Уолтер Мосли - John Woman

The department chair was looking the opposite way down the hall and so did not see his approach. John wondered if it might be a good idea to retreat before she noticed him. He wasn’t bothered by the prospect of facing Pete Tackie’s rage but Eubanks might have a nervous breakdown and suddenly pull a pistol out of her bag.

“Hello, Professor,” he said, coming up behind her.

She spun around, her shoulders pulled back in surprise. There was a wilted spray of violets pinned over the left breast of her dress.

“Hello, John.”

“You here for my office hour?” he joked.

“Yes. Yes I am.”

“Come on in then.”

When the department head was ensconced in the visitor’s chair John said, “This is a terrible business.”

Annette’s unreadable stare reminded him of the coyote stalking him in the desert. She was, he thought, a woman ripped from her place, torn from the comfort of her fate.

“I’ve done an awful thing,” she said.

John worried that the broadside had broken her will. Fretting thus he realized that he didn’t actually dislike the officious educator. Her experience in life was limited and so she fought battles in an imaginary arena called the history department of NUSW.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I sent one of my students into your class today with a camera hidden in his briefcase. Before the class began he put a tiny microphone on your podium.”

“You were spying on my class?” he asked, his tone making light of the breach. “Annette, you are always invited to attend with no need for subterfuge.”

“I believed that you had sabotaged me,” she said not heeding or maybe not hearing his gentle words. “I was sure that you would start to spread poison about me and Ira. I thought that damned poster was your idea. I wanted proof. I wanted to catch you on video trying to destroy us.”

Eubanks shuddered and moved her hands around, reaching for words and reasons that did not exist. Her jaw jutted on both sides and then, suddenly, a short burst of tears cascaded down her cheeks.

“Then,” she choked. “Then, when I heard what you said, I realized you had no animosity toward us. It was us, always us attacking you. Our fear of you created what we saw when you were simply following your own muse, your own beliefs. We brought those damned yellow broadsides down on ourselves.”

“You don’t have to worry, Annette,” he said. “I’m sure you and everyone else on that list are innocent and I’m just as certain that the university will back you.”

“Why don’t you hate me?”

“That’s a very good question,” he said. “It’s true that the worst thing you can do to a person is to take away their ability to make a living. Better take a man’s wife and children than his job.”

“Because he can get a new family?” she asked.

“Because he doesn’t need a family but no American can live without a paycheck.”

“So?”

“What?”

“I was trying to take your job and blacklist you too.”

“Yes.”

“Then why not fan the flames of distrust against me?”

“Sometimes it’s just easier to tell the truth,” he said. “The broadside is a cowardly attack. If any of it was true then the president would have had to put those culpable professors on academic suspension. And, anyway, all of us make mistakes along the way. There’s no value in persecuting someone for overcoming their history in an attempt to forge a better future.”

Annette Eubanks’s roaming hands settled in her lap as Arnold Ott’s had done.

“Dean James has provided for a public forum tomorrow at Deck Rec at four,” she said. “He’s left it up to me to organize the gathering. The entire student body and teaching staff will be urged to attend.”

“How will it be structured?”

“I didn’t know until I saw your lecture,” she said. “But now I believe that you should give the address.”

John thought of asking why him but decided that asking the question would only serve to reopen her wounds.

“I’d love to,” he said. “That way injury might be turned into something good.” Her silent smile was filled with pain. Her hands raised up from her knees and she seemed to expand like an animated character in a Bugs Bunny cartoon — about to explode.

“The department has made a request that you be terminated,” she said — her words delivered rapid-fire.

“I know. President Luckfeld offered me a university professorship in recompense.”

“Of course he did.”

Eubanks shook John’s hand at the door and then walked away. He watched her for a moment then turned. Before he could close the door he was pushed from behind so violently that he stumbled across the room. He didn’t try to regain his footing, instead allowing himself to stagger forward until he was close enough to his desk drawer so that he might reach Hototo’s knife — the totem intended to keep him safe.

When John turned he saw Pete Tackie slamming the office door with his big left hand. His other fist gripped a baseball bat. Pete then took the bat in both hands and slammed it against John’s lone file cabinet.

He hit the metal box again and again, denting the sides and cracking the dark green paint.

John took that moment to sit in his chair. As he drew himself forward he used his left hand to pull open the top drawer from its underside.

“Is there something wrong, Mr. Tackie?”

“Why the fuck you say all that shit about us, man?” Flecks of spittle popped from his lips.

“What did you expect me to say?”

“You called us immature and evil and cruel.” Pete slammed his bat against the cabinet to punctuate each claim.

“You called me a coward,” he added.

“Yes.”

“You admit it?”

“Does anyone other than Carlinda and Tamala know about your part in making those yellow broadsides?”

“Kerry and her boyfriend.”

“Do any of them think you a coward?”

“No.”

“You did this to help me didn’t you, Pete?”

“I guess.”

“And if I said that the professors named should be fired and the people who put up the posters should be seen as heroes then I would have been suspected of being part of the posters’ origins — no?”

“But you coulda said that we were real historians who knew how to use our studies to change the way things happen.”

Pete slammed the bat down on the desktop. With his knee John closed the drawer; the belt-buckle knife was in his left hand.

“So you did this for praise and not the restructuring of social context?”

“We really liked you,” Pete said lowering into John’s visitor’s chair. “We did this so that they wouldn’t fire you. And then, and then you called us names and said that we were stupid. We’re not stupid.”

“No you’re not.”

John peered into his would-be attacker’s eyes.

Pete dropped his bat.

“Then why did you say it?”

“Because my role was to pull everything together after you tore it apart. It has, so far, worked. You and Tamala and Carlinda created an atmosphere that will make a difference.”

“But I feel like shit.”

“When you play against a really good rugby team,” John said, “go into overtime and fight as hard as you can, how do you feel afterward?”

“Sore as hell,” Pete said. “Sometimes there’s bones broken and all kinds of bruises and shit. Sometimes the girls that hang around wanna take us home but we hurt too bad.”

“It’s the same thing here. We’re doing work that will make a difference. It’s hard work and when it’s over we’re exhausted. You’ve made a difference and nobody but your friends can know about it.”

“Then you don’t really think all those things you said?”