Wendy Hornsby - The Hanging

Looking at the floor, he shrugged. “If you say so.”

I punched his shoulder gently, and he looked up.

“How was your pizza?”

Finally, he smiled his crooked, wiseass smile. “Thanks for not ordering broccoli on it like you used to. Casey and I hated the broccoli. Even your mangy dog Bowser wouldn’t eat it.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “Don’t you have work to do?”

He nodded as he looked around, seeing his crew slowly going back to their work.

“Lew will let you know what happens at the meeting,” I told him.

As Sly walked across the gallery to resume whatever we had interrupted, Lew turned to me.

“You’re welcome to hang around here until it’s time for the meeting,” he said. “There’s a rally scheduled on the quad for about twelve-thirty before folks head off to the big budget-cuts demonstration. It might be tough getting through them for our meeting.”

“Thanks, but I have film projects to grade,” I said. “I’ll be in my office.”

As I opened the door to leave, Sly called my name. I looked over at him.

“Wouldn’t it be easier if I just put a twelve-bore to Holloway’s head?”

“Be careful what you say,” I cautioned him. “Words like that could come back and haunt you.”

“Grab a picket sign, ladies.”

Before I could tell the woman holding the clipboard-I think her name was Sophia and I think she taught in the English Department-that we would not be joining the protestors, Kate nudged me to be quiet, picked up two signs from the pile and handed me one.

“Tees are on a table in front of the bookstore,” the woman, maybe Sophia, continued. “Sorry, there are only extra-larges left, but hell, they’ll make good sleep shirts when this is over.”

“Déjà vu,” I said to Kate as I looked at the sign in my hands: UNPAID FURLOUGHS = PAY CUTS!!! Kate’s said SAVE OUR CLASSES.

“What déjà vu?” She surveyed the crowd with an expression of pure disdain. “What are you thinking, Sproul Plaza?”

I nodded, remembering demonstrations at Cal, the University of California, Berkeley, when we were students there together.

Several hundred souls milled about on the campus quad, faculty, support staff and students, all garbed in California-poppy-orange T-shirts, Anacapa College’s school color, waiting to board a trio of chartered buses for the forty-mile freeway trip to downtown Los Angeles. There was to be a region-wide demonstration that afternoon in front of the state building to protest funding cuts to education, and the crowd should have been full of eager energy, all prepped to get The Man. But they were very quiet.

The sun was trying to come out; weathercasters promised the storm would blow over by evening. In the meantime, it was chilly, breezy. But few seemed to be aware of anything that was more than two feet beyond the ends of their noses. A few older folks, faculty probably, clustered in small groups and engaged in face-to-face conversations, while the youth tweeted, texted, chatted, listened to music and played games on electronic devices we used to call mobile telephones. But no one seemed to be fired up over the issues in which they were investing their time on this blustery day.

“Looks more like kids going off to summer camp than warriors heading off to do battle for a cause,” Kate said, the deep crease between her brows an indication of the depths of her displeasure. “One thing we learned at Berkeley, Mags, was the art of righteous demonstration. The organizers have a bullhorn. Why aren’t they using it to exhort and rabble-rouse? Bunch of pussies.”

“Maybe they need a tutorial,” I said, although knowing better than to encourage her.

She grabbed my arm. “Come on roomie, let’s show them how it’s done.”

Déjà vu indeed; she raised my sign-holding arm and waved it as she pushed through the crowd, dragging me along with her, headed for the man at the center of the quad who held a shiny yellow bullhorn cradled in his arms as if he were protecting it. He was a tall, bespectacled, rumpled, nearly bald guy, probably in his fifties, clearly faculty, and clearly at a loss about what he needed to be doing.

A student looked up from his snazzy phone at Kate when she accidentally bumped his shoulder. “Hey, Professor, you coming with us?”

“Some fun, huh?” she said in response. “Better than studying for mid-terms, Josh.”

I laughed. I remembered Kate gearing up for plenty of demonstrations, though I had to think for a moment about what the causes were back then. But I remembered her more clearly with her dark head bent over piles of books and notes, cramming for exams, writing papers.

Serious, pretty Kate, was one of my oldest and dearest friends. As I told Lew, she was first my roommate at the convent school on the San Francisco Peninsula where our parents parked us for high school, and again, later, at Cal.

After college we went in very different directions, Kate to graduate school and then on to a career teaching history at the college level, and me into the inane world of television newscasting. But we stayed in touch, stayed close. When I lost my husband, Mike, almost a year ago, it was Kate I called first, after the police left.

And it was Kate who talked me into accepting a one-semester teaching gig at Anacapa. Adjunct professor pay was pathetic, but teaching turned out to be a wonderful diversion. Harder work than I expected, certainly, and more rewarding.

We reached the man cradling the bullhorn.

“Damn thing’s warm enough, George,” she said, taking the horn out of his arms. “Time to put it to work.”

“Uh.” His hands followed the horn and I wondered if he would grab it back. “Kate?”

First thing she did to get the crowd’s attention was to turn up the volume all the way and then snap the On switch, sending out a squealing blast of static that sounded something like amplified fingernails scraping on a blackboard; some skills, once learned, we never lose.

With the volume somewhat lower, she began to exhort and rabble-rouse.

“Good morning, Anacapa.” Heads turned toward her. “I said, good morning.”

There was a pallid refrain of Good-mornings in response.

“I can’t hear you,” she shouted into the bullhorn. “And I’m standing right next to you. If I can’t hear you, then the governor can’t hear you and the legislature sure as hell can’t hear you. I said, Good morning.”

“Good morning!” resounded across the quad.

She dropped the horn to her side and asked George, “When do the buses leave?”

He was grinning now. “Ten minutes. I was just going to announce that it’s time to board.”

Bullhorn up again, Kate asked the crowd, “Hey, people of Anacapa College, are you fed up with fee increases?”

When the chorus of “Yes” died down, she shouted, “Don’t tell me, tell the governor: What do you want?”

“No more fees.”

“Louder, let the legislature hear you, too. What do you want?”

As I listened to the shouted refrain, I looked across the crowd. The only mobile phones I saw now were being held aloft to take pictures or to allow the person on the other end to hear the commotion.

“Tell me this,” Kate shouted next. “If they cancel any more classes, will you be able to graduate on time?”

A thunder of “No!” George now waved his arms at the crowd like a cheerleader, finally exhorting and rabble-rousing, telling them to get louder.

“Then you go get on those buses,” Kate yelled, “and you go tell the governor. You go tell the legislature. You tell them you have had enough. You tell them you can’t pay higher fees. You tell them you won’t tolerate any more canceled classes. You go tell those fat butts who hide out in Sacramento that you have had enough.” She demanded, “What have you had?”