Straight Pool

by JJ Partridge

  And that’s when being snookered hit me. My colleagues had grasped that Puppy Dog is as good as his word—and his word is no good. And I hadn’t even mentioned the bothersome ‘coupla things.’ There wasn’t going to be any negotiation! The University would agree the City could use the buildings. We’d begin to fix them up. Then, I would be calling Puppy Dog, asking when we would meet about the Protocol, and he would explain how busy he was and put me off. Then I’d call again and I’d be put off again, and pretty soon, he’d have his cleaned-up buildings ready for the festival, and I would have only a cooperative Commencement Week and, maybe, some minor street repairs. Eventually, I’d hear from Puppy Dog about a ‘coupla things’ which I wouldn’t like and could say truthfully were not promised. Puppy Dog would say he had been double-crossed and we’d be back throwing punches again. ‘I told you so’ would be whispered in the corridors of College Hall.

  “Ugh!”

  * * *

  I worked without interruption into the afternoon until the sun found my window and changed the room’s colors, making the sheets of paper on my desk starkly white. Marcie had remained uncommunicative and left the office at four-thirty without a goodbye. An hour later, I walked across a deserted Green, its buildings gray and bronze and angled by streaks of shadow, through College Arch and out to Waterman Street to the commercial hodgepodge of Thayer Street.

  While there was a diminished level of commerce coincident with a rapidly emptying campus, Thayer Street was hardly in hibernation. Students wired to iPods or with cell phones glued to their ears flowed toward me, bicycles whisked by, and the familiar sounds of sidewalk laughter and street noises echoed. Starbucks’ window couches were occupied by kids with laptops, pizza joints and kabob shops had customers, skateboarding high school kids were ‘hangin’ in front of the CVS, and the owners of a line of shiny motorcycles parked in double rows across from the Book Store had to be ensconced in one of the many bars. Further along, at Paragon and Andrea’s, tables had been set for sidewalk dining, push carts selling hot dogs and Del’s Lemonade competed for curb space, and a familiar, forlorn saxophonist, his instrument case open and strewn with coins and currency, blew screechy notes that competed with the rumbles of car engines.

  My destination was a recently renovated Victorian ark near the corner of Thayer and Lloyd Avenue, home to a senior administrator in finance who was throwing one of many end-of-the-academic year cocktail parties. Not that I’d make every list but I could have been in more than a few East Side living rooms over the past month as administrators and senior faculty belatedly crammed their neglected social obligations into the weeks before Commencement. In five minutes or less, I greeted my host and his partner, said hello or nodded across the double parlor to several colleagues and acquaintances, had a tepid, unshaken martini in hand, and sampled the offerings of canapé and excellent bruschetta from Creative Cuisine. To be honest, only not wanting to appear standoffish drove me to some of these soirees; too often after crowd scanning, a faculty member would discover me in a discrete corner and rush to instruct me as to the ‘appropriate’ course of action for whatever the Administration was about to get wrong. But not tonight. My expectation was that Nadie would be my shield; she would save me from irritation and enforced dullness.

  Nadie was holding court on a rear porch. I threaded my way through the crowd to the circle of casually dressed, thirty-ish males. They looked toothy to me, with the smell of the hunt. Shamelessly, I brushed a possessive kiss by her ear as she introduced me to two assistant professors from Psychology and one each from Earth Science and English. I took their reactions to my explicit claim in stride.

  Unfortunately, my timing was poor. Their conversation was centered on the Arts Quad. Words like ‘crisis,’ ‘thuggery,’ ‘cretins,’ and ‘Gestapo,’ were thrown around to the nodding agreement of all. The Earth Scientist, with his oily ponytail and soulful brown eyes, was the most agitated and goading. I smiled back, nodded occasionally, was vague and sympathetic, explained the Protocol, even as I sensed Nadie was waiting for me to respond with a brilliant, righteous defense of the University’s right to be free of unlawful, bellicose incursions. Her questioning glance and, eventually, an eyeful of challenge led me to excuse myself for a refill of my glass, and circulate. After finding myself accosted by a professor of English—all reason and quotations and of a type we once called a ‘tweed brain’—for whom waiting to express his opinion was the same as listening, I found pleasant company in a professor of Italian literature and his beguiling wife who let me practice my ill-used, academic Italian; they gently suggested some conversational practice would be beneficial if I wished to order veal and not insult the waiter’s family.

  Nadie and I circled back together around seven-thirty, thanked our hosts, and walked up the incline of Lloyd Avenue, crossing over Prospect Street, and down to Congdon Street. She wore a green silk blouse and dark slacks that gave her trim figure a youthful profile; her hair was tied back, giving prominence to ears that were adorned with tiny silver hoops. All together, stunningly beautiful. She seemed to have left her edginess at the party—maybe her coterie of admirers helped—and the wine exaggerated her natural conversational whirl-a-gig as she recited suggestions from other party guests as to restaurants and points of interest at Lake Como and Verona. I nodded often; another of the weak martinis, a glass of Gavi, two plates of bruschetta, followed by pink petit fours, espresso and a not very smooth grappa had made me very solicitous.

  When we arrived home, she went directly into the kitchen for a glass of San Pellegrino while I checked the pile of mail in the salver on the central hall table. Ms. Pina, my wonderfully efficient day lady, had been in today and the hall retained the heavy botanical scent of Garden Fresh Glade. Alcohol had lifted my ego so that when I joined Nadie in the den, I was full of my successes with Puppy Dog: peace during Commencement Week, campus environs cleaned and repaired, a commitment to review the Protocol, and aid for the city’s Verona exhibition. Progress on all counts!

  Nadie’s definition of ‘progress,’ however, was complete and abject surrender by the City, apologies all around, severe punishment for the cops involved, and a pledge that the Arts Quad was forever inviolate. She said to get my ‘deal,’ I was playing in Sonny and Puppy Dog’s sandbox. “ ‘Truce?’ With these cretins? If you don’t go after them, they’ll think the University is pulling its punches….”

  Ugh. I didn’t answer—I was disappointed—and opened the screens to the breezes which lapped the Hill and brought the buzz of traffic from a distant I-95. Building lights silhouetted office buildings and apartments that lined the rivers of downtown; the State Capitol dome was brilliantly uplit. Then, suddenly and surprisingly, her hands were kneading my shoulders, consoling me. Another one of those rapid changes in mood?

  “Easy for me to say, right?”

  “Right.”

  She asked me when I was going to meet Charlie Fessenden and it was then I remembered that I hadn’t mentioned one aspect of the Charlie Fessenden saga.

  “ ‘Quonnies?’ ” she said.

  “Actually, the Quonochontaugs. I can say it but can’t spell it.” How dumb was that! And I continued to recite what little I had heard at the Sunday meeting.

  “Why did they release their claim to Charlie’s land?”

  I repeated what Flanaghan said, that they wanted federal recognition and a casino and didn’t want to cloud it up with a fight about the land claim in Westerly. Offhandedly, I continued, “Every tribe seems to think it has an inalienable right to go into the casino business.”

  I never saw it coming. She was all over me! Of course, ‘every’ or ‘all’ was a mistake, a slip of the tongue; ‘every’ or ‘all’ didn’t ‘think’ anything. “And,” she said, her emerald eyes sparking, “why not? Europeans destroyed their cultures, smothered their traditions, spoiled their forests, took their land, ….”

  “Okay, you’re right, you’re right!” I protested, but unwilling to leave the field without honor, I s
aid “but why casinos? Lots of other opportunities, I would think.”

  “You would think…? It’s not up to you. It’s their land. They need the money. Rhode Island’s hooked on gambling anyway.”

  “That’s right!” I snapped back. The martinis made me do it! “That’s the problem. So, we should make it easier to throw away money? I don’t mind casinos someplace you have to get to, a resort like Las Vegas or even Atlantic City, even forty miles away in Connecticut. But we’ve got too many people ready to spend their lunch breaks in a casino or Social Security checks or welfare money at any slot machine they can get to by car or bus. We already have slot machines in Greenwick. Face it, Rhode Island doesn’t need another casino.”

  Her eyes widened in her attack. “You can be such a snob! And a nimby! The same people you always complain about. Native Americans are within their rights to have a casino if they are sovereign nations, as, I believe, the courts have ruled. They can do pretty much what they want, where they want to. If the ‘white man’ ”—she mugged—“likes to gamble, and gives them back some of what was stolen, why not? It’s not up to you. In fact, you ought to be sympathetic since it was probably your ancestors who ….”

  She stopped and I’m glad she did. We can get into heated discussions over our different backgrounds and notions of class which can end in long silences. She says I listen to minorities with a tin ear, despite personal good will, and maybe I do get my back up whenever she presses her victims causes. Nadie, on the other hand, easily slips into self-identification with those who fit within her vast universe of downtrodden. Her saving grace is that she hates cruelty, and fiercely believes that the scales of justice require periodic balance. I no longer ask ‘by whom.’

  So, how is it we’ve managed to be lovers for three years? Because we respect each other … and sometimes learn.

  I announced I was going to the loft to watch the Red Sox. On my way, I stopped at the drinks cabinet in the dining room and poured two fingers of Macallan. I’m not even sure that I wanted the Scotch but somehow I thought it was going to be a good idea. Upstairs, Mrs. Pina’s ministrations were further evident in the shipshape neatness, shiny woodwork, and lemony smell she brought to our principal living space. I turned on the fifty-two inch plasma screen television and became engrossed in the game against the Blue Jays. Curt Schilling was getting knocked around and then a David Ortiz homer tied it up. I barely noticed when Nadie came upstairs and sat a few feet away at the HP computer on our work table, although every few minutes, there was an ‘I thought so’ or ‘shoot’ or other expletive. Ortiz was up again in the top of the seventh with a man on first and two out when a sheet of paper was thrust into my line of vision. I grabbed it; it was a two page printout from the Rhode Island Almanac of History concerning the death of Metacom or King Philip, chief and visionary leader of the Wampanoags, in 1676.

  It was a particularly gruesome story. Philip, after reverses in his war against the settlers, his allies seeking peace, his son and wife captured, enslaved, and sent to certain death in the West Indies, took refuge at his encampment at Mount Hope in Bristol, Rhode Island with a few of his most loyal warriors. Colonists and their native allies attacked at dawn and Philip, brought down by a musket ball from a native, died in agony. The militia captain, one Benjamin Church, ordered Philip’s body drawn and quartered as a traitor and hung on four trees; one hand was chopped off and given to the marksman, and his head taken to Plymouth where it was stuck on a stockade pole for twenty years. There was a listing of militia officers present at his death and his body’s mistreatment, and underlined, were the names Issac and Nathaniel Temple.

  “Any relations?” she said unctuously.

  “I have no idea.”

  “That’s why I think if they want a casino, they can have a casino!”

  “I have nothing to do with the Quonochontaugs,” I said defensively. “That’s Charlie Fessenden.”

  “You can’t escape history!”

  Her argument was one I couldn’t win. She always had righteous indignation on her side.

  I used the remote and turned off the game. I said, “I know this isn’t particularly timely or romantic but would you like to go to bed?”

  Her eyes softened. She said, “Well, why not.”

  And we did.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A sulky mist dulled the shapes of RISD buildings towers and drained the grass of color as I walked to College Hall. Even the hum from the distant highways was muted until the buses and cars swept by on Angell Street and a four-wheel boom box spewing rap music brought me perspective. Then, through College Arch and The Green, soon to be a focus of Commencement Week activities, virtually deserted as though no one wanted to be responsible for the dramatic change about to occur on our campus, but having a magical quality, a place apart look, that beguiles me. Despite the centuries old buildings and ancient trees, the sense of tradition evoked, there was a vulnerability as graduation approached. The time had come for the brightest and best we had to move on, and Carter University soon would be in the rear mirror of their memories.

  Marcie ignored my entrance to our suite and, immediately, I apologized for my defensive attitude of yesterday, admitting that my victory over City Hall was pyrrhic. She reacted with an appreciative smile, and then, as certainly planned, got even.

  “Guess who’s on the invitation list for tonight’s bash,” she said with a mischievous glint in her eyes and answered her own question. Ugh! The ‘bash’ she referred to was a big door cocktail party at President’s House before tonight’s prestigious Commencement Week kick-off, the Carter Forum. Her self-identified ‘who’ was a big donor impatiently awaiting my letter on significant income tax issues relating to a proposed gift that was currently dead last on my ‘to do’ list. I left her with a drawn out ‘thanks.’

  * * *

  The next several hours were spent in our library/conference alcove punching up IRS rulings concerning donations of real estate to charities on our computerized legal research system. God, I hate tax research, particularly the jargon used by the IRS to give ‘advice’ on arcane tax issues. It was defeating me when the Quonnies came back to mind. For a break, I googled in a few spelling variations before hitting on ‘Quonochontaug Tribe.’

  A lot of two finger exercises brought up hundreds of newspaper articles from the Westerly Star on the Quonnies application for recognition from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, followed by a denial which sounded almost apologetic. If only the Quonnies could demonstrate this or that, the Great White Father would happily bestow its blessing, laying out a virtual road map for a subsequent submission. Included in the application was a list of financial backers, including Greenwick Dog Track Association, a/k/a Greenwick Downs, which meant Ugo Calibrese. Under ‘Consultants,’ I stopped at the reference to Carter University’s Department of Anthropology and Professor Derek Kirk.

  Derek Kirk is a Scot who landed at Carter a decade ago, one of the bright lights of the younger faculty, despite his scathing humor and ‘I take no prisoners’ attitude toward the pretentious. Soon after I arrived as University Counsel, his department became immersed in a controversy over the return of two totem poles to an indigenous group in British Columbia. Emotion, proprietary instincts, and hubris clashed as to their return, with Derek championing the position of the claimants. Eventually, Derek prevailed, impressing College Hall with his reasoned approach to an ugliness ignored for too long, that some of the Department’s most unique and valuable objects might rightly be deemed stolen property.

  “Leaving tomorrow for home for three weeks, laddie,” he said when I telephoned to get his ear for a few minutes. “So-o, has to be today.” I said I had some questions about the Quonochontaug Tribe. “Yew mean Quon-o-chon-taug Band.” Sometimes, he laid on that burr so thickly, it had to be in self-mockery or play.

  “ ‘Band’ ”?

  “We use the word ‘tribe’ in a way native peoples of New England ne’er would have. Their basic organization was a wee mor
e like our concept of ‘clan’—‘people’ as a family, by tradition, and language, but loosely organized. In any credible list, yew’d find many designated in English as ‘bands.’ How much time do yew have?”

  “Enough to be educated.”

  “C’mon down. Bring an inquisitive mind.”

  * * *

  The Department of Anthropology is housed in a renovated factory building near our boathouse on the Seekonk River, a ten minute walk from College Hall. Pleasantly surprised that the sky had cleared to a cloudless Easter egg blue, I left the office at noon, my steps quickened by relief from numbing tax law. Through to Governor Street, my walk was shaded by canopies of oaks, maples, elms, and plane trees; traditional spring flowers brightened gardens and window boxes of Georgian Revivals, gabled Queen Annes, and filigreed Victorians. East of Governor Street, carefully preserved period housing gave way to vinyl siding and aluminum over-hangs, American and Portuguese flags, satellite dishes sprouting from three story tenements, tiny cottages on postage stamp lots, and more exotic flowers like zinnias, delphiniums, and sunflowers that fought for light and air. National Grid was ripping up Ives Street in front of the neighborhood’s delis, bakeries and taverns so I detoured to Transit Street, past triple-deckers with backyard arbors, cinder block garages with climbing crepe myrtle, and artificial flowers adorning Holy Mary ‘bathtub’ shrines. With students vacating this popular apartment area, overfilled barrels, bursting trash bags, and dilapidated furniture lined the curbs.

  At Gano Street, I cut through a small park, unaware that it memorialized the arrival of Roger Williams, the heroic founder of Rhode Island, by dug-out canoe on the nearby Seekonk until I read a bronze plaque on a granite pillar. Narragansetts greeted his party with ‘What cheer, Netop’ or ‘What news, friend.’ Reading that inscription, I realized that I knew diddlysquat about the native people who then populated Rhode Island, other than they left familiar place and river names like Pawtucket, Woonsocket, Narragansett, Pawcatuck, Seekonk, Matunick and Pawtuxet. I became annoyed; if I didn’t know, who did?