viii
Assassination

John Charles Creed did not come to the events of February 8, 1985 unwarned, although administration had done its best to keep it all hid. Lily Lee’s Guidelines on Sexual and Racial Harassment, circulated in the fall of 1984, should have tipped him off. New rules are always designed to hang somebody. Administrative reaction to Jack’s critique of the document, published in the Sentinel, should have been another sign. Old Main remained absolutely aloof from a debate that ran to three weeks and sixteen letters, columns, and articles. Not a word from Reich, Hauptmann, or the author of the Guidelines. And Victoria Nation had been skulking around the corridors of Busiris Hall for the better part of fall term. Clearly Jack was being given rope enough to hang himself.

The very scheduling of a meeting late on Friday afternoon should also have suggested trouble of a serious nature. Jack’s previous altercations had been settled over the phone or in the middle of the week. Marcus, Finkelstein, and Browne were all taken out on a Friday afternoon, in classic corporate America busts. Bring ‘em in after everyone else has left for the weekend. Tell ‘em to clean out their desks by Saturday noon. When Monday rolls around and the rest of the office finds out, the problem kids are long gone. What’s the use of raising a stink?

Jack’s friends on the faculty were kept pretty much in the dark, of course, including Lou Feracca and me. We didn’t even know about the meeting until after the fact. Jeremy Jones did, but said nothing. Attempting to exculpate himself, he gave himself away: “When they asked me, I just said, ‘Well leave me out of this one. I’m a friend of his.’ ” Jones claimed to have been “on his knees” the whole first week of February, although this too he revealed after the fact.

Undergraduate friends were more savvy and more forthcoming, most notably Jack’s cheerleader friend Carolyn McQuillan and his Polish buddy Paul Popowski. In mid-December, Carolyn had drawn Jack aside after a Bucks game. “Blondie Robertson is having some kind of meeting about you this weekend,” she informed him. “I wasn’t invited because she knows we’re tight, but a couple of other English majors are going. I’ll try to find out what it’s about. I promise to let you know.” Jack thanked her. The subject was never again discussed, although Jack saw Carolyn (and Blondie, who was a member of the pompom squad) at virtually every Bucks game between December and February 11.

Jack forgot the matter.

Sometime around February 3 or 4th, another English major, Joline Harte, reported to Jack that when she’d complained to the dean about her psych. class, all Hauptmann wanted to discuss was her departmental advisor. Was Professor Creed meeting his classes regularly? Was he prepared for his classes? How did he treat her? How did he treat women and minority students in general? Was Professor Creed really the chauvinist his writing made him appear? Jo had received the distinct impression that complaints were being solicited. Jo told Hauptmann she considered Charles Creed the best teacher in the department and possibly in the school, the best advisor a student could have, the best friend a woman could have.

So Jack was aware of trouble brewing, although he had no idea how serious that trouble would be. Whatever it was, he considered Carolyn and Jo not a part of it. They were his kind of people, part of a saving remnant in a rising mass of mediocrity. So what was new? Charles Creed had always known he had friends . . . and enemies.

Paul Popowski brought a third warning the day of the 8th, during a burger-and-beer lunch at Tookey’s Tap.

Feracca and I were not there. We were not purposefully absent, as Charles in his paranoia later suspected, but Charles told me later that Paul described at 12:30 precisely what would transpire at 4:00.

Jack and Paul talked maybe five minutes about the semester break and the new term. Then Paul came to the point with the directness of a man on a mission. “Word is that Blondie Robertson is getting you busted this May on a sexual harassment charge,” he announced.

“That’s the first I’ve heard about that,” Jack answered, which was not entirely true. “I meet with the Vice President this afternoon at 4:00. Maybe Blondie is what that meeting is all about.” Jack told Paul what he’d heard from Jo and Carolyn.

“Blondie says it’s all settled,” Paul said. “Come May, you’re gone. She seems pretty smug.”

Jack assured his young friend that he had never harassed Leanna Robertson. That he had no interest in Leanna Robertson. That he had never expressed the slighted interest in Leanna Robertson. “Blondie is a Young American for Freedom. I’m interested strictly in Students for a Democratic Society,” Jack told Popowski. Then he explained Y. A. F. and S. D. S. to twenty-two-year-old Paul, who had heard of neither. Nor had Popowski heard the story of the 1971 dismissals, or the firings of Marcus DeLotta, Aaron Finkelstein, and Ben Allan Browne.

“Heavy shit,” Popowski agreed.

“It’s every bit as ugly hanging around the Busiris ink well as thinking about the D. C. government.”

“What does Blondie have on you, Professor Creed?”

“I know she got pretty punched out of shape over my reading of Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’.”

“I was in that class.”

“The ‘Howl’ business is all I can think of, really. She hasn’t taken a class from me since her freshman year. We don’t get along, for the same reasons you and she don’t get along. I don’t respect what she represents, and I suppose she doesn’t respect what I represent. The difference is that you and I are willing to live and let live. She, I’m afraid, is not.”

“The real difference is that you’re willing to admit you have a body, and she has yet to come to terms with hers. She’s a senior, Dr. Creed, and still a virgin, if that tells you anything. She’s a pompom girl, but she’s still living in 1954.”

“I see her at the Bucks games. She was Kappa Delta’s homecoming queen candidate.”

“She was, until the Women’s Studies people convinced her that was uncool.”

“Hanging out with Miss Vicky can’t help her any,” Jack mused. “Although I could tell you some stories about Victoria Nation.”

“Like?”

“I could, but I won’t. Anyway, Blondie will one day repent her misspent youth. Probably she does already, subconsciously. But women are a complex mix of impulses, Paul. As I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“Tell me, Dr. Creed.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“There was a meeting at Blondie’s place. She and a bunch of other girls from the Women’s Studies Program.”

“This also I know.”

“They’re pretty tight about what went on. Carolyn and Jo think it has something to do with PP 469 last fall.”

PP 469 was something Jack did not know.

“Women’s Studies 469, Professor Nation’s seminar in applied feminist politics. We’ve been calling it ‘Pussy Power for 69.’ Get it? The women were very close about what went on in that class, but apparently the general idea was to translate theory into action. If you can imagine any of those broads actually doing anything besides bitch and whine. Carolyn suspects their action involves you. Anyway, I overheard Blondie mouthing off about getting you railroaded out of here. When she noticed me, she shut up real quick. I’d take her seriously, Professor Creed. And watch out for Sandy the Chaste, and Annie Brower too. Man, she doesn’t like you. Did you fuck her and dump her or something?”

“Would I tell you if I had?” Jack asked. “You’re one of my best friends right now, and I trust you. I tell you that sincerely. We share a lot of things, Paul. But whether or not I’m banging Annie Brower would be a strictly private matter.

“I have not, incidentally, been intimate with Ms. Brower. Nor with Miss Chase. Annie B. took me for freshmen comp., creative writing, and world literature . . . at least until she dropped the class. Been following me around for two years. She’s cute, but she’s not bright. Annie’s young. Not too young for you, Paul, but way too young for me. Although in a way I agree with you guys: Annie B. cool.”

“That may be something you don’t know, Professor Creed,” Popowski informed his mentor. “Annie no longer be cool. She took Professor Nation’s Women’s Studies class and has been a different woman ever since. Maybe that’s why she dropped your class. Something else you might not know: Annie B. spent her first two years at Busiris going down quick and easy for every frat boy on the row. Used to call her ‘Annie Hinge Heels.’ Now you date her six weeks without getting into her pants. The frat boys blame Professor Nation. Sigma Nu has a stuffed effigy of Professor Nation hanging in their entrance hall. It’s got a witch’s cap and in its hands a little doll full of pins, labeled ‘Annie B.’ Annie was at Blondie’s meeting. So was Sandy the Chaste. I’d be careful.”

“If Blondie Robertson, Sandy Chase, and Annie Brower are all Bert and Ernie have to complain about this afternoon,” Charles promised, “we’ll be finished in five minutes.”

“Well watch the plain clothes, Dr. Creed,” Paul suggested. You never know what’s going down.”

While Jack’s reaction may seem overly complacent, let us remember that this was 1985, long Before Anita Hill. It was not yet apparent that “sexual harassment” might be whatever a woman—or an administrator—wanted to make of it. In his own mind Jack was convinced that whatever he had done, with whomever he had done it, did not constitute harassment in any reasonable definition. And who would be in a better position to understand that than Harassment Officer Lily Lee Martin-Oliver? The thought of Lily Lee investigating his private life made him more than a little uncomfortable, but a large part of Jack’s private business at Busiris was Lily Lee. He saw the 4:00 meeting as part of the on-going battle between management and unionless labor, which was governed even its most acrimonious moments by fairness among adversaries.

Other guarantees obtained as well, including the First Amendment, academic freedom, and academic tenure. There were lawyers if you needed them, a contract, and the ACLU. As a final resort, there was always the threat of a Big Damned Mess in the newspapers. Jack anticipated a disagreeable confrontation along lines already too familiar, followed by more anger, frustration, and alienation. Maybe he’d write a piece on censorship for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Maybe another letter in the Riverton Standard-Republican, or even an interview with one of the kids from the Busiris Sentinel. In this case the possibilities for play might be circumscribed by the nature of the problem, but on February 8, 1985, Charles was convinced that Leanna Robertson was not going to railroad him anywhere.

He dropped Popowski at his apartment and returned to campus, where he spent the afternoon in the basement of McKinley Library, working on “Heading Home,” a short story which has nothing to do with sexism or racism. Charles Creed’s attention was clearly not focused on his meeting with Hauptmann and Reich.

Around 3:45 Charles returned to Busiris Hall, to find on his office door a sealed note reminding him of his 4:00 appointment. He found also Deirdre Williams, come to see him on some business that remained unclear. “I was a little distracted, of course, but I honest to god couldn’t decide what she was talking about,” Jack told Lou Feracca and me. “She rambled—she was talking about nothing, really. She wasn’t even in my class this term. For a while I thought I was being hit on, but the conversation did not sound like an invitation . . . although a student who comes to your office on a Friday afternoon, when everyone else on campus is getting drunk or arranging sex, has probably got more on her mind than sentence fragments and comma splices. I was just about to tell her, ‘look, I’d love to talk, but I have an appointment to see the Vice President,’ when she says, ‘I just wanted to see you again, and tell you to have a good weekend.’ Then she was gone.”

Williams was one of the striking ones. She had a very full figure, lips not as ripe as some, but high cheek bones and bedroom eyes. Deirdre was a lot more seasoned than most Busiris coeds—a younger Lily Lee, slightly more troubled, slightly less sassy. Jack had gone as far with her as a lunch at the Heidelberger. On that occasion she announced—with no more invitation than the fact of the meal—that she felt absolutely but unwillingly monogamous. “It’s like my boyfriend has tattooed his initials on my cunt,” she told Jack over a Reuben sandwich. What, she wondered, could be done about this troublesome commitment to unmarried monogamy?

“The metaphor left me so nonplused,” Charles said, “that I couldn’t make the obvious suggestion. I hadn’t even made up my mind about her, and there she was coming right at me. This happened right after Lily Lee’s harassment guidelines, when all those letters were appearing in the Sentinel. I thought she was a set-up, and maybe she was. But I didn’t want to insult her by acting as if she was a plant. I mean, what kind of an insult would that be? We finished our meal in studied irrelevancies.”

Williams made no mention of the tattoo on Friday afternoon.

“The curious thing,” Charles told me, “was I met her again in Old Main, as I left Reich, around 4:15, when every office in the building had closed for the weekend. She had as little business in Old Main as she had at my office. She was just, apparently, there.”

Deirdre was not among the students at Leanna Robertson's meeting, and not among students making written complaints about Charles’ behavior. Deirdre was at the Sunday night meeting of Students in Support of Charles Creed. Given the conversation at the Heidelberger, it’s unimaginable that Deirdre could have complained about harassment.

Jack’s final theory was that Deirdre had come to his office to warn him he was going to get hit, and possibly to offer support. Then she fell into complete confusion before exiting with the “have a good weekend” remark. Reconsidering, she tried to intercept him in Old Main, then collapsed again when they met there, and disappeared in utter confusion.

At 4:55 Charles donned his yellow Caterpillar cap and blue denim jacket, blew a ritual departure kiss to the photo of his kids, put a stick of Juicy Fruit chewing gum in his mouth, and closed his office door behind him. He walked down three floors to Hauptmann’s office—as per Hauptmann’s request—so they could walk together to Old Main.

This meeting was obviously important to administration. Hauptmann had scheduled it in a phone call on the 4th. A written reminder had arrived via inter-campus mail on the 5th. On the 8th, Hauptmann’s secretary had telephoned while Jack was lunching with Popowski or writing in his McKinley Library office. Hauptmann sent her to post a reminder on Jack’s door. He and Reich were taking no chances.

They had cut themselves little slack. A late January meeting was impossible, as Jack was off campus on semester break. A meeting at the end the fall term would have given Jack several weeks to consider his options. A meeting on the 15th of February might have given Charles a legal claim, under the advanced notice of termination clause of his contract, to another year’s salary. The window was narrow indeed.

“I wonder how events would have transpired if I’d just skipped Bert’s little tea party and headed out to Burr Oak Park,” Jack mused several years later. “Jumped down a manhole somewhere. Taken the kids’ warnings seriously. Invited Deirdre Williams to the Holiday Inn for a few brews. Anyone with good sixties political sense should have seen the set-up coming. The old sixties fox, though thrice-warned, was caught napping.”

Hauptmann betrayed little. Had he any inkling of the visits of Williams and Popowski, or of Jack’s awareness of the Robertson meeting . . . if the Dean was at all surprised at the sight of a man walking casually to his own execution . . . if he felt any sense of satisfaction at his impending revenge for previous affronts public and private, he gave no indication, except, perhaps his studied civility. Hauptmann extended his hand to Jack, clapped him like a Sicilian on the shoulder, coughed twice deep in the throat, and inquired how his week had gone.

“Not as pleasant as the two weeks previous,” Jack answered, “but it had its moments.”

This invitation to further inquiry went unpursued. Jack concluded that his dean was not at all interested in his week nor, in all probability, in anything he might have to say about Leanna Robertson. He launched another trial balloon.

“I did talk with my agent Tuesday last about the Reagan book. She says she has a New York house interested.” This invented phone conversation, fraught with implications regarding the career of Busiris’ most celebrated writer, should have interested Hauptmann. He left the second question blank as the first, flunking Jack’s pop quiz.

Jack in his denim jacket and Hauptmann in his trench coat walked in silently through the Gothic arches and down the oak-flanked sidewalk on which Ted Jones had escaped the Hilton demonstration a decade earlier. A pair of local mutts had chased a gray squirrel up one of the trees. The squirrel spiraled the trunk a few times, then proceeded to shower the ranting canines with fragments of bark and shards of ice. The sight was funny, if you had a sense of humor.

Hauptmann did not. He coughed again. “You’ve been at this institution a number of years,” he said.

“I have served this institution well,” Jack reminded him. “I was on the search committee that hired your predecessor. I go back so far, I remember Busiris during the good times. I go back so far, I remember getting a raise larger than the year’s inflation.”

“Professor Creed, this is serious business.”

“Nothing is more serious than a 2% raise in a year of 10% inflation, Ernie. Ask any of the faculty or staff. Especially the ones with families.”

“The topic of today’s conversation is not your salary.”

“The topic of today’s conversation has not been revealed.”

“It’s something you did.”

“When?”

“Repeatedly.”

“To whom?”

“I am not at liberty to reveal.”

“You can’t tell me what or when, but I’ve been doin’ it again and again.”

Another silence. The sidewalk was gray and wet and empty. Only four or five vehicles in the Old Main parking lot, including Lily Lee’s white Chevy and Reich’s gray BMW. Even the library had closed, which tells you more than a little about Busiris in those days. 4:00 on a Friday afternoon in early February, with nothing for students to look forward to but March, and McKinley Library was closed.

“All I can say about this matter is that it’s something you did, and a great deal depends on your reaction.” Hauptmann spoke not threateningly, but without consideration and without conviction.

There is a small moment in the classic film The Blue Angel—two moments, actually—which compress whole worlds of ambiguous messages into the most fleeting of glances. On his way to Lola Lola’s room, the enraptured Professor passes the troupe’s clown, who gives him a sad, quizzical expression that passes unnoticed. Toward the end of the film in a parallel scene, the Professor himself, wearing the clown suit, is passed by the cabaret singer’s new lover on his way to her boudoir. The Professor’s expression mimics that of the suit’s previous owner.

What is the unspoken message in that expression?

“Do not do this.”

“Do not do this to me.”

“Do not do this to yourself.”

“I, returned from that hell, could warn you. But I do not, and for that you have my sincerest apologies.”

“You do this thing to yourself. I am helpless to keep you from it. We are all fools, and there is nothing for any of us.”

On their way to the elevator in Old Main, Creed and Hauptmann passed the office of Affirmative Action Officer Lily Lee Martin-Oliver. Reflexively Jack looked through the open door, directly into the eyes of the woman he had loved for a decade, the woman to whom he had not spoken in half a decade. Surely Lily knew of Jack’s meeting with Reich, and she chose to be in her office at 4:02 on Friday afternoon, stationed behind her desk and directly in front of the door she chose to leave open. How had she known the instant of their passing? How long could she have sat there facing the open door? Had she watched as the pair crossed the gray campus from Busiris Hall to Old Main, listened for their footsteps down the hall, then moved quickly into position behind her desk? How many other pairs of eyes watched from how many other windows, roofs or doors?

How long does it take a man, walking at his normal gait, to pass a three-foot doorway? How long for two pairs of eyes to lock on each other?

Not a second. Not half a second. Yet in that split second was said everything . . . and nothing.

“Turn around. Run away.”

“Go ahead. I am with you. I am always on your side, Jack.”

“I have said nothing.”

“I told them everything. I had no choice.”

“I’m as helpless in this matter as you are.”

“I know . . . everything. I have chosen not to help you.”

“You’ve done this thing to yourself. It’s entirely out of my hands.”

What Charles Creed most desperately wanted to read in her eyes was the message he had not heard since Lily’s return to Busiris. The declaration that neither of them was in any position to confront. The promise that was, both knew, best left unspoken.

Maybe that was there too.

Maybe it was not. Everything and nothing. Then that briefest of moments passed, and the gray walls of Old Main intervened once more between them. An elevator took Creed and Hauptmann to the third floor, where another gray door opened into Reich’s office, an office full of gray upholstered chairs, gray curtains, and one of those gold-metal framed family portraits, lobotomized mom and sanitized dad standing behind three kids, all laundered and pressed, a cheesy smile on each face.

And the gray arm of the Vice President motioned Charles across the gray carpet into a gray upholstered chair, and the door shut behind him.

Hauptmann, Reich, and Charles were the only individuals in that room. No lawyers, no assistants, no Affirmative Action Officer. Reich read his prepared letter verbatim, without introduction, cordial or otherwise. He was as emotionless as Hauptmann. While Popowski’s warning had prepared Charles for its opening paragraph, Jack flushed at the mention of physical grabbing and sexual intimacy. He flushed again at the word “racist.” When Reich moved toward the subject of dismissal for cause, a mental buzzing began in the back of his head which drowned out some of what the Vice President was saying. He felt also a distinct distancing from the situation, the thought, “This has happened to Marcus and Aaron and Ben Allan. To a dozen good men, at this very institution, in this very room. Now it is happening to you. Today you join those millions of Americans fired each year. You have finally stepped into the trap you can’t wriggle out of.”

There was also denial: “This cannot be happening. This is a major annoyance, but something, as always, will be worked out.”

Charles heard mention of rights and lawyers and courts. He heard the threat of hearings. Of course he heard the deadline for resignation. He did not hear the offer of financial benefits.

Nor did he hear any indication that his future hinged in any way on his reaction to Reich’s charges and options.

“It was clear to me, even in my confused state,” Charles told me the following morning, “that I had been arrested, arraigned, tried, judged and sentenced before I walked into the room. And the punishment did not fit the crime. Whatever the crime was.”

When he finished reading, Reich handed Creed a carbon of the letter and requested his signature at the bottom of the original. Jack retained enough of his senses to decline the signature, on the good sixties theory that whatever The Man wants you to do is unlikely to be in your own best interest.

“Your signature is to indicate receipt of this notification,” Hauptmann explained.

Jack assured him he would be signing nothing until he spoke with a lawyer. Mentally he inventoried those who he thought might legitimately have complained about harassment or racism, including Deirdre Williams, considering also the possibilities of gossip and phone taps and plants in the bed. “I have a very strong record on assisting women,” Jack told Reich, “as many women can attest, including your affirmative action officer. I have an equally exemplary record on matters of race, as Lily and Jim and any number of black students will attest. I have, in my time, seriously jeopardized my reappointment at Busiris with my support of both blacks and women. I look upon blacks and women as my absolute equals”

Reich remained silent. “I can assure you, further, I have never said anything intentionally sexist, intentionally racist, or intentionally, to students at least, offensive. I absolutely have never traded sex for grades or even offered to trade sex for grades. I have in fact on at least one occasion declined such an offer.

“Finally,” Jack added, “I am not about to resign a tenured position over unspecified charges from unnamed individuals.”

Hauptmann assured him that several young women reported being physically touched. One claimed to have been invited to “fuck her brains out.”

“All the students have all been interviewed by myself, Dean Hauptmann, or Mrs. Martin-Oliver [he seemed to place a special emphasis on the name], and we are, unfortunately, convinced they are telling the truth. I am further convinced, Professor Creed, that a case for your dismissal for cause would be upheld.”

“You haven’t even talked to half the people involved,” Creed told Reich, “that half being me. And you haven’t talked to any of my people. I can give you a dozen, I can give you five dozen students and former students who would give me very strong support.”

The argument was less a matter of self-defense than a subtle threat of the Big Damn Mess, a tactic which had proven effective with Martin Stoddard. Jack had been trying to provoke such a public explosion at Busiris for years, most recently on the contingency contract matter. Reich certainly knew that. He would not, Jack was certain, risk a public showdown.

The implied threat wrought not the slightest hint of fissure in Reich’s composure. He yielded not an inch. “We are concerned not with your dozen or dozens, but with these specific cases, Dr. Creed,” Reich asserted. “Your attitudes toward harassment, as published in the student newspaper, make perfectly clear your own callous position on this extremely sensitive issue. We take sexism and racism very seriously in this office. We would find cause for concern in the legitimate complaint of just one student. And there are more than one.”

“The issue of harassment, as I pointed out in The Sentinel, is very complex. I’m open to a public discussion . . . I have even tried to create a public debate on the subject of harassment. I will even publicly answer charges and complaints. But I will not, in these times, jeopardize my ability to support my family because of unspecified complaints from anonymous persons.”

Reich leaned back in his chair, pressed the tips of his fingers together, and with distraction bordering on weariness spoke for the first time outside of a prepared text.

“Dr. Creed,” he said, the father explaining facts of political life to his adolescent son. “Charles. We are talking, first, about a hearing in front of the committee on tenure, promotion, and dismissal. This is not a court of law. This is an administrative hearing. It is like a trial, but not all the rules of a court proceeding obtain. I have presided at more than one such hearing, and they are not pleasant for either administration or faculty. In addition, the transcript of such a hearing would become part of your permanent record. I hope you will spare yourself, your family, your colleagues, your supporters, and your career the unpleasantness of such a public hearing.”

“Dr. Reich,” answered Jack, looking directly into Reich’s eyes, “such a hearing would no doubt injure my reputation and my career. I can, however, assure you that many individuals on and off campus detest this institution, or at least its present leadership. They might look upon my departure as signaling the beginning of the end of both the institution and its present leadership. Many on this campus, even among those whose salaries Busiris pays, would rejoice to see this institution swallowed whole by the ground it rests upon.”

“Mr. Creed,” Reich responded, “don’t make idle threats. Don’t invite scandals, avoid them. As you yourself have pointed out, you have a family and a career to protect. Whatever villainy you imagine, this institution is simply larger than you are, and so I am in a stronger position than you are. Besides [his eyes lost their dreamy abstraction and locked directly on Charles], information regarding certain other individuals, who themselves have made no complaint against you, might surface in such a hearing. Probably you would not want that information made public, or those individuals dragged into a public hearing. This is something you might wish to consider.”

The hint of a smile flickered across Reich’s face, the amusement of one who has just sprung a well concealed trap in a game of chess.

Oddly, Jack had never considered the possibility of being manipulated into a situation in which he himself would fear the Big Damn Mess. Naively, he had not considered his enemies clever enough to construct such a trap, or evil enough to use it. Lily’s glance took on increased significance.

Only one card remained to be played. “You’ll hear from a lawyer,” Creed told Reich, rising from his seat.

“We can speak through a lawyer if you wish,” Reich told Creed. “A man in your position should spare himself that expense, but speak to a lawyer if you wish. Then the University’s lawyer will speak with your lawyer. Then, I expect, your lawyer will explain to you the advantages of the course I have already suggested.

“Considering the severity of your offenses, we have made you a generous offer. Accept it. You are no longer a naive teenage hippie. You are old enough to understand that anyone can be bought. White men and black women can be bought, Dr. Creed. Whatever you have done to yourself, and others have done to you, you too now find yourself a situation where you too can be bought. You have been made a generous offer, Professor Creed. Accept it.”

“You’ll hear from a lawyer,” Charles repeated, folding his letter into a pocket, collecting cap and jacket, and leaving Reich’s office in the grandest style he could manage.

Exiting the elevator on the first floor of Old Main, Jack was greeted by Deirdre Williams.

“I just got fired,” he told her stupidly as she passed. Her face registered no surprise. She kept walking down the hall.

Lily Lee’s office door, Charles noted in passing, was closed, and her car was gone from the parking lot.

The two mutts and the squirrel were gone. Black clouds filled the winter sky, and the wind had picked up. February in Riverton left nothing to look forward to except March.

Jack’s odd sense of detachment gave him a surprising clarity of thought, despite the buzzing brain. Back in B. Hall 313 he unfolded the letter and read again the first paragraph, focusing on the complaints. They were vague beyond identification. Whom had he grabbed? What was a grab? A hug around the shoulder? A pat on the ass? Charles was no ass grabber. What constituted “flagrant sexism”? And when had sexism become a hanging crime?

What was with this racism shit? Who on the Busiris campus had more jeopardized his own career to press the cause of Afro-American rights? If Reich and Hauptmann knew anything, they knew that. If they didn’t, Lily Lee could have set them straight in a moment.

With whom had he traded grades for sex? No one, least of all Lily Lee. Charles always prided himself on being scrupulously honest in that regard.

There was profanity, of course. He’d been there before with women like and Edith Kolb and Sandy Chase—Paul’s “Chaste Sandy”—who, he knew for a fact, disliked his broad use of a language used commonly enough among men and women but offensive to the Presbyterian ear. Well—that was a religious matter, or a class distinction. In Sandy’s case, a little hard core was genuinely educational.

Jack searched for Leanna Robertson and Anne Brower, but nowhere in Reich’s letter could he find them. Had he ever kissed or grabbed them? Not that he remembered. Whatever legitimate complaints they might have scarcely justified dismissal for cause.

Having dismissed them, Charles inventoried other possibilities. Deirdre Williams, who had, more than coincidentally, crossed his path twice this afternoon? Carolyn McQuillan? Lily Lee herself? What was the message she tried to telegraph in that tiniest of split seconds?

It did not occur to Jack that people might have stretched the truth just a little, or fabricated. Nor did he then perceive himself as the target of some exercise in applied feminist politics, or as the recipient of Reich’s apocalyptic and final quid for Creed’s many previous quos. He remained caught in a loop between insubstantial charges and the disproportionately heavy consequences. How in heaven’s name could a man be fired for anything he ever did, said, or even thought about doing with Leanna Robertson or Anne Brower? Or, for that matter, Deirdre Williams? For authoring a prize-winning book? For bringing Afro-American Studies to Busiris Tech?

Jack reached for the telephone, an old rotary dial phone, click, click, click as the numbers unwound, then a pause, then a ring, then a couple of extra dull clicks as the other party answered. He had once joked with Carolyn McQuillan about the lines being tapped, excoriated imagined eavesdroppers with directives to “fuck off, asshole, this is a private conversation.” Maybe the joke was on Jack. Maybe the phone calls had indeed been tapped. Maybe there were plants under the desk. Maybe he was being monitored even as he dialed Leanna Robertson’s number. Maybe that’s what Hauptmann had meant by much depending on Charles’ reaction.

A pledge at Kappa Delta sorority informed Jack that Leanna Robertson had left Riverton for the weekend. At Anne Brower’s apartment, no answer. Dierdre Williams—nobody home. Probably out with the boy whose name was tattooed on her cunt. Jack phoned Rose Marié to say he’d be late for dinner. Then he phoned me.

“I was just fired, Tucker” he announced. “Can you get on over to the office?”

“I’m out the door,” I told him.

Jack dialed Annie Brower again. No answer. Click, click, click. Had she and Leanna been sequestered this weekend, removed from a possible line of fire? Well, naturally they’d be gone at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. What did he expect?

For an instant Jack considered phoning Lily Lee Martin. She too had crossed his path this afternoon. Her unspoken message burned in his heart. Lily Lee was certainly one student with whom Charles had been sexually intimate. If you were investigating Jack Creed’s private sex life, you were investigating Lily Lee. Reich himself seemed to have alluded to her. She had certainly seen the letter Jack had just received, although Reich had not exactly said as much. Reich had indicated that Lily was part of the investigation. And Lily Lee had authored the law used to execute him. Lily was obviously the key.

Jack buried the idea almost as soon as it crossed his mind. If she was part of the cabal, Jack had nothing to say to her. If she was not, there was nothing she could do. It was simple as that. Besides, the phone might be tapped indeed. Their conversation might reveal things Reich did not know, jeopardize her position. Even if his phone were not tapped, a long distance call to her home in Lincoln County would show up on his home or office phone bill. A phone call might compromise both her marriage and position.

Lily Lee would have to remain uninvolved.

Instead of Lily, Jack telephoned Morrie Kaufman. Kaufman headed the Busiris ACLU and chaired of the committee on tenure, promotion and dismissal. According to his letter, Reich had twice conferred with Kaufman. Kaufman could tell Jack as much as Lily Lee.

Morrie had not yet returned from school. His wife promised he’d be in touch as soon as he got home.

Lou Feracca and I arrived at Jack’s office together.

“Reich gave me until Monday to resign,” Charles said without emotion.

“Motherfuckers,” Lou said. “Motherfucking motherfuckers.”

“He read me a letter full of vague accusations, threatened me with a hearing, and gave me until Monday morning to resign.” Jack offered us his copy of the letter.

“Linda has gone over to your place to be with Rose Marié and the kids,” I said.

“I told her I’d be late for dinner. I didn’t offer any particulars. I still haven’t decided how I’m going to handle her.”

“You can’t get fired and not have your wife know,” Lou said.

“I’ll tell her. But I’d just as soon the news came from me.”

“Better it come from a woman,” I said. “Linda is cool, and she’s close to Rose Marié. She can buffer the situation.”

Jack flared. “What does Linda have to do with this?” he wanted to know. “Besides, Rose Marié is part of the problem.”

“Look, Chas, this is not the time to get pissed at your friends,” Lou pointed out. “Andrew and I have been through a bit on this too, you know.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know shit. I know what Popowski and a couple of other students told me. From my friends I’ve had only silence in the snowy fields. Unless it was you guys sent Popowski. Somebody sent Popowski. Somebody who lacked the balls to speak up for themselves. Who would let a friend walk blindly into an ambush? Maybe Jones? Maybe other faculty?”

“You been hit before, and you always came out okay,” Lou said simply. “Nobody expected Reich to can your ass this time.”

“Nobody expected them to can my ass. Meaning you guys? Meaning the department? Meaning the whole goddamn University? How come everyone but me had expectations?”

“You don’t need a weather man, Jack. You going to sit there and tell us with a straight face you had no clue?”

“I didn’t expect to be fired.”

“Neither did we,” said Lou

“Then why quit?” I asked Jack.

“I haven’t quit.”

“You sound like one cooked user,” Lou pointed out.

“The implication is that to get the heave-ho, Creed must have really fucked up this time. Lipped off to the wrong nigger? Knocked up at least half a dozen coeds? NAACP attorneys and daddies with paternity suits must be at the gates. Boyfriends with axes must be waiting in the alley way. Is that what you’re implying?”

“I’m not implying shit.”

Jack fell silent, his anger spent.

“Still,” he said finally, “that’s the thing, isn’t it? Nobody’s going to care what did or did not go down, with whom, or under what circumstances. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. They’ve finished me off with one quick shot. Confidences? Friendships? Trust? Gone absolutely and for good. Rose Marié, my kids, you guys, every goddamn student and teacher on this fucking campus is going to be thinking, somewhere in the back of his big or little mind, ‘Weeeell, you know, that’s what you get for hanging around with those kind of people. Niggers will do it to you every time. And Creed always was one for the ladies. Had quite a tongue on him too. He must have done something this time.’ Fucking Reich has fucked me good. I will never march in another commencement. Never again in my life wear that robe and hood.”

“Jack,” Lou said, “this is very bad. We don’t know any more about it than you apparently do, but we all know this is very bad. We also know there’s a skeleton in every closet in Old Main, and lots of people pull down beaucoup bucks despite the skeletons in their closet. Reich has a few of his own from what I hear . . . from what you told me. Threaten Reich with what you know about him and Tits. Fight this through. We’ll stand beside you and so will a lot of people in the department. In five years it’s just one more bit of buried Busiris history. There was this president who buggered the entire basketball squad. There was this director of security who ran a whorehouse out of the girls’ dorm. There was this V. P. A. A. who shacked up with the head of the Women’s Studies Program. There was this English professors who. . . .”

“Who?”

“Who nobody knows, and nobody says. It’s dead.”

I sensed Charles already withdrawing from us.

“So what have you guys heard?” he wanted to know. “Absent yourself, Andrew, and level with me. What are people saying?”

“Everyone knew some kind of investigation was in progress,” I told him, “probably since mid-October. They didn’t talk much to Lou or me or your other close friends. Steiner in physics asked me about you, oh, maybe last November. Nation is a significant player, and perhaps your pal Jones. We’re sure they talked with Nation and Jones and maybe several others in the department. There was a meeting among some of the students. There was also something involving that basketball player, but you know more about that than we do.”

“I don’t think anybody knows details; it’s all been pretty hush-hush.” Lou added. “Probably they want to keep it that way.”

“We figured you were pretty savvy, and would certainly have gotten wind of it. After all that flap over Lily’s Harassment Guidelines, we figured you’d be extra alert. Whatever went down, you’d know what to do. You didn’t ask us for help. We figured you were taking care of business in your own way. The investigations, as far as we could tell, were back in November, December. We figured whatever was going to happen had happened long ago and was part of buried Busiris history.”

What I had told him was the truth, although I doubt Charles believed me.

“We figured you knew something. We figured somebody upstairs would have had to talk to you, sometime, before today?”

“Not a word.”

“On harassment, you’re supposed to get a warning,” Feracca pointed out. “It’s part of Lily Lee’s guidelines: ‘Since sexists and racists are often insensitive to the feelings of others, any student or faculty member seeing a colleague engaged in what might be considered sexist or racist behavior should point out the offensive behavior and the way in which it might be perceived.’ Plus it has to be a written warning. That’s in the rule book.”

“I know the rule book. I wrote a detailed critique of the rule book. This thing isn’t being done by the rules.”

“So what exactly is the rap?” Lou wanted to know.

“Blatant racism and sexism. Grabbing, whatever that means. Racial slurs, racial biases, racial insensitivity, whatever that is. Possibly offering maybe to perhaps trade sexual favors for grades, which as we all know is bullshit. Everything is vague. No specific accusations. No names. I don’t even know who is accusing me of what.”

“Bet on Leanna Robertson among the women,” Lou said. “Among faculty . . . there’s been a lot of jealousy since Age of Faith. You know that.”

“You can’t fire a man for writing a popular book, no matter what it says. Period. This is 1985, not 1885.”

“You haven’t exactly made things easy for yourself these past few months,” I observed, “or on others, including us. For whatever reasons, which I don’t think you’ve shared even with us, you’ve been in a genuinely foul humor, short-tempered, surly. You’re never at meetings. When you’re not off campus doing whatever you’re doing, you’re not in the office and you’re rarely at Tookey’s. With Popowski, maybe, and a couple of the girls. It’s hard not to notice. The Bucks Boosters! Jack, for chrissake! Maybe fame and fortune have gone a little to your head. You’ve alienated a few people.”

Lou supported me. “The rap is you wrote Age of Faith on Busiris time, with a Busiris research grant, then pocketed all the royalties and blew off classes. And being so close to students is not a really good idea either these days, especially the cheerleaders. It’s bound to breed jealousy among both men and women students. Your nose never has been exactly clean, and these days you got to walk on tip toes around this place. It ain’t the sixties any more, Jack. You’ve said that yourself.”

Charles said nothing.

“You wanted honesty,” I pointed out.

“You should phone Morrie Kaufman,” Lou suggested.

“I already did,” Charles told us. “Half an hour ago. His wife said he was on his way home. He hasn’t returned the call.”

“Morrie’s a straight shooter,” Lou said.

“Morrie’s a classic work-from-within-the-system liberal,” Jack said. “He wasn’t going to be any help anyway. Fuck Kaufman. Fuck the ACLU. What have they ever done at Busiris, seriously? What could we expect from them? Morrie’s probably sitting right now in Old Main, conferring with Nazi overlords Hauptmann and Reich. They and some University attorney probably monitored my calls, gathering more evidence after the fact. I probably should have phoned nobody. Including you guys.”

“There is another person who certainly ought to know something,” I suggested.

“Yeah there is.”

“You talk to her?”

“I have not spoken with Lily Lee since she returned to Busiris. We all know that.”

“The normal flow of student complaints would be through her office,” Lou pointed out.

“She wasn’t in Reich’s office.”

“Reich could not conduct an investigation without her knowledge. He could not have prepared a letter without her input. That’s impossible.”

“He mentioned her name,” Charles said. “I don’t know whether it was a threat, a lie, or a statement of fact.”

“There is only one way to find out,” Lou insisted.

Jack froze. “The truth, fellows, is that I’m not ready to confront what Lily Lee might be thinking about me right now. ‘Harassment’; ‘Racism’—that just destroys me with her. Reich threatened a public investigation that might, and I quote, ‘reveal things I might not want revealed. Or involve persons I might not want involved.’ What would I say to Lily Lee?”

“Look, Jack,” Lou said honestly, “I can see how you might not want to air your private business in front of a woman, but I think in this case. . . .”

“Lily Lee is my private business,” Charles said simply. He paused. “And my private business is going to remain my private business.”

“Then I’d say Reich has you by the short hairs, good buddy.”

“What does Reich know about Lily and me? Reich was not around in the seventies. I first met Reich at that farewell party for Lily and Jim.”

“I could name a few people who would be more than happy to fill him in.”

Finally Lou spoke what we were all thinking. “Lily works for Bert these days.”

“I think not.”

“You told us he said something about everyone being bought, about white men and black women being bought. That’s what you said he said.”

“The bottom line is, my private life is my private business.”

“And Rose Marié’s,” Lou said. “And your kids’. And everybody else’s. Busiris is just a small town, Chas, full of small town gossip and small town politics. This ain’t the time for lectures, but your own business just ain’t your own business here. You know that as well as we do.”

The discussion seemed frozen.

Then a deus ex machina in the form of a knock on the door: Paul Popowski, Carolyn McQuillan, Jo Harte, two students I didn’t recognize.

“Deirdre Williams said you told her you got fired,” Paul explained.

“Professor Creed, you’ve got to fight this thing,” Carolyn said. She meant it. Her eyes were red.

“We want to help,” Paul offered. “We’re having a meeting tonight in my apartment. All the good majors, some basketball players and, you know, some of the other students. Remember two years ago, when the art school wouldn’t give tenure to that painter? And all the art majors refused to go to class, because he was the best teacher they had over there? And they threatened to kick them all out of school, but the boycott went on anyway, and finally they had to reconsider his tenure, and then they gave it to him? You remember that? We’re going to organize a boycott, write letters to the newspaper, and all threaten to transfer.”

“It might not be 100%, but we can get enough that they can’t afford to lose us all,” Joline promised. “We’ll shut down the entire university if we have to. A lot of people love you, Professor Creed. We’ll support you.”

“Leanna Robertson is just a stuck-up sorority bitch who thinks she’s a whole lot better than she really is.”

Jack was obviously touched, but he remained silent and a little cool. The students sensed his distance and urged themselves upon him.

“It will be like the sixties again,” Popowski pleaded. “Like your own book.

“Will you come to our meeting?” he wanted to know. Charles shifted uneasily, Mr. Sixties in his own rhetoric, fifteen years’ bulk larded around his middle. How to command the troops to sit still? How to deny their faith?

“I have to deal with my wife tonight. And Timm and Jenny. I haven’t told them anything yet.”

“We can meet tomorrow morning. We got the whole weekend, but we want to get organized for Monday morning.” Jack’s reticence was pushing Paul ever closer to the edge of disbelief.

“It’s tremendous to have friends,” Jack said. I could see Lily Lee, Rose Marié, Jenny, and Timm swirling across his field of vision. I rescued him: “Dr. Creed doesn’t even know what he’s charged with, Paul. We’re going to get hold of a lawyer over the weekend and find out what the changes are. Then we’ll make some decisions.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Charles said. “One thing I do know is that the knee-jerk reaction isn’t always the best reaction.”

Carolyn McQuillan’s face registered disbelief.

The troops were out ahead of their leader. “You will be a useful threat,” he assured the delegation.

It was Carolyn who finally shamed him. “There are great stories about you, Professor Creed,” she said, “here on this campus. The speeches you gave at the Black Students Alliance, and the Laird protest, and even the hearings on Open College. You’ve told some of those stories yourself. You’re not just a person, you’re an idea. Go home and tell your wife what’s happened. If she doesn’t believe in you, she’s not worthy of you. A lot of people on this campus really do believe in you, and I’m one of them.” Tears welled up in her eyes.

So Carolyn loved Charles after all, and for a moment she didn’t care who knew it.

“We came to help,” Paul repeated.

“So did Dr. Tucker and Dr. Feracca. I’ve got a lot of friends, and I can use a lot of help. But while this is in part a political situation, Reich has managed to make it a personal situation as well. I can’t give you all the details, except to say they have very little to do with Anne Brower and Leanna Robertson. There’s a whole lot of shit going down. The political situation is ours, but the personal situation is mine, and I have to deal with it myself. Give me the weekend to talk to a lawyer. I promise to let you know what he says.”

This was not what the troops wanted to hear—Mr. Sixties talking lawyer talk—and not what Charles wanted to give them. But it was all he had. Jack, Lou and I all sensed the fact, if Paul Popowski did not. All three of us realized the situation was pretty hopeless. So taking Jack’s promises at face value (what else could he do?), Paul and his followers left. A moment later I drove Jack back to his place, to Rose Marié and the kids, to the ghost of Lily Lee Oliver née Martin.