Danny Tobey: The Faculty Club

“Of course not.”

The professor smiled politely. “The trade-off hasn’t changed. One life for five, yes? And yet your answer is now opposite?”

“But a hospital-you’re supposed to protect people…”

“The child on the track doesn’t deserve protection?”

Anderson stared at the professor. His mouth worked to form a response. Finally, he said something so quiet it was lost to everyone but him.

The professor walked a couple of seats down.

“Ms. Goodwin, please help Mr. Anderson out. Would you pull the lever?”

“Daphne Goodwin,” Nigel said under his breath. “Former editor in chief of the Yale Daily News. Triple crown winner: Rhodes, Marshall, and Truman scholarships.” And, he failed to mention, one of the most uncomfortably attractive people I’d ever seen. Her hair was midnight black, pulled into a luxurious ponytail. Her lips were painted red against lightly tanned skin. She had blue eyes that sparkled from across the room. Her face was set in a permanently skeptical expression, eyebrows raised, lips somewhere between a frown and a smirk: it was aggressive and erotic.

“I would do nothing,” she said, folding her thin hands in front of her.

“Nothing, Ms. Goodwin?”

“If I pull the lever, I am causing the death of a child.”

“And if you don’t pull the lever, five children will die.”

“But I didn’t cause that. I didn’t create the situation. But I won’t pull the lever and, by my action, kill a child.”

“I see. Are you sure?”

She paused, looking for the trap. Then she said, “Yes.”

“So, Ms. Goodwin, by your logic, if there were five children on your track, and no child on the other track, we couldn’t blame you for not pulling the lever, because you didn’t cause their death?”

She froze. “I didn’t say that… I mean, that’s not what I meant.”

“Mr. Davis, can you help us?”

I was still looking at Daphne Goodwin’s bright blue eyes when it dawned on me that Ernesto Bernini had called my name. Two hundred faces were now following his gaze and turning to look at me. Silence filled the room. I felt my heart stop like a needle skidding off a record. Four hundred of the most brilliant eyes in the world were now burning holes in me.

“Yes?” I answered weakly.

“What would you do?”

I felt panic in every nerve of my body. My future was sitting all around me, watching.

I paused and chose my words carefully.

“I can’t say what I’d do, sir. It’s a terrible situation. Either I cause the death of a child by my action, or I allow five children to die by my inaction. Any way I choose, I lose something. If I had to decide, I would. But as long as it’s just an academic exercise, I respectfully decline to answer.”

Those flickering elfish eyes were boring right through me. I was pretty sure I was about to get sent home to Texas, possibly with idiot tattooed on my forehead.

Finally, he spoke.

“Fair enough, Mr. Davis. In here, it is just an exercise. But someday, you may have to choose. Should you send soldiers to war? Should you sign a law that will help some and harm others? And I wonder, Mr. Davis. Will you be ready?”

“Amazing,” Nigel said to me as we packed up our books. “He actually called on you. You must hang the stars! But who are you? I mean, no offense, but I know everybody, and I’ve never heard of Jeremy Davis.”

“I’m no one. Really. No Rhodes scholarship, no editor in chief of anything. And I botched that question anyway. Refusing to answer! What was I thinking?”

“Hey, I thought it was cool. Buck the system and all that. The point is, he knew your name. On the first day! That man makes presidents. All I can say is, you’re generating quite a buzz for yourself. She doesn’t cast her glance casually.”

Nigel nodded across the room. I looked just in time to catch the blue eyes of Daphne Goodwin, before she tossed her hair and turned away.

“Anyway, you remind me of a young Bill Clinton,” Nigel said, rising and ruffling my hair on his way out. “And I’m going to ride your coattails the whole damn way.”

I spent the afternoon running errands. The campus bookstore was a two-story building nestled between an old-timey tailor and a hamburger place called Easy’s. I needed to buy books for the rest of my first semester classes: Contracts (taught by Professor Gruber, a round man with short arms and thick square glasses that made his eyes look a hundred yards away), Property (with Professor Ramirez, a severe woman with a long pinched nose and watery eyes), Constitutional Law (Professor Müeling, accent of undetermined origin), and of course, Torts. It would take me almost a week to figure out what a tort even was, but basically, if I punch you in the face, or if you slip on some ice while crossing my yard, that’s a tort.

I searched for a book called Trial Skills and grabbed it. I planned on trying out for the Thomas Bennett Mock Trial, one of the law school’s oldest traditions. Whoever won that was basically guaranteed a Supreme Court clerkship, as long as they didn’t find some other way to flame out.

I carried the heavy stack of books, and it seemed like I had the whole universe of human behavior in my hands: what we promise each other and how we harm each other; what we can take and what can’t be taken away.

I bought three boxes of highlighters and a package of those colored sticky tabs.

When I checked my mailbox that evening in the student lounge, it was empty, except for a handwritten note:

Come to my office, it said.

Signed, -E.B.

Ernesto Bernini’s office was filled with books-on the shelves, on his desk, on the floor. It would take a hundred years to read all those books, I thought. There was no computer, but stacks of paper were everywhere. The overhead lights were off, and a lamp cast a small orange circle on his desk. The moon shone in through the window, throwing a blue-white glow over the rest of the room.

“Sit down, Mr. Davis,” the professor said kindly, stepping toward me and extending his hand toward a chair. He sat close by on the edge of his desk and fixed me with those rapacious eyes.

“How tall are you?” the professor asked.

“Six-one, sir.”

He nodded.

“Can you guess the last time we elected a shorter than average president?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “William McKinley. One hundred and six years ago. Isn’t that funny? In a world of ideas, height still matters.”

He shook his head.

“I didn’t know that, sir,” I said, then cursed myself for sounding so stupid.

“That’s okay,” he said, chuckling. “The potential is there.”

I wasn’t sure I was being complimented, but I said thank you anyway.

He leaned in closer.

“Good bone structure,” he said, his eyes moving over my face. Suddenly, I wished I could somehow move my chair a couple of inches without being rude. There was nothing sexual in the way he was looking at me; rather, I felt like a prize heifer being appraised by a rancher. “Strong jaw. Cheekbones could be a bit more prominent, but oh well. You can’t have everything, can you?”

For some reason, I thought of an old friend of mine whose dad was a music teacher. He said his dad could tell what instrument a student would be good at, just by looking at the bones of his face.

Bernini smiled, satisfied, and leaned back.

“I read your article in the Coleman Law Review,” he said. “Very impressive, publishing in a law review as a college student.”

“You read that, sir?”

“You seem surprised.”

“I just… it’s kind of an obscure journal. I’m not sure the people who work there read it.”

Professor Bernini laughed and clapped his hands. “Nevertheless, I was impressed. Interesting ideas. I’m thinking of citing you in my next article. That will raise your stock a little, eh?” He hopped off the desk and opened a window, letting a burst of cold air into the room. His breath came out in plumes of white mist, and he pushed the window closed against the wind.