Beet

by Roger Rosenblatt

  “They’re delicious!” said Jamie.

  “And the baskets—so pretty!” said Betsy.

  Matha smiled demurely before telling them to eat shit.

  By late morning it could be said that every student and most of the faculty in Beet College had ogled and circled the pig at least once, making the appropriate remarks of amazement and inquiry—except for Max Byrd and Arthur Horowitz, who had more urgent things on their minds.

  Akim’s reversion was now complete. He was astonished how smoothly it had happened, as well as how eager he was to cast off the terrorist paraphernalia along with his nom de guerre. He’d even phoned his father—in part to initiate a rapprochement, which the repentant rabbi welcomed, saying, “You made me a better Jew by becoming an Arab than I would have been if I were an Arab and you were a Jew,” or something like that. Arthur also needed to ask him about what he’d discovered on his computer screen.

  That was the previous evening. Max had been with him, and he too called his dad. Both young men knew they’d stumbled upon an area of knowledge and activity way beyond their experience. They’d stay up all night because of what was on that screen. Max’s dad’s information abetted the rabbi’s, and both combined with Max’s own “cyberfreak” expertise. His ability to see the nothing that was not there had proved indispensable. It was then, that morning, the boys decided to consult the professor they most trusted.

  Peace phoned Livi at her Manhattan office. “I’m not sure what to do,” he said.

  “You’re sure, all right. But you don’t know when.”

  “The faculty meeting, I guess. But it seems a little cheap to air all that in public.”

  “Only you would worry about the niceties, sweetheart. If you don’t do it in front of the others, you’ll lose the advantage. You don’t want to give a man like that an inch.”

  “Are you amazed by all this, or what?”

  “I am.”

  “Do I love you?”

  “You do.”

  “Will I see you soon?”

  “You have no idea.”

  As anyone could guess, the day would turn out to be quite busy for the crowd at Beet, what with finals nearly over and Christmas around the corner. Life was especially frantic for members of the CCR. Professor Kramer took this opportunity to apply to Gonzaga University, the last on his list of possibilities, for an assistant professorship, or if not that an instructorship. It seemed his attempts—and Heilbrun’s and Booth’s as well—to make lateral moves and win tenure at other institutions of higher learning had been unsuccessful, so now they were willing to take anything. Kettlegorf had no luck either, and neither did Lipman. Lipman had tried so hard to become a recognizable professor. She’d jarred jams, cross-country skied, and bought a chocolate Lab that she named Pinch. Nothing worked. So, rather than apply to colleges, she wrote her old boss at the New York Times, noting that there was no job too trivial for her, including writing the column on arts news. Her former employer replied that she should remain in academia, where she would do the paper more good by continuing to spread word of its excellence.

  His future protected by Ada’s Lacoste money, Keelye Smythe did not apply for a new position elsewhere. He was getting on, after all, and he wondered if this weren’t a good time to try something new that would suit his social gifts and talents. Foundation work might do. Or the presidency of the College Board. Or an institute of some sort. Perhaps the government. Any place where he could deny people what they wanted and deserved, but with sincere regret. No rush. He’d look around.

  None of them informed the others of their efforts. It might appear to show a lack of faith in their ability to save Beet College. But they were bundles—bales—of nerves. What would happen tomorrow at the faculty meeting, when they were called upon to present the new curriculum? Kettlegorf could not help but think they might have been a bit hasty when they refused to let Professor Porterfield continue as their leader. But when she gave it some thought, perhaps it was more gratifying to attempt to discomfit a colleague than to allow him the chance to save their necks.

  Content as he was otherwise, Bollovate, too, had spent a nervous Tuesday night. Sheila had kicked him out of the Louisburg Square house, and got an injunction forbidding him entrance to the Wellfleet house, the Newport house, the East Hampton house, and even the 25,000-square-foot log cabin on the Snake River in Jackson Hole. The settlement demanded in Sheila’s divorce papers had so upset him, he wondered if he were suffering congestive heart failure instead of his chronic acid reflux. He had tried to get hold of Matha for a business conference in the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, where he wound up spending the night. But Matha was unreachable, even to him. So he turned on the TV, searched the movie menu, and selected Dripping Wet Asians and Young Thai Pie.

  Come Wednesday he felt chipper again, and in the evening, after checking on a number of hidden bank accounts to ascertain that they remained hidden from Sheila, and checking in on the Potemkin real estate company he’d set up on Long Island, he drove toward Beet College. He would arrive by eleven, just about the time the MacArthur Five would enter the library and Livi Porterfield would get home to surprise her husband. One important errand lay ahead for him, and one more at tomorrow’s faculty meeting, and he would be king of the hill. As he steered the Escalade onto the Mass Pike and hooked north, never dimming his brights, he contemplated life without Sheila and the children. The dead trees stood at attention.

  It did not take much to figure out what he’d had in mind when he engineered the closing of the college. Oh, he’d engineered it, all right. He’d appointed Porterfield because the young professor was wet behind the ears and likely to fail. He reveled in Professor Porterfield’s humiliation, especially after Porterfield had faced him down. But it would have made no difference to Bollovate or his fellow developers on the board if Peace and the CCR had come up with the most dazzling curriculum ever devised. He and his cronies were bound to close the place under any circumstance because the land was a hell of a lot more valuable (“Are you kidding?”) with the deep thinkers off it. It didn’t take much to figure that out either. And it might have taken a little more, but not so very much, to figure out that the trustee developers were going to wind up owning the property, which is why they were happy as little overfed pigs themselves at their momentous meeting in the Temple two months earlier when good old Joel came up with his new curriculum scam, which was merely a stalling tactic, until the purchase could be arranged. Now, thanks to the hapless Francis April’s need for ready cash (Bollovate wound up paying him $60 thousand plus the promise of a personal introduction to Joe Namath), the deal was as good as done. All that remained to play out were the coup de grâce on Professor Porterfield’s disgrace; the anger-cum-melancholy of the milquetoast faculty; the brief if noisy outcry of the parents, and of the old-money alumni; and that would be that. Massachusetts State officials? Don’t make Joel Bollovate laugh. The dummy corporation, which had so intrigued Matha Polite and concerned her sister, would front the money, and the man with the iron belly would add to his infinitely expanding territory two hundred and ten acres of prime real estate “in the heart of American history.”

  All this chicanery had been in plain view from the start, had anyone wanted to take a look. But Beet being a college, populated by people who populated colleges, it occurred to no one to notice anything other than themselves. And so what was not difficult to figure out was left unfigured out.

  Yet there were two additional items of pettifoggery known only to Bollovate and Lewis Huey. Not even the other trustees were in on them. And no one would have figured out the far worse of these two things had not Akim Ben Laden, as then he was known, been dissatisfied with his concentration. That the concentration was Homeland Security, as one would soon see, presented a minor irony of its own.

  “Laissez les bon temps rouler!” cried Matha exactly at eleven, an hour after Bacon had closed for the night. No one remained in the Old Pen, the novelty of the Trojan Pig having eroded, leav
ing the campus to darkness and to the MacArthur Five. Bagtoothian was responsible for making les bon temps rouler. He looked around furtively, hand shading eyes like a comic book spy, reached beneath the pig’s pink fiberglass tail, disengaged the pole, and pulled.

  Matha felt the pig roll and come to a stop. “Are we here?” she shouted a whisper to Bagtoothian.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Where are we, exactly? And call me sir again, and you’re toast.”

  “Under the second floor, like you said. What do I do now?”

  “Kill yourself.”

  The rental man had shown Matha what button to push to raise the vertical lift. Two chrome-plated cylinders moved upward away from the tractor chassis, and the pig rose a few inches at a time, the scissor link unfolding into three steel diamonds one atop the other and finally reaching its lift capacity of twenty-six feet. It stopped parallel to the library’s second-story window, and about four feet away to allow room to open the snout-door. Bagtoothian pushed the structure forward, bringing the elevated pig flush with the building. Matha reached out, raised the window, and crawled through with the others behind her.

  “Go let in brains-for-shit,” she told Lattice, who trotted downstairs.

  The students took their stations and waited, looking about the great domed room, casting shadows in the dark and against the walls of books. Matha congratulated them on their achievement. They were about to desecrate the warehouse of learning they’d targeted on the Day of the Bollovate, two months earlier. And if their occupation of the building would not effect the great work stoppage of the mind they’d envisioned, at least they could serve their community as they always had—as giant pains in the ass. Here they stood, with all that was best thought and felt surrounding them. And it was theirs to abuse. Compared to this, thought Matha, MacArthur House was a piece of cake, which reminded her: “Did you bring in the baskets of cookies?” she asked Betsy, who, lucky for her, had.

  “Do you think we can eat all these cookies?” Bagtoothian asked.

  “They’re not for us, they’re for the crowd. It’s cold out there. They’ll enjoy a snack.” Matha was talking strangely, but the others were too afraid of her to point it out.

  Since he’d been following Matha, as was his practice, Ferritt Lawrence had seen everything—from the previous night’s gentle lowering of the pink pig from the roof of the Muncheonette to its placement on the platform and the wheels. On his mountain bike he’d trailed the pig on its long nocturnal journey, as the MacArthur Five had rolled it into the Old Pen just before dawn. He’d watched it all day, and into the night, when its occupants vacated it for the library. He noted all that, just as he noted that Matha had promised she would let him know when she would pull off the next big radical event. And he noted that once again she’d failed to keep her word. So he stood out of sight and watched some more, knowing exactly what he’d do when Matha emerged from the building.

  At their stations in Max’s room (Arthur had abandoned his cave permanently), the two students called Professor Porterfield. They’d uncovered the last piece of the puzzle. Peace said he’d come to them. He threw on his navy sweats, opened his front door, and said, “Hey!” Before him stood the most beautiful redhead he had ever seen.

  “M. Candide?” she asked.

  “The same.”

  It was close to midnight, the hour the MacArthur Five had determined they would announce their conquest of Bacon. Matha knew the students and faculty were still shaky and frightened, and she would play on their mood. There was no point to a prolonged occupation of the library now. Tonight’s act was more symbolic. Since the college was about to shut down anyway, let the students do the shutting. She for whom speech was a perlocutionary act knew she could mislead a crowd one more time. The aesthetic logic of the occupation would appeal to everyone. And the pig, as the instrument of the Beet College finale, was simply scrumptuous.

  But as the five were about to descend the stairs, they heard voices. “Oh, my God,” said Lattice. “I’m ruined.”

  “Shut up, you wuss.” Matha hesitated on the landing and listened. She knew one of those voices too well.

  Bollovate and La Cocque mounted the steps side by side. The kids hid behind the balustrade.

  “You’ve killed the alarm?”

  “Oui.”

  “You understand. I only want to see what it will bring on the open market. I have no plans to keep it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure it’s in good shape? It won’t crumple in my hands?”

  “Oui.”

  “Is there a reason you speak half in French?”

  “No. Non.”

  The students watched the two men enter the Main Hall and approach the Mayflower Compact lying in the dimly lit cabinet. La Cocque lifted the top of the case, like a waiter presenting flaming food. He reached in, took the document, and handed it to Bollovate, whose appetence for profit made his teeth glow in the dark. He slid the treasure into the large envelope he’d been holding. The students felt heartsick, but did not know why.

  Jesus! Matha said to herself. Was Bollovate stealing the Mayflower Compact? Shit! Was she ever out of her league! They would wait till the two men’s backs were turned, and go ahead with what they’d planned. But she knew from that moment she was but one of Bollovate’s seductions, probably the least of the lot. There was Louie Huey, there was the freakazoid La Cocque, there were his fellow developers on the board, and there was this twenty-year-old girl, herself. How had she come to this pass? Something stirred briefly in Matha Polite. Was it fear? Self-awareness? Shame? The chocolate chips?

  Avoiding detection by Bollovate and La Cocque, they crept downstairs and collected at the library door. “Ready?” said their leader.

  “Fuckin’ A,” said Bagtoothian, yet even he was feeling uneasy. They opened the door and stood on the threshold facing the green. “Brothers and sisters of Beet College,” Matha called out. She had no need for a bullhorn; her words reverberated off the library wall. “Brothers and sisters of Beet! Rejoice with us! We’ve seized the library! Come and take one last stand before Beet College is no more!”

  At first there was scant response to her beckoning. Then five or six students wearing parkas over their pajamas emerged from the darkness bearing flashlights. Then ten or twelve. Then many. Faculty, too—until the Old Pen was full of people again, though this time they seemed part of a processional more than a rally. Everyone was bone-tired, hangdog, and wrapped in an overwhelming sadness. They had nothing left in them. They herded together into the Old Pen like farm animals, heads swaying, feet dragging. All that was missing was the moo.

  Hearing Matha’s blaring call, Peace, Livi, Max, and Arthur, who’d been in Max’s room, joined the others. Peace was still unsure as to when and how to divulge the information the four of them now possessed. Livi, at his side, was loving every minute of it.

  “We’ll sit in the library as a final gesture of defiance!” said Matha. “If Beet must close, let the people do the closing!” Some few stepped forward to follow her into the building.

  And it was then that the power of the press asserted itself. “Before we go any further,” shouted Ferritt Lawrence to the crowd, “I’d like you all to hear something.” Matha turned and stopped cold. Of course, he played the tape he’d made of the lovers at Sow’s Motel. He had to. He was a journalist, and an investigative journalist to boot.

  Just like that, the tape delivered the whole incriminating conversation at the highest volume, exposing both parties as conspirators against Professor Porterfield and the college itself. Students and teachers listened and said nothing in their outrage, until the tape arrived at “Oh! Mr. Bollovate!” when the crowd could not, and did not wish to, contain itself. If Matha thought she’d heard derisive laughter that day at the CCR meeting, what she experienced here would reverberate for a lifetime.

  In terms of the case against Professor Porterfield, the tape only substantiated what most people
suspected anyway; Matha had made the story up.

  “I knew it all along,” said those who’d known it all along.

  But life was about to get considerably worse for the girl. From the middle of those assembled came a voice, clear and southern and declamatory in its emphasis. “Martha Stewart Polite!” cried Kathy. “What are you doin’ with your life?” There was a terrible silence. “Martha Stewart Polite! Ah’m talkin’ to you!”

  “Why are you calling her that?” asked Bagtoothian.

  “Because it’s her name, silly!”

  “Pass out the cookies!” Matha told Betsy Betsy. “Do it now!” But even her cohorts had deserted her. It was one thing to betray the college and try to screw Professor Porterfield, quite another to be named for Martha Stewart. Martha Stewart Polite! Her comrades ran from her, hoping to be absorbed in the community of peers they’d sneered at. Their peers were unabsorbing.

  Yet Matha gave it the old college try. “Go ahead and laugh,” she said. “But I have something to tell you that will make my little subterfuge seem like chicken feed. In the Library right now, Mr. Bollovate is stealing the Mayflower Compact! We saw him do it, him and La Cocque.”

  The two men appeared on the steps behind her. La Cocque, sensing danger, scuttled away. Bollovate didn’t flinch. What? Are you kidding? Was Joel Bollovate going to be brought down by a tart like Polite?

  He cast her a look containing murder. She caught it, fled into the crowd, and bounced off Arthur.

  “Akim?” she said, hoping she had found the one in the group who would embrace her. She hardly recognized him clean-shaven and dressed like a person. She wondered what she had missed in him, while Arthur wondered what Akim had ever seen in her. He stood with his arms at his side. Kathy clasped her sister by the shoulders and led her away.