Andrew Shaw - Campus Tramp

The tavern was a college hangout studiously patronized by Clifton students and studiously avoided by Clifton citizenry. It was set up to resemble an old colonial tavern, with wood paneling and ancient-looking tables and chairs. Colonial utensils hung suspended from the ceiling — pots, pans, foot warmers, candle-molds and other weird cast-iron artifacts that Linda couldn’t identify. About seven or eight young men stood drinking beer or hard liquor at the bar. Couples occupied the tables, drinking, laughing, talking and singing.

Joe led her to a booth and they sat down. From where she sat she could see the bar and the doorway. A waiter came and Joe said: “Two labels down.”

She looked at him quizzically. The waiter disappeared and he smiled at her.

“What did you say?”

“Two labels down,” he repeated. “That means two 3.2 bottles of Carling’s Black Label.”

“Why down?”

“You’re not 21, are you?”

She shook her head.

“Down means 3.2; up means 6-point.”

She nodded, understanding. A second or two later the waiter arrived with the beer and she poured herself a glassful. She sipped it and it was cold and good. Joe was saying something and she was answering him but most of the conversation was going over her head. She was too caught up in all that was new to concentrate on what was being said.

It was only her second day at Clifton, and here she was drinking a beer at the tavern and sitting across from her date. She was enjoying herself, really enjoying herself, and all at once she knew with an overwhelming certainty that she was going to enjoy her stay at Clifton. It was a nice atmosphere, warm and friendly, and she found herself feeling very much at home in it.

She looked up at the line of men at the bar and one of them in particular caught her attention. He was tall, with brown hair clipped close to his scalp in a crew cut and a goatee and mustache that matched his hair. At first glance the combination of crew cut and beard seemed ludicrous, but when she looked a second time they seemed to go together, as if they happened to fit this particular boy.

He was drinking some sort of liquor, drinking it straight with beer for a chaser. He didn’t talk to anybody but at the same time he didn’t seem to be alone. He drank laconically, tossing the liquor down his throat and following it with a sip of the beer. There was an air of complete self-assurance about him. It said that he didn’t give a damn about anybody or anything.

She watched him for awhile and Joe must have noticed because he stopped talking and looked at her.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

“Who?”

“The fellow with the beard,” she said, pointing.

He looked around for a second and turned back to her. “That’s Don Gibbs,” he said.

“Who’s he?”

“He edits the Record. You know — the college paper.”

She nodded.

“The first issue comes out Friday.”

She nodded again. She knew that there was a school paper called The Clifton Record ; it was another of those pearls of information which the catalogue supplied to entering freshmen. And, when she looked again at the boy called Don Gibbs, it seemed very logical that he would be the editor. He looked like someone important.

“I don’t like him,” Joe was saying.

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure. Nothing personal, exactly. Just a feeling. He seems phony, with that beard and all. Like he’s trying to prove something.”

“How do you mean?”

“Just phony.”

She looked at Don Gibbs again, and this time she wanted to tell Joe that he was wrong, that the beard wasn’t phony, that nothing about this boy was phony. She didn’t know why but she felt that Don Gibbs was somebody very important, somebody who was going to be important to her. And as she thought about it Joe seemed to fade, as if he was just another pre-med student who would wind up going into his father’s practice and never being very interesting or particularly exciting.

“Besides,” Joe said, “I don’t like the way he acts with women.”

She looked at him, waiting for him to go on.

“He thinks he’s a real hot-shot. He thinks he can... well, make any girl he looks at.”

“Can he?”

“I don’t know. I think he just talks a lot.”

“Does he talk much?”

“I’ve never had much to do with him. It’s just a feeling I have. Anyway—” he smiled at her “—he’s not the sort of guy you want to have anything to do with.”

She nodded, thinking how wrong he was. Wrong on several counts. For one thing, she was willing to bet that Don Gibbs could have nearly any girl he wanted. And that he didn’t talk about it, either.

And he was definitely wrong on the last score. He was precisely the sort of guy she wanted to have something to do with.

They had another beer apiece. Then Joe paid the waiter and they went out into the night, leaving Don Gibbs drinking his whiskey and sipping his beer. They drove back to her dormitory, and Joe parked the car in front of the dorm and walked around to open the door for her. He was the perfect gentleman, just as Chuck had been, and he opened the door for her and took her arm and led her up the path to the door.

He kissed her goodnight, but she decided that it wasn’t much of a kiss. His lips found hers and touched them briefly. Then he released her and took a short involuntary step back and grinned at her.

She forced a smile to her lips.

“I like you,” he said. “I like you, Linda.”

“I like you, too.” It struck her as a rather foolish thing to say, but it was true enough.

“Tomorrow night?”

She hesitated. “Yes,” she said, after a moment. “Tomorrow night.”

The days were a whirl and the nights were a jumble and the first week was gone almost before it had started. Up in the morning and a quick shower and you put on your clothes in a hurry and rush over to the caf for breakfast. The scrambled eggs are too soft and the toast is burnt and nothing is quite the way mother made it at home. The coffee is bitter and either too hot or too cold, and you have to practically pour it down your throat because you have to get to that eight o’clock English class.

Classes. English, with a tall, balding, stoop-shouldered professor named Bruce Irvine smiling sadly at you and telling you what books you were supposed to read. Pride and Prejudice and Madame Bovary and Crime and Punishment and Great Expectations and Daisy Miller. Five novels plus twenty poems and you had to read them all in the one semester and understand them, and each day in class Professor Irvine would talk about the books and poems as if they were old friends, his eyes sad and his voice soft and watery.

Spanish, with Professor Esteban Moreno, who looked very Castilian with high cheekbones and a thin black mustache, and who left Spain when Franco took power in 1937. He chattered at you in rapid-fire Spanish and you had to listen with both ears and your mind because otherwise you were completely lost in no time. And he spoke better English than you did, to top it off.

Western Civ, with Hugo Mills, a stubby little man who never smiled and who was very, very clever and very, very cynical as he lectured at you on the early years of the Roman Empire. You listened to him and he was extremely interesting and extremely amusing and seemed to know everything there was to know, but you couldn’t help thinking that the bitterness in his face and in his words came from knowing so much and never having done anything about anything.

Biology, with Martin Jukovsky, a quiet, mild-mannered little man who spoke so softly that you could hardly hear a word he said. But it didn’t really matter and after a while you didn’t bother to listen any longer, because you had already learned everything he was saying in high school and the class was a waste of time.