American Fraternity Man

by Nathan Holic

  “I got a tip about some hazing activities,” he says, “and it doesn’t look good.”

  “Hazing? There’s no hazing at EU.”

  “Hazing,” LaFaber says. “Your boys got carried away.”

  “What was it? Blindfolds? Was it something…silly?”

  “There’s a full packet I’ll give you,” he says and then folds his hands in his lap. “Print-outs of Facebook photos. That’s the irony here, Charles. We never would’ve known about this had they not posted pictures on Facebook. And not just vague pictures where maybe it could be hazing, or maybe something else. It was an entire photo album dedicated to an event in a hotel room. The brothers yelling at pledges, kids doing push-ups, covered in vomit. Some really disturbing stuff. Captions, too, like ‘This is how you treat a scumbag pledge.’”

  “They posted it themselves?”

  “Your boys couldn’t just…” He closes his eyes and runs his hands across the glass surface of the desk. “Couldn’t just shut their fucking mouths. And now this is something that we can’t ignore.”

  I shake my head. He isn’t making this up; this is not something concocted simply to punish me; already I can tell that this is real, that this is something that LaFaber didn’t anticipate and didn’t want, not just some manipulation of national bylaws or Excel spreadsheets in order to make a point or to get what he wants. What the hell had Todd done since I’d graduated?

  “Charles,” he says, “I need you to go to EU.”

  “A National Review for my own chapter?” The room is still cold, the metal shelves still icy and the world outside still dead, but suddenly I feel heat in my body. “That’s against procedure, Walter. Consultants aren’t supposed to go on formal visits to their own chapters, and they’re especially not supposed to conduct investigations or reviews—”

  “Procedure be damned,” he says. “This is critical. This isn’t some podunk Shippensburg or Las Cruces group. EU has been one of our best-performing chapters for more than a decade. That campus, that house…you know it by now, the places you’ve seen…that chapter is a dream come true. Never a problem, never a violation.” He stops, takes a moment to sit up straighter and to try to steady his breathing. “I need you to save that chapter. Strike the fear of God into them. Whip them back into shape. We cannot”—breathes heavy, scar bright as blood—“cannot let this become an issue, not there of all places.”

  Here’s the deal, LaFaber says: Brock and I will go to Florida, while LaFaber and Nick conduct the other reviews via telephone. LaFaber will take Nick to meet with the interest group at Illinois next week…Nick is perfect for the colonization, don’t you think? So dedicated to the personal growth of the men, so empathetic. Perfect. Anyway, if everything looks like a “go” at Illinois, then we move forward with a full-scale colonization for Spring.

  “I chose to speak with you first,” LaFaber says, “because, well, Brock is a great consultant, very dedicated, but he’s a bit headstrong. A hot-head. I admire his determination, but I need someone who understands what it means to be flexible.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I need you to save EU, Charles,” he says. “You understand what real problems look like. The mess at Shippensburg? The party at Illinois? And hell, those guys at Delaware and Central Michigan are just asking to be shut down. I don’t know how you got out of there alive. Edison University is a steady revenue stream with no expenses. You know what I’m talking about. You see it. We send a consultant to Florida once a year, as mandated by Sacred Law, and that’s it: not a peep from them. Always 80 or 100 men in that chapter, sparkling facilities, and they send—you sent, when you were president—sixteen men to Regional, another fifteen to National Convention. EU is…with the bullshit we deal with? New Mexico? EU is like an A+ student in a room full of delinquents.”

  So this is who I am. Flexible.

  It occurs to me that LaFaber has known me all along, that we three consultants were split up the way we were for a reason: Brock to the efficient chapters that just needed a kick in the ass, Nick to the well-performing schools where no one was needed, and me to the schools where…where a push-over consultant was needed, someone malleable, someone to look the other way if need be, or someone to take an action that values and good sense would prevent another man from taking. I was needed in places where the consultant could be controlled.

  And that’s why I’m going to Edison University. To look the other way. To give tips on how to hide the hazing, perhaps? With Brock to “strike the fear of God into their hearts,” but Charles Washington to make the final recommendation to the National Headquarters—something light and harmless to ensure the future prosperity of a profitable chapter.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll do whatever you need.”

  And LaFaber leans back and cracks his knuckles. Once again, he’s gotten exactly what he wanted. Once again, he’s seen into the very souls of the people around him, has figured them out so completely that—

  “But I need something from you, Walter. Two things, if I’m going to do this.”

  “You need something from me?” Walter asks. His hands were behind his head in triumph, but now they’re sinking back to the desk surface. The scar was bright, but now it’s gone a chilly white, a smear of hardened glue across his forehead. “All right,” he says. “What can I do for you, Charles?”

  “First,” I say, “I want you to call off the New Mexico State review.”

  “That’s crazy,” he says. Shakes his head, laughs. “The hazing is rampant, and it’s palpable. You wrote it in the reports, wrote it yourself. I could have shut that chapter down based solely on your reports. But the diversity angle…a review is going to happen.”

  “No, it won’t,” I say.

  Part of me wants to stop talking, to once again nod and give up and take direction: just delete the photos from my investigation, or write the fabricated report, or—hell—just cave under the chop-chop-chop noise of Helicopter Parents circling above. But not now. Not anymore. It terrifies me to speak this way, but I tell LaFaber: “This is what you’re going to do with New Mexico State. You’re going to give them a semester of probation. Let me work with them. Or Brock, or Nick. They’re good kids, and they can change. But that chapter’s going nowhere, and that’s non-negotiable.”

  LaFaber smiles, snorts. “Or?”

  “Or I call the Greek Advisor, call the campus newspaper, tell them that you made me falsify the report.”

  “A campus newspaper? Please.”

  “This isn’t 1998,” I say. “Medium doesn’t—”

  “You’re lucky I don’t terminate you right here.”

  “Medium doesn’t matter,” I finish. “Campus newspaper, blog, whatever. Story goes viral overnight.”

  “Weak threat,” he says. “You need to think long and hard about what you say next.”

  “Viral. We’ll see how quickly there’s a ‘Save New Mexico State’ Facebook group,” I say, “how long it takes to have a hundred thousand members. How long before the word ‘racist’ gets thrown out, regardless of whether you take that extra step and conduct a token review before closing them. How long it takes the collective membership of the national fraternity to align against you. That’s the thing about viral stories, Walter. At some point, outrage overtakes truth.”

  LaFaber breathing heavy. Perhaps for the first time considering my position.

  “You talk to me about Google search results?” I ask. “Whenever someone searches ‘Walter LaFaber,’ this is the first thing they’ll find from now on.”

  “Fine,” he says. Shrugs. “Fine. Fine, fine, fine. You can have your New Mexico.”

  “New Mexico State.”

  “Whatever. But they’ll be your problem.”

  “The other thing,” I say. “I want the Illinois expansion.”

  “Charles,” he says and laughs. It’s hoarse and dry, sharp as a machete. “A colonization requires a lot of resources, financial and staff. It takes almost a full semester, plenty of
blood, sweat, and tears. The University of Illinois is big for this fraternity, and Nick is going to be willing to work for sixteen weeks without sleeping.”

  “You can make it work, I’m sure.”

  “But why would I, Charles? To avoid another of your threats?” The machete laugh again, and now he’s standing, glaring at me dismissively with fingertips pressed into the desktop. Shit. He’s getting his groove back. It was only a matter of time: Walter LaFaber, larger than the stage on which he walks. “It wouldn’t be too tough for me to fire you right now,” he says, “to paint you as some rogue Frat Star consultant. Very easy, in fact. And if I do that, every story you tell will be tainted: sour grapes from the fired employee.”

  I smooth my pants. “This isn’t a big request.”

  “Charles,” he says. “Charles.”

  “I want to do the right thing, Walter. This expansion would let me make up for—”

  And somehow, in the span of a heartbeat, he’s won.

  “Even if I wanted to put you on that expansion,” LaFaber says, “there’s so much that would need to be rearranged.” Sighs, considers me from the corner of his squinted eye, looks ready to start taking back every inch he’d conceded…

  “I’ve got their charter,” I say suddenly.

  “Their what?”

  “From 1921,” I say.

  “The Illinois charter?” Eyes wide open.

  “The Illinois charter.”

  “Well,” LaFaber says and now his fingers are wrapped through the blinds, squeezing. “Well shit, Charles. Go get it. What…why didn’t you tell anyone? Where is it?”

  “I snuck into the house the next morning.” I smooth my pants again, wonder if I even need to say anything else. “Maybe I wanted to save something,” I say, “because everything else I’d done was so pointless.”

  “Where is it?”

  But now I’m standing up, too, and I’m walking to LaFaber, walking behind his desk and he’s twice my size but I don’t care. “I have it,” I say. “You put me on Illinois, and you get this artifact back. One of the original charters from the North? That’s priceless.”

  “Well. It’s not worth that much.”

  “It’s signed by our founders. You told us during training: there’s only three or four original charters left from the fraternity’s first two decades.”

  LaFaber shakes his head, tries to conjure a smile and a laugh.

  “I get New Mexico State, and I get the expansion,” I say, and I point in his face, “and you get EU, safe and sound, your little ATM machine. And when the expansion is over, you get the charter back.”

  He hasn’t moved. My finger is in his face, and he hasn’t moved. “I had other plans for you in the Spring, Charles. Big plans. I could’ve made you into the next Walter LaFaber.”

  “Not anymore. Illinois,” I say.

  He waves away my finger as if it hasn’t bothered him. “You give me what I want at EU, Charles, you won’t have to worry about a thing. You’ll be lead consultant on the Illinois colonization. You and Nick will work together, but you’re the lead.” He holds out his hand for me to shake, and I do, and then he leans over his keyboard and types a short message and says, “Go visit Janice’s office. She’s booking your flight, and it leaves in the morning.”

  “All right,” I say.

  “Finish up here, and get packing.”

  And I smile, but for some reason the smile hurts my face.

  *

  Much of the remaining Thursday afternoon is spent completing reports that various staff members have dropped off at our desks, responding to hundreds of emails from alumni, volunteers, and university administrators who have all been notified (in a mass email from LaFaber) that we are off the road, in the office, and available for their every need. Outside, the sky grows dark with clouds, then turns to a soft white during the sun’s last hours above the horizon. Online weather reports confirm what everyone in the office, through our windows, can see developing: Halloween snow flurries. Unexpected, some of the reports and forecasts say, but not unusual. A cold front drifting in from Canada. My first snow ever: and I picture white snow blanketing the ground like puffy pillows. A winter wonderland. Candy canes.

  Before he leaves the office, LaFaber stops by the cluttered west wing of the Headquarters to say goodbye to us all. He stands a fair distance from our cubicles, from the mess that overflows from the hallway and spills into our work spaces, as though we created all of this disorder and he refuses to become entangled within it; he holds his coat over one shoulder, his pose more akin to a model than an office executive. “Save them,” LaFaber says to me. “Save your chapter, Charles. This is win-win.”

  When Nick, Brock, and I walk back across the courtyard to the Lodge after business hours, the wind is piercing—my ears, my entire head, hurts after only a couple seconds outside—but the snow is light, melts as soon as it touches the ground. All is cold and wet on our final night in Indianapolis. What I thought would be a pristine white wonderland is instead a sleeting gray dusk.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT. National Review.

  But then, just like that, snap my fingers and shut my suitcase and—whoosh—I’m back in Florida in my Nu Kappa Epsilon polo, shivering when I leave Indy but sweating when I land. Rental car with Brock, and we check into an off-exit hotel, grab some lunch at a local Panera, then head out to campus, world green and bright around us as we pull onto Greek Row, but the NKE chapter house looming dark and glowering like some still-shot from Amityville Horror or Poltergeist.

  Through the front doors and the bodies part around us like bystanders at a crime scene. Here in the house, there are faces that feel familiar, like Facebook friends you can’t remember adding and whose status updates you’ve learned to ignore. Their names could be James or Joe or Jason, and as Brock and I walk swiftly from the foyer to the living room to the chapter library, I can hear them whispering as we pass. “Old president,” someone tells a new member. “Gonna help us out,” someone else says. “Sweet,” and a high-five, but a high-five like they’re watching me on TV, like I’m some field-goal kicker trotted onto the field and they could care less about the man beneath the helmet.

  The older brothers—the ones who would say hello and ask how the road’s been—aren’t here. Not hanging out on the lawn furniture in the living room, not watching TV, not reading or studying. Maybe they were told not to come. Maybe they’re avoiding me. Maybe the chapter has changed so completely in six months that they no longer want to be part of it.

  I think of all those declarations I made, in public and in my own head, how Fraternity is Family!, but this house—a place I lived for four years—is as cold to me as the Headquarters Lodge. They’re glad to see that it’s Charles Washington walking through the door instead of some other consultant they’ve never met, but really I’m regarded no differently here than I was at Pitt, or Ship, or Illinois, the Nationals scab to wait out, something not of the body.

  *

  The eight officers of the Executive Board are waiting for us in the chapter library, but they think that an arrangement has been struck, that Charles is here to save the day. Maybe LaFaber has consulted with the alumni already, and the alumni have called the officers to ease the anxiety of the National Review. These guys are all smiles, ready for a wrist-slap and a “bad dog” and then a “Well, talk to you later! Keep on keepin’ on!” They understand, in a way that I never did, how perfect Edison University is, how perfect and lucrative and important their individual fraternity chapter to the National Headquarters. University of Florida in the early ‘70s, defended by the National Fraternity despite a hazing activity that nearly resulted in a dozen dead 18-year-olds. After the fire was over, those guys had to know they were invincible, right? What would it take to shut them down? Well. These guys know it, too.

  But here’s something they don’t know: right behind me, a wrecking ball is about to swing through the doors.

  Todd Hampton is seated at the far end of the boardroom table, play
ing with his cell phone, saying “Oh hey, Charles,” but not looking up at me, and the next thing he knows he’s dropping the phone and yelping like a high school girl at a horror movie because Brock plows through the room and into his face and says, “You the chapter president?”

  “Um, yes,” Todd says and half-stands, but falls back into his seat.

  Brock is hovering over him. Brock is 250 pounds of don’t-fuck-with-me.

  Todd raises his hand meekly.

  “Don’t wanna shake your hand,” Brock says. “Put it away. I wanna know what I’m dealing with here.”

  Todd tugs at his collar. His phone is on the floor now, an unfinished text message on a screen whose brightness is slowly fading to black.

  The seven other officers are speechless, faces gone ashen. They’re sophomores, mostly, Todd one of only two or three juniors elected to the Executive Board. These were men who joined while I was already an officer, whose short NKE existence was lived in my shadow. During elections last Spring, there was nothing out-of-the-ordinary about them, no red flags that this group of eager young Nikes was plotting some dramatic introduction of hard-core hazing practices. For all I knew, they were just like me during my own freshman year, decent kids with all the promise in the world. Looking from face to face, though, they seem even younger than I expected, younger than anyone should expect when using words like “elimination” and “suspension” and “expulsion.” Across the country, I’ve seen what seasoned frat stars look like, and at worst, these are kids still trying to play the part. Perhaps they’re shocked at Brock’s entrance, rolling through here with the weight and physical presence of a Marvel superhero, or perhaps they’re just surprised to see that they aren’t in a favored and coddled position, that my presence won’t save them. Were they expecting fist-bumps? Twenty minutes of bull-shitting about the EU football season before we got down to business?

  “Here’s what’s gonna happen,” Brock says. “We’re gonna meet with you one at a time. We’re gonna get the full story, damn it, and then we’re gonna see what’s to be done about it.” He’s standing with his weight against the table now, trying to look each man in the eyes as he talks…but by the time he gets halfway around the table, he notices that someone has brought a Super Big Gulp into the room, and it’s sitting in a wet ring on the glossy surface of the boardroom table. A Super Fucking Big Gulp? In a National Review? Brock grabs it—no one reaching to stop him—and sighs heavily like he’s fucking told these kids a thousand times not to bring drinks in here…told them! And then he stomps across the room and slams it into the trashcan, the sound of its impact like a glass-shattering car crash. “Way we see it at HQ, you guys could be closed by tonight if we don’t hear what we want.”