by Bill Crider
The rules, however, were not really as restrictive as people sometimes thought. Smoking, for instance, was permitted on campus; but Fox didn’t like to be seen smoking. He and Burns generally smoked in the history lounge, a small, unused office on the second floor.
As they walked down the stairs, Fox said, “Thank God the football season’s over.”
“It hasn’t been over long enough,” Burns said. In fact, the HGC Panthers had lost their last game of the season only the previous Saturday, by a score of forty-eight to nothing. They had also lost the ten previous games, most of them by a similar score. Each passing week had seen Elmore’s comments in the weekly luncheon grow more scathing as he addressed the coach, who was also the head of the Physical Education Department.
No one was in the history lounge when they reached it. No one usually was. The room was small and bleak, with the paint peeling off the walls, and it was lit by a single hundred-watt bulb hanging at the end of a fraying brown fabric-covered cord that dangled from the twelve-foot ceiling. The furnishings consisted entirely of items that Fox had picked up at garage sales: an ancient card table with the blue lamination peeling from its cardboard top, three steel chairs even older than the table, and a ghastly floral couch with a missing cushion, covered with unidentifiable stains.
Fox loved garage sales, and he usually looked as if he bought all his clothes at them. Today he was wearing a pair of double-knit pants decorated with huge windowpane checks of brown, green, red, and gray, a knit shirt with a penguin on the pocket, and a Dallas Cowboys windbreaker. One of the windbreaker pockets had been partially ripped away, there were ink stains on the shirt, and the fly of the pants would zip only about three-quarters of the way to the top. All of this was in distinct contrast with Fox’s head and face. His clean-cut features and razor-cut hair would not have looked out of place in a preppie handbook.
Fox closed the door of the lounge as Burns sat down in one of the steel chairs. Then Fox sat in one of the other chairs and pulled out a crumpled pack of L & Ms from the unripped pocket of the windbreaker. He offered the pack to Burns, who took one, more to be companionable than because he wanted to smoke. Burns never smoked except when he was with Fox or Mal Tomlin.
They lit up with Burns’ matches and smoked in silence for a minute, tapping their ashes into a red and white Diet Coke can that sat in the middle of the card table. They knew that there was little likelihood that they would be disturbed. Dean Elmore had long ago made known in an open faculty meeting his opinions about “the malcontent mutterings of lugubrious lounge lizards,” and shortly thereafter the lounge once used by the general faculty had been converted into a meeting place for the student government.
“You know, you’re right,” Fox said, taking a deep drag on his L & M. “Elmore will probably let Coach Thomas have it again today. I hate to say it, but I guess that’s better than one of us getting a going-over.”
Burns tapped ashes into the Coke can. He knew what Fox meant. Elmore had several times made scathing remarks about Fox’s wardrobe and attacked the History Department in general for its “low standards of personal conduct,” which Burns interpreted to mean that Elmore knew that Fox smoked in the history lounge. “E pluribus unum,” Burns said.
“Don’t give me that crap,” Fox said, dropping his cigarette butt into the can and reaching into his pocket for the pack. “You know as well as I do that there’s no unity around here. Everyone is just looking for some way to stick it to somebody else. Nobody’s interested in anything except saving his own job.” He lit the cigarette that he had shaken out of the pack. “Present company excepted, of course.” He blew out a long plume of smoke.
“Of course,” Burns said, dropping his own butt into the can. He was well aware that HGC was working under strict budget limitations. In the past few years, there had been a considerable drop in enrollment, mostly due to Elmore, in Burns’ opinion, and there was a concerted effort under way to reduce the size of the faculty. And Elmore had a pretty good idea of whom he wanted to send away.
Fox pushed back his chair and propped his feet up on the table, a precarious proposition. He seemed quite comfortable, however. Burns noted that he was wearing a pair of Hush Puppies that had probably never been brushed. They were the dirtiest Hush Puppies that Burns had ever seen. The sole of the left shoe had separated from the upper at the toe. “Heard the latest?” Fox asked after achieving a satisfactory balance.
“Probably not,” Burns said. He was pretty sure that he was always the last to hear any of the campus gossip. Once when a math teacher had been fired, the man had been gone for three months before Burns even heard about the incident.
“L. J.’s got a job at North Texas State,” Fox said.
L. J. was L. J. Hitt, a psychology teacher whom Burns knew slightly. “How’d he luck into that?” Burns asked.
“Don’t know,” Fox said. “All I know is that he’s leaving at midterm.”
“How many does that make now?”
“Right at forty,” Fox said.
“Hard to believe,” Burns said, shaking his head. “Give me another cigarette.”
Fox handed him the pack and Burns lit up, thinking about the forty or so faculty members who had been fired, quit, resigned, or retired since Elmore’s ascendancy to the deanship.
“Why don’t we leave?” Fox asked. It wasn’t a rhetorical question.
“Four reasons,” Burns said through a haze of cigarette smoke. “One: We’re having too much fun. Two: We can’t believe Elmore would really fire us. Three: In our fields, it’s almost impossible to find jobs. And four: We don’t have the guts.”
“You and your damned lists,” Fox said. “I guess that about covers it, though. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to look around.”
“I look in the job vacancies section of the Chronicle of Higher Education every two weeks,” Burns said. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Fox said. “For all the good it does.”
“I’ll tell you how mine read,” Burns said. “‘Position for specialist in American literature. Non-tenure track. Prestigious publications required. Ph.D. required. Load will consist of five courses in freshman composition. Some off-campus teaching’—that means you get to teach in the local units of the Texas penal system—’required. Salary, seventeen five to eighteen five per year, depending on experience.”
“I think you’re probably exaggerating,” Fox said. “But not by much.”
“Not much at all,” Burns said, dropping his second butt in the Coke can. “Let’s go to the luncheon.”
Chapter 2
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 fo
ur. 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.