Why the Dean Is Dead: #5 in the Briarpatch College Series

Prologue

The winter of 1996-97, months of discontent nationally and locally, finally ended with the arrival of the traditional glorious but short Briarpatch College spring. Though the spring would move too quickly into summer, it was still a moment for renewing hope in life, in the future of the college, and maybe even in Donahue’s courtship of Mary C, perhaps even in the prospect of marrying Sociology and Spanish in ways other than alphabetical order.

Awkwardly, the Spanish instructor of Donahue’s dreams, Mary, had no interest in marriage. However, this morning she was happy—first, because she was able to resume jogging! That always gave her an emotional high; second, because she had just opened an enthusiastic letter from the editor of The Journal of Obscure Cultures, who had written that her proposed article would be a sensation—nobody had ever studied crime among the Andean tribes she had gotten to know so well. Her article would be widely quoted, he was sure, and he would print it as soon as he heard from peer referees and ‘interested parties.’ So, send it in!

She broke into first a wide grin, then a frown. This article would earn her tenure…as soon as she wrote it.

President Flo Boater pretended to be ecstatic, too, when Mary showed her the letter. She smiled at the phrase interested parties. This had to do with Dean Stanley Wooda’s communication with the editor, in which he’d asked him not to publish the article until a local investigation into Mary’s alleged plagiarism had been resolved; of course, Flo Boater had no idea that the article was not yet written, but neither did the editor. Flo believed that once Mary was gone, for having failed to produce the scholarly article required for tenure, Donahue would disappear, too. That damned detective, she thought, should never have been hired. It was another mistake, she told herself, made by the incompetent long-serving president of Briarpatch College—her late husband—and the real administrator, the equally deceased Academic Dean, C. Wooda, her lover for longer than she wanted to remember. She wished she could say, They thought they had been so clever, attracting a real Ph.D. for the Sociology Department, after years of hiring ABDs who usually left at the end of the academic year—or earlier. But she could not allow the trustees to think that Floyd Boater made bad judgments—one of them might quip that he made a poor choice for a spouse, too; and then the fat really would be in the fire. With that thought, she glanced down at her body. Was she putting on weight? She then shook her head—concentrate on business! Mary was sitting here in front of her, and Donahue would not leave unless she did, so all Flo Boater could do was allow herself a smile about almost having explained that that ABD meant all but dissertation. With another shake of her head, she reflected on how she had become so accustomed to explaining academic jargon, that she almost explained it to Mary. She thanked Mary, sent her on her way, and leaned back to reflect on the college’s problems.

The president was also happy that Flechadoro, their troublesome Native American freshman, had disappeared. That is, he had not returned for the spring semester. Or so Dean Stanley Wooda had reported. Did you just find out? She had asked.

Well, he had responded. Fletch operates on Indian time, so coming back late was what he usually did. The rest, well, the Dean of Students office is running behind, too. Otherwise, the young dean had been in an especially florid mood concerning their former student, One of the last members of the last Indian tribe to live in the Middleville area—driven from these unpromising lands by other barbarians…. He had paused for a moment to smile before continuing, Of course, they had themselves chased away other nameless nomadic tribes, poor saps who had also visited our berry patches every summer. Not much gained, not much lost.

Flo Boater had smiled then, too, reflecting on how confident Stanley was now, ever since they had become—what did the Greeks call it, one in body and mind. Well, not in mind; and maybe it was not a Greek saying—didn’t they like boys? She remembered that from having helped her husband write his dissertation on the Trojan War; and she found herself smirking at the way classicists had laughed at the title, The Leadership Style of Agamemnon. She asked herself, helped? Ha. And Floyd sure didn’t help write mine! Stanley may be dean, but in so many ways he is a boy—he doesn’t even have his bachelor’s degree yet. Her lips pursed as a picture of his youthful vigor came to mind. But she suppressed that vision long enough to respond, more formally than she intended, "Flechadoro was ready to file a lawsuit, to claim the college land for ‘its rightful owners,’ that is to himself and the fourteen other members of his tribe." She recalled that when the tribe had moved west, a few members had stayed behind in Middleville; one had leased his portion of the tribal land to the college for 99 years, then immediately drunk himself to death with the proceeds. A few others had ‘married white’ and their origins had been forgotten until Flechadoro had made local residents think there might be money in having Indian ancestry.

Flo Boater knew it would not be easy for a defunct Indian tribe to reclaim the college lands, though ‘Dean Cross’ (as everyone called this slightly balding low-level administrator whose title partially compensated for his low salary and thick glasses) was reputedly earning some nice fees for researching family trees of local citizens. She almost laughed to think that Cross’s wife, who did most of the interviews, was waiting for some of those trees to turn into new furniture, or a dishwasher—paying off college loans and other debts had priority. So far Cross had found no Indian ancestors, but local citizens were happy to think that they were descended from proud warriors and noble princesses. She remembered the dean reporting that Cross had found in the census two female Native Americans whose occupation was called sporting. Whoever said that folks back then didn’t have a sense of humor? Middleville was a small community, so, fortunately for him, the census officials knew the real names of the women who’d given a nom de’amor, and had written them down, too, in tiny letters in the box provided for recording each person’s means of earning a living. No children listed, and if there had been children, who would have been the fathers?

For his part, Cross Threshold was ready to tell his customers that those women, once he could establish a family connection, were independent entrepreneurs—somewhat better paid than the seamstresses and laundrywomen who either supplemented their husbands’ meager salaries or who were able to just get by in a community where almost everyone was poor. But he would not be specific about what they did and he would not share this information too soon. After a suitable period of waiting, hopeful costumers might be willing to pay an even higher fee for even less information than he could have provided at that moment. He could then share the women’s first names and let the great-aunts fight it out over how those names might fit into their family ancestries.

There was another secret he was not ready to share—that nobody was likely to get rich. First of all, Briarpatch College had no money. Of course, that was hardly a secret—local gossipers had speculated for years as to how long the college could remain open—but many of those same people believed that the college was much richer than it claimed to be. Second, Flechadoro firmly believed that common property could not be sold or leased; although he had allowed townsfolk to believe what they wanted, he had no intent of extending tribal membership to the descendants of sisters who had turned their backs on their origins, much less those who had made a living on their backs. In any case, the two individuals in that latter category had gone to the state reformatory for women in Zenith, then disappeared. (Cross’s request for information even about the date of their release was denied—privacy, and he was not a relative.) In fact, Dean Cross shared his findings reluctantly—knowledge shared, he had learned, was an advantage lost.

Dean Wooda, who normally took Cross’s information, passed on to Flora Boater only what he thought she needed to hear. Still, he suggested that it hardly made sense to discourage ‘Fletch’ from promising to share any new-found wealth with qualified local citizens, since there were rules designed to prevent Americans from joining tribes and then claiming the annual subsidy the federal government gave to tribal members. Moreover, no lawsuit, even if successful, was likely to result in a large financial settlement, there being no known oil or other untapped resource under the college buildings. And if there is a lawsuit, he told the president, a show of candor might influence a juror or two in our favor. And, we get some gifts out of this—you know, once they take an interest in the college… Still, he was uneasy. Flechadoro was so confident. He could be in possession of something. Of what, he couldn’t say, though normally Stanley Wooda had an excellent imagination. Girls knew that he could see right through them—or through their blouses, at least. But what type of ‘new-found wealth’ had Flechadoro been talking about? Did he mean the college land, parts of Middleville, or the entire county? Did he imagine his tribe claiming the campus, then selling it back?

President Boater decided not to ask. Good thing, she said, that you arranged to send our Noble Redman to Latin America, to teach Native American folklore to people who had their own folklore. Following that witticism was a smile and a blown kiss. The smile meant, Good luck on getting any money out of our bankrupt institution! Foreclosure was unlikely, since no banker wanted to try to resell empty buildings in the middle of a declining community in a backward corner of the state.

Dean Wooda misunderstood her gesture. She was a woman, and in his view of the world women, especially middle-aged widows, wanted only one thing—sex. They might pussy-foot around it at first, but later they couldn’t get enough. He smiled back, indicating that he was ready to take care of her needs. It was a pose, but he had risen swiftly from a senior majoring in off-campus studies to Academic Dean by letting people imagine that their wishes were his thoughts.

He had similarly misunderstood what had followed his giving Flechadoro ‘traveling money.’ He knew that ‘Golden Arrow’ had used the cash for a farewell celebration with JJ and Smitty, the two most worthless students ever to attend Briarpatch College, and—given the many shiftless ‘Pricks’ who had matriculated in the past—that was a notable achievement. He knew that after the grant agency learned that Flechadoro had pled guilty to a misdemeanor offense—trashing a bar—they’d withdrawn the offer. No one knew who had informed the agency, but suspicion centered on the mother of the chair of the history department, a malicious gossip who probably thought this would help clear the path for her son to become dean. It had all happened so fast that Flechadoro was hardly sober before he got the bad news. He disappeared before Flo Boater could appeal the decision—as she would have, since once he thought it over, he might just have come back to finish his degree. That much the dean knew. But he did not know that Flechadoro had left behind a note to ‘Flo Boater,’ offering to sell a valuable folder. He had put the note into a recycled envelope, tucked the cover inside, then slipped it under her door. Miss Efficiency, the president’s secretary, had put it in the president’s IN box without reading it. She was not to look at anything private, and orders were orders.

Flora Boater could not have shared this information with Stanley, not even during pillow talk, because Dean Cross, who sorted through Flo Boater’s correspondence to save her time and boredom, had not forwarded the note to her. He had told himself that she would have thrown it, unread, in the trash. He smirked at this. Originally she had assigned him to decide which letters should be sent to her unopened, then to look through those of doubtful interest to see if they merited her attention; he did this so well that she assigned him to also sort all notes from faculty, students, and other ‘unimportant’ people. This became easier after she had informed everyone to address correspondence using her formal title—President Boater—and to put a return address in the upper left-hand corner of new envelopes. He was to only read the unsealed notes; the rest he was to separate according to the importance of the sender into approved and unapproved piles, then read the latter ones. And he was then to forward the approved notes to her along with a carefully limited selection of the remaining faculty memos and student requests. It was not long before he noticed the approved messages in the trash, apparently unread, along with all the notes he had thought interesting, some not having been taken out of their envelopes or folders. She did not want him to say anything about the contents or potential contents of her correspondence—she was too busy for oral reports, and she did not like anyone to question her judgment.

Consequently, Cross Threshold had put this handwritten note in a bulging file folder entitled ‘Interesting Stuff’ that he kept in his isolated office on the ground floor of the oversized administration building, the former courthouse that every day showed more need for renovation. Technically, he was deep inside the Student Services Empire, but the staff there ignored him and he ignored them. It all fit together, he thought—the outmoded buildings, the perennial college financial crisis, the president’s carelessness, the administrative chaos, and his own filing system. If someday Flo Boater wanted to know about this matter, he would be able to dig the note out. Meanwhile, Flechadoro was simply one more former nuisance, a young fellow with fantastic dreams and strange habits who was now gone. The note, he could say, was obviously a reflection of an overactive imagination, probably written while suffering a hangover.

Flo Boater, proving once again that ignorance is bliss, assumed that with Flechadoro having left, the campus was safe from legal confiscation. If he tried to come back, well, she had told the Registrar not to readmit him until the criminal damage charge was resolved, which she thought she could delay because the judge was a loyal alum. That left her free to dream about improving the college’s rating in the US News and World Report—out of the lowest percentile, or at least off its very bottom. She wondered if changing the name of the college to BC would have any impact. Not officially, of course, because that was too complicated—state charter and such—but in all public documents and announcements. No, that would work only if the rating system would replace Briarpatch with BC. Probably not. This year Briarpatch had the best football team in its history—its won-loss record over the past century had roughly paralleled its academic standing—but the team wasn’t ready to play Boston College. It had barely beaten Arcadia. And the quarterback was on probation.

She paced her office, a glass of scotch in her hand, imagining how she would have looked if she had been a prosecutor here, with the judge and jury watching her every move, every gesture, hanging on every word. She asked rhetorically, her voice echoing around the chamber, "Would the requirement that all faculty members publish cutting-edge articles and books improve our reputation?" Probably not, she admitted to herself, and sat down at her large desk. Every college said that it encouraged scholarship. But who knew what was cutting edge and what was last year’s fad? It didn’t really matter. As long as she could use the policy to get rid of Donahue, whose articles were all aimed at, well, ordinary people, she would keep it until, how long? Well, at least until Mary’s situation became clear. If the editor of the Journal of Obscure Cultures published her submission anyway, that would be a problem. Not much danger of that, Stan had assured her, but if it happened, she could always have him say that the journal was not prestigious enough.

Hah, she laughed aloud to herself, "The Culture of Obscure Journals. We’ll soon have less of that on lists of faculty publications!" Then she thought, Perhaps that would be a good topic for a talk to other college presidents. Might wake them up; let them know that BC is looking ahead to the twenty-first century. We can’t stay stuck in 1997 forever.

She frowned at the thought that there weren’t even many professors at BC who had published in any journals, even obscure ones. With their teaching loads, how could they?

Meanwhile, over at the college library, Ms Gates was pacing down the stacks, two new books in her hands, looking for a place to set them down until she could weed out something to make room for these. Looking at one volume’s garishly illustrated cover, she frowned. As far as she was concerned, covers should be solid colors and titles kept short. But her dislike here went beyond that—Who’d waste good money on Indian history? Especially these Indians. Not even real ones like the Sioux. Just Mexicans and Andean tribes. I don’t see why Professor Donahue and Miss C even bother ordering them—their students never look at them. And the way the Library of Congress catalogs these books nowadays—some in anthropology, some in linguistics. What’s next? Science fiction? Thank God we’re still on the Dewey system; I can put them anywhere I want. Who’d notice?

After filing the two books, she stood there, hands on her hips, wondering what she was going to do with the arrowhead collections that local citizens were donating; she couldn’t imagine where to display them, but she could not ignore the late Dean Wooda’s instructions to accept them graciously. How do I catalog them? she had asked, getting only a response to find a way.

Her suggestion to put them into the upstairs storage area earned a sharp rebuke—the donors expected to see them on display: Find a way.

She suspected that C. Wooda had some fancy money-making scheme in mind when he first encouraged such gifts. Something like those South American artifacts that never came to anything? He probably wanted to impress alumni with romantic notions about the simplicity and purity of Indian life, then ask them to build a wing on the library as a museum. Ridiculous! If they knew as much about Indians as she did! She had grown up on a reservation, with parents who died poor because, well, because that was what missionaries did in those days. Anyway, she had enough work managing the library and she was sure that the present dean would never approve a budget that included a director’s salary to manage an almost non-existent collection of arrowheads and stones purported to be axe heads and scraping knives. That nice Mr. Donahue, who would certainly be put in charge, would do his best, but what did a city-bred man know about savages? Besides, he surely won’t be around long. As for a new wing, what the library needed was a wrecking ball.

Why were all these people so interested in artifacts anyway? They had been picking them up, even right on campus, for years. For a buck or two they could get any number of arrowheads at back yard sales. That phrase suddenly gave her pause, They aren’t really back yard sales. Usually, they set up in the front yard. On those days when it rained or was too hot they were ‘garage sales.’ She preferred the term ‘rummage sales,’ but that implied church basements where people could finger the clothing or even try it on without getting a hostile stare. But what bothered her most, she realized, was that she had unthinkingly used the term ‘back yard sale’ herself. Such was the power of popular culture that no individual was immune from being tricked into using inaccurate words.

Sweeping her eyes around the ever smaller reading room, pressed for space by computer-filled cubicles, she espied a desk littered with candy bar wrappers and ageing bound volumes of National Geographic open to fuzzy semi-pornographic pictures. Closing the thick volumes with a series of satisfying smacks, she swore that she’d never let that student back in her library. She expressed her outrage to a nearby library assistant, I don’t care if he does have a paper due, he could at least use real books. As soon as the assistant had fled, Miss Gates opened one volume where a mimeographed assignment sheet peeked out from where it had been used as a marker and looked at the magazine. Inventive, at least, to find anything on his topic—something on nudism—by looking through a popular magazine. She removed the sheet, carefully crumpled it before throwing it in the trash, then returned to close the volume and put it on the reshelf cart. There, she told herself, he won’t find that easily. Serves him right for being so careless. Her mood was spoiled only slightly by the thought that he might have been finished with the magazines.

She remembered that one day, not too long ago, maybe this week, a student—JJ his worthless friend had called him, as if that was supposed to mean something to her—had actually asked for similar books from one of those presses so scholarly that no one could afford to buy their publications. She had told him, You can’t expect me to process new purchases instantly, and, anyway, you have to get faculty members to request purchases. His ‘instructor’ was, she believed, some assistant dean. She didn’t mention interlibrary loan to him—that kind of thing was for people she could trust to bring the books back on time; as for purchases, no department budget was large enough for ‘that kind’ of books. As the student left, flipping her the bird as a final salute, she had thought that the real Dean Wooda would have put a stop to such annoyances. Her outrage almost became vocalized, The pip-squeak imitation Wooda we have now doesn’t do anything. He lets the JJs on campus run wild just because his folks have money. Hell, if the president knew how much I have hidden away, I could do what I want with this place. Of course, she couldn’t let Flo Boater know that—there would be no end of calls from the Development Office, no end of invitations to meet with trustees and to appear on the dais at important events, and perhaps no raise for anyone next year if she did not agree to sign her estate over to the college upon her demise. She smiled slyly. Why should I care whether some supercilious newcomer from some state university with nothing going for it beyond a football team got a raise? Moreover, no one would find her will until she was ready to reveal it, which would not be soon. She had not felt so well in years.

Chapter One

JJ and Smitty, reflecting on whether to make plans for life after graduation, were wondering if there was life after college. They were seniors, more or less, but their interest in study had followed the phases of the moon; that is, they buckled down every blue moon or so. Anyone asked to describe them would have to think, if the moon was full, they would be thin; new moons meant that the monthly parental checks allowed them to buy beer. Not tall, not short, not ‘just right’ applied to height, nor hair length—except for holidays, when the trip home required haircuts, JJ avoided both scissors and shampoo, and Smitty had been shorn only recently by his girlfriend, Ellie, when he was too stoned to notice.

Hey, Samson, Jones asked laconically, Whata think we’ll be doing next fall?

How the hell should I know? And what’s the business about Samson?

Jones laughed, I bet Ellie knows.

Smith shook his head, then for ten seconds pretended to sleep. Then he sat up and asked, "God, JJ. What will we do? Go to work? Join the army?"

The army? Jones responded, twisting a lock of his hair down to study it. Are you out of your frigging mind? He couldn’t remember when he had last washed it, or whether doing so was even important.

Donahue said that it helped him a lot. He didn’t know what to do out of high school, either.

Hell, Smitty. We’re way past high school, he said, still studying his longest locks. I can’t afford shampoo, but it doesn’t matter—no date lined up.

But, JJ, I still don’t know what I want to do. Except be with Ellie, maybe, but she’s way too smart for me. Smith would have twisted his hair down to look at it, but it was too short. Nothing works out for me.

Don’t be so realistic. Think, uh, think of what could be.

This led to a typical dormitory discussion of pipe dreams, but without their usual marijuana, until Jones repeated his suggestion that Smith apply for graduate school, Heck, use your real name. You might even get one of those scholarships for underrepresented minorities.

We tried that here, but the only way I got into Briarpatch was for my dad to make a nice donation to the dean. I don’t know what your dad did, but at least you had an ACT that was above random sampling. Besides, the only underrepresented minority I’d qualify for is ‘stupid.’

If you’d finished the test, you’d’ve done better. One out of four is correct. Didn’t you know that a blank answer is always wrong?

Well, every school I applied to turned me down, even Arcadia Junior College.

No shit? I thought junior colleges admitted everyone.

Well, Smith explained, something happened during the interview.

That was all that was said for several minutes. Finally Smith said, Graduate school is out. They are so stuffy. Long classes, some kind of thesis, twenty pages, maybe thirty.

Jones thought about that for a moment, then said, I think it’s even longer, but you can always hire some help.

Help?

Yeah. There are wives of graduate students who will do typing, organize the paper, maybe even some of the research, correct the grammar. His monologue trailed off into vague visions of what desperate women would do for money. Write an essay on post-modern philosophy even.

Smith scratched his head, I dunno. You’re still supposed to study something, aren’t you?

Jones fired back "Hey, Zenith University is trying some new stuff. Professor Stout says that with our background in the honors program, we’d be a shoo-in.

Smith thought about this for a moment before asking, Do you think he really knows who we are? I get the feeling he doesn’t recognize me.

"Don’t be so negative. If he can’t remember who you are, he won’t give you an F. Besides, we are unforgettable!"

You, maybe, Smith groused, "but I could be the only guy to ever flunk that class, and I’ve been attending! Stout had not liked his last paper, which referred to God and America favorably. How had that happened? He didn’t do it intentionally. Yeah, I’ve been going to class, at least the last week or two."

Jones shrugged, indicating that maybe failing wouldn’t be that bad. They could stay around another year. Drink some beer. Maybe get a date. (Older men were attractive. Hell, even that dweeb in biology, looks like a pimply anorexic, already half bald, but girls wait outside the science building and follow him home.) That all depended on talking their parents into one more year of full tuition—they could always threaten to go home. Nah, better move on. The girls somewhere else wouldn’t know all about them.

Smith understood this wordless communication—they had discussed it so often that he knew what Jonesy was thinking. But he worried that failing any more courses might put them both over that magic mathematical line that would allow Dean Threshold to expel them. This had once been Dean Wooda’s job, but intestinal spasms had caused him to pass off routine cases to his assistant; also, he would seem more impartial when hearing appeals—it was awkward for a dean to hear appeals of his own judgments, something that had become more frequent recently. Smith wondered aloud if his parents, and JJ’s, too, would provide them the means to bribe Dean Wooda, to make them ‘special cases?’ Or could the threat to go home be extended even to replacing the cars they had totaled in their freshman year? What was the point of getting those chemistry grades erased if they needed them to stay at Briarpatch? Smith shifted his position to face his friend, then confessed, I’m not so sure I want to graduate. Ellie is still here.

Jones screwed up his face. He didn’t have a girl. He hadn’t even had a date since, well, better not think about that. There was plenty of time for girls later. Meanwhile, there was beer. Hey, you got any scratch? He made a mental note to calculate what his grade point average would be without that chemistry C, or the other grades that may or may not have been recorded—he’d had to check his transcript, if he could get it from Ms Hogg, who was so anal about privacy that she wouldn’t even let students have one. Then he wondered what had happened to Flechadoro. That Noble Redman could figure out grades without losing track of where to put the decimals. How had his ancestors managed to lose an entire continent?

Only a few blocks away Dean Threshold was explaining to his wife the new rules for tenure, how candidates had to write an essay on how they planned to improve the retention of students in their majors. Too many students had been leaving, most between semesters. That was always a bad sign—each New Year there were too many sophomores who had earned no grade points in the fall and therefore could not return for the second semester. Freshmen, in contrast, were always given an opportunity ‘to adjust to the demands of college life.’ They wouldn’t be expelled until May, after which an appeal based on their promising to reform could get them a one semester extension. Dean Wooda was reputed to be as accommodating as Ms Hogg was not. Got to fill the dorms. Flo Boater’s orders.

Mabel, who had been preoccupied with rubbing her feet—too many hours on them at the Diner, and the crowd had never slowed down all day—stopped long enough to ask, Isn’t that a recipe for grade inflation?

Yeah, he responded with a laugh. I tried to point that out, but that little bastard, Dean Wooda, or Wouldn’t, explained that it didn’t matter—we’d get better student evaluations!

She smiled wanly at his little pun, thinking that it was getting a bit tiresome and somewhat dangerous—he was sure to repeat it to someone who would pass it on. But all she did was to scratch her head, wondering if she had time for a shower or should she wait for morning. The process stirred up a question, Does that mean getting rid of Donahue?

Oooh, Mabel, he replied, stretching out some of the kinks from his day at the desk, You’re right on top of it today. He sighed, scratched his own head out of sympathy, then said, Of course. They say DO is a hard grader. Fair, but still hard. He paused to think, He’s not particularly dynamic…and he actually expects students to learn the material. Another pause, then, No way for him to get good evaluations.

She interrupted her thoughts about how to fix a supper that did not remind her of the Diner, Not even from good students?

He snorted, How many of those do we have at Briarpatch?

She conceded the point, then asked, Who reads the evaluations?

He laughed, Well, I do. So I know what is expected.

But you wouldn’t fudge the figures. There was a bit of a suggestion that he could sleep on the couch if he did.

Don’t have to. Don’t have to. Flo Boater never reads his summaries.

When Mabel padded off to the kitchen, he turned on the TV, frowned at the bad signal from Zenith, then turned it off. The radio was better. Better reception, but it had only music, and country music at that. He turned it off, wondered when Middleville would get cable, then put his hands behind his head and leaned back to remember his conversation with Flo Boater at the end of the day. I wonder why she wanted to see me? Didn’t her child-dean tell her everything? Maybe not. Oh, the look on her face when I told her that two Indian women had earned degrees at Briarpatch. Even better, they may have been the first Native Americans in the state to do that.

Why women? she had asked. Not men.

He had almost explained that men were more likely to earn big bucks, and he had almost smiled when he thought of this pun, which would have applied only to Indian males, but that would have required him to elaborate on the obvious—instead, he fell back on the response he had worked on all day, and was even now proud of: Indian men were warriors and hunters. They wouldn’t study. Women would. Then he frowned, remembering Flo Boater’s retort, Nothing changes, I guess. Just like our students now. He hadn’t thought of that.

Fortunately, he didn’t have time to get flustered. The president had immediately asked, What happened to them?

Uh, they married White, moved away.

You checking on that?

Oh, yes…yes. Of course. He had almost blushed to think of Middleville’s miniscule Black population, which he understood was like many such communities across America, with a long history of marrying Native American women whose husbands had just curled up and died from depression and alcohol. He hadn’t checked their family histories, relying instead on Flechadoro’s assurance that his tribe was proud of its racial purity and the likelihood that college graduates would have married classmates. No Blacks went to Briarpatch back then, and precious few even today.

They have descendants? Flo Boater must have been thinking of potential large contributions to Briarpatch College. It had been years since the college had a truly large donation, and she was finding the long staircase to her office steeper and…oh, how the building needed an elevator—for handicapped students who needed a transcript.

Cross Threshold, in contrast, had wondered about the descendants of those Indians making a claim on the college land—but that was because he knew that Flechadoro’s unopened folder might contain a bombshell, and she didn’t know it existed. He temporized. Hard to say, he had replied slowly enough to sound like he was thinking about the question. I’m sure I can find them in the census somewhere…. If, he had thought, I had a sufficient budget to buy the microfilm from the Census Bureau.

What’s the problem?

Uh, Smith and Jones are awfully common names.

She had blanched, "Not ancestors of our Smith and Jones, I hope."

Probably not. I understand that those aren’t their names anyway.

She had sighed, You’re right, those hooligans just call themselves that because nobody can spell their real names.

He remembered giving her a slight smile, Not even the registrars remember. Their professors are no better. Causes endless confusion. Ms Hogg, our current registrar, was on top of it, he believed, but she would not talk with him—privacy rights, she said.

His reverie was interrupted by Mabel asking, What’s the matter, honey? You look all red.

He shook his head, a bit confused, then said that it was nothing. Actually, that was not quite the truth. Shortly after the previous conversation he had again climbed the two long flights of stairs to the second story to the president’s office. He greeted the secretary, who indicated he could proceed. Flo Boater watched him take a chair, eyeing him cautiously, You been looking into that problem again?

This had confused him. When he had called for an appointment, he had told Miss Efficiency only that it was a serious matter, and No, it couldn’t be discussed during her office hours in the Japanese coffeehouse. One of them, either Miss E or the president, had figured out that it couldn’t be genealogy again; therefore, it had to be the rumor about grades being for sale. Either was smart enough to have done so, but now was not the time to find out which.

His eyes slightly bulging, he had bought time to think, Oh, no! I’ve just been asked for advice on how to deal with the problem. Someone had suggested DO.

And what did you say?

Uh, instructors should speak with Dean Wooda. There was more than a bit of nervousness in his voice, as he hoped this was the right answer.

It was. But she had warned anyway, Never let anyone talk to Donahue about this. That ex-cop is dangerous.

I wouldn’t think of it, he had assured her.

Now, these Indian women you mentioned, she had said, changing the subject. Surely they had distinctive names. Now to find out how much Stanley has been telling me is true.

He had sighed, Actually, no. Their names were Mary and Ellen. Last names don’t matter here. It was the Smith and Jones business, only with nobody to ask.

Don’t matter? she had asked, rather more sharply than she intended.

Uh, the college records have them as Lost Hatchet, but I’ve not found any Indians anywhere else with that name. Like most Briarpatch graduates, they had vanished, to be never heard of again.

You say you checked the census? Shouldn’t that give you birth years and such?

The Middleville returns would, but Indians aren’t in the regular census. ‘Neither taxed nor enumerated’ is the wording of the law, more or less. He had flashed on Ms Gates informing him of that with a few tart words—and, no, no more interlibrary loan requests, not even for Flo Boater’s flunkies. His face burned at that memory, but he had managed to explain, So, they wouldn’t be in the census until after they were married.

That, uh, Indian census. Can’t you look in there?

He had thought quickly, Typical government snafu—lost, stolen or burned. Who knows? Besides, the two women were