The following noon, at an All-U rally, LeRoy Duquesne, Gene’s faculty adviser, had stood on Royce Hall steps, speaking loud and clear into a microphone, opposing any and every type of limitation on academic freedom, including the loyalty oath. An act, in Gene’s mind, of supernatural courage.
LeRoy Duquesne, at forty-one, was thin-chested and too slight of body for his impressive head, a full professor with a reputation of consequence for his book on Pound. LeRoy Duquesne, therefore, was everything that Gene hoped to become. And it goes without saying that the man scared the pants off Gene. After the speech ended, Gene gathered all his courage, pushing through the crowd of students around LeRoy Duquesne. He could scarcely believe it when his faculty adviser gripped his hand, saying, “Gene, old son, tonight Hilda’s having the faculty wives. Let us imbibe brew at The Glen.”
There, surrounded by students braying out college songs, they fulminated against the Oath, then Gene, burping tap beer, warmed by the glow of proximity to this admirably committed man, heard himself admit his cliché English Department dream. “Write,” he confessed slowly. “I did a series of columns on the UN for The Bruin. Undergrad stuff. But I want to do the real thing.”
“Journalism?”
“No. Creative writing.”
“Poetry?” There was a warning growl to this question. In LeRoy Duquesne’s office, next to his Ezra Pound: A Critique, was a stack of different quarterlies, each indexing a poem (#1, #2, and so on, up to #17) by L. Fitzgerald Duquesne.
“Poetry’s beyond me.” Gene shook his head mournfully. “Just fiction. About the ordinary people, little people.” He gave an embarrassed smile. “My Norman Corwin syndrome.”
LeRoy Duquesne, his territory intact, rubbed the bowl of his Dunhill against his Roman nose, inquiring, “What length work do you have in mind?”
“A novel.”
“Why not start with a smaller canvas?” asked LeRoy Duquesne with a hint of his lectern irony.
“A novella?”
“A short story. A time-honored form, Gene, the short story.”
It was well after two when Gene was back under his parents’ commodious roof, yet he sat at his desk, two-finger pecking on his Remington:
Troopship
A Short Story
by
Eugene Matheny
And working through the night, he rough drafted a story of a young Pfc. shipping overseas. Like Gene, the young man had turned down, on principle, a chance at officers’ training. Through that foggy May, Gene rewrote and polished “Troopship.” He did another story. And another. Seven in all. He showed each in turn to Caroline. She thought them splendid. He discounted her opinion. She’s my girl, his sense of uncertainty averred, what else could she think?
He did not show his work to LeRoy Duquesne. The professor’s good opinion was too important to risk.
For by now the two men were friends.
That summer and fall, with Mrs. Duquesne (“Call me Hilda”), a quiet, exophthalmic little woman, and Caroline, they passed compatible evenings discussing literature and civil liberties.
“You’re not his friend,” Caroline said once. “You’re his echo.”
“We agree. We’re on the same side.”
“He uses you to pump his ego.”
“He doesn’t need me for that.”
“Genebo, there’s such a thing as having too much humility.” And Caroline said no more.
Late in June, the oaths were mailed to university employees, faculty included, with a covering letter asking for a signature. Many didn’t sign. A substantial number of nonsigning researchers, TAs, junior faculty—in other words those without tenure—were denied reappointment.
And in the fall of the same year, 1949, the regents issued an ultimatum. Even those professors with tenure would not receive their paychecks if they had not signed their loyalty by February 24, 1950. Or as Caroline quoted the punchline of an old joke, “No tickee, no washee.”
A special faculty meeting was held in the recently constructed Shoenberg Hall. Before, everyone had been inoculated by fear. Now they were frozen by fear. In the well-lit new auditorium, speakers used two languages. Liberal for image. Nonsubversive (apolitical) for the finks surely present. Gene, who had a mathematical turn of mind, kept track of the number of times the matter of withholding paychecks came up. One hundred and eighty-seven times. Nobody, speakers kept reiterating, wanted to back down on so vital an issue as the Academic Senate’s Constitution-given freedom to hire and fire. But, they said obliquely. But.
After the meeting, LeRoy Duquesne and Gene crossed the bleak, autumnal campus.
Gene sighed. “Take the oath or be canned—even with Governor Warren on our side, there aren’t enough regents to stop it. God, Germany all over again.”
“I have finally conceded,” said LeRoy Duquesne, “that it is well within the realm of possibility that there won’t be a single holdout.”
“A few. Us in English. Dr. Caughey in History. LeRoy, think one more petition’ll accomplish anything?”
“Maybe.”
Gene gnawed a hangnail. “My feelings about the Oath never’ve been sound like yours. I mean, I’ve always nursed a sort of feeling that if we are making this much effort, why not use it to hire colored and Mexican faculty. But you, you’ve always seen it as a threat to academic freedom. You’ve fought the regents on their own ground. That takes tremendous courage.” LeRoy Duquesne kept his eyes on his feet, which were crunching through dry, wind-blown leaves. Gene went on, carefully. “That’s what I don’t understand. Today, when they were all backing down, I had this tremendous urge to fight. Me. A TA with no tenure, no nothing. I mean, why should I do battle when everybody’s dropping off the bandwagon?”
LeRoy Duquesne had no answer.
“Why should I put everything on the line now, when nobody cares anymore? And when I never cared—for the right reasons, anyway?”
“You’re a born champion of lost causes,” said LeRoy Duquesne, his tone implying there could be no more noble occupation. As he bent his impressive head against the wind, he gave Gene an encouraging smile.
Both men understood that without this approval, which meant so much to Gene, Gene would not have gone to his battered desk upstairs in Royce Hall, and in less than an hour composed his WHEREASes. He and Caroline had circulated the petition, he with thoughtful sincerity, Caroline with highhanded, confident smiles. Both approaches had gotten terrifyingly small results.
3
Arrowhead is a mountain lake resort about eighty miles northeast of Los Angeles. On steep, hairpin curves Gene’s ’38 DeSoto boiled over twice. It was dark when Caroline, laughing and gasping into icy air, unlocked her parents’ cabin. The men accomplished a small fire. Mrs. Duquesne heated her curry, and Caroline produced two raffia-wrapped bottles of Dago red, which for love of Gene she called sour red. After dinner the two women went downstairs to use the chemical toilet.
Their footsteps descending the narrow stairwell, Gene reached for his calf briefcase. “I’ve got some material,” he said. He released worn leather. The pain in his stomach was sharp. Sudden.
“Material? On what?” LeRoy Duquesne set down maroon wine.
“I took your advice.”
“About what?”
“The short-story form,” Gene said, pulling out three immaculate sheaves of Eaton’s Corrasible bond.
“Three?”
Those that Gene considered his best work. Or rather, his least bad work. “Each more rotten than the next.”
LeRoy held out his hand.
Gene did not relinquish paper.
“Don’t you want a reading?”
“They need more polishing,” Gene muttered.
“I’ll tell you about that.”
“They’re nothing special.”
“Gene, give me some credit.” LeRoy Duquesne waggled his fingers. Commanding.
Gene, placing his stories in the hairless hand, experienced a sense of release. Sure, he still feared losing Le
Roy Duquesne’s respect. But he trusted the man. It was the kind of trust rarely bestowed on one human being by another, and then only by a completely decent person like Gene Matheny.
The following morning Gene rose at the first thin light. Caroline slept, the top of her dark head tousling above the quilt. Worry about his literary lacks had given Gene a wakeful night.
Upstairs in the living room, LeRoy Duquesne was already waiting, a terry-cloth robe wrapping his insufficient body.
“Have you sent these out?” he demanded.
“I thought maybe The New Yorker.” As Gene spoke, he realized that his dream of selling to The New Yorker was one more English Department cliché.
“But they haven’t gone?”
“Not yet.”
“Good.”
“Then they are rotten?”
“We’ll work them into shape, old son, you and me together.” LeRoy Duquesne rubbed his hands together. “Let’s start with ‘Troopship.’”
LeRoy Duquesne’s talents lay in critical analysis: he could stretch a paragraph on the blackboard and let it twitch, neither dead nor quite living, while he pointed his ferule at character, style, realization of theme, figures of speech. He performed the best damn autopsy in the English Department. Shuffling pages of “Troopship,” his voice ringing with passion, he covered the manuscript with his minuscule, spiky notes. Gene’s eyes occasionally would shift from paper to the sculptured features of LeRoy Duquesne, poet, critic, mentor, Progressive, and friend. He would agree, “That’s right.” “Uh-huh.” “Yes, the crap game should be deepened into symbolism.” “Yes, sure, I get it.”
4
The following Tuesday Caroline got a phone call from her grandmother. The right birthday gift for Em, Mrs. Van Vliet admitted, had her bewildered. Could Caroline help? And lunch with her?
“Saturday,” Caroline agreed.
Saturday, promptly at half-past eleven, the Daimler drove up Cordell Road. Caroline, feeling blissfully elegant (her pleasure enhanced by a gaping neighbor), stepped into the car as she would a perfumed bath. Joseph, tipping his cap, closed the door after her. “How was Arrowhead?” Mrs. Van Vliet inquired.
“On the way up, the motor boiled over—twice. It snowed the entire time. And Mrs. Duquesne insisted on serving her curried lamb—twice.”
“Delightful,” said Mrs. Van Vliet dryly.
“Grandmama, remember I told you Gene’s been writing about the Army? Short stories? Old luv, you wouldn’t believe how good they are. Sensitive. Fine. I cry each time I read them. Well, LeRoy Duquesne spent the weekend criticizing them.”
“Criticize? That has an ominous ring.”
“LeRoy Duquesne’s meant to be a renowned critic.” Caroline made a face. “Gene’s working like a dog, revising.”
“Does this mean he’s given up on the Holy Cause?”
“We’re still slaving on the petition, if that’s your innuendo, Grandmama.” Very French.
“Will Gene sign?”
“Of course not!”
“Then he’ll be dismissed.”
“Faculty firing—there’s one little threat I do not believe they’ll carry out.”
A hand gloved in French kid brushed light as a butterfly wing on Caroline’s knee. “Caroline, remember those movie writers, the ones who refused to answer the House Un-American Activities Committee? Some went to jail. None’ll work again. Ever. The same goes for recalcitrant professors.”
A remark as infuriating as unarguable: Mrs. Van Vliet numbered among her friends, Caroline was aware, three regents of the University of California.
They had turned into the heavy traffic on Colorado Boulevard before either spoke.
“Methinks we can work this out,” Mrs. Van Vliet said.
“His signing? Gene never will.”
“You two getting married,” Mrs. Van Vliet said without lowering her voice. She and Joseph would have considered it a breach of etiquette to hint that his protruding black ears might eavesdrop. “You’ve been sleeping together for almost a year.”
Caroline’s cheeks burned brighter. Close as she was to her grandmother, she was also a daughter of her time. What girl in 1950 could admit sexual activity? And to another generation?
“God knows I’m no Puritan,” said Mrs. Van Vliet. “But let these long-term romances continue past a certain point and they fade. The girls drift from one affair to the next. Some never marry, some make a bad marriage.”
“Alas and alack for me.”
“Why?”
“You just said he’s about to get the ax. How can we afford to get married?” And as she spoke, into Caroline’s normally self-assured mind flashed oddly deflating facts: Most of my Omega Delta pledge group are married. Beverly’s married and pregnant.
Mrs. Van Vliet said, “We’ll find something for him in Van Vliet’s.”
Caroline’s breath sucked in.
“Why the surprise? Gene has vision, he’ll make a good merchandiser, and that’s what a market chain needs most.” She gave a chuckle. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he does well. Very well indeed.”
“Why should it? You own half the stock.” Caroline, recovering, bent one leg to the seat, turning to her grandmother. “He’s a sensitive, wonderful writer. A born teacher.”
“We’ve eliminated teaching. And writing?” Mrs. Van Vliet’s tone was guilty of malice aforethought. “What luck your tastes run to expensive red frocks. Apprentice writers are notoriously overpaid.”
“I don’t believe Gene could be good in the business.” Caroline’s tone echoed her grandmother’s. “He’s smart, progressive, creative, the exact opposite of Uncle Richard and Uncle Hend.” Mrs. Van Vliet’s sons, who alternated presidency of the chain. “They’re good at it.”
Mrs. Van Vliet chuckled. Caroline’s assessment of her two sons coincided with her own. “Now. Be serious. You can convince Gene.”
“To each his own disaster area.” Caroline shrugged. “Sure I can. Bossy from the word go, that’s me. But I won’t.”
“The idea doesn’t appeal to you?”
“It does. Very much.”
“Then?”
“Not for Gene.”
“Let’s see if I understand. You want Gene in Van Vliet’s, but there you won’t respect him?”
“That’s about it.”
“Normally, Caroline, you’re more straightforward.”
“Van Vliet’s just isn’t Gene, Grandmama, don’t you see that? On campus he can write, do crazy, wonderful things like the petition. He can admire and trust people.”
“Even if he doesn’t admire the family, he can trust us,” said Mrs. Van Vliet wryly. “Caroline, listen to me. You’re not the little hausfrau sweeping up cookie crumbs like Em. You have style, spirit. You’re expensive.”
“Grandmama, why’re you playing Mephistopheles?”
“Your happiness is important, very, to me.”
“Then let me be happy.”
“Without the accoutrements, you won’t be.”
“With Gene grubbing, I won’t be.”
“You don’t understand how important money is to women like us,” Mrs. Van Vliet sighed. “I’ll have to manage this.”
They rode the rest of the way to the new Bullock’s in silence.
While Caroline and Mrs. Van Vliet deliberated over Em’s birthday gift, Gene was at his desk in the English Department office, surrounded by empty desks of other TAs and the stale memory of their (possibly) stale bologna sandwiches. He was typing the final draft of “Troopship” carefully, lovingly, erasing his infrequent typos, blowing away curly dust. He read the story aloud, pausing three times, thoughtfully inking over three sentences. He retyped these pages. He moved to the pigeonholes, folding crisp paper lengthwise into the empty crypt labeled DR. LEROY F. DUQUESNE. Pages rustled into a fan. Gnawing a thumbnail, Gene stared for approximately five minutes. He pulled his story halfway out, then hastily pushed it back.
5
“Can’t you tell me what this is all abo
ut?” Gene asked when he picked up Caroline on Monday night.
“La grande dame’s invited us to dine, that’s all,” said Caroline, grabbing his earlobes. “Kiss me, you fool.”
He kissed her forehead. He knew better than to smear the crimson lipstick brushed an immaculate millimeter inside the ripe mouth, a mouth that hinted of the gratification of various healthy appetites. She hugged his rib cage, hard, admitting that although she normally found him most unsexy, tonight there was a full moon, and the full moon invariably brought out the Countess Dracula in her, causing her to yearn after passionate scenes of vampirean lust, floggings, degradation, and your routine bloodletting. All the way to her grandmother’s, she babbled.
Parking, Gene asked, “Caroline, what is it?”
“What’s what?”
“The fluster.”
“Can’t you tell perversion when you see it?”
It was rare for Caroline to be nervous. She infected him. Joseph, huge, jug-eared, opened the door. Gene began to sweat. He knew Joseph. Besides, his parents kept an elderly live-in maid. Tonight, though, he realized a butler is a butler is a butler. Mrs. Van Vliet took his hands in hers. He felt the outsize gems. Her perfume, he decided extravagantly, was distilled from lilacs grown under rock-crystal panes of a Côte d’Azur hothouse. Normally he enjoyed being with Caroline’s grandmother. Tonight she was queen dowager. Joseph passed a salver with three glasses of tawny wine. Gene downed his. And for some reason thought of “Troopship,” now in the agonizingly silent custody of LeRoy Duquesne. He was served avocado salad, a slab of perfect pink beef flanked by tasty roast potatoes and hollandaise-girdled asparagus. An excellent meal that Gene could not taste. He was worrying alternately about “Troopship” and the vastness of the dining room. Why was Caroline so nervous? Why was he?
Imari dessert plates were set in front of them.
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