The action was not sufficient to satisfy him, however. He also insisted on obtaining the names of the members of our congregation, and it was then we truly felt the hand of God guiding us. We gave the insolent creature the complete list of Novatians, and we included their meeting place for good measure.
This finally satisfied him, as was fully revealed this forenoon.
The legionnaires apprehended virtually every member of that contumacious sect, and today a special event is being planned on the campgrounds. Sewn up in sacks, the heretics are to be strewn across the open field to be trampled upon by the war elephants of the auxiliaries.
So you see, your grace, Divine intervention can be the only explanation for this fortuitous arrival of the military, which will achieve the final solution to the nagging problem of this atheistic sect.
Rest assured this humble sinner will continue to do all in our power to encourage the flourishing of the True Church.
We remain, faithfully, your brother and colleague in Christ.
FINALS
About all I could think about was Eileen. Earth Day, Vietnam, the civil rights movement, none of it had any impact on me. Even without Eileen, I probably wouldn’t have become involved, because I’m not big on politics. With Eileen, I didn’t have much time for my studies, never mind anything else.
She had the biggest, bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. And when I helped her with her class work, she would drive me wild, looking at me with those lovely eyes, twisting a strand of her long blond hair and then putting the tip between the most luscious lips on campus.
There was a lot of staring and hair tasting when it came to Philosophy 101. Phil 101 was her nemesis. She had received a final warning from the Dean’s office the previous semester, and she now needed a C in the course to keep from being thrown out of Downey Junior College. It hadn’t been easy for her to accomplish the feat of receiving a Dean’s warning, since Downey has never been noted for its high standards, but Eileen managed.
I’d done all I could to help her get into a cinch program, and we’d managed to Mickey Mouse her most of the way. She was sure to get at least a B in drama, since she was in the semester play—fortunately with a non-speaking part. And she was a good swimmer, so she’d elected for an advanced swimming class. We’d also managed to get her into a Distributive Education class which was a complete no-brainer, peopled mostly by jocks, with an instructor who spent most of his time either talking about his experiences in the navy or trying to justify the course’s existence. He was so eager to get students into his class he virtually guaranteed a C or better to warm bodies.
Eileen’s French course was no problem. The language prof was way beyond retirement age, hired temporarily, semester after semester, and senile since her fifties. Since she usually forgot what she’d taught the previous day, the students managed to keep her going over and over the first two or three chapters in the text. The rumor was the Dean of Students had to fill out her grade book for her because she shook too much to do it herself.
And then there was Phil 101. Eileen had managed to screw up her schedule, and there wasn’t much left when the Registrar finally got it straightened out. What with all the draft dodgers, Downey was straining at the seams, so even Remington’s courses were packed—for the first time in history. I should say Doctor Remington, because he insisted on the title, though I’ll bet he got the degree through correspondence from a degree mill. Anyhow, Phil 101 already had 200 students in it, split into four quiz sections, and only a last minute dropout allowed Eileen to crowd in.
The few other choices had been even more impossible. I couldn’t see Eileen in Math, and I sure wouldn’t have been able to help her there, since I barely scraped through the subject, myself. Economics? God, no!
So we had finally settled on Phil 101. The big advantage to the course was the fact I was taking it too. Besides giving me an extra hour a day of Eileen’s company, I knew I could help her out because I was majoring in history, which gave me a fairly good background for the class. That’s not saying I wanted to take the course, not as long as old Remington was the instructor, but he was the only one teaching it. He’d already established a reputation as being absolutely the most boring instructor on campus, who made the French prof sound like Lenny Bruce. Every other word was “ah” or “um,” and he managed to spend interminable time on the most abstruse trivia.
But one nice part about the class—other than Eileen’s presence of course—was Remington’s exams. They were notorious for being simple, even though he graded them erratically, enjoyed the reputation of being a “tough teacher,” and—to maintain his reputation—even managed to flunk a few students. The biggest drawback from Eileen’s perspective was Remington’s habit of giving only one test per semester—a final. It was going to be make or break on one and, in the meantime, I had no way of gauging the real effectiveness of my coaching.
On the other hand, Remington’s weird kind of testing gave me even more time to spend with Eileen, and I’m sure I was the envy of a good share of the college’s male population, though I was probably being given credit for achievements which were still well beyond my grasp. Eileen had made it very clear from the beginning what our relationship was going to be—platonic—without giving any thought to the philosopher responsible for the concept. But, as the days went by, I had the definite feeling she was weakening and—God!—how I wanted her to weaken.
The same semester was when miniskirts appeared on campus, and Eileen was the first one to come to school wearing one. For my money, she might as well have been the only one, because no other legs on campus could match hers. Males jostled each other to climb the stairs five steps behind her.
In spite of her looks, Eileen had never acquired a steady. She occasionally ate lunch with three sweat-shirted jocks, one of whom—Eric Swenson—dogged her footsteps almost as much as I did. Swenson was the biggest and ugliest one of the crowd, even though he was trying his best to look chic and up-to-date with straggly long hair instead of the standard crewcut. He managed to give me dirty looks every time I dragged her off to the library for study hour. I kind of doubt he even knew where the library was.
Now, why Eileen ever enrolled in college in the first place had been a mystery to me, until one day she told me she wanted to be a stewardess. The minimum requirement for the position on the regional air shuttle was a junior college degree, and Eileen’s heart was set on wearing one of those natty blue uniforms with the overseas caps. We weren’t halfway through Phil 101 when she announced anything less than a C would mean utter and complete devastation for her. She didn’t add it would mean banishment for me, with only an occasional glimpse of her waiting on customers at the local five and dime store. On the other hand, the C became a glowing talisman holding out the promise of a stewardess-ship for Eileen, and—by then, I was sure—the promise of something more for me.
I worked my tail off.
But then there was Remington. Since he was a nut on attendance, we both showed up religiously. Each student had his own form of entertainment in the class. The one on my right spent the hour catching up on all the letters she hadn’t written in her two years at the college. Another nearby must have passed his organic chemistry course twice-over as he carefully went through his text and made elaborate notes. Eileen looked off into space while sucking on endless strands of her beautiful hair. The male on the opposite side of her spent his time staring at her, and I didn’t have to guess what his mind was occupied with.
As far as I was concerned, Remington did his level best to destroy my interest in philosophy. His delivery grated on me. Every third word was “ah”. Even his personal appearance drove me to distraction. What hair he had managed to keep always stood on end. And he had large tortoise-shell glasses, virtually no chin, and nicotine-stained teeth which must have been a sickly yellow to begin with. To top it all, he wore clothing closely matching his God-given features.
I was sure he owned only one suit of clothes—an off-color blue jobb
y sewn together by blind, sweatshop workers laboring away in some Hong Kong garret. The pants were too long, and the cuffs had obviously been dragged though the mud at one time or another. The wrinkles seemed to be a fundamental part of the fabric. His shirts varied between a blue pin-stripe and a gray-white disaster with a collar at least two sizes too big for his scrawny neck. The high point of his sartorial splendor, though, was his ties. I counted them. Three cast-offs from the local thrift shop, each with its own individualized grease stain.
And the weeks dragged on. Four days a week with Remington, every Friday with a bored quiz section leader. The section was an improvement over Remington but, since Eileen was in a different one, I didn’t have the reward of her presence. I did pick up valuable information from my section leader though—the nature of Remington’s tests.
Half was objective, half was essay. And Remington prided himself on getting the results back the following morning. Or, rather, on forcing the section leaders to spend all night correcting the papers so he could give them a cursory inspection and have the grades posted by eight a.m. Section leaders were supposed to take everything into consideration: neatness, grammar, explicit conformity to instructions—name in the left hand corner, last name first, row number in the middle, section number on the right, section leader’s name next to it, and on and on.
Did he even look at the papers, I wondered. Oh, yes, I was informed. He even corrected a token half-dozen himself. As for the others, the final grade was his decision and was almost certainly based upon the number of red marks made by the section leaders, though the arcane method of distinguishing C-minuses from D-pluses was something beyond the ken of my section leader.
I began to panic by the end of the last month, but not for myself. I’m a stickler for following rules, and I had the textbook mastered. Surprisingly, it was both readable and informative, which convinced me Remington had left its selection up to the section leaders. He certainly showed no evidence he, himself, had ever so much as glanced into it. My concern, as you can imagine, was for Eileen.
If anything, her attention span with me was even less than it was with Remington. It was pleasant for me, looking across the library table at her boobs, but it was agony trying to get her to deal with the simplest of concepts.
By now, you may have assumed Eileen was just plain dumb. If so, you’re way off the mark. Granted, she wouldn’t have broken the code to Etruscan; still, she had a good memory. Title, author, chapter and verse of every Beatles song were carefully filed away and readily repeatable. And she could recite the exact heights and weights of each of the Rolling Stones. So I soon discovered she could easily memorize a list of anything, however inane. But I didn’t have the right list, while the concepts I explained to her disappeared almost as rapidly as she heard them. And she did hear them, since I very soon adopted the procedure of having her repeat what I said, hoping it would stay around a while if she did.
In one session, near the end of the semester, I asked her who’d written Plato’s Republic. The hesitation stretched out into numbered seconds, then she smiled her killer smile, reached over, tapped my arm with those soft and gentle fingers and said, “You’re just being silly. I know the answer. It was Plato. You were trying to trick me, weren’t you?”
I admitted I had been, but I was grateful nonetheless, both for the soft touch and for the correct answer.
Early on, I’d decided to concentrate on possible objective questions, on the assumption writing anything would give her something on the essays. With a little luck then, even a modicum of success on the objective portion might sum up to the desperately wished-for C.
As the day of the final came closer and closer, however, I began to realize it was all hopeless. I had to admit to myself Eileen’s chances of avoiding dismal and total failure were roughly on a par with her being run over by a dinosaur. But Eileen was becoming even more forthright in her admission the fulfillment of her goal would guarantee the achievement of mine. So then I became frantic. More than that, I started to act crazy, actually planning something I would never so much as thought of before.
I knew if I had an actual copy of the test, Eileen—with a minimum of coaching—could pass it. I was certain she could memorize the objective portion and guarantee a B or even an A on those questions. And, with handwriting neat enough to satisfy even Remington, plus some canned answers for her to work on, she should at least be able to pass the essay section. The end result would then be an almost certain C!
OK, so it was crazy! But there was one way to get a copy. Instructors had to have the originals into staff services at least three days ahead of time. The fancy grillwork on the side of the building was easily scalable, and no one ever thought to lock the windows to staff services on the second floor. They weren’t even closed during those last warm months of spring semester.
Two nights before final, and after making sure the watchman had made his last rounds and was safely in his cubbyhole viewing “I Love Lucy,” or whatever, I climbed into the administration building and slipped into staff services. Pile after pile of freshly mimeographed tests were neatly stacked on the long office table. Everything but Philosophy 101. I was desperate. I looked everywhere, even fishing through the wastebaskets in the forlorn hope the stencil had been discarded there. Nothing!
I spent the night back in my room trying to deal with the problem. Where had the damn things gone? How could I get a copy?
Sam Heimdahl was born to be a con artist. Next morning, on campus, I turned to him for help. “Yup. There’s a way you can get a copy. But it’ll cost you money.”
“How much?”
He shrugged. “Eric Swenson got a copy of last semester’s Physics 100 test.” Sam grinned. “He barely passed, even then, and it cost him three hundred dollars.”
Three hundred dollars seemed a mere pittance for what I had in mind, even though it represented almost three months of my sacking groceries at the local supermarket.
As it turned out, Emma Lundquist, an old-time clerk in the office, was the source. It took a lot of talking around the subject before we were both comfortable with what I was asking. And then I drew a blank.
She was quick to tell me Dr. Remington had gathered up all the copies several days before to make some hand corrections. She then added, as though it were common knowledge. “He does the same thing every semester.” Seeing the expression on my face, she went on for my benefit, “Dr. Remington is always very concerned about any copies getting out. He even waits for us to run them off, and then takes all the copies home right then, along with the stencils and any defaced copies. There’s no way his tests could ever get out.”
So there I was. And there Eileen was. No stewardess. No nothing!
I tried putting the best face on it. Since I hadn’t told her to expect a copy of the exam, she didn’t have to share in the disappointment. And I reassured her beyond all reason. She was definitely going to make it.
Hah!
But she was ever so grateful. Those big, beautiful eyes got moist as she thanked me, and she rested her hand on my arm for the longest time. I’m not really sure whether I’m an atheist or an agnostic, but I did pray for a miracle, knowing damn well none would happen.
The Phil 101 exam was on the last day of finals. I checked through my copy as soon as I received it and knew it was utterly beyond Eileen. At first, I didn’t dare to even look at her. When I did, I saw she was frowning and gamely working her way through the objective portion. I felt almost guilty as I turned to the exam and somehow managed to lose myself in it. When I’d finished, near the end of the period, I was just in time to see Eileen take her copy to the front desk where an appreciative section leader eyed her voluptuous, mini-skirted figure as she dropped the exam in front of him and left.
I rushed up to leave my copy, hoping to get a glimpse of what she’d turned in, but at least two other students had deposited their own meager efforts on top of hers before I got there. She was nowhere in the hall when I went out, and I dec
ided it was all for the best.
I didn’t sleep at all night. I didn’t pray, either, knowing even God couldn’t square the circle. And I arrived on campus just as one of the section leaders was posting the grades. The usual crush was taking place. I started down the list in my section first because Eileen’s was still to be posted. A-minus. I shook my head in exasperation. Since I knew I had completely cooled the exam, I assumed I must have somewhere missed a comma. The s.o.b.!
And then I found Eileen’s score. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. I even traced my finger across the list to make sure the name and letter were on the same line.
As I was shaking my head in disbelief over the A, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Sam Heimdahl, grinning from ear to ear. “I guess you haven’t heard. Someone broke into Doc Remington’s house a couple of days ago. The story’s in this morning’s paper.”
And there it was. A brief item in the local news section.
DOWNEY PROFESSOR’S HOME BURGLARIZED
Doctor Aemilius Remington reported to the police his home had been burglarized over the weekend. While the police found a broken basement window and muddy footprints at the scene, Doctor Remington said, to the best of his knowledge, nothing was missing. He also hazarded the guess the intruders must have been frightened off before they could take anything. The investigation of the burglary is continuing, according to a police spokesman.
I took off to phone Eileen. Her mother said she was out. Three more calls produced the same answer, an annoyed one by the last try. Fortunately, I got Eileen’s father on the phone when I made one more call in the evening. Eileen had left word she was staying the night with friends—the Pedersen sisters. The trouble with this bit of information was I knew she couldn’t stand either of the Pedersens, but I was desperate enough to try anyway. I was right, of course. They knew nothing about the supposed house-guest.
It wasn’t hard for me to figure out where Eileen was really spending the night, and I cursed myself because I hadn’t thought of breaking into Remington’s house.
Expect the Unexpected Page 14
