Joyce Oates - Mudwoman

Reverend Ezechiel Charters had been something of a Tory, in the tumultuous years preceding the Revolution. His fate at the hands of a mob of local patriots would have been lethal except for a “divine intervention” as it was believed to be—the noose meant to strangle him broke—and so Reverend Charters lived to become a Federalist, like so many of his Tory countrymen.

A Federalist and something of a “liberal”—so the founding-legend of the University would have it.

But twenty-year-old Alexander Stirk hadn’t been impressed by all this history. Brashly he’d limped into the president’s office on his single, clattering crutch, lowered himself with conspicuous care into the chair facing the president’s desk, glanced about squinting and smirking as if the anemic light from the high windows hurt his battered eyes, and murmured:

“Well! This is an unexpected honor, President Neukirchen.” If he’d been speaking ironically, President Neukirchen, in the way of those elders who surround the just-slightly-insolent young, hadn’t seemed to register the irony.

For M.R. was strangely—powerfully—struck by the boy. There was something pious and stunted and yet poignant about him, even the near-insolence of his face, as if, unwitting, he was the bearer of an undiagnosed illness.

“The police were asking—could I identify my assailants?—and I told them I didn’t think so, I was jumped from behind and didn’t see faces clearly. I heard voices—but….”

M.R. had questions to ask of Stirk, but did not interrupt as he continued his account of the assault. She was thinking that most of the individuals who came to her office to sit in the heavy black leather chair facing her desk wanted something of her—wanted something from her—or had a grievance to make to her—or of her—as president of the University; most of them, M.R. would have to disappoint in some way, but in no way that might be interpreted as indifferent. Uncaring. For it was M. R. Neukirchen’s (possible) weakness as an administrator—she did care.

She was not a Quaker. Not a practicing Quaker. But the benign Quaker selflessness—the concern for “clearness”—and for the commonweal above the individual—had long ago suffused her soul.

All that matters—really matters—is to do well by others. At the very least, to do no harm.

And so, M.R. didn’t want to question the injured boy too closely, nor even to interview him as the police had done in the ER; she didn’t see her role, at this critical time, as anything other than supportive, consoling.

Almost as soon as the news had been released, bulletin e-mails sent to all University faculty and staff, there’d been, among the more skeptical left-wing faculty, some doubt of Stirk’s veracity. And among students who knew Stirk, who weren’t sympathetic with his politics, there was more than just some doubt.

But M.R. who was known on campus as the students’ friend did not align herself with these.

And it was so—seeing Stirk up close, the boy’s very real and obviously painful injuries including a broken eye socket, M.R. wasn’t inclined to be skeptical.

Or, rather—she’d learned such a technique, from her first years as an administrator—her skepticism was lightly repelled, suspended, like a balloon that has been given a tap, to propel it into a farther corner of the room.

“Of course, the University is going to investigate the assault. I’ve named an emergency committee, and I will be ex officio. Whoever did this terrible thing to you will be apprehended and expelled, I promise.”

Stirk laughed. The wounded little mouth twisted into a kind of polite sneer.

“Better yet, President Neukirchen, the township police will investigate. Whoever attacked me committed a felony, not a campus misdemeanor. There will be arrests—not mere expulsions.” The thin boyish voice deepened again, with a kind of suppressed exaltation. “There will be lawsuits.”

Lawsuits was uttered in a way to make an administrator shudder. But President Neukirchen did not overtly react.

M.R. had been vaguely aware, before the assault, of the controversial undergraduate—at least, the name “Stirk.” In recent months she’d been made aware of the conservative movement on campus, that had been gathering strength and influence since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to the very eve, in early March, of a “military action” against Iraq, expected to be ordered by the president of the United States within a few days.

It couldn’t be an accident, Alexander Stirk had declared himself passionately in favor of war against Iraq, as against all “enemies of Christian democracy.” A wish to wage war as a religious crusade was a part of the conservative campaign for a stricter personal morality.

Before every war in American history there’d been a similar campaign in the public press—often, demonic and degrading political cartoons depicting the “enemy” as subhuman, bestial. The campaign against Saddam Hussein had been relentlessly waged since October, mounting to a fever pitch on twenty-four-hour cable news programs in recent weeks—Fox, CNN. It was a farcical sort of tragedy that the murder-minded Republican administration led by Cheney and Rumsfeld had its ideal foil in the murder-minded Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Except that hundreds of thousands of innocent individuals might die, these deranged adversaries deserved one another.

Disturbing to realize that the conservative student movement was steadily gaining ground on American campuses in these early years of the twenty-first century. Even at older, more historically distinguished private universities like this one, that were traditionally liberal-minded.

In the hostile vocabulary of Alexander Stirk and his compatriots—leftist-leaning.

“I told the township officers, and I will go on record telling you, President Neukirchen—I don’t feel that I should try to identify my assailants even if I have some idea who some of them are.” Stirk paused to remove a handkerchief from his coat pocket which he unfolded and dabbed against his injured eye, in which lustrous tears welled. He spoke with exaggerated care as if not wanting to be misunderstood.

It was clear to M.R.—unmistakably!—that Stirk was speaking with an air of adolescent sarcasm, perhaps hoping to provoke her.

It hadn’t happened often, in M.R.’s university career, that students had spoken disrespectfully to her. Perhaps in fact no student ever had—until now. And so she wasn’t accustomed to the experience—wasn’t sure how to react, or whether to react. In her chest she felt a sharp little pang of—was it hurt? disappointment? chagrin? Was it anger? That Alexander Stirk whom she’d hoped to befriend was not so very charmed by President Neukirchen.

Yet more daringly—provocatively—Stirk was saying: “Frankly I can tell you—as I am sure you would hardly repeat it—President Neukirchen—when I was attacked, I had blurred impressions of faces—and maybe—an impression of just one face—or more than one—belonging to a light-skinned ‘person of color.’” Stirk paused to let this riposte sink in, with a look both grave and reproachful. Then as if he and President Neukirchen were in complete agreement on some issue of surpassing delicacy he continued, piously: “But—as a Christian—a Catholic—and a libertarian—on principle I don’t believe that it is just—as in justice—to risk accusing an innocent individual even if it means letting the guilty go free. That isn’t a principle that makes sense to pro-abortion people—who grant no value whatever to nascent human life—but it’s a principle greatly cherished by the YAF.”

Pro-abortion? Nascent human life? What this had to do with Stirk being assaulted, M.R. didn’t quite know. But she knew enough not to rise to this bait.