Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red (8 page)

Fine shook his head in exasperation. “Did it ever occur to you to ask me before you got up this petition? Did it ever occur to you that it might interfere with my own plans?”

“Jeez. Roger, we thought you’d be pleased. Besides, if we didn’t do it, the SDS would, maybe even the Weathervane crazies. You’d rather have us doing it than them, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, I don’t like it, Ekko. I want it stopped.”

“OK, if that’s the way you want it. Excuse me a minute –” He grabbed a student who was with a girl. “Hey Bongo, come on sign a petition for Professor Fine!”

Roger Fine hurried away.

What have you got against John Hendryx. Dad?” asked Betty Macomber. It was Mrs. Childs’ night off, and Betty was clearing the dinner dishes while he glanced through the evening paper.

“Hendryx? Oh, the new man in English?”

“New! He’s been here two and a half years.”

“Really. It just shows how time flies. Why; I have nothing against him.”

“Then why hasn’t he been appointed chairman of the department? Why is he only acting chairman?”

President Macomber put his paper aside and looked up at his daughter, she was tall and blonde; “my Viking princess” he had been fond of calling her when she was a little girl, although her face showed planes of maturity: it was unlined and still attractive. “It’s regulations,” he began. “A chairman of a department is required to have tenure, and that takes a minimum of three years, Hendrix hasn’t been with us that long. So naturally he can only be acting chairman.”

“But in the past people have been made chairman of their departments without tenure,” she persisted. “You told me yourself that Professor Malkowitz was made chairman of the Math Department the day he was hired.”

“Malkowitz was a special case, he wouldn’t have come to Windemere otherwise, and we were very anxious to get him, the trustees had to grant him tenure by special vote.”

She put aside the bread tray and salad bowl she was carrying and sat on the hassock at his feet. “Well, why can’t you do the same thing for Professor Hendryx?”

He leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Professor Malkowitz has a national reputation, he’s an extremely capable man.”

“And you have doubts about Professor Hendryx’s ability?”

There was no doubt about the challenge in her voice, he tried to blunt it with a light answer. “Well, one thing I can say about him, he certainly knows how to enlist female support.” He smiled. “For months now Millicent Hanbury has been after me about him, and now you. I can understand her attitude, they’re old friends. I gather, or at least they both come from the same hometown. But you. I didn’t think you even knew him.”

“I met him the day I got back, he was at the Sorensons’ party.”

“Oh?”

“And I’ve seen quite a bit of him since,” she added offhandedly.

But he wasn’t fooled. “He complained about his treatment here?”

“No, it wasn’t that,” she said. “But when I happened to refer to him as chairman of the English Department, he made a point of correcting me and explained he was only acting chairman.” She paused. “If you know anything against him. Father, I’d like to hear it.”

Realizing that her interest was more than impersonal concern for a faculty member, he began cautiously. “He has a good degree. Harvard. I think, and I understand he’s published some. But when you’ve been at this game as long as I have, you get a kind of feeling about faculty people. In the last ten years, before coming here, he’s had three different jobs, and why would he come here at all? We’re a small college, not too well known, with that kind of background he should have been able to wangle a job at one of the prestige colleges by this time.”

“Your precious Malkowitz came here.”

“Ah, but we went after him and made it worth his while. Professor Hendryx, on the other hand, came to us, and at midyears.”

“Maybe he prefers a small college, a lot of men do.”

He nodded. “But his last job was at a small college – Jeremiah Logan College in Tennessee. Why didn’t he stay there?”

“Just because it’s in Tennessee. I suppose, any New Englander is apt to feel like a fish out of water in a small Southern town.”

“True,” he acknowledged, “and it’s what I thought until I bumped into the chancellor of Jeremiah Logan at the College Presidents Association meeting last year. I mentioned Hendryx. Now you know, these days an administrator, any employer for that matter, has to be verv careful of what he says about a former employee. You can be sued if you say something you know perfectly well but can’t prove, that’s why we don’t pay too much attention to the run-of-the-mill recommendation, well, this man from Jeremiah Logan was even more cautious than most, but I was able to gather that Hendryx had been in some trouble down there – about a girl, one of the coeds.”

“I know all about that,” she said calmly. “She was a cheap little whore, the original sweetheart of Sigma Chi – and all the other fraternities.”

“He told you all this? Why?”

“Because we’re interested in each other,” she said, getting to her feet.

“Betty, the man called him an over-sexed –”

“Well, I could do with a little of that after Malcolm.”

“Betty!”

“Look Dad. I might as well tell you. John and I are going to be married.”

He stared at her.

“Don’t look so shocked, and I’m not going to be put off just because a man of forty is not celibate. Now, aren’t you going to wish me good luck?”

“But with a coed!”

“Big enough, old enough. You don’t suppose your coeds here at Windemere are all innocent virgins, do you?”

“No, of course not,” he said. “But I still cannot approve of male members of the faculty – well – having relations – that is, taking advantage of their position to – why – seduce female members of the student body.” He started again. “Look Betty; I’m as modern about these things as any man my age can be. But it’s not right for a faculty member – I mean Just from the point of view of fairness, because he can take advantage of his position. If nothing else, think what it indicates of his character.”

“Fairness! Character!” She gave a hard laugh. “Dad, let me clue you in on the facts of life in the seventies. Sex is a woman’s business; it’s her specialty, her field of concentration. If any affairs are going on at Windemere between faculty and student, and I’m sure there are, believe me, it’s something that the girl has initiated and is managing, and she’ll usually be the one who terminates it when she finds someone else or has decided she’s had enough. Now this affair of John’s down at Logan, and others he’s probably had at the other places he taught, well, he might think they were his doing but you can bet that in each case it was the girl’s.”

“Betty, we you having an affair with him?”

“Dad, you’re sweet. No, I’m not, but it’s just because it hasn’t developed that way – not yet, anyway. Have I shocked you?” She looked at him in amusement.

“Do you love this man. Betty?”

“I’m not a teenager with a crush, if that’s what you mean. I find him attractive, he’s goodlooking and intelligent.”

“But you’ve only just met him. You don’t really know him.”

“Yes, and I practically grew up with Malcolm and see what happened,” she said. “I’ve known John for almost two months now. It’s long enough.”

“Just because you made a mistake once –”

“I’m thirty-five and John is forty. Our backgrounds are similar, he comes of an old New England family, and he’s unattached, he’s the most eligible man around. If I wait. I’ll end up marrying some widower with a couple of kids who’s looking for a housekeeper to work without pay – if I’m lucky, as for any affairs he’s had with some silly little coeds, well, if he hadn’t had any, then I’d have cause to worry. What else can a bachelor professor in a small college town do? Would you rather have him make time with the wives of his colleagues?”

“Most men marry.”

“Then he wouldn’t be available to me. Look Dad. I’m going to marry him. Right now we’re keeping it quiet because he has some silly idea people won’t understand, but make up your mind to it. Don’t worry; Dad,” she hugged him impulsively. “I know you’ll like him once you get to know him better.”

“Has Billy met him yet?” he said.

“As a matter of fact, we’re driving up to see him Saturday morning. I’m sure he and Billy will get along fine.”

“And what about your plans for the future?”

“That depends on you,” she said. “John would like to stay on here, but he considers his present position as acting chairman demeaning. When the last bulletin passed him over, he was going to resign, but I persuaded him to wait. If he does decide to leave, we could live for a while on the little money Mother left me while he looks around for another job. I suggested it, but he’s too proud to accept it. But if he’s given tenure and appointed permanent chairman, we could get married right away, and then we’d go on living here.”

“But that has to be by a vote of the trustees.”

“Have they ever turned down a single recommendation of yours?”

“No – o.”

“Please. Dad!”

She looked as anxious as a child, and what did he really know to Hendryx’s discredit? Still, it went against the grain to use the authority of his position in a purely family matter. On the other hand. Betty wasn’t the only one. Dean Hanbury had urged him to make the promotion, so it probably would work to the benefit of the department and the school. “Well, perhaps I’ll talk to Dean Hanbury:” he said tentatively.

She knew she had won. “Oh thanks. Dad.” She gave him another kiss. “When will you see her?”

He thumbed through his pocket diary. “Let’s see, tomorrow is Friday. I don’t have anything on for the morning.” He made a note. “Friday the thirteenth. You superstitious?” He smiled at her. “I’ll see her tomorrow morning.”

She blew him a kiss and then hurried up the stairs. “I’ve got to change.”

“I thought you were going to stay in tonight….”

“Oh, but I want to tell John the good news.”

They couldn’t use Abner Selzer’s place because his roommate had the flu, and Yance Allworth and Mike O’Brien both lived at home. So they had agreed to meet at Judy Ballantine’s pad even though it was way to hell and gone on the other side of town, in the West End, at least, thev would not be disturbed. Besides, since this Judv was shacking up with Ekko, two of the five were already there, she lived three flights up in a tenement house that real estate gougers had prettied up with tiled shower stalls and cabinet kitchenettes and a few sticks of furniture so that they could charge an arm and a leg to students, nurses, and interns at the Mass General Hospital, who couldn’t find anyplace else.

Ekko appropriated the one chair. It was a wing-back job whose fabric was not only faded but marred by cigarette burns caused by the carelessness, if not actual vandalism, of the previous tenants who resented the inflated rent they had to pay. “Just pin on a couple of lace dollies and it’ll look like new.” the renting agent had said.

Judy; although a senior, looked like a young girl. Not only was she tiny, but her face had a childlike expression with a small rosebud mouth and large innocent dark eyes, she sat on the floor, her head against Ekko’s knee, flicking her cigarette in the general direction of the ashtray on the floor, with her other hand she massaged his calf under his trouser leg.

On the ratty sofa with sagging springs sat Mike O’Brien who worked part-time in a bank and so wore a regular suit and a white shirt and even a tie for God’s sakes; his fat little fingers were intertwined on his lap.

Yance Allworth lay on the floor, his handsome Afro resting on a cushion he had pulled off the sofa, he was wearing fringed pants of purple leather and a pink silk shirt that contrasted dramatically with his dark black skin. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be asleep as Abner Selzer, bearded and with hair nearly down to his shoulders, reported on his conversation with the dean.

“I arranged it for half-past two today because –” he broke off. “Jeez Judy, do you have to feel him up while we’re having a meeting?”

“Screw you,” she said amiably.

“Get on with it.” said Ekko, patting her head like a dog’s.

” – because that’s when Millie Hanbury suggested,” he concluded.

“Screw Millie Hanbury.” said Allworth through half closed lips.

“Maybe I wouldn’t mind.” said Selzer. “She’s got some built.”

“You’d mind, all right.” said Judy. “She’s a dyke.”

“How do you know?” asked O’Brien, interested.

“It stands to reason.” Judy said. “She was a Phys. Ed, major in college, all those Phys. Ed, types are. What I’d like to know is why we got to meet her at half-past two on a Friday.”

“Friday the thirteenth.” Yance Allworth murmured.

“Because Friday the place is like a ghost town, there won’t be anyone around. Just us.”

“So what kind of pressure can we bring with just the five of us?”

“More than if we held the meeting Monday morning as you suggested. Judy;” Selzer retorted. “Then we could get maybe fifty kids, seventy-five at the most, and Hanbury would take one look, see we could only scare up a handful, and know right away she held all the cards.”

“How do you know we’d only get fifty?” asked O’Brien.

“Because that’s the name of the game nowadays.” said Selzer. “You know how many signatures we got to our petition? With Fine as a drawing card? A hundred and nineteen, that’s all we could get in a whole week, one hundred and nineteen lousy signatures. So when Hanbury suggested Friday afternoon, I snapped it up because that way we don’t show our weakness.”

“I bet if we’d joined with the Weathervanes, we’d have got a hell of a lot more,” said O’Brien.

“Screw the Weathervanes,” Allworth murmured.

“You and me both.” said Ekko. “That’s a freaked out bunch of crazies that I wouldn’t join on a streetcar in a rush hour.”

“They’re real revolutionaries,” O’Brien insisted.

“They’re real zombies, is what they are.” said Ekko. “You say, half-past two, abner? Okay, so it’s half-past two. Did you tell her why we wanted to see her?”

“No, but she knows we’re pushing for Fine naturally because of the sign on the Marble.”