Too Late to Die

by Bill Crider

  Elmore was ranting on. “I have a plan,” he said. “A plan to save this school! There are several steps that we can take, beginning with the elimination of major sports, on which we lost over two hundred thousand dollars last year!” So that was why there’d be no moral victories.

  All eyes, some furtively, some openly, turned to Coach Thomas, who had tried to take a drink of tea, some of which must have gone down the wrong tube. Thomas choked and coughed, slamming his glass down on the table. All the eyes turned away in embarrassment.

  Burns sneaked a look at President Rogers. Rogers sat calmly, looking as if his thoughts were on heavenly things, or things at least unrelated to what was happening in the faculty dining room.

  “Of course,” Elmore said, “such a move must be approved by the board, but I am confident that after I give them my facts and figures they will see things my way. All scholarships will be honored, naturally, but we would seek to hold no athlete here if he or she wished to transfer to another college or university.”

  Of course, Burns thought. Naturally. But if all the athletes went elsewhere, a considerable portion of the student body would disappear without a trace. What then?

  “What then, you ask?” Elmore said, startling Burns badly and causing him to wonder if he had spoken aloud.

  “What then?” Elmore repeated. “Let me say now that I have a secret plan, a plan that is both bold and innovative, a plan that will bring thousands and thousands of dollars to this institution each and every semester. It will call for vision, but I believe that we have that vision, and I will be discussing, it with you individually in the days to come.” He sat down abruptly, leaving everyone to finish his meal, sneak glances at Thomas, and wonder about the “secret plan.”

  All Burns could think was that the plan, as described by Elmore, must be complete lunacy. There was absolutely no way to bring that much money in without selling off the school’s properties, which Burns happened to know had already been done, or by forcing the entire town to enroll for courses.

  As soon as possible without seeming too eager, people began to get up and leave the luncheon. As they passed by Elmore, he handed each one a list of businesses that he would prefer they avoid.

  Chapter 3

  Burns hung back, waiting for Mal Tomlin, who was defiantly finishing another cigarette, and that was how he came to see the confrontation. Most of the other department heads had departed, slinking away as silently and unobtrusively as possible, each one meekly taking the paper that Elmore handed him.

  Coach Thomas, however, did not go quietly. He was a big man, who had once had a tryout as an offensive center with the Houston Oilers in the early years of their franchise. He had been one of the last players cut. He had the size, but not the quickness. He had shrunk a little since then, especially in the years since Elmore had been dean, but he was still big. He was wearing a faded HGC letter jacket in the school’s colors of black and gold, and his shoulders made any padding superfluous.

  Thomas walked up to Elmore, who handed him a piece of paper. Thomas ignored it. “The board will never approve dropping the sports program,” he said.

  Elmore looked up at him. “Of course they will. It’s a losing proposition, and I’ll prove it to them. It may be that the football team loses because it’s coached by losers, but that doesn’t really matter. No one wants to support losers.”

  Thomas’s face was gradually turning a deep, dark red, the red of raw meat laid out in a butcher’s shop. As Burns watched, Thomas’s fists seemed to grow into hardwood knots, solid as croquet balls and twice as large.

  Even President Rogers seemed to notice that something was happening. “Ah, Dean Elmore,” he said. “Perhaps it is a bit premature to speculate on what the board might do.” He sneaked a quick upward glance at Coach Thomas.

  Thomas was not mollified. He reached out for Elmore.

  What happened next was seen by both Burns and Mal Tomlin, who had crushed his cigarette in his plate and was now watching with as much interest as Burns. Elmore attempted to scoot his chair backward, but because he did not rise from it, it was difficult to move on the rug on the dining room floor. When Thomas’s hand had almost reached him, Elmore made one more attempt to scoot out of harm’s way, this time giving a good backward push. He gave too good a push, or so it seemed to Burns, and toppled his chair over. Coach Thomas looked as surprised as anyone to see Elmore on the rug, his chair half on top of him, scuttling around like a pair of ragged claws, trying to get out from under his chair, trying to escape from Thomas, trying to regain a little of his dignity.

  Coach Thomas reached down a hand to help Elmore to his feet, but Elmore, fearing violence, or maybe fearing assistance, scuttled backward. He finally got to his feet and continued backward until he hit the wall.

  Burns looked at Mal Tomlin, who appeared about to strangle, his laughter making spasmodic efforts to force its way past his tightly shut lips. Burns grabbed Tomlin’s shoulder and dragged him from the table, both of them making their way to the door and going out. Burns hoped that Elmore hadn’t seen them. God only knew what he would do to punish any witnesses to what had happened.

  Once they were outside, Mal Tomlin broke into guffaws of laughter. Burns joined him. Coach Thomas emerged right behind them. His face was much more serious, and Burns and Tomlin soon calmed down, though Tomlin had more trouble controlling himself than Burns.

  “He’s threatening to sue me,” Thomas said. “Says I shoved him down and tried to beat him up. I didn’t do it.” Thomas had a puzzled look, as if he couldn’t quite figure out what was going on. It was a look that Burns had seen often on the faces of people who had dealings with Elmore.

  “Don’t worry, Coach,” Burns said. “Mal and I saw it all. We’ll be your witnesses. Rogers saw it too.”

  Mal Tomlin shook out a cigarette and lit it, not an easy job, considering the wind velocity. He put his disposable lighter back in his pocket and said, “I wouldn’t count too much on Rogers. He’s never contradicted Elmore before.”

  “It’s still the three of us against the two of them,” Burns said. “Elmore will realize that. He’ll never sue anybody, Coach. He’s just a bully, and he likes to make threats.”

  The coach seemed to relax a little. “I guess you’re right,” he said. “Still . . . I didn’t even touch him.”

  “We know,” Tomlin said. “Go on home and enjoy the weekend. He’ll have forgotten all about it by Monday.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Thomas said. “I’ll do that. I’ve got worse things to worry about, after all.” He turned away and started toward the Gymnasium (Hartley Gorman VI).

  “He’s right,” Burns said. “If the board does approve dropping the sports program, he’ll be out of a job.”

  “They’ll keep him on,” Tomlin said. “They’ll just cut his salary.”

  “Maybe so, but I’d hate to be the one to tell the players,” Burns said.

  “Me, too. I think I’ll take my own advice and go home,” Tomlin said. “See you Monday.”

  “Sure,” Burns said. “See you Monday.” He started back to Main, where his car was parked, thinking about Monday.

  Burns’s car, which he intended to keep forever, or as long as was humanly possible, was a 1967 Plymouth Fury III, the kind they didn’t make any more, a gas gobbler from the word go, in which eight adults could ride in comfort. Its only real drawback was the vinyl seats, which were hot in summer and, as they were now, cold in winter. But the car started immediately, and the heater would be warm in a minute. Burns headed for home.

  “Home” was three miles from the school in a nondescript tract house amid a hundred other tract houses built at a time when Pecan City had been going through a minor period of growth. Burns had gotten the house cheap, the previous owners having been transferred to another area and in dire need of capital. It was basic housing, and it suited Burns just fine. He knew his neighbors barely well enough to speak to, and he lived quietly in anonymous bachelorhood.

  Once in
side, Burns poured himself a glass of grape juice, put a couple of Creedence Clearwater LPs on the turntable, and sat on the couch reading a new Hemingway biography. He found it difficult to concentrate on the book, however; thoughts of Elmore kept intruding.

  Elmore had always been Elmore, as far as Burns knew. He had been on the campus for several years before Burns had arrived and had already managed to alienate everyone who came in contact with him. At that time, though, he had been in the relatively harmless position of teaching biology. He had been filled even then with mad plans for the improvement of the school, but no one had taken him seriously, not even when he stood up in faculty meetings to explain his plans to the assembled multitude. When the position of academic dean had come open three years before, owing to the untimely demise of Dean Clark—a wise, respected, and even loved man—most people who knew that Elmore had applied for the job laughed openly. Most of them were now working elsewhere, and there was Elmore, dean indeed.

  No one was quite sure how it had happened. It was now harder to find a member of the selection committee who would admit voting for him than it was to find a registered voter who would admit that he voted for Richard Nixon in 1968. Apparently Rogers had taken a hand in things behind the scenes, but that, too, was kept very quiet. Maybe, thought Burns, Elmore really did have the goods on someone.

  Unable to read, Burns put down his book and went into the room he liked to call his library. Built-in shelves lined the walls of the room intended by the builder as a dining area. All the shelves were filled with books, not necessarily books that Burns would have wanted his students and colleagues to know that he read—mysteries, science fiction, horror, popular fiction of every stripe. It was Burns’s opinion that even an English teacher couldn’t read Faulkner all the time.

  In the middle of the room was a dilapidated desk, a far cry from the one Burns had at school. Burns sat down at the desk in a straight-backed wooden chair and opened the top drawer. Several sheets of paper were stacked neatly inside. Burns took out the top one and looked at the heading: The Ten Best Bad Movies of All Time. It was a list that had bothered him a little because it had two Viking movies on it, The Long Ships and The Vikings. He wasn’t quite sure it was fair to have two movies with the same sort of subject matter on such a short list. He looked at the list for almost five minutes. Then he drew a line through The Vikings. It took him most of the rest of the afternoon to decide to replace it with The Black Shield of Falworth.

  Burns liked to get to his office early. He liked to arrive at least an hour before classes began at eight o’clock so that he could read his newspaper, organize his thoughts, plan his day, or just generally goof around the office. He wasn’t one of those people who could drive into the parking lot at three minutes before the beginning of class, jog up the three flights of stairs, and begin lecturing.

  On Monday, however, he didn’t even get to finish his paper. Bunni walked into the office at seven-twenty. Right behind her was her boyfriend, George (“The Ghost”) Kaspar. George was a good example of what was wrong with Coach Thomas’s football team. He was five-eleven, fairly stocky, and weighed about one-eighty. Maybe one-ninety with all his gear on, suited up for the game. And George was the largest of Coach Thomas’s defensive tackles. Even the strong of stomach had to look away at times when the HGC Panthers attempted a pass rush. It often appeared that opposing passers had time to get a haircut and a manicure while looking for a receiver; it appeared that way because such was often the case.

  None of which was Coach Thomas’s fault, really. It isn’t easy to recruit the cream of the crop to play football at a tiny denominational school a hundred miles from the nearest major population center. Thomas had to take whatever was left over after the Southwest Conference and the larger schools got through.

  George had been in Burns’s American literature class the previous spring. He had been no genius, but he had tried hard and done fairly well. Burns liked him.

  “I hope it’s all right if we come in and talk to you,” Bunni said.

  Burns put down his newspaper and took his feet off the desk. “Sure,” he said. “Have a seat.”

  Bunni and George sat.

  “What can I do for you?” Burns asked. He had a pretty good idea what they wanted. Department heads were supposed to keep what transpired at the Friday meetings to themselves, but someone always talked, much to the chagrin of Dean Elmore, who had done everything but put a “Loose Lips Sink Ships” poster up in the faculty dining room.

  Bunni and George looked at each other. “We’ve heard a rumor,” Bunni said, apparently having been chosen as the spokesperson.

  “That’s not unusual around here,” Burns said, truthfully enough. Rumors at HGC were as common as prayer meetings. They had grown especially rife since Elmore had become dean.

  “This is a rumor about the sports program,” Bunni said.

  “So what’s the rumor?” Burns asked.

  “That there won’t be a sports program,” Bunni said. Her eyes were wide with the enormity of it all. “That football and basketball and . . . and everything will just be . . . gone!”

  “You can’t be sure about rumors like that,” Burns said, feeling like a slimy worm. “Something like that couldn’t happen just over the weekend. Something like that would take board approval.” He stopped. He didn’t know what else to say.

  George decided it was time to speak up. “We heard that Dean Elmore is going to take the idea to the board and tell them that the school can save a lot of money if we do away with sports.”

  The kid had a pretty good source of information, Burns had to admit. “Taking it to them and getting their approval are two different things,” he said. “I imagine some of the board members are old football players themselves, and most of them probably like coming to the homecoming games. Elmore won’t have an easy time of it. Assuming, of course, that what you heard is true.”

  “It’s true, all right,” Bunni said. She clenched her fists on her nicely rounded thighs. “I really do hate that Dean Elmore.”

  Burns was surprised. He’d certainly never seen Bunni express so much emotion before, not even when they’d discussed Jonathan Edwards’s “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” in the American literature class.

  “Is there anything we can do, Dr. Burns?” George asked.

  Burns sat silently for a minute. If he did anything at all to help these students, he would get in serious trouble if Elmore found out. But what the hell. “Write this down, Bunni,” he said. “I’m going to give you a list.”

  Burns and Earl Fox were sitting in the history lounge, smoking L & Ms, when Dorinda Edgely opened the door and walked in.

  She looked like a pig.

  It wasn’t her figure, though the orange and black polyester pants she wore, and probably had been wearing since about 1974, were stuffed to the bursting point with her bountiful self.

  It wasn’t the fact that her blonde hair seemed to have been styled by the very man who created Miss Piggy’s “do” for “The Muppets.”

  It wasn’t the rosy pinkness of the flesh of her chubby face and double chins.

  No, it was none of those things.

  It was the snout.

  Dorinda Edgely was wearing a snout, which would have been right at home on the Practical Pig in the Disney cartoon. It was pink and wrinkled, and it had two black nostrils painted on. It was attached to Dorinda’s face by a thin black stretch band, like the kind that Burns had once used on Halloween to hold his Lone Ranger mask.

  Around Dorinda’s neck was a piece of white string, from which a sign was hanging. The sign said HELP ME KISS A PIG in purple block letters.

  Dorinda held a tin can from which the label had been removed. She rattled it at Burns and Fox. Burns could hear the sound of coins clattering around inside the can. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and blew out a puff of smoke.

  Fox, meanwhile, had dropped his cigarette to the floor as soon as the door had begun to open. It had rolled aside a f
ew feet, and Fox completely ignored the fact that it was there at all, even though it was sending up a steady stream of smoke. “Hi, Dorinda,” he said. “You’re looking great!”

  Dorinda stopped shaking the can.

  “I mean, you’ve got on a great get-up! Doesn’t she Carl? Isn’t that great? It’s great! What’s it for?”

  “The contest,” Dorinda said. “Surely you’re aware of the contest?”

  “Oh, sure!” Fox said. “The contest. We know about the contest, don’t we, Carl?”

  As a matter of fact, Burns did know about the contest. Every year a member of the faculty got to kiss a pig in the student dining room at noon on a Thursday. For this privilege, the faculty member had to raise more money than any other faculty member entered in the contest. Though the money went to a scholarship fund, Burns had always declined the honor of entering. Kissing a pig in front of the students was not his idea of a good time.

  “Sure,” Burns said. “We know about the contest. How much money have you collected, Dorinda?”

  “I haven’t counted it,” she said. “But I hope to have a little more when I get out of here.” She looked pointedly at the cigarette burning on the floor.

  “Absolutely!” Fox said, fumbling in the back pocket of his faded bell-bottom jeans for his billfold. He pulled it out, looked inside, and extracted a wrinkled dollar bill. “Here,” he said, extending it toward Dorinda.

  Dorinda took the bill and looked expectantly at Burns, who took another defiant drag on his L & M. “Is Dean Elmore entered this year?” he asked.