Mind Change

by T'Gracie Reese

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Then the two of them left.

  They walked down a corridor that led deeper into the building, looking for a stairway that might take them up to the second floor, when they passed another office, large and familiar to Nina.

  Now she remembered. It was the provost’s office.

  Inside it stood two women, both bending over a desk, then looking up at them. They gazed at them much as Matheson had done, but no smiles crept across their faces.

  They were women who looked quite similar: business-suited, trim of build, one with flaming red hair, and the other with hair much the color of Lucinda Herndon’s, except pulled straight back and tied in a braid that hung almost to her waist.

  They continued to stare.

  Nina felt instinctively that the two of them should have kept going. But they did not.

  Like deer in headlights, they stood looking back at them, dumb show mutual zoo gazers at the Administrative Hall for Wildlife and Spectators. Neither side knowing which was the wildlife, which the spectators.

  Finally, the mime ended with both women, as though set loose by the same instinct, walking in an almost run step to the glass door and sliding it open.

  The woman with the flaming red hair stepped through the wall––or where the wall should have been, had the door not been there––studied them for a long five seconds, looking them up and down.

  “This is my husband’s office. He’s Charles Iverson, the provost. I’m his wife, Amy Iverson. What are you doing here?”

  They said nothing.

  “Are you part-time faculty? Because you’re not coming in here, do you understand that? Now get the hell away from here!”

  “Ma’am,” Rick stammered.

  “Don’t ma’am me! I told you to get the hell away from here!”

  “We’re just––”

  “You’re just trying to come in here and take what doesn’t belong to you! My husband is a top administrator at this university, and he’s going to stay one. We will fight this insanity, do you understand? She can’t do this!”

  “We’re not part-time faculty,” said Rick, calmly. “I’m a newspaperman. I’m Rick Barnes of The Gazette.”

  There was a momentary pause.

  Then the woman who had identified herself as Amy Iverson surged past the braid wearer and lunged straight at Rick, stopping only inches from his face, as though halted like a bulldog by a leash two inches long enough.

  “I remember you now, you creep! You’re Barnes, the reporter! You write vicious things about my husband, and about the university. And you have for years.”

  “I just write––”

  “You were in our house once, years ago, when Charles and I first came here. And you even had us over. Then you just turned against him!”

  Rick seemed at a complete loss for words.

  “You creep!”

  Then he stepped back, almost involuntarily, so that he was pinned against the wall by both women who––seeming to forget Nina––started showering him with obscenities, hatred glowing in their eyes.

  “You creep! Are you going to win some sort of prize for this? Is this a game for you, or what? Do you get paid for costing us our livelihoods? How much? How much do they pay you per word?”

  Then a policeman appeared at the other end of the corridor.

  “What’s going on here?”

  “Nothing,” said Rick.

  The policeman, a huge black man with guns and shining badges and handcuffs and red and blue and tan insignia and nightsticks and six feet two of body, walked quickly toward them, saying: “Well, something sure seems to be going on! You can be heard all over the building!”

  They simply stood there, pursing their lips and shaking their heads.

  Finally:

  “There was an argument,” said Braidwoman, holding the palm of her hand toward the policeman and pushing it repeatedly forward into the air, against nothing, as though it were actually repelling an unpleasant fact, which, if pushed far enough away from her, would simply disappear.

  “There was an argument, and we let our tempers get out of hand.”

  “I’ll say you did.”

  And then came the buzzing of his walkie-talkie.

  Still glaring at us, he unhooked it from his belt, swung it to his ear, and barked into it.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be there.”

  Then, to the four of them:

  “I’m assuming this is over, right?”

  Nods around the group.

  “All right. You can all go.”

  Five minutes later, the two of them were sitting in Lucinda Herndon’s office.

  “Lucy,” said Nina, “this is all incredible. I had no idea––”

  “I know, Nina. It’s not what you expected.”

  “It’s not what anybody expected. People are in shock.”

  “They’ll get over it. Mr. Barnes, you’re covering all of these events admirably.”

  “Thank you.” .

  “But now I must ask you to consider writing another story.”

  “All right. Shoot.”

  “I can’t. Not quite yet. Not until I get a confirmation.”

  “A confirmation about what? And from whom?”

  “About a job. And from Nina.”

  Nina sat forward:

  “What?”

  “I’m about to offer you a job, Nina.”

  “But you have offered me a job. I’m supposed to be teaching an English course.”

  “And you will, if you wish to.”

  “If I wish to?”

  “Yes, you may choose to decline.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you might not have time.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not understanding any of this.”

  “Perhaps I can clarify it. I actually invited you to come to Ellerton because I need you for a much larger job than teaching one course. I couldn’t describe the job to you before because—well, because you knew nothing about the events of this morning.”

  “If you had told me about them, Lucy, I wouldn’t have believed them.”

  “And you would probably have stayed in Bay St. Lucy.”

  “Well, since you mention it…”

  “Of course. And that’s perfectly understandable. But you must at least let me tell you of the job. Because I honestly believe it to be crucial to my vision of the new Ellerton.”

  “All right, Lucinda. But I just don’t see how I can be a part of any of this. So many people fired, so much anger…”

  “The anger will dissolve. All of the people released will have money to live on—a good deal of money—for the rest of their lives. If they wish to spend their remaining years researching extinct shrimp, so be it. But I’m much more interested in hiring now than firing. And that’s where you come in.”

  “Where?”

  “I want you to find teachers for me.”

  “But you just hired more than two hundred adjuncts.”

  “And they will teach a great many of our courses. Their numbers will be supplemented, though, by Golden Age teachers. And you will be head of The Ellerton Golden Age Teaching Project.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s not that difficult, Nina. Think of it this way. If you ask most people—people from any profession, any age—who their favorite teacher of all time was, almost all of them will have one they want to talk about. Mizz Suggs from the fourth grade. Or Coach Daniels. Or that great high school history teacher who just seemed to make everything come alive, and whose fifty-minute class seemed to be over only minutes after it began.”

  “Yes, I guess that’s true.”

  “Of course, it’s true. And the thing is, it’s only one per person. Nobody was ever lucky enough to have two great teachers. Only one. The other thirty or forty get divided into a group that were all right and hard-working, but not magic—and another few who weren’t worth shooting and never should have been in the classroom
to begin with.”

  “Yes. I’ve known some of them, too.”

  “Nina, there are right now, even as we are speaking, a thousand or more wonderful high school teachers—teachers of all subjects, from English to biology to mathematics to history—who are in good health, and simply living the life of a retired teacher. I want you to find those people and bring them here.”

  “But how would I do that?”

  “You will do it, and you can do it, because you’re Nina Bannister. You are one of those people. And I’m betting that if asked right now, just because of your experience with thirty years in the classroom and in the principal’s office—you could name me at least fifty wonderful teachers whom you have known, have worked with, have observed, have met in various conferences—and who are no longer teaching. Who are, in short, being completely wasted.”

  Nina, almost involuntarily, began thinking.

  And it was true.

  Felicia Harrison, who had taught with her for years in Bay St. Lucy.

  What an inspiring English teacher.

  She made it, according to every student, come alive.

  Bill Meyer from history.

  Tom Congdon from over in Hattiesburg.

  More came to her mind.

  And more.

  She interrupted her own reverie to ask:

  “All right, I know a few. But I’m not sure if some of them are even still alive. I’m especially not sure if they’d want to go back into teaching.”

  Lucinda Herndon shook her head and said:

  “They probably would not wish to go back into high school teaching, dealing with the ever present wild and unruly student who has to be sent to the office. But this would be college teaching, teaching in an environment most high school teachers were never allowed entry into. Students who listened, and colleagues who were all creative, who could all learn from each other.”

  “All right, a lot of them might be interested in something like that.”

  “Of course, they would. We would pay each one forty thousand dollars a year, which they would receive in addition to teacher retirement. They would live here on campus, just as the people who were adjuncts are going to live, in the comfortable apartments that Peter Stockton and his friends are going to be building for us. All of their meals—if they should choose to take them on campus—would be free. Tell them: come and teach for three years, and you can put into the bank another hundred thousand dollars with which to supplement your retirement. Now tell me, Nina: is that not an attractive proposal?”

  She realized there was but one answer.

  “Yes.”

  “Could you not use another hundred thousand to live on?”

  “Of course I could. But I still don’t see how I’m going to find enough teachers who are really great at their job. Yes, I know a few, remember a few. But as for the rest––”

  But Lucinda Herndon simply smiled and nodded.

  “You go into towns in Mississippi and simply hold your finger in the air. Think, Nina: if any stranger were simply to go into the library in Bay St. Lucy and ask one of the older librarians: who is the best high school teacher Bay St. Lucy ever had, what would be the immediate answer?”

  Nina mused for a time and then said, softly:

  “Me.”

  “Of course. And there are you’s all over the state. Their names are not collected in any one journal or printed on any one plaque; for they have become part of the town’s mythology. We will pay you, Nina, and pay you well, to travel around the state and find these people. Find them and bring them back here. You would, in short, be doing research. But it would not be blathering nonsense and it would not be called structuralism. It would be mining for gold, that presently is hidden and doing no good.”

  Silence for a time.

  “I––”

  “Think about it, Nina. Think about it.”

  She said she would.

  And then the two of them left.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: A CABIN IN THE WOODS

  They returned to the offices of The Gazette to find Penn Robinson standing in the door.

  “Okay. It’s all out of control.”

  That fact was made obvious by a casual pause to listen. A blue and white helicopter was flying low over head, the faces of photographers visible through the Plexiglas windshield. Sirens seemed to be going off everywhere.

  “The radio announcers keep going over the same figures, the same sentences. According to the AP, the nation’s leading one hundred largest universities are wasting more than a billion dollars a year on useless research and useless bureaucrats. Do you have any idea the effect that is having?”

  “I can’t imagine,” Rick said.

  Robinson shook his head.

  “Well, let’s just try to get at one thing at a time. The country is almost broke. We’re having riots in the streets in New York and Chicago to protest Wall Street. People are out of jobs, losing their homes. Whole cities are going bankrupt. And now: a billion dollars a year. A billion dollars a year!”

  The helicopter continued to circle, getting shots of the part-time faculty who, as they were exiting the gymnasium, were waving hand-painted posters that said:

  Down with the full-time faculty!

  Nina could make out on the side of the helicopter the words: ABC News.

  “It’s going to get worse,” Rick said.

  “You better believe it’s going to get worse,” Robinson countered. “There are apparently demonstrations against The University of Waste being planned on campuses all over the country.”

  “Which campuses?”

  “University of Idaho, in Boise.”

  “That figures,” he said. “Conservative West.”

  “University of Wyoming.”

  “Yep.”

  “University of Colorado.”

  “Figures.”

  “Harvard.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “And people are coming here. Jesus, are they coming here. By the busloads.”

  “Who’s coming here?”

  “Everybody. Reporters, TV types, politicians, but mostly parents. They have no idea what’s going on. They can’t find out anything any other way: they have no idea if the university will even exist by Monday.”

  “What are the politicians saying, boss?”

  Robinson shook his head.

  “Obviously, the most conservative Republicans love it. The Tea Party guys have been ranting about pin-headed academics for years. Two Republican senators have publically endorsed Herndon’s bold initiative and are exhorting college presidents to take similar actions.”

  “What about the Democrats?”

  “They don’t know what to do. Their first instinct was to be outraged over the firing of two thousand people. But this isn’t like the firing of two thousand actual working men and women, union members, truck drivers, steamfitters—no, these are academics whom nobody—nobody—sympathizes with or likes. And not only that, it’s bureaucrats. It’s a paradox. The people who just got fired are all liberals, so you’d think the Democrats would support them. But they all make a hundred thousand dollars a year—except for people like the provost, who make four hundred thousand––do no physical work, and summer in Europe. In other words, they live like Republicans. So the Democrats don’t know what the hell to say about them.”

  He paused, then continued:

  “No one likes these people, you know? They have no organized basis of support. Who’s going to man the barricades backing ‘University English Professors for Extinct Shrimp?’ And ‘The Association of Vice Directors and Assistant Curriculum Planners’ is hardly the Teamsters’ Union.”

  The editor shook his head and said:

  “On the other hand, they’re not going to take this lying down. The administrators are flying back to campus as fast as they can. The American Association of University Professors is already threatening the University’s accreditation. The more sane faculty members are organizing. I don’t know what will happen
, but something will, and probably within a few hours.”

  “So what do you want us to do, boss?”

  “Get out of town. You need to lie low for a while. Everybody’s looking for you, Rick, either because they love you or because they hate you. You can’t report the story for a while because you’ve become the story…which can’t be allowed to happen. So, is there somewhere you can go, at least for a few hours, until this begins to die down?”

  “Yes, I think so.

  “All right. Take the station’s van. I don’t even want you going back to your place to get your car.”

  “Okay, thanks, boss. I’m going to take Nina to––”

  “I don’t want to know. Just get out of here.”

  And they did.

  On the way out of town, neither of them spoke. Finally, Rick said:

  “I’m sorry I took his offer so quickly, Nina. I should have asked you if you wanted to come.”

  “That’s all right. And by the way, where else am I going to go? Everybody who hates the president—or you—now hates me.”

  “It’s too bad it’s happened that way.”

  “It always seems to happen that way. I look forward to a few days of rest and relaxation, and then all hell can break loose. It’s just that when it breaks loose, it tends to do so in so many different ways. Why don’t the authors who seem to be creating me at least try to write the same book twice, so I’ll know what’s coming?”

  She shook her head and said:

  “No, that’s just the way it is. So where are we going?”

  “Some friends and I have a hunting/fishing cabin.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  And it was.

  And that worried her.

  For a time, they simply drove.

  It was a nice drive, and within a few miles, it put the sirens and the helicopters and the police cars all behind them. The radio emitted a bit of elevator music which, mixed with the murmur of the engine, seemed to have the same lulling effect that windshield wipers do during a long trip in rain.

  The chain restaurants and filling stations came more sparsely. They started up a few hills that became gradually more wooded. Finally, there were just pines and blue sky, the sun behind them becoming multi-colored as its rays deflected through whatever layers of waste and garbage in the atmosphere made it look golden and magical.