John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"Ha," Max said, and showed no further interest. However, the stranger seemed not to notice his incordiality.

"Hey, that's some darky you got there! You all been to a fancy dress party?"

As the term meant nothing to me, I identified Croaker, explained how he happened to be with us, and introduced Max and myself as well.

"My gracious sakes! Proud to meet you all!" Much impressed, he thrust out his hand first to Croaker. "Greene's my name, Mr. Croaker."

Croaker growled. "He doesn't speak our language," I said.

"Is that a fact! Won't bite, will he?"

"You don't try to lynch him he won't," Max said.

"Now hold on!" Green's protest was still good-natured, though I gathered he had grounds for feeling insulted. "Just because he's a darky don't mean I don't admire his football-playing. I got nothing against darkies. I grew up with darkies."

"Congratulations."

Greene turned to me with a chuckle. "He's a peppery one, ain't he?" Then he reached his hand up to Max. "Peter Greene, sir, and proud to meet you. I read about you in the papers a long time ago."

"You got nothing against Moishian Student-Unionists either?" Max asked sarcastically. But he didn't refuse the handshake, and I saw a trace of a smile in his beard for the first time that day.

Peter Greene stoutly cocked his head. "I'm ready to riot against Nikolay College anytime the Chancellor says," he declared with dignity. "But I got nothing against any man that's got nothing against me. Darkies or Moishians, it don't matter."

"A liberal," Max said.

"Call me what you want, I'm just Pete Greene." He winked his right eye at me. "Nobody knows better'n me how the papers twist things ever whichaway. Don't flunk me till you get to know me, and I'll do you the same favor."

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Greene," I said when my turn came. And indeed I found his manner on the whole winning, though somewhat disconcerting.

"Pete," he insisted. "Same here, Mr. George. I never did meet a Grand Tutor before." I wondered that there was no trace in him of the skepticism I'd learned to expect upon identifying myself; only curiosity, which I was pleased enough to satisfy.

"How come you got to matriculate like everybody else?" he wanted to know. "Now you take me, that's just a plain poor flunker like the next: all I can do is hope the good Founder may find it in His heart to pass me when the time comes. Which He sure ain't passed me yet, evidently, much as I thought He had."

I explained that while I was what I was in essence, as it were, I was not yet so in act, and would not be until I had passed my own Finals — just as a chancellor's son, in the days of hereditary office, might become the lawful ruler of his college while still in his infancy, but would not exercise his powers in fact until he came of age.

"Well, I think it's a wonderful line of work for a fellow to take up," Peter Greene said stoutly, as if to encourage me. "You might not believe it to see me now, but when I was a boy I was president of the Junior Enochist League. Youngest president they ever had! More than once I've thought I should of took up Tutoring myself, instead of business engineering. But there wasn't the profit in it then there is now." He grinned and winked again, this time at Max. "Going to take you all a while to reach Commencement Gate on that!"

I agreed that considering my skill as a driver and the condition of the vehicle it might be as well to walk — especially if the roads were busier near Great Mall — and invited him to join us. He accepted at once, declaring he abhorred above all things solitude, having spent his childhood in the College Forests; but he saw no reason to abandon the motorcycle, which it seemed to him could easily be made serviceable. With my permission he opened a leathern pouch on the rear wheel — I'd scarcely noticed it — and fished out an assortment of tools from which he chose two or three box-end wrenches and one with adjustable jaws.

"If it's a thing I do love," he declared, "it's fooling with motors ."

I dismounted and watched him go to work on the machine. Heedless of his clothing and at home with the tools, he first unbolted the sidecar from the motorcycle proper, declaring it bent out of line past salvaging, and then availed himself of its perfectly sound wheel and tire to replace the ruined one on the front of the cycle. From the sidecar also he fetched a black canister, which he uncapped, sniffed, and poured from into a tank above the motor. The whole operation took no more than half an hour. Then he wiped his hands — blacker than Croaker's now with engine-grease — on a clean linen handkerchief and powdered them with dust from the roadside. His suit and shirt-front were quite soiled.

"Now, by gosh!" He adjusted the throttle and other devices, kicked the starter, and produced at once a roar from the motor more hearty by far than any I'd managed. I insisted that he drive, since he was familiar with the controls and I had no notion how to balance upon two wheels. Further, I proposed that Max ride behind him on the saddle and I on Croaker's shoulders, inasmuch as despite my greater weight I was a less fragile burden, who safely might be trotted instead of walked.

Max grunted and mounted the cycle. "You don't mind chauffeuring a security risk?"

Greene shook his head agreeably. "Maybe you're a risk, sir, and maybe you're not." He squinted his eyes. "But you ain't a traitor to your college like they said, I know that."

"You know already? How do you know?"

"I can tell by looking," Greene declared, and paraphrased a saying of Enos Enoch's: " 'Tain't the cut o' your coat, but the cut o' your jib.' "

Max scoffed. "Some eyes you got." But he seemed not displeased. Greene replied, turning to the controls, that he had in fact but one good eye, his right, having lost the other in an accident years before — but he supposed there were some things he could see clearly enough. He frowned at the rear-view mirror on the handlebar.

"Speaking of eyeballs, if you and George don't mind I'll just take this thing off before we start…" He unscrewed it, with my consent, and pitched it into the weeds. "I got a thing about mirrors since my accident. You know? No sirree," he went on energetically, testing the throttle and not pausing for reply or acknowledgment: "I'd know by looking if a fellow was a traitor to his college." He turned to Max with an innocent frown. "New Tammany is your college, ain't it?"

My advisor laughed aloud, and Greene joined blushing in, as did I when I saw the little joke. We started off then much more smartly than before: our new companion, an expert driver as well as a vigorous talker, held the cycle balanced and perfectly matched to Croaker's trot, with a minimum of engine noise, at the same time remarking endlessly upon himself and the campus scene.

"Fact is, it's still a free college," he declared, adding though that it wouldn't be for long if Tower Hall kept meddling with the School of Business. "And what I say, a fellow's got a right to whichever Answer strikes him best, I don't care if it's the Junior Enochist Pledge or the Student-Unionist Manifesto." He nodded his head in forceful jerks as he talked, and blinked several times at every period. My impression was that he spoke less from conviction than from an earnest wish to be agreeable, which was at least a refreshment after Max's attitude. "He ought to teach what he wants in the classroom too," he went on. "But he better not force anybody to agree, by golly Jim! And if he don't love his alma mater he should transfer out, that's what I say! Now you take me — " He took himself with his left hand, throttling with his right. "Nothing red about old Pete but his head — "

"Maybe the neck too," Max suggested.