xviii
Prelims

Jack sensed trouble with Virginia Coyle from February 1991. He knew for certain a battle was in the offing when, in April, he reviewed with her as acting assistant dean the letter which he himself, as a member of the Department of English, had written, giving the department’s reasons for not appointing her to a tenure-track position. Still, Jack never expected a State Board of Human Rights investigation. He never expected a law suit or a public trial. He never expected to see Virginia Coyle appointed to a tenure-track position at Novum, never expected to see Virginia Coyle collect any money from him or the University, and he never expected to die.

What Jack did expect is unclear. There would be some sort of complaint against the school, against the department and probably against him personally. Both Newlund and Coyle had made that much clear. Jack regarded the complaint as a ploy, one more maneuver in the knee jerk antagonism between Newlund’s union and Olsen’s administration. Coyle’s remarks suggested that she hoped to leverage Jack’s personal life into reappointment at Novum State. This was a dirty trick, well outside the bounds of labor-management politics. Jack’s relationship with Kelly had no bearing on the department’s collective assessment of Virginia’s professional competence, as any mediator would see. Both faculty and administration were friendly to Jack, fed up to here with Virginia. Coyle and Newlund could only look cheap.

In any case, bad teaching was not to be rewarded with good money. Although Jack was vaguely uncomfortable at Virginia’s innuendoes, on this point he was determined. Not until Novum State, as he put it, “cast him adrift” in 1996, did Jack lose faith. Then came the intrusion of Victoria Nation, and the threat she represented, into Jack’s problems with Virginia. Jack fell into a deep depression from which only Jenny Lynn and Kelly rescued him.

Virginia Coyle played her hand with the finesse of one who had been there before, which, in fact, she had. She understood immediately that Olsen’s tenure-track gambit was being used to lure her out of a position which, theoretically, offered permanent employment without evaluation. She and Newlund filed a formal grievance over the conversion of the fixed-term into a tenure-track position. This was merely a delaying action: SUUFAMP expected to lose its grievance, and it did. Quickly.

Aware that her application for the tenure-track had been rejected even before it was made, Newlund and Coyle did their best to maneuver the department into appearing hostile and prejudiced in its consideration of her application. Their prejudice might be finessed into a position or a cash settlement, either through a negotiated compromise with Novum or an arbiter’s award.

Olsen’s offer of a tenure-track English position for AY 1991-92 came hard on the heels of Jack’s February chat with Virginia. Newlund’s grievance was denied toward the end of the month, which coincided with the end of winter term. SUUFAMP’s contract gave part-time and fixed-term employees the right to “first consideration” for permanent positions, a right which all parties agreed applied to Virginia Coyle. The contract specified no time frame for this consideration, however, and the first week of March was spring break. “Virginia is not legally obligated to work for Novum State between February 22 and March 3,” Newlund reminded Marilyn Schneider. “Come March 4, she will be very busy with spring term classes. As you know she’s teaching a new course this term, the novel.”

“To six students,” Schneider observed wryly.

“Two students or thirty-two, the preparation is the same.”

“I’ll expect a letter of application by the end of the first week of class.”

“I can’t promise anything. The candidate will do her best.”

“I’m sure she will.”

On March 19, Marilyn Schneider found a typed letter in her mailbox:

Marilyn scheduled a department meeting for March 27, and requested in writing, on the afternoon of the 19th, that Virginia provide “whatever materials you might care to provide in support of your application for a tenure-track appointment at Novum State University.” Virginia’s response, in a note of the 25th, was, “It will take some time to assemble the material you requested, and I will, as you know, be out of town during the first few days of April at a professional conference, for which I will be preparing this week. So I cannot possibly have anything to you by the 27th.”

“It is customary for persons applying for positions to offer such support materials as they deem necessary and appropriate without being formally invited to do so,” wrote Marilyn in her formal response of mid-afternoon. “I would have expected any candidate to provide materials with her or his letter of application. You have known of the department meeting to consider your application for the past eight days. You’ve had my request, a professional courtesy, for a week. I will discuss the issue with the department, but my guess is we’ll proceed with our action on your application as scheduled, on Wednesday, basing our decision on whatever materials you have by then provided.”

In lieu of application materials, Virginia sent her union president with a message. “She says she needs more time,” Newlund told Marilyn and others gathered in the department office. “Our position is she deserves it.”

“She’s had since mid-February,” Marilyn pointed out.

“What ‘our’ position?” Jack wanted to know.

“The SUUFAMP’s position.”

“I am SUUFAMP. Marilyn is SUUFAMP. More time is not our position at all.”

“Don’t get yourself in trouble, Charles.”

“Don’t get yourself in trouble,” Jack told Newlund. “Most of your membership is pissed enough with you already.”

“We’ve been through this before,” Newlund warned. “The contract clearly defines conferences as professional activities. Virginia is within her rights in saying the conference prevents her from meeting your deadline on providing materials.”

“She hasn’t been conferencing since the middle of February,” Marilyn pointed out.

“Much, but not all,” Jack added.

“That’s SUUFAMP’s position,” Newlund told her.

“That’s your position.”

“Some members of this department are beginning to sound very prejudiced against the candidate.”

“Forming evaluative judgments is our job.”

“Not until you see the evidence.”

“This isn’t a law court, Brad. We both evaluate and collect evidence. And we’ve collected enough evidence to fry your client, which is obviously what Virginia has become. Of course we’ll give her a fair trial first, then string her up.”

“You shouldn’t have said that, Jack.”

“I didn’t. Marilyn didn’t hear me, and I didn’t say it.”

“Hear what?” Marilyn wanted to know.

“You guys watch your toes.”

On March 27, 1990 the department of English voted to reconvene on April 3 to review Virginia Coyle’s application, and informed her in writing that it “anticipated receiving materials on or before Tuesday, April 2, 1990.”

“There’s nothing to review,” Marilyn told Jack when, late Monday afternoon, he asked to review the Coyle files. “I haven’t seen her all day, either.”

There was nothing to review on Tuesday, April 2, a day when Virginia canceled all three of her classes. “Conference lag,” Haley suggested.

“Even as we speak, Virginia is writing out student evaluations,” Jack joked. “Now one with the left hand. Now one with the right. Now one in pencil. Now one in green ink.”

Wednesday morning brought more nothing. Marilyn phoned Virginia’s apartment: no answer. She posted a note in her mailbox: “The committee meets at 4:00 p.m. to consider your application for a tenure-track position. I anticipate receiving the materials you promised before that meeting.”

“I haven’t got a thing,” Marilyn announced at 4:00. “I suggest we go ahead.”

“We don’t want to give her any opportunity to claim she was discriminated against,” Ed Haley cautioned.

“We’re losing good candidates,” Lloyd Cowley argued. “The longer she stalls us, the more likely it is that our top choices from outside will have jobs by the time we get to them. That’s probably her plan.”

“I say give her one more week.”

“Virginia has had extensions aplenty,” said Marilyn. “I think we should proceed through this vote. And then move on with the search.”

“I didn’t hear that,” said Jack. The department voted one week’s further extension. Marilyn Schneider returned to her office to find a hand written note from Virginia: “I received at 4:15 your message announcing a meeting at 4:00 p.m. today, requesting material from me for that meeting. It’s obviously impossible for me to meet your deadline. This act is but one in a pattern of harassment I have experienced over the past year. My union president will be informed.”

This time even Newlund had to admit Virginia had been allotted time enough. By the time the department met as scheduled on April 10, the candidate had forwarded to Marilyn Schneider the materials she’d been two months in assembling. They consisted of one typed cover letter, one copy of her vita, three conference programs, one of which contained her name, a photostat of one typewritten article and a letter indicating it had been tentatively accepted for publication in Irish Studies Today, and a photocopy of a paper-in-progress.

“Not a single student evaluation,” Ed Haley noted.

“She writes worse than she talks,” Jack noted. “Pure salt water taffy. Try twisting this second paragraph around in your mouth.”

The department discussed Virginia Coyle for nearly two hours, although the actual vote on her application came after thirty minutes. Most of the discussion concerned the amount of detail to offer as reasons for rejecting her application, such as it was.

“If we’re not specific, we sound capricious, discriminatory, prejudiced, irrational. She’s got a law suit,” Jack thought aloud.

Marilyn thought otherwise. “You get sued for what you say, not for what you don’t say. Every time we get in trouble, it’s for offering too much, not for offering too little. If administration wants to elaborate, let them.”

“You mean, let me,” Jack joked nervously.

“You’re in an odd situation,” she agreed.

“I’m a big tough guy.”

“You’re just Olsen’s spokesman. As associate dean you’re covered under their liability insurance. We’re not covered, and firing people is not our job. Let’s keep our letter vague to cover our own asses. And to protect Virginia. This letter is part of her permanent record.”

The department’s best writer was delegated to frame the department’s letter. At first he objected. “I’m not entirely comfortable with this. Virginia has been hostile since last September’s party. I had the talk with her in February. I’ll probably have to talk with her next week. Now you want me to write the letter that sends her down the toilet.”

“I’ve spoken with her many times,” Marilyn said. “I have written her as well. I’ve carried the full brunt of this business so far. She has as much cause to suspect me as you.”

“Lloyd?”

“I’d just say somethin’ that got us all in trouble. You know how I am. And how I feel. I been opposed to her from even before we hired her, and she knows it.”

“Ed?”

“I’d as soon not. You’re the writer, Charles. And the big tough guy.”

Jack’s letter complimented Professor Coyle on her “persistent efforts in the direction of professional development”; moved on to express some concern over student perceptions, “or misperceptions,” of her intentions and methods, to which it attributed their reluctance to remain in her classes or enroll in other classes she taught; and decided, with apparent regret, that Virginia was “a luxury the department could not afford.” Jack wrote the letter in several drafts, each reviewed and edited by the full department. The final draft was indeed a collaborative effort and pleased all who signed it.

“It’s a good letter,” Lloyd Cowley concluded.

“Extremely prejudiced and prejudicial,” Coyle decided, demanding that it be withdrawn from her personnel file. Jack’s union further demanded that the department explain in writing what was meant by “student perceptions or misperceptions” and “a luxury the department could not afford.”

The department did not elaborate on its letter of April 10, 1991.

A week later, at Vice President Olsen’s request, Jack found himself explaining that letter to Virginia.

His speech then was a replay of his talk in February. “Once again,” he told her, “I’d like to keep the specifics off the record, but I’ll spell things out, and we can let them be a part of the record if you wish.”

“Once again, I reject your criticisms of my performance as unfounded in objective fact,” she told him.

“You’ve been through two grade appeals since February alone.”

“Trouble-causers, as I explained to the committee. Their grades were not changed.”

“In both cases, you were directed to reconsider your course grade, which is the most student-friendly verdict an appeals committee can render. At the very least, you cost me, the students, yourself, and your colleagues a great deal of time.”

“I do not apologize for my integrity, Professor Creed.”

“I have prepared here a chart of your grades for fall and winter terms, Professor Coyle: number of A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, No Credits, Withdrawals, and Incompletes.” Jack handed Virginia a chart of grades, including a column marked “percentage of total.”

“Let us compare your grade charts with these charts for both the English department and the University. These are computer-generated from grade sheets and include every grade given in every class taught by the English department and every class in the University. Both totals include your grades. You will notice a remarkable discrepancy between your profile and the department and university profiles in every category: far fewer A’s, B’s, and C’s in your profile, and a much higher percentage of D’s, NC’s, and Incompletes. The percentage of students withdrawing from the class is also significant. I believe we’ve discussed the matter before.”

“The data here are inaccurate,” Virginia insisted.

“Could you point out the inaccuracies?”

“I shall when and if the occasion for doing so arises.”

“This is the occasion.”

“Perhaps there will be future occasions.”

Jack settled back in his chair. “I think these charts will become part of the record,” he announced finally. “If you have specific objections, make them through Brad, and we’ll work through the problems.”

Virginia said nothing.

“As you know, the grade appeals are confidential and will not become part of your file. I’m not going to go into the various stories we’ve all heard: they too are hearsay, and do not belong in a personnel file.

“Here is something which is part of that file.” Jack handed her a photocopy of a letter:

“I verified the story with both the mother and the son,” Jack told Virginia.

“This was a clear case of plagiarism, and I caught the little devil red-handed,” Virginia fumed.

“Did you have the original from which he plagiarized?”

“I recognized the source.”

“Did you show the source to him or his mother?”

“I didn’t have to. He knew what he had done.”

“These are the kinds of things which lie behind the department’s decision on your application,” Jack explained. “The department kept them out of its letter, and I’d as soon keep them out of your file. But if you insist on confrontation, the stories will be told. They do not make you look like a very professional person, Professor Coyle.”

“I am an extremely competent female,” Virginia told Jack. “This institution has historically had difficulty dealing with strong, competent women. I am the most professional person on this faculty, far more professional than any of those who acted on my application.”

“I understand the threat you are making, Virginia, but it’s not going to hold water. I’ll put my vita against your vita any day of the week,” Jack told her.

“One’s vita tells . . . so little of one’s story.”

“I’ll put my professional record against yours any day.”

“I would advise you not to, Professor Creed.”

It was Jack’s turn to sit quietly for a moment.

“Fire away with whatever you think you’ve got,” Jack told Virginia Coyle on April 11, 1991. “Whatever you do, I doubt the department or the university is going to change its position.”

“I have already scheduled a meeting with President Weber,” Virginia told Jack. “You may prevent that meeting if you wish.”

“I am, in this case, speaking for President Weber. Or for his agent, Vice President Olsen. I say what NSU administration has told me to say. You have been talking to President Weber for the last half hour, Virginia.”

Coyle went not to Weber but to Newlund, demanding he file a grievance against the English department, collectively and as individuals.

“Faculty can’t grieve faculty,” Newlund told his client. “We went through that last fall.”

“They’re hostile and prejudiced,” she persisted. “They can’t handle a competent woman. Not even Marilyn Schneider. Especially Marilyn Schneider.”

“A grievance is filed against an employer,” Newlund explained.

“It’s Creed and Schneider. And Haley. And Cowley. They’re all terrified of me because I don’t play their little political game.”

Newlund needed nearly an hour to convince Virginia that any grievance would have to be made against administration, not faculty, and it would have to be procedural. “Let’s focus now on keeping some of that material out of your personnel file, and then grieve the hiring process after it’s complete. I’m still very hopeful of winning a permanent appointment as part of an arbiter’s ruling. That will take time, but I think our chances are good.”

Virginia Coyle’s grievance was still pending when she emptied her office, packed her belongings, and disappeared into the dark of a June night. She had missed most of her spring classes and left without turning in final grades . . . the result, her SUUFAMP president claimed, of stress and mental anguish caused by students, the English department and Novum State administrators. After telephone calls to her 22 students (four in the novel class), Marilyn Schneider filled in grades on Virginia’s three grade rosters.

Despite the stress and anguish which prevented her from meeting classes, and even while badgering Brad Newlund almost daily about her grievance, Virginia Coyle found time to visit the Wisconsin Human Rights Commission in Madison. This was in May, and the visit was unknown to Brad Newlund. Precisely what went on at the Human Rights Commission in the fall of 1991 is confidential. Neither Jack’s lawyers nor the University’s could or would reveal details. “I can say only that she apparently did not present her case well,” the University attorney told Vance Hayes. Another source intimated that Virginia so antagonized the human rights officer that she nearly threw her down the stairs. Virginia kept insisting she’d been grievously mistreated at Novum, and the officer kept insisting she had no case. When Virginia threatened to file a gender harassment complaint about the officer, the woman decided to get Virginia out of her office as expeditiously as possible. “If you are reinstated to your employment at Novum as a result of a labor decision,” she told Virginia, “you will have a weak human rights case. If your grievance at Novum fails and you lose your job, your human rights case will be stronger. Come back after the grievance has been decided.”

At least that’s one story.

The record shows only that Virginia Coyle attempted to file a human rights complaint in spring of 1992, and that she returned two years later, after a ruling on her labor grievance.

The grievance stumbled through stages of hearing and appeal throughout 1992 and 1993, ending up finally in the hands of an arbiter. Taking his own sweet time, the arbiter ruled in October 1993 that Vice President Andy Olsen had acted within his contractual rights in awarding the English department a tenure-track position and concurrently declining to award them a concurrent fixed-term position, and that, despite Virginia’s year of service, both department and administration had followed correct and unbiased procedures in rejecting Virginia Coyle’s application for the tenure-track position.

“Thus it was,” Jack observed with an appropriate appreciation for the irony, “that a case which seriously weakened the union position arose out of the state-wide president’s home school, out of her home department. The ‘right of first consideration’ clause was dropped from our 1994-96 contract, thanks specifically to Virginia Coyle. I liked Linda. I still admire some qualities of Linda. But she let Newlund mishandle the Coyle situation. SUUFAMP would have been just as well off to let Olsen bounce Coyle for cause. Saved us all a lot of trouble.”

“Then Newlund would have had a law suit instead of you,” DeLotta reminded him.

“A most deserving fellow,” Jack observed.

Her grievance lost, Virginia returned in February 1994, to the Human Rights Commission. For whatever reasons—perhaps former Professor Coyle was more persuasive in her presentation, perhaps she had a more sympathetic audience, perhaps the loss of her job had indeed strengthened her case—this officer agreed to investigate the matter. In April 1994 President Weber was informed that the Wisconsin Human Rights Commission was conducting a confidential investigation, and specific charges of human rights violations might be forthcoming regarding Novum’s treatment of one of its former employees, a Dr. Virginia Coyle. The bases for her complaint were both harassment and gender discrimination. President Weber promised the University’s full cooperation.

Jack knew of the 1994-5 investigation, although no specific charges were leveled against him. He was questioned briefly by the human rights investigator in Olsen’s presence. “I told them both that I was quite familiar with harassment regulations and that I had never sexually harassed Virginia Coyle in any reasonable definition of the word. Moreover, I had never seen anything I considered sexual harassment of Virginia, and I had not heard indirectly of any episodes that might be considered sexual harassment.”

One more time Jack reviewed what he remembered to have been the department’s discussion of her tenure-track application, and its reasons for passing negatively on it. He recounted his February and April meetings with Virginia, although he failed to mention the Silver Dollar Bar discussion which had produced the February meeting. He went over the letter he had helped compose on April 10, 1991. He assured the investigator that his reservations about Virginia Coyle’s teaching abilities stemmed entirely from his assessment of her as an individual, and had nothing to do with her being female. He pointed out his especially cordial and professional working relationships with a number of Novum State women.

“Dr. Coyle claims you don’t know how to interact with a competent female.”

“Me personally?”

“She mentioned your name specifically.”

“Tell her she’s begging the question.”

Jack later admitted to having been very upset by the episode. “I thought we had laid the ghost of Virginia Coyle to rest with the labor grievance. I had the notion once again that I was being used as leverage to squeeze some financial settlement out of the institution, because I knew that one way of proving harassment was to demonstrate a pattern of behavior. I figured I’d come out of any Novum State investigation looking like a cradle-robber because of Kelly, and out of any report from Busiris looking like a racist sexist anarchist. My essay on Women’s Lib would be dragged in to prove my difficulties in ‘interacting with a competent female.’ My known friendships with Kesey, Bly, Farmer, Etter, Blei and Dylan weren’t going to help much either. I was very upset about it all. Didn’t sleep well for a month. Ask Kelly.

“I still couldn’t believe Virginia was playing these cards, though, because the more the investigator asked, the more of an earful he got on Virginia Coyle’s teaching history. All the things we’d been trying to keep out of her record, for her sake, were all going right into the record. I couldn’t believe Virginia was doing this to herself.”

Lloyd Cowley was also questioned in this investigation, as were Jack Haley and Marilyn Schneider.

“When the investigation was finished, we held our breath,” Jack remembered, “but I personally figured what the fuck, this is a gender discrimination thing. If there’s a settlement, it will be with the University or the State System. It pissed the shit out of me to think that Virginia might use me—might use Kelly and me—to squeeze some dough out of Novum State. But I didn’t see it as a personal threat.

“When Olsen announced informally in March 1995, that the Human Rights Commission investigation had found no violation of Virginia Coyle’s human rights, we really figured we were out of the woods. Everything was coming up hollyhocks and strawberries. Songs of the North Country was still selling well, and I was a hot item again on the scholarly talk show circuit. Bob Dylan himself wanted me to do his authorized biography. Timm had completed flight school. Jenny Lynn had seen the light, pulled out of Women’s Studies at Bryn Mawr, completed a degree in history at U.W.-Madison, and begun graduate studies at Northwestern. On a fellowship. The kids were independent and so was I. Kelly had finally found a good job in Lake-of-the-Woods. I had the Dylan project. Marilyn, Lloyd, Ed, Kelly, and I went out to The Silver Dollar for a big damned steak dinner. Talk about premature!”

The matter lay dormant and forgotten for half a year, while Coyle went door to door in Madison looking for a lawyer to plead her case. At least five rejected her, including Scott and Daneman, the most prominent Wisconsin specialists in harassment litigation, who told her she had no case. Then she found Roger C. Barclay, new to Madison and to harassment law, a little green, with plenty of time and no reputation to lose. He took Virginia and her non-case on a cash basis.

The suit hit Jack—and the rest of Novum State—like the proverbial ton of bricks.

“I thought we were done with that,” Schneider fumed.

“I didn’t even know you could file a civil suit for human rights violations,” Kelly complained.

“You couldn’t until two years ago,” Lloyd Cowley grumbled.

“Isn’t that a little ex post facto?” Haley asked?

“The new law offers a window of opportunity. To those whom the earlier absence of a law disempowered.”

Not only the fact of the suit itself, but the nature of Virginia’s allegations stunned the defendants. “I can guarantee you there was nothing like this in the 1994 complaint,” Andy Olsen assured Jack. “Items 22, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 35, 37—all new here. None of this was discussed in my presence when the human rights officer talked to you, Ed, and Lloyd.”

“And we never talked to anyone except that day with you.”

“Funny it should come up now,” Ed Haley mused.

“That’s what’s meant by ‘recovered memory,’ ” Jack suggested.

“Convenient, ain’t it?” Lloyd Cowley fumed.

“Of course it never came up before,” Jack told me on the telephone. “She’d threatened to drag me in before, but her accusations were not specific. My guess is the Human Rights officer was smart enough to sort through Virginia’s bullshit and keep her focused on Novum State. The human rights officer was conducting an investigation, not representing Virginia the way Barclay was. Trying to discover facts, not trying to leverage dough out of Novum. Nobody from the human rights office said anything about me and Kelly. Or about me and any other students, past or present. None of that ‘long history of unprofessional relationships’ routine. All that shit is new.

“Well, if you’re going to lie, lie big time. That must be what her hotshot lawyer told Virginia. Or maybe she figured it out when her 1992 complaint wasn’t hot enough, and then her 1994 complaint wasn’t hot enough. Better go for it big time.”

“You do seem to attract the beauties and the bitches,” I told Jack in sympathy. “Sometimes I envy you, and sometimes I do not envy you.”

“I’ll tell you this,” Jack admitted. “I’ve gained a lot of respect for Justice Thomas.”

“Thomas?”

“Yeah, Clarence Thomas. I’ve always figured, sure, yeah, okay. Whatever you say, Clarence, shuck and jive and save your black behind. We all know you were hitting on her. I figured he hit on her, she turned him down flat, then he quit. When he moved to a new job and she accepted his offer of a ride in his new car, he thought she was interested. So he started hitting on her again, and she turned him down, and he let her drop like a stone of her own weight.”

“That’s about what we all thought.”

“But we all figured all the things she said he said were true, right?”

“Yeah, mostly.”

“Like you and Lou and everyone figure all that shit about me at Busiris was mostly true. Right? Come on, now, Tucker, you can admit it. This is your old buddy Jack you’re talking to.”

“Jack, . . .”

“Say no more, Tucker. I’d have thought the same thing about you. Everybody does. That’s the insidious nature of the charges. You can’t shake them.

“Well, shit, I now believe the Judge told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Me offering Virginia Coyle my support in exchange for sexual favors? Calling her up to announce I’m balling some student and would she please change the kid’s grade? That’s a bigger stretcher than Long Dong Silver’s dong. I honestly doubt Thomas said anything at all about Long Dong Silver or public hairs on Coke cans. I would bet the mortgage to my house Hill made that shit up. Women are absolutely, self-servingly vicious. Or they can be when they want to be. I should have remembered.”

Virginia’s civil suit precipitated a meeting of all Novum State defendants in President Weber’s office on November 24th. “The University is represented in legal matters by the Attorney General’s Office in Madison,” Weber announced. “Their lawyers will be representing the University and the State System, and the A.G.’s office will represent all permanent Novum State University administrators. It is our belief at this time that it will also represent faculty members named individually, and Novum faculty who were employed part time in acting administrative positions in 1990-91. Happy Thanksgiving.”

“What do you mean ‘our belief’?” Lloyd Cowley wanted to know.

“I mean that we have every reason to believe the state A. G.’s office will represent you, Jack and Marilyn and Ed,” Weber told him.

“And I asked what do you mean by ‘have every reason to believe’?”

“If you have in fact done something criminally wrong in this case, then . . .” the President’s voice trailed off.

Cowley finished the sentence. “Then we’re shit out of luck.”

“The A. G.’s office is very strong on human rights issues,” Weber told Cowley. “They’ll be talking to all of you, Lloyd, and if they feel they can’t defend you, then . . . you’re going to have to . . . retain your own attorney. Only insofar as you’re named as an individual.”

Lloyd’s face flamed, the red not of embarrassment but of anger. “I’ll tell you something you can tell the A. G.’s office. The only reason any of us had to have anything to do with that bitch was administration’s orders to hire a woman. I said right then that directive was a crock, and nobody believed me. This is where it got us. If this damned school is going to put me in the position of having to deal with a bitch like that—pardon me, Marilyn—then this school can defend me when I get in trouble for acting in the best interests of its students, staff, and administration. If this place—if you, Charlie Weber—can’t do that much for your faculty, then fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”

“I was acting on Andy’s request, as administration’s representative,” Jack reminded Weber.

Cowley charged ahead. “And I’ll tell you another goddamn thing. You can defend all of us from Coyle’s law suit, or you can defend yourself against mine. Mine is going to make hers look like small potatoes. If you want to talk about creating a hostile working environment—you, my friend, have done it.”

President Weber tried to calm Cowley, who was, in truth, an old friend. “Lloyd, if it were up to me, I’d say we’re all in the same ship. I can’t make promises for the A. G.’s office.”

“Lloyd’s right,” Marilyn told the president. “Administration is 100% responsible for Virginia Coyle. We picked her pretty far down a pool that Andy Olsen mandated.”

Jack supported Marilyn. “The only reason we became in any way involved with Virginia Coyle is through our employment at Novum State. The only reason any of us is involved in this action is Novum State’s deep pockets. She can’t get anything out of me: what there was, Rose Marié and Bryn Mawr already took. She’s not going to get much out of Lloyd or Marilyn or Ed, either. We’re in this because of Novum State. Okay, I’m employed by Novum and I’ll admit Novum has taken good care of me. So I’ll help Novum out. But Novum better help me. Quid pro quo. If NSU’s quo disappears, my quid disappears. And Novum will not win any suit without my testimony, because Andy Olsen put me right at the center of this mess.”

“I can’t make promises,” Weber told the group.

So Roger C. Barclay began his investigation of Creed, Cowley, Schneider, and Haley, and the Attorney General’s office began its investigation of Creed, Cowley, Schneider and Haley to see if they could defend the foursome from Barclay’s investigation.

“I’m being investigated by my own lawyer,” Jack told Kelly that afternoon. “Sounds like some of Paul Lewinski’s Russian stories.”

“How many investigations does it take?” Kelly wanted to know.

“Some swords hang over your head forever. From the sounds of things, they’ll be getting into you and me. Either our lawyers or theirs.”

“You and me is none of their business. Linda Tholen said so.”

“I’ll try to keep us out.”

“You ought to sue Coyle. She did nothing but harass you ever since she set foot on campus.”

“Men don’t sue women for harassment.”

“I should sue her.”

“Yeah, you could sue her.”

“If she sends her lawyers snooping around my man, I’ll shoot her. I grew up with a 22 in my hands.”

“Don’t get yourself in trouble, honey. This too shall pass.”

For two months the defendants heard nothing from either Virginia’s lawyer or their own. Two months of suspension and anxiety. Then the A.G.’s office sent an investigator to Lake-of-the-Woods to interview defendants preliminary to depositions. Not ten minutes into his interview, Jack made a strategic error. The investigator was asking for specifics on the conversation of February 11th. “Did you keep any written notes?” she wanted to know. “Contemporaneous written documents always carry more weight in court than memory.”

“The conversation was off the record,” Jack pointed out. “Neither of us took notes.”

“Did you write anything down immediately afterward?”

“There might be something in my diary. I’d have to check.”

“You keep a diary?” the woman wanted to know.

Jack’s diary, of course, led to Kelly Ayers. Nobody in Madison knew Kelly Ayers from Eve. They knew nothing of her perspective on the student-teacher romance, and they certainly didn’t know that Kelly was in 1996 the second Mrs. Charles Creed, and had been for some years. She was merely a troublesome name in Jack’s diary, a student with whom one of the defendants was obviously involved.

On February 13, 1996 Jack received a registered letter from the Office of the Wisconsin State Attorney General:

Jack ranted. Kelly raged.

“I can’t believe you gave them your own diaries. Even I can’t read your diaries. You don’t let anybody read your diaries. How could you give your diaries to a lawyer?”

“She asked for them.”

“They’re personal. There must be all that stuff about us. . . .”

“I gave them only spring of 1990 to summer of 1991.”

“That’s us.”

“It should demonstrate clearly that I acted without malice toward Virginia. And certainly without sexual interest.”

“You violated confidences with me to appease Virginia Coyle?”

“Look, Kelly, I don’t need a lot of shit on this. It’s not like I published them in the newspapers, you know.”

“So this bitch has photocopied ‘appropriate passages,’ and is passing them around Madison. Maybe she’ll send them to Weber. Maybe she’ll share them with Coyle’s lawyer. Maybe she’ll publish them in the Capital Times.”

“I thought it would help the case.”

“It didn’t help you. I wish you’d be more selfish sometimes.”

“You got that right.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“One thing you do, you get your diaries back and all the copies. That’s a start. Then you hire yourself a good lawyer.”

“Who has money for a good lawyer?”

“Who can afford not to hire a good lawyer?”

“I hired a good lawyer once. All he did was fuck me over and charge me for it.”

“Well, you get the diaries back.”

This much Jack managed on his own. “The diaries were provided voluntarily in the spirit of client-lawyer confidentiality,” he wrote Karen Kerr. “What you have done violates that confidentiality. Possibly it violates copyright law. You will return originals and all copies to me immediately.”

A month later, Jack’s diaries were back in his own hands. The originals at least. How many copies circulated around Madison he had no way of knowing.

The problem was that Roger C. Barclay got wind of the fact that there were diaries, so naturally he wanted diaries. And he wanted diaries all the way back to the 1970s.

Barclay’s request for diaries, with the threat of a subpoena, prodded Jack finally to seek legal council. He had gone March, April, May and June of 1996 pretty much on his own, confident in the justice of his own cause and more confident that once he was cut from deep-pockets Novum State, Virginia Coyle’s interest in him would evaporate. “I will walk into the court, raise my hand on a Bible, and tell the jury what I know. I really don’t think any jury is going to award Virginia Coyle very much of my money.”

After the request and the threatened subpoena, he drew a line. “Virginia’s paranoid fantasies, or malicious inventions, are not an invitation to you or anyone else to rummage through my entire private life,” he wrote Barclay. “The answer is NO.”

“Why didn’t you say they were lost?” Kelly wanted to know.

“The A.G.’s office just had them.

“Tell him they sent them back, with all copies, but they got lost in the mail. Tell him they got thrown into Lake Mendota by that crazy carrier last month. Tell him the others were stored out in the old chicken shed, but it burned down. What the fuck does he know.”

“I’ve always been such an honest man,” Jack lamented.

“There’s a time for honesty, and a time for dishonesty. Learn from your sweetie.”

The question which haunted Jack, and the real reason he went looking for a lawyer, was the extent to which Virginia Coyle could move, or already had moved into his years at Busiris. In seeking a lawyer, Jack was protecting himself, but he was also protecting Kelly . . . and Lily Lee.

Jack’s quest for legal representation took him first to SUUFAMP.

“Not a thing we can do in these cases,” Brad Newlund told Jack. “I’m really sorry. I’m a male too. But sexual harassment—discrimination in general—is just one thing the union can’t defend its members on. We’d be setting ourselves up for a law suit. SUUFAMP has a definite policy on this.”

“Entirely self-serving policy. Probably saves you big bucks.”

“It’s never come up before, to my knowledge. The law is less than a year old now. You and Linda and Ed and Lloyd are the test case.”

“So this union, into which I have paid big bucks for the past decade, which worked very energetically in support of possibly the most incompetent teacher I ever knew, a woman whom we all agreed was a disaster . . . this union now tells me it can’t defend me against slander and libel that could easily ruin my career and will absolutely end any plans I might have had for advancement? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“It’s all procedural,” Newlund told Jack.

“Procedural my ass. This harassment shit has you yuppie liberals shivering like hares and scurrying like cockroaches. You’re despicable. And from now on, I’m fair share in this union.”

Rebuffed by the union and suspicious of Lake-of-the-Woods lawyers, Jack looked to greater Wisconsin and, finally, out-state. “When people in Wisconsin heard the A. G.’s office had cut me loose, they would have nothing to do with the case. Then I thought of Minnesota, because people there are so much into harassment law. Minnesota inflicted upon us Catharine MacKinnon, the later-day Volstead. Populism and Puritanism are Minnesota’s legacy, and I thought people would have more experience dealing with that shit in our good neighbor to the west. Everyone I talked to there was a full-tilt feminist victim type. All I got from them was the sense that I—we—were in serious shit . . . and the growing conviction inside myself that some stand had to be taken.

“Then somebody at Alley Press—which is really tied to Robert Bly—mentioned a New York outfit called the Coalition of Free Men who might, they thought, offer legal advice and maybe financial support. You could have knocked me over with a feather when C. F. M. mentioned the name Marcus DeLotta.”

DeLotta took the case immediately, pro bono humanitatis. “We are going to take this case right to them,” DeLotta promised his old friend. “And the minute anybody opens his or her fat yap about Busiris, we are going to shove a lawsuit so far up their ass they’ll be able to spit turds. I see megabucks in this situation. Not to mention an opportunity to settle some old scores and do American men some good in their on-going battle against feminist assholes. I personally have had it up to here with fundamentalists, fuddy-duddies, fruit cakes and feminists. The counter-attack on the 4-Fs starts now.”

DeLotta’s counter-attack had actually begun some years previous, upon his departure from Busiris in 1971. He’d kicked around college teaching for a few years, growing like the rest of us increasingly frustrated with America in the 1970s. Unlike the rest of us, including Jack, he had the courage to opt out of the education business. “Law is clearly where the power lies today,” he told me and Jack one evening. “Step back from the picture three and a half steps and you’ll see it clearly. Law governs education. Law governs business. Law governs sports. Half the sporting news you read is legal news. The new laws of victimology and affirmative action determines what books get published and taught; what businesses will pay how much to whom for remarks made, accidents suffered, or posters displayed on their premises; even what major league baseball owners will or will not be allowed to exercise control over the teams they own. In America, law is now the supreme power.

“And if you want the money and the power to rub off on you, you have to hang out where the power and the money are.

“Besides, I promised myself that if there was ever to be another Busiris Tech, I was going to be in the power position. Once around as the fuckee is plenty for me. You’d have been a real chump to walk in there alone. The law would have eaten you alive.”

DeLotta arrived on the scene in July 1996 with the zeal of a man on a mission. On two missions, really. By the end of the month he had written the Attorney General’s office demanding that Karen Kerr be fired and disbarred for unprofessional behavior. Representing Kelly Creed, DeLotta had filed suit against Roger C. Barclay for invasion of privacy and harassment. Representing Jack he had filed suit against Novum State University and the State University System of Wisconsin for harassment and violation of civil liberties. Against SUUFAMP collectively and Newlund individually he had filed a suit for breach of contract. “I don’t think these suits will amount to a hill of beans,” he confided in Jack, “but my arguments are more cogent than hers against you, or the cases against either of us back at Busiris. Besides, they might set some things up for someone else three, five years down the line. Why should you take all the hits?”

In August, DeLotta turned his attention to Busiris. His long, accusing finger winged its way south into the darkness of the American heartland. “I don’t mind telling you how much pleasure I took in introducing myself as the attorney of their former Pulitzer Prize-winning associate professor of English. I was very low key. At first nobody in administration recognized me, but they all knew your name, and they were walking on eggshells. It’s like, ‘He’s come. Didn’t we know it was only a matter of time.’

“By the second day they knew my name as well, and a more terrified bunch of Yahoos you have not seen. People tripped over each other to assure me they ‘had not been at Busiris during the Creed years.’ They are so absolutely full of righteous shit, you would not believe.

“Incidentally, your woman—Martin, Olivia—is no longer there. She left under some cloud—I’m not sure what—related to those letters. Her replacement is, you’ll love this, one Francine Fitzner, Ph. D. Bryn Mawr, 1986. Francine is a grad school chum and probable lover—although I would deny in court having ever said as much—of your former colleague and still director of a conspicuously under-enrolled Busiris Women’s Studies Program, The Victorian Nation herself.

I did not speak with Vicky. She’s reportedly as full of venom and spite as ever. I thought she was a preacher’s kid.”

“Preacher’s kids have a lot to deal with.”

“Might be using feminism’s attack on patriarchal Christianity as a means of rebelling against her father,” Marcus mused.

“Feminism should go easy on Christianity,” Jack said. “Christianity takes women half way to feminism: frees them from sex. Christianity allows women to birth the godhead without having to fuck a male. Think of that, Marcus. A significant stride, eh? And when the godhead is born, he’s everything a woman would want: kind, sensitive, gentle, loving, nice to his mommy. And a virgin. Christianity relieves women of all sexual obligations. It marginalized blue-collar men, real men, the carpenter man, while elevating the sexless female. It’s about as proto-feminist a religion as the world has to offer. All that’s left for feminism is to eliminate the godhead altogether and let women bond with women.”

“That’s Francine and Vicky. Ms. Fitzner is also in some terms, I will not describe them as intimate, with the plaintiff, whom she met back in 1987 at one of those NEH-funded summer institutes for college professors on ‘Women of the Revolution(s)’.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“In other words, Jack’s old pal, Virginia Coyle, Francine Fitzner, and Miss Vicky have been talking about you ever since Novum State interviewed Virginia in the spring of 1990, and you, foolish fellow, mentioned your book Age of Faith—remember now?—which indicates under “notes on the author” that he lives in Riverton, Illinois, and teaches English at Busiris Technical University. Hand it to Virginia: she did her homework. Took the book out of the library, read up on you, and recognized Busiris as the school which employed her friend of the summer previous. The rest you may surmise.”

“Son of a fucking bitch.”

“You may also surmise that Francine Fitzner has leaked every document in your file to Virginia Coyle and Roger C. Barclay. You didn’t notice some uncanny similarities between Reich’s letter in your Busiris file and Barclay’s complaint of last November? Wake up and smell the horse turds. I don’t think you’d be much wrong if you surmised that you’ve been set up from day one, before Coyle was fired—excuse me, not hired—and years before Barclay ever arrived on the scene.

“Because here’s the other part of the news. Your woman Coyle is far more adroit at scheming schemes than she is at research or teaching. If she put into teaching or research the energy she puts into law suits, she’d out-publish you. Except she’s a one string fiddle.

“The degree comes with one huge black ink spot, which I probably can’t erase without spending a few days in the United Kingdom. What it amounts to is a very suspect examination record at University College-Dublin and a thrice-rejected dissertation (from what I can gather, one outside examiner wanted her dismissed from the program), followed by a law suit or the threat of a law suit (I’m unclear on this) over (get this) ‘unwelcomed sexual advances by her advising professor and one other member of the examining committee.’ Interestingly, a virtually unaltered dissertation was accepted almost without challenge upon the next presentation.

“Another enormous cloud obscures the woman’s career in Los Angeles. Seems she left Mt. St. Mary’s before the end of her first year in a tenure-track position. I think she was already unemployed when you folks interviewed her on the telephone. She left with a string of student complaints long as your left arm. Apparently the kids were ready to lynch her. I mean, this woman was universally hated. ‘And anoder ting, Stella, about ‘bout your sister’: immediately after being dismissed by her previous employer Dame Coyle filed suit against them for, you’re never going to guess so I suppose I’ll have to tell you, sexual harassment and sexual discrimination. This woman just can’t get enough of other men not getting enough of her! That suit was going on throughout 1990-91—you wondered why she was so often out of town—until it was settled out of court, for a sizable amount of cash. $250,000 plus lawyer’s fees to be exact. In March 1991. The reason Virginia Coyle had trouble assembling materials to support her application for the tenure-track at Novum State is that she was wrapping up her six-figure settlement in California. Probably she was setting you guys up for the suit here while she was billing you for the meals and motels there. $250,000 kind of gave her the taste. Without any shadow of a doubt, it is money from that settlement which is paying Barclay’s fat fees as Coyle goes for the gold once more.

“Didn’t you people do any background check on this woman before you hired her?”

DeLotta’s revelations left Jack ecstatic, anxious, relieved, troubled.

“How many times does it take before I begin to learn?” Jack wondered aloud.

“She’s been setting you up—you personally and the whole school—since she arrived in Wisconsin,” DeLotta told Jack. “I personally suspect your union and your administration set you up too.

“You want to know what I think? You’re a big boy, you can take this. I think Coyle has already spilled the Busiris beans. On the QT. I think the beans were spilled way back in 1991, when Coyle left your office for the President’s. Maybe even before. I think that’s why you were assigned to write the negative recommendation on Coyle, and you were assigned to do all the talking to her. I think Olsen, possibly on instructions from Weber, used you to trash Coyle. If things get ugly, he’ll use Coyle to trash you. With the acquiescence of your man Newlund and possibly with the approval of your woman Tholen, although I haven't been able to figure out yet where she stands. Weber and the State System boys are pressuring Judge Mortland to cut you from the herd and schedule your trial ahead of theirs. Depending on what comes out there, they’re going to save themselves by cashiering you.”

Jack could only shake his head.

“The funny thing is, Coyle and Barclay don’t understand any of this. They’re not in cahoots with Olsen. Barclay thinks he’s going to destroy you, collecting nickels and dimes, then go after big bucks from Novum, claiming they were criminally negligent in visiting such a known menace to society on his poor client. I’m not sure Barclay knows his client’s background much better than you folks did when you hired her. Barclay is a very sloppy lawyer, and he takes much of what Coyle tells him at face value. He thinks once he’s done with you, Novum will settle quick and easy. Olsen will watch you go down, then defend Novum to the general public by blaming all Coyle’s problems on you. In dealing with Barclay, Olsen plans to wait until your trial is finished, then confront Barclay with Coyle’s background, and offer a cheap settlement he figures they won’t be able to refuse.

“Of course he could expose Coyle before your trial, but he’s afraid the cloud will hang, and he’s looking for a fall guy. You go down, she goes away. Then, with tremendous regrets of course, he’ll have to discipline you.”

Jack sat silent.

“That’s a lot to digest,” he told his old friend.

“It is. I could be wrong on some of this, but I don’t think so.”

“I’m not sure I’m up for this one.”

“It might get very, very messy. Or, if we get a few good rulings from a sympathetic judge, it might not.”

“I don’t know if I’m up for this.”

“It’s a fight that somebody has to fight.”

“I’m fifty years old. You’re fifty years old. We fought our battles in the sixties and seventies, when we were young men who could drink and fuck all night and march all day and then do it all again and again. I can’t do that shit no more. Ask Kelly.”

“This is very doable.”

“It would take ten years to see things through. We both know how the law works. A young man comes from the country seeking admittance, spends his entire life and fortune, and never gets through the first gate. When he’s completely exhausted and ready to croak, the gatekeeper tells him, ‘You had a perfect right to this gate. It was made just for you. Too bad, buddy.’ Fuck that shit.”

“This is your battle. It’s been your battle for fifteen years.”

“It’s the young ones’ battle. Fuck: I got two good books. Pretty soon I’ll have a third, a huge book. I have delivered Timm and Jenny Lynn safely to their maturity. They don’t need my dough. I cave in, settle for peanuts with Virginia, which they take because they think they’re getting big bucks from Novum. And I better settle quickly before they figure out otherwise. I take whatever settlement Novum offers me, which will be okay, $60,000, a year’s salary. Maybe two. Enough to pay the farm off. Hell, all we owe is about $10,000 now. Kelly works. I write. This Dylan biography is going to make me a million dollars. Not to mention famous again. If academia is going to hell, let the Newlunds of the system inherit the mess they’re making. If the country is going to hell, that’s the young people’s problems. If they’re too damned lazy, or stupid, or distracted, or spaced out, or busy making money to know somebody’s sticking a needle in their arm, then fuck ‘em. I’m tired of fighting people’s battles for them and being kicked in the balls for it. I am tired.”

“At least hear me out, okay?”

“I am listening, comrade. I am listening.”

“The key to the whole business is Busiris. That’s where Coyle thinks she’s got you. That’s where Nation is foaming at the mouth. That’s where Olsen thinks he uses you as fall guy. At Novum you’re squeaky clean: Mr. Nice Guy, not a student complaint to his name—I’ve checked your personnel files: they’re exemplary. People kill for files like yours. You’re a damned saint. In the Busiris files you’re this insane racist, sexist, anarchist with the long beard and Molotov cocktails in each hand. The Novum Creed nobody touches. Unless they get to the Busiris Creed, they’re done.

“If we want, and notice I am saying if we want, I think we can keep Busiris out of this one of three ways. First, we might get Mortland to rule anything related to your past or Coyle’s inadmissible evidence, on the grounds it’s prejudicial, or irrelevant, or . . . well, I can think of a dozen arguments. Right now Barclay would fight that, because he’s naive about Coyle, but he might lose. He should hope he loses. I might add that this kind of a ruling would be a great victory for harassment law in general. You’re the perfect person to establish that precedent: a golden record here, long before Coyle showed up, a known record of supporting women, Blacks, etc. The cause—and my future clients—would benefit from such a precedent, if we can set that precedent. I remind you I’m defending you gratis for the good of the cause.

“Or maybe Mortland does not rule our way. Brings us to option two. Option two is we confront Barclay with his client’s history. I’m betting he hasn’t a clue, because no lawyer in his right mind would knowingly take this kind of marginal case from a psycho like Virginia Coyle. Take a case like that and you’re guaranteed to lose in court, and you won’t get any meaningful settlement out of court, as Barclay has already seen. Even if she pays him cash up front for his time as she goes—which Virginia is apparently doing—he’s undermined his reputation. So we confront him on Coyle’s past and cut a deal: your history is untouchable, her history is untouchable. Case goes to trial on its own merits.

“Fifty-fifty Barclay takes that deal, because left to its own merits the case collapses even if you did offer to trade support for sex. She’s just too bad a teacher. But that’s option number two.

“Third option is we let him bring all the Busiris he wants. Nation, Fitzner, personnel files, police investigations of your merry pranks if they can get them, the works. They have their shit, we have our shit. And we have plenty of shit. We line up all the guns and shoot them off and see who’s standing when the smoke clears.”

“Then everybody’s covered with shit.”

“Everyone is covered with shit, but you win this one, Jack. You win very big time, and here’s the reason. You ready for the reason? Here’s the reason.

“Number one, all the police records clear you of every damned thing that went down at Busiris. I saw a dozen reports, Jack, a fucking dozen investigations. Did you know these were going on? And thorough? You can’t believe how thorough. Man, did they have a hard on for you! The FBI investigated the letters. Every fucking one clears you. You got a sterling endorsement from the Riverton Police . . . also a tremendous police harassment case, which Barclay would generously reclaim from the statute of limitations by bringing them into the open in 1996. So I think Barclay is shit out of luck there.

“Reason number two. I talked to some people in Riverton when I was there. Yvonne Gayle about died when I called on her. I mean, she literally nearly died of a stroke. You don’t remember her. Why am I not surprised? Yvonne Gayle wrote the letter that stipulates her name not be released without her permission! I found her name, and I found her. She’s married now. Has three kids now. Not a good looking woman. She wrote the letter because she flunked out of school and needed a good story to tell her parents. You never fondled her tits. You never invited her to bed.”

“Shit.”

“She still thinks she didn’t get a fair shake in your class and she wasn’t exactly sick when they canned you, but she’s feels very bad about having written the letter. Said she watched the whole Hill-Thomas hearings and had nightmares, and not out of sympathy for what Hill claimed to have gone through. What’s really got her upset, of course, is that Busiris leaked her name. She’s terrified of a suit from you, and she’s probably ready for a suit against them. For breach of promise. We’re talking. So this woman doesn’t testify. Guaranteed.

Alonzo Jackson was ready to write out a check for your legal fees. I shit you not. There is a man who feels really, really guilty. Alonzo might be our most useful witness if we need him. Even in Lake-of-the-Woods, people have heard of the Chicago Bulls. If Barclay ever talks to Jackson, he’s going to stay away from the whole business down there just to keep Jackson off the stand.

“I also caught up with your old friend Blondie Robertson. Yessir, I talked to Leanna. She too is married. She too has a kid. She too is sick. She didn’t love you, she loved the Polish kid, Paul what’s his name. Robertson trashed you to trash him . . . well, it’s not that simple, but that’s what it boils down to. Maybe she liked you too. I got that impression. Anyway, she’s a lot more mature now than she was in 1985, and she feels absolutely sick. They paid her off with a position in Admissions, in case you didn’t know that. It turns out she became a great fan of your Lily Lee Martin, and left when Martin left. Or right after. She, incidentally, did not stick the knife in Martin’s back. Blame Jones-Nation, who went on a bit of a power trip, savaging Reich and Hauptmann along the way. Robertson does not testify.

“The others, I don’t know. What they’ve got to say is not going to hurt you. You know where they were coming from, and when the whole truth is told, they look like jerks.

“Conversely, I talked to a dozen people who can help you and want to help you. You can’t believe the friends you still have down there. If they want to open Busiris, we can bring in people to testify, we bring in depositions from as many people as give you depositions. So help me, I will bet my three years’ fees to your three years’ salary you come out of court looking like a damned martyr. I further bet that Barclay, once his bluff is called and he really looks into your history, folds like a poker player with a pair of treys.

“Your problems with Virginia, incidentally, end there as well.

“But here is the best part, the part that has them shitting their pants in Riverton. Once we’re done in Wisconsin, we go to work in Illinois. Slander. Defamation. Negligence in compiling a file. Negligence in maintaining the file. Negligence in leaking the file. Breach of contract in maintaining the file. I talked to your man Stella down there. Not a bad guy, actually. Good Sicilian. For a cut, he would be very useful to us. And, as regards old BTU, he too has seen . . . the error of his ways.

“There is a ton of money in this for you, Jack. If the cards fall right, you’d never have to teach again.”

“I love teaching. I draw a tremendous energy off students, even the young ones. Especially the young ones.”

“They seem to think you give them something in return.”

“So once again The Kid finds himself at a crossroads,” Jack mused aloud. Once again. Last time The Kid turned around and walked away.”

“Not without . . . leaving his mark, Jack.”

“You know, looking back I think that even Novum State Associate Dean Charles Creed would have called Busiris Assistant Professor Jack Creed in for a little talk. Of course it would have been a different kind of a talk. But I think that I’d have had a chat with both of us.”

“How come a decent fellow like you has all these problems with women, Jack?”

Jack thought a minute. “Because I give them a lot, but it’s never enough. They always want more. Does that make sense?”

“Absolutely.”

“Our most righteous crusades were always against the liberals. Most people don’t know who their real friends are.”

Jack looked over DeLotta’s shoulder, as if staring through the wall to some invisible point four hundred miles and a million lightyears distant.

“Tell me something,” Marcus asked Jack. “Off the record. Was it you?”

“Marcus. Buddy. Don’t tell, don’t ask.”

“Lawyer-client privilege.”

“Well, I’m not going into all that, Marcus.”

“Off the record, Jack: was it you?”

“Off the record, Marcus . . . it was not. I didn’t do a damned thing after February 1985. Maybe I know who did, and maybe I don’t. I’m not saying, even to an old friend like you. I will say I had friends. Apparently I taught them well.”

“I’ll accept that. Although I don’t entirely believe it.”

“You’re a smart lawyer, Marcus. You’d have made one hell of a college professor.”

“I got another one for you.”

“Confidence time.”

“Just when did you make up your mind you were leaving Busiris?”

“Well. That’s another one of those things.”

“What a fuckin’ place, eh?”

“We pulled some shit.”

“You remember the ‘Free John Sinclair’ concert in Ann Arbor?”

“John and Yoko Ono.”

“John Lennon, the Beatle, seven years on.”

“And Stevie Wonder.”

“You remember the gymnasium construction boycott?”

“The Fucking Outsider.”

“The Melvin Laird visit?”

“You wanted to see slick shit, you should have been around when Lily was president of B.S.A.”

“We pulled some shit.”

“Time it was. I have a photograph.”

“So are you fighting, or have you already made up your mind to sneak out the back door again?”

“There’s no underground service tunnel this time, except for Kelly.”

“Then you’re going to fight? There’s a ton of money in this, Jack. Pull the lever, watch the tumblers come up cherries, see a ton of good come out of the machine.”

“Let me sleep on it,” Jack Creed told his lawyer friend.

“And I want to talk to some people.”