Word Perkins, the Institute’s factotum, leaps to his feet. “I third the motion, huh?”

“All those in favor of militant action indicate same by saying aye.”

A babble of delirious “Ayes” echoes from the rafters.

“All those against?”

D.J. surveys the suddenly still church. A leer overpowers her usual sardonic expression. “The ayes have it,” she announces
jubilantly.

“I say we draw lots and the loser immolates himself under the first bulldozer,” Word Perkins cries excitedly.

“We voted for militant action, not a suicide raid,” D.J. notes in alarm. She leans closer to the microphone. “I’ll accept
motions on militant action.”

The Baptist minister vaults off the organ stool and thrusts a fist into the air. “Let’s knock off this parliamentary crap,
break up into committees and put the show on the road.”

The crowd, with a bewildered Lemuel lost in its heart, roars approval.

Science says us the core of our planet is molten iron and nickel, millions of degrees hot if not hotter. Empirical evidence
contradicts this. Crouching behind a low fence at the edge of the field with what Rain called the B Team, with sunrise a good
half hour off, I felt through the thick soles of my new Timberland boots (which cost the equivalent, I
must have been out of my mind to buy them, of 79,990 rubles at the Village Store) a bone-numbing iciness emanating from the
bowels of the earth. If there was molten anything between my feet and China, I could not feel a hint of it.

Rain had warned me to dress warmly, which is how come I was wearing almost everything I owned: I had on long underwear over
my short underwear, I had on two shirts, I wore the sleeveless sweater my mother knitted me after she was released from prison
over my store-bought sweater with sleeves, I wore my khaki scarf wound around the lower half of my face, I had on my faded
brown overcoat which fell to my ankles, I had on Rain’s ski cap with something called a pom-pom at the crown.

I could have been wearing nothing for all the good it did.

We had gotten there at four in the morning in order to “take up positions” before the state troopers blocked the highway.
That was how the Baptist minister had phrased it. He had been an Army chaplain in Vietnam during the imperialist war waged
by America the Beautiful to dominate southeast Asia. He spoke in military terminology and made taking up positions sound like
the kind of maneuver a Roman legion might execute.

I remember looking to my right and left to see if anyone in the B Team beside the Rebbe, who had not stopped whispering since
we arrived, was still alive. In the silvery stillness of a waning moon, I spotted vapor seeping from the lips of Rain and
Mayday and Dwayne and Shirley and Word Perkins, I heard muffled coughs and grunts farther down the line. These faint signs
reassured me there was life on earth.

“In classical Hindu mythology,” the Rebbe was lecturing me, he was frightened, it was his way of keeping the devils at bay,
“the cosmos passes through three phases: creation, symbolized by Brahma; order, symbolized by Vishnu; and a return to disorder,
symbolized by Shiva. This mirrors Creation, Eden and the Great Flood in Torah. The order of Vishnu and the disorder of Shiva,
like the order of Eden and the disorder of the Flood, should maybe be seen as two sides of the same coin, two faces of the
same God, two visions of the same reality. The way I read Torah, these visions coexist as they coexist in the theory of chaos,
demonstrating, you want an unbiased opinion, once more—”

Rain’s tight voice interrupted the Rebbe. “So here they come.”

Her words were picked up down the line. “Here they come, angel,” Shirley echoed in a tense undertone.

“Here they come,” said Word Perkins, and snorted.

“Here who comes?” I asked Rain, but she was too busy peering over the top of the fence we were crouching behind to pay attention
to me. Willing my joints to defrost, I rose to my knees and looked over the top of the fence. I could see the headlights of
cars creeping slowly around a curve about a kilometer down the highway. Rain started counting out loud in a voice that indicated
her jaw muscles were frozen. “One, two, three, four, Jesus, five, six, holy Christ, seven, eight, nine. Seven carloads full
of goddamn cops! The big headlights behind must be the flatbeds with the bulldozers. Who do they think they’re going up against,
Saddam Hussein?”

The A Team was positioned between us and the headlights. The dozen or so kamikazes, the Baptist minister’s code name for the
volunteers on the A Team, had chained themselves together, with the ones on either end chained to the stanchions of the bridge
that straddled a frozen stream. We could make out the kamikazes silhouetted in the headlights as the police cars drew up,
three abreast, on the far end of the bridge. We could hear car doors slam, we could hear the kamikazes shouting the slogans
they had rehearsed in the church: “Backwater has no taste for nuclear waste,” or words to that effect.

Suddenly a brilliant light flashed on, bathing the bridge in daylight. “That means the TV cameras are filming,” Rain announced
excitedly.

We could see old Professor Holloway striding back and forth in front of the human chain, his cane flailing over his head,
as a phalanx of state troopers, some of them armed with what looked like shotguns, approached. Then a voice brayed over a
battery-powered bullhorn, “I’m holdin’ here in my hand uh court injunction prohibitin’ you from interferin’ with the ‘dozers
scheduled to break ground for the nuclear-waste dump. I’m orderin’ you to circulate. If
you refuse to circulate, I’m gonna hafta go an’ arrest you for obstruction uh—”

The rest of the warning was lost in wailing, sirenlike feedback.

Rain pressed her lips against my ear. “Dudes who are armed also
talk
to dudes who aren’t in a peculiar way, right?”

The state police made short work of the A Team. Troopers carrying enormous wirecutters moved in and severed the locks on the
chains, and the kamikazes, gallantly chanting their slogan, were hauled off to a bus that had pulled up behind the flatbed
trucks.

I remember wondering if the bus would be heated; I remember thinking the sooner we were arrested, the greater our chances
would be of living through the night.

Our master plan, devised by the Baptist minister, the only one among us besides me (I spent my two years in the army picking
cotton in Uzbekistan) with any serious military experience, was the same as Wellington’s at Waterloo. As the Baptist minister
explained it, our strategy was one against ten, our tactic ten against one. The A Team was the key to success. As their chains
were being clipped, the kamikazes were supposed to mislead the police into thinking the other members of the anti-nuclear-waste-dump
movement (are you ready for this one, Raymond Chandler?) had chickened out.

The state troopers apparently fell for the ruse, because they waved the two flatbed trucks on without inspecting the dump
site. The first faint smudge of light gray mixed with streaks of ocher appeared in the east as the trucks pulled up parallel
to the field, not fifty meters from where we were huddled behind the fence. Thinking that if more demonstrators turned up
they would come from the direction of Backwater, the police parked their cars on the bridge, blocking it to traffic. The drivers
of the two giant bulldozers, along with four men wearing plastic helmets over ski hoods, started winching down the ramps fitted
onto the tailgates of the trucks.

The winches squealed. The four steel ramps clanged onto the pavement.

As if this was a prearranged signal, the Baptist minister stood up and bellowed “Onward, Christian soldiers!” With
that, he leaped through a gap in the fence. D.J., a tentlike cape swirling around her ankles, plunged after him. Off to my
right several football players started a flanking movement. I caught a glimpse of some nice asses as the cheerleaders, still
wearing short skirts and tights, scrambled over the fence. I caught a glimpse of the Rebbe, in a coal-black overcoat and a
coal-black fedora, rising with great dignity to his feet, carefully dusting the dirt from his knees before striding off toward
the flatbed trucks.

“Chazak
,” he exclaimed more to himself than to those around him, so it seemed to me. “Be strong.”

“Come on,” Rain yelled, pulling Mayday and me after her. Dwayne led Shirley through another gap in the fence. The next thing
you know a wave of about fifty of us were dancing like American Indians around the six workmen and the two flatbed trucks.

Our tactic—ten of us to one of them—had succeeded.

One of the workers climbed up on a running board, reached into the cabin and leaned on the Klaxon. From the bridge, a siren
on one of the police cars answered. We could see the state troopers scrambling into their cars. Two started up simultaneously
and collided. With a screech of tires, the other cars bore down on us. Close by, the motor of one of the mammoth bulldozers
spurted into life; then the engine was gunned and the bulldozer started to crawl on its giant tank treads toward the tailgate
ramp.

“Kamikazes needed to block the ramps with their bodies,” roared the Baptist minister.

“The kamikazes have all been arrested,” shouted Dwayne.

“Oh, dear,” moaned the Baptist minister.

Then state troopers in brown uniforms and brown Stetsons were spilling out of police cruisers and charging the cheerleaders,
who bravely defended themselves with their batons. A blinding white light sputtered on, bathing the scene in daylight. I could
make out two men with long, thin cameras mounted on their shoulders right behind the state troopers.

Rain pulled Mayday and me around to the back of the first flatbed truck, the one with the enormous bulldozer inching toward
the ramp. “Lie down on the ramp,” she shouted in my ear. “They won’t have the guts to squash anyone.”

She was holding on to Mayday’s leash with one hand and my scarf with the other hand, as if the last thing in the world she
wanted me to do was follow her instructions. Her voice said go, her hand on my leash said stay. Her seaweed eyes, as big as
eyes get and brimming with fear, stared at me as if I was a potential victim.

Suddenly I knew where I had seen those eyes before.

Under the circumstances, lying down on the ramp was effortless. The fact is I was disappointed when I realized that this was
all she expected me to do for her. I would have done anything. I would have leaped from a cliff with one of those long hemp
cords that brings you up short centimeters from the ground tied to my ankle. It was a way of paying a debt.

Here I ought to insert a footnote, I ought to put the story into time. I saw a demonstration in Leningrad once, it took place
in 1968 the day the state television interrupted its programs to announce that Soviet troops had liberated Prague from the
counterrevolutionaries. I happened to be driving in my Skoda past the Smolny Institute, which was the Communist party headquarters
when there was still a Communist party and it had a headquarters, when six valiant souls unfurled banners denouncing the Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia. They had barely raised the banners over their innocent heads when they were engulfed by a tidal
wave of KGB agents spilling out of the doors and ground-floor windows of the building, as if they had been bottled up inside
for just such an eventuality. The KGB agents were not gentle with the four young men and two young women: They tore the banners
from their hands and flung the demonstrators to the ground and kicked at them with the thick-soled, steel-toed shoes that
KGB men always wore. I saw one of the young women being dragged by her hair toward an unmarked truck. As she was pulled across
the cobblestones past my car she gazed up at me, her seaweed-green eyes fixed on mine with an intensity only a lover can bring
to the act of looking. She stared at me, I realized this later, as if I were a potential victim. In the time it takes a heart
to beat, an eye to blink, a lung to suck in a thimbleful of air, I fell wildly, eternally, achingly in love with her. I am
humiliated to say you this, but watching her being dragged away by her hair, dear God, this is a true detail, I did not go
to
the aid of my beloved. I did not get out of my Czechoslovak-made Skoda and walk up to the officer in charge and identify myself
as the youngest candidate member in the history of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and lodge a protest. Here were the Fascists,
here was a major river, yet I did not make a stand. I still had two signatures, you see, one for internal passports and pay
books and visa applications, one for documents I might want to deny having signed.

I wish to God it would be otherwise, but in my case what you see is not what you get. To my dying day I will never forgive
myself for this cowardliness—which, I suppose, is why, when Rain said me lie on the ramp, I thought: What besides my life
do I have to lose, since everything else I have already lost?

Which is how I came to stretch out my hundred-and-six-year-old body on the ramp while the world went crazy around me. Shadowy
figures were running in every direction, people were screaming, a tear-gas canister landed at Dwayne’s feet, rolled a short
way, exploded under the short skirt of one of the cheerleaders, releasing a thin white cloud, the state troopers were fumbling
with the gas masks, the Baptist minister was cursing and choking, D.J. was vomiting, the Rebbe, hatless, was holding her head.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Dwayne’s main squeeze Shirley being dragged away by two state troopers twice her size,
I could not see their shoes but I knew they had to be thick-soled, steel-toed, I could see Mayday calmly urinating in the
middle of this madness, I could see Word Perkins, a crazy grin frozen on his face, letting the air out of a giant tire, I
could see Rain dancing up and down under the cab of the enormous bulldozer rubbing her eyes and shrieking to the driver, “There
is a human being lying on the ramp. So do you hear me, you goddamn motherfucker? You’re gonna murder a
Homo chaoticus
if you’re not careful.”

It is hard to know whether the driver heard her over the chaos of the moment, or if he did, whether he simply did not believe
her. Whatever the explanation, he continued backing the bulldozer toward the ramp. Twisting my neck, I looked up and saw the
giant tread jut out over the end of the flatbed truck and begin to tilt down toward the ramp on which I was lying. I turned
my head away. I was not going
to move, but I certainly did not have the stomach to watch either. I felt my body grow hot and thought there might be molten
iron and nickel between me and China after all until I found myself squinting into an incredibly brilliant light and heard
someone yelling for everyone to get out of his way so he could shoot. It occurred to me that the state troopers were going
to put a bullet through my heart before the bulldozer crushed the body it was beating in, which I interpreted as the American
way of preventing cruelty to
Homo sapiens
.