Wasted Year: The Last Hippies of Ole Miss

by Douglas Gray

  Dr. Hirsch has dropped by to collect the rent, his arrival coinciding with a visit from Nick and Suzie, bearing glad tidings: Suzie’s pregnant.

  “How did that happen?” Cindy asks.

  Dr. Hirsch nudges me with his pudgy elbow. “Did you hear that? She wants to know how it happened.”

  “How do you think?” Suzie replies.

  “I mean, did you forget your pill? Did the condom break?”

  “Not every pregnancy is an accident, Cindy.”

  “All of mine have been,” says Rose, the sorority chick that James has brought by this evening, to Dr. Hirsch’ apparent disappointment.

  “Nick and I want to have this baby. We’ve been trying for months.”

  “Lord, I’ve never had to try,” Rose pitches in. “A boy can just look at me too long and I get pregnant.”

  James, Andrew, Garrett and I avert our eyes from Rose, in unison. So does Dr. Hirsch. Only Nick doesn’t join in on the joke, standing proudly at Suzie’s side like a hirsute Joseph to her hippie Mary.

  ~ ~ ~

  Friday, September 3

  The Lyric is showing The Omega Man, with Charlton Heston. Garrett and I amble over from Colemans Barbecue for the 8:00 show.

  The last Charlton Heston epic I saw was Planet of the Apes, (1968, Twentieth Century Fox, directed by Franklin Schnaffer) also here in the Lyric, which is as seedy and rundown as I remember it, another frozen in amber moment.

  “Don’t tell me the Baptists are trying to buy this place, too.”

  “They are, as a matter of fact,” Garrett answers.

  We take seats in the center aisle, three rows from the screen.

  “Shit, this is a remake of I Am Legend,” Garrett whispers about ten minutes into the film, and this fact seems to offend him deeply. “What a travesty.”

  “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty vampire!” I quip as Charlton is manhandled by his undead enemies.

  When the Russians launch a bomb against China that sets off a global plague, Garrett rises and shakes his fist at the screen: “You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”

  The rest of the audience seems content to watch this dreck without our witty commentary, until old Charlton kisses his black co-star. With that, a chorus of frat boys and sorority chicks in the back of the theater break into howls of protest and revulsion.

  Garrett turns around, stands up in his chair, and shouts at them. “Shut up, troglodytes! This is elevated cinematic art. You’re not worthy to watch a Charlton Heston film. And if I hear another outburst from you, I’ll come up there and whip your asses good!”

  To his surprise, and mine, they’re cowed. It must be that standing in the chair made him look more intimidating than his actual 5’4”.

  The story ends with Charlton posed as a Christ figure, crucified by the vampires in a public fountain with his precious, plague-resistant blood flowing out onto the water. Garrett hurls his empty box of popcorn at the screen, to register his disgust. Since the aisles have apparently not been swept in weeks, he’s also able to follow up with a volley of paper cups, candy bar wrappers, and more popcorn boxes.

  “Richard Matheson would be rolling over in his grave – if he were dead.”

  Garrett instructs me on the genius of Richard Matheson on our way out of the Lyric. In addition to classic sci-fi novels, he turns out to have been the script writer for two of the greatest Twilight Zone episodes of all time – the one about the gremlin on the airplane, and the one about the little girl who slips through an inter-dimensional rip in her bedroom.

  “That one scared the crap out of me,” I admit as we descend the steps in the lobby.

  Suddenly, Ho looms before me, in a terrycloth bathrobe, screaming. She raises a tiny, wizened fist to my face, shakes it, spits on my shoe, and departs in a huff.

  “Do you know who that was?” I ask when we’re out on the sidewalk.

  “That was Ho. She’s Jimmy and Tiger Woo’s old sister. I don’t know what you’ve done to her, but she must really hate you.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Saturday, September 4

  James and I drive to the outskirts of the Ole Miss marijuana plantation, park the car about a hundred yards away and follow a barely-worn path through underbrush and bushes to a clearing with a vista of a stand of pines behind a chain-link fence.

  “There it is,” he says.

  “Where?” I can’t see anything.

  “Right there.”

  “You mean, behind those pines?”

  “Those aren’t pines, man.”

  It’s amazing. They’re growing plants that top 20 feet tall.

  “That’s going to be a lot to harvest.”

  “Damn straight, it is.”

  James drops me off on campus, which isn’t so deserted today. Registration begins Monday, and students have already started returning.

  But the Grove is mostly empty, so I sit zazen in the shadow of my favorite oak tree, full lotus in the triangle of its old roots, drawing its power through my lower chakra up through my core.

  I position my mind in hara, find my center of gravity, and begin counting breaths.

  I let go of everything except the now. The sound of leaves, wind, squirrels in the branches above me, the low humming of wheels on pavement in the distance, an occasional voice. The grass grows a vivid green, each blade sharp and distinct, sunlight slicing with utmost clarity and precision through the gaps of the trunks and branches. The slow sweep of shadows over the grass tells me that the vast earth is circling the sun through what we call “space,” and that what we call “time” is passing.

  But I’m not alone here. I feel another presence nearby. An old friend. Recognition. Joy. A shimmer in the air a few yards away, near the park bench, a figure materializing.

  But it seems to be in a struggle to take shape.

  “Citizen?” I ask. “Is that you, boy?”

  At that, the figure collapses back into air molecules, dissolves, vanishes.

  ~ ~ ~

  Sunday, September 5

  I’m crossing the Square, from the hardware store to the courthouse at 9:55 a.m. when a forest green ’69 Cadillac turns into the lane from South Lamar, swerves, and narrowly misses hitting me. The driver appears to be a middle-aged woman in her Sunday finest. She glares at me as I dart to avoid being winged by her front bumper.

  Deputy Hacker, lounging on the park bench by the Confederate statue, witnesses the near-accident and chuckles.

  “Officer, I want that woman arrested,” I josh.

  “I should take you in for jaywalking.”

  “I was in the crosswalk.”

  “Bright college boy like you ought to know how to use a crosswalk, then. Remember ‘Look to your right, look to your left, before you cross the street’? I’d of thought you’d learned that back in grammar school.”

  “But this is the Square. Traffic’s only supposed to move in one direction. Wouldn’t looking both ways be a wasted effort?”

  “Always trying to outsmart the system, hey, college boy?”

  “What system?”

  “Traffic system. City engineers put a lot of work into designing it. They wouldn’t appreciate your mocking it.”

  “Mock the traffic system? That’s the furthest thing from my mind.”

  “Nothing’s sacred to you people, is it?”

  “Well, with no disrespect to the city engineers, I don’t consider the traffic system to be sacred.”

  “And that’s where anarchy begins, which is exactly what you people want.”

  “What I really want is not to get run down in the public square by Christian ladies in a rush to get to church on Sunday morning so they can pray for the damnation of their enemies.”

  At that remark, Hacker rises from the bench, adjusts his belt and places a hand on his holster. “Christians built this town, college boy, and I’ve had about enough of you for one day.”

  I shrug and proceed along my way.

  �
��There’s a new sheriff in town,” he calls after me. “Don’t forget.”

  “I look forward to meeting him.”

  “That can be arranged at any time.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Monday, September 6

  It’s a typically chaotic Ole Miss registration day. By the time I reach the main concourse of the Coliseum at 8:30, endless queues of students needing permission slips, car registration and identification cards have already formed. It’s after 10:00 before I enter the arena to collect class cards, and well after 11:00 before I’m done.

  I reach Bondurant Hall at 11:45. The Museum doors are shut, but Dr. Goodleigh’s office is open and her radio is playing Vivaldi. Goodleigh’s in her rocking chair, reading the Commercial Appeal.

  “I was just about to have lunch.” Dr. Goodleigh rises from her chair to hug me, and I turn schoolboy flustered. “Join me.”

  Dr. Giordano is holding court at the big table in the east dining room and summons us with an imperious wave of the hand as Dr. Goodleigh and I exit the cafeteria line, trays in hand.

  “Eh, Anglo-Saxon,” he says, clamping my left shoulder in an uncomfortable squeeze, “you’ve returned.” Somehow Giordano seems to have grown larger, more grizzled and more intimidating during my absence. “What are you eating? What’s that on your tray?” he asks, though the substance is not the least bit mysterious.

  “Soup.”

  “Soup. Zuppa,” Giordano mocks. “You eat like a woman.”

  I glance around the assembly, and recognize no one. Giordano’s brand new entourage of Philosophy students, I conclude. They all know Goodleigh, of course, and jockey to find an opening for her at the table.

  “I see you’re having the pork chops, Aldo,” Goodleigh remarks. “Tell me, did the kitchen staff let you capture and slaughter the hog yourself?”

  He ignores the question, but picks up on the theme. “In the camps, we were starved. We ate rats. British guards treated us like animals, and we became animals. I became an animal, and I eat like an animal. I eat when the food is in front of me, because I never know when I may eat again.”

  “My lord, not the POW stories again. Does anybody have the phone number of the Geneva Convention for this poor man?”

  “I can’t stand them, either,” I say. “My mother’s family was Irish. The Brits made us eat potatoes.”

  The conversation turns to war crimes. Goodleigh and I are left unmolested to negotiate my hours for the term. It’s agreed that I’ll staff the Museum on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, and afternoons Tuesday and Thursday. The plan matches her teaching schedule and my class schedule.

  On the way out of the dining room, I glimpse Dr. Evans at a corner table with Amy Madigan. His back is to me, but they seem to be engaged in earnest conversation. Amy isn’t smiling, and she doesn’t return the greeting when I wave to her, simply scowls.

  ~ ~ ~

  Tuesday, September 7

  The queue outside the bookstore is remarkably short as I pass by this morning, so I take my place at the end of the line and am inside within 15 minutes. The cashier rings up my purchase – three texts for Hirsch’ linguistics class, an advanced German reader, an Oxford University edition of Horace’s Odes, and a secondhand copy of Harrison’s Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion. The total comes to $43.70. It’s a good thing James’ grass is free, because it’s going to be a lean month.

  On my way out, I encounter a shrine to Amy Madigan – a display table with a dozen copies of A Monastery of Horses, and a black-and-white head shot of the author wearing an expression halfway between cerebral and dreamy. Blurbs of praise for Mississippi’s youngest new best-selling author.

  Garrett’s surprised I haven’t read it yet, as we share a joint in the Ohm.

  “It’s not that bad, for a first novel,” Garrett judges. “But it’s derivative. When she’s not trying to be Faulkner, she’s trying to be O’Connor. And when she’s not trying to be O’Connor, she’s trying to be Welty or Willie Morris or Barry Hannah or Walker Percy.”

  “Another hybrid of moonlight and magnolias with Southern gothic?”

  “I’d say more of a mongrel than a hybrid,” Garrett replies. “On the other hand, if you think of writing as economics, rather than art, you’ve got to give Amy a lot of credit. She knows what her audience expects. Southern fiction’s big business. In the good old days, being from Mississippi was an embarrassment. Now it’s turned into a profession.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Wednesday, September 8

  My first day at work. Dr. Goodleigh has classes at 9:00 and 10:00 a.m., Monday – Wednesday – Friday, leaving me alone in the Museum for two hours with all of my old friends – the head of Pan, the Etruscan amphora of the sphinxes, the Attic amphora of Hermes with Dionysus, the red-figure pelike of Artemis and the deer, the busts of Aphrodite and Augustus, Menander, Agrippina, Marcus Aurelius, Vitellius.

  They seem to watch me as I use my work table to sit zazen for a while, before turning my attention to Goodleigh’s correspondence and the draft of her latest article for Classical Archaeology. This is, after all, what I was hired to do. She could have chosen any graduate assistant to watchdog the exhibits while she’s away, but few of us can type 90 words per minute.

  I’m happily banging away on the Museum’s old Smith Corona upright when, unexpectedly, Cindy appears at the door in sandals, a pair of hip-hugger jeans, and another of her seemingly endless supply of halter tops.

  “Wow, I didn’t even know this place was here,” she exclaims.

  “What brings you by?”

  “I wanted to see where you’re working. Is this stuff real?”

  I lead her through a standard introductory tour of the collection, explaining the time periods between archaic and classical works, the various provenances of the artifacts, the shapes and uses of the vases, the distinction between red figure and black figure decorations. But all the while I’m distracted by the vivid reality of Cindy’s body. She’s putting every nude in the place to shame.

  Goodleigh, back from class, peeks in on us.

  “Daniel and I are housemates,” Cindy announces when I make the introductions.

  “How interesting,” Goodleigh replies. Later, to me, she says, “What a bubbly girl. She must make it difficult to concentrate on your Herodotus.”

  “Fortunately, I have a highly disciplined intellect.”

  “Not disciplined enough to remember to visit Bill Sutherland.”

  “I’ve been putting that off,” I admit.

  “You’re avoiding your chairman? Why? They released him from the hospital. Bill’s not dangerous, you know.”

  “It’s just that . . .” I begin, hesitate, and sigh. “Listen, I saw enough of crazy last year. I’m not ready to deal with it again.”

  “If you came back to Ole Miss to get away from crazy,” Goodleigh points out, “then you’ve clearly been running in the wrong direction. As you know only too well, there’s nothing here BUT crazy.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Thursday, September 9

  “Mail for you,” Dr. Goodleigh says as I arrive in the Museum this afternoon. She lifts a salmon-colored envelope from the pile on her desk, and sniffs it. “From a woman.”

  I carry it to my work table in the museum, set it down, and stare at it for a while. The envelope reads

  Daniel Medway

  c/o Classics Department

  University, MS 38677

  in a familiar hand. Inside, a note on Valerie’s stationery:

  As you probably expected, my conscience got the better of me. I reported my bad behavior to my supervisors. You can imagine the outrage. I’ve been placed on administrative leave until they decide how best to punish me without causing a departmental scandal.

  None of this matters. I’m leaving Charlottesville. You were right, it’s a terrible place. I don’t know where I’ll go. It might be fun to find out. Take care of yourself. Don’t forget about that skinny hippie chick. You deserve a little fun.

 
; I return to Tyler Avenue in a guilty funk and just want to be alone in my room. Instead, I find the house in turmoil, strangers running about and shouting while somehow being choreographed by James.

  “What the hell’s going on?” I ask Andrew.

  “James says the Revolution’s started,” he replies, with calm skepticism. “Garrett was at the Journalism building when an AP story came over the wire about a prison riot earlier today in upstate New York.”

  “I doubt the Revolution’s going to start in a New York prison.”

  “Except that a photograph from inside the prison followed a few minutes after the copy. James says that Tamburlaine is there, inside, with the prisoners.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Friday, September 10

  After work, afternoon classes and a stop at the Greyhound station, I’m standing on Mrs. Hirsch’ old porch, outside the screen door, listening to the argument inside. I make out James’ voice, Andrew and Garrett; others I don’t recognize.

  There’s a crowd around the kitchen table, debating over a stack of photographs, Xeroxes and newspaper clippings, all of which supposedly show Tamburlaine among the bystanders at a number of historic events – the Kennedy assassination, the King assassination, the Bobby Kennedy assassination, the Pentagon march, Kent State. And now, inside Attica State, with the rioting prisoners.

  I pause a minute in the doorway, my first box of books balanced on my shoulder, to take in the scene. Clamor stands at James’ side, close enough that he brushes against her every time he draws a breath. She’s in the same outfit as the other day, jeans and camouflage jacket. I study her for a moment and decide that she’s definitely a girl. I think.

  “Yes, there’s one blurry white guy in the prison, wearing an interesting hat. Yes, there’s a blurry white guy in Dallas, also in a hat, and some blurry student at Kent State wearing a hat,” Garrett tries to reason. “But there’s no evidence it’s the same person. Even if it were, he couldn’t be Tamburlaine. He’d only have been — what? — 15 or so when Kennedy died. Unless Tamburlaine is a time traveler.” Garrett stops to take a breath. “Is that what you’re saying, that Tamburlaine’s a time traveler?”

  “I believe,” James says, “that he is not limited in the way that normal beings are.”

  “My lord, you’re serious. Really. James, listen. I never thought I’d ever say this to anybody — but you’ve got to cut down on the drugs, man. They’re making you delusional!”

  I turn to carry the box to my room and find Cindy hunkered on the couch, watching a portable television.