Protectors

by Kris Nelscott

  Pammy knew better than to mess with Olive in this mood. All she could do was talk to Olive directly.

  “Is something wrong?” Pammy asked.

  “Yes, something’s wrong,” Olive said. “I’ve listened to you too long, that’s what’s wrong.”

  Pammy straightened ever so slightly. She took a step toward that blond wood counter, resting her hands on it, but not leaning.

  “What, exactly, is the problem?” she asked.

  “Your list,” Olive said. “Now you’re admitting men into your program?”

  “Possibly,” Pammy said, not really wanting to lie to Olive.

  “Well, unpossible it. Young men have more than enough opportunity to learn how to beat people up. They do it on their own with no encouragement from you.”

  “Um.” Pammy felt blindsided. “I don’t teach anyone to beat someone up. I teach them how to avoid such situations.”

  “You teach them how to use their fists, correct?” Olive asked.

  Some of the office staff had slipped through the doors. They lined up like this was a televised fight, and they had ringside seats.

  “Yes,” Pammy said. “Sometimes a woman needs to know how to hit back.”

  “A woman,” Olive said. “I supported you when I thought it was just women, especially these young people today who get into horrid situations with their drug-addled friends. But I can’t support you teaching young men.”

  “Well,” Pammy said, “right now it’s just a vague idea. Which was why I brought the list—”

  “Your list,” Olive said with contempt. “Your list is not valid.”

  Pammy’s cheeks heated. Had Olive figured out that none of those kids were applying for any classes?

  “What do you mean?”

  “As far as we can tell, most of these students have dropped out. I won’t have you teaching children to beat each other up on the university’s dime.”

  Alice had come up behind her. She was waving the list just outside of Olive’s sight, almost like a little white flag. Or maybe it simply meant let her talk.

  “That’s why I’m here, Olive,” Pammy said. “I thought there was something suspicious in this group of names. I brought them to you to make sure they were enrolled here.”

  “Well, most of them aren’t,” Olive said, but she had less charge to her voice. Sometimes reason actually worked with Olive.

  “Thank you for clarifying,” Pammy said. “I’ll deal with this from here.”

  “I’ll talk with Irene Roth. She shouldn’t be bringing these people to you—”

  “She didn’t,” Pammy said quickly. She didn’t want to get Irene in trouble. “A graduate student was proposing this class. I’ll kibosh it as soon as I get back.”

  “What graduate student?” Olive snapped. “I’ll talk with her—”

  “It’s all right,” Pammy said. “I’ll take care of it. If I come to believe that she was trying to pull something over on the university, I’ll let you know.”

  Olive pursed her lips. “I don’t like this, Pamela.”

  “Neither do I,” Pammy said. And then, because she couldn’t help herself, she added, “I am confused, though. I thought you supported the self-defense classes.”

  “I did,” Olive said. “I made a mistake.”

  Pammy’s hands gripped the edge of the counter. Its corners were rigid. They bit into her skin.

  “What made you change your mind?” she asked.

  Olive pushed her glasses up to the bridge of her nose. Their lenses distorted her eyes, made them seem larger than they actually were.

  “You didn’t hear about that poor girl?” Olive said.

  “Which girl?” Pammy asked.

  “The one they found in Tilden Park yesterday,” Olive said.

  “I hadn’t heard anything about it,” Pammy said. She hadn’t heard much news in the last two days, except for some headlines this morning—something about the Apollo Crew heading back toward Earth.

  “Olive!” a woman yelled from the back. “You’re not supposed to—”

  “It’s Pamela,” Olive said as if everyone in this office knew who Pammy was. Maybe they did.

  Alice suddenly looked worried. She rolled the papers that comprised Pammy’s list into a tight baton. Alice glanced from Pammy to Olive and back again.

  Pammy couldn’t quite read Alice’s expression, but the women who had been watching slipped back into the offices as if they didn’t want to be a part of this conversation any longer.

  Olive came closer to the counter. “The police arrived here last night, wanted some information, so I had to stay late. I’m not supposed to tell you anything, because they’re not going to tell the press anything until the family’s notified, but Pamela, what I heard gave me pause.”

  Pammy’s stomach knotted up. “The girl they found in the park, is she all right?”

  “Of course she’s not all right!” Olive snapped. “That’s why they have to notify family. She’s dead, Pamela. She died horribly, and the police believe that she fought with someone. They believe that she sealed her own death warrant by fighting back.”

  Pammy frowned. “How would they know that?”

  “Her wounds,” Olive said. “She had skin underneath her fingernails. What fingernails were left, of course. They ripped off in the struggle.”

  Pammy closed her eyes for a brief moment, trying to calm herself. She had heard this kind of thing from the police before. Men often got defensive wounds on their hands as well, but the police always said they were heroically trying to stave off savage blows.

  When women got them, they were stupidly trying to fight back.

  “It was awful,” Olive said, as if she had been waiting for Pammy to look directly at her. “They showed me photographs.”

  Pammy started. “Why would they show you photographs, Olive?”

  “They don’t know who she is,” Olive said. “Her identification is missing, and they don’t have her fingerprints on file. They doubt she’s been fingerprinted, since her hair is nicely trimmed and she has good teeth, whatever that means.”

  “It means,” Pammy said softly, “that she hasn’t been starving and she wasn’t using a lot of drugs.”

  “Well, there is that, then,” Olive said somewhat sarcastically.

  “I’m still not sure why they came to you,” Pammy said.

  Olive raised her chin slightly, then blinked hard. The photographs had truly disturbed her.

  “We have photographs of all of our students,” she said. “We take them as part of their freshman class, and then again, if they want, of course, in later years. They were hoping I would go through the files for them.”

  Pammy couldn’t imagine how much work that would take. There were thousands of students at UC-Berkeley. “Do the police do this often?”

  “Sometimes,” Olive said. “Usually, we have more to go on than this. You know, a name, an address, an age, something.”

  Pammy nodded.

  “Sometimes, we have student assistants who can go through the files and pull the relevant year’s worth of photographs. Or we start with students who didn’t re-enroll. But this time…” Olive’s voice grew hoarse, and she cleared her throat. “This time, it’s summer, and who knows which students will return and which ones won’t and who stayed in their apartment for the summer and who left, and what exactly is…”

  She swallowed, then stopped.

  Pammy didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything at all.

  “I told them that I’d look, which was my mistake. That’s when they showed me their photographs—the ones clean enough for me to view.” Olive’s voice broke. “I think…I think maybe…I think they thought it would galvanize me, make me look quicker.”

  “It might get the image out of your mind,” Pammy said, hoping she was being helpful.

  “Nothing will scrub that away,” Olive said fiercely. “Nothing. And you, Miss Girls-Are-Strong-Too, you should see what happens to girls who fight like
that. You should see….”

  Olive stopped herself, her lips pressed together. Then she whirled and started back to her office.

  “Olive,” Pammy said, “when did she die?”

  “What does it matter?” Olive asked.

  “A friend of mine saw something a few nights ago,” Pammy said. “Maybe this girl—”

  “This girl was already dead,” Olive said. “That was part of the problem, Pamela. She was already dead, and animals have gotten to her. The soft squishy bits are gone, do you understand? And the police thought I could recognize her from some photograph, compare it to that.”

  She shuddered, then walked away.

  This time, Pammy didn’t try to stop her. Pammy just watched as Olive slipped into the back.

  Alice walked up to the counter, her expression apologetic. She unrolled the list, flattening it on the countertop with her hands.

  “How often do the police do that?” Pammy asked. “How often do they come here for information like that?”

  “More and more these days,” Alice said quietly. “Kids just seem to vanish sometimes. Usually it’s missing persons. Parents contact them, wanting to know if their child has moved or is still attending classes. Sometimes the students keep us informed, but don’t inform their parents.”

  Pammy tried not to look at the lists, curling slightly under Alice’s palms. “I can understand that.”

  “We can too. Students have always done these things. We’re allowed to give information on the undergraduates if they’re not yet twenty-one, but the graduate students—well, sometimes it’s hard. I’m glad I work here and not, say, at the law school.”

  Pammy nodded. “I was actually wondering about the poor dead girl—”

  “It’s not your fault, Pammy,” Alice said. “Olive’s been yelling at everyone since she saw those photographs.”

  “Is that normal?” Pammy asked. “That—”

  “Olive? No, she doesn’t yell as much as you’d think—”

  “No,” Pammy said. “The police, showing crime scene photographs to a civilian.”

  Alice shook her head. “I think they’re desperate. I overheard some of the conversation. I think they’re worried that they might be blamed for the death.”

  “How could they…?” Pammy stopped herself mid-thought. “They think this happened during martial law? Has the body been in the park that long?”

  Alice shrugged.

  “Would there be any of it intact?” Pammy said, more to herself than to Alice. “I mean, martial law was lifted—”

  “I don’t know,” Alice said, “and I don’t want to know. The girl’s dead. It’s horrible. She was fighting with someone. Also horrible. Or maybe—I mean, she was off the side of a trail. Maybe she had fallen and grabbed someone for help, and scraped skin as she did so. Maybe that person was too scared to go to the police after this spring. I know I might have been.”

  Pammy looked at her. She hadn’t expected that revelation from Alice.

  Alice shrugged again. “Think about it. If you were a college kid, and right now, the police are demonizing them, and you go to the police with something simple—a friend fell. That could lead to a murder conviction as easily as an accidental death.”

  Pammy’s mouth went dry. She hadn’t thought of that at all. It seemed odd that Alice would have. But maybe the admissions office was seeing things Pammy couldn’t even dream of.

  “I’m glad my kids are still young,” Alice said in a low voice. “Because right now, even though we get all kinds of breaks because we’re employees, I wouldn’t let my children go to school here. Heck, the way the country’s going, I’m not sure I want my kids to go to college at all.”

  Pammy found herself nodding. This world certainly wasn’t the one she’d attended college in. She had thought things had gotten bad here in Berkeley during all the protests of the Free Speech Movement. Those protests seemed like child’s play now.

  “Anyway,” Alice said when Pammy didn’t respond to her confession. “I have your list of names. You really taking men in your classes now?”

  Pammy shook her head. “I’m rethinking it.”

  “If it’s because of Olive, don’t. Do what you need to do,” Alice said. She slid the papers forward. “Now, onto this.”

  Pammy put her hand on the papers, spreading them out.

  Alice tapped her finger on the top page. “I don’t know where you got these names, but most of them aren’t students.”

  Pammy was not surprised. Since these kids were missing only from the perspective of friends, it stood to reason that many of the kids had just dropped out of school.

  “Something just seemed off about the proposal,” she said, “but I couldn’t think of a reason to say no.”

  “Well, take a look.” Alice held the edges of the papers down. “I marked the current enrollees in red. Three of them are at the same address that they’ve been at all along. One’s back in the dorms after living off campus for a while. I’m rather surprised the four of them are on the list. Good kids, it seems. The others…well, the university is better off without them, I think.”

  “You recognize some of the names?” Pammy asked, surprised.

  “Not so much,” Alice said, “but there are notations in the files. I recognize the pattern. They come, they get involved in some of the politics around here or they drug up or whatever that’s called, then they flunk out. The next stage is coming back with a parent, begging to be reinstated and having the Fs thrown off their transcript. We’ve been getting a lot of that lately, and some high-powered attorneys trying to force us to do it as well.”

  “Really?” Pammy hadn’t heard of any of that kind of behavior before. Maybe that would be an explanation for the disappearances. “Are any of the students on this list involving their parents?”

  “No one here, yet,” Alice said. “But believe me, they will. That’s how the pattern works.”

  Pammy bit the inside of her lower lip. “Could they just be…missing?”

  Apparently, Alice didn’t hear the trepidation behind Pammy’s question.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Alice said. “They could have gone missing. They could have gone to some hippie commune. They could have gone to some protest in Washington, D.C. They could be in some drug house off Telegraph. We have no way to know, unless someone reports something to us. All we get are transcripts and inquiries.”

  “And you have no transcripts or inquiries for these kids?” Pammy asked.

  “Transcripts on all of them, with lots of Fs or DNFs. None of the kids formally dropped out, as far as I can tell. But the information might not have gotten to us yet.”

  “Okay.” Pammy was trying to understand this. “Yet you mentioned these kids were all trouble.”

  “Oh, we have at least one note in each of the files. Some from professors citing disruptions. Some from the dorms, requesting a room be opened or closed or one of the students to be permanently barred from the dorm—”

  “You can do that?” Pammy asked.

  “We can’t. The Housing Administration makes those decisions, but we do document things. Because complaints accumulate. Every once in a while, we have to tell a student they may not enroll for the next semester.”

  “I didn’t know the university did that,” Pammy said.

  “We like to keep it quiet,” Alice said. “Usually, these students, they go away—they don’t take classes for a semester or two, and we can tell them that they’re no longer enrolled. Then we make them reapply, and we turn them down. They have to go through a lot of hoops to get back into the university.”

  “Even though you accepted them once,” Pammy said.

  Alice shrugged. “It’s a political process, at its core. We do have limited slots. We can use our discretion. You’d be surprised some of the former students we’ve turned away.”

  “Like Mario Savio?” Pammy asked, citing one of the leaders of the Free Speech Movement. His attempts at getting readmitted to the uni
versity made national news two years before.

  “That was a particular case,” Alice said primly. “Savio’s request played out in the news because he was well known. Most of these requests do not make the news at all. Only the family knows. Or the student.”

  “Are these students as active as Savio was?” Pammy asked, thinking about those political listings that she had left off of her recopied list.

  “Good heavens no,” Alice said. “He was the national leader of a movement against the university—”

  Pammy started to correct her, then didn’t. The Free Speech Movement ultimately was about students’ rights, not about trying to hurt the university. But, Pammy knew, lots of university employees, particularly with offices here, in front of the action that happened inside the building and at Sather Gate, felt otherwise.

  “—no one is on par with Savio,” Alice was saying. Pammy had missed most of what she had said. “But some of these kids do have marks in their files for their protest activities. And some of them, particularly the young men, were involved in some of the more violent protests.”

  “Did Olive know that?” Pammy asked.

  Alice nodded.

  “So that’s why she’s so against them taking my classes,” Pammy said.

  “She’s against them, period.” Alice patted the papers as if they had tried to escape. “She’s not necessarily alone in that.”

  Alice said that last very softly. Pammy frowned at her.

  “You have no idea what it’s like here, Pammy,” Alice said. “We got gassed in May.”

  “So did we,” Pammy said.

  They stared at each other for a moment. Something sizzled in the air between them. It wasn’t quite hostility, but it wasn’t friendly either. It was as if their shared experience had made them enemies rather than solidifying their friendship.

  Alice slid the papers toward her.

  “I don’t think you should conduct this class,” she said.

  Pammy made a show of thumbing through the pages. Someone had written the dates of last known attendance beside each name. The red marks that Alice made showed up like flares in the middle of a sea of yellow paper and blue ink.