Diana Peterfreund - Under the Rose

As for the senior project: I was screwed. But I’d skip the bout of self-flagellating lectures about how I’d spent the last month distracted by George and worry about the issues at hand. Namely: tracking down Micah Price.

Which, it turned out, was not as hard as you’d think. Poe had been planning on working some Digger magic on the registrar’s office, but that wasn’t necessary after I plugged Price’s name into Google. Search results turned up a good dozen news items from the Eli Daily News in the past few months. Apparently, he’d been running an ongoing protest outside the Bible as Literature lecture all semester. The class met Mondays and Wednesdays, with sections on Fridays at 10:30. As it happened, we were smack in the middle of Friday section time.

We found the protest, such as it was, on the Cross Campus lawn. I wondered if the scraggly bunch of protesters had enjoyed more popularity earlier in the year. Now the group consisted of Micah, a half-dozen signs, and three freshmen (one of whom was sitting cross-legged on the half-frozen, half-dead lawn and working on his linear algebra problem set). From the stack of protest signs lying abandoned near the group, I could tell Micah had expected more participants. He was shouting into a megaphone, with the result that many of his words were obscured, especially as you closed in on the “blockade.”

“The word of God should not be analyzed!” he shouted, echoed by a halfhearted “Yeah” from two of the freshmen (Linear Algebra merely pumped his fist in the air). “It should not be subjected to comparison!” (“Yeah.”) “These are not stories, to be dissected by the heretics who have signed up for this class. These are not myths, to be encapsulated and dismissed by the God-hating atheists who control this institution!”

His followers waved their signs, which bore slogans like DON’T TELL ME ABOUT MY GOD, THE BIBLE IS NOT A FAIRY TALE, and, oddly, I AM NOT A MONKEY. (That last one was probably left over from his Tuesday protest of the Geologic Basis of Human Evolution seminar at the Anthropology department.) “I wonder,” said Poe, “what Bible, particularly, they are up in arms about. The King James? The New International? The Catholic Bible? I wonder if he thinks it’s okay to study the Apocrypha?”

“When I took the class, the text we used was the New Oxford Annotated,” I said. “The big controversy in my class was due to issues of translation. I had a Jewish classmate who argued every week about vowels and alternate meanings, et cetera. I learned more than I ever thought I’d have to about the Septuagint.”

“Maybe they should have a Bible as History class?” Poe asked.

“If possible, that would cause more controversy. The problem with teaching the sacred text of a living religion is that some people in the class are going to view it as sacred text. No one gets up in arms about the World Mythology Survey unless they worship Zeus or Odin. But trying to teach using text some people feel has been perverted from the start is bound to cause problems.”

“So why bother teaching it in the Lit department? Why don’t they stick Bible study in the Religious Studies department and be done with it?”

“Because we’re not necessarily discussing the religion. Just the stories for the purpose of context. Some of us want to understand Faulkner and Borges and Steinbeck and have never read the Bible before.”

“And whose fault is that?” He smirked. “This school was founded by a bunch of Puritans who didn’t think Harvard was holy enough. Not in order to teach people who don’t read the Bible.”

“This school wasn’t founded for women either, but look: Here we are,” I snapped. “A lot of things work that way.” I shook my head at the scene before us. “I don’t know how they manage to lecture with this going on all the time.”

“I imagine it becomes white noise after a while.”

We headed across the lawn to Micah’s not-so-merry band. He’d laid off the editorial in favor of quoting scripture. I tapped him on the shoulder during a particularly rousing rendition of Leviticus 26.

“ ‘…if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate’ —What?” He whirled on me.

“Pardon me for interrupting,” I said. “But you haven’t seen Jenny recently, have you?”

Micah glared first at me, and then at Poe, but he didn’t get very far with that. Poe was a Jedi master when it came to a good glare. He brought down walls.

“Well, well, well,” Micah said, lowering his megaphone. “If it isn’t the Brotherhood of Death, come to shut me up.”

“Not at all,” I said. “Carry on with your protest, by all means. But let me know when you last saw Jenny, first.”

“Haven’t seen her in days.” He turned back around and lifted the megaphone to his lips. “‘I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you.’”

“Skipped a few verses,” said Poe. He reached over and snatched the cone from Micah’s hands. “Now answer the lady’s questions, and you can get back to your rant.”

The three freshmen froze. Linear Algebra even looked up from his graphing calculator, and I may have been imagining this, but in the sudden silence, I thought I saw a bunch of faces pressed against the glass in the classroom door. Poe waved for me to go on. Clearly, he did not adhere to Malcolm’s constant admonishments for discretion.

“Right.” I tugged at the hem of my sweater. “Again, when did you last see Jenny?”

Micah’s expression gave Poe’s a run for the money and I felt the sudden need to step back. But I ordered my feet to stay rooted to the spot and lifted my chin. I reminded myself that this was the guy who had threatened Jenny, the one who had almost fought Josh, and who, for all of his claims to piety, was the only person close to Jenny who hadn’t bothered looking for her.

He leaned in close to me. “That bitch,” he hissed, “betrayed me.”

Get in line, buster.

But Micah wasn’t done. “So I don’t care where she is, and I don’t care what happens to her. She deserves whatever punishment is inflicted upon her. Jennifer Santos is a worthless whore of Satan,” he went on, “and you know it, because you are, too.” He spat in my face.

I stood there in shock. So did the freshmen, the students in the classrooms (who most definitely were watching), and everyone else on Cross Campus.

Poe simply stepped forward and handed the megaphone back to Micah.

And then clocked him in the jaw.

I hereby confess:

I’m just as shocked

as you are.

“I can’t believe I just did that,” Poe kept saying, over and over, as we hightailed it off Cross Campus.

I looked over my shoulder as we raced up the steps near Maya Lin’s Women-at-Eli Memorial Fountain, which bears more than a passing resemblance to her better-known Vietnam Veterans Memorial. (That lady has one schtick, but it’s a good one.) Yep, Micah was still down for the count. The three freshmen huddled around his prone form. We so needed to get out of town.

“I can’t believe I just did that. Why did I just do that? I can’t believe I just did that.” Poe reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. Oh, for Persephone’s sake! What was he going to do, mop his brow?

But instead he handed it to me. “Did he get you in the eye?”