by Kluge, P. F.
At closing, the camera found the network reporter, sitting across from Wright, adoring him. He wrapped it up. “On this night of decision for a small beleaguered college, Hiram Wright summons up Geoffrey Chaucer’s famous description of an Oxford clerke. ‘And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.’ Wright will be here. About the rest of them—about the college itself—we’ll see tomorrow.”
So, the last president steps outside his cottage and proceeds down a path lined by photographers, students, faculty members, farmers, janitors. “Sorry, Warren.” “Don’t do it, Mr. President.” “Did you get my e-mail?” Am I Lee at Appomattox? Wainwright at Corregidor? Surely not. Death and imprisonment don’t await me, just more invitations than I can open, an infinity of symposia and summer homes, sympathy and condescension all the rest of my days. I try looking around me, taking it all in, its last moments of life, this ancient gravel path—again and again, we fought off those who wanted to pave it—those rows of trees that 19th century presidents planned and planted, they reproach me, those classroom buildings and laboratories, that ugly Greek Revival auditorium, that dining hall with stained glass windows, each celebrating a great work of literature, that got controversial when we became co-educational and people complained that Cristina Rossetti was the only female writer. Those venerable spirits watch me walk these last steps, and, oh, those grassy, carefree lawns, those empty classroom windows, they watch me, from distant dorm windows, open, curtains flapping in the breeze like flags of surrender, windows where students had strung blown up photos of the first three victims from window to window, like fans mark strikeouts at a baseball game, they reproach me. “Give ‘em hell, Warren.” “Hey, Mr. President, it’s not your fault.” “About my sabbatical...” They all reproach me, the presidents who were passionate builders, shrewd administrators, zealots, time servers, and the faculty, their anger and talent and pretensions come to rest in a small place, they reproach me, and the students most of all, the ones looking out of ancient yearbooks, rows of young men, all dead, long dead, yet they took comfort in knowing that this place would live on, that other lives would pass through here, they reproach me, for closing this college tips them into oblivion, as much as they remembered this place they equally believed that the place would remember them and this morning is the end of that, the end of all remembering, so they reproach me along with students who’d left yesterday and the day before, the ones who other colleges had courted, sweeping down like vultures, cooing like trauma counselors, sorry about our misfortune and so anxious to accommodate its victims, these students whom murder had turned into refugees, would they talk about this place forever, would they have reunions and if so where, and would they invite me, and would I accept? I look up as I neared Ascension Hall, which had been covered, make that buried, in ivy when I arrived and I had permitted that ivy to be cut away, because the arguments were irrefutable and yet, I remember and miss that tall, brown and green building, that marriage of plant and stone that would be our tomb today. I should never have let them take the ivy.
It was over quickly. No speeches. The time for that was past. No agonizing. We put together a committee—Ave Hayes and three others, with me ex-officio—to monitor the situation and make further recommendations. Then we voted and the only odd thing was that someone requested a secret ballot. A strange idea, I thought, but when we counted the votes, there were twelve votes not to close the college. Then I understood. Later, anyone could claim that they had cast one of those negatives, the same way any member of a firing squad could walk away from the scene of the execution, telling himself that his weapon held a blank. Still, there was something dead on the ground, a person or a college. Close to two centuries of college history had ended and the trustees were in no mood to linger. Some left with hugs—“let me know what you decide...if there’s anything I can do.” Others departed with no more than a nod. Being a trustee was supposed to be an honor.
Quickly, the college emptied. The dormitories first, of course, those were vacated in three days which were the longest and worst of my life, because the village filled with a false flush of business, cars and campers crowding into parking lots, parking on the grass, just as they did in May and August. This was different—sullen, shoddy. And final. The dining halls closed too, all the cafeteria ladies, dishwashers, cooks gone, the kitchen sealed and fumigated. One by one, our systems shut down, the student health service, the college bookstore. The athletic facilities, the swimming pool and weight room, showers and saunas, locked down. All of this was over in a matter of days. The town would die a slower death, more disorganized. Some people left right away, no one knew whether temporarily or forever. They probably didn’t know themselves. Certainly, they didn’t tell me. About half the faculty remained in town for various reasons but even the stayers-on were outward bound, except for Hiram Wright. He stayed down on River Road, holding class for a handful of renegade students. The place was as I had never seen it before, this winter emptiness that began in late November and continued past New Years’ was terrifying. I felt it most in mid-January, when the campus had always filled up with students returning from vacation. Coming to central Ohio in January, then plodding to class on February’s muddy paths, hawking and coughing through classes, inhabiting dormitories where overheated air flushed out the smell of stale food and unwashed clothing, enduring a succession of sunlight deprived days, that surely was the act of faith I’d mentioned in my latest—and last—college address. But now the migration was interrupted, the tide didn’t roll in, the river stopped flowing and I faced the reality of our death.
“Closing a college turns out to be a tricky business,” Willard Thrush said. Thank God, there was some work to do during the day, reason enough to go to the office. And, like him or not, Thrush was lively as ever.
“Your business is bankrupt,” he said, “there’s Chapter Seven, Chapter Eleven, depending on how bad it is. There’s a bankruptcy judge, bankruptcy law. It happens all the time. But this—as I hardly need to tell you—is a non–profit institution. The State of Ohio is very interested in what we do, how we liquidate, how assets are distributed. You can’t hold a yard sale. What we’re going to do, Warren, is set up a foundation. That’s what Monticello College did, when it died. And Alliance College too.”
“I never heard of those places,” I said. Not only had I not known that they died, I was unaware they’d ever lived. But I wondered what became of their presidents, whether they told themselves that time changes all things, that nothing lasts forever. Did they inventory all their decisions, asking themselves if anything they did or didn’t do might have made a difference? I had. Did they worry. Blame themselves? I had. Did they have correspondence from a killer who labeled them an asshole?
“Those other places were way down the food chain from us,” Willard continued. “Still, the precedent is there. They took what they had and formed foundations. They make grants. So that’s what we’ll do. We need to be able to accept money that’s coming in, even though most of what we’ll get is contingent on reopening. Which I hope we will. But if we have to sell the college...”
“Sell the college?”
“Well, yes,” Willard said. “It never occurred to you?”
“Has it ever happened?”
“That’s what I’m saying. There’s the places I mentioned. Plus, the Unification Church took over a place in Connecticut. Some Maharishi snapped up Parsons out in Iowa. No such luck for us. The obvious purchaser would be Ohio State, opening a branch here. But that’s not in the cards. They’re set up in Lima, Mansfield, Newark and Wooster already. And besides, we’re not their style.”
“So...” I couldn’t resist asking what came next. It was like sending in that card to Social Security, that tells you how much you get, if you survive to collect and they’re around to pay. “How much are we worth?”
“There’s no market, no demand...not for a whole college. Sorry.”
“Oh,” I said. Sometimes it was amazing that there’d ever been a colle
ge here. Maybe that was the way to look at it, improbable from the beginning, lucky to have lasted this long.
“As for the component parts,” he resumed. “About a dozen dormitories ranging from 1901 to a few years ago. Miscellaneous bungalows and cottages, your place included. We’ve got millions of dollars of science labs, those were the big ticket items...”
We’d invested heavily in science in recent years, $30 million just lately. The humanities people weren’t pleased, our carving Los Alamos into local woods, while poets and writers holed up in rickety houses, routinely warned to please ease up on using the copy machines.
“We’ve got faculty and administration offices, we’ve got athletic buildings, baseball and football fields, maintenance facilities, what else? Oh, the library. I forgot the library. Think anybody needs a library around here?”
“How much?” I pressed.
“And two theaters. Plus tons of beds and dressers, chairs, computers, dining tables, weight room equipment. Trucks and vans and tractors and stuff, a whole fleet.”
“How much?” I persisted.
“Prepare yourself…” Willard said.
“I’m ready.”
“…for a disappointment. Five million, that seems safe. Ten million, if we’re lucky.”
“That’s incredible. It’s...”
“A dime to a dollar? Fifteen cents? I know. But listen, Warren, you’ve got to wrap your brain around this. If this college isn’t sold as a college, and it won’t be, its constituent parts depreciate. Because no one’s looking for a chemistry lab right here, right now. And the fattest cat in Cleveland or Columbus doesn’t want an indoor Olympic-sized swimming pool that has two locker rooms and a basketball court attached.”
“Is that all?” I asked. I meant to ask whether he was done now, whether he would soon leave. But Thrush misunderstood me.
“Not quite,” he said. “There’s the land. A thousand acres under our direct control...that’s the hill, the lawns, the athletic fields...”
“Yes...”
“And the Stribling Tract...wherever...whatever it consists of...”
“I always enjoyed not knowing,” I said. “Guessing. Hoping, even.”
“Well, enjoying, guessing, hoping are out of style right now, Warren. Call the lawyer. The Stribling Tract lawyer. Or have him call me.”
“Alright,” I said. I could feel him writing me down, marking me off. I was fading. But I had to speak. “Sorry for being so...It’s just that...this college we had. I liked the place just fine. I really did. Just lately I’ve been hearing about all the things that were wrong with it, with us, all the ways we’d gotten weak and soft. Giving faculty what they wanted. Giving in to students. To parents. Weakness and compromise and drift. But Willard, tell me. Wasn’t this a good place? At the end of the day?”
“End of the day is where we are, Warren,” he cruelly rejoindered.
“But didn’t people love it?” I persisted.
“Sure, Warren,” he said. “Lots of people loved it.” He arose, I stayed in my chair. I saw pity in his face, looking down at me. “I’ll see myself out,” he said.
These days, the college has become a kind of weekend drive destination, even a tourist attraction. Cars cruise through town, drivers rolling down their windows to ask where, exactly, the bodies had been found and what am I doing here, was I around when the shit hit the fan? There are inquiries about staging a solve-the-mystery weekend here and some movie producers were interested in location shooting. I confine myself to home and office during the day, but at night, I wander. It’s not recommended, but I walk, sharing February darkness with whatever might come out of it and half inviting it to come. I walk the mothballed campus, the rows of faculty houses, half of them dark, realtor signs out front, others announcing “for sale by owner,” a circumstance which describes the whole college. Cars sometimes stop if the driver recognizes me. “Are you alright, Warren?” “Just out walking, Mr. President?” “You sure you’re alright?” Every house I pass has a history. I’ve been president long enough to have seen them change hands, sometimes more than once. I remember old professors, the ones who regarded me with skepticism when I arrived, dead a long time, most of them. But here, more than most places, the ones who’d pass on linger in memory for a while, not the books they wrote or didn’t write, but their styles, their quirks, their presences. Now we’ve come to the end of that, the end of remembering. Can I be blamed if I felt old feelings returning? Old regrets? Can I be blamed if at last I drive down to River Road, to pay my respects to Hiram Wright?
“What’s he doing here?” I hear someone ask as soon as I step up on the porch.
“That’ll do for tonight,” Wright says, glancing my way. The seminar he’s been leading disperses. Reluctantly. A dozen students have been sitting around a fireplace, books in their hands. This is education for people who want it, education for free—no charge, no credit, virtue its own reward. It’s like seeing an old dream, a college in the wilderness. That was how we began.
“Bummer,” one student says. He glances at me as he departs. I see accusation in his eyes. What did we ever do to deserve that guy?
“Get yourself what you need, Mr. President,” Wright says. I proceed to the back, where a bottle of Calvados awaits me. My bottle, my glass. When I let him go, I avoided him. It was as though I’d pulled the trigger on the last of an endangered species, a nationally known scholar content to make his life at a small college, to let the world find its way to him, not he to it. Then, one day at the post office, he invited me to visit. Now, at the end of everything, I turn to him.
“How’s your little college?” I ask, once I’ve filled my glass.
“Marvelous,” he replies. “We’re back to basics, back to beginnings...unenriched, undistracted by...” He gestures in the direction of the hill. “All the other things that grow up around it.” That’s my life’s accomplishment, he dismisses with a nonchalant wave. “They’re here because they want to be,” he says. “Not because their parents sent them. Not because of the parties or the swimming pool or the easy B’s.”
“Where do they stay?” I ask.
“Since you locked them out, you mean?”
“Hiram, I had no choice.”
“I know that,” he replies. “Well, they live down here. With me. With my neighbors. In shacks and huts and trailers. Sleeping in cars, some of them. Others in tents. See what I mean? It’s a college in the sticks, in the middle of nowhere. Heartbreaking autumns, killer winters, spring just in the nick of time. Nothing to do but read and write and think. And drink...” With that he nods to the kitchen. I refill his brandy glass. I might defend myself against his criticism but why bother? My college is dead. And, besides, I agree—not in my mind but in my heart—with some of what he is saying. I was a builder president. I built dormitories and labs, an athletic center which Hiram claimed never to have noticed. But even as changes occurred—good changes in some cases, inevitable in others—I liked hearing about that college in the wilderness, a pure small place, without the summer camp counselors and the country club trappings. So I listen, nodding, letting the scorn and nostalgia wash over me, until Hiram notices something wrong.
“What is it, Warren?” he asks, studying me. “You’re more hangdog than usual. As a matter of fact, you look awful.”
“My wife. She keeps telling me it’s time to go. Go to Maine. Where there’s a home waiting for me. And the rest of my life. Carefree golden years. This is over she says, this is our past. And everything she says makes sense. And yet...I can’t bear it.”
“Stay,” Hiram says. “I’ll keep you company. Really. Stay. Better you than someone else. I enjoy your company. This is a small place but it amazes me, how years pass and you never get to know some of the people you see every day. Beyond a certain point. We assume smallness guarantees intimacy. Yes and no. It also enforces distance. Until just lately, anyway. Lately barriers come down. We’re getting to know ourselves better. So, once again: stay. If I can stay,
you can stay. See this out.”
“Alright,” I say. He’s told me what I wanted to hear. And then it comes to me, my boldest stroke ever. “But I have a proposition for you.”
“What might that be?”
“Don’t react right away. Just listen to me.”
“I’m listening.”
I meant much less than has been imputed to me, naming Hiram Wright our provost. I don’t deserve the blame that has been piled upon me, or the credit. I wanted to correct an old wrong, repair a slight to our college’s legend. A small courtesy, that’s all, the last college president looking for a little company in Stribling Hall. To my surprise, he accepted my offer. A few days later, another surprise awaited me.
I’m not sure I had ever seen the two of them together, Hiram Wright and Averill Hayes. Granted, there must have been occasions, receptions of some kind, where they shared a crowded space with many others. But they did not consort until now, when they entered unannounced, sat down unasked.
“Have we interrupted anything?” Hiram asked.
“No,” I said. “Nothing.” What they’d interrupted was my study of a winter sunset, one of those gaudy orange and purple productions that looks like the world is ending, just west of here.
“Well then...” Hiram continued. And stopped, just stopped, which was odd for someone who traded in complete sentences and well-turned paragraphs. It was Ave who continued.
“Look at us,” he said. “I guess this is what they mean when they talk about ‘the old boys club.’ A handful of duffers sitting down.”
“Old we certainly are,” Hiram agreed. “And boys too.”
“Till recently, it would feel like an illegal meeting,” Ave said. “The old boys have been pretty well shredded, but...funny thing...the ones who hate the old boys, they’re not around right now.”