Mind Change

by T'Gracie Reese

  He walked on, reaching up first to this volume, then to that volume…

  Herodotus.

  Lucretius.

  Marcus Aurelius.

  Virgil.

  He took down the volume of Virgil, opened it, laughed:

  “Oh this is Magnusson’s translation, what a lark! That I should come upon it like this. Tommy Magnusson. We had such times together. I remember him translating the superb lines:

  I seemed to see Hector, most sorrowful, black with bloody dust, torn, as he had been, by Achilles’ car, the thong-marks on his swollen foot––

  He looked at Nina as though expecting a verdict:

  “Well, it’s not bad, is it? I would have questioned car, save for the meter. Oh, Tommy! You did not render it badly, Tommy, nor could you have, for you loved it so much.”

  He moved on down the narrow space between stacks of books, tapping this one gently on the spine, or chastising that one for looking dusty, or being torn about the cover.

  Finally, without looking back at Nina, he said:

  “There’s a table over there by the window. Let’s go and sit down a bit. We can still hear them whispering. But I must admit, I’m a bit tired.”

  She followed him to the table, which sat next to a large window. She could see a few lights in the buildings, but the campus was obscured by tree limbs.

  Despite that fact, he waved toward the window, indicating in the general direction of the bell tower.

  “Down there, on the west side of Reed, there used to be something of a faculty club. I remember having cognac there. Of course, there were several places around town where we did that. Gibbons’ Pub. That was Ariel’s favorite. Ariel Polonski. A magnificent Shakespeare scholar. Shakespeare’s plays, all of them, were constantly playing in that mind of hers, apparently simultaneously. After a glass of something or other, she could be prevailed upon to perform. It would be very quiet in that corner of Gibbons––and where Ariel sat, that chair, would become the stage. And the terrible, murderous, insane, deceived Othello would enter. ‘Put out the light, and then put out the light.’ ‘But once put out thy light, thou cunningist pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat, that can thy light relume.’ And then of course, later in the act, Emilia, brave Emilia, discovering the monstrous evil of her husband, Iago: looking at him whispering to him: ‘You told a lie; an odious, damned lie; a wicked lie. She false with Cassio? Oh, villainy, villainy, villainy!’”

  He shook his head, slowly.

  “How you did love the students, Ariel! Dear Othellian Ariel. And far below, sub teram abite, in your dark subterranean home, your home below the earth. Lucy is a magnificent president, isn’t she? She was Lucy then, of course. Tom and Lucy Herndon. You know, we were a faculty then. And then we watched, over the years, as it all began to slip away. Just dissolve. It became so chillingly competitive. Until the point––”

  He looked quickly upward, as though catching sight of Thomas Herndon’s ghost floating by, moving from one volume to another:

  “Something’s going to happen tomorrow,” he whispered.

  “Pardon?”

  “Tomorrow. It will happen tomorrow.”

  “What will?”

  “I was having a glass of brandy with Lucinda last week. We don’t do that often these days. I’ve become too old, and drink disagrees with me. But she had invited me to the residence. I remember her looking at me so strangely and saying, ‘What I’m going to say to them, Arthur—well, I shall say it to you, too. But it isn’t meant for you, not really. You’re different from the rest of them. You should know that.”

  Nina leaned forward and said:

  “She told me she was going to give in to the faculty, and let them have more time to do research.”

  “So that is what she told you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well. That is in fact the rumor. All over campus.”

  “So all the professors should be happy.”

  He merely shook his head:

  “All the professors cannot be happy. Not anymore. Not the real professors, anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, my dear, all the real professors are dead.”

  And, so saying, he rose and tottered away.

  CHAPTER FOUR: A MESSAGE TO THE FACULTY

  Nina arrived at the president’s house at eight thirty, to find an entirely different atmosphere than the one she remembered from the previous day.

  Everything was business. Lucinda Herndon greeted her warmly, of course, but seemed preoccupied with a thousand other matters that needed to be attended to.

  She did find time to talk to the young woman who was her personal aide:

  “I assume the letters went out, Megan?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Every one of them. Morning post.”

  “Good work. Now, you have a class, I think?”

  “Yes. Math at nine thirty.”

  “Well. Good luck with it. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  “Have a good day, Madame President.”

  “Oh, I shall. And now, Nina, let us go and meet the faculty!”

  She threw open the veranda doors, smiling back at Nina and saying:

  “I feel so––so dramatic when I do that! And then the walk across the veranda, and past the rose bushes––and out onto the campus! Come! Come, let us begin our day!”

  And they walked into the campus, bending into a slight and invigorating north breeze and avoiding Frisbees.

  “Dear young Megan is my salvation. The university pays her such a pittance to work for me part time. She’s a secretary, greeter, organizer. I don’t know what I would do without her. We had an immense mailing that went out this morning. She had to supervise it. These things, although they might seem to, do not get done by accident.”

  “No. I’m sure they don’t.”

  “Good morning, Madame President!”

  “Good morning, Linda. Good morning, Susan.”

  Lucinda Herndon smiled:

  “It’s such an archaic title. ‘Madame President.’ I shouldn’t allow the use of it. Doctor or Mrs. Herndon would be fine, and, I suppose, more appropriate. But the undergraduates have always insisted on it.”

  On they walked.

  Meyers Hall.

  “Good morning, Madame President.”

  “Good morning, Stephen.”

  She seemed to know each one of all fifteen thousand or so students on campus.

  What had Nina read about Ellerton?

  Over a thousand full-time faculty and more than a hundred upper-level administrators.

  She probably knew every one of their names, too.

  Grierson Hall was directly in front of them now, and they could see a larger than normal mix of faculty members shuffling up the concrete stairs.

  “You’re looking good this morning, Professor Herndon.”

  “Thank you, Professor Clarendon. How is the anthropology department?”

  “Clicking along. A bit concerned about the latest news on sabbaticals.”

  “I know. Isn’t it depressing? But we’ll deal with it this morning.”

  “I’m sure we will.”

  They threaded their way into the main Grierson lecture hall to find that Rick Barnes had already arrived.

  “President Herndon!”

  “Hello, Mr. Barnes!”

  “And Nina Bannister, the prize winning teacher!”

  “Hello Rick,” said Nina, taking the hand that was offered to her. “That was a great story in this morning’s paper.”

  “I’m glad you liked it, but it doesn’t do you justice. So, President Herndon, I assume you’ll be introducing Ms. Bannister to the faculty this morning? I also assume you know the rumor?”

  “And what rumor is that, Mr. Barnes?”

  “That you’ve somehow found a way to bend the law.”

  “That law being?”

  “The one that keeps adjuncts from teaching more than two courses a semester. As it stands, if t
hey do, you have to pay them benefits. But if you could get around that law, then you could double the number of courses adjuncts teach—without having to hire more adjuncts, there not being enough room for the ones now working here—and you could drastically cut the faculty teaching load. Which is what they’ve always wanted, of course.”

  “Well, there is some truth to that rumor. I think I can tell you that I have, in fact, found a way to clear much more time for the faculty to do research.”

  “Then they’ll love you.”

  “We’ll see. We’ll see.”

  It took a few minutes for the faculty to filter in. During the time, Nina tried to avoid thinking of her own days as an undergraduate.

  They had not been spent at this university, but she decided all universities were pretty much the same in certain respects. There was always a big lecture hall. It had the same smell, the smell of nervous. There was always a huge green blackboard, always a screen to be pulled down for PowerPoint or whatever kind of presentations were to be given; always the soft laughter turned to soft whispering turned to near silence turned to silence as the professor fixed his microphone, arranged his notes, and began.

  This time the professor was not Nina’s old chemistry teacher (God how she’d hated chemistry!) but a large, beefy, white-bearded professor whom she’d seen some minutes before, arriving in a big game hunter’s hat, not quite a cowboy hat, but a hat with what seemed like animals’ teeth stuck in its band, as though he were on not a Midwestern campus, but a Western African antelope plain.

  “I want to thank you all for coming. We have a bit of business today. As you know, President Herndon has agreed to join us, to talk about freeing time for more research.”

  Lucinda stood, turned, and was welcomed by a few pleasantries, a smattering of applause.

  “I think the president knows we have some concerns.”

  More laughter, somewhat nervous this time.

  “But I want to point out that we are always happy to have her among us, and I’m sure she’ll do her best to answer our questions. So I give you President Herndon.”

  She walked up the two stairs to the stage, crossed to the podium, leaned forward, resting her forearms on it for just an instant, then seemed to rock back again. She looked around the room, appraising her audience.

  How many people? Nina wondered.

  Three hundred or so?

  The rest not yet back, for classes were still days away from starting.

  Then Lucinda Herndon said:

  “You are all fired.”

  She left the podium, descended the three steps leading down the stage, walked to where Nina and Rick Barnes were seated, looked down at them, and said:

  “Let’s go.”

  They rose. As Nina followed from the hall, she heard some raucous laughter and a few comments such as:

  “That’s what we were going to do to you!”

  From two or three of the people in the back of the hall:

  “Inappropriate humor. Entirely inappropriate.”

  Then silence, or, at least, sounds that Nina could not hear.

  Within a minute, the three of them were outside.

  Of all the things that Nina could remember about that morning, that afternoon, the following night—all of it––the walk away from Grierson Hall was the most vivid. She could remember marveling at how still everything was. A few hooded Frisbee players were still running about on the green, but other than those few shrill sounds, and chiming from the Bell Tower across campus, there was simply silence.

  Broken by Rick Barnes, who asked:

  “My God, Dr. Herndon––what happened?”

  “I fired the faculty. Also a great portion of the administration. All in all, I believe 1,263 letters went out this morning.”

  “But––I mean––is it a joke or a demonstration or––”

  “No.”

  And they kept walking.

  There were only two things possible, Nina could remember thinking: either Lucinda Herndon, her old friend, had lost her mind or she was beginning to lose her mind. Despite the radiant glow that she seemed to exude, even as they walked through the brisk morning air, her cheeks flushed a healthy red––despite those things, she had to be suffering from early stages of dementia.

  Or she would not have done what Nina had just witnessed.

  Barnes again, stammering now:

  “I mean––can you do that? Just––fire everyone?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why are they fired?”

  “Because we can’t afford them.”

  “But they’re the teachers!”

  “No they’re not. Adjuncts are the teachers.”

  “But the faculty––”

  “They’re nothing. And I’m tired of supporting them. Now––I believe we are to part for now. I would suggest that you return to the offices of your paper, downtown. Nina, I think you should go with him. I’m not going to be good company for a time now. You’re the person I trust most to counsel me in the days ahead. Also, there’s a huge job I’m going to be tasking you with, and quite soon. I’m lucky to have you on my side, and I want you to remain closely apprised of what’s going to happen. A good many of the letters will have been received by now, and there will be much activity in the next few hours. Much of it will be filtered through the newspaper office.”

  “But, Lucinda,” said Nina, “I’m not sure how I can help.”

  “I’ll let you know that early this afternoon.”

  “But whatever’s happening is so completely out of my league––”

  A shake of Lucinda Herndon’s head:

  “No it isn’t. You seem to thrive in difficult situations. This one is going to become very difficult. I need you, Nina. I apologize in advance for involving you.”

  “Don’t worry about it, if I can really help.”

  “If anyone can, you can. That’s all I can say for now. Please take her with you, Rick. Keep her in the know. And take her advice.”

  “All right, I will, but—Dr. Herndon, do you really want me to write this story?”

  “Yes. That’s why you were invited to the meeting.”

  “I mean––really, you’ve fired them? All of them?”

  “That’s correct. Here––”

  She handed him a small, sealed, manila folder.

  “The letters are in there. There are two of them––one for faculty, one for administrators. You may quote the letters for your story; or you may reproduce them in their entirety. It’s up to you.”

  “Every faculty member got one of these?”

  “Every full-time faculty member will receive a copy today.”

  “But they’re prestigious scholars!”

  “Not one university will offer one of them a job. Not one. Not Harvard. Not Oxford. Not even the local community college. That’s how prestigious they are. No, dear. They aren’t prestigious at all. They’re simply arrogant.”

  “And your reason for firing them?”

  “Is that they are crooks.”

  “You want me to write that? Your quotation is, “The entire full-time faculty is crooks?”

  “That’s right. They take a great deal of money, and they give nothing back, except specious research, which consists of innumerable books and articles that deal with nothing that is taught here on the campus, or anywhere else. They have run, for decades now, a colossal scam. A colossal fraud on the people of a state desperate to avoid going broke. And I’m tired of it.”

  “But doesn’t the Board have to agree?”

  “The Board will meet later this morning. They have a regularly scheduled, monthly meeting at ten o’clock. If they choose to fire me and go on being robbed, so be it. But I will have some things to say to them before that happens. And by the way, I’d like for both of you to be there.”

  “I––my editor probably has to––”

  “I’ll call your editor. He’ll agree. This story is yours now. If you want it, of course.”

&n
bsp; “Of course I do.”

  “Then good. Run along now, both of you. I shall be in touch.”

  And she left.

  The office of The Gazette was in chaos. Nina had never seen such confusion. Reporters were running from table to table, cubicle to cubicle, going toward one wall and then changing direction and going back toward the other wall. All the phones were ringing. No one was sitting down, at least not for long. From the street came the sound of sirens. She had no idea whether they were responding to the normal morning fender bender just like those that might have taken place in little Bay St. Lucy, or the riot that she assumed was about to begin on campus.

  Two people––white-shirted and disheveled––stared at Barnes and asked, simultaneously:

  “Have you heard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you believe this?”

  “I can believe anything.”

  “Rick?”

  “Yes, sir. Nina, this is my editor, Penn Robinson Jr. Sir, this is Ms. Nina Bannister.”

  “Yeah, the subject of your story this morning. Good morning, Ms. Bannister.”

  “Mr. Robinson.”

  “Do you know anything about this?”

  The editor was a compact man with a hatchet face and an intense stare, fuzz-headed and immensely powerful-looking through the chest. He could not have been more than five feet seven inches tall, but intense, beady eyes and massive biceps made him a frightening figure.

  He walked toward both of them, a cup of coffee in his hand, steam rising from either the coffee or from him.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “any more than you do.”

  Barnes:

  “Sir, we’ve just come from Herndon. Apparently she and Nina are very close. She asked me if I’d help keep Nina apprised of everything that’s going on. I hope you don’t mind her staying close with me on this.”

  “I’ll be happy to have her around. Hell, I’ll put her on the payroll if she can help us make sense of this lunacy! Now come on in here, both of you.”