The Kingdom of Dog

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “If that’s what the syllabus says. ” Her phone rang and she answered. It was obvious from her body language that I was dismissed.

  I walked back across the quad to Fields Hall, sticking to the well-trod if somewhat slushy paths. A few dirty piles of old snow nestled around the bases of the pine trees in dirty clumps. Stapled flyers fluttered from the notice board in the center of the quad as I walked past.

  I hadn’t taught professional and technical writing for years, since I was a newly-minted MA in New York scrabbling for any work that came my way, but I’d been writing memos, letters, resumes, reports and presentations for years.

  The syllabus was pretty straightforward. The class met in one of the computer-equipped classrooms in Blair Hall and students did both in-class and online work, using a software program I had begun using in the previous term. I logged in and looked at the materials Perpetua had assembled, ignoring the messy pile of papers and phone messages on my desk.

  Fortunately she had prepared a series of video lectures on each topic. I was surprised to see how old she was—she looked like she’d been a nun when Martin Luther was posting his ninety-five theses on that church door in Wittenberg. I didn’t understand how someone could look so old, frail and munchkin-like and still be alive. But then again, she wasn’t any more.

  I grabbed a hoagie from one of the trucks for lunch and went back to my regular work. I pulled bits of roast beef out of my sandwich and fed them to Rochester as I made phone calls and answered email.

  Just before two Dezhanne came in for her work-study shift. “I’m rethinking this whole pre-med thing,” she said, dropping a couple of huge texts on the reception desk outside my office. “Do you believe how much reading we have to do for organic chemistry?”

  “When was the last time you saw a doctor, Dezhanne?”

  She cocked her blonde head the way Rochester did when I said something to him that he didn’t understand, but she said, “I still go to my pediatrician back home. I guess it was like, in August, just before I came back to campus.”

  “And wouldn’t you want him to know everything about whatever might be wrong with you?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “Don’t you think he had to study organic chemistry? And understand everything?”

  “He’s like a hundred years old,” she said. “And he has a hunchback.”

  “Probably from carrying around heavy textbooks,” I said. “You have to accept the responsibility that comes with whatever career you choose, Dezhanne. You want to be a doctor? You have to be the absolute best doctor you can be, because people will depend on you to heal them or keep them healthy.”

  “But it’s so hard.”

  “If it wasn’t hard, then anybody could be a doctor. Would you want a doctor to treat you, or your family, who didn’t have the brains and the determination to study organic chemistry?”

  “Fine,” she said. “But just for the record, I hate alkyl halides.”

  I didn’t even know what those were, but I said, “Duly noted. ” Then I walked back to Blair Hall. Time to be a teacher again.

  13 – Style and Grace in a Small Town

  The professional and technical writing class met in a first-floor computer lab in an addition at the back of Blair Hall that hadn’t been there when I was a student. The rest of the building was dark and gloomy, with tall, gothic-arched windows in the classrooms, and dusty fluorescent lights hung on pendants. The classrooms had rich wooden wainscoting and scuffed floors, and I had fond memories of seminars in the small rooms on the third floor, a professor and a handful of students discussing the meaning of life and literature.

  At least that’s the way I remember it. We were probably as uncommunicative as today’s students, and our professors must have felt like brain surgeons, probing our heads for any spark of intelligence.

  Tall windows in the computer classroom looked out on a walkway between buildings, where the grass was sparse and brown. A squirrel shook the branches of a pine tree as I walked in to the room, causing a flurry of the last fine snow outside the window.

  Computers lined the perimeter of the room. About twenty students either sat at the terminals or at a couple of round tables in the middle of the room. I threaded my way through them, saying “Good afternoon,” until I reached the podium.

  “You’re not Sister Perpetua,” a boy at one of the round tables said.

  “That’s very perceptive,” I said. “I’m Professor Steve Levitan, and I’ve been asked to take over your class for the rest of the term.”

  “What happened to the sister?” a girl asked from the side of the room.

  “She was called to her heavenly reward last Thursday night. I see from her syllabus that we’re discussing memos today. I’m going to give you a brief lecture on memos, and then I’m going to ask you to write a memo for distribution to the campus about Professor Kaufman and her death.”

  “Will we have to use the phrase ‘heavenly reward’ in the memo?” the same snarky boy at the table asked.

  “If it’s appropriate for your audience.” I used that as a segue into the topic of memos, forestalling any more comments. I told them how long I’d been teaching at Eastern, and about my current job in the alumni office. “I write this kind of material for a living these days,” I said. “And those of you who see yourselves earning a living at some point in the distant future will need to know how to communicate with your colleagues, your clients, and any other audience as appropriate.”

  I pulled up Perpetua Kaufman’s video lecture on memos. She was surprisingly animated for such an elderly, gnome-like person, and I was sorry that I hadn’t had a chance to get to know her over the past year. But adjuncts tend to come and go as classes demand, and we don’t spend a lot of time socializing with each other, or with full-time faculty.

  When the video was finished, I said, “Now I want you to consider the audience for your memo. Are you writing to your fellow students? To the faculty and administration? How do you think your memo might be different based on those different audiences?”

  The snarky kid raised his hand. “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Lou Segusi. You could change the kind of language you use—more colloquial for students, more formal for adults.”

  “I’m not sure all the faculty here behave like adults,” I said. “But that’s a good point. Any other ideas?”

  No one else had anything to say, so I started picking names off the roster, starting with one I recognized, the girl from the booster club who had helped out at the party. “Barbara Seville?”

  “Professor Kaufman had a really interesting life. You could pick out different details to tell about her depending on the audience.”

  “Good point. Where could you find information on Professor Kaufman for your memo?” I looked back at my roster. “Yenny?”

  I expected a girl, but a skinny boy with a wild bush of dark hair raised his hand. “Google?”

  “Yes, but Google’s just a search engine—it just points you to sources. What kind of source would have the information you need?”

  “An obituary?” Lou asked.

  “Good idea. You can find obituaries by checking the local papers. What about something closer to home? La’Rose?” I asked.

  A black girl with elaborate braids raised her hand. “Maybe on the Eastern website?”

  “Yup. There’s often information about your professors on the site. ” I called the rest of the roll, then showed them where to find the memo templates in Microsoft Word. “You have the rest of the class to write this memo. Use the assignment button to submit.”

  As they worked, I went up to the teaching station and used the computer there to log in to my email. I managed to answer a couple of press queries before Lou raised his hand and asked, “Professor?”

  “Yup?”

  “If I finish the assignment can I use the computer to work on something else? Sister Perpetua always let us.”

  “I don’t have a problem with that
.” I went back to my emails, and a few minutes before the end of class I walked around the room, looking over shoulders. “You don’t need the CC: field if you’re not copying anyone on the memo,” I told La’Rose. “You don’t have to put a salutation on a memo,” I told Ashleen.

  As I passed Lou’s computer I saw that he was working on a paper for history class that had someone else’s name on the top. “That your paper?” I asked.

  “I’m just proofing for a friend.” He minimized the paper quickly.

  It looked more like he was writing it for a friend, but I wasn’t going to start my first day by accusing a stranger of plagiarism. I went back up to the podium. “Remember, guys, I will be grading you based on the format of your memo, as well as your ability to write clearly and punctuate appropriately.”

  They all began packing up. Lou was the last to go, typing away up until his last classmate had left and I was standing by the door. “I’m going to lock the door,” I said. “You can stay here until the next class comes in.”

  “Thanks, Prof,” he said, still clacking away at the keyboard.

  Eastern was to close at four o’clock that afternoon so we could all attend Joe Dagorian’s funeral at Saint Augustine’s in Leighville, and I got back to my office just in time to say hi to Rochester and give him a rawhide bone until I returned from the funeral. I didn’t want to contemplate what kind of mischief he might get up to at a cemetery.

  I rode out to Saint Augustine’s with Sally Marston, and we slipped into a pew in front of Mike MacCormac and Sam Boni, the director of intercollegiate athletics. Sam looked like a California beach boy sprung to life from the pages of a fashion catalog. He had been a collegiate swimmer and water polo champ at a California college and he had maintained a swimmer’s lean and muscular physique. He also had wheat-blond hair, blue eyes, and cheekbones models die for. A few rows back I saw Norah’s colleagues from the English department, and other departments were grouped around us.

  The priest concluded his eulogy by saying, “Someone told me that Joe managed a difficult process with style and grace, and that he managed to convey to the students who weren’t admitted that it was in their best interests to forget about Eastern and move on to a better place for them. Today, we bid farewell to Joe as he heads to his own better place.”

  The cemetery was behind the church, and we followed the pallbearers and the coffin down a paved path, and then across to the plot that had been reserved for Joe. A wind came up as we stood around the hillside grave and the priest read a few words. I could feel that chill January wind sweeping across the Pennsylvania countryside and raising our fuel bills as we shivered in it.

  While the others stood and mingled for a few minutes after the coffin had been lowered into the earth, I walked to the top of the rise and looked out on the countryside. Before me, just beyond a checkerboard of farmland, lay Leighville, its black roofs clustered together as if for warmth. Below my feet blades of grass poked up through a thin slush, while along the roads it had turned a brown grey from the exhaust of passing cars, and on the far hills it still looked deep and white.

  As I stared out at the roofs of Eastern College, I thought about how much the college had changed since it was founded. About all the Joe Dagorians and the Steve Levitans who must have worked there over the years, whose names and records were lost to history. What we remember of history is usually the movers and shakers, the people who change things. The Joe Dagorians merely maintain the status quo.

  I rode back to Eastern with Sally, picked up Rochester, and headed downriver. Night was just falling, neons awakening and cars just beginning to turn on their headlights.

  One of the things I had to adjust to when I came back to Bucks County, after the bright halogens of Silicon Valley, was the lack of street lights. Where I lived with Mary, the night was almost as bright as the day, between the streetlights, store window lights, neon signs and headlights. But in the country, when it was dark, it was dark. Most nights I found the dark welcoming, a soft gloom that overtook the day and gave us time to recharge. But since Joe died I had started to fear the night, because it covered the evil around us. I shivered and Rochester snuggled next to me.

  As I fixed dinner, I kept one eye on the evening news, and saw Thomas Taylor being led into the police station. “That’s the homeless guy who was hanging around the car when we went to the printers,” I said to Rochester. “I wonder if he picked up one of the programs from my car. Oh my God, maybe it was because of me that he knew where he could find Joe.”

  I had to sit down, and Rochester came over to press his head against my knee. My mind was full of questions about the contact between Taylor and Joe. Had Taylor been hovering around outside Fields Hall and taken advantage of Joe’s trip outside? Or had he contacted Joe and made arrangements to meet him outside? And would Taylor have even known about the party if it wasn’t for me?

  14 – Living in Fear

  I couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the evening. I wanted to call Tony Rinaldi and ask what he’d learned from Taylor, but I knew it wasn’t my business. I played endless games of computer solitaire, Scrabble and mah johngg and finally took a sleeping pill around eleven, after taking Rochester out for a quick pee.

  The next morning I woke early and heard the slap of the Courier-Times on the driveway. I yawned, climbed out of bed, and dressed for dog-walking. On my way down the driveway, Rochester pulling me like he was the lead engine on a freight train, I picked up the paper and pulled it out of its plastic wrapper. As I followed Rochester down the street, I unfolded it and the headline jumped out at me.

  “Is Eastern College Safe?” it read. “Campus murder has students living in fear.”

  Pascal Montrouge, who I had pegged as a sleazeball the first time I met him, had interviewed students, faculty and staff members and recorded their fears that lax security had led to Joe’s murder. “I can’t sleep at night,” one girl was quoted as saying. “My roommate and I take turns taking naps during the day.”

  He hadn’t come to me for my take on the situation, which I resented. He pointed out that a homeless man had been detained in connection with the murders, which further spurred questions about campus security. He made it seem like homeless people were camped all around the college grounds.

  There was no mention of Taylor’s connection with the College or any possible motive, which I thought was a serious omission. It Taylor was the killer, then Joe’s murder hadn’t been a random act that should sow fear throughout the college.

  My anger simmered as Rochester and I drove up the River Road to Leighville. The weather was warming up, and the sun had melted most of the snow in the fields and farmyards. The campus was almost completely snow-free.

  I picked up a copy of the Eastern Daily Sun, the campus newspaper, in the lobby of Fields Hall on my way to my office. The front page featured a story about campus security, and I stopped at the foot of the curving staircase to read it. An unnamed source in the campus security office claimed that the incidence of crime on the campus had risen nearly 50% in the past year. There had been more muggings, burglaries and violent assaults in the last year than in the previous three. Our director of security had declined to comment on the story, which unfortunately lent credence to the report.

  As I walked into my office, Babson’s secretary buzzed me with a summons.

  “I presume you’ve seen the morning paper,” he said when I walked into his office. Mike was sitting in the visitor chair next to Babson’s desk.

  “Good morning, President Babson. Morning, Mike. Yes, I read the article, in the Courier-Times, and then the one in the Daily Sun. Is it true? We’ve upped our security patrols?”

  “Do we have any choice?” he asked. “I think Eastern College is as safe as any campus in the United States, but we have to do something to reassure people.”

  I saw down next to Mike and the three of us discussed strategies for replying to press queries about security. Babson was worried that if the story continued much lon
ger it could have a negative impact on everything we did. “Sally says that admissions is getting questions,” he said. “And I’ve already heard from three alumni parents this morning. We don’t want this to develop into some kind of mob mentality—students transferring, declining our offers of admission. Then the faculty start to leave and donations tank. We’ve got to catch this, Steve, or we could find ourselves on a downward spiral we can’t stop.”

  “I don’t understand why the police haven’t released the fact that Thomas Taylor had a personal motive,” I said. “That should make things easier for us. That he’s not just some random homicidal homeless man. I’m going to call Sergeant Rinaldi and check in with him, and then I’ll start working the phones.”

  “Protecting Eastern’s reputation is job one right now,” Babson said. “Let me know if you need me or my office to do anything.”

  When I returned to my office, Montrouge finally called for my statement. I wanted to be petty and snub him, but that would only make things wors.

  But all I could do was confirm that the incidence of burglary on campus is up, while assault and muggings had dropped dramatically. “But there’s no relationship between these problems, which every campus has to some degree, and Joe’s death.”

  “I’m not sure about that, Steve,” he said. His French accent had become very irritating. I wanted to tell him that my name was not Stiv but I refrained.

  “It was an isolated incident,” I insisted. “You should talk to Sergeant Rinaldi at the Leighville police. See what he has to say about the suspect he has in custody.”

  “He’s not saying anything,” Montrouge said. “So right now all I have is the problems at the campus. “I’m working on a follow up story for tomorrow’s paper.”

  I struggled to get him to focus on the positives about Eastern, but as he pointed out, good news doesn’t sell papers.

  As soon as I hung up with Montrouge I called Tony Rinaldi. “Are you going to charge that homeless guy I saw on the news last night?” I asked.