Joyce Oates - Mudwoman

March 2003

Must ready yourself. Hurry!

But there was no way she could ready herself for this.

“I don’t wish to accuse anyone.”

His name was Alexander Stirk. He was twenty years old. Formally and bravely he spoke. For his small prim child’s mouth had been kicked, torn and bloodied. His remaining good eye—the other was swollen shut, grotesquely bruised like a rotted fruit—was fixed on M.R. with hypnotic intensity as if daring her to look away.

“Though I have, as you know, President Neukirchen—numerous enemies here on campus.”

President Neukirchen. With such exaggerated respect this name was uttered, M.R. felt a tinge of unease—Is he mocking me?

M.R. decided no, that wasn’t possible. Alexander Stirk could not mistake M.R.’s attentiveness to him for anything other than sympathy.

His head was partly bandaged, with the look of a turban gone askew. His wire-rimmed glasses were crooked on his nose because of the bandage and the left lens had a hairline crack. In the thin reproachful voice of one accusing an elder of an obscure hurt he spoke calmly, deliberately. For he had a genuine grievance, he’d been martyred for his beliefs. He’d hobbled into the president’s office using a single aluminum crutch that was leaning now against the front corner of the president’s desk in a pose of nonchalance.

M.R.’s heart went out to Stirk—he was so small.

“That is—President Neukirchen—there are many individuals among both the undergraduate and the graduate student body—and faculty members as well—who have defined themselves as ‘enemies’ specifically of Alexander Stirk as well as ‘enemies’ of the conservative movement on campus. You know their names by now, or should—Professor Kroll has seen to that, I think.”

Kroll. M.R. smiled just a little harder, feeling blood rush into her face.

“Of these self-defined ‘enemies’ I’m not able to judge how many would actually wish ‘Alexander Stirk’ harm, apart from the usual verbal abuse. And how many, among these, would be actively involved in actually harming me.”

Stirk smiled with disarming candor. Or seeming candor. M.R. smiled more painfully.

She’d invited Stirk to her office, to speak with her in private. She wanted the young man to know how concerned she was for him, and how outraged on his behalf. She wanted the young man to know that, as the president of the University, she was on his side.

The assault had taken place on the University campus just two nights before, at approximately 11:40 P.M. Returning—alone—for Alexander Stirk was frequently alone—to his Harrow Hall residence, Stirk had been accosted on a dimly lit walkway beside the chapel by several individuals—seemingly fellow undergraduates; in his confusion and terror he hadn’t seen their faces clearly—not clearly enough to identify—but he’d heard crude jeering voices—“fag”—“Fascist-fag”—as he was being clumsily shoved and slammed against the brick wall of the chapel—nose bloodied, right eye socket cracked, lacerations to his mouth, left ankle sprained when he was thrown to the ground. So forcibly was Stirk’s backpack wrenched from his shoulders, his left shoulder had been nearly dislocated, and was badly bruised; the backpack’s contents were dumped on the ground—leaflets bearing the heraldic fierce-eyed American eagle of the YAF—(Young Americans for Freedom)—to be scattered and blown about across the snow-stubbled chapel green.

Evidently, campus security hadn’t been aware of the fracas. No one seemed to have come to Stirk’s aid even after he’d been left semiconscious on the ground. M.R. found this difficult to believe, or to comprehend—but Stirk insisted. And it was wisest at this point not to challenge him.

For already, Stirk had been interviewed by the campus newspaper in a florid front-page story. Bitterly he’d complained of “unconscionable treatment”—that several witnesses to the attack, in the vicinity of the chapel, had ignored his cries for help as if knowing that the victim was him.

Alexander Stirk had a certain reputation at the University, for his outspoken conservative views. He had a weekly half-hour program on the campus radio station—Headshots—and a biweekly opinion column in the campus newspaper—“Stirk Strikes.” He was a senior majoring in politics and social psychology, from Jacksonville, Florida; he was an honors student, an officer in the local chapter of the YAF and an activist member of the University’s Religious Life Council. When high-profile liberal speakers like Noam Chomsky spoke at the University, Stirk and a boisterous band of confederates were invariably seen picketing the lecture hall before the lecture and, during the lecture, interrupting the speaker with heckling questions. Stirk’s particular concern seemed to be, oddly for a young man, abortion: he was resolutely opposed to abortion in any and all forms and particularly opposed to any government funding of abortion.

But he was also opposed to free condoms, contraception, “sex education” in public schools.

It was so, evidently—Stirk had roused angry opposition on the campus including a barrage of “threatening” e-mails, of which he’d turned over some to authorities. He’d been, by his account, “insulted”—“called names”—told to “shut the fuck up”; but until the other evening he’d never been physically assaulted. Now, he said, he was “seriously frightened” for his life.

At this, Stirk’s voice quavered. Beneath the supercilious pose—the posturing of a very bright undergraduate whose command of language was indeed impressive—there did seem to be a frightened boy.

Warmly M.R. assured Alexander Stirk—he had nothing to fear!

University proctors had been assigned to his floor in Harrow Hall and would escort him to classes if he wished. Whenever he wanted to go anywhere after dark—a proctor would accompany him.

And whoever had assaulted him would be apprehended and expelled from the University—“This, I promise.”

“President Neukirchen, thank you! I would like to believe you.”

Stirk spoke with the mildest of smiles—unless it was a smirk. M.R. had the uneasy sensation that the young man who’d limped into her office was addressing an audience not visibly present, like a highly self-conscious actor in a film. There came—and went—and again came—that sly smirk of a smile, too fleeting to be clearly identified. For his meeting with President Neukirchen Stirk wore a dark green corduroy sport coat with leather buttons, that appeared to be a size or two too large; he wore a white cotton shirt buttoned to the throat, and flannel trousers with a distinct crease. Except for the luridly swollen eye and mouth, Stirk gave the appearance of a pert, bright, precocious child, long the favorite of his elders. Almost, you would think that his feet—small prim feet, in white ankle-high sneakers—didn’t quite touch the floor.

How strange Stirk seemed to M.R.! Not so much in himself as in her intense feeling for him, that was quite unlike any sensation she’d ever experienced, she was sure, in this high-ceilinged office with its dark walnut wainscoting, dour hardwood floors and somber lighting grudgingly emitted from a half-dozen tall narrow windows. The president’s office on the first floor of “historic” Salvager Hall—old, elegantly heavy black-leather furnishings, massive eighteenth-century cherrywood desk, Travertine marble fireplace and shining brass andirons and built-in shelves floor-to-ceiling with books—rare books—books long unread, untouched—behind shining glass doors—had the air of a museum-room, perfectly preserved. Visitors to this office were suitably impressed, even wealthy graduates, donors—the portrait over the fireplace mantel, of a soberly frowning if just slightly rubefacient bewigged eighteenth-century gentleman bore so close a resemblance to Benjamin Franklin that visitors invariably inquired, and M.R. was obliged to explain that Ezechiel Charters, the founder of the University—that is, the Presbyterian minister founder of the seminary, in 1761, that would one day be the University—had been in fact a contemporary of Franklin’s, but hardly a friend.