The Ancient Nine

by Ian K. Smith, M. D.

  “So, I should’ve just walked away after he called me a pussy in front of everyone and pushed me?” Mitch said.

  “It would’ve been tough, but it would’ve been the more effective thing to do. If you would’ve walked away, we wouldn’t be sitting here right now, and Coach would be sitting in University Hall answering to a lot more powerful people than you and me.”

  “Coach hasn’t said anything to me yet. Zimowski talked to me, but he didn’t say much.”

  “Coach will call you up to the office in his own time,” I said. “Don’t mistake his silence for this being over.”

  “Everyone thinks he’s gonna bench me when the season starts.”

  “Not gonna happen. He wants to win games. He needs to win games. He might be an asshole, but he’s not a stupid asshole. There are too many people looking over his shoulder, asking questions about why we’re not winning. He won’t forget what you did to him, but he’ll put his pride away for now, because you’re too important to the team.”

  “I feel like I should say something to him,” Mitch said.

  I shook my head. “Let him come to you first. He needs time to work it out in his own head. Be yourself, play hard, and don’t take any shit on the court. We need some big men on the team who are ready to do battle this year. That’s why they brought you here in the first place.”

  “Everyone keeps saying he’s gonna Ad Board me.”

  “He won’t do it,” I said.

  “Why are you so confident?”

  “Because he doesn’t want to lose his job. He sends you before the Ad Board, and he knows your father will sue everyone from President Bok down to the janitor who sweeps the court.”

  A couple of Mitch’s friends found us in the rotunda and joined us. We turned our attention to more important matters—the freshman women.

  We finished our entrées and moved into the main hall for dessert so that we could do a better accounting of the inventory. We immediately spotted Roz Minter from the volleyball team.

  “Now, that is prime choice,” Fred Carter said. Carter was the smartest black kid I had ever met in my life. He came from one of the worst neighborhoods in Detroit, son of a city bus driver and a mother who worked in the streets and sanitation department. He was a “perf,” which meant he had achieved a perfect score on the SAT.

  “Don’t waste your time,” Alphonse Lewis said. “She’s not into the bruthas.” I had seen Alphonse around, but had just been introduced to him that night. He had that big New York City attitude with his hooded sweatshirt and red-laced shell-top Adidas sneakers.

  “How do you know?” I said. “She has a boyfriend back in California.”

  “Yeah, and he’s about as white as that plate on your tray,” Alphonse said. “Someone saw a bunch of pictures of him in her room. She doesn’t even try to talk to us. I see her in here at least once a day, and she’s always sitting on the other side.”

  The racial politics at Harvard were complicated. Black students were in a tough position. If we spent too much time with white students, other blacks figured we had sold out. If we spent too much time with other black students, our white classmates assumed we were angry separatists. The dining hall was one big murky fishbowl of social complexities. Everyone looked to see who was sitting with whom and how much time they spent interacting on the “other” side. I was lucky because playing a sport gave me a pass that the non-athletes didn’t have. By dint of my team and training obligations, I automatically spent time with both blacks and whites, which gave me immunity.

  Mitch said, “Boyfriend or no boyfriend, she’s the finest girl on campus.”

  “Damn right, she is,” Carter concurred. “And let me tell you something. Phonso might talk all this shit about her now, but let her give him the slightest opening. His nose would be so wide open, you could see all the way up to his frontal cortex.”

  We all had a good laugh.

  “Damn right.” Alphonse smiled. “I might not agree with her social choices, but my daddy didn’t raise no fool.”

  We sat there for the next half hour, comparing notes, making bets, doing what guys do when they’ve got time on their hands and nothing serious to do with it. Then Carter had to spoil everything. “Let’s go up to FBT,” he said, looking around the table. “We haven’t been there in a while.”

  The Freshman Black Table was a weekly, two-hour Sunday-night discussion group that took place in a large room on the second floor of the Union. It had been started several years ago by some members of the Black Students Association so that students of color could meet to share ideas, freely express themselves, and simply enjoy each other’s company on a campus where it was easy to feel isolated and alone. It was set up as a social support for freshmen, but upperclassmen trickled in occasionally to share their experiences and offer advice.

  “I don’t know,” Alphonse said. “The last couple of weeks, I’ve been mad as hell when I left there. I was about this close to jumping on Carl’s ass.”

  Carl Johnson was the president of FBT, a buttery-voiced Californian who took himself way too seriously and couldn’t hold a regular conversation without seeming like he was stumping for political office. I didn’t like him. He was too damn politically correct, arguing both sides of an issue, playing to the majority sentiment when it worked in his favor, then becoming the devil’s advocate when he wanted to seem profound.

  “C’mon, Alphonse,” Carter said. “You sit down here and talk about Minter and how she doesn’t relate or hang out with her own people, and now you don’t want to go to FBT. Who’s being hypocritical now?”

  “It won’t be all that bad, Alphonse,” Mitch said. “We’ll hang around for about an hour, then cut out and shoot some pool downstairs.”

  Alphonse looked at me.

  “What the hell,” I said. “I’ll go.”

  The meeting had already started when we walked in, and Carl was standing in the front of the room wearing a starched oxford and blazer with a pair of shiny wing tip shoes. There must’ve been seventy or so people arranged in a semicircle. They all turned as the four of us found our way to the back of the room. Carl was going on about the need for us to keep the pressure on University Hall to hire more minority faculty and the important alliances we could form with the other minority groups on campus.

  The discussion was fast and furious, people standing up expressing their anger that a school as rich and powerful as Harvard could offer the excuse that the number of minority faculty was low because it couldn’t find enough qualified academics to recruit to Cambridge. Someone had suggested a day of boycotts, while others made plans for a march on University Hall. Carl was in complete control of the meeting, selecting who should speak and in what order, moving the conversation along when he thought new ideas should be infused into the conversation. Then an upperclassman—a husky, dark-skinned guy wearing a brightly colored African dashiki and matching kufi sitting tightly around the crown of his head—stood up.

  “We’re in the middle of the most sexist, racist season right now, and no one’s mentioned it,” he said. “The final clubs are in the middle of their punch, picking and choosing who should enter their mansions while at the same time keeping the rest of us locked outside.” His voice was deep and full, his cadence dancing like the rhythm of a Baptist preacher. “Many of you, my young bruthas and sistas, may not know about these clubs, but I’m here to tell you that they’re a real threat to equality, and regardless of what University Hall says in its official statement distancing themselves, these clubs are every bit a part of the Harvard fabric. Knowledge is power, and you need to know the oppressor is not always out there with bats and bullhorns. Exclusion is quiet and invisible and often a lot more oppressive than a physical beating that everyone can witness in the open.”

  He didn’t mention my name or even look in my direction, but I sank about a foot in my seat. I sat back and listened for the next hour as both men and women stood and told their experiences of white classmates being invited to parti
es at the clubs while they hadn’t, and members sharing old exams and class notes that no one else could access. They discussed incidents of drunken debauchery, specifically one case where a group of members and punchees coming from a dinner had hurled racist insults at a black girl who was walking home alone from the Square. In my zeal to unearth the Ancient Nine and their secrets, I never thought about this side of the clubs. Now I felt awful, a complete traitor. No one looked at me differently, but I felt like every eye in that room was dissecting me. By accepting the Delphic’s invitations, was I turning my back on all those generations of brave souls who had fought and struggled for inclusion and justice?

  The debate raged on with the guy in the dashiki suggesting we chain ourselves together and sit in front of the clubhouses. A freshman from San Francisco suggested we find out the names of the club members and post them on wanted signs throughout campus. I sat back, trying to reconcile the world they were describing with the one I had witnessed over the last few weeks. Sure, these guys were big drinkers and loud at times, spoiled brats who had their parents’ legacies and bank accounts to keep themselves insulated in privilege. But I had yet to see the racial tension that had made so many people in the room angry. Was it there, but I just didn’t see it? Had my desire to join actually become my blinders? Even worse, had I already become one of them and didn’t even know it?

  Then out of nowhere, a mousy little sophomore raised her hand and stood up in the back of the room. “I’m that girl who was called ‘nigger bitch,’” she said. The room fell silent. “At first, I was angry, then I felt sorry for them. I thought it was sad that a bunch of boys who had everything in the world going for them didn’t realize what pathetic little fools they were being. The more we protest and argue with the administration to do something about them, the more they’re going to taunt other students who don’t look or talk like them. I know this might not be a popular opinion, but I think rather than trying to shut them down, change will come faster if we could find a way inside those old mansions and transform their culture.”

  Her words motivated me, and I left the Union that night with new energy and focus. My mission had now become a lot more than figuring out what happened to Erasmus Abbott or which men held the garter of the Ancient Nine. It was still a long shot, but if I got in, I would try to be that spark for change.

  18

  BY MONDAY MORNING, the masses who had trampled the Yard had mercifully gone home. Gates that had been locked were reopened, the extra security checkpoints were carted away, and a sense of calm had returned to campus. Dalton hadn’t called me, which had me worried. I kept thinking of that little blue book under his mattress. Would it shed any light on Uncle Randolph’s death?

  I grabbed lunch after classes with a couple of football players at Kirkland House, and then headed back to my room to take a nap before practice. Someone had slipped a large manila envelope with my name on it under the door. Inside, I found a small note written on Crimson stationery stapled with two newspaper clippings.

  Spenser,

  I found these two articles the other night and thought you might be interested. I think your suspicions about Collander Abbott are correct. There’s something not right about his son’s disappearance and his behavior. Most fathers would be overwhelmed by the death of a young son. He appeared not to be that kind of father. Hope this helps.

  G. Stromberger

  The first article was dated March 8, 1928, and appeared in the Newport Daily News. It was a short article without a reporter’s byline. The lead paragraph spoke of a generous donation Mr. Collander Abbott had made to the local horticultural society. It then mentioned the mysterious disappearance of Erasmus Abbott and commented on the shroud of secrecy that had enveloped the case for the last four months. Collander and Elizabeth Abbott had not been seen socially since their son’s disappearance, and they denied all requests from the media for interviews. Strangely, the Abbotts never went to Cambridge to meet with police or university officials, choosing instead to handle all communications about their son’s case by telephone or through intermediaries. Then the article got interesting. Abbott had been asked if he wanted a search to be conducted of the Delphic Club, the location police believed Erasmus had visited the night of his disappearance. Abbott not only dismissed the search as unnecessary, but actually signed a petition with other Delphic members that was filed in a Cambridge court to block what they deemed to be an unwarranted search of a private institution.

  The next clipping was from The New York Times, a long obituary and picture of Collander Abbott dated May 1, 1977. It spoke of Abbott’s parents, Dr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Abbott and the fortune the family had amassed with their printing concerns around the world. It briefly mentioned Collander’s early years before focusing on his time at Harvard, where he was a Phi Beta Kappa and esteemed member of the exclusive Delphic Club. There was one curious paragraph dedicated to Erasmus Abbott.

  Abbott’s son, Erasmus, followed in his father’s footsteps at Harvard, where he was a noted student in the physical sciences before his disappearance after a prank on Halloween night. The younger Abbott’s body has never been found despite a massive manhunt. Questions have always centered on the Delphic Club, a secret society founded by the late J. P. Morgan Jr., of which Collander Abbott remained an active member after his son’s mysterious disappearance. Reports of a rift between father and son first surfaced when the younger Abbott broke religious ranks with the family and submitted to the Catholic teachings of a distant cousin who stood at odds with the strong Protestant traditions of the Abbott family.

  The rest of the article spoke of the family’s immense philanthropic efforts, directed most notably to the church he attended. It also mentioned that he was a prominent member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

  Did the religious discord within the family mean anything? Was Erasmus Abbott really at odds with his father? Did any of this have anything to do with his breaking into the Delphic?

  I picked up the phone and dialed the number to the Thompson Home for the Aging. The operator put me through to Kelton Dunhill, who picked up on the third ring. “It’s hotter than hell down here,” he said. “What’s going on up there in Boston?”

  “Just finished Head weekend, sir,” I said.

  “Now the campus can breathe again,” he said. “I attended one of those weekends in the seventies. One big, continuous party. The only time I’d ever seen that many people invade Cambridge was for the Game.” He referred to the annual Harvard–Yale football game, always considered to be the most important social event on Harvard’s calendar.

  “Things are back to normal,” I said. “I can’t even tell you if we won any of the races.” I waited for him to finish chuckling before I said, “Sir, I wanted to ask you another question about Erasmus Abbott.”

  “You boys still fishing around?”

  “Just following up some leads.”

  “What’s on your mind, Collins?”

  “Did Abbott speak much of his father?”

  “He and his father didn’t get along,” Dunhill said.

  “Do you know why?”

  “I don’t remember the specifics, but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with religion. The old man was a major capitalist and a staunch Protestant. Erasmus was an atheist.”

  “Did you ever meet the father?”

  “Never.”

  “What about after Abbott disappeared?”

  “Even then,” Dunhill said. “No one from the family showed up for the memorial service we held for him in Russell Hall. His parents sent their lawyer and a servant to collect his things from his room. It struck all of us as strange, but the family was known to be extremely reclusive. They didn’t like to mingle much outside their small social circle.”

  “Did you know that Mr. Abbott was a member of the Delphic?” I asked.

  “Of course I did,” Dunhill said. “And that’s what made it all the more tragic. I always thought part of the reason Ras wanted to break in
to the Gas was to irk his father.”

  “Did you ever hear the name of the Irishman they found in the Charles?”

  “I’ll never forget it. Mike Donahue. My third-grade teacher had the same name.”

  It was starting to sound like Collander Abbott was connected to two deaths, and both had something to do with the Delphic.

  * * *

  DURING AN OLD EPISODE OF CHEERS, Dalton finally called. He had just arrived on campus and insisted we look at the book immediately. Some strange things had happened at Wild Winds, and he was wondering if any of it had to do with the book. We agreed to meet in a small study room in the tunnels underneath Lowell.

  Dalton arrived out of breath and looked tired. He carried a manuscript box in his hands, which I assumed contained the book. The lights in many of the tunnel rooms were either busted or too dim to see much of anything, which is why I had brought my reading lamp.

  “Jesus, it’s hotter than Hades down here,” Dalton said, pulling off his coat and sweater. His hair was already damp. “There’s enough heat down here to melt a polar cap.” Once he got himself comfortable, he said, “I think we’re doing the right thing. Uncle Randolph trusted me enough to go to the vault. We won’t let him down now.”

  “What happened at Wild Winds?” I asked.

  “It felt weird,” Dalton said. “I felt like I was being watched the entire time. When the family gathered for the will reading, Brathwaite pulled me to the side and asked me what I was doing at the bank the day Uncle Randolph died.”

  “How did he know you were there?”

  “He didn’t say. I assume he spoke to Tippendale.”