FIVE

WE RESIST

Power corrupts;

attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

Refuse to participate in evil.

Insist on taking part in what is healthy,

generous, and responsible.

Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back.

Get down off the fence

and lend a hand, grab a hold.

Be a citizen, not a subject.

 

— Edward Abbey^viii

1

WE STUDENTS were about to launch a movement to resist evil, no matter the cost and come what may. How trite those two phrases dredged up from my musty diary. And yet.

On a rainy Friday morning, I trudged toward McWhorter Hall and my work-study job. At the base of the stairway I shook my umbrella, stomped my booted feet. It was just past eight o’clock. A soft, steady rain always lifts my spirits. Unlike most sane people, I love clouds and rain, a psycho preference, I admit. Rainy days make me think of Ashtabula, of fishing with dad on Lake Erie, of lazy summer mornings to read library books on the porch, of rain on the tin roof beneath my bedroom window. I was slightly late for work, but Greta, the administrator of the School of Conservation and Natural Resource Development, was hardly a task master. I always looked forward to my work-study hours doing tasks that required little thought and afforded time with this awesome woman with perfect skin, beautiful auburn hair, and an amazing disposition.

Greta Snyder had been with the university longer than most of the faculty in CNRD, longer by far than Dr. Tulkinghorn. She came to Gilligan as a student 25 years ago and had worked in the CNRD office as an undergrad. For the past decade she had been the school administrator doing things behind the scenes that enabled the school to serve its students and faculty, no matter the titular leadership. Greta was an even more important person than the grumpy Dr. T. She could answer virtually any question I had ever heard posed and Dr. T.’s ill temperament washed off her like invisible ink. How did she manage this calmness and capableness? Could I ever be that way? Questions like this hounded me a great deal back then.

As I began designing a small brochure on the “Fracking and Ohio’s Energy Future” symposium (What a travesty!), across the office I saw Stefan deep knee bending at Greta’s desk. They were talking quietly about matters I could not fathom. For Stefan, eye contact with ordinary-sized people, like me, was a big thing. He continued squatting as he and Greta laughed. An inside joke. You had to admire people like Stefan and Greta who seemed so at ease with each other and people generally. He stood up, glanced my way, broke into a smile. “Hey, Hannah.”

“Hey, back at you.” A warm wave washed across my breast bone causing my heart to skip a beat. I made a mental note to highlight the encounter in my diary that night: I am grateful to be a part of this impressive school, a small part, but thanks to people like Greta and Stefan, I feel appreciated, and somewhat aroused, Stefan, cunning charmer, thou art.

Stefan ambled out the door. In the hallway, I heard, “Good morning sir.” “Arghh, wet and bleak!” Dr. T. swashbuckled into the office. “Mrs. Snyder, come this way. Quickly! That email draft I sent you last night. Gotta put it in proper form.” His commands, like rocket propelled grenades, cratered the outer office, serene only moments ago. In the midst of the barrage, Greta cheerfully replied, “Oh, hi, Dr. T. Sure, I can do that.” She followed him, a steno pad in hand. How can she possibly work for this dumbass every day?

An hour later, as I returned from the restroom, Dr. T. passed me in the hall. He made eye contact. “Say, um, sorry what’s your name again?”

“Hannah McGibbon.”

“Yes, yes. Work-study. Fifteen hours a week, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, Hannah. Remember a couple of weeks ago you mentioned attending the Post-Carbon — what was it? — meeting?”

“Yes. Post-Carbon Student Action. I go to their meetings every week.”

He gently took my elbow and led me to a bank of windows across the hallway from the CNRD office. This creeped me out mightily. He had barely ever even acknowledged me. This cretin is up to what here?

We stood at the windows and looked down at a wet, weedy, litter-strewn parking lot between the wings of McWhorter. In a hushed tone, Dr. T. asked, “Hannah, so what’s happening with that group these days?”

Truthful and straight forward girl I used to be, I tried to explain that the group’s main activities focused on saving Blackwood Forest and helping the university see that going straight to green energy was the way forward. I told him that the PCSA had been meeting with ClimateThrong, another student group.

A smarmy smirk bared Dr. T.’s yellowish Teddy Roosevelt teeth. He looked like a wolverine. “ClimateThrong?” he asked.

I attempted to ignore his teeth but could not avoid glimpsing nose hairs growing south like lily pad roots. “Yeah, it’s a group focused on bringing down carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million as soon as possible. That’s a pretty big challenge. Gilligan’s climate plan is one step along the way, but ClimateThrong wants to ramp up the plan.”

“Indeed,” he said. “Well, thank you Hannah. I like to know how the students in our school contribute to the betterment of Gilligan University. Let’s keep in touch.”

He turned and waddled into the office. I stared blankly out the windows trying to make sense of the whole episode. Eventually, I returned to my brochure. Before leaving for class, I mentioned the conversation to Greta. Her kind face revealed no astonishment or alarm. She simply said, “That’s nice.” Then, as I gathered my umbrella and backpack, she asked, “Say, would you like to come over for some home cooking tonight? Kurt plans to grill ribs. The kids would love to see you.”

The rain had passed. The setting sun stroked the maple and sycamore tops lending a soft glow to the Snyder’s patio. The evening was cool enough for sweatshirts. After dinner and three games of volleyball, Kurt hustled the kids off to showers and bedtime. I thanked Greta again, probably the third or fourth time, so grateful was I for this friendship and chagrined that I could never return the kindness.

I looked up and noted that Greta was casting a seriously adult look across the picnic table. I could not read it. She said, “This morning, your conversation with Dr. T. I suggest that you try to be more discreet in future.”

“Discreet? I’m not getting your drift. Did I say something I shouldn’t have said?”

“I’m not sure. What I have to tell you, Hannah, is just between us, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I have reason to believe Dr. Tulkinghorn wants to use information you may be providing about student plans for Blackwood Forest to bolster his future here. I think his goal is to work with Jasper Morse to fast track drilling there. Now, here’s something that’s a bit urgent. He plans to meet Jasper Morse clandestinely day after tomorrow to discuss ‘kicking butt’, to use his words, of anyone opposed to fracking at Blackwood.”

“Kicking butt, whoa! What’s he going to do?”

“Exactly what that means I don’t know, but I think you and your friends ought to be vigilant.”

“Do you know when and where he will meet Morse?”

“Yes, when but not specifically where.” From her bra, Greta pulled out a small bit of paper torn from a spiral notebook. The jagged edge, for some reason, caught my eye. Obsessively, I wished my fairy godmother would bring me scissors to straighten that edge. Greta handed over the still warm paper.

Scanning it quickly, I said, “Thanks. This could really help.” Then my mind melted into a chaotic mess: This can’t be real. My life is boring and stupid. Am I becoming a spy? Will this get me into deep shit? How can students possibly stop anything? What about the faculty? What if I end up in jail? Kicked out of school? Should I tell Samantha? Wow, how exciting is this?

Realizing I had momentarily zoned out, I apologized. “Sorry Greta. My mind is racing. What do you think I should do?”

Greta stood up and came around to my side of the table. She sat down next to me. She placed her arm gently across my back and tightly squeezed my shoulder. “I cannot really answer that, Hannah.”

My response was thin and hesitant; tears slowly trickled across my cheeks. Greta had been a friendly employer but never an alter-mom who could reach into the valley of my heart. “I don’t get it,” I blubbered. “This is crazy, me in the midst of some kind of thriller. This is so not me.”

Greta went into the house for a box of tissues. She returned and I shook my head in embarrassment. Greta said, “It’s okay to cry. This is all a bit heavy. But none of us wants Blackwood Forest to be spoiled, right?”

More tears. More tissues. “The problem is, Greta, I don’t know whether I’m up for this. I’m usually such a wuss. This could easily become just one more thing for me to suck at.”

“You’ll be fine, sweetie. A bit later in life you’ll realize your sense of yourself at this moment is way off. You know the people in PCSA and you know the plans. Take this information to them and tell them to be cautious. Please, don’t reveal the source. I don’t want to know what happens next; the less I know the better. I can pay close attention to what’s going on in my little sphere. If I have new information I’ll pass it on. Maybe this will be helpful in some way.”

Still sniffling, I sat there dumbfounded. My sense of self … way off?

I walked homeward through the darkening west side neighborhood of stately old homes. Nice quiet neighborhood. No student housing. Spreading oaks. Someday, I want to live in a secure place like this. Pipedream, shithead! As I headed up West Clayborne toward campus, I called Astrid. She would know what to do.

2

José Citron, on a roll, added layer upon layer of suggestions for our group project for Stefan’s class. José, Astrid, Greg, and I brainstormed in a stuffy study room in the Josiah Brownlow Library. We interrupted José frequently for translations of his Spanish-inflected African American English peppered with phrases from the hood.

When he said, “Like, man, if I had a car, it sure wou’n’d be a Prius.”

“What’s wrong with a Prius? It’s a really green car,” I asked.

“Prius in the hood means homosexual owner.”

“Yeah, but …”

“Girl, you know and I know that I’m one flashy theater and dance major. I’m gay, yeah. But don’t want boys in the hood to focus on that. As Richard Pryor said, ‘If you’re sensitive in the hood, you’re someone to be eaten’.”

And another.

José: “Yeen talmbout shit!”

Greg: “Say what?”

José, matter-of-factly: “Yeen talmbout shit.”

Greg: “Yeen? Tom? Bout? Sheet?”

José: “Got it, sort of. This means whatever you said ain’t worthy of further discussion.”

Greg: “Hmm, I don’t get the context.”

José: “It was just me runnin’ on. Like, maybe one of my ideas would get us a D 'cause Stefan thinks we haven’t done enough homework and we’re bullshitting. He’d say at the end of it: ‘Yeen talmbout shit’.”

Greg: “You done lost yo damn mind? Ain’t nobody here talmbout shit.”

José, cracking up: “You speaking my lines, man. For a white guy, yo’ one funny dude.”

Greg: “Watched every episode of The Ghetto Show.”

And another.

José: “Ay que sera!

Astrid: “Ay que sera … something about something that will be? Was that connected to your idea of a survey on GUO student responses to crossing bad thresholds?”

José: “Good memory, Canuck. Do you mind if I use the C-word?

Astrid: “It’s okay. We Canadians are known for our good dispositions. Me, I’m known for being an abrasive bitch”.

José: “Ay … la gran patrona!”

Astrid: “Si.”

José: “Yeah, well, que sera here is really ‘whatever will be, will be’. Fatalism in English. At least that’s the way it’s often used in Puerto Rico and the way Big Pun, the late great Puerto Rican rapper, put it out there.”

Later, José to Greg: “¡Hala! bro! Yo makin’ me feel totally retarded. I need to know 'lot more if I’m gonna help with some of your topics.”

Greg: “Me too, but isn’t that what it’s all about — to get out of our comfort zone? I remember Stefan saying something on the first day of class. Like, don’t expect trigger warnings. He said he wanted us to lose sleep over the suffering and pain of encountering ideas that trouble us.”

José: “Yeah, man, I’m tight with that.”

Astrid: “Right. If I’m comfortable in a class, I’m bored and not learning anything.”

I remember mulling this over. It certainly had not been my previous experience in school, but with Stefan’s class and my Tulkinghorn encounter, I wondered if I was finally suffering my first bout with the discomfort of ideas that freak me out. None of us realized it at that moment but in a matter of weeks we had all become fluent in a new language leading to new ways of thinking about ourselves and the world. Had Stefan been there in the library, he might have said: “Here, gang, the inklings of a frightening unwinding beyond denial and despair. Scary, yes. But maybe also a doorway opening outward.”

Time ran out. Three peach-fuzzed guys peered into our study room. They wore grimy jeans, thrift store military jackets, and black high-laced boots. Two of them sported slouchy Che Guevara beanies, the other a fedora. The one with the fedora annoyingly knocked on the window.

“Hips drive Greens into the cold,” sighed José.

We descended the palatial stairway that opened onto the expansive, almost empty Brownlow lobby with its crystal fusion chandeliers and earthy Spanish tile. It was hard to believe that vast banks of card catalogues once occupied this space. Now it was used for alumni functions and fund-raisers when the circulation desk would miraculously be transformed into a cash bar.

We crossed Centennial Quad onto Clayborne, then to Federal and Jefferson heading toward The Jenny Coffee House slotted into an alley across the street from the Argolis Town Hall and Police Station. Astrid and I trailed behind the other two, talking in our sibilant way. José looked over his shoulder and called back, “Come on, you slackers!”

Astrid retorted, “Nerds refuse to consort with dance majors.”

The Jenny and Progressive Perk were owned by the same people, known locally as the coffee mafia. Whereas Progressive, with its two levels, off-white paneled walls, modern furniture, and shiny hardwood floors was chic and polished, The Jenny had the aura of a 1980s living room with threadbare overstuffed chairs and couches, carpeted floors, mismatched chairs and tables, and antique objects scattered about. The Jenny was home to environmental and social and political activists. Tonight some thirty PCSA and ClimateThrongers noisily networked before their weekly meeting.

Lara Hedlund, opened the meeting. “Hello fellow Greens! In our tradition of shared democracy, I am your facilitator tonight.”

“Yo Lara,” a chorus responded, followed by a few melodic notes from a goat-bearded guy named Frank on his recorder. The gathered activists’ voices rose in haunting plainsong:

As one, we join with Earth, our Mo-ther,

As one, we sing to her our praises,

As one, we work to save her and heal her,

As one, her heart beats with our own … with our own …

with our own.

I checked out José. I could tell the chant seemed way too honky for him. He rolled his bowed head back and forth and chuckled softly. To his right, Astrid mulled over this bizarre scene. This would never happen at a Canadian University, she whispered. “We Canadians: we are way too anal, reticent, and obedient.”

After the chant, Frank led a series of ‘oms’. Astrid and I were lost in a tree-hugging reverie. Greg sat silently, deep in thought as usual, his mind and soul in a different century. José carried on with his subtle mockery.

Lara introduced Katherine, the secretary for the evening and walked through the draft agenda on an easel pad. “Any other items?” she asked.

This was my moment. I stood up and cleared my throat. “I have some information we might want to act upon. At all costs, it must be kept under wraps. It relates to the item on Blackwood.”

Lara responded, “Sounds intriguing. Remind me of your name.” I told her then glanced down quickly at Astrid. I saw her covert thumbs-up and felt simultaneously elated and terrified.

Lara knew how to keep an unruly group on task. When people began talking over one another, Katherine handed a rosewood striker to her. She gently used it to tap the Tibetan singing bowl. This signaled a serenity moment. The Greens hushed. Then, in modulated tones, she aptly summarized dueling opinions and helped antagonists come to recognize each other’s views. The topic now was Blackwood and it raised nuclear blasts of clamor as rumors bounced back and forth across the room coupled with talk of street protests, sit-ins, hunger strikes, and other less passive tactics. Lara temporarily stepped down from her facilitation role to share what she knew.

“Okay, we all know Morse has rights to the minerals beneath Blackwood. Unless some billionaire comes forward and purchases the rights for us, there’s no legal way to stop him from fracking there. He is just waiting for permits from the state to begin the process. According to the Beacon, test drilling indicates ample gas and probably oil too. Nothing will happen until the permits are issued, but the chances are much more than fifty-fifty that the Ohio DNR will grant them. As you remember from last week, we in PCSA and you guys in ClimateThrong agreed to request a meeting with President Redlaw to see if there’s any way to forestall this. He hasn’t got back to us yet.”

Katherine, the acting facilitator, recognized Astrid. “The Prez was in our dorm a few nights back. Since the university must install new boilers and chillers soon, I made the case for skipping natural gas, and like other universities in Ohio, leaping from coal straight to renewables. My argument was that universities ought to be the models of how society will power itself in the post-carbon era. Putting on a gravely male voice Astrid quoted the president: ”Good thinking, but this is a very expensive option until renewables become price competitive.”

That brought down the house.

She said, “Don’t laugh. He threatened us with much higher tuition if the university were forced into such a quick switch.”

Katherine thanked Astrid and studied her for a moment, this fervent barefooted, girl, garbed today in all the colors of the rainbow.

Lara returned to the facilitator’s table. She called on me.

I nervously put forth what I knew: the likely motives of Dr. Tulkinghorn, his plan to meet with Morse day after tomorrow, the utter need for secrecy. “I find myself in the middle here. I cannot be seen to be part of this. In the future, I may be able to channel more inside information. I could also feed Dr. T. some false info if that would help.”

“Go girl! A double agent!” Lara said. “Risky business, but going forward we’re definitely going to depend on you, Hannah. Thanks for your brass here. Okay, folks, looks like we need somebody with a car and a couple of other people to help trail Dr. Tulkinghorn. First, do you all think we should do this?”

A hearty “yeah!” rose from the gathered Greens.

“Any nays?”

All quiet.

“Volunteers then?”

Nick, the Paul Bunyan Canadian guy, stood up.

“I have a car,” he said. “And I am free and eager to help out that afternoon. My friend here next to me, Émilie, and I volunteer for this mission, captain.”

Greens burst out laughing. Paul Bunyan nodded and thrust a fisted hand into the air.

José, sitting next to Astrid, whispered “You available?” She replied, “Yeah, let’s do this.”

“Other volunteers?” asked Lara.

José stood up. “Spooks José Cintron and Astrid, er.” She whispered, “Keeley”. “Astrid Keeley ready to report for duty, ma’am.”

The meeting went forth. At its conclusion, Nick and Em, José and Astrid met at the front of the room, shared phone numbers, and made plans to rendezvous. Lara, Katherine and I joined them. When Nick suggested a beer at Hanigan’s, we agreeably followed: four spooks, one facilitator, one recorder, and a double agent about to enter the world of fossil fuel espionage.

3

Nick Marzetti, at the wheel of his 2002 Mazda, pushed eastward on Route 743, a winding two-lane state highway. They were about a mile from the Bartholomew County line. At the top of a rise, Em, riding shotgun, saw Tulkinghorn’s white Mercedes pulling into a rest area on the right. “Slow down,” she advised. “They’re turning off the road.”

“Old man’s gotta piss,” offered José.

Proceeding cautiously past the rest area, Nick asked the others to tell what they saw.

“Two getting out of the car,” reported Astrid. “Dr. T. is one. The other is a well-dressed dude. Pin-striped suit, white shirt, red tie, shiny shoes, slicked-back black hair, olive skin. Looks Italian. No offense, Nick.”

“None taken. Could be Greek, though.” He pulled onto a Forest Service road to the left a hundred yards further on. In a wide spot, he three-pointed around and stopped. They were just out of sight of Route 743.

Nick took command. “Em, since you blend into the shade better than the rest of us, go duck down behind that big beech — the one with the gray bark, near the road. When you see them leaving, wave to us. I’ll start the car. Lay low, stay there. When they’ve passed, get ready to hop in.” As an afterthought, he apologized. “Sorry, I didn’t mean what I said about blending into the shade to be racist.”

Em grinned. “Not racist, my friend. I’m one of the reasons why our class qualifies as multicultural, inter-racial, and diverse. This is my proud role. Hide in the woods.”

She alighted and scrambled to the beech.

José asked, “What about me?”

“Different,” replied Astrid. “Besides, in that rainbow shirt, you don’t exactly blend into the forest.”

“I suppose. But being Puerto Rican and gay ought to count for something.”

Nick said, “Sure, maybe we can assign you to hit on that Italian guy.”

“Ewww.”

Nick’s phone vibrated. He responded in short low tones, not letting the caller talk. “We’ve got him along with another guy heading toward Bartholomew. Good surveillance under way. They’re stopped at the rest area at the county line. Don’t want to fuck this up so just call us if you see them at your end. We’ll go from there. Right. Bye.”

With an uncharacteristic lightness, Astrid blurted, “What an awesome way to spend a fall afternoon. I’ve never been in a chase scene.”

Nick was about to respond when Em began waving madly before ducking down again. The white car zoomed past.

It took a few minutes but near Maslow they were back within sight of the Mercedes which had been taking curves at high speed. There were two other cars between it and them. In Maslow, the speed limit lowered to 35. A few miles further, the intervening cars turned off. Nick hung back. On hilltops, Em assured him the Mercedes was still on 743.

When 743 intersected Interstate 77, Tulkinghorn angled onto the northbound ramp. Astrid checked the map on her phone. “They’re going toward Cambridge.”

“Shit,” replied Nick. “If they go that far, we’ll have to stop for gas.”

Nick entered the ramp cautiously. The Mercedes merged into traffic at speed, moving rapidly into the passing lane.

The Mazda with 250 thousand kilometers on the odometer began shuddering at 55 mph. Nick seemed not to notice and took it up to 70. They caught a glimpse of the Mercedes many cars ahead.

Nick said, “This is as fast as I can go. I hope we can keep them in sight.”

About ten minutes later, they slowed with traffic. A state highway patrol car with flashing strobes was pulling over a white car. As they approached, they recognized Tulkinghorn’s Mercedes.

In the moments it took for Nick to realize what was happening, all three passengers had their phones pointed out the window. Up the road, they compared pictures. Astrid’s was clearest. When she enlarged the image, they could identify the Mercedes license plate and the approaching patrolwoman on foot. The picture also revealed the shadow of a passenger in the cruiser’s front seat.

Nick said, “Awesome. Now we need an off-ramp with a good view of the interstate.”

They found it a few miles further north and crossed over to the on-ramp. Nick pulled onto the grass, cut off the engine, popped open the hood, got out of the car and pretended he was dealing with an engine issue. The others waited and watched. Twenty minutes later, Nick spotted the Mercedes moving northward much more slowly. He slammed down the hood and hustled to the driver’s seat.

Astrid asked, “Did you see what I saw?”

There was a chorus of “Whats?”

“Unless my eyes deceived me, there was only one person in the car, the driver.”

“What da fuck!” Em exclaimed. They had never heard the West African swear in English. She was a bundle of surprises. A few days earlier when Nick had asked her how a weekend in New York City went down for her, she had responded, “Grand being in big city and oh, oh those lovely blond boys!”

Nick: “Okay, we’ll try to figure out what happened to Guido later. Our job is to see where Dr. T. is headed.”

They stayed a half-mile or so back, and then followed the Mercedes off the Interstate eastward on Route 837, then south on Route 443. After about fifteen miles, Tulkinghorn turned west again back toward the Interstate. Tulkinghorn turned south. They followed cautiously.

José speculated, “Big diversion makes me think he knows he’s got a tail.”

Nick said: “Possibly. But maybe something else is going on.”

“Some goose chase,” said Astrid.

“Go Gilligan!” replied José. “His goose gonna get cooked.”

A few minutes later, Tulkinghorn pulled into the last service area in Ohio. They stayed on his tail. He passed through directly to the gas pumps. They pulled into the food service parking lot. Without saying a word, Nick got out and stealthily slipped into a passageway between food services and the gas station. The rest ran across the parking lot to empty their bladders.

Tulkinghorn left his car and scanned the parking lot. He had not yet made a move to pump gas. Nick saw him nod toward the window of the service station. He flicked his wrist, wagging an index finger. The Italian came across the tarmac and slid back into the Mercedes. Tulkinghorn quickstepped around the back of the car and jumped in the driver’s seat. In a flash, the pair headed once again onto the freeway.

Nick raced back to the Mazda, collected his troops.

They caught up just as the Mercedes exited at Henry Falls. They followed through stop-and-start traffic and onto Union Street, one of the main streets of the historic town center. The Mercedes pulled over at the St. Marian Brew Pub. Tulkinghorn and the guy they’d been calling Guido went inside, apparently unaware of their followers.

From the Mazda, across and down the street, the students watched and plotted. A plan evolved. The two students least likely to be recognized, Em and José, would go into the pub as a couple and try to get seats within earshot of Tulkinghorn and Guido. They would call Nick and Astrid and leave their phones open. Astrid, as visibly animated as anybody had ever seen, had risen to strategist. She instructed Nick to set his phone to record the next call. She did the same.

Em and José strolled arm-in-arm across a nearly empty street, Em towering over José. She swayed her hips, then playfully slapped José’s posterior when he tried to outdo her waggles.

“Interesting couple there,” remarked Nick.

Within moments, he and Astrid jittered upward in synchrony as their phones rang. They accepted the calls, engaged speaker phones, and listened.

Ghost voices murmured indecipherably, as in a vast cathedral. José could be heard whispering, “Hope your memory’s better’n mine.” Em replied, “Hope you can make sense of this English. Is it English?”

José responded, “Not mine.”

After more moments of garble, they began to pick up bits of a conversation. Nick gave Astrid a modest thumbs-up followed by a shrug. Shaking her head, Astrid wrote a quick note: Should have sent them in with a digital recorder. I’ll take notes.

They sat quietly. There was a great deal of background noise, including Em’s and José’s inane lovers’ conversation and drink orders — Em, gin and tonic; José, lemonade. Nick listened intently, squinting toward the pub, trying to activate his x-ray vision. In her notebook, Astrid jotted words that seemed to have been uttered by the suspects. Nick turned to study Astrid: this childlike woman with her bolts and tattoos, her bare feet and edgy manner; this super brain who now resorted to old fashioned stenography. She was an adept note taker. He looked at her notebook and saw the highly legible straight-up print-cursive combination, familiar to anyone schooled in Canada, with a variety of abbreviations, arrows and question marks. In reading this string of words and phrases and hearing the level of background noise coming through, he feared that making sense of this might be impossible.

The phones went silent. Nick and Astrid breathed more deeply and ended their calls. They needed to shake off the tension. Nick felt cramped and tense. He put his hands on the steering wheel and nervously rocked it back and forth. He asked, “You from around Toronto by any chance?”

Astrid tipped back her head; she rubbed her eyelids.

“Yeah, Oakville. You?”

“Quebec, near Montreal.”

She seemed surprised. “Wow, another Canuck.”

“Right. You?”

“Also. Well, my mom’s originally from Ohio, so I’ve got two passports.”

“Cool. How’d you get to GUO?”

“Got cash — free ride, four years. Liked feel of the place, Honors College. Needed to get away from southern Ontario and parents. And you?”

“Girlfriend got money for her PhD,” he admitted. “She’s from Vermont. I trailed. It’s been good so far.”

“Ah.”

They noted movement across the street. At precisely five o’clock, a portly red-faced man, easily in his sixties, in a huge cowboy hat, left the pub. His open-collared western dress shirt showed underarm sweat marks. Designer jeans with a giant Navaho belt buckle and leather cowboy boots completed the ensemble: an old cowboy who’d wandered east. He stopped to light a cigarillo. In a puff of smoke, he swaggered down the street and climbed into a red Ram pickup.

Nick reached for his phone and snapped a photo through the windshield.

“One of the perps?” wondered Astrid.

“Maybe. Or just a creepy Henry Falls regular.”

They watched him back the truck out of a tight parking spot, make a wide sweep of the street to reverse his direction, and roar toward them. They ducked, but not before seeing a Morse Valley Energy logo on the truck’s door. When the Ram had turned left at the next block, they sat up.

Nick turned to Astrid. “Morse himself probably. So, there were three.”

“Motherfuckers.” she said.

As she uttered her judgment, Tulkinghorn and Guido ambled out immersed in conversation. They got into the Mercedes. At the end of the street, they went right, apparently heading back toward the Interstate. Five minutes later, Em and José popped out of the pub, holding hands, giggling. They hustled into the car, still laughing. Em said, “This little boy: he’s, how you say? — un hot date.” José looked thrilled. “Oh Baby! This sistah: she be one tall drink o’ water.”

Astrid and Nick cracked up. Nick said, “What more could you want?”

“Couldn’t handle more,” admitted José. Em could do nothing but giggle, her hands covering her mouth as she shook her stunning head.

Nick’s smile faded quickly. He said, “Look gang, Em and I need to head back for a seminar tonight. We’re planning to meet Lara at Meroni’s at ten. Can you guys make it?”

Astrid replied, “Absolutely. In the meantime, I’ll get on the Internet. Try to follow some leads. Spook around a bit. Need to identify Guido and search for more on Morse Valley Energy, Morse himself.”

José offered: “I’ll be there, for sure. Maybe I’ve got some of this worked out. Tulkinghorn’s got a scam going. Let me Google him. Who the hell else is in this caper — the other dude in the cop cruiser?”

They compared notes during the hour homeward. Astrid wrote down everything. In Argolis, Nick stopped at Centennial Quad to let the other three go their way. Just before she leapt out, Astrid said, “Lots of gaps here. We may need help from online professionals.”

“Hackers?”

“Some people call them that.”

“Risky,” said Nick.

“Yeah, but if we’re going to nail these bastards, we gotta take risks.”

4

Most of us were already gathered at Meroni’s Tavern when Em descended the stairway. When she saw José at the bar, she ran to him, enveloped him in her arms. “How is it, these many days since that date of ours?”

“If I was hot for you this afternoon, baby, can you imagine my thermal radiation now?” José gingerly extricated himself from the long-armed princess.

Nick, tagging along behind, held out his fist. José bumped it with his own, a new brotherhood I found fascinating and impenetrable. Guys, jeeze! On the other hand, it seemed that these three had, in a matter of a few hours, gathered round a sense of purpose sturdy enough to endure a lifetime. It turned out to be true, especially if one were to add Astrid.

“Where is Astrid, by the way?” I wanted to know.

Nobody had seen her.

We gravitated toward a long table at the back of the basement tavern known as the best place in Argolis for surreptitious trysts. Meroni’s also served cheaper beer and was definitely not a noisy sports bar — no televisions even. Nor was it ever a place faculty or university staff were seen. On the other hand, it was anything but hygienic. Lit primarily by neon beer signs over the bar, it was dank and it was dark. The tables and booths were worn to grimy sheens and it took no more than a couple of minutes to detect the aromatic residue of gallons of beer spills and buckets of barf regurgitated by generations of Gilligan’s most inexperienced drinkers. Mario Meroni had served them all. And here he was now, denim apron stretched over his beer belly, taking orders from the gathered conspirators. “Nobody here underage?” he asked.

“No, of course not,” replied Nick, though he knew José and me to be borderline at best. With no more than Nick’s assurance, Mario waddled back to the bar.

Already seated were Lara and a slightly older woman called Adrienne whom no one seemed to know, Katherine, Jason O’Leary — an Australian grad student who worked with Lara, Frank — the goat-bearded flutist, and Sean — the grad student who freaked us about pandemics a few days earlier. We thought of ourselves as an impromptu steering committee. Em, Nick, José and I found places and sat down. Pitchers arrived. Glasses were filled, emptied, and replenished. Small talk ended. Lara cleared her throat and, in her queen-bee voice, said, “Okay, you beer guzzling greens, let’s hear what happened this afternoon and what we can make of it, where we go from here. Where’s our sister of the dreadlocks?”

Nick responded. “She said she was following some leads online and would definitely be here tonight. She’s a reliable Canadian. Perhaps we should wait a few more minutes because she’s the one who took notes.”

Ten minutes later Astrid came slinking past the bar toward our table. The Yeungling Beer sign cast a scarlet halo over her crocheted rainbow tam, a Rasta saint bobbing toward Zion. Ten pairs of eyes followed her progression.

Astrid apologized. “Looks like I blew it. Lost track of time. Sorry.”

“No worries, Astrid! Gave us a chance to chug a few pitchahs.” This said with a wink from Jason, the Aussie. Jason could drink anybody under the table and arise the next morning with bright eyes. Others nodded. José pulled up a chair for Astrid. She sat by his side.

“I will say that my labors did bear some juicy fruit,” Astrid announced.

“Great,” Lara said. “We can hardly wait. I hope nobody minds me facilitating here. We have little time and we need to plot a strategy.”

With his usual bravado, Nick said, “I’m very okay with your facilitating, Lara — doing what comes naturally to you. Go for it.”

All except Adrienne agreed. She continued to observe proceedings as though she had absolutely no stake in the discussion. Why was she here?

Lara said, “Thanks everyone. Okay, let’s get started. These guys — Nick, Astrid, Em, and José — did in fact succeed in trailing Dr. Tulkinghorn this afternoon. I was a back-up part of the plan so I know what didn’t happen because I wasn’t needed. But I’ve yet to hear what did happen. Who wants to tell us?”

Nick spoke up. “As you know, I was driving and to that extent I was captain at the beginning the chase. After that, we began to pool our observations and decisions and without realizing it we morphed into a jolly good band of spies.”

“Yo ho!” Frank exclaimed.

Nick glanced over at Frank, tilted his head, flashed a crooked smile. Frank was a time traveler from the 1950s. “As I mentioned,” Nick continued, “Astrid took notes, so if she’s willing, I’d say she should first go through the facts — what we actually saw and heard.”

“Sounds reasonable,” ruled Lara.

“Okay, I can do that,” Astrid agreed insouciantly. “This is in chronological order, more or less.” What followed, in clipped tones, like a CBC newscast with the volume turned down, was Astrid’s recounting of the chase, the highway patrol handoff and the unknown third party in the patrol car, the players besides Tulkinghorn, and the rendezvous at the pub in Henry Falls. Leaning in to listen to her, we looked like kids at the library story hour. Astrid spiced up the chronology with brief anecdotes of Em’s spying from the underbrush, their urgent rush to the toilets at the service plaza, the mysterious Guido, Em’s and José’s impromptu date, and the cowboy with the red truck in Henry Falls. Astrid was a hilarious storyteller. Who would have guessed? When I first met her, she seemed so nerdy and taciturn.

“Who is Guido?” Jason wanted to know.

Astrid: “Guido actually ought to have been called Dimitrius or Giannis. When we dubbed him Guido, Nick speculated he might not be Italian. That turned out to be true. I’ve discovered his name is Marcus Katavanakis. He is Governor John Winthrop’s Deputy Chief of Staff. His grandparents were Cypriot immigrants to Cleveland during the Great Depression.”

“Whoa,” uttered Nick. “Fantastic research.”

“A stud in that car,” agreed Frank. “So, the Governor may be part of this story?”

Astrid: “Somehow, maybe. Haven’t figured how.”

“What happened when this guy — Kata … whatakis? — got into the patrol vehicle?” Jason asked. “And who else was in the car?”

“That we do not know,” Astrid replied. “Perhaps related, I did learn from the Portsmouth Clarion website that our President, Dr. Redlaw, huddled with the Governor and his Chief of Staff at a regional Chambers of Commerce meeting in Portsmouth earlier today. The tête-á-tête between Winthrop and Redlaw was behind closed doors. Katavanakis, the deputy, was not at the meeting.”

“Did the article say anything about the subject of that meeting?” Nick asked.

“No, but reading between the lines of conversation we overheard in the St. Marion Brew Pub, I began to piece something together. I was trying to verify my suspicions when I realized I had lost track of time. I can speak of that now or later.”

“Now,” urged everybody in unison.

“Okay, all of us picked up something about a tradeoff and leases and royalties. We could not pull out specifics because of background noise in the brewpub. But in that context, we also kept hearing the word ‘northeast’, or ‘northeastern’. Thinking about this, I wondered if the university had land in northeastern Ohio. Investigating no further than the university’s website, I realized that the university, in fact, has a campus called Northeastern Regional Campus in Farmersburg. What I did not have time to find out is what could be offered there as a trading chip. I’m suspecting it is oil and natural gas.”

“Interesting speculation,” observed Lara. “Turning that campus into an industrial landscape to save Blackwood Forest. Some trade-off.”

Nick: “I’m still not getting how the governor might be involved, why he would send one of his staff to meet with Tulkinghorn.”

Lara said, “I may be able to throw light on that. First, let Astrid finish.”

I asked, “So, who was the guy in the cowboy suit in Henry Falls?”

“It was Jasper Morse. The blurry photo Nick shot through his car window matches Morse’s online photos. Plus, we saw the Morse Valley Energy logo on the side of his truck. So, in the pub, the three were the wily Dr. Tulkinghorn, Mr. Katavanakis, and Morse.”

“A redoubtable trio,” observed Katherine. “So then, did you pick up any info about Blackwood in the pub?”

Astrid asked Nick to respond. “Yes, Blackwood was woven through and around much of the garbled conversation we picked up on our phones and what Em and José were able to hear. You guys have anything to add?”

Em spoke, “When Morse said something, when he was very, very angry, yes, Blackwood was a word we heard. A couple of times, he said something like, and pardon the naughty word here, ‘that fooking oil and gas are mine’.”

“Speaking of naughty words,” José cut in. “When Morse was referring to our professors, more than once, he called them, ‘fucking liberal socialist commies’ and he referred to us as ‘tree-hugging vegetarian hypocrites who deserve a serious ass-kicking’. We also heard the president and provost trashed as ‘pussies’.”

“Sordid,” Jason muttered.

Astrid simply nodded. She pulled at her dreadlocks, paused, staring off numbly toward the bar apparently mesmerized by the blinking Yeungling sign. Finally, she continued, “Anyway, to get back to us, my take is that this Morse dude is out to seriously flatten students. If we tangle with him, we could be totally hosed.”

“That verb cracks me up, eh!” Nick chided.

“It’s part of our national vocabulary, you hoser.”

Lara ignored the Canadian banter. She called on Jason.

“So, why do you think our impetuous boss, Dr. Tulkinghorn, is involved in these conversations?”

I said, “Yeah, I’ve been wondering that too. Remember I told you guys the other night that my source speculated that Dr. T. is trying somehow to enhance his future at Gilligan. I don’t get what authority he has. Anything on that?”

Astrid replied, “Yes, and this might, I say might, help answer your questions. The word ‘chair’ got bandied around in the pub. I believe this refers to the academic tradition of naming a Chair for a gilded donor. The minimum donation for a named Chair at Gilligan is two million dollars — that’s from the GUO development office web page. The named Chair is then occupied by a distinguished faculty member, in perpetuity in many cases, with prestige and lots of other goodies: puffed-up salary, travel, research funds, what-not.”

“Perpetuity, eh? Good word, that,” remarked Nick.

“Yeah, I picked it up at Iroquois Ridge High School. We’re proud of our mastery of the English language in Oakville. We suck at Français, though.”

“So, Astrid, are you saying that Dr. Tulkinghorn may be maneuvering for a Chair, maybe financed by Morse?” I asked.

“Maybe. Lots of maybes, I realize, partly because I don’t understand what Morse gets in return and I wonder, as you do, Hannah, why Tulkinghorn has any agency here. We need more information from your listening post. I will delve deeper into his résumé.”

Sean said, “This is making my head spin.”

Astrid replied, “Mine too. There’s more. We all also heard something about The Caymans.”

Em interrupted. “Yeah, in the pub I whispered to José, ‘What are these Caymans?’ He whispered back, ‘Corporate tax haven and resort for very rich guys.’ I ask, ‘Near Puerto Rico?’ He say, “No, south of Cuba.’ I ask, ‘Like Puerto Rico?’ He say, ‘If Puerto Rico be Wal-Mart, Caymans be Saks Fifth Avenue.’ You get that?”

“Word!” Frank pronounced.

Astrid nodded knowingly. “Yeah, from what I understand, the Cayman Islands have the aura of underworld laundering of drug money and other ill-begotten revenues, fake corporations, tax-dodging, offshore banks that hide depositors’ identities, and the like.”

Jason cut in: “Ill-begotten: another blinder! You must be an honors student.”

“I am, for what it’s worth.”

Jason had another question. “Are we thinking this crude Ohio tycoon rubs elbows with piss-elegant bankers and drug lords in the Caymans?”

Astrid replied, “Apparently. Crude has nothing to do with it, unless you’re talking about barrels of oil.” She paused for affect. She would then drop the biggest of her discoveries. “Okay, get this.’

“In following leads on Morse Valley Energy, I discovered a U.S. Senate Subcommittee Hearing document on offshore tax-dodging by U.S. corporations. Morse Valley Energy was on a watch list as having an office, within an unnamed corporate group, in Georgetown, the Cayman Islands capital. I won’t say how, but I followed a trail to some bank accounts. I discovered Mr. Morse has at least a dozen dollar and euro accounts in banks that include the Cayman Maritime Bank and Trust, the Island Royal Bank, the Commonwealth Bank of Canada, and several others.”

Nick whistled. “Holy shit! This could be lethal.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Astrid calmly responded. She certainly seemed to be enjoying parceling out her findings. “Undoubtedly, some of the man’s fossil fuel earnings go off shore. That’s not so remarkable, especially for a privately-held company like Morse’s. What’s astonishing is the number of accounts. I cannot believe he needs so many simply to hide money from his mines and wells. Here’s why: Morse Valley Energy generates annual revenues on the order of 30 million dollars, yielding a before-tax and debt service profit of three to five mill. Having taken over Concourse Gas recently, Morse is now in debt. Bottom line here is that the amounts going off shore should be modest. In no way does it make sense to have at least a dozen bank accounts. In my opinion, those accounts have been set up for some other kind of income, some much bigger shell game.”

She looked around the table and saw Nick’s jaw slackening, his mouth slightly agape. He shook his head and rolled his eyes. They exchanged glances. Astrid released a knowing smirk.

She went on. “I know this sounds totally improbable but the cigarillo-smoking dude in cowboy boots we saw in Henry Falls is wheeling and dealing in fast company and may be insanely rich. Oh, almost forgot. I also discovered something in a GUO Development Office file called ‘Platinum Asks’. They had Morse valued at only thirteen to fifteen million dollars. In that file are notes about his bundling contributions for Governor Winthrop last year in the vicinity of fifty thousand, not counting a thirty thousand contribution from the man himself and Morse Valley Energy employees. Morse is a freewheeling libertarian and Winthrop, a Republican, leans in that direction.”

José asked, “If you believe he has a cash flow way beyond what he makes in coal, oil, and natural gas and beyond what GUO thinks he’s worth, what is this bro into? Drugs, sex trafficking, blood diamonds, weapons, what? And how would you find out?”

“I can’t divulge my methods, José. You can understand that, right? And I’ve no idea how he is making his money, but I intend to find out. Then, exposure could be our best strategy.”

“Yo’ talkin’ blackmail, sistah?” José broke a wide smile.

“Not yet, bro.”

Katherine interrupted, “Looks like we’ve stumbled into a high stakes game. This is making my jitters spin out of control.”

Lara tried to calm her. “Hang on, Katherine. We’re only at the data gathering stage. José’s remark was a joke, right José?

José, nodding, “Right. Worse thing you can do, Katherine, is to take me seriously.”

“Whew,” Lara said, “these numbers make my fellowship look like penny candy. Full disclosure time, gang.”

Everyone came to attention. Adrienne arose from her passivity.

“I have something to tell you,” Lara began. “Last spring I was awarded a Winthrop Fellowship to finish my dissertation. This fellowship has been endowed in Governor Winthrop’s name by, you guessed it, Jasper Morse. Winthrop was re-elected last year, as you just heard, with considerable help from Morse. Perhaps now you can see why the governor may be in the thick of this mess. He has some influence over Morse perhaps. Not sure how. But then it would seem Morse could have him by the balls as well. Meanwhile, though my fellowship pales by comparison to Morse’s wealth, I would be hosed, to use Astrid’s word, without it. My advisor told me point-blank not to meddle and here I am facilitating, what? Actions that may bring the FBI down on us? Where does that leave me?”

Adrienne straightened her back and stared intensely at Lara. I watched Nick watching her. She was an attractive tallish woman in her upper twenties maybe, now looking enraged, copping something ominous. She wore black high top shoes like those of a boxer, tight jeans, a sleeveless form-fitting pitch-black jersey disclosing smallish but praiseworthy breasts. Her short dark hair was harshly cropped and streaked with bleached spikes, shooting up like stems of straw. She had silver studs in her ears and at the side of her nose. There was a swirly tattoo, a vine of some sort, on her left forearm climbing across her elbow and over her bicep, equally praiseworthy. This was one formidable woman. A terrifying beauty.

She suddenly pounded her fist on the table. Nobody but Nick and I had been paying attention to her. The others looked warily her way. Her voice came forth in a lower register than one would expect of a young woman. As if her remarks had been shot from a crossbow aimed straight at Lara’s heart, she said, “Your supervisor’s advice is the best you’ll ever get, girl. You’ve got to escape this fiasco before it spins out of control and wastes your five years here, not to mention your future. Leave these naïve amateurs masquerading as the NSA to their madness. They soon will find themselves expelled from the university and facing prison sentences. Bail the fuck out, Lara. Bail the fuck out!”

Lara’s aqua eyes tasered back toward Adrienne with fervor nobody in this room had witnessed. She spat out a tight-lipped command, “Leave these people out of this, Adrienne. I am capable of making my own decisions without your lewd input.”

All the excitement and intrigue of the past hour was sucked into the black hole of their exchange. There was a collective gasp. Muffled conversations at the bar faded into faint white noise. Time stopped. We looked first at Adrienne, then at Lara, then back to Adrienne. Jason, shifting restlessly, spoke directly to Lara, his flat tone a soothing counterpoint. “Lara, from where I sit, I would fully go along with your decision to withdraw. This could put your PhD at risk and you’ve got your future to think about. But if you decide to hang with us, you have my support to continue as one of our most informed and passionate members. I cannot predict how this will pan out. No one here can. But whatever happens, whatever you decide, I’ve got your back.”

“Thank you, Jason,” Lara replied, clearing her throat softly afterwards.

Before anyone else could speak, Adrienne rose. With contempt aimed broadly, she swept her eyes across the table. She gathered her shoulder bag and aimed toward the door, her shoes squeaking across the bar room tiles. A couple of drinkers at the bar watched her and whispered to one another. As if she had dragged an evil force field on her heels, everyone slumped in relief. What was that all about?

With urgency gushing up from someplace deep, a place I could not name, I spoke. “Lara, you have a difficult decision,” a quiver in my voice. “Like Jason, I will be here for you, no matter what. As for the rest of us, what we know so far might alone be enough to halt the drilling under Blackwood Forest. We cannot simply walk away, but I don’t think we can do much more tonight. One more thing I do want to know is whether you spies picked up any kind of timeline. Does this plot, or whatever it is, have a deadline?”

Astrid responded. “No, no specific dates. Morse did say that he wanted to ‘fast track this thing’, whatever that means. My guess is that nothing is going to go down in the next few days.”

Lara regained her bearings. “I agree. The permits from the state have not been issued. Until then, Morse can do nothing.”

“Let’s give our spooks a few more days to nail down more details,” Katherine suggested.

“Sounds right,” said Lara. The others agreed. A solidarity was coalescing out of the gravity of Astrid’s revelations and the tension of the past moments. A few minutes later, coming out of the restroom, I almost bumped into Lara and Jason. They seemed a bit furtive, like teenagers caught out after curfew, but Lara said brightly, “Oh, hey Hannah. Off we all go into the wild blue yonder.”

5

Wearing a balaclava, leather gloves, a long-sleeved black nylon top, black jeans, and dark-colored fitness shoes, the cyclist known as Puma, cruised to a stop, dismounted, leaned the bicycle against the chain link fence, grabbed a small waist pack and headlamp from the saddle bag, and strapped them on. Puma halted momentarily to review the plan. Should the bicycle be locked to the fence? No. Since the neighborhood was pitch black at this hour, the likelihood of theft was small and the plan could be derailed by the slightest delay.

The small bungalow on the other side of the fence was dark and silent. Puma opened the gate and, keeping to the shadows of a locust tree, crept toward the house. Beneath a flower pot was the back-door key. Puma deftly inserted it into the lock. A chance October wind caught a low branch of the locust. The branch rasped against a gutter. Puma froze and listened for sounds inside. Nothing. Nimble as Baryshnikov, the Ninja leaned forward, softly shouldered open the door, snapped on the headlamp, and slipped into the kitchen.

Avoiding a small table and chairs, Puma moved swiftly to the living room at the front of the house. To the left was a hallway leading to the bedrooms. Deep breathing and an occasional snore bolstered the interloper’s confidence. Quickly gathering cushions from the couch and chairs, Puma stacked them in the arched entry to the hallway. Two woven throw rugs, lace curtains from the front and side windows, and oil-soaked fabric strands from the waist pack were added to the stack. From the same pack, two water bottles were extracted, the caps removed, the contents splashed over the stack. Finally, a fuse-cord, long enough to reach from the amassed stack to the kitchen, was taken from the pack. With a pocket knife, Puma slashed a pillow and inserted the fat end of the cord into its feathery stuffing. A length of twelve-gauge stainless steel wire secured the cord to the upholstery’s ribbing. Puma then climbed onto the couch, removed a picture from the wall, and with a spray can of black acrylic paint, on the wall, in large letters, wrote:

CALL OFF YOUR MINIONS

OR BEWAIL MY NEXT VISIT

 

Unwinding the cord, Puma tiptoed back to the kitchen and from a hip pocket took out a lighter, flicked it to life, ignited the wick on the kitchen floor, and silently studied its progress. Fizzling softly, sparks raced toward the target. Quickly retreating across the kitchen, Puma stopped at the circuit panel on the back wall, opened it, switched off the main breaker, and crept silently outside.

The door was closed and locked, the key returned to its place. As the unheeded figure in black scrambled across the yard to the bicycle, then unhurriedly nosed it down the broken bricks of the alley, the shrill pitch of a smoke alarm could be heard.

6

Astrid flicked back and forth, screen to screen, trying to make sense of Morse’s offshore operations. A notebook to her right was filled with flow charts with boxes and circles, laced with arrows, scribbled notes, and numerals; question marks on every page. She had been staring at screens for eight hours. It was 5:00 AM. In a couple of hours, Sunday would dawn and she would walk four steps to her unmade bed and fall victim to the manic sleep of a hacker so obsessed that she had neglected to eat, had completed none of her class work. After a few hours, she would wake to spend more time at her computer trying to scour her way through fog thick enough to obscure government regulators and the FBI. Astrid, known to some online as Havoc, felt confident that with her collaborators and her own intuitive and technical legerdemain she would accomplish what seemed to have baffled the real spooks.

Weary beyond reason, flipping again through her marked-up notebook pages, Astrid wondered which of the dozens of her diagrammed scenarios matched reality. She was confident that she had left no stone unturned. But she could not yet name the relative roles nor rank the importance of the pieces of Morse’s intricate puzzle, and still could not say how, in fact, they fit together. She had encountered too many firewalls, too many inscrutable laws protecting offshore investments, too many uncertainties. Despite penetrating Morse Valley Energy’s email system and invading Morse’s personal computer, she had not discovered the source of the ungodly cash flow that fed his empire. Astrid and her collaborators at Sans Visage (SV) had so far been unable to uncover even the vaguest clue. Sans Visage was the notorious global commune of black-hat hackers, some whom were also trying to disassemble Morse’s project.

Her original estimate of a dozen accounts had exploded exponentially. And these accounts were only one part of the organism. The vast proportion of the funds were in shadowy corporate entities, so-called post-office-box companies, all allegedly in the energy business and located not only in the Caymans but also in Cyprus, Lichtenstein, and Macau. It entailed a global empire under an umbrella called Gruppo Crogiolo, a limited liability corporation registered in Larnaca. Cyprus. Crogiolo, in Italian, translates as crucible or melting pot. Did Morse have Mob associates? Apart from the name, Astrid could discover no other Italian connection either in the U.S. or offshore. Was there significance to this name? She could not say.

Companies in Gruppo Crogiolo spanned the energy sector: petro credit and investment, accounting, legal services, industrial gas, power tools, mining and drilling equipment, fabricators, pipelines, asphalt manufacturing, nuclear engineering, uranium enrichment, coal exporting, and others. Their ownerships were impossibly entangled and, so far as Astrid could discern, not one entity was a bona fide enterprise with real employees, actual buildings, company kitchens, restrooms, computer systems. None of that: nothing but post-office boxes and bank and investment accounts where assets moved back and forth using loans; options; securities, hedge funds, currency trading; bonds; apparently fake payrolls and elaborate invoices; and dozens of other intricate strategies. But where was the head of this hydra? Was someone in partnership with Morse? When she searched for an address in Larnaca, where Gruppo Crogiolo had been registered, all she could find was another post office box.

This was not simply a shell game to provide cover for fixed accounts. It was a dynamic, cancerously expanding organism. Between its earliest appearance in 2003 and the present, Astrid estimated that Gruppo’s assets had grown by a factor of one-hundred fifty — from three-and-a-half million to more than five hundred million dollars, an astronomical rate of increase for any times and especially those spanning the Great Recession.

Her mind turned to other unresolved questions. If Morse has more money than God, why would he be taking a stand over the relatively meager amount of oil and gas under Blackwood? Could anyone else possibly know what I know? What had been discovered by the U.S. Senate Committee on offshore tax dodging? What about the Morse Valley Energy mine safety violations? Why were charges of conspiring to subvert mine safety standards dropped in 2006? Might the Bureau of Mines, the FBI, the CIA, and Europol be poised to nail the bastard?

She opened her fifth Red Bull of the night and began to build a new head of steam. Thinking there might be clues about his offshore holdings within Morse’s legitimate business, she resolved to revisit the facts on Morse Valley Energy. She also needed fresh eyes on the players in this drama. She went back to her laptop.

As the first rays of dawn began to creep across her room, Astrid’s buzz had worn thin. The lobes of her brain were cascading toward omega. On the expectation of further word from SV, she did not turn off her computer. She arose from her cluttered desk, lowered the blinds, and flopped, fully clothed, into bed.

7

Lara and Jason knocked on Nick’s door. After their smoky awakening two nights earlier, Lara was on the brink of bailing out of the Blackwood campaign. At one moment, she was convinced that Marilyn’s and Adrienne’s advice could not be ignored; at the next, fueled by the violation of her apartment, her history of independence, and her noblesse oblige, she believed that Blackwood’s future and that of the warblers depended on her. While cleaning up her place, she and Jason endlessly tossed around her options. Now they needed a clear-headed third party to listen and advise.

Nick opened the door and welcomed them into a tiny sitting room with a ‘seventies plaid couch, an overstuffed chair with a serious case of mange, a blistered Naugahyde lounger, and a scratched coffee table atop a faded oriental rug. The room seemed to shrink as Nick crossed it and his immensity enveloped the lounger. He introduced his girlfriend, Amanda. As she gathered her backpack and bike headgear, she apologized for running off. It was Monday evening. A class of psych undergraduates awaited her.

On the couch, sitting next to Jason, Lara recounted the events of early Sunday morning: the shrill alarm, the acrid smoke, the mad rushing to quell smoldering cushions with a fire extinguisher, the jittery 911 call, and later, just as firemen and police arrived, the discovery of the message on the wall.

Nick jotted some notes in a small notebook.

She continued, saying that apart from smoke and the charred cushions, rugs, and curtains, there was little damage to the apartment. Police detectives and fire inspectors arrived after dawn, collected their evidence, interviewed them, and by noon, left them alone. She admitted she was unable to expunge the message from her mind. The word, bewail, had drilled deeply into her unconscious, fueling nightmares. Wearily, she described Jason as a saint. He cleaned up the dry powder from the extinguisher and repainted the living room. It took three coats to cover the words.

Nick rhythmically rocked his head back and forth, shoulder to shoulder. A troubled look swam into the pools of his eyes. “I’m sure the police asked this, but do you have any idea who might have broken into your place?”

“Not for certain. I’m not even sure, and the police could not yet say whether it was one or more interlopers. They actually didn’t break in. They — or he or she — entered the house by unlocking one of the doors. Nothing had been jimmied, no windows broken.”

Nick asked about the word minions on the living room wall.

“When the police asked about that, I obfuscated, trying to protect our group. Jason, who was interviewed separately, claimed he could not understand it. It is no secret I’ve been attending PCSA meetings and that I have facilitated a couple. It should also be clear to anyone spying on us that PCSA is an amorphous, non-hierarchical group. I do not understand why the intruder used the word.”

“I need to ask you something you conceivably might not wish to answer. If so, I would understand.” Nick paused, giving Lara a chance to reply.

She responded with a not-sure kind of shrug. “Don’t know what you have in mind. But since I need your help and you can’t provide it without the full story, you’re welcome to ask anything.”

“Okay. On our walk back to campus the other night my friends and I wondered about the tirade of that woman who seemed to have lost it during our meeting at Meroni’s. What’s her name? Andrea?”

“Adrienne”.

“Okay, yeah, Adrienne. Do you have any idea why she went off like that?”

Lara paused. “Well, maybe. As you can imagine, Jason and I have been speculating about Adrienne. This is between us, okay? At least for now.”

“Sure.”

Lara, running the fingers of her left hand nervously through her auburn hair, bit her lip and began. “Okay, Adrienne and I had a half-year fling, shall we call it. It went south about six weeks ago. At least on the surface she had been an interesting, mysterious, and, sure, somewhat intense friend. She was into martial arts and worked out incessantly. She could be sullen, dark really. I once asked her what was behind those moods. She said something like, ‘If you live close to a cemetery, you cannot cry.’ I never got closer to an answer than that. But she was never the psycho bitch you saw last week. After Jason and I began to see one another, she would appear from time to time, trying to seduce me, or that’s how it felt. I had no interest. I assumed she had reconciled to that. I had not seen her for about three weeks. And then she reappeared the other night.”

Nick, as hetero a male as you’re likely to find, took a minute to wrap his head around Lara as a bisexual person. “No big deal,” he told me, though I’m not sure that’s how he really felt.

“Did she know how to get into your apartment?”

“Yes, there was a key stuck up into a planter on the back stoop.”

“Did the police ask that question?”

“Yes, of course. I lied. I said that Jason and I and the landlord had the only keys.”

“Were you protecting Adrienne?”

“Yeah, maybe. There was an underlying bit of fear. The breakup was rough. It had its origin in my own vanity, her unpredictable disposition, and my need for somebody more compassionate. She was pissed. Ignorance of who she really is, I suppose, makes me apprehensive.”

Nick made more notes. “Might she be an arsonist?”

“Not based on any experience I had with her. This may not relate, but she seemed to have a furtive life of some sort, as if her black belt was needed in that life.”

“Her life? What does she do? Is she a student?”

“No, she is not a student, though I think she graduated from GUO, maybe six or seven years ago. At first, I couldn’t figure out how she supported herself. She has expensive tastes and toys. When I asked her about this, she played it down and said she was a ‘trustafarian’ .”

“A what?”

“That’s what I asked,” Jason said, yawning out loud.

“Oh.” Lara replied. “You know, a person with wealthy parents who set up an account for their kid — a trust fund.”

Nick found this humorous. He repeated the word, asked how to spell it, wrote it down. He tilted his head toward Lara, scrunched up his forehead, and smirked, as if this was too bizarre to be believed. “Did you believe her?”

Lara swallowed. “I guess so. We had good times, mainly in bed — sorry, Jason. She always picked up the tab when we went out, and I had other things pressing me, like data to analyze, a dissertation to write, my dad.”

“Your dad?”

“Yeah, he’s my single parent. My mom died when I was five. He raised me after that, to put it loosely. Now he’s alone and I worry about him. Growing up, my role was to strenuously push boundaries but also to kind of take care of him. He’s a doctor with a laboratory business.”

Nick sized up Lara anew: something about her motherless childhood, her single-parent dad, her admitted obstinacy, her willfulness and strength. These qualities infused her with unyielding tenacity, amped up her charisma, and influenced the compelling ways she interacted with those around her. He realized he was not immune to the aura of the woman.

He wanted to get back to Adrienne. “So Adrienne was gone from time to time and did not divulge the reason for her absence?”

“Right.” Lara agreed.

“What’s her surname?”

“Umm, let’s see. It’s Foster, I believe.”

“You were with her six months and you can hardly remember her last name?”

“As I said, she was never forthright about anything. And we were not really a couple, if you know what I mean.”

“I guess I do.” Nick changed direction. “Any reason for you to believe she could be an agent of the opposition here?”

“The opposition?”

“Yeah, Tulkinghorn or Morse, who knows who else.”

Lara frowned and turned her eyes toward Jason. Some unholy dread there. “All I can say is that I have no evidence at all. One would have to stalk her, which would be difficult as she seems to slink around with a great deal of stealth. I tried to do so for about a week back in the summer after she told me she would be gone indefinitely. Her main mode of transportation is a motorcycle which she almost never rides in daylight. I never knew where she kept it but I did discover that she seemed to be running marijuana between Grieg County and several cities. She traveled with a grizzled biker dude on those trips. That was obviously one of her sources of income. I never knew if she had a room or an apartment in Argolis. She’d rarely be with me for more than a night or two.”

“Good grief,” Nick replied calmly, though knowing Nick, I’d say his brain was screaming Oh fuck! “Okay, here’s this woman who was highly enraged the other night; she feels she has been jilted; she’s potentially psycho and perhaps violent, has a black belt; is a drug runner and she knows how to operate under the radar. Add these up and I’d say she’s your number one suspect. If she’s not an agent of the others, this could simply be payback. But why the minion message? Either way, she’s one formidable adversary. I wouldn’t want to tangle with her.”

Lara listened, head bowed, her elbows on her knees, her hands clasped. Jason seemed frozen, staring straight ahead, his hands folded in his lap. Lara abruptly looked up. “So, where do you think that leaves us, Nick?”

“Personally, I’m committed to continue trying to save the forest and I trust most of the folk in PCSA and ClimateThrong are too,” Nick replied. “More to the point, where does all this leave you?”

Lara sat upright, moving to the edge of the couch. “I twitch in both directions. I’d be best advised to back off. But that’s not my history, nor my gut inclination. Jason has been totally neutral. I think deep-down he’d like to see me out of harm’s way.”

“Lara’s got to make up her own mind,” Jason said. “I know her well enough to say she’s not prone to take the easy road. Smitten as I am, I wish it were otherwise.”

“Back to you Lara,” Nick said. “More immediately, what do we tell the others and what should the rest of us do? This whole thing is getting more and more out of hand. We’re all distracted and everybody has studies and careers to think about.”

“To answer your question, Nick, I do have a plan,” Lara said. “I am leaning toward staying in the arena, not to idolize one of my dad’s heroes, Theodore Roosevelt. If people ask about the break-in, I’ll give bare details without mentioning anything about the message. If they’ve read the Beacon story, which came from the police blotter, they will not know about the message. The police deliberately chose not to divulge it.”

“Why?” wondered Nick.

“They told us the intruder would more likely show his or her face again if the apparent point of the break-in and fire had not been reported.”

“Some theory,” Nick observed.

“Well, my good friend,” Lara said with regained serenity, “talking through this and getting your input have helped me get back on course.” She gazed now at Nick’s broad shoulders and bushy face and was grateful for, though also a tinge intimated, by his grounded masculinity. “We all realize, I think, that we could be over our heads. But we also have a shot at shutting down Morse. And I may have a way to deal with Adrienne.”

With that, Nick said, “Sounds like it’s Miller time.” He went to the fridge and brought out not Miller but three bottles of Shawnee Light, a cheap beer brewed with genuine Shawnee River sludge, he claimed. They popped open the beers, lifted them in a silent toast, and slumped wearily into the worn cushions.

8

Speaking into her cell phone, she exited the front door of Classic Diner at the northwest edge of town. She walked across the poorly lit parking lot to the back of the restaurant and climbed into the passenger seat of a Chrysler 300C. As if she and the car were one, in her black jeans, short military style leather jacket, and knee-high black boots, she oozed across the black leather seat. Without a word, he grasped the apex of her slightly spread legs.

As always, he rasped, “Vile pussy”.

She said nothing.

He revved up the 3.6-liter engine and headed toward the freeway. She removed her jacket, unbuttoned the top button of her silk blouse, and lit up a Garcia Y Vega.

Traveling at eighty-five, halfway to the destination, the Chrysler flashed past a speed trap. Either the officers were asleep at the radar or the black muscle car was untouchable. Each time the woman made this trip, and she could claim several, she understood anew how much raw power her paramour possessed. At Route 743, they turned east, then north on Dorfmeister, a country road cutting through scruffy low woods of sumac, sassafras, hawthorn, and honey locus. A waxing gibbous moon revealed a doe and two fawns at the edge of the road. They skittered away in the dark. In another ten minutes, they cruised past a looming Faux-Normandy mansion on the left. Its cut limestone exterior, second floor dormers, many faceted roof lines, turret, and four car garage were out of place in this coal-gutted land. A window on the second floor was alight.

“Queen’s awaitin’ me,” the man chuckled.

“As likely as you getting it up without my help,” she replied.

They continued another three miles, stopped at a closed gate on the left. He remotely opened the gate, allowing the Chrysler to ease through onto an unpaved track. The gate closed behind them. A mile further, they pulled up to a darkened log cabin in deep woods. He heisted his hulk out of the car with an audible groan as the stiffness in his lower back resisted his upright intention and his weak left hand and wrist burned with arthritis. Grappling the door, he steadied himself and, feeling dizziness, took a moment to catch his breath. She watched patiently from her side of the car, the man’s predicament: his bad back, his gimpy hand — reputedly crushed in a fight, shortness of breath, the inevitability of decrepitude. Her trepidation outweighed any empathy she might muster. But one had to admire his rise from a New Barnstable nebbish to a globally significant stud.

They climbed five steps, crossed the broad porch, and entered the cabin. He locked the door behind them, activated the gas fireplace. He walked around, surveying his pine-paneled getaway, turned on two table lamps.

“Drink?”

“Sure.”

“Bourbon?”

“Yes.”

He returned with two whiskey glasses, one neat for him, the other on the rocks. They sat in silence at two ends of a couch, each momentarily lost in the flicker of the fire. To her, the cabin bore history riven by terror as well as omens she dared not ponder. To him, it was a den of domination, a retreat few had entered, a pleasure palace. As soon as she entered the place, she began to worry about her payoff and escape. But first, at the very least, there would be unpleasant business.

He arose without a word, abruptly grabbed her by the wrist. What would it be this time? They ascended to the cabin’s loft. He led her to the ominously heavy door with a fingerprint entry system. He pressed his thumb to it. The door opened and motion-activated string lighting revealed an expansive room with a king-sized bed at its center, a mirror above it. The room squatted under the cabin’s eaves; it had no windows. At one end was a closet with the costumes and paraphernalia of his madness.

Chuckling now, almost to himself, he told her to relax. She could not. At length, he assigned her a role for the evening, a role she knew exquisitely well but a role she had never played here. She breathed more easily. This time, it seemed, she would not suffer at the expense of his gratification. Trust had built. This was perhaps her only opportunity.

As dominatrix, she began speaking ritual phrases to stir his deranged imagination and bolster her confidence. Layer by layer, she removed his clothing, leaving his bulbous body exposed but for a pair of boxer shorts. She eased him onto the bed and attached the obligatory cuffs, hands and feet. As she spoke, she stood on an oak chest at the foot of the bed and slowly removed her outer clothing revealing her uncupped breasts and a series of crisscrossing black leather straps over her shoulders and around her torso, all attached, front and back, to a string bikini. Hers was a tight feminine muscularity, a black-belt fitness. Yet, she knew that in real combat, she was likely no match for the old man, unless, of course, his heart arrested. With experienced hands, she stretched a condom over his member, a startling thing — that of a horse. She knew nothing of its history, nor of his own father’s obsession with his son’s long and large cock, nor of the father’s demise. She climbed aboard. He moaned, straining against the restraints. The headboard rapped rhythmically against the wall.

Soon enough, it was over.

She turned away, swung her leg over him, masked her disgust. Dropping off the bed, she gathered her clothes, dressed quickly, and moved toward the door. She was on the brink of activating her plan, leaving him locked and restrained. It would finally allay her fears and solve several other problems. On the other hand, it could also lead to unintended consequences, not the least, for her, a loss of income. He understood her dilemma, yet the very thought of ending life this way loosened his bowels.

His voice ice-cold, he warned, “I will set my hounds upon you. I will hunt you to the ends of Earth.”

Hackneyed warnings, to be sure, but she doubted neither his capacity for vengeance nor his will to survive. Saying nothing, she hesitated several moments at the threshold. Then she turned back. She unlocked one handcuff, did not remove it or unlock the other. She stuffed the key into pillows barely within his reach. Despite his tirade, he was weakened in the wake of ejaculation and near abandonment. His breathing, short and shallow, was that of a petrified old man.

Still. She needed to act quickly.

“You completed your assignment?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Envelope in the microwave. Await further instructions.”

“Good,” she replied as she gagged him, attaching the harness at the back of his head.

Moving with lightning speed, she closed the door and descended to the kitchen. She collected her reward, bolted out the back door, and ran into the woods. One hundred yards on, she came upon the Kawasaki. She helmeted herself, fired up the motorcycle, and sped westward toward what now seemed a foredoomed future.

9

I slipped into the CNRD office at 7:35 AM, dropped my backpack and breakfast on the work-study desk, and walked across the room to the kitchenette. Greta was not at her desk. Dr. T.’s door was closed. With swirly, jerky motions, I cleaned the coffee pot, ground the beans, hit the brew button. As I poured a cup for myself, Dr. T. barged in. “Oh hello, Dr. Tulkinghorn,” I chirped. “How’s the morning?”

Tulkinghorn skidded to a stop. He wore a sad-sack brown suit, a yellow button-down shirt with a pale orange tie with Gilligan crests, a large old fashioned tie-clip accentuating his middle-aged spread. He carried a scuffed leather briefcase, its handles wrapped in duct tape, and a blue and orange express packet. “Hello there,” he called back, apparently unable to recall my name. “I’m okay, but I’d be better with some of that coffee. Could you bring me a cup?”

“Sure, Dr. T.”

He swooped out a big ring of keys on a chain hooked to his belt, opened his door, and plunged into his darkened office.

Convinced I was succeeding in softening the man, I, Hannah, the reticent sophomore work study student, transmuted into Hannah, the sultry seductress. I poured his coffee into the red mug with the Donetsk Energy logo, added creamer and sugar in the amounts he preferred, removed one of my blueberry scones from The Neighborhood Bakery bag, and placed it on a paper plate. Though anxious about this, my first ploy, I marched confidently into his office. “Here you are and I’ve also brought a fresh scone for you. You look like you could use a treat.”

“Well, that’s thoughtful of you … Anna, right?”

“Hannah with h’s at either end. Looks like you’ve got a busy day ahead. Something formal perhaps. I don’t remember seeing you so dressed up. That’s a smart looking suit.” I hated to lie but such was now my job description.

“Aw, it’s what I call my wedding and funeral duds. Hate ‘em. But this morning I’ve been invited to a press conference at Stiggins on the university’s energy plan. President Redlaw presiding.”

“Must be important,” I said, holding back everything.

“Probably a waste of time. Well, thanks again for the treat.” He ripped open the express mail packet, extracted a typescript document, grappled in his suit pocket for his reading glasses, and mumbled to himself, “Got some reading here.”

“Okay, Dr. T., I’ll let you get to work. Enjoy your scone.”

I returned to my desk as Greta arrived. We exchanged greetings. I asked whether Greta knew the time of the President’s press conference. Greta checked Dr. T.’s calendar. “Eleven,” she said.

I quickly composed and sent a text.

I looked up from my phone. Greta was standing there. She leaned over the desk and whispered, “Alerting your compadres about the press conference?”

“Yes,” I said in equally hushed tones. “Hopefully, they will make some noise.”

I dug into my office work while simultaneously fretting about my upcoming class, when our group would be the first to present their project. The group — Astrid, José, Greg, and I — had met until after midnight, fine tuning things. Since ours was the first to present, we wanted to set the bar high. I was mighty worried and wrote this in my journal in the wee hours:

Twiggy me, a shitbag of self-loathing and fear of public speaking, GAWD! I could KILL our project. Why wasn’t José, that super-confident theater major, the one to introduce it?

10

Mid-morning light cast a sedate glow across his office but what was happening was anything but sedate. President Mitchell Redlaw was being coached on the forthcoming press conference by Director of Media Relations, Sabetha (Beth) Samuels, the dazzling African American diva of his inner circle. At this point, I had not yet met Beth. But even I knew of her skill as the campus guru on crafting the message, sticking like Elmer’s to it, and controlling the discourse in the administration’s favor. Beth, at six-one, was eye-poppingly gorgeous, dressed in style and cut as though she were a television anchorwoman or a U.S. Senator; on that day she wore a chic pin-striped charcoal pant suit, sans blouse, yielding an intriguing neckline. Her height was grandly accentuated by black spike heels.

From long experience, Beth also knew that Redlaw, with his XXL ego, was often un-coachable. He was prone to temporize. Today, though, fatigued and perhaps a little melancholy, he seemed as compliant as an old spaniel. Was he tiring of the job, feeling burned-out, detached for some other reason? Beth worried. Where was that Redlaw dynamism?

Yawning, he apologized: “Usual protocols, then.”

Beth nodded. “You probably don’t need another run through the specifics but allow me to reiterate them anyway.” She expected resistance. The president moved not a muscle. “First, it would be wise, off the top, to tell the world that in less than two decades GUO will have become an Ohio and national model for making the transition from fossil fuels to green energy. Second, in doing so, don’t forget to mention that we will have more than achieved our 2030 zero-carbon emissions goal. Third, I would not stray from the facts on our ageing boilers, the need to replace them soon, and the cost-effectiveness of converting from coal to natural gas. In the notes there, I’ve included data from the plan and the chapter and verse of the Board’s minutes on the matter. Fourth, at all costs, you must avoid mention of Blackwood Forest and our alumnus Jasper Morse. These, literally and figuratively, are minefields — as you are well aware Blackwood could become a flashpoint for …”

A tap on the door interrupted her.

The president raised his hand to hold her in suspension. “Yes?” he called to the door. It opened. Provost Helen Flintwinch took a few cautious steps into the office and stood there blankly. She had forgotten her glasses and squinted across the poorly lit room. At first, she did not see Beth. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she asked, “Is that you Beth?”

Beth, aware of the provost’s nearsightedness as well as her own blue-blackness, replied, “Yep, I’m here, Helen, helping the president prepare for the press conference.”

Flintwinch nodded. She turned toward the president and said, “Mitchell, good morning. I think you should know, in case you have not heard the ruckus, that there’s a mob of students with protest signs and noise makers on the front lawn.”

The President’s inner sanctum faced the rear courtyard of Stiggins and neither he nor his executive assistant and her staff had heard anything. “Well, well, well,” he said. “Free speech. Damn those framers.”

Looking as if she’d seen the ghost of Thaddeus Stiggins, the nineteenth century Methodist minister and second president of Gilligan for whom the building was named, Beth stood up, towering over both Flintwinch, who was five-six tops, and the seated Redlaw. In ringing tones aimed at the ceiling, her hands formed into fists accentuating her iron woman forearms, she cried, “Shit! Shit! And more Shit!”

Unaccustomed to profanity from the media relations director, the president and the provost snapped their heads upward.

Beth shifted into command mode. Ignoring the provost, she said, “Okay, Mr. President, listen up. First, I recommend you call the GUO Police and tell them to stay as far away from the protest as possible, unless, of course, it becomes violent. They need to be out of sight. Second, assuming the demonstration doesn’t get out of hand, you must totally ignore it in your opening remarks. The student journalists and the other media will no doubt jump on it as soon as you invite questions. At that point, all you need to say is: ‘As long as protests on this campus are peaceful and do not abridge other’s rights or involve hate speech, Gilligan students are quite free to express their opinions.’ Refer to the First Amendment of the Constitution. Leave it at that.”

“But what if the protest is focused on Blackwood Forest?” Redlaw asked.

“It definitely is,” said the provost.

“Shit, again,” cursed Beth.

11

Astrid and José rushed out of McWhorter into the autumn sunshine to join the stream of students rippling from class to class. They broke free of the migration by cutting through Weary Hall’s basement. Weary Hall housed the Department of English and the School of Classical Studies. To Astrid, Weary Hall was as ho-hum as the subjects taught there. On the stairway, they came up behind a tweedy English prof, her graying hair twirled in a bun. She labored up the stairs carrying a stack of essays in one arm and an MLA-logoed bag in the other. José, in the lead, slowed down enough to say, “Excuse us”. She turned and smiled vacantly as they whooshed past. As soon as they emerged from Weary, they could hear the chants and drums.

 

NO MORE COAL. NO MORE GAS.

WE WANT ENERGY THA’S GONNA LAST.

NO MORE COAL. NO MORE GAS.

WE WANT ENERGY THA’S GONNA LAST.

GREEN ENERGY! GREEN ENERGY! NOW, NOW, NOW!

 

They ran to join the demonstration. Frank, at the front of the chanting mob, was lost in rapture as José sidled up and offered his fist. Frank, tilting his head back and forth, twisting his hips, stomping his Birkenstocks, his beard waggling to the drumbeat, bumped José’s fist and, as if channeling Jerry Garcia, shouted, “Get it on, man!” The pulsating mob, once about twenty, had doubled and more than doubled again as students poured out of classes onto the quad. José grabbed Astrid’s hand and they began swinging and shouting to the seductive percussion of plastic whistles, Brazilian rattles, tambourines, African drums, and Cuban congas. Protestors, including me, waved signs with messages for the media and the Redlaw administration. The two I made said:

BLACKWOOD FOREST: IRREPLACEABLE

I SPEAK FOR BLACKWOOD

My friends wielded homemade signs conveying similar, and somewhat overworked, advices and gripes:

GET THE FRACK OUT OF OUR FOREST

SAVE BLACKWOOD

PRESIDENT REDLAW: DON’T FRACK BLACKWOOD

NO FRACKING WAY

GO GUO: GEOTHERMAL UNIVERSITY OF OHIO

BLACKWOOD GROUNDWATER: SACRED LIQUID

SHALE GAS IS FRACTURED LOGIC

MORSE: SHOVE YOUR INJECTION WELLS UP YOUR ARSE

SWITCH TO GREEN ENERGY NOW

LEAVE GAS IN THE GROUND

~

Sergeant Gilmore Putman, a twenty-year veteran of the Gilligan Campus Police, pulled his cruiser to the curb. To his partner, Lisa Van Sickle, he said, “We ain’t had a demo up here in a good long time, prob’ly not since '03 when they set down in the middle of Federal and Clayborne. Got pretty interestin' pickin' up them coeds and stuffin’ ‘em into the sheriff’s van.”

Ignoring the old man’s memories, Lisa, a twenty-something Southeast Tech grad and recent recruit, asked, “Are we liable to be called in to break this thing up?”

“Nah, Chief Barnhill told us to sit tight unless things get violent. This ain’t the seventies, not even 2003, when people were pretty pissed at Bush. These kids, apart from the fact they cain’t hold their liquor, cain’t keep their pants on, and are way too rich — are harmless. Hey, you’re almost one of them. You oughta know.”

“Not quite. I was raised in a dirt-poor household ruled by a tyrant who abused his wife. We kids learned to respect authority or we’d be beaten, just like our mom was.”

To comment on Lisa’s upbringing, Gilmore decided, would lead to no good place. Instead he said, “Well, if we are summoned, we’ve got almost the whole force here: two other cruisers over by Lindbloom and one across from the main portal. Also, several officers on foot and bicycles behind the library are ready if they’re needed. That truck across the street has our riot gear. Don’t you worry, dear, we’ll be fine.”

~

Beth Samuels had carefully prepared the ground for a dignified and informative press conference. She not only warmly introduced the university executive officers and Dr. Tulkinghorn on the dais but she also asked each media representative to stand and be recognized, one-by-one. To each she offered what seemed like a graciously tailored personal welcome. Sean, the PCSA/ClimateThrong plant, shrank into his chair. But Director Samuels, anxious to keep to her agenda, had not noticed him and proceeded quickly to set the scene for President Redlaw. As the president ambled to the podium, student helpers passed out shiny copies of the energy plan. Faithfully following Beth’s script, Mitchell Redlaw walked through the salient features, highlighted GUO’s intent to establish a model for making the transition to green energy, and carefully outlined the steps the university will follow from boiler replacement and conversion to the switch to renewable sources and a zero-carbon campus. He carefully explained each step and presented the Board’s detailed financial arguments for the twenty-year progression.

Realizing that Redlaw had reclaimed his mojo, Beth relaxed. But not for long. The strengthening background cadence of drumbeat and incessant chanting began to jangle her nerves. The racket reverberated discordantly from two sides of the briefing room, as if stereo tracks had been ineptly synchronized. Despite her growing agitation, which, if unleashed, could seriously derail the event, she dug deeply and pulled out a fresh PR face, brimming with enthrallment. She had to grant the president this: despite the noise and distraction, the humiliation, Mitchell Redlaw marched gallantly on without mentioning what everyone else in the room knew to be true. This press conference had been cleverly upstaged by a small band of irate and well-organized students.

He concluded his remarks and invited questions. Beth folded her quivering hands and hoped for the best. He called on the undergraduate student council chairperson by name. She rose with a plethora of things on her mind. She began, “President Redlaw, thank you for calling on me first! Hi Everybody!” She turned this way and that, waving from her wrist. “Well,” she continued, “Gilligan Student Council last night passed a resolution that contained five interrelated, student-centered items. The first one of those is that GUO move immediately toward divestment in fossil fuel energy companies in the university’s portfolio. We ask our university to be at the forefront on this social cause which has been a missing piece of the climate debate on this and many other campuses.” She then reached back to conjure the longest, most unanswerable rhetorical question in recent Gilligan press conference history. “What better publicity could there be for GUO than to have it take a moral stand, a courageous stand, a most commendable stand, at the very head of the pack of responsible universities by divesting itself of fossil fuel industry investments, investments that lead to pollution of our seas, our fresh waters, and the very air we breathe and that, most importantly now threaten the stability of the global climate.” Less than halfway through, she lost even the president, but then she rallied with a succinct follow-up that pinned the man to the wall. “So … will you, President Redlaw, and your administration commit to this noble goal of divestment? That’s my question.”

Despite his aching knees and back, Redlaw sustained his erect bearing, poker-faced and stock-still while maintaining eye contact with the woman. He was experienced in handling student demands. He understood that student participation in university governance was partly life preparation and partly smoke and mirrors. He job was to humor them into thinking their proposals were reasonable and would factor into campus policy and decision-making. Beyond this, Mitchell Redlaw was a good-hearted man of probity, a reasonably competent president, and a man who could see the end of the tunnel. With all this in mind, he replied, “Thank you Megan. As for divestment in fossil fuel-based companies, though it is a noble suggestion, I agree, I am not sure it would do much to advance the cause of slowing climate change. Perhaps universities should instead use our considerable influence not to reject the fossil fuel-based sector but to encourage them to lead us through the transition to green energy. I agree with Harvard’s president, who said that boycotting a class of industries on which we rely extensively for our everyday existence is disingenuous. The plain fact is that we simply cannot do without oil and natural gas in the near term. In light of that, I believe that it would be two-faced to divest at this moment. And that’s why very few campuses have done so.”

If the chair of the undergraduate Student Council was crestfallen by Redlaw’s response, she made no show of it and had no further questions.

There was a brief pause allowing the elephant in the living room to hover more prominently, swinging its trunk to the beat of drums and tambourines. Not a circus elephant, not this one. Beth realized then that it was not a question of if, but rather of when the demonstration would come up and she prepared to intervene. As nobody had yet raised it, Sean stood up. He identified himself as a PhD candidate in microbiology and a member of PCSA. Point blank, he asked about Blackwood Forest and how it figured into the energy plan. He followed by observing, “I mean, how can anyone in this room not be aware of what’s happening outside? In all due respect, what can you say about this Mr. President?”

“Well,” the president began, “as I mentioned in my introduction, I have scheduled a meeting with your group next week. At that time, I hope I will have information that is not yet available to answer your question. I believe I would be ill-advised to make a public statement on Blackwood Forest now. As for the students outside, thanks to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, they and all other members of the university family have the right to peaceful and non-intrusive speech. Those students today are exercising that right.” In deep, solemn tones, a manner of speaking he had learned to call upon in situations like this, as if proclaiming God’s final judgment, he said, “I congratulate your friends and classmates on their spirited engagement on this issue because it is one of great significance in our times.”

“But sir …”

Beth stood and joined the president at the podium. She whispered in his good ear and said, “Thank you Sean for your question, and thanks to all our media friends for attending this press conference on the Energy Plan for Gilligan University of Ohio. I am available any time at solomon@guo.edu for follow-ups or clarifications. Regrettably, the president must now depart for a legislative hearing in Columbus this afternoon. So, again, with gratitude from President Redlaw and his executive council, I declare this press conference adjourned.”

Sean ran down the corridor and out the back door. He found Nick, grabbed his arm and explained what had just happened. Nick replied, “Go tell Frank!” and he directed his group to follow him to the front of Stiggins. When Nick and the others arrived, he saw Frank and Sean gamely trying to quiet the crowd. At the top of his lungs, cupping his hands around his mouth, Frank shrieked that in the press conference the president had just stonewalled questions about Blackwood. In a heartbeat, we protestors responded with vehemence. Was a peaceful demonstration about to become unruly? F-bombs became part of a new call-and-response chant, which if you thought much about it, made little sense. But it rhymed and who cared?

BLACKWOOD! BLACKWOOD! SACRED SPACE

REDLAW, REDLAW! FUCK YOUR FACE.

 

As more and more onlookers became participants, Nick directed his group to return to the rear of Stiggins. When they arrived, they discovered press conference attendees sneaking out the back door. The group rushed en masse to reclaim their turf and resume their chants. Two executive-looking women, the Vice-President for Research and the Dean of the Graduate School halfway down the back steps, were bumped by the surge of student demonstrators. The students backed away and apologized. Paralyzed by fear, the VP Research managed to find her phone. As she grabbed the arm of her colleague and was led away from the demonstration, she called the President’s Office. “The mob is out of control,” she screamed into her phone.

Less than ten minutes later, a phalanx of police, dressed for riot control, marched across the quad toward Stiggins. Over a bull horn a lieutenant ordered us to disperse. We momentarily ceased our chants. Frank stepped aside to consult with Katherine, who, in the absence of Lara, seemed to be our leader now. Checking out the police in full riot gear, we protestors surged forward to chant and drum again. Katherine later explained to me that her worst fear at that moment was that the group had become too large and too rowdy to bring under control. With this in mind, Katherine urged Sean to bring Nick around. Nick and his followers reappeared and, laughing wildly, joined in the new chant. Katherine yelled, “Quick, grab our people. Form two columns. Take them out of here before the police start bashing heads.”

The police had now advanced within a few feet of the steps to the Stiggins lawn. Behind their shields, they formed a wall. Their helmeted and gas-masked faces were grotesque: riot guns loaded with rubber bullets, pepper spray and tear gas at their belts, batons drawn and ready. Pandemonium or peaceful retreat? Scared shitless, I could not predict. The answer hung in this standoff moment. The police did not budge. The lieutenant reissued his order, this time with an ultimatum. “If you have not obeyed this order in the next three minutes, you will be arrested for disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace.”

Reluctantly, those of us with signs and noisemakers and drums began to follow Nick and Frank down the steps. At the police line, Nick called out, “We’re dispersing peacefully. Please let us pass!” After a moment of indecision, the police were ordered to lower their shields and back away. Silently, we marched through the phalanx and across the Quad, holding our signs high. Shots of our retreat would appear on front pages of newspapers the next morning and on websites and social media platforms almost immediately. In the absence of drums and chants, the other students took the opportunity to avoid confrontation and went their ways. Frank and Nick led us down Harrison Hill onto Eastman Quad. We huddled in the open space in front of Addison Hall. We relinquished our signs and instruments and most of us returned to the business of being students. I drifted towards Katherine.

“Whew! We dodged a bullet, perhaps literally,” said Katherine.

Jason, having rushed over from his lab, said. “Sorry I missed everything. It looks like it turned out to be a bit of a ball-tearer.”

“Is that saying it was bad?” asked Katherine.

“No, just the opposite. But was it crackers overall?” Jason asked.

“Not sure about that,” she responded. “What I can say is that it definitely felt like Late-K.”

“Huh?” replied Jason.

I knew exactly what she meant.

12

We squeezed around a table in the back room of The Jenny. Samantha and I were stoking up for a long night with double Americanos. Nick drank an unknown beverage from a battered Montreal Canadiens mug, his attention given to the sweetness of it. Something alcoholic. Lara, a GUO mug at hand, asked him to facilitate. He nodded. Using his meaty hand, he slapped the table, jarring the gathered few.

“Where to start?” he asked wearily. “Most urgently, let’s quickly assess the protest: what went well, what needs to be improved. Then, we’ll try to figure out what’s liable to bubble up in the meeting tonight. Finally, next steps. Anything else?”

Katherine raised her hand. “Yes. CNRD is planning a field trip to Blackwood next week. We need to promote it. Also, I briefly talked with a staff contact this afternoon. I have some insights and advice.”

“Good,” Nick reassured her. “Anybody else? No? Okay, Sean tell us about the press conference.”

Sean stood up, smoothed his trousers, adjusted his sweater, cleared his throat. In mannerly Carolina English, he briefly reiterated what had happened in the press conference, how the media relations director had protected the president and brought the meeting to a close when he asked about Blackwood. He distributed a one-page summary of the press conference and announced that the president would meet with us next week.

“Are there other matters before we talk about the protest?”

“Yeah, Nick,” offered Jason. “I want to acknowledge Hannah’s alacrity in alerting us.”

I blushed.

“Alacrity?” Nick asked.

“Yeah. It’s a word we Aussies use every day. Canucks need the thesaurus?”

“What’s a thesaurus?”

“Right, mate. Anyway, without Hannah we would have known about that press conference only after the fact. Kudos to our faithful mole.” The clapping and hooting heartened me, to say the least.

Nick acknowledged Astrid. “I don’t know whether any of you had a chance to look on line for our protest. I found a video clip, probably by one of our students — smart phone quality. It was just 45 seconds but by five o’clock this afternoon it had been seen by almost thirty thousand viewers. I also watched Channel 18 in Columbus and they opened with the video of us and our signs and the confrontation with the campus police. They got Frank seriously boogying out there. So, I’d say if our mission was to bring Blackwood to the attention of the wider world, we succeeded.”

“Outta sight!” exclaimed Frank.

Nick asked for opinions on the protest. Although the rapid mobilization had been impressive and the overall outcome of surrounding the press conference and capturing media attention was successful, the downside, everybody agreed, was how it almost ended with head bashing. We realized that what seemed like an innocent occurrence on the back steps nearly set off a police riot. The outrage and the f-bomb chants would need to be curtailed in future. “That chant was hilarious but it was also borderline stupidity,” Katherine admonished.

“With all due respect, Katherine, I’ve got to tell you, that chant was the highlight of the morning for me,” Astrid countered.

“Me too,” admitted Frank and José.

Katherine nodded. “We’re running out of time. Should I report on my meeting with that staff member now?”

“Yeah,” said Nick.

Katherine took a few moments to gather her notes and to remind herself about discretion. Later she admitted that she was unpracticed at covering her feelings. She typically would flush at the first tiny act of deception. On that night she said she couldn’t just choose to mask or not mask those feelings. If she tried too hard, it would simply bring on inarticulacy and blushing. On the other hand, if she weren’t mindful, something would slip out. So, she decided to just stick to the facts, to share data without emotion, to keep the momentum going forward. This was a path that derived naturally from her logical, literal self.

She began. “My source believes we are on the cusp of what could become a campus-wide resistance with enough legs to flush backroom deals into the open and draw other allies to our cause. Three keys here are, first, to sustain the spirit of dissent with almost daily actions; events that garner media attention, do not damage property, and are serious but also whimsical and amusing. We can’t let everyone sink back into apathy. Second, we’ve got to keep the protests and demonstrations non-violent. And third, for the moment, we should withhold all the background information we possibly can.”

“Movement Organization 101,” observed Nick disdainfully. “Anything else?”

Katherine shot a sharp-eyed glare back at Nick. She decided not to take the bait. “Yes,” she replied. “The other big idea I picked up is that we should consider converting part of our campaign into an ‘occupy movement’, like the demonstrations on Wall Street and across the country last year. The obvious place for this would be Blackwood Forest. But since it’s so far from campus, a better strategy, at least at first, would be to set up on campus, someplace central. Permission to have a presence, say, on Centennial Quad every day, might be granted.” Katherine paused and seemed flushed.

Lara spoke up. “I like the occupy idea but I was never impressed with the non-hierarchical, unfocused nature of those protests. We don’t have to be rigidly top-down but total decentralization should not be our aim. Anarchy is our enemy.”

Katherine agreed. “For sure: our biggest risk is looking like a bunch of Wall Street occupiers. People would conclude it must be a consequence of poor preparation, weak organization, incoherent focus. We risk being seen as airheads not to be taken seriously. We need to be smarter. Also, internal dissent plays right into the hands of the enemy and gets us nowhere, except perhaps time in jail.”

I asked Katherine what her source meant by withholding background information.

“All the dirt on Morse and others will have much greater impact if we first raise the levels of insecurity among university administrators who will be obsessed with Gilligan’s public image. Behind the scenes we need to hint to the president and perhaps to Tulkinghorn and Morse that we know more than we’re saying.”

“Alright, time to open the doors,” Nick announced.

13

At the Jenny’s coffee bar, a crowd of many dozens clogged the room. The young greens stood in small groups drinking mugs of coffee and chai, reliving the events of the morning — the protest that would become an inflection point in their university careers.

“Man, did you see those campus cops shaking in their riot duds? If we’d charged, they would have been dogmeat.” The speaker was a scraggly lothario looking up to a stunning, long-legged hipster woman in a tweed winter coat, black tights, and combat boots. She replied, “Fuck yeah, Jacob!” The place was thrumming with fantasies: storm the bastions, make tumult not love, down with the cops. As more resisters flocked in, revolutionaries seemed primed to take over the movement.

When Nick opened the doors to the outer room, he exclaimed to Em at his side, “Holy shit! Who turned over a rock to expose all these teenagers?”

“A rock?” Em inquired as she and Nick quick-stepped backwards to avoid being crushed by the stampede rushing past them. In the midst of the horde they recognized Adrienne sashaying into the room as sensuously as a supermodel — long strides, hips asway, her body trim as sprung steel. Nick blinked. She wore what he would later describe as Saint Catherine Street chic: a knee-length skirted business suit, flatteringly cut and of elegant fabric, over a ruffled white high-collared blouse; gold bracelets, ear rings, a six-petal broach on her lapel; smoky gray hose, black knee-high boots. Like a CEO strolling down Montreal’s premier shopping street, she was so starkly out of place that two students in jeans and sweatshirts, assuming royalty or at least a university dean, proffered their places. She accepted and haughtily draped her topcoat and handbag over a second chair.

Em asked Nick, “Is that the angry woman? C’est-a-dire, l’allumeuse!

“Oui, Émilie. C’est la vamp,” he confirmed.

Five minutes later, with forty people seated at the tables and another forty sitting on the floor and standing against the walls, Frank opened the meeting with the requisite lines.

“Hello sisters and brothers!” he shouted.

“Yo Frank,” they responded.

“In our tradition of shared democracy, I am co-facilitator tonight along with Katherine, here.”

Frank grabbed his recorder. He trilled an octave or two. “Okay, please stand. Those who know the words of our opening verses, help the others. We’ll sing them through three times.” By the second iteration, the voices of some eighty greens careened from wall to wall, passing through hearts of both the experienced and the dozens of novitiates. After the chant, as if Gaia had descended among them, they stood reverently. Out of the silence, Katherine tapped the Tibetan singing bowl. Allowing its reverberations to fade to a soft hum, Frank led the group through a series of “oms”.

Katherine stood and thanked everyone for coming. She informed them that Nick Marzetti would take minutes. Nick rose. I noted something eventful about his demeanor: sturdy as always, but tonight somehow humorless and unyielding, pissed about something. He directed everyone’s attention to the agenda and told them to pay close attention. He said that this was a ridiculously jam-packed agenda, especially since they had reserved the room for just ninety minutes. Sweeping the room with his eyes, his bushy head rocking left and right, like a boxer before the bell clangs, he stared sternly at the masses and cautioned that Katherine and Frank needed everyone to honor each other’s right to speak, leaving space for him, Nick, to take notes. He seemed to be working himself into a tizzy. He demanded that everyone respect the facilitators’ difficult assignment. “They’re just trying to keep the meeting moving forward, okay?”

Then, to my astonishment, as if something inside him had snapped, he climbed up onto his chair. The burly behemoth from the far north of hairy face and unshorn locks, garbed for deep winter, never a threat in southern Ohio, was now on the table, which sagged under his immensity there in faded coveralls, hiking boots, a wool-lined red plaid parka, frighteningly unhinged, his eyes glazed and red. He jerked his left arm upward and thrust his fist toward the ceiling busting a panel and festooning those below in mouse turds and feathers. In epic outrage, at the top of his voice, he screamed, “My friends, I will promise you this: we will crush those bastards who aim to rape Blackwood Forest! We will drive them from our sacred ground. We shall be victorious!” He halted and glanced dumbly downward. He noted his lofty position on the wobbly table. Looking wan and abashed, to whoops and cheers, he descended. The cheers soon devolved into bedlam, hubbub, tumult. Soon they reached a pitch of window-rattling pandemonium.

Katherine, supposedly at the helm, appeared to be flayed by the chaos. Try as she might, she could not silence the crowd. What was Nick thinking? Frank, help! From there the evening further unraveled.

When Astrid and Em tried to report blandly on their surveillance trip — “Dr. Tulkinghorn met clandestinely with some men we are still trying to identify.” — a group of women in the middle of the room, mimicked Nick’s refrain. “Lock him up! Lock him up! We shall be victorious!”

When Megan began to explain the Student Council proposal for the university to divest from fossil fuel companies, a graduate student named Weston Churchill contended they were aiming at the wrong target. “Divesting a few million in fossil fuel companies will have zero impact, not even as a gesture. I say strip out the hedge funds, the securities brokers, the bond dealers, the big banks that screwed us over in '09. Bring the university’s half-billion-dollar endowment home to local banks and financial institutions. Invest in green energy, local green development, schools and social justice in this region. If the university is a model now, it’s a model of how not to uplift this region.” To a standing applause, he concluded his argument.

When Sean put out suggestions about an Occupy Gilligan action, Julianna Ferguson, a slight woman from Connecticut, a veteran of Zuccotti Park and one of Stefan’s advisees, arose from a group in front of Katherine and Frank and made a case for confronting the university and police with tents and a 24/7 presence on Centennial Quad. Her childish round freckled face and reddish curls belied a steely history of resistance from foreclosed houses in Seattle to the redwood forests of California to Wall Street. “I can organize a tree sit in Blackwood that could be sustained through the winter. I’ve done this in California. If we select the right trees, we can hold up things indefinitely. We could try to break Julia Butterfly Hill’s world record of 700-something days. We could post everything on Twitter and Instagram. It would be so awesome! The media would be out there every day!”

When Katherine tried to lead a conversation on ongoing actions to keep the protest alive, a vocal group of about a half-dozen shaggy undergraduates next to Julianna, waving a copy of Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching,^ix conspired to advocate a series of tactics, from sugaring gas tanks of Morse Valley Energy vehicles and equipment to spiking survey vehicle tires and trees, to pouring oil on the president’s carpet to kidnapping Tulkinghorn or maybe Morse himself — “Think of the ransom!”. Their spokesperson was Zachary Grayson. Astrid leaned across José to whisper to me, “Sheesh, Zach’s cutting us off at the knees.”

In fact, he had just begun.

Turning to face the crowd, he continued his argument with rising fervor and unassailable logic. “If all our actions are non-violent and controlled by the university via their permitting system, they’ll never fucking pay any attention to us. They’ll just carry on, business as usual. The only way we can challenge their assumptions and their pussy-assed plans to wreck Blackwood and switch to fracked gas, that, if you include all energy used to drill and process the gas and dispose of wastes, and the leakage of methane, it will add to, not lesson, GUO’s carbon load. The only way we will be successful is to take them off their game. We need to bring them down. Omega, baby!”

Astrid, José, Katherine, and the other Stefan-heads in the room understood where Zach was headed. He paused as affirmations ricocheted back and forth across the room. “This, I would argue, is our only option. Bring 'em down! Face it dudes, this is not just about Blackwood. It’s about the future of life on this planet. It’s about climate change and our future, if we have one. Our generation has got to take a stand — just like college kids did during the war in Vietnam and the anti-nuke protests of the eighties. We have to push this administration, the state of Ohio, even the Feds to the edge of the cliff.” Amidst cheers and applause, Zach sat down, high-fiving Julianna and the others.

Like seeds from milkweed pods parachuting in a swirling autumn wind, all shards of order and decorum scattered widely and would not be rejoined this evening or any other. Katherine stood speechless. When she turned to Lara for help, Lara’s chair was empty. Frank struck the Tibetan bowl until at last the crowd hushed.

Gasping to regain the sacred space that had launched the meeting with such promise, Katherine and Frank called for a time out. Except for Nick, who seemed comatose, Frank, Katherine and the rest of us from the steering committee rushed to a door that led to an alley. We wrestled to find consensus. As the clock ticked, we realized we were twenty minutes from disaster: a meeting where chaos had reigned and no decisions had been made. Sean put forward the only viable strategy: Sign up everybody, tell them we shall act as a more-or-less permanent steering committee at their behest, get people to follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and encourage everybody to go on the field trip to Blackwood. “It’s the best we can hope for,” he argued. “We need to recalibrate. Weston Churchill — was that really his name? — had good points about bringing GUO’s investments home. The red-headed girl’s suggestion of a tree-sit appealed to me too. And that boy with the monkeywrenching book, what was his name? He rattled my brain. I keep hearing ‘Bring them down, baby!’ He’s right about getting their attention. On the other hand, what’s the point of a zero-sum game?”

“It’s called late-K to omega,” I said.

“Zach’s an immature and shamelessly conceited prick,” Astrid asserted calmly.

Katherine winced. “Really?” she said.

“On the other hand,” Astrid continued, “he’s a cagey thinker who keeps everyone on their toes. Maybe we should bring him, Julianna — and Weston on board.”

“Let’s go for it,” Frank said.

Astrid’s mordant brain then labeled each member of the group:

Lara: Alpha woman

Katherine: Alpha surrogate

Hannah: Mole extraordinaire

Julianna: Occupying maven

Em: African queen

Sean: Carolina queen

José: Bacardi queen

Jason: Swagman

Nick: Hairy Quebecer

Frank: Time traveler

Zachary: Conceited prick

Weston: Uptight sweetie~

 

At the onset of the meeting, Lara had spotted Adrienne at the back of the room. She let out an audible gasp and briefly considered a quick exit. On second thought, as she surveyed Adrienne’s smart outfit embellishing her beautiful body, she remembered why she had fallen for the woman. Tonight, she had a hunch that this might be her chance to square things. She whispered her plan to Jason. He responded with a quick nod. In the midst of Zachary Grayson’s disquisition , Lara climbed past Em and Nick, excusing herself as she passed. Leaving the room, her hand on the door handle, she turned to make eye contact with Adrienne and gestured for her to follow. Adrienne subtly acceded. In the heat of Zachary’s pleas, nobody, including Katherine, paid attention to the departure of the two women. They met in the corridor leading to the restrooms.

“What in God’s name are you up to Adrienne, dressed like Michelle Obama in this shabby coffee house? Why are you here?”

“Whoa there, bitch. Calm down. Can’t you put on a more conciliatory tone?”

“Conciliatory, shit! How can I be conciliatory after you slammed me at Meroni’s and then almost killed me and Jason? I know full well it was you. But so far, for some reason, I have not tipped off the police. I should. I really should! They might be interested in, let’s say, the trade route you and some ageing biker dude seem to regularly ply on your Kawasakis.”

“You can prove nothing.”

“Oh, Adrienne, my tempestuous Adrienne.” Lara’s tone was syrupy, then harsh. “Don’t tempt me! When you stood me up, time after time, leaving me bereft and lonely, I began collecting data, due diligence call it. My life as a stalker was intriguing. I have photos and video at both ends of the circuit that might well put you and that biker thug in prison.”

“What is it that you want?”

“Want? It’s not a question of want. What is it that I require? Is that your question?”

“Okay, require.”

“As a start, tell me why in the fuck you smoked Jason and me out of my apartment. Then, if you would be so kind, you might explain what you meant by ‘my minions’ and ‘bewailing your next visit’? And finally, who in God’s name, besides poor Adrienne, the bitch who treated me like dirt, is behind this?”

Adrienne took Lara by the arm and led her through The Jenny and into the inky night. A chilly wind made Lara hunch inward and wrap her arms around herself. Adrienne sighed once and answered the three questions. The smoky fire was meant “to get your attention without burning the place down”. She had not expected Jason to be there. Adrienne admitted that Jasper Morse is somehow involved but “I cannot tell you how or why. The message: ah well, the message. It was meant to scare you away from PCSA. I got the wording from a suspense novel.”

Lara looked into Adrienne’s eyes and decided, despite her deep-seated suspicion and Adrienne’s track record, this time she was telling the truth. She had another question. “Are you here tonight spying on us for Morse?”

Adrienne stood silent, staring intently at The Jenny’s steamy windows, perhaps studying her own reflection. She hesitated still more. Then, in a halting placatory way, she admitted, “Really, Lara, s'just a short-term gig with the man.” She checked her watch. “Yeah, he’s meeting me soon. I’ll tell him what went on here. He’ll pay for the intelligence. After that, I plan for this to be the end of our relationship. The man’s a head case, a very rich head case. He compensates me well. But it’s time we part ways.”

“A head case?”

“Yeah, like many narcissistic corporate megalomaniacs I’ve encountered over the years, he’s drunk with power, has to fill his empty soul with induced adoration. Plus, there’s something hideously dark driving him.”

“Something hideous? Are you in danger?”

“I can take care of myself. My black belt up against his sixty-something bloated body and dodgy heart? No contest. As for the hideous part, I have no idea.”

“Okay then. How about striking a deal?”

“It depends.”

“It depends? I don’t see that you’re in the driver’s seat.”

“Tell me what you propose,” Adrienne relented.

“Right. You feed him misleading information about our intentions tonight. Tell him we are backing down and are on board with the university’s energy plan, including Blackwood oil and gas, but that we want to shrink the timeline to renewables. Then come back to us with intel on his immediate movements and plans. If you do these things and deliver us timely and valid information, I will not pursue my inclination to have the cops look into your role in the break-in and fire. Nor will I bring up the marijuana trade.”

“You’re asking me to continue to hang with that slimeball?”

“Yes, I am, if you want me to forget about your felonies and trafficking.”

“Seems like you’ve backed me into a corner.”

“Ha. You backed yourself there, Adrienne.”

Adrienne shifted her weight to her left foot, extending her hip in Lara’s direction, striking a provocative pose, or that’s the way Lara saw it. Typically an implacable fortress, Adrienne softened her voice as if to lower a drawbridge across her moat. “You know, when I stop to think about Blackwood Forest,” she mused, staring again into The Jenny, “I cannot understand why Morse is so intent on drilling there. He doesn’t need the income. For some reason, the man’s bent into a pretzel over Blackwood.”

“We’ve been trying to understand that too,” Lara admitted and realized this moment of truth was a sort of catharsis.

Adrienne moved a step closer to Lara. “And Lara, despite what you may believe, I do care about the warblers and your degree and career. I even feel sympathy for those nubile kids in there, not yet tarnished by this fucked-up world and possessing much nobler motivations than mine.” She spoke these conciliatory words carefully and deliberately, as if scrolling through a thesaurus to compile the least inflammatory phrasing.

Lara listened, biting her lower lip. “Thanks,” she replied sweetly. “So here’s my last question: Can you think of a way to stop the man?”

“Let me work on that,” Adrienne said, abruptly turning away and walking toward campus. She disappeared into the shroud of that dark night.

14

Stefan helped me here. Though a mole embedded in CNRD, I had neither the pleasure nor the pain of sitting in a faculty meeting of the School of Conservation and Natural Resource Development. This is an embellished second-hand account of a momentous, though certainly inglorious gathering.

Faculty filed into Room 332. As the table could accommodate less than half the faculty, the rest were obliged to climb over each other into a second tier of chairs lining the walls. Per tradition, senior faculty gravitated to the table, leaving Stefan and the others as back benchers. Dr. Tulkinghorn, already ensconced at the head of the table, aimlessly shuffled a stack of paper, avoiding eye contact with his staff. The chairs on either side of him were vacant until he brusquely invited two of his energy toadies — economics professors Jennings and Pritzolf (Bland and Blander in Stefan’s mind) — to join him. The room was still but for the murmur of professors speculating about campus unrest.

Also at the table were climatologist Burt Zielinski, idly doodling on a small notepad; Horace Lindford, a fifty-something hard rock geologist, staring out the window toward Block Hall; Katsu Tanaka, microbiology and epidemiology prof, who shuffled a stack of eight by ten photos of microbes; Paul Maynard, a thirty-something environmental geographer thumbing his smart phone; Patricia Mansfield, ‘Manny’, the environmental sociologist with seventeen years under her bejeweled concho belt who was responding to email on a tablet. Stefan noted that Al Jaggers, the environmental attorney who had enough seniority to sit at the table, was not present. He was in court that afternoon. Earlier in the day he told Stefan, “I don’t know which kind of torture I prefer. It’s like your inquisitor asking, ‘Would you like the rack or waterboarding today, sir?’ ”

On either side of Stefan at the back of the room sat Sophie Knowles, who surreptitiously marked lab exercises, and Marilyn Shesky, Lara’s ornithologist advisor, scrolling up and down, left and right, across a spreadsheet on her laptop. Several other junior colleagues trundled in belatedly from classes.

To start the meeting, Tulkinghorn monotonously relayed a dozen or so announcements in rather detailed succession. Anyone paying attention to their email, that is, everybody in the room, had already noted or deleted each item earlier in the day or last week. Stefan yawned. When Dr. Tulkinghorn paused, Horace Lindford sighed dramatically and said: “I remember the first director here, back in the eighties, Myrle Fish. This was before the Internet, of course. Myrle, why he’d sit there, right where you’re sitting Truman, and he would read the second and third class mail to us for half an hour.”

The irony lost on him, Tulkinghorn raised his eyebrows. “There’s some interesting history.”

An item on budget cuts finally animated the colleagues. This was well-tilled ground arising from the inherent paranoia that professors harbor about their perks. What will it be this time? Hiring freezes? Heavier teaching loads? Purging untenured faculty? Cuts in travel allotments, supplies, and equipment? Denial of sabbaticals? Only the cost of hang tags for parking would have induced more blather. In truth, October is a terrible time for responding to budget mandates. Provosts and deans are petty dictators in October, perpetually crying wolf. Year after year, threatened cuts come and go. Then, like magic, money is found or belts are tightened or the future is mortgaged on the prospect of tuition rises (Aargh!), all without encroaching appreciably on faculty prerogatives. The academic roller steams on. Everyone in the room, except Sophie and Stefan, understood this. The extended discussion was so much kabuki.

Tulkinghorn barely reacted to the bellyaching and posturing. In fact, he seemed not to have been paying attention. His mind was frozen by the next item: GUO’s energy plan. And the very idea of trying to convince these idiots that it would be useless to oppose it filled him with nausea. Nodding toward Burt Zielinski, he said, “We need to move on. Burt, you have the final word on the budget.”

Burt looked up sleepily from his doodles, which had loped across a second page. “I’m feeling suffocated in this stuffy room,” he said, uttering what seemed a non-sequitur. It wasn’t. “Like almost every building on this campus,” he continued, “McWhorter is overheated in winter and overchilled in summer. Money wasted on such inefficiencies might be dedicated to something academic, like scholarships, for example. But, to be honest, Dr. Tulkinghorn, budget woes bore me. If I were worried about my compensation, I wouldn’t be working for the State of Ohio. I’m happy enough to just live simply, teach my classes, and do my research.”

“There you go,” concluded Tulkinghorn

“What about those of us who are woefully underpaid women?” asked Patricia Mansfield, her hands clasping each other at chest height so firmly her knuckles went white. She stared expectantly at Tulkinghorn with her jaw protruding like an anvil and her eyebrows compressing her forehead into three north-south gullies just above her nose.

“You’ll get yours,” Tulkinghorn replied, either with intention or without awareness of the insult. “Next item,” he said.

Professor Mansfield abruptly stood up tipping her chair backwards with a crash. She stuffed her tablet and phone into a woven handbag. “I’m sick and tired of this male-sexist institution!” she screamed and stormed out, slamming the door behind her.

As though a judge had pronounced a death sentence, the room went silent

Out of the silence, from the far end of the table, a plaintive nasal tenor began to sing:

Manny’s wearing strings and rags.

Manny's gone away,

Manny's wearing strings and rags,

Manny's gone away.

Manny’s gone to O-hi-o

Manny’s gone away.

 

Freddie Neysmith, an environmental philosopher nearing retirement fancied himself Pete Seeger, right down to the goatee. Following the chorus, he continued to hum, followed by an unearthly cackle, sucking still more oxygen from a room on the verge of implosion.

As for Tulkinghorn, he ignored Mansfield’s exit and simply pursed his lips and shook his head at Neysmith’s antics. Stefan had never heard Neysmith sing and could remember no direct contact with him since his rebuff on the stairway back in August. Marilyn later told him that Freddie interrupted meetings at least once a semester. “Jeez oh man, those lame-brained men always coddle that flippin’ idiot and probably agree with his despicable misogyny”, she said. On this occasion, Neysmith had improvised from the traditional North Carolina folk tune, Jenny’s Gone to Ohio.

Stefan could hardly keep his mouth shut and stay in place, but he realized he could not afford to aggravate Tulkinghorn further. Sophie also stayed put. From the look on her face, Stefan could tell that she wrestled with the same dilemma. Marilyn simply rolled her eyes and went back to scrutinizing her spreadsheet.

“The university’s energy plan,” Tulkinghorn intoned, “was released by the president at a press conference yesterday. I had earlier reviewed the Environmental Impact Statements completed by Morse Valley Energy regarding the proposed drilling for natural gas and oil in Bartholomew County and found them to be in accordance with Ohio and Federal laws. With respect to that proposal, I believe the ball is now in the court of the Ohio Division of Mines and Mineral Resources. The energy plan, as you are aware, will move Gilligan away from coal toward renewable resources by the 2030s. In the meantime, natural gas will be the bridge fuel.”

“I have been asked to explain and defend the plan in a series of meetings across campus in the next two weeks. It would help me and the university greatly if my own school could send me on this mission with a favorable vote of confidence.”

Tulkinghorn distributed copies of the plan and walked his faculty through its main elements. Endless discussion ensued about the toxic legacy of coal, the economics of fracking for natural gas, fracking impacts on water, carbon footprints, alternative energy options, promoting energy efficiency because of the profligate waste Burt had earlier mentioned, solar panels on the roofs of several faculty homes (an irrelevant tangent), the student protest, and rumors about the brutal assault by protesters of the Dean of the Graduate College and the Vice-President for Research. Twice Dr. Tulkinghorn upbraided Paul Maynard, the geographer, for two-handedly slapping the table, throwing his head back, and screaming “What a bunch of bullcrap!” Finally, Maynard said, “I’m not an environmental geographer for nothing. I find this plan reprehensible and contrary to everything I believe about our need to move away from carbon-based fuels as soon as possible. Fracking will trash this region beyond recognition.” Shaking his head wildly, he concluded, “No way will I support this plan.”

Tulkinghorn, as director had long ago demonstrated that he possessed the emotional equilibrium and impartiality of a pit bull, stared back at the geographer. He said, “Your world, professor, is nothing but fantasy and foolishness. The real one, my world, thrives on coal, oil, and natural gas and will do so for decades, if not centuries, to come.”

Burt Zielinski stood up. He got everyone’s attention by flapping his hands in a calming motion. “Listen dear colleagues,” he began. “I have heard all the pros and cons and impressive perspicacity on this latest plan from the administration. I know the director would like our support. But truthfully, I’m afraid it falls seriously short of responding to the urgency of the moment with regard to reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In fact, I’m ashamed of it. I agree wholeheartedly with Paul on the madness and devastation of hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas in this region. It is a net loser and it requires mega-gallons of water and nasty chemicals that then have to be put someplace.” He stopped, as if in mid-sentence. His silence stumped the room. Apparently without intending to say more and sweeping the room with his eyes to make contact with all his colleagues, he said simply, “I call the question.”

The vote, as Tulkinghorn predicted, was fifteen opposed to the plan; nine in favor. Had Patricia Mansfield been present it would have been sixteen to nine. After blurting, “Bloody fools!” Tulkinghorn adjourned the meeting. With his head down like a blocking back, he busted his way toward the door. A manic jumble of angry curses and arguments ensued. As soon as they could, Stefan, Sophie, and Marilyn hustled toward their offices.

“What a freaking circus,” Sophie said, shaking her head with disgust.

“Goshamighty, though, it is the place we call home,” said Marilyn.

15

Stefan’s Journal
Burt and Me

After the meeting, Burt and I amble across Centennial Quad. We stop at the twelve-foot-high statue of Denis Pádraig Gilligan overlooking the northwestern corner of the quad. Widely recognized as one of Gilligan’s most avid campus historians, Burt has more Gilligan trivia than Dr. T. has curses. He reads aloud the phrase inscribed on a plaque at the base:

Oh the glorious saunters over these Ohio hills in spring, the sallies into the woods in the quiet of winter, the excursions through the hollows on sultry summer morns, oh the gladness that pleases my soul more than all the paintings in the world’s museums.

I gaze up at the dandy nineteenth century founding professor with his ruffed collar, frock coat, flowing locks, and books in hand. “Way ahead of his time.” I speculate. “Gilligan seems to have carried New England transcendentalism westward. How remarkable.”

“You think?” asked Burt expecting no response. “Actually, the rogue spent way more time in the River Palace, a hotel slash brothel at the Shawnee confluence, than in the countryside. Gilligan was unquestionably a heavy drinker and a womanizer, and he reputedly missed many a morning class recouping his wits and calming his stomach. Not that it mattered to the seventeen male students at the Territorial Institute, who themselves had no doubt been sampling the night-time wares of this wild river town.”

“So, this quote is laughable if not wholly misleading?”

“Oh, the man may have staggered around in the woods, who knows? There’s no denying that the school is named after him and not some other Gilligan. Every university has its mythic founder. Harvard, John Harvard; Virginia, Thomas Jefferson; we’ve got Denis Pádraig Gilligan. And isn’t it somehow fitting that the country’s number one party school these days stands on the shoulders of one of the nineteenth century’s most notable drunks?”

“Fitting, yes, but I’m crushed by this revisionism.” Shaking my head, I follow Burt out of the quad and across West Clayborne to dinner. At the Trattoria, I am anxious to tell him what Katherine had revealed on our date. I need guidance but I’m unclear how to get started. As I pour Lambrusco into our glasses and we are served our entrees, Burt resolves the matter. He talks of his late wife and the painful hiatus of her absence in his home and in the lives of his children and grandchildren.

“She was only fifty-eight, but nature abhors a vacuum, you know, Stefan, and in the three or so years since her death, my grieving has been displaced by a calm gratefulness that comes brightly upon me like the way one feels on a spring day in May around here. As you know, I am an atheist, so I think about this sense of gratitude as the zenith of being human and having a human heart capable of boundless love. And my gratitude multiplies. My two daughters have rushed into the vacuum I felt so profoundly in the early months. I see them and their kids once a month or so. All in all, for a guy on the downslope toward Medicare, I have a life far better than most of my fellow humans. And friendships like ours are all part of my sense of rightness these days.”

“I am honored.” With this, my heart cracks wide open. Tears well up.

“What about you, Stefan? You must be the most eligible bachelor on campus, if that archaic notion still applies. Which of the legion of young women beating on your door might become the chosen?”

Here is the opening. I smile. “Young women beating on my door? Not exactly, but I like the image. And frankly, you must be clairvoyant to have asked. I had intended to seek your guidance on a … what? … an apparently deepening relationship.” I detest this ambiguous locution while also realizing this is often the way the world unfolds. As Rumi wisely observed: As you start to walk out on the way, the way appears. And the way appears idiosyncratically in the voices of those you trust.

“Okay, Burt. Let me flesh out a bit of background.” Briefly and without drama I tell of my life of serial shallow, short-term liaisons. I speak of the platonic relationship with Kate and the line we almost crossed. I fondly describe my sparkling sojourn with Gathoni Njema. I say that it is a struggle to pin down how I really feel about Katherine in the wake of just a few hours together. Maybe it is too soon to say. And then there is the fact that she’s my student.

“What about Gath … what was her name? Would you be interested in striking up with her again?”

“Ah, Gathoni. Well, since she was one of my better students in Kenya, I would certainly be pleased to see her. But getting back into a relationship, no, I don’t think …”

“Without the romance of the open road, no deeper feelings, eh?”

“None, really.”

Responding to my revelations about Katherine, Burt is careful. “You know, the whole furor, belated furor I might add, about sexual harassment, rape, and sexuality in general on campuses these days casts a different light on the age-old Puritan inheritance of ‘thou shall not covet one of your students’. One must be cautious.”

“I am aware and thus even more conflicted. To be candid, on that single date, we walked arm-in-arm and kissed twice. That was it. We did talk about how we’d both like to continue seeing one another and the risks of doing so. I told her that perhaps next semester would be easier when she would no longer be in my class. She replied that she did not know if she could wait. If anything, she was less reserved than I forced myself to be.”

“Hmm. Patience is not exactly the behavior that comes to mind in those intense moments of early infatuation, if my memory serves me about how that worked thirty-something years ago.”

“Right. But patience is almost the least of Katherine’s and my worries. And here’s where I really need your counsel. To tell this piece, I’m afraid I must breach our agreement to avoid shop talk because what I have to say is wrapped up in the Blackwood Forest controversy, the university’s energy plans, and the future of our school director.”

Pushing around scraps of rigatoni on his plate, Burt raises his eyebrows. “This is intriguing, Stefan. How in hell can Truman Tulkinghorn possibly be connected to this affair of your heart? Has he been stalking you?”

“I trust not, though, as you are aware perhaps, he’s not pleased with my first few weeks as a member of his faculty. I got a bit of a slapdown in his office a couple of weeks ago.”

“Someone mentioned something, yes.”

I reel out the tangled tale of the collaboration of PCSA and ClimateThrong, the surveillance of Dr. Tulkinghorn by four of my students, the involvement of the governor’s deputy, the meeting in Henry Falls, the research on Morse’s international holdings, the break-in at Lara’s apartment, and my consults with Katherine about civil disobedience before and after the demonstration outside Stiggins.

Burt, his mouth slightly agape, shakes his head disbelievingly. “Christ, what a story! I can hardly believe this has been going on right under my grand Slavic nose. Perhaps I should not be surprised because I’ve never understood or totally trusted our director. I’m aware that he’s a climate change doubter but he’s steered clear of the subject with me. On the other hand, I really like Mitch Redlaw. I consider him a friend as much as that is possible across faculty-administration lines. I have had friendly conversations with the provost, though I know her less well. I cannot believe they are implicated except through the energy plan which admittedly was crafted by them and is a series of regrettable compromises. Then, of course, there’s Jasper Morse. He’s a tough customer I hear. Mitch once told me Morse was one of his biggest challenges.”

“That’s my impression,” I admit.

“Well, that’s all the scuttlebutt I have. So what can I do to help you through this quagmire?”

“As I mentioned, I have become a back-channel advisor on non-violence in civil disobedience. So far, I am anonymous, according to Katherine. To continue helping her, I obviously have to meet her somehow.’

“Any excuse will serve, right?”

“Yeah, there’s that. We have done so once clandestinely but this will be increasingly difficult if protest actions continue, as I suspect they will. A part of me thinks I should back away before it’s too late and I’m in deep trouble with Gilligan. Of course, the other side of me wants to jump in up to my ears. Fracking under that forest and the injection of wastes on adjacent lands would be criminal. And if we don’t get off fossil fuels soon, I see us down-spiraling fast, in large part from climate change. I am delighted to see these millennials thrust into old time street protests.”

“You usually cannot animate them unless there are some deals on Groupons or Saveology in exchange,” Burt said, surprising me with his awareness of the trendy apps.

“Well, in this case, I believe the students’ involvement is pure, like the people on the streets in Tunis and Cairo. But back to the essence Burt, overall I am seriously conflicted. What do you think I should do?”

Burt grabs his chin with his left hand and strokes his jaws with thumb and forefinger looking off across the darkened dining room, pausing long in thought. I know not what to expect. At length, he says, “Stefan, if I were you, if I were full of life in the prime of life and as quietly competent as you are, I would give this protest all you’ve got. Go for it, man! With my blessings. And if you ever need it, you can count on me for cover and further advice, whatever they’re worth. I do teach these precious souls, you know. And I do very much care about their futures. Whatever we can do to model behaviors they will need in future, we ought to commit ourselves to that. As for Katherine, she seems, from all you say, worth the commitment — a possible soulmate for you. Be careful, of course, but you are, after all, not a couple of eighteen-year-olds. Lost weeks or months in a cherished relationship can never be recovered.”

“Thanks, Burt. I was hoping you would tell me to follow my heart.”

16

Em, alone in the coffee shop of the Carsey Student Union, leaned down to remove her shoes and massage her insteps and toes. Whenever she did this, her soul would revert to childhood in Senegal when she enjoyed the perfect freedom of bare feet, all day long. That is, until age six, when she was shuttled off to St. Agnes of Assisi Primary School where the nuns required tight-fitting white shoes. Those days, twenty years ago, seemed remote. And what were the nuns thinking? White shoes on girls who walked through either dust or mud on unpaved, rutted streets and alleyways, hopping across open sewers along the way? She sipped a mug of coffee for which she had paid twice the price of a day’s wages for an unskilled worker in Dakar. She could not think about that.

Katherine, Nick, and I ambled across the coffee shop. Em looked up from her tablet. She exuded the countenance of an African princess, her gracefully folded hands, her welcoming smile, her long neck and dangling earrings.

“Bonjour, Émilie,” we said in unison. We laughed, happily engulfed as we were in friendship deepening by the week.

“Bonjour to you too.”

There in the hum of the half-filled coffee shop, late afternoon shadows tiptoed slowly across the room. We discussed the protest and the chaotic meeting, Zachary’s call to action, and Katherine’s battle to control the mob. Her apologies.

Nick spoke, his face that of a chastised hound. “No need to apologize for what happened the other night, Katherine, it was more my …” His sentence trailed off. His face drooped more, as if he realized he was about to explain something he had not fully figured out, maybe to open his heart to us. “Okay, I’m the one who owes an apology,” he said finally. “My demented outburst I’m sure freaked out everyone and probably gave the acolytes courage to challenge our smugness. Maybe that part wasn’t bad. But I was more out of control than at almost any time of my life and that scared me. It was a Late-K meltdown.” He hesitated. We could not tell whether he had more to say.

Then Nick was speaking again, rattling off a succession of explanations. “See, it’s been a couple of freaking bad weeks on the home front. Here I am in southern Ohio trailing after my girlfriend. I like it here but I would never have come on my own, you know? You guys haven’t met her but Amanda’s a beautiful, intelligent, and ambitious neuropsychology doctoral student. She’s from Vermont and we’d been sailing toward an international wedding, like right on the border between Vermont and Quebec, maybe next summer. Don’t know what she saw in me really. But it had been a good run. That is, until she came home last weekend and confessed that she and a young psych professor had a thing going.” Nick closed his eyes, lowered his head, shook it slowly, attempting to dispel this dolorous admission.

“A theeng going.” repeated Em. “Affaire de cœur?”

“Oui.” He paused grimly. “I find my liberal soul unable to absorb this situation. I cannot forgive Amanda. I was and am pissed, especially since she continues to be enamored of this man I have never met or seen, who, by the way, is also one of her professors this semester and is married.”

“Mon Dieu!”

“She moved out that day of the meeting,” Nick added.

Katherine swallowed deeply. A wave of panic swept through her. I could see something in her eyes, something terrifying. She explained later that she felt like a voyeur: a fascination with the alignment of Amanda’s and her own liaison, the thin ice of transgression, their hearts made vulnerable by centuries-old preconceptions and judgments. She clenched her jaws as she struggled to remain passive.

I found myself consoling Nick, who was, what?, seven years my senior. What did I know?

“That’s rough, Nick. I mean getting elbowed out by a professor. I can’t imagine the pain you must be feeling.”

“Yeah, it is painful, Hannah,” Nick almost whispered. His eyes released tears. Em wrapped her arm partly around him. She could not reach across his breadth.

I noted her gesture with an open-hearted expression, my gaze at them, as a couple, soft. I said, “At the meeting, Nick, hey, I think you actually performed a service by firing up everyone. When you punched out the ceiling, I was, like, ‘Seriously, dude!’ Why can’t I have such passion?”

Nick wiped his eyes, raised his eyebrows and nodded a hint of agreement. He allowed a sly smile, probably remembering turds and feathers flying.

“Oh yes! I agree,” said Em, as usual lilting up toward heaven. Turning to Nick, she said, “But for you, Nicholas, this is all so tragique.”

Katherine’s eyes widened.

Me too. I had a hard time thinking of Nick as Nicholas. Was Em’s sobriquet hers alone? Nick’s shoulders slumped more. I had never seen the sturdy bear appear so vulnerable, his esteem so deflated, his proportions so visibly shrunken. There was no more to say. I looked across the table. In Em’s deep brown eyes I noted a flicker. Em’s facial expression seemed somber. Yet what I saw in her eyes was something sunnier.

17

Almost from the start, when Adrienne opened the door of the big Chrysler, she sensed something anomalous and fraught as touchwood. He was upset at her late arrival. He brusquely ordered her inside. She shuddered to think that he somehow sensed her impending infidelity, her role as secret agent. How did I drift into the vice-grip of this sordid patriarchal profession? Here I am in the business attire he mandated. He barely looks my way. A no-name chattel, I am.

“Ain’t you aware I’m a busy man? Christ, I haven’t got time to drive around and around this overrated town. What in hell you been up to?” She did not reply. As the car sped out of town, she turned to see two leather suitcases and the man’s coat in the back seat. “Are you going on a trip?” she asked.

“Yeah, and so are you,” he said roughly. Then in a friendlier tone, “We’re heading to the sunshine.”

She would probe no further. The man had never been one for small talk nor of telegraphing his moves. He turned onto the ramp and headed south on the interstate. In a half hour, they exited at the regional airport in West Virginia, drove to the far side, and pulled into a hangar. An unmarked corporate jet, its interior lit, running lights blinking, awaited outside. He ordered her to follow him. They walked out of the hangar into the dampness, her spike heels clacking across the tarmac. They climbed aboard the plane. His luggage and some other cargo were loaded. A cabin attendant closed the door: a shapely chocolate-colored woman, early twenties, with what sounded like a Jamaican accent. In ten minutes they were airborne. Soon after takeoff, the flight attendant brought a tray of hors d’oeuvres and sandwiches. The man sat facing her in a large reclining seat, she behind him and on the other side of the plane in an ordinary business-class seat. He said, “Have some champagne.”

“No thanks. By the way, just out of curiosity, could you divulge our destination?”

“No, my dear. We’ll be keeping a low profile for a few days.”

She realized belatedly that her preparations for what she believed to be one evening had fallen seriously short, and it was not clothing or her toothbrush that most concerned her.

Three hours passed. The man snored. She was too agitated to sleep. She sensed the jet descending. He awoke, coughing and wheezing, sauntered unsteadily to the toilet. He returned to belt up for landing. She gazed out her window. Pitch black. As the engines decelerated, she saw points of light, a runway.

They disembarked into a dense tropical night, the scent of the sea predominant. She felt the weight of her mid-latitude clothing. They were walking through a cavernous hangar. He led her to a doorway that opened to a parking lot. No immigration formalities. Puerto Rico? A ground attendant was there with the luggage and cargo. She heard the plane take off. A limousine driver escorted them to his car. He took the cargo aboard and drove into the night.

After about a half hour, she noted a steep upward climb. A road with multiple switchbacks. At the end of it, a gate. The driver entered a code. The gate opened. Two Rottweilers barked furiously and ran alongside the vehicle as it proceeded along a lane lined with palm trees. They aimed toward a faintly lit structure. The car pulled up. He got out and harshly scolded the dogs, giving each a slap. He led her across a portico into a spacious villa. “This here’s my Caribbean hidey hole,” he explained.

“Hardly a hole,” she replied, taking in the elegance of the air conditioned great room where they stood.

“Just a manner of speaking. We got everything we need up here: food and drink, pool, servants, the whole nine yards.” Without further explanation, he said, “Well, damn. It’s almost three and I’m tired as an ol’ houn’ dog. You sleep down the hallway there. Suite to the left. Big bathroom and shower, balcony too. Good views. You’ll find all the clothing you need so you can come out lookin’ sexy for breakfast.”

After a shower, she slumped on the bed, trying to wrap her mind around this turn of events, especially the few hours of apparent reprieve from what could be days of depravity. She checked her phone. No service. No wireless. No surprise. Before falling into a shallow sleep, she recalibrated for the coming days.

She awoke to brightness only imaginable near the equator. It was after ten. In bare feet, she walked across her expansive room, opened the blinds, then the shutters, and crossed to the balcony railing. She looked out to an east-facing seaward horizon. Ocean, the color of Persian turquoise, flat and featureless. The villa was perched atop a small mountain surrounded by acres of undeveloped land with sharp drops to the sea. She saw neither people nor structures on a small half-moon beach far below at the head of an embayment with a tiny off-shore island. A yacht of indeterminable size and provenance bobbed off shore. Where exactly was she? She returned to the room and changed into a black and fuschia bikini, a crocheted tunic, and flip-flops. She needed coffee.

In the kitchen, an amiable round black woman in a white uniform, who called herself Josephine, greeted her warmly and introduced her daughter, Jacinta, similarly dressed.

“Hello Josephine and Jacinta, I’m Adrienne,” she responded, shaking their hands.

“Mistah Jaspah ain’t up yet. You won’t see him much afore noon,” Josephine informed her. She led her to a table set for two on a veranda overlooking the pool deck. After a light breakfast, Adrienne explored the open floor plan of the spacious villa, all pastel, wicker, and generic Caribbean paintings. She found no clues on location. She wandered into the meticulously kept tropical gardens with palms, gardenias, hibiscus, and other flowering plants she could not name. Under a broad straw hat, a muscular shirtless man raked palm debris. He flashed a wide smile. She noted both the locked gate they had passed through in the night and a smaller servant’s gate to the right. She looked down at the sea from the spectacularly steep cliffs, one-hundred feet or more. She returned to the infinity pool and dove into the tepid water. She swam laps, a vigorous crawl, then settled onto a lounge with a plum-colored beach towel. She wrapped herself in the towel. Suffused by the effervescence of hibiscus and the warmth of diffuse sunlight, she fell asleep.

The day transpired without unpleasantness, prompting in her both relief and anxiety. He had made no advances. He spent the afternoon at work in an office one level below the main floor of the villa; she heard him talking. A telephone there. They shared a sundown cocktail at the pool, went to their quarters to change and returned for dinner, served by Jacinta. Broiled kingfish, rice, okra, and fresh salads. As desserts and brandy were served, Morse excused himself. Quickly and without fanfare she poured an aliquot of powder into his snifter. With their brandies in hand, they retired to lounge chairs in low lighting aside the pool. She took the opportunity to report on the PCSA/ClimateThrong meeting, which seemed like weeks ago but in fact was twenty-four hours earlier. He listened without comment and began nodding off. After some minutes, his body jerked awake, a neurological myoclonus she expected. He shook his head in a vain attempt to clear it and slurred a farewell. “Sorry. Past few days been busy. Need sleep. Guess we’ll have to postpone after-dinner playtime 'til tomorrow.”

She said good night and let out a long breath; she had deployed her only passive defense and could not use it again. When Josephine came to the poolside to collect glasses, she asked, “So, Josephine, do you live up here?”

“Oh no, ma’am. Jacinta and me, mos' days we take taxi from town 'cross island. Nobody but Mistah Jaspah live on dis mount’n. Sumtime, one of us do stay heah to clean up, den go to sleep in room ovah dere.” She pointed to a door off the kitchen.

“Town?” Adrienne asked.

“Yes’m. Charlotte Amalie. Maybe he take you dere fo' dinner some night.”

“I’d like that. Do you suppose you could post a letter there for me tomorrow?”

“Oh yes, ma’am. No problem wi' dat.”

Another night of reprieve. Another night to prepare for tomorrow’s inevitabilities. Charlotte Amalie? Not Puerto Rico.

The second day passed, again without harsh exchange or discord. It reminded her of her days as a mistress in Hong Kong for an aging Chinese CEO with a limp dick. She was certain that such tranquility would soon end. In late morning, they descended to Bartley Bay, the bay she could see from her room. To the left of the stairs to the little beach was an exceedingly sheer cliff that dropped straight to the water.

Morse took hold of her elbow and guided her into a dingy bobbing in shallow water at the beach. A barefoot crewman, no more than sixteen and decked out in a naval-style shirt and cap and khaki shorts, fired up the outboard. He aimed them toward the yacht 200 yards off shore. They boarded via a rope ladder: a gleaming white vessel, 80 feet in length with twin-engine inboard diesel engines, elaborate navigational equipment, and sleeping quarters for six. The crew of two consisted of the youth who had ferried them and an older man obviously in command. Morse led Adrienne to an aft deck. He donned a captain’s hat with scrambled eggs on its visor. No doubt who owned this vessel. And the jet, for that matter. They cruised to an unoccupied cay about an hour away. She swam and snorkeled in the crystalline water while he sunned himself on the beach. They ate a picnic lunch there. He drank three beers and seemed to relax. Uncharacteristically, he spoke of his company, the fracking boom, and his plans to tap shale gas in Bartholomew County.

“Under Blackwood Forest,” she declared.

“Goddamn right. State will give its blessing soon. I been waiting forty-nine years for this sweet revenge. Those protestors haven’t a clue.”

So he had been listening to her last night.

“Revenge?” she asked.

“None of your concern.” Beneath his captain’s hat, his face reddened, setting off alarms. He had scant regard for social graces.

For reasons she could not fathom, like butter on a tropical breakfast table, he just as abruptly softened. “Ah well, it’s ancient history,” he said. “A family, the Barstows, who owned that land back then, well, they had a daughter. Name of Belinda. She was the sweetest little thing you ever saw; two years behind me in school. I wanted that gal, I tell you, but I never. I never …” He stared out to sea, clenched tight his jaw, allowed his mind to drift back to New Barnstable, Ohio in 1964.

“She wrongly accused you?”

“Not her. 'Twas her father, Melvin Barstow. The bastard. She was pregnant, that’s for sure, but 'twarn’t mine. I had no idea somebody was pokin' her. Whole family rejected me, including her brother Malcolm, who was my best buddy. Ruined me in New Barnstable. I left for GUO and told ‘em to expect payback. Guess what? It’s now.”

“But the university owns Blackwood Forest and the Barstow farm now.”

“Don’t matter none. They never took me seriously neither.”

“What happened to Belinda?”

“Belinda? Oh, Belinda. Had a shotgun weddin' to that fucker, Kenny Caldwell. Lost the baby. Served her right. Miscarriage. She 'n Kenny got divorced, in seventy-six. She died. 2010, I think.”

After more lounging on the beach, they climbed back aboard the yacht and, by a different route, returned to the villa. They agreed to meet for dinner at seven and retired to their separate quarters. During dinner, Morse conveyed clearly that he was ready for playtime.

It was then her worst fears came to pass. Having served dessert, Josephine and Jacinta departed. Without pleasantries, he took her by the arm to the master suite at the opposite end of the house from hers. He ripped off her clothes, and threw her toward the bed. She rolled onto the floor and scrambled to readiness: a crouch, her coiled-spring judo imagination focusing on her opponent’s weakness — his gimpy left arm and hand. In haste, she slightly misjudged his approach, slipped on a throw rug, and, in the next instant, was beneath him. Should anyone have been within earshot of the villa, they would have heard primal female screams, a male in rut, panting “ … B'linda … B'linda!” In horror, they would have hailed the Virgin Islands Police Department. And had the police arrived, they would have found a whimpering, bleeding, badly bruised, semi-conscious woman, unable to speak. They would have concluded that hers was an attack so brutal that rape could provide but partial explanation. Her attacker was a psychopath.

But there was no call for help.

Morse left her on the floor and swaggered half-nude to the kitchen. From a shelf, he grabbed his Jack Daniels and took a long pull from the bottle. He sat, dazed, sexually satiated and limp, with no more than a tenuous hold on reality.

She regained consciousness. Driven to escape, she crawled instinctively toward the patio door. Everything burned; she felt abdominal pain; abrasions on her back and thighs, her head throbbing from a swollen mass above her occipital ridge, her vision blurred. She rose. Walking with great difficulty, she could not sustain a straight path. She remembered the servants’ gate, a way to the road, away from this madman. She fell. She lay immobile on the grass. She opened her eyes. Someone was there, at her side. A girl. Who? The girl spoke words she could not comprehend. The girl helped Adrienne to her feet. The girl abruptly disappeared. Had she been hallucinating? Stunned and confused, she stooped, threw up her dinner. Wiping her nose and mouth with the back of her hand, she rose again and wobbled across the lawn. Blackness.

Morse rose from the breakfast bar, steadied himself, grasping a chair against his dizziness, the bourbon pulsating his heart. After some moments, he hobbled toward his bedroom, spasms of coughing wracking his chest. Her scattered clothes surrounded smudges on the tile and a pool of blood. He noticed a blood trail out the door, across the patio. He followed it to the edge, lost it in the darkness. Something caused him to stop and be still. From the direction of the bay, he heard wailing: a heart-stopping scream that, cascading like falling water, descended toward the sea. Then, silence.

He slumped onto the grass, hugging his knees, blubbering and dreadful. The absolute insularity and stillness accentuated the horror of his deed. There had been deaths in his mines, of course. Coal mining is a risky occupation. And his first wife had an awful demise to cancer. But not since that night of filial combat in a pitch-black workshop, when his lower left arm and hand had been crushed by the blow of a mattock; when enraged, his arm dangling helplessly, he drove his head and shoulder into his own father — the one who abused him early and often — when the man dropped the mattock, fell back, and cracked his skull on a steel bench. Not since then had he been so hideously the arbiter of death. He sat paralyzed with fear, wracked with self-loathing, emotions rarely experienced since that night almost fifty years earlier.

Hours later, the sky filled with towering dark clouds, thunder in the distance and a hint of dawn in the east, without gazing seaward for even a moment, he sauntered back to the villa.

18

Stefan gathered his notes and books. Today was the half-way point in the semester. His students (including me) had been coalescing into a lively set of learners with a poignancy that delighted him, so he claimed. For this class, he had directed us to read two articles critical of panarchy’s apparent failure to take account of ‘agency’, the capacity of individuals to act independently and make free choices. We were also assigned the autobiography of Lois Gibbs, the courageous housewife from Love Canal, New York who altered the course of the environmental movement in the 1980s. He asked us: Can individuals acting alone or collectively derail the progression of panarchy in ways that might postpone or totally avoid sending a vaster social-ecologic system over the cliff? In other words, can panarchy’s progression be impacted by dedicated people like ourselves or even by resource managers?

“Good morning all.” Stefan said as he projected two quotes:

He asked an Ecuadorian student named Mikaela to read aloud the first quote and wondered whether she remembered the passage. She replied, “Yes, and this is one more reason why this class is making me anxious about my future.”

Stefan merely nodded. He then asked Samantha to read aloud the second quote. After she finished, Stefan asked whether anyone could identify the author.

“My memory may not serve me,” began Astrid, “but in a course on social change last year, I remember reading about a certain American anthropologist — a woman who long ago studied people in the South Pacific. She may have written or spoken these words. I believe her name was Mead and you see this quote all over the place. My professor told us that there is disagreement about whether those are actually her words.”

“You got it, Astrid. Yes, her name is Margaret Mead.”

“A little background,” Stefan continued. “Margaret Mead was born in 1901 and died in 1978. And whether the words are hers matters little because of her indelible impact as a brilliant anthropologist who tried to understand families and the human life cycle in a time when there were few women in her field, let alone of such brilliance and international repute. The words in this quote have animated social and environmental activists for more than two generations because at some level they are authentic. But how true are they? Do you believe Mead or Nickleby? That will be the nub of our class today.”

“I’ll roll with Margaret,” asserted Nick.

“I would have expected no less,” replied Stefan. “Alright, with these quotes in mind, let’s open with some conversation about the protest on campus a couple of days ago. What motivated it? Who are the small group of thoughtful committed citizens involved here? Is there a chance they may change the world? I am interested in whether you are persuaded that such resistance movements have worth, whether they could alter the progression of history in this region or beyond, and whether they have anything to do with panarchy.”

“Stefan, you may be aware that some in this room were there,” Sean said. “Perhaps they prefer anonymity.”

“Alright, let’s keep the conversation abstract.”

“Okay, good,” Nick jumped in. “The small group of hopefully thoughtful and committed students emerged from the combination of two student organizations focused on the post-carbon world and climate change. They took action on the day the university’s energy plan was released.”

“To which they objected?” Stefan asked.

“Damn straight,” replied Nick.

“Why?”

Sean raised his hand. Stefan nodded his way. “Well, I attended the energy plan press conference,” Sean said calmly. “GUO’s stepwise progression toward green sources goes across a bridge of, first, for up to five years, coal, then natural gas for about two decades.” He paused, studying his clasped hands. He looked up straight at Stefan. “Now, can you believe this, Stefan? When I asked the president whether this scenario would be fueled by natural gas from under Blackwood Forest, his handler cut me off. So, what are we students supposed to think? It’s obvious to us that southern Ohio is poised to become a sacrifice zone, including this pristine forest, to supply GUO with gas. What we activists want is for the university to flip to green energy now and to leave the shale oil and gas in the ground where it will never add to the atmospheric load of greenhouse gases.”

“Is that feasible?” Stefan asked.

“Yes,” cut in Katherine, perhaps too ardently. “It is exactly what Ohio’s flagship university is proposing.”

“And what of the nature of the protest on campus? Was it a productive way of making your points? Could it alter the progression of panarchy?”

Nick was back. “I cannot speak for the others but if the purpose of the rally was to raise awareness of the connection between the energy plan and Blackwood Forest’s future, I believe it achieved its purpose. More than a hundred protestors participated and thousands looked at videos online and on television.”

“What about panarchy?” asked Stefan.

“Whether activists can stall panarchy’s dictates is another question. I am not sure about that,” Nick admitted. “Yet, I still do want to hang with Mead’s optimism. I mean, our big brains ought to be capable of pulling us back from Late-K. Right?”

Em, Sean, and Katherine uttered agreement. The rest of us looked on expectantly as if our participation in the discussion would be next. I myself was skeptical about stemming panarchy’s relentless tide.

“Equivocating,” observed Stefan whose eyes kept drifting toward the open door. “Excuse me a moment,” he said as he walked out of the room. Soon Stefan and a short, leather-skinned, bearded man came into the room. This was my first look at a man I would come to know and still do find awesome. To me, the nineteen-year-old, he looked like he could be seventy. He walked with a curiously swaying gait. His bleary eyes hinted of stone. He was dressed in worn canvas overalls, an olive camouflage jacket, scuffed boots, a black beret. A long gray pony tail hung half-way down his back. He gazed at us nervously, forced a smile that revealed a missing tooth. Stefan drew up two chairs and sat at the front of the room with his guest.

“Okay guys, this is Rutherford Bosworth Hays. He is a veteran of the American war in Vietnam. Following two tours in Vietnam, he became a nationally famous anti-war activist. For the past thirty years, he has been farming in Grieg County, south of here.”

The man mumbled, “Shit, I’m only thirty-nine. Musta started digging the ground as a toddler.”

A few laughed cautiously. I wanted to giggle more.

Stefan motored on. “Yeah, that figures. Anyway, for a long time, Mr. Hays has made his life in southern Ohio as a farmer. I met him at the Farmers Market and I am grateful he agreed to join us. He asks us to refer to him as ‘Boss’.”

Some of my classmates who seemed reticent in the earlier discussion sprung to life as Boss recounted his experience in Vietnam and the antiwar movement that forced the U.S. to pull out of the war. José asked whether this level of activism could possibly happen again since there’s no longer a draft in the U.S. Julianna wanted to know if Boss felt as impassioned about current issues as he had in his antiwar days. Lucia, the Mexican American, hinting at her burning issue, asked whether he believed individuals in America today could possibly take on powerful institutions like the U.S. Immigration Services and the Border Patrol. Melissa, our gallant older single mom, wondered what Boss would advise student activists to do about the current threats to Blackwood Forest. Astrid asked whether he thought we could save the forest.

Boss answered these questions with deliberation, adding salty commentary that connected his era with ours.

In speaking about the war, the way he told it was, “Okay, this was the war of yer grandparents’ time, right? Let’s not demean any of yer grandfathers who may have gone to war, those of you who are Americans, but let’s also face facts and call that war a defeat. And I would add,” he said with deadly calm, “and pardon my language here, without the millions of students on the streets and on college campuses, without John Kerry and other vets protesting, there was no fucking way the tide would have turned and the decision made to pull out in 1975. And, believe me, resisting this war was almost as dangerous as dodging friendly fire in the mountains of 'Nam. The FBI wanted my ass and they made that perfectly clear several times. I spent some nights in the slam. This was after I nearly lost my life in the jungle for this freaking police state.”

“What was yer other question?”

José reminded him. “Could a war protest with millions and millions on the streets happen these days?”

“Not likely,” Boss replied. “First, wars these days are different with fewer boots on the ground. Also, there’s wars out there most of us haven’t got a clue about. We’ve got at least three like that going now — in Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan. Then, as you say, what’s yer name? Ah, José. No draft, as you said, no self-interest among testosterone-poisoned young bucks like yourself. Let me tell ya, going to war was a frightening thing for us and rightly so. It took one gawdawful toll: more than 50,000 of my generation died fighting a fucking futile war. Sorry, again. My woman’s always harping on my foul language. Can’t help myself. Grew up on a pig farm north of Delaware, Ohio. Pigs usually don’t wince at cuss words. Not like my woman. By the way, my home was just a few miles from the place where our nineteenth president grew up. Rutherford B. Hays. Not remotely related. We were the white trash Hayses. But my parents admired the man and named me after him, somewhat.”

“Wahl, back to you, José. War is hell. I experienced war not once, but twice, as Stefan mentioned, and it busted my butt for life. Look, since I got back, I’ve not seen one child killed by gunfire. That’s good, right? But every time I’m with a child, I fear for his life and like a madman I begin to conduct surveillance of the perimeter lookin' fur a nest of snipers. Shit!”

Boss stood up abruptly and stretched his five-five frame, his head juddering nervously. He returned to his seat and paused. He blinked and shrugged and said so softly you almost had to read his lips. “I have the blood of kids on my hands.” As he said this, he opened his ill-proportioned gnarly hands and wiped an errant drop of salt water from his left eye. Without warning, at the top of his lungs, he screamed, “Killing children! What greater atrocity can you think of?”

The class acted as though someone had machine-gunned the room. Shock waves from Boss’ lamentation reverberated — a searing, flesh eating eternity. I looked over to see Boss’ hands trembling. José was dumfounded. Stefan’s face turned grim; he was speechless. After a few more moments of breathless silence, Boss regained composure and without apology sat down and resumed his responses to questions.

When asked about his current passions, he said, “Okay, my friend — was it Julie?”

“Julianna,” she corrected.

“Yep, Julianna, I do. It’s savin' the planet. Yeah, sweetheart, by all means, my cause now is Mother Earth.”

When Astrid asked what kind of things Boss had done for the environment in southern Ohio, he replied, “Well, darlin', the details … well, prob'ly I can’t talk about 'em here. Let’s just say, I and some like-minded folks have, from time to time, pulled off a few rural beautification projects. Mostly at night. Let’s just leave it at that.”

Astrid’s eyes lit up.

Julianna seemed perplexed. She offered a tepid, “Wow,” and added, “My generation’s activism, like on Wall Street, was right out there in the obviousphere. Maybe we’re scared of the dark.”

When Boss responded to Lucia’s question about bigger institutions like the Border Patrol, shaking his head, he said, “Confronting the gum'ment is a damn sight riskier now than in the seventies, my dear. The NSA snoops on all of us; FBI's behind every bush; surveillance cameras everywhere. But darlin', listen here! Hispanics on the streets scare the bejesus out o' ol' white men in politics because they deeply threaten their power. Some poet once wrote that ‘habit rules the unreflecting herd’. Lemme tell you, those ol' white guys have gotten into some bad habits they will one day regret. Señoritas and señora will have the last laugh.”

Lucia looked unconvinced and seemed to repress a thought. Stefan agreed with Boss. He understood the demographics. He said he could envision a country in the mid-twenty-first century where whites would be the minority. (After class, Stefan told me that when that demographic shift happened, he would be sixty-something, “if he made it that far.” Why, I wondered, the qualifier.)

Melissa revealed that her father was a Vietnam vet and that he had lived with terrible memories and nightmares, with chronic depression. Boss lowered his jittery head. He looked up with a sadness that reached across the decades to a time when thousands of body bags arrived on our shores.

He said, “I grieve for yer dad, Melissa, and for his whole family. Is he still with us?”

“No,” she starkly replied and said no more. My heart skipped beats.

In response to Melissa’s and Astrid’s questions about Blackwood, Boss uttered this injunction: “Deploy whatever means are at your disposal to save that beautiful forest. You are not likely to have another chance; I guarantee you that.”

Em, Katherine, Nick, and Sean, all madly taking notes, stopped to exchange glances, but they remained curiously silent. Like the rest of us, they had been sitting on the edge of their seats, charges of electricity coursing through their veins.

As for Stefan, outwardly he was somber. He told me that images of dying Vietnamese children had seared the backs of his eyelids. Deeper down, he said he felt inordinate gratitude for Boss’ homespun candor and grave retrospection. Boss had brought the daunting experience of an historic protest generation to us, a feat Stefan alone, even with his history of pacifism, could never have done.

When it was time for break, Rutherford Bosworth Hays briefly mingled among us, weaving his way toward Stefan, as if walking through a stand of tall oaks. He thanked Stefan for the invitation. They shook hands and Boss made for the door, saying, “I’d best get back into the hills. Too much time in these hallowed halls might rub offen me and who knows what awful things might happen next.”

We had not resolved the question of agency.

19

Truman Tulkinghorn dialed Jasper Morse’s number for the sixth time in three days. It went immediately to the same voice mail message he had been receiving all weekend. He killed the call. No use leaving the same message again and again. The thing was, he had cornered Morse and Morse knew it. The old buzzard was delaying. His only way out was to accede to Tulkinghorn’s demands as soon as possible. Then everyone could get back to their lives. After the state issued its permits for drilling, which, thanks to the faithful Katavanakis, Tulkinghorn knew was imminent, Morse could gobble his oil and gas, the president would have his energy plan, and he himself, would have secured a permanent place in the pantheon of Gilligan scholar-leaders. Except for the student unrest, all the loose ends would be tidied up. Like gnats in a Dakota spring, those whippersnappers had been nipping him at each energy forum. He needed to speak to the provost about shutting them down. Tulkinghorn went off to lunch forgetting his phone. When he returned, Morse had left a voice mail message.

A few minutes later, when Greta entered Dr. T.’s office, she came upon a scene that proved once again that you can never fully fathom life. Even in the goosey Gilligan world where academic politics reached levels of vitriol and absurdity far out-weighing the stakes, let alone reason. In two decades of running the show in CNRD, Greta believed she had seen everything. But here, crazy beyond reason, she found her ill-humored boss leaning back in his office chair, his stumpy legs stretched across to the desk top and shoeless feet crossed atop the blotter. His eyes were closed and his face, like warm putty, had serenely relaxed downward subsuming both chin and jaw. For just a moment Greta saw not a face but a rippled series of chins. He opened his eyes and to her great surprise beamed the broadest smile she’d ever seen. “Greta,” he exclaimed, using her given name, which usually meant trouble, “this is one helluva a beautiful afternoon, isn’t it?”

20

President Redlaw told me that he didn’t really detest meetings with students. In some ways, he said, they offered comic relief from the incessant pressures of his job, the endless streams of meetings and emails and phone calls, the humdrum chores of running the place. In fact, as a former university professor with many hours in the classroom and lab, he claimed that he spent more time thinking about students than the average president. His student-centered mindset had, over the years, even become imbued with a measure of sympathy. After all, life for us after university was destined to be far more daunting than it had been for him and he had to acknowledge, of course, that without us, nobody at Gilligan, including himself, would have the privilege of living this life of the mind. Now, in preparing for the meeting with us pesky neo-environmental resisters, he did not expect happy outcomes. And that thought had more than tarnished his day.

Even as he checked his notes on recent conversations with Governor Winthrop and his deputy, Marcus Katavanakis, he was haunted by the implacable will of Jasper Morse who had failed to return his calls and seemed also to be avoiding the governor. Redlaw’s proposal — a trade of Northeastern campus drilling rights for those of Blackwood — despite the intervention of the governor’s office, seemed to have fallen on deaf ears. Nor had Provost Flintwinch’s conversation with Truman Tulkinghorn earlier in the day revealed anything new. All this uncertainty skewered the president on the horns of a dilemma: to prevaricate with us or to stick to the truth and risk further demonstrations?

Emerging from the Carsey Student Union, we quick-stepped up the hill toward Centennial Quad and Stiggins Hall. Dressed in business casual clothing, we looked like an off-campus delegation. Lara led the first group, which included Katherine, Nick, Em, Sean, Jason, and Weston, who, fully in character, wore a blazer and tie. Astrid, José, and I marched with the second group that also included Frank, Julianna, and Zachary. Over a tumultuous lunch, we had formulated a set of questions for the President. We would endeavor to put these forward, one by one, and to listen and be respectful. No one wanted or foresaw a donnybrook. Nick reminded us that we were acting as representatives of our respective groups, not as individuals. Today was for information gathering, and we were determined to let Redlaw know that if drilling in Blackwood is going to happen, campus demonstrations will be amped upward.

Sean led us to the same room where the press conference had been held. It had been rearranged around a large conference table. We arrayed ourselves at the table and my classmates spoke in hushed tones. I looked around the room, intrigued by its clean federal lines, no rococo trim, just simple wainscoting, deeply-set multi-paned windows, soft eggshell tones, and, most of all, the portraits of all the university’s presidents, beginning with Denis Pádraig Gilligan and Thaddeus Stiggins right through to Mitchell Horvath Redlaw. I leaned toward Lara, nodding toward his portrait, “Have you ever met President Redlaw?

“Yes. He’s a tall, handsome, gravelly-voiced guy. Beware of his silvery tongue.”

Just as President Redlaw and Media Relations Director Beth Samuels passed through the outer office of the presidential suite on their way to the meeting, Brittany, a work-study student, flagged them down. “Sir, I have a call for you. It’s the governor’s office.”

They one-eightied back to his office. He picked up the phone. “Yes, hello Hank. You caught me on my way to face the music. Oh no, but just as daunting: a group of students representing organizations who led the protests on campus last week. Yeah, right!”

Beth studied Redlaw’s face intently, trying to imagine how this call might impact the meeting. Hank, she knew, was Henry S. Carton, Ohio’s Attorney General. She had prepared the president on the premise that Blackwood would be permitted and that the proposed trade-off was no longer in play. Had something significant changed? She could not read Redlaw’s facial expressions. His responses and the questions he asked did not clarify things. Redlaw concluded the call with several “uhuh's” and “Okay, Hank, please thank the governor for the update. We’ll go from there.” He placed the phone daintily into the handset. “Well, Beth, it’s worse than we thought.”

When the president and Beth Samuels entered the room, we all rose as if the lord of the manor had come upon his servants in the kitchen. “Hello everyone, please sit. Sit. I’m just a first-generation Gilligan jock from Euclid, Ohio — a guy who’s not now nor ever has been a member of any royal family. My dad was a plumber.” His self-deprecating chuckles were genuine enough to break the ice, long one of his most successful ploys. “For those who haven’t met her, this is our Director of Media Relations, Sabetha Samuels. Like me she also did hoops, not here but at Georgetown, right Beth?”

Beth nodded. “Yes, I’m a DC girl. Born and raised there. After Georgetown, I went to the University of Michigan for my graduate degrees.” She flashed a cheery smile around the table. “Well, hello everyone and thanks for taking some time from what I’m sure are busy days during midterms. I don’t think I’ve met any of you, oh, except for that young man right over there.” “You’re Sean, right?”

“That’s right. I can’t believe you remember me.”

“It’s my job,” she explained, her smile exposing one spectacular set of teeth. “So, starting with Sean,” she continued, “could you each say just a bit about yourselves so that the president can get a sense of what brought you to this moment — your year here, your hometown, your major. If you are grad students, maybe you could also tell us where you got your first degree.”

As we introduced ourselves, the president had a follow up question for each of us. The charm offensive continued unabated all the way to Em. The president’s eyes brightened when he discovered a Senegalese citizen in the room. He told her, “I met your president last year in Dakar. I was part of the U.S. Delegation accompanying our president. I got exactly one minute to tell him my name and my university,” he admitted, laughing at the memory. “I really enjoyed my few days in your hometown. So, it is just wonderful to know that we have some Senegalese students here.”

“Thank you,” replied Em. “But I’m afraid there are not ‘some Senegalese’, just one: me, Em!”

Following Em, the mood shifted. Beth laid out ground rules and said the president would have to leave in about an hour. She said that she and the president wanted to hear as many voices as possible and hoped they would be able to respond to all their questions.

“Thanks Beth,” the president said. His voice had dropped an octave. I sensed from the man’s demeanor that the news would not be good. “First, I want to say that I know that some of you participated in the rally last week. I applaud your level of engagement, that it was passionate and well-focused. I am also thankful that the demonstration was peaceful. Second, I assume that you have read the university’s energy plan, so that we won’t have to take time to go through it.” He paused.

We nodded. My eyes were once again drawn to one of the portraits directly across from me, that of Ebenezer Quilp, president from 1870 to 1875: a plump diminutive figure with grotesque bushy sideburns, no doubt a tight ass in his day. I wondered what Ebenezer would think of this meeting. The radiators in the room clanked. The stale ambiance of antiquity seemed to muzzle clear thought. I tried to shake it off. I turned my attention back to the president, sotto voce, speaking words perhaps not meant to leave the room.

“I’ve just had a call from the governor’s office. It was the reason we were a few minutes late. I’m afraid I have news that will not be pleasing to you. Without embellishment, I will just say that Morse Valley Energy has informed us that, unless we purchase their rights, they will proceed to drill for oil and gas as soon as the Ohio Division of Mineral Resources Management permits them to do so. The amount they demand is extraordinary and far beyond our means. The governor’s office confirmed that there is no way, politically, legally or financially, that the state could subsidize such a purchase. They further disclosed that the permits for horizontal drilling for shale oil and gas, shallow wells for withdrawing water, and deep injection wells will all be issued.”

All but Zachary, Astrid, Nick, and perhaps Katherine, had come to this meeting anticipating better news. Most of us believed the rally would, at the very least, have stalled Morse and forced him back into the courts where the university would try to defend their right to the stewardship of Blackwood. The stark reality of political, legal, and financial constraints foisted upon the university stupefied our collective consciousness. Nobody seemed able to call up words of incredulity, anger, and outrage. The room fell silent.

Finally, Lara found her voice. “Mr. President, I’m the one with perhaps the most experience and vested interest in Blackwood Forest. I do have my warbler data and I will, I promise, complete my PhD. But I sit here absolutely floored by this news. I have read that the university has previously been unsuccessful in taking legal action or in convincing Mr. Morse that the ecologic and symbolic significance of this forest and the university’s role as its legal steward far outweigh the minerals beneath it. Apart from the ecological immorality of fracking and the withdrawal of water and disposal of wastes so close to Blackwater, there is climate change and the university’s pledge to transform itself into a carbon neutral campus. This decision goes counter to that pledge. How can this be happening? What kind of a man is this Mr. Morse, an alumnus of this university, that he is willing to abandon reason and responsibility? What kind of message is Gilligan University of Ohio sending by failing to stop this madness?” Lara let out a long breath and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “I’m sorry sir. I weep for the warblers and all life in that forest.”

The president searched Lara’s misty eyes and responded in a touching somber way. “Lara, your points and questions come straight from your heart and they move me deeply. I wish the marketplace valued beauty and ecological integrity and, in fact, ecological services, as keenly as it does oil and natural gas. In a more perfect world, maybe it would. But now, in this imperfect world, we live and die for the fossil fuels that have made our civilization and comfortable lives possible. And that’s why the calculus of Morse Valley Energy is to liquidate their legal assets beneath our forest. We are partly to blame. All of us. We create the demand that is the force behind such a decision. I am as frustrated and heartsick as you are but we have not been able to find ways to delay or alter these impending decisions. As you know, I am dead serious about achieving our carbon goals by the 2030s. In the meantime, it appears we’ll have to take some hits.”

“How much did Morse Valley Energy demand for the rights?” asked Weston.

“Well, it was two hundred million dollars,” the president replied.

Weston whistled. “Our endowment is more than twice that, right?”

“It is. I believe it’s valued at about 585 million now.”

“What about bargaining with some of those chips?”

“In theory, it might seem a way to go,” said the president. “But in reality, most of the endowment is tied up in long term investments, life insurance policies, commitments to specific needs like scholarships and academic programs, faculty awards and research, and the like. The liquid part of it is probably in the low tens of millions … maybe twenty to thirty.”

“Would the Gilligan Board of Trustees favor leveraging some of those funds toward the long term purchase of those rights?”

“I rather doubt it. If we did not plan to exploit the oil and gas, they would not see it as an investment.”

Weston said, “Hmm, that’s tragic. Nobody here thinking long term.”

“I would disagree, Weston” the president countered in a kindly way. “Our endowment has a thirty-to-fifty year investment window. Again, it is a matter of the market place seriously undervaluing other natural assets.”

“Changing the subject, I wonder whether a judge would issue an injunction?” Nick asked.

“To answer, let me first sketch out some background. As you may know, in the 1990s, using a provision of a particular law relating to mining called ‘lands unsuitable for mining’, the university went to the courts to establish a perimeter around Blackwood Forest beyond which no coal mining would be allowed, in essence, to prevent mining around and beneath the forest. Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources agreed with us and sanctified the buffer zone. Morse Valley Energy, which even then owned almost all the land around Blackwood Forest, challenged the ruling and failed.

“However, they subsequently mined to the very edge of the buffer zone and in succeeding years, with different parties in the governor’s office and legislature, different leadership in ODNR, different judges in the courts, Morse Valley Energy began to chip away at the ‘lands unsuitable’ decision. First, they succeeded in having the buffer zone reduced, and then, in 2007, they gained the court’s permission to explore for oil and gas beneath the forest. We challenged that ruling but, by 2010, we had run out of appeals in Ohio courts. An attempt to argue the case before the United States Supreme Court failed in 2012. That brings us to the present moment. So, the answer to your question, Nick, sorry to say, is no.”

Nick looked back at the president. “American federalism baffles me.”

“Me too,” Redlaw agreed. “In this case, some of the federal statutes are administered by the state, leaving ample space for chicanery.”

Nick locked into the president’s eyes. “I agree with Lara. This is madness”.

The president’s response was level and cold. “In some senses, yes, it is. But the anarchic alternative is far worse.”

“Nobody here is speaking of anarchy,” Nick, his hackles on edge, shot back.

Zach raised his hand.

“Yes, Zachary,” the president said.

“So, okay, the legal pathways are blocked. End of story? No, I respectfully submit, sir.”

Nick cracked a brief smile. His mini-lecture on showing respect had somehow rubbed off.

Zach continued. “I would like to argue that to be totally stumped by legal obstacles strikes me as the height of flabby bourgeois complacency, an alibi for relinquishing power. In all due respect, President Redlaw,” Zach layered it on, “I would suggest that there’s no more urgent task than to call in the cavalry. By that I mean build a broad-based campaign among alumni, students, faculty, the environmental community in Ohio and nationally, even our political representatives, though I’m doubtful that Ohio politicians have the will to take on this issue. Make this a national campaign that exposes Morse Valley Energy in the worst of lights, and it becomes a PR winner for us, rebranding Gilligan as the greenest university in Ohio. If this fails, then I believe we can expect the worst.”

Redlaw studied Zach with a mix of caprice and fascination. He told me the thoughts going through his mind at the time were: Isn’t this bourgeois complacency business quaint? Where did he get that? But he calmly asked, “Zachary, where did you go to high school?”

“Sandusky, sir. Saint Michaels Boys Prep.”

“Ah,” said Redlaw. “I wish I had had your critical turn of mind when I was your age. Don’t you ever let it lapse. About the only things on my mind back then were hitting shots on the court, drinking shots in the bars, and finding the girls and the pizza.”

“These are a few of my favorite things!” Zach sang, his clarion baritone, belting out the line from The Sound of Music.

Everyone, including the president, spontaneously broke out in laughter and applause. Astrid whispered to me, “The bastard steals the show. Again!”

Zach, straight faced throughout and still staring at the president, pressed forward. “Seriously, sir, what do you think about such a campaign?”

“Well, Zachary,” he began, again calling on the gravelly voice, “I think it makes a great deal of sense, providing we had enough time. Unfortunately, in this case, I fear our string has run out. A campaign like this should have been waged and sustained back in the 1990s before Morse and the economics of coal and the fracking revolution got us backed into a corner. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be much in favor of the coalition you describe if we were not in the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour. When you’re, say, fifteen points down in a basketball game with twenty seconds on the clock, no miracle of any sort can win you the game. As for your prediction of what? Apocalypse? I must say I’m more sanguine.”

As the meeting wound down and all the above-board options had been explored, some with white-hot intensity, Katherine spoke. “Mr. President, we know our time with you has more than expired. On behalf of our two organizations, I want to thank you for your openness and the extra time you’ve given us. From our side, I cannot say what will happen next; in all likelihood, I would expect more rallies, more resistance. All I can promise now is that we will present to our membership the facts as you have explained them to us and we shall continue to advocate peace and non-violence. Finally, I would ask for permission to call you or someone on your staff in the next day or two. In the interest of keeping lines of communication open, I would want you to know of our organizations’ reactions to the news and of any further developments.”

“I would greatly appreciate that,” he replied. He wrote a number on the back of his business card. “Here’s a number, Katherine. You can call it any hour of the day or night. Thank you all,” he said as he rose. With Beth Samuels in the lead, he left the room.

We all stood. I gazed again at the Quilp portrait. I winked and whispered, “Come to our aid, oh great Ebenezer,” then thought to myself: Bonkersville.