Late-K Lunacy

by Ted Bernard

  She heard Astrid say, “Surprise? Huh, socio-ecological system sideswiped by emergent events. Anybody remember Thomas Homer-Dixon? No? Okay, forget it. Let’s get going.”

  We followed Lara out the door. Dodging traffic, we hurried across Windham Street to Weary Hall. She asked us to sit in close formation on the front steps. She encapsulated the news of Adrienne, her request for help, and the urgency of the situation. Whoever first uttered the word “flabbergasted” must have been imagining our collective astonishment as we stared at Lara. Then, like a burst of fireworks, we rocketed a stream of questions at her.

  “Look, look! Sorry,” she responded. “Neither you guys nor I have time to mull over details and contemplate options. Events have overtaken us. You must deal with Redlaw while I rush to gather items Adrienne needs for her mission. I caution you not to breathe a word of Adrienne’s resurrection to anyone outside the Group of Thirteen. Honestly, I have no idea how these developments will unreel separately or interact with one another. All I can ask is that you trust me and that we stay in close touch.”

  Lara blinked. Almost to herself, she asked, “How in hell did a smart-assed Minnetonka girl raised by a dysfunctional parent ever end up pulling strings in an international thriller?”

  “What is Adrienne’s timeline?” I asked.

  “Adrienne has less than 72 hours to encounter and trap Morse in Saint Thomas.

  “How can we help?” I asked.

  Dazed, Lara looked at me as if she were encountering a stranger. “Well, H-H-Hannah,” she stuttered. “As for you guys, I simply ask that you try to buy some time with Redlaw and hold fast the secret of Adrienne’s survival.”

  Katherine said, “Unless the administration intends to call in the National Guard, I think we can reasonably sustain the occupation for another, what? three days. They might actually prefer us to drag our feet. It seems clear they’re reluctant to confront Morse.”

  Lara scanned our eyes and intuited concurrence. “Okay, good.” Lara saw us shaking our heads at the improbability of everything, unable to compute systemic outcomes. She asked, “Astrid, what do you have on Gruppo Crogiolo that I can take with me? I hate to call it blackmail but that’s what seems to be evolving here.”

  Judging from her indifferent expression, Astrid seemed lost in a distant realm. With sleepy eyes, she studied her hands and fussed with her sleeves. I noted with alarm that she had failed to remove telltale signs of the blackening salve from her wrists. Her weary demeanor transmitted the stress of last night’s high-stakes adventure followed by almost no sleep.

  Lara waited impatiently. Astrid refocused and spoke as if what she was about to reveal was nothing more than an afterthought. “Umm, yeah, I was about to tell everybody that my associates and I have successfully hacked into several of Mr. Morse’s accounts. And, um, we have moved sums from those accounts to others we set up in Saint Kitts, which is, quite interestingly I would say, just south of Saint Eustatius.”

  Lara’s jaw dropped. She gulped. “What a breakthrough, Astrid! Can you supply details? Like, how much.”

  “Yeah, I can do that.” Astrid responded so casually you’d think she had been asked to order pizza or find Latvia on a map. “Yeah, we’ve got incontrovertible evidence.” She pulled documents from her pack.

  “So, here’s a copy of my assessment of Gruppo Crogiolo and the banks and particular accounts we nabbed after breaking through multiple firewalls. Obviously, I do not reveal either my methods or the Saint Kitts account details.” Astrid yawned. She pulled at her dreads, scratched her ear, suffered an involuntary twitch.

  “The sum?” Lara reminded Astrid.

  “Oh yeah, well, we thought it ought to be big enough to grab Morse’s attention. So, yeah, overall, it’s, like, about seven-point-five mill.”

  “Whoa! Are we talking U.S. dollars?” asked Jason.

  “The very ones.”

  “Shite! That’s one gobsmacking numbah.”

  “Yeah, I suppose it is,” Astrid said nonchalantly. She had more to confess. “You know, I’ve been wracking my brain on how to use this evidence to nail Morse without going to prison myself. I believe I now have my answer. Though I hardly knew her, I am thankful Adrienne is alive, of course. But I am on the verge of being giddy to learn that we are about to hang that evil dude by his testicles. Or whatever Adrienne has in mind.”

  “Here, here,” said Jason.

  “Let’s hear it for my Canadian compatriot!” Nick exclaimed. Astrid reached around to give a little tug to Nick’s beard and grinned shyly. Lara took hold of Astrid and gathered in the rest of us for a group hug of such emotional heft that even Nick found himself choking up.

  15

  Mitchell Redlaw descended the steps of the presidential residence, his briefcase in one hand, a container of freshly baked apple-walnut muffins in the other.xii He failed to notice the apricot orb in the east or the honking geese overhead or the swirls of falling maple leaves and the glow of yellow chrysanthemums in the low sun, or even the morning crispness signaling colder days to come. His head swam with worst case scenarios: a deplorable morass, he reckoned, likely a lose-lose outcome both for his administration and us. Last night, he checked our Occupy Centennial Facebook site to see another planned demo at Stiggins Hall.

  His mood darkened with each step toward Brownlow Library and through the leafy courtyard between Brownlow and Stiggins with its sunken garden and modernist statue of Pan by Fletcher Emanuel Flocker, a professor of art in the early seventies and an avowed Pan worshiper. Flocker had reputedly been run out of town after being caught with his hand up the skirt of a former president’s wife at an alumni gala. Redlaw admitted to me that he always wondered why upright Argolis Christians had not then lobbied for removal of Flocker’s Pan, and before that, had not objected to its subtext: a statue of a god whose activities as a half-goat, half-man rambler of groves and fields, and companion of the nymphs were meant to boost fertility. On his way to work, each morning he took special pleasure in high-fiving Pan, at least in his imagination. Hello Pan, he would entreat. Bless all the randy fantasies of those who walk these hallowed grounds.

  As Mitchell Redlaw left Pan this morning, he began to hear the steady beat of percussion and chants. His stomach roiled like an autumn cyclone. Today, he was convinced, was about to become one bodeful and tediously long test of his administration’s deluded picture of the troubled world.

  16

  The morning had seemed so full of promise. Mrs. Wickett, his ageless chef and presidential mansion supervisor, greeted him brightly an hour earlier with freshly baked muffins. Thelma Wicket was an institution at Gilligan: not just an indispensable employee, but also the revealer of the state of things as they really are rather than Redlaw’s intellectualized version of them. This morning, as she laid a copy of the Columbus Express on the table, she warned, “Mr. President, there’s Blackwood news here that may spoil your day. Before you read a word, think happy thoughts and savor a muffin with your coffee. I’ll send you across the street with a couple of dozen more muffins for the folks in Stiggins. I predict my muffins will help everyone put their day in proper perspective. “

  “Thank you, Mrs. W. I promise that I shall not read the paper until fully fortified.”

  “That’s a good fellow.” She laid out his breakfast and retreated to the kitchen.

  When he had eaten, he turned his eyes to the newspaper. “¡Ay caramba!” he exclaimed out loud, though his first inclination was to say, “What in bloody hell!” But Mrs. Wickett brooked no cussing in this house. And she was, after all, the trail boss, having outlasted four presidents leading up to Redlaw, going back to 1974. And there was an increasingly good chance that Redlaw would be her fifth. He now understood her precaution. There were more than a dozen loose ends and decisions relating to the Blackwood protest and occupation. But this new development would surely take precedence. How could this situation become more dire?

  In the Stiggins conference room, the President’s Executive Council
meeting opened with news of the vandalism at Morse Valley Energy’s drill site.xiii

  Media Relations Director Beth Samuels distributed photocopies of the front-page story in the Columbus Express. She said, “The plot obviously thickens with this development. However, I would caution us to respond to this vandalism as if it had nothing to do with our energy plan and the protest on campus. Until there is evidence to the contrary, I have advised President Redlaw to express regret and disgust at the unlawful acts and to offer full cooperation with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Bartholomew Sheriff’s Department. A press release will go out in the next few minutes. I will also say that, after consulting with Legal Affairs Director Hexam, for the time being, the president decided that Gilligan’s level of cooperation should not include searches without warrants nor detention of any of our students who, in their protest and occupation, have been lawfully exercising their rights.”

  An uproar from both sides of the table prevented Beth from turning over the agenda to the president. Mrs. Wickett’s muffins were failing their mission.

  “Mitch, I cannot believe you’re recommending we equivocate here,” Vice-President for Facilities Management, Harry Phillips, exclaimed with vehemence. “We need to clear these children off the quad, pull aside each of their leaders to ascertain their whereabouts last night. Enough of these sixties follies. Somebody’s going to get hurt here and every day our reputation sinks further and further into the mire they’ve created. Call in the National Guard if we have to. Another thing: those kids are wrecking the landscape. Centennial Quad looks like it’s been desertified and with the predicted rain it will soon be nothing but a muddy bog.”

  Stephen Langston, the VP for Finance and Administration, looking dangerously close to cardiac arrest, shouted, “Mitch, Beth, Lottie! And whoever else may be harboring temperance here: Stop! Stop mollycoddling these adolescents! Face up to it, we have allowed ourselves to be blackmailed by them long enough. When you meet with them, Mitch, tell the buggers their gig is up. Let them rant and rave about Morse and Tulkinghorn all they want. The provost can take care of Tulkinghorn and the rest of us will assemble reasonable explanations to counter their naive allegations. Be done with all this. As Harry just said, get them off that Quad before it turns to mud. Tomorrow is the first of November. Next week is predicted to be stormy.”

  Vice-President for Research Agatha Larkins jumped into the fray in support of the students. “Our students have become the envy of the post-carbon crowd and poster children for the national media. They have articulately responded to questions about their motivation. In their words, this is about their future as well as protecting a special place. Many faculty believe their case has not been taken seriously and that the political clout of the fossil fuel energy sector and the governor have steamrolled over our integrity as a university and the future of these students. I believe we missed a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be on the right side of history.”

  Monique Barley, Dean of the Graduate School, added that she had heard overwhelming support of the occupation among the graduate faculty. “Sixty-something percent of the faculty in the School of Conservation and Natural Resource Development, for example, rejected the university’s energy plan and therefore implicitly support the students’ case against drilling under Blackwood Forest.”

  “Yes, yes!” argued Akira Robinson, the Director of Institutional Equity. “I am impressed with our students, and the points they’re making about green energy are totally valid. It is where we on this council should be. A quick shift away from fossil fuels will be to everybody’s benefit.”

  “I could not disagree with these women more stridently,” interrupted Grace Battersby, Vice-President for University Advancement, who usually was as reticent as Clarence Thomas. Her stake in the argument was hardly nuanced and she saw no need to apologize. She launched a fevered offensive. “Agatha, Monique, and Akira, I find it shameful that you should ally with the occupiers. This occupation breaks the law. Furthermore, the occupiers have also likely committed felonies at the drill site. All of which besmears the good name of Gilligan University. To me, it makes absolutely no sense to vilify one of our wealthiest alumni with allegations that would require years to substantiate and would surely lead to very negative consequences for this campus.”

  She paused briefly to examine her manicured fingernails flashing tangerine glitter. She solemnly folded her hands. She took a moment to fondle the Clé de Cartier watch on her wrist. After still further dead air, she looked up, pulled a pugnacious expression and continued her finger-wagging tone. “With his wealth, Mr. Morse also has the wherewithal and tenacity for a protracted legal battle that would drag on year after year. Can you imagine being in the eye of a negative PR storm that would gain strength with each of his appeals? Why would we want to do that? If the man is as wealthy as some in my office believe, we stand to benefit much more if we undercut their silly allegations about his affair with a prostitute and the whole Larnaca Chair thing. We need to provide him cover. And let me warn you: if we are on the wrong side of his ire, let alone history, the consequences for Gilligan are too awful to contemplate. It would be the antithesis of my mission here and …”

  Vice-President Battersby’s argument was interrupted by a pandemonium of shouts and allegations, of verbal left hooks and counter punches, skin and hair flying, screams one on top of the other; a donnybrook such as none President Redlaw had witnessed in a twenty-six-year career in university administration. Curiously, Provost Helen Flintwinch had not weighed in. He wondered why. Yet how cutting and irrational the insinuations that frothed from the mouths of these alleged members of the cultured class. Wherefore their presumptive right to attack each other?

  Redlaw realized no one could be blamed but himself. And yet, he remained calm and gazed upon the unholy turmoil as through a tower window. In time, he felt assured that this was his moment to reach back for truths he’d always known: truths that are simple and straightforward; truths needing little elaboration or academic circumlocution; truths naked and raw, sinew and bone, irreducibly and fully his own.

  Above the cacophony, Mitchell Horvath Redlaw rose from his seat to assume his full power forward stature, ascending now above the fray, as if he had become a ridiculously open man on a court full of midgets. He fixed his glare upon each member at the table, one-by-one, all ten of them. They hushed. Unruly children caught by their headmaster in multiple tantrums. After long moments when the air became still as a mid-August day, when even the motes of dust and pollen had suspended their circuits, the president spoke.

  “My colleagues, I would argue that we have not been held hostage by these young crusaders. If we are hostages, we are so because of our own intransigence and lack of imagination. I am to blame more than any of you and I take full responsibility. When we as a university might have staked out high ground, when we might have boldly modeled a quick transition to green energy, when we might have creatively leap-frogged over obstacles inherent in university and state budgeting — when we could have taken all these extraordinary steps, instead we made a Faustian pact with a wealthy alumnus who had backed us into a corner and who personifies the notion that humanity can burn fossil fuels ad infinitum without inducing climatic collapse. We, of all of society’s institutions, we should have listened to our environmental scientists who know full well that the current mindless expansion of fossil fuel production, driven by hydraulic fracturing, is hardly a bridge to a zero-carbon campus and is neither ethically nor environmentally sound. Even within the frame of our plan, we will discover that the shale gas bridge to green energy will have collapsed as climate and civilization will be on the brink.”

  Redlaw lapsed into a pause, staring toward unfathomably bleak horizons, his expression solemn. Realizing the embarrassing lacuna, he quickly swept his eyes around the table and reverted to his notes in deeper, more hushed and humble tones.

  “I stand here with a heavy heart and a shattered conscience. As your president, I have del
ayed and dodged and prevaricated, and stretched the truth about green energy directly leading to higher tuition, among other things, all the while hoping that this nettlesome occupation would lose steam and we could return to normal. That is not going to happen. As you witnessed this morning, if anything, the protest has gained strength across the student body and far beyond. This has become a talismanic event for these young people precisely because their campaign is fueled by the terrifying prospect that, if the fantasy of the fossil fuel era continues, they will have no reasonable future. Mr. Morse and his deeds, whatever they may be, his wealth and political connections; Dr. Tulkinghorn’s pathetic ploy to be a puppet master, if that’s what it was; the vandalism at Blackwood; and the regrettable furor of these past moments — all these things are merely specks on the clouded horizon that this generation of students perceives all too clearly. If we were to continue to cast our lots with Morse and what he represents, I have come to the conclusion that the students have every reason to bring us down.”

  Redlaw briefly glanced at Beth Samuels, sitting next to him. She presented a despairing picture. She had spent more time with him in recent years than anyone at this table. They had become each an element in the other’s lives and had spun up a fine friendship with memorable laughs and wildly successful fund raising.

  As for Beth, she believed she had learned to read Mitchell Redlaw unerringly. As he proceeded in this, what? mea culpa?, she realized how terribly wrong she had been. No way had she seen this coming. She was unable to imagine how to paste gloss on the turds he had just dropped. How regrettable! But perhaps her regrets were more about herself, corrupted as she had become by the vast underbelly of public relations.

  The president continued. “Therefore what I propose is this: 1) we allow the students three days to wind down their occupation; 2) we notify the Ohio Attorney General that we have information leading us to believe that Jasper Morse is involved in tax evasion and possible fraud with respect to the Larnaca Chair; 3) we request that the Ohio Attorney General seek a court-ordered injunction on drilling under Blackwood; 4) we turn back the Larnaca gift and begin an investigation of how and why an obscure financial services company in Larnaca, Cyprus came to offer Gilligan University of Ohio a no-strings gift of twelve million dollars; 5) we suspend Dr. Truman Tulkinghorn until this investigation is completed; 6) Gilligan University of Ohio shall immediately revise its energy plan to move toward renewable energy with great urgency and without undue tuition increases; 7) in the meantime, beginning next fiscal year, we shall commit to purchase as much green energy as possible to reduce our fossil fuel portfolio and carbon load. Finally, I propose to announce to the students this afternoon that within a few days, ideally by late Monday, November 4th, we shall make a series of announcements that will greatly please them. That concludes my remarks.” The president calmly returned to his chair.