Cursed to Death

by Bill Crider

  On their way out of Main, they were joined by Mal Tomlin. Mal was the chairman of the Education Department, which occupied the first floor. He was smoking a Merit Menthol 100. Mal smoked anywhere he pleased, and he didn’t care who knew it. He was a compact, muscular man, who looked even more like a former semipro shortstop than Clementine Nelson did. “You fellas want a cigarette?” he asked. He took out his Merit pack and offered it to Fox, who waved it away. Tomlin took great pleasure in offering Fox cigarettes in public, knowing that Fox would never take one. “Wonder who’ll go on the firing line today?” he said, replacing his cigarettes in his shirt pocket.

  “Could be any of us,” Burns said. “As usual.”

  Mal shook his head ruefully. He knew as well as anyone how Elmore could cut someone down. He had been the target only two weeks before, when Elmore had lashed out at the Education Department as being the refuge of fifth-rate students with tenth-rate minds and ambitions that rated so low they couldn’t be measured. “The dregs!” Elmore had yelled. “The very dregs! That’s who signs up for education courses! And they pass! Can any of you believe that? They all pass!”

  Mal had tried to explain that any student entering the teacher-education program had to be carrying a 2.0 average in all his other courses, but it had done no good. Elmore’s plan to improve the education curriculum was simple: Add another year. Make the prospective teachers spend five years in school instead of four. When Mal had said that teachers were already grossly underpaid and that hardly anyone would want to attend school for an extra year in anticipation of earning a teacher’s salary, Elmore had exploded again. “Idiots! If they could get any other job, they wouldn’t want to teach in the first place.”

  Elmore was a warm and understanding man.

  As they passed the Bible Building (Hartley Gorman IX, in Elmore’s terminology), Abner Swan came down the walk and fell in with them. The chairman of the Bible Department, Swan was widely regarded as the biggest ass-kisser in the known universe. Whenever Elmore was to be agreed with, Swan could be counted on for a resounding “Amen!” If anyone dared to question Elmore (a rare occurrence, but it happened) Swan could be counted on to glare at the questioner as if glaring at the pope. Or the Devil.

  “A beautiful day, eh, gentlemen?” Swan boomed.

  As a matter of fact, it was not a beautiful day. The sky was thickly overcast, the temperature was around forty degrees, and there was a brisk north wind that cut right through everyone’s clothes, particularly Fox’s double-knit pants. But that didn’t bother Swan. He was out to curry favor with all and sundry, even God.

  “Yeah, Abner, it’s lovely,” Burns said.

  “Yes, indeed,” Swan said, “a day to be truly thankful for.” He rubbed his hands together like Uriah Heep, though Burns had never considered Swan a model of humility, even of false humility. What Burns liked about Swan was his clothes. Today he was wearing a navy blue knit suit, a pale yellow shirt, a flowing navy and yellow tie, and white patent leather shoes. His hair was cut by a barber who had carefully studied the finest in television evangelist hairstyles.

  Swan cut a fine figure. He was big—three or four inches over six feet—and he loved getting his picture in the local papers. When the Bible Building (or Hartley Gorman IX) had been constructed a few years previously, Swan had, in the words of Mal Tomlin, “worn overalls every day and lurked around the construction site waiting for a photographer to show up.”

  Not that any of this saved Swan from Elmore’s wrath. When Swan had worn his overalls to a Friday luncheon, Elmore had called him a “bumptious boob.” He had ragged him unmercifully when one of the Bible majors, a senior who would have been graduating with honors in a few months, had gotten two girls pregnant, one of them the daughter of a local minister. Through it all, Swan had sat with clenched teeth, his face a deep, dark shade of red. And by the next meeting, his smile would be back in place and his “Amen” would boom out.

  They reached the dining hall, which was itself on the first floor of the Men’s Dormitory (Hartley Gorman V), and went in by the side door. To the right was the faculty dining room, which the faculty was allowed to use only if attending official meetings called by the dean or the president.

  Burns led the way to the back of the room, where a buffet table had been set up, and began filling a plate with rubbery English peas, watery mashed potatoes, wilted salad, and ham that had a slightly greenish tinge around the edges.

  Other department heads were already sitting at the dining table. Dick Hayes, from business; Faye Smith, from math and science; Joe Reasoner, from psych; and Coach Thomas. Just coming in the door were Don Elliott, speech and drama; Fran Stafford, languages; and Mary Winsor, journalism. That would be all except for the dean and president, who always came a bit late.

  Everyone was aware that this lateness was a deliberate power ploy on the part of Elmore, and that President Rogers was merely playing along. Both men, Rogers especially, were legends of punctuality on the campus, and Rogers was notorious for having students counted absent if they were so much as two minutes late to assembly. Burns thought that Elmore had probably read a book somewhere and gotten the idea that the Big Boss Man never had to be on time to a meeting of the Underlings. Why Rogers went along with him was just another mystery.

  Sure enough, after everyone was seated and eating, Elmore and President Rogers walked in. The cadaverous Elmore resembled no one so much as John Carradine, as Carradine might have looked with a wavy pompadour liberally coated with daily applications of Grecian Formula. Lay him out in a casket, Burns thought, and he’d make an ideal corpse. His sallow complexion only added to the impression.

  President Rogers, on the other hand, was short, dumpy, ruddy, and cheerful, the perfect foil for Elmore in more ways than one. His pleasures seemed to run chiefly to eating, attending the school’s sporting events, praying at chapel, and letting Elmore have his way. He was always smiling, had a kind word for everyone, and appeared to be the most harmless of men. Though he was also entirely ineffectual, Hartley Gorman College had muddled along fairly successfully under his presidency for six years, until the advent of Elmore, who had stepped into the power vacuum with a vengeance and proceeded to run the school into the ground.

  Why Rogers had let it happen was a question much discussed among the faculty members. No one had an answer. One story had it that Rogers had an incurable disease. Some said that he was senile, though he was only sixty-one. Still others said that a beautiful sophomore had left campus under mysterious circumstances and that Elmore had the goods on someone. Just whom he had the goods on and what the goods were was uncertain.

  None of it mattered, in the long run. Elmore had the power. Technically, all decisions had to be approved by the president. In practice, whatever Elmore said, went. As Burns put it to Fox, “‘That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’”

  There was a noticeable lack of small talk at the table. Even the usually irrepressible Mal Tomlin had little to say. Mostly there was the clinking of silverware and the rattle of ice in glasses. The room was always too warm, and condensation formed on the inside of the windows. Finally, Elmore stood. “I’m going to ask Dr. Swan to return thanks,” he said.

  Swan rose, grateful to be called upon. If he had possessed a tail, he would have wagged it. He launched into a lengthy blessing that included everyone from the president of the United States on down, mentioned the afflicted and the needy, brought in the prosperity of HGC, and concluded by asking a special blessing on Dr. Rogers and Dr. Elmore, “as they guide and direct this great institution dedicated to Thy glory.” Burns felt the green ham turning over in his stomach.

  “Amen!” boomed Swan. A number of other “Amens” chimed in.

  Then Elmore passed around the toothpick holder, a ritual that Burns never failed to view with amazement. Not everyone indulged, of course, but the sight of six or seven adults digging around in their molars with toothpicks was something that required seeing for believing.

  After
the toothpick ritual was completed, it was time for the dreaded “Departmental Reports,” in which each person told what had been accomplished in his area that week. This was when Elmore got rolling. It started with Coach Thomas, who made the rookie mistake of referring to his team’s forty-eight to nothing pasting as a “moral victory.”

  “Moral victory!” Elmore scoffed. “That bunch of refugees from justice wouldn’t recognize a moral if it bit them in the gluteus maximus. If they could hang onto a football like they hang onto their girlfriends’ mammaries when they strut around campus, we’d be ranked number one in the nation! I would estimate that our alumni contributions to our football program have fallen off by fifty percent in the last two years! Moral victory! One more season of moral victories like that, and . . . well, never mind. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that.”

  Coach Thomas sat red-faced and shamed, looking at the remains of the rubbery peas on his plate, as Elmore went on down the line. Fox got blasted for his Dallas Cowboys windbreaker. “If you can’t support your own school, Fox, why take its money?” Tomlin got it for his cigarette. “Only a sick and demented beast fouls its own habitat, Tomlin.” Dick Hayes got it for the incompetence (alleged) of a student secretary trained in his department. “She can’t even spell her own name the same way twice; much less type a decent business letter. It’s quite possible she types with only two fingers; otherwise she could hardly be so slow.” Even the local businessmen got it for their tightfistedness. “This town would die without Hartley Gorman College, but these sour-balls won’t give to support our little scholarship drive. We’ll teach them, though. I’m going to pass out a list of everyone who turned us down. I would hope that no one from this school would patronize their businesses.”

  It went on, but not for as long as usual. Elmore had something else on his mind. “As some of you may know,” he said, “our school is in dire financial straits.” He stood with arms akimbo and looked hard at each department head. Burns met his eyes. He knew the reason why the school was in trouble.

  So did Elmore. “Some of our ‘loyal’ faculty members have sown the seeds of discord among the students. They have said that the new courses I have introduced into the curriculum—with the complete approval of the Curriculum Committee—will water down their degrees. Make them worthless. I want these faculty members rooted out! They do not belong here at Hartley Gorman!”

  Burns was staring straight at Elmore, but he had a powerful desire to stare down at his plate, which is what many of the others were doing. “Complete approval of the Curriculum Committee”—now there was a laugh for you. The committee had fought Elmore from first to last, Clem Nelson almost losing her job in the process, before Elmore had rammed his curriculum through by “Executive Decision.”

  His decision. The committee hadn’t even been allowed to vote on the final measure, much less argue against it in a faculty meeting.

  The new courses that Elmore was so proud of consisted of such stringent offerings as “Personal Money Management,” in which students were required to learn how to balance a checkbook and absorb such gems of wisdom as the fact that clipping newspaper coupons could save them money at the grocery store, especially if the store paid double for each coupon. Then there was the notorious humanities offering, especially hated by Burns, in which students were supposed to get a complete background in twenty centuries or so of music, art, and literature in one semester. Well, Burns thought, it beat learning to balance a checkbook.

  Elmore was ranting on. “I have a plan,” he said. “A plan to save this school! There are several steps that we can take, beginning with the elimination of major sports, on which we lost over two hundred thousand dollars last year!” So that was why there’d be no moral victories.

  All eyes, some furtively, some openly, turned to Coach Thomas, who had tried to take a drink of tea, some of which must have gone down the wrong tube. Thomas choked and coughed, slamming his glass down on the table. All the eyes turned away in embarrassment.

  Burns sneaked a look at President Rogers. Rogers sat calmly, looking as if his thoughts were on heavenly things, or things at least unrelated to what was happening in the faculty dining room.

  “Of course,” Elmore said, “such a move must be approved by the board, but I am confident that after I give them my facts and figures they will see things my way. All scholarships will be honored, naturally, but we would seek to hold no athlete here if he or she wished to transfer to another college or university.”

  Of course, Burns thought. Naturally. But if all the athletes went elsewhere, a considerable portion of the student body would disappear without a trace. What then?

  “What then, you ask?” Elmore said, startling Burns badly and causing him to wonder if he had spoken aloud.

  “What then?” Elmore repeated. “Let me say now that I have a secret plan, a plan that is both bold and innovative, a plan that will bring thousands and thousands of dollars to this institution each and every semester. It will call for vision, but I believe that we have that vision, and I will be discussing, it with you individually in the days to come.” He sat down abruptly, leaving everyone to finish his meal, sneak glances at Thomas, and wonder about the “secret plan.”

  All Burns could think was that the plan, as described by Elmore, must be complete lunacy. There was absolutely no way to bring that much money in without selling off the school’s properties, which Burns happened to know had already been done, or by forcing the entire town to enroll for courses.

  As soon as possible without seeming too eager, people began to get up and leave the luncheon. As they passed by Elmore, he handed each one a list of businesses that he would prefer they avoid.

  Chapter 3

  Burns hung back, waiting for Mal Tomlin, who was defiantly finishing another cigarette, and that was how he came to see the confrontation. Most of the other department heads had departed, slinking away as silently and unobtrusively as possible, each one meekly taking the paper that Elmore handed him.

  Coach Thomas, however, did not go quietly. He was a big man, who had once had a tryout as an offensive center with the Houston Oilers in the early years of their franchise. He had been one of the last players cut. He had the size, but not the quickness. He had shrunk a little since then, especially in the years since Elmore had been dean, but he was still big. He was wearing a faded HGC letter jacket in the school’s colors of black and gold, and his shoulders made any padding superfluous.

  Thomas walked up to Elmore, who handed him a piece of paper. Thomas ignored it. “The board will never approve dropping the sports program,” he said.

  Elmore looked up at him. “Of course they will. It’s a losing proposition, and I’ll prove it to them. It may be that the football team loses because it’s coached by losers, but that doesn’t really matter. No one wants to support losers.”

  Thomas’s face was gradually turning a deep, dark red, the red of raw meat laid out in a butcher’s shop. As Burns watched, Thomas’s fists seemed to grow into hardwood knots, solid as croquet balls and twice as large.

  Even President Rogers seemed to notice that something was happening. “Ah, Dean Elmore,” he said. “Perhaps it is a bit premature to speculate on what the board might do.” He sneaked a quick upward glance at Coach Thomas.

  Thomas was not mollified. He reached out for Elmore.

  What happened next was seen by both Burns and Mal Tomlin, who had crushed his cigarette in his plate and was now watching with as much interest as Burns. Elmore attempted to scoot his chair backward, but because he did not rise from it, it was difficult to move on the rug on the dining room floor. When Thomas’s hand had almost reached him, Elmore made one more attempt to scoot out of harm’s way, this time giving a good backward push. He gave too good a push, or so it seemed to Burns, and toppled his chair over. Coach Thomas looked as surprised as anyone to see Elmore on the rug, his chair half on top of him, scuttling around like a pair of ragged claws, trying to get out from under his chair, tryin
g to escape from Thomas, trying to regain a little of his dignity.

  Coach Thomas reached down a hand to help Elmore to his feet, but Elmore, fearing violence, or maybe fearing assistance, scuttled backward. He finally got to his feet and continued backward until he hit the wall.

  Burns looked at Mal Tomlin, who appeared about to strangle, his laughter making spasmodic efforts to force its way past his tightly shut lips. Burns grabbed Tomlin’s shoulder and dragged him from the table, both of them making their way to the door and going out. Burns hoped that Elmore hadn’t seen them. God only knew what he would do to punish any witnesses to what had happened.

  Once they were outside, Mal Tomlin broke into guffaws of laughter. Burns joined him. Coach Thomas emerged right behind them. His face was much more serious, and Burns and Tomlin soon calmed down, though Tomlin had more trouble controlling himself than Burns.

  “He’s threatening to sue me,” Thomas said. “Says I shoved him down and tried to beat him up. I didn’t do it.” Thomas had a puzzled look, as if he couldn’t quite figure out what was going on. It was a look that Burns had seen often on the faces of people who had dealings with Elmore.

  “Don’t worry, Coach,” Burns said. “Mal and I saw it all. We’ll be your witnesses. Rogers saw it too.”

  Mal Tomlin shook out a cigarette and lit it, not an easy job, considering the wind velocity. He put his disposable lighter back in his pocket and said, “I wouldn’t count too much on Rogers. He’s never contradicted Elmore before.”

  “It’s still the three of us against the two of them,” Burns said. “Elmore will realize that. He’ll never sue anybody, Coach. He’s just a bully, and he likes to make threats.”

  The coach seemed to relax a little. “I guess you’re right,” he said. “Still . . . I didn’t even touch him.”

  “We know,” Tomlin said. “Go on home and enjoy the weekend. He’ll have forgotten all about it by Monday.”