OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY

Walter was sitting in his study when he heard the noise.  It was the sound of a doorknob turning and a door creaking open.  He raised his head from the book he was reading to see who might cross the hall.  But nobody did, so he went back to reading.  But after a few moments, he heard it again, so he got up to see who was moving about. It was after two in the morning, and everyone had been asleep for hours.  At first he didn’t think anything strange about the noise, but when he got up to look in on his wife and children, and found them all asleep, he began to wonder.  He checked the attic door, opened it and looked up the dark stairs.  The doors to his son’s and daughter’s bedrooms were ajar, as they usually were, since neither of them liked to close them during the night.  His own bedroom door was wide open, as usual, because his wife liked to leave the hall light on when he stayed up reading.  And he seldom closed the door when he turned in, unless they had guests in the house.

     After looking everything over, he went back to his study, sat down in his big easy chair, threw his feet onto the ottoman, picked up his book, and tried once again to become absorbed in his studies.  He was a professor at a small college and was preparing for the coming week.  He needed at least another hour before turning in.  Usually he would read, take notes, pause for a while, write a paragraph or two on a yellow pad that he kept on the arm of the chair, and then return to reading.  But the noise he had heard lingered in his mind, and it was hard for him to concentrate.  Instead, he lifted his head and listened to the night.  But he heard no more for a long time.

     It was when he began to doze that he heard it again.  Clear and close.  The sound of a doorknob turning and a door creaking.  He got up quickly and walked into the hall.  But nobody was about.  He thought most likely he had dreamed it in his doze, since it was on his mind.  But the sound was too clear and close to him to believe that it was a dream.  Nevertheless, he could read no more.  He decided to turn in.  It was a Friday night, now a Saturday morning, and he would have to finish later, perhaps even on Sunday.  So he put his books and papers on the old desk that held his computer and turned off the lamp that hung over his chair and went into the bedroom to put on his pajamas.

     He was just about to go to the bathroom when he heard the stool flush.  So he went into the hall to see which of the kids would come out.  But the bathroom door was open, the light was shut, and the kids were asleep.  However, the tank in the bathroom was filling.  It was no dream-sound he had heard.  He looked about the hall, checked on the kids’ rooms, and actually went up into the attic.  But everything was sleepy and normal.  He shrugged his shoulders, said “strange” out loud to himself, brushed his teeth, and went to bed.  But sleep wouldn’t come.  Somebody flushed the toilet, and it wasn’t him, and it wasn’t his wife, who was lying asleep right there when he heard it, and it wasn’t the kids, both of whom were dead asleep when he looked in on them only moments after.  So who was it?  Sleep didn’t come.  He lay there listening to the night for a long time.  But he heard no more, and after a while, doze overtook him and he fell asleep.

     His children were late sleepers and seldom crawled out of bed before nine on a Saturday morning.  But Rebecca, his wife, rose early and often baked a coffee cake for breakfast and did her chores or went out shopping and came in before anyone else got moving in the house.  This is why the house was quiet and he slept undisturbed till late.  It was well after nine when he was wakened by his daughter, Angela, who had come into the bed and was bouncing beside him.  She said, “Wake up, daddy, I’m all alone.  Mommy’s gone out, and Teddy’s sleeping, and I’m the only one who’s up.”

     “OK, baby, I’ll get up,” he said, and yawned, and rubbed his eyes, and looked at her, and then at the clock.  Just then she jumped on him and laughed.  But he gently pushed her away and said, “Go get dressed and I’ll make us some breakfast,” and threw his legs out of the bed and sat up.

     When he went down, he decided to make a great big omelet and some toast, and maybe some bacon, if they had any.  So he looked in the fridge, took out half a dozen eggs, the carton of milk, found some bacon in the meat drawer, and put all these things on the counter beside the stove.  Then he reached down to the cupboard below and pulled out the frying pan.  When he put this on the burner and reached for the knob to turn it on, he found that the knob was gone.  Then he looked at the stove and saw that all the knobs were gone.  “What’s going on?” he thought.  He looked in the sink and the dish strainer, but the knobs weren’t there.  “What’s going on?” he said out loud.  Angela came down in her jeans and sneakers and a red pullover shirt.

     “What’s for breakfast?” she said.

     “I don’t know,” he said, “I can’t turn on the stove.  Where’re the knobs?  Did you take them off and play with them?”

     “Why would I do that?” she said.

     She looked at the stove and then looked in the sink and the dish strainer, and said, “They’re gone!  Mommy must have cleaned them, but where are they?”

     Just then they heard the back door open.  “Help, help,” they heard her say, “Somebody help me with these bags.”  So they loaded up and carried the bags into the kitchen.

     When they had everything in, and brown bags stuffed to their tops were sitting all over the counters and the kitchen table, she said, “I wanted to bake a cake for breakfast, but all the knobs of the stove were gone, and I couldn’t turn the oven on, so I decided to get the shopping done.  Now, let’s put these things away.  Angela, find the knobs so we can make breakfast.”

     “But mom, I don’t know where they are!  I didn’t take them off,” she said, pleading her innocence. 

     “Then Teddy must have done it.  Go wake him up.  It’s getting late now, anyway.  Look around his room and see if they’re there.”

     So she ran upstairs.  But the knobs were not in Teddy’s room, and when they came down, Teddy was in his pajamas and was still groggy.

     “Where are the knobs to the stove?” his mother said to him.

     “I don’t know,” he said, looking at her innocently.

     “Well, somebody took them, so you better find them,” she said.

     “But mom,” he pleaded, “I don’t know where they are.  Where should I look?”

     “Where did you play with them?” she said.

     “Mom, I didn’t play with them.  Why would I do that?”

he said.

     And so the missing knobs were a mystery all that day, and they couldn’t find them.  They just had buttered toast for breakfast and spent the day as usual.  But during the afternoon, returning from the park, Rebecca began to complain about the knobs, saying that the stove was useless without them, and they would have to go out for dinner if they couldn’t be found, and that they should see if they couldn’t buy new ones, because they sure weren’t going to buy a new stove just because the knobs got lost.

     “What could have happened to them?” she said to her husband, who was driving the car, and who was deep in his own thoughts at the moment.

     “I have no idea,” he said.  “I don’t know if one can just buy knobs, we’ll have to go see.”

     “Let’s go home first and give the house another look over before we go to the stores,” she said, always the thrifty one in the family, who loathed to spend on unnecessary things.

     When they got in, they systematically searched the house, every room, every closet, every nook and cranny where things could get misplaced.  No one thought to look in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator.  But that was where they were found at last when Walter reached into the ice bin to make chocolate sodas for Angela and Teddy.  He reached in and pulled out a knob instead of a cube.  Then he reached in again and fished around and found all the others.

     “Well, well, well,” he said. “Look here.  The knobs!  They’ve been on ice all day.  Who would have thought to look there?”

     “You must have put them there,” Rebecca said.

     “Why would I do that?” he said, protesting his innocence.

     He never mentioned the noises he heard during the night.  But he thought of them.  And he thought they must be the victims of some kind of gag, or that someone was getting into the house, or. . . , but he didn’t pursue that thought.  He didn’t want to mention last night because he didn’t want to frighten them.  But he was concerned.  And he decided he would have to do something about it.  But what?  He would have to make a plan.  Tonight, anyway, he would have to stay awake, because somebody is in the house who doesn’t belong here.  Or was getting in.  He felt a slight movement of nerves in his stomach.  Should he be afraid?  He decided he should be alert, at the very least.
     But that night he made sure everything was locked and during the early morning hours nothing had happened, and try as he might, he couldn’t keep sleep off.  He had finished his preparations, read ahead in his heaviest reading courses, watched an old Alan Ladd film on American Movie Classics until he became bored, and finally turned in about three in the morning.  And after a few days, he had forgotten all about the noises and about the strange disappearance of the stove knobs. 

     But it was about this time that he began having trouble on campus.  He was a professor of sociology and since the college was very small, he was a one-man department, responsible for teaching all the sociology courses needed for the school to offer a minor in that area.  In order to offer a major, they would need to hire a second sociology professor to supplement the curriculum.  In the campus politics of the time, a slowly but steadily growing budget was the cause of intense fighting among the faculty, all of whom were lobbying for increased expenditures in their own areas.  And he was failing to make a case to the dean for his own needs.  This meant that he would get no relief from his heavy teaching load, and he was unhappy enough to think about moving on. 

     Adding to his failure, about this time a group of students had taken offense at some remarks he made in class about sex in a discussion of family life.  The class was called Marriage and the Family, and part of its regular content was the examination of sexuality and its relations to courtship, post-marital adjustment, divorce, and gender issues.  He had a reputation for being frank and open in his classroom discussions, but these students were among that small group of the intensely religious who act as guardians of everybody’s moral life.  They had dedicated themselves to removing him from the faculty.

     It wasn’t the first time he had to face the ire of students.  His views on homosexuality, abortion, feminism, minority groups and civil rights, immigration, all the topics that raise the temperature in his classes, were deliberately intended to arouse opposition, to seem extreme to his students, for in this way he challenged them to think and learn how to defend their own views--whatever they were.  But this group was more challenging, since it had set about removing him systematically and with great skill, beginning their campaign with letters to the more conservative members of the board of trustees and thus involving the president of the college from the very top.  The campus newspaper was next, with extremist students writing letters of outrage and disgust, demanding his ouster.  And the final step was a petition, which the group had managed to get almost half the student body to sign. 

     With all this going on, Walter had actually begun to search for another position, feeling that he had no sympathy from his dean and colleagues.  They were, he thought, like wildebeests that stand around nervously chewing their cud and watching the lions devour one of their own.  He did, however, have defenders among the students, some of whom were beginning to take up his cause.  He decided to keep his distance from them, since he did not want to discredit their efforts by seeming to be using them for his own ends.  But he wished they were as skillful as his opponents. 

     As usual, he kept these strains and stresses to himself, refusing to bring them home to trouble Rebecca and the children.  Soon the spring semester would be over, and summer would diminish the intensity of most of these problems, he hoped.  But he did raise the question of moving on to Rebecca, just to see how she would react to it.  They had been here for over ten years, and she thought that they had found their home, which made her feel, after the years of study and the first jobs, both secure and happy. 

     “Why?” she asked.  “Aren’t you happy here?  Do you really want to move again?”

     “It’s not likely that I’ll get any help in the department.  It seems sociology is low on the priority list for program development,” he said, drawing a long face. 

     “Well, if you aren’t happy, we should go somewhere else,” she said, trying to be supportive but feeling very much the opposite.

     They had set roots, she felt, and the children liked their schools and their friends, and she hated the idea of having to pick up again and settle somewhere else.  But she noticed that he was uncommonly moody and often seemed distracted.  She would talk to him and he seemed not to be listening.  And he had taken to going to the movies, which she liked to do but which he always complained about because movies were so adolescent in their themes and plots that they bored him.  She had noticed these changes in him, and so she decided that if he wanted to move they should just make up their minds and do it, the sooner the better.  She was not the kind of person to tolerate indecision. 

     “What have you done so far?” she asked.  “Have you begun to search?”

     “I have,” he said.  “I’ve called around to people I know and turned up half a dozen possibilities.  I haven’t formally applied anywhere, though.”

     “Well, you’d better get to it if you want to leave here, because we’ll have to sell the house and that means going through ten years’ worth of things piling up, and garage sales, and trips to the dumps, and packing, and all that.  God, I thought all that ended when we came here.”

     And so he began to search in earnest.  They were nearing the end of the semester, and finals week was approaching when things got really ugly.  Among the group of students who were out to get him was one young man who had political ambitions.  He was a poli-sci major and was successful in his campaign for student-body president.  He had just been elected to that position and would begin his term in the fall.  His name was Corey Tjarks and he was a devious and self-confident junior and a leader among the religious right.  He was also an honors student and was held in high esteem by the faculty.  He worked hard in the campaign against Walter, and now that the semester was drawing to a close, he feared that all his efforts would lead to nothing once everyone went home.  This young man had visited the president and committed himself to an ugly lie about Walter. 

     After listening to his story, the president was deeply troubled.  He was a fair-minded man and he knew Walter well enough to doubt the student’s story, but if it were true, he would have no recourse but to terminate him and see to it that he worked no longer in academia.  So he called Walter in for a talk with the intention that the affair would go no further if he could be satisfied that the story was untrue. 

     It was a lovely day in late April, and the campus was coming alive.  The dogwoods and cherry trees were beginning to bloom, the tulips were up and glowing, and the maples and elms were budding, casting their golden-green shine against the clear blue of the sky.  Walter had no idea what he was heading to as he crossed the campus from the science building to Burpee Hall, where the administrative offices were housed.  The president, whose name was Malcolm Brownlee, was expecting him as he walked in.  After the initial pleasantries, Dr. Brownlee said that he heard a disturbing story about him and wanted to clear the air.

     “What’s the story?” Walter said.

     “A young man on this campus, I won’t name him, for the present anyway, has told me that you propositioned him for sex just this last week in the old State Theater, and that when he refused, you threatened to kill him if he revealed what you did.  I’m telling this to you frankly and openly so that you know what’s at stake here.  It’s your future, Walter, your reputation, everything.”

     “Do you believe this story?” Walter said, trying to keep calm, but suddenly feeling all his rationality dissipating.  “If you believe this student, I take it he’s a student, then I shouldn’t talk about this with you, I should get a lawyer, and we should talk through counsel only.”

     “I was hoping this could be ended here, for I don’t believe any of it.  This business about your threatening his life--I don’t believe it, Walter, because it’s just not you.  Besides, I’ve already spoken with the college’s attorney, and he advised me to hear you out.  He doesn’t know it’s you, of course.  I told him from the start that I don’t believe the story.  I’ve known you and Rebecca for five years, Walter, and I can’t believe you are capable of propositioning a male student, no less threatening his life. But we have to talk this through.  You know our lawyer, Tucker.  He said the student was hovering on the edge of actionable libel and that we could dismiss him for cause if the story is a lie.  Well, what should we do, Walter?  Did you meet any student in the theater?” 

     “Dr. Brownlee, you just said you don’t think any of it is true.  You know I wouldn’t proposition a student.  Do you think I’m a prowler?  Preying on boys?”

     “No, I don’t think either of those things.  But this is what I was told.  People can surprise you, and frankly, Walter, if it turns out that there is any truth at all in this student’s accusations, I will crucify you, you can depend on it.”

     Dr. Brownlee had turned stone faced as he said that, and Walter was shot through with a stab of fear.  For a moment he was so addled that he stood up and began to pace the office.  He felt himself in the grip of an irrational force whose nature was malevolent, and he was speechless.  The remarks he made about sex in his Marriage and the Family class didn’t seem so out of the ordinary that so much ill will and antagonism and downright evil should flow from them.  They were pretty tame, actually.  A female student had said she was offended by his focus on sex in their last three class meetings, and he responded saying that only adolescents and the adolescent minded found the subject of sex offensive, especially in the classroom, where their job was to study the strains and stresses on marriage and family life.  Perhaps his tone of exasperation offended her more than his remarks.  Even so, the reaction was all out of proportion to the cause. 

     Dr. Brownlee told him to calm down and sit.  But his agitation increased and finally, almost stuttering, he said,

     “Well, did this student give you details?  Date, time, he said the State Theater, but when?”

     “He said it was last Friday night during the nine o’clock show.”

     “Well, I was there, then.  He must have seen me.  But I was with Rebecca.  It was a crowded theater and I never left my seat.  Though now that I think of it, Rebecca did get up to go to the restroom.  He must have spotted me then, when I was alone.  He thinks it’s his word against mine.  Before I have a chance to talk with Rebecca, you should call her and get the details about Friday night from her, so you can put your mind at rest.”

     “No need.  I believe you,” he said.

     “Call her, please.  You must, or I’ll never calm down.

This has never happened before.  I really don’t know what else to do,” he said.

     “But I do, Walter.  I don’t want to involve Rebecca in this right now.  Besides, I’m not the person to talk to her. That time may come if we have to formally hear these charges before the sexual harassment committee.  But I have my suspicions it won’t come to that.  This has been a hard semester for you.  A faction of students has been complaining loudly and frequently, and I already put out one fire with the trustees on your account.  That petition business almost got you.  I don’t like what they’re doing, any more than you do.  What this student wants, I’m sure, is to create some nasty suspicion against you.  It’s an ugly thing, what he’s doing, Walter.  You’re a lightning rod for protest on campus, and in the past it has been innocent enough.  I’ve always appreciated the stimulation you generate among the students.  It would be dull around here without you.  You attract problems.  Good enough.  It’s a professional hazard.  I feel sorry for you this time, though. 

     ”This is what I’m going to do.  I’ll call this student in and tell him I’ve spoken with you and that I’m convinced you made no advances towards him or threats and that if he spreads this tale any further, he will have to consider the consequences of libel.  However, if he pushes his story and goes to the dean of students, he will have to convene the committee to hear the charges, and the whole thing could blow up and embarrass the school and cost you your job and possibly your savings.”

     “But my professional life is at stake.  How can you prove you didn’t do something?  But I think if Rebecca and I tried to recall every moment of Friday night, we could show that there never was a moment when I could have propositioned this student.  We did have a baby sitter for Angela and Teddy who could verify the time we got home.  Actually, I’m not afraid.  I think we could survive it.  But if this student had the gall to lie, don’t you think he’d push it to the end?”

     “If he’s lying, and I believe he is, this will calm things down.  Meantime, try to make peace.”

     Walter was shaken when he left.  He couldn’t believe that students would go to such lengths to silence him.  Yet they took his classes!  His were always among the first to close out at registration.  Wasn’t it paradoxical? he thought.  But it’s his word against the student’s.  What if the president didn’t know him as well as he did?  What if he knew him but didn’t like him?  What if he was a coward or  lacked conviction?  What would he have done?  A suspicion planted grows in time.  Would Dr. Brownlee be able to avoid that?  He was shaken, and he felt his hands trembling as he walked.  He was indignant.  Angry.  Insulted.  Violated.  He felt like doing harm, like striking out at someone.  “Make peace.”  Indeed.  How?  The lowliness of it.  The nastiness.  The malevolent nastiness of it overwhelmed him. 

     When he returned to his office, he called the faculty secretary and canceled his afternoon class.  He couldn’t go to it because he knew he would lose his composure.  He was sick at heart.  And he was still trembling with anger and the feeling of insidiousness that came over him when Dr. Brownlee first told him the accusation.

     After Walter left his office, Dr. Brownlee told his secretary to call Corey Tjarks and ask him to visit later that afternoon.  The message reached him while he was in his research methods class.  He glanced at the note given him by the faculty secretary and smiled at the thought of Dr. Janson squirming in the president’s office.  He expected to be told that Dr. Janson protested his innocence and then would be asked if he wanted to bring charges against him to the sexual harassment committee.  Then he would act gallantly and tell the president that he’d prefer to drop the whole thing, because he didn’t want to wreck Dr. Janson’s career over a thing like that.  But he would have achieved what he wanted, he would have planted suspicions about Dr. Janson, and later, just before exams, he would concoct an incident in which Dr. Janson would appear to have struck out at him in revenge.  That would be the clincher.  Dr. Janson would be history.

     Meanwhile, Walter had gone home.  It was still early, just before noon.  Angela and Teddy were in school and Rebecca was out somewhere.  He didn’t know if she would come home for lunch.  The kitchen was dark and he had to use his key at the back door.  He was wearing a light windbreaker, and as he was hanging it up in the closet at the foot of the stairs, he heard a voice seeming to be talking on the phone in the hallway just at the top of the stairs.  The door on the stairwell was ajar, and he put his ear at the space between the edge of the door and the jamb.  It was a girl, and her voice was unfamiliar, and she was saying that her mom was home and would have to go now.  Grabbed by an impulse, he quickly ran up the stairs, and in not more than a second or two had turned the corner and was in sight of the phone.  But no one was there and the phone cord was completely still, as though no one had touched it.  He ran the rest of the way up and looked in all the bedrooms and his study, the bathroom, and then went up into the attic.  His search took only a few seconds, and he came downstairs and looked around the house, and then outside in front and back, but no one was visible anywhere on the sidewalks or in the yards, and no car was on the roads.  He went back upstairs and checked the closets. 

     Is it possible, he thought, that he hallucinated the voice?  That he imagined it saying it had to go now because its mom was home?  Why would he imagine such a thing?  Who could it have been and where did she go?  It was clearly a girl’s voice.  Not a boy’s.  Not a child’s voice, but a girl’s.  He could recall it clearly.  It was unfamiliar, the voice of someone he didn’t know. 

     What did it mean?  He went into the kitchen, intending to make himself a sandwich.  But the morning’s effects on him had robbed him of his appetite, and the voice he had just heard spooked him so much that he couldn’t eat.  He had opened the fridge and was staring in without seeing.  He closed the door and went to the cupboard for a cup and poured himself leftover morning coffee and put it in the microwave.  While it was spinning inside, he reached in the utensil drawer and pulled out a spoon and grabbed the sugar bowl off the counter.  When the microwave beeped, he sugared his coffee and sat down at the kitchen table, sipping and staring across the room at the wall opposite.  He tried not to think of anything.  

     Corey Tjarks, on the other hand, had eaten a big lunch at the cafeteria and was feeling particularly satisfied with himself.  So far he had not confided his scheme to anyone.  He was waiting for his meeting this afternoon with the president, and after that, he would gather a few of his friends from the Religious Life Council, those who worked on the campaign to oust Dr. Janson, and reveal what he had done.  Together they would plan the coup d’état, and then they could all go home for the summer satisfied that they had done good work. 

     The intervening hour passed slowly, and Corey started to become nervous.  Not that he was having second thoughts, but that he was beginning to wonder if he could maintain his appearance of grieved innocence.  He had gone to the reading room of the library and pulled out the local newspaper and read the sports pages.  Then he went to the periodical room and picked up Sports Illustrated.  He kept looking at his watch.  Finally, at ten minutes to two, he left for Burpee Hall. 

     Dr. Brownlee was waiting for him and ushered him in without delay.  In his customary genial way, Corey said hello to Dr. Brownlee’s secretary as he went by and took a seat at the table across from Dr. Brownlee’s desk.  But Dr. Brownlee had gone behind the large neatly arranged desk, sat down, leaned forward, and crossed his arms on the big leather-lined blotter that covered the desktop immediately in front of him.  Corey felt intimidated by the formality of this arrangement, feeling exposed there by himself.  At his first visit this morning, Dr. Brownlee sat with him at the table.  Both were silent for a while as Dr. Brownlee looked at him. 

     Finally, Dr. Brownlee said, “Mr. Tjarks, I have spoken with Dr. Janson and told him exactly what you told me.  Of course, he denied everything.  It seems to be your word against his, doesn’t it?”

     “But of course he would deny it, Dr. Brownlee.  You didn’t think he would admit to it, did you?”

     “It’s your word against his, isn’t it?” Dr. Brownlee repeated.

     “Of course.  We were both alone.  He’d make sure there were no witnesses.  He’s not stupid.”

     “You were both alone in the theater?” Dr. Brownlee persisted.

     “Yes.  I passed him on my way up the aisle to get some  popcorn and he followed me out. . . .”

     “The point I’m making is that you are making this a case of his word against yours, since you were both alone in the theater that night, right?”

     “Yes, that’s what’s so frustrating, isn’t it?”

     “Well, Mr. Tjarks, your accusations are so serious that if you had gone to the dean of students, which, as you well know, is our policy here, the dean would have had no choice but to convene the sexual harassment committee, and your complaint against Dr. Janson would have been formally heard, as is required by law, and then referred to the police because of the threat you claim Dr. Janson made against your life.  That would have led to a court order for Dr. Janson to keep his distance from you, and perhaps even to our suspending him from his duties until the whole thing had been resolved.  Once you made the complaint, it would have to have gone to committee, you see.  But you came to me, first.  Have you gone to the dean yet?”

     “No, I didn’t know if I should do that.  I wanted your advice about what to do.” 

     This was not going the way he had expected, and he was beginning to worry.  It was his word against Dr. Janson’s, after all, he said to himself, so what could come of it in the end, if the president decided to not do anything?  At most, it would end here, and he’d have to give up his campaign. 

     “I swear, Dr. Brownlee, what I said is true.  I was terribly afraid that night, and I’ve been afraid ever since. I can’t concentrate on my studies, and now with exams coming up, this threat against me could cause me to lose it all.”

     That business about the police had unnerved him, and he was reaching now, trying to make the incident seem devastating to get back the president’s sympathy.

     But the president said, “Mr. Tjarks, are you familiar with the consequences of libel?”

     “Not really,” Corey said.

     “Your accusations are of such a nature that they would do very great harm to Dr. Janson.  Do you think he would sit idly by and not do anything to defend himself?”

     “I hadn’t thought of it.  I was dealing with the incident that happened in the State Theater.  I wasn’t thinking beyond telling you.”

     “Well, I heard Dr. Janson’s response to your story, and from what he told me, I find it unlikely that he did what you claim he did.  I’m not going to tell you why I think that.  That will come out in due time if you pursue this.  My recommendation is that you do a little research into libel and what can happen to someone who tries to ruin another person by telling stories that are untrue or that imply things that are untrue.  And then, when you have a good grasp of these consequences, I recommend you go see the dean of students and file your complaint if you want to pursue it.” 

     “So, that’s your response?  You’re going to believe Dr. Janson?  Without any proof?  You’re going to take his word for it?”

     “Mr. Tjarks, it’s not my responsibility to do anything.  I think I understand why you came to me instead of going to the dean.  If you want my advice, I have just given it.  Go to the dean and file your charges.  But I caution you, once you do that there’s no backing away.  Be prepared for the consequences.” 

     Dr. Brownlee rose from the desk and opened the door that let into his secretary’s office.  He stood there holding the knob, waiting for Corey to get up.  But Corey just sat there, refusing to end the conversation.  So Dr. Brownlee closed the door again and said, “Is there more?  Something you left out?  Or have you changed your mind about this?”

     “No,” Corey said.  “I haven’t changed my mind.  But I’m not satisfied with your response.  I believe I am in danger, and I feel you don’t believe me.”

     “I think if what you said really happened, you would have gone to the dean instead of coming to me.  I can’t do anything about it, anyway, and you know that. You shouldn’t have come to me.  You’re an intelligent young man, so I have to ask myself why you did.  I’m afraid I know the answer to that.  Unless you have more to add, Mr. Tjarks, this conversation is over.”

     He opened the door again, and this time Corey got up and walked out.  He didn’t greet the secretary as he passed, and he didn’t say good-bye to Dr. Brownlee.  He walked hurriedly out into the corridor, shoved his hands into his pockets, and left Burpee Hall for his dorm.  A storm of emotions roiled in him as he crossed the campus.  Anger and shame.  Anger at not being believed when it was his word against the word of another, and shame at being thought a liar, being told almost outright by the president that he was lying.  These two emotions swirled in him, blackening his face and assailing his self-confidence, producing a state of impotent rage.  He kept hearing Dr. Brownlee’s voice remarking about why he went to him, “You’re an intelligent young man, so I have to ask myself why you did.  I’m afraid I know the answer to that.”  “I’m afraid I know the answer to that.”  “I’m afraid I know the answer to that.”  It kept echoing in him.  He returned to his room and threw himself into the old stuffed chair that filled the corner by his locker. 

     Anyone who might have seen him during the hours he sat there abandoning himself to shame and wishing he could die would have been frightened by the expressions that crossed his face.  But no one saw him.  It was in the dimness of these late afternoon hours, in the half-light that filtered through the blinds and curtains, that Corey Tjarks lost his mind. To what extent the human character is shaped by the quality of the mind or is the agent that shapes the mind and gives it it’s unique quality, we can only surmise. Whether it was a weakness in his character that unseated his mind or an inborn weakness of mind that corrupted his character, the whole of him had fallen apart, and he became an amoral will, a monomaniacal energy bent on doing harm, and unable to restrain itself. 

***

     Walter had sat staring at the wall and sipping his reheated coffee, wondering if he should tell Rebecca about his meeting with the president, or trust in the president to settle the matter with the student so that it would pass without further incident.  Why trouble Rebecca with such nasty business?  She would push him then to get another position and get involved in the search herself, as she has done in the past. 

     But he was having second thoughts about leaving now.  With the smell of these accusations on him, his leaving would be an admission of guilt.  He couldn’t bear that. Besides himself and the student who made them, only the president knew of these accusations, but the college was so small that in a few days, everyone would know.  All it would take is for the student to say something to one of his friends, and it would be known all over campus in only hours.  He didn’t know, in fact, whether that had already happened.  That’s the way things are.  There’s no getting around it. 

     Could he depend on the student to keep silence?  Of course not.  He was motivated to tell.  That seems to be the strategy.  No one would know who started it.  No one could be blamed.  All that would be whispered around is that he had propositioned some guy in the theater and threatened to kill him.  The only defense he had against the rumor was to be there and to be himself.  Some would believe and some wouldn’t.  But so long as he was there, doing what he did, being himself, eventually the rumors would be quieted.  He had seen that happen before.  He knew how these things worked.  After all, he was a sociologist.  But if he left, the rumor would be believed, and it would follow him, as inevitably as death followed life.  There would be no escaping it.

     He decided not to tell Rebecca.  Not now.  He would tell her only when and if he had to.  For now, though, he had to tell her he had decided to stay.  He just didn’t want to move, that’s all.  He hoped she would feel relieved, because she didn’t want to move in the first place.

     As he sat there thinking through his choices, he heard Rebecca pulling into the garage.  He finished his coffee, got up and went outside.  She was coming out the back door of the garage when she saw him. 

     “What are you doing home?” she demanded. 

     “I canceled my afternoon class,” he said, “because I don’t feel good.  I heard you come in, so I came out to see if you needed any help.”

     “With what?” she said.  “I didn’t go shopping, I shopped only Saturday morning.”

     “Where’ve you been?” he asked.

     “I was volunteering at the nursing home.  You know I go there to help serve lunches on Mondays.”

     “I forgot,” he said.

     “What’s the matter with you?” she asked then, “do you have a cold?  You don’t look feverish.”

     “I have a headache, it’s been blinding me, so I came home to try to nap it off.”

     “Are you better?” she asked, looking curiously at him, for she detected something strange in his manner.

     “A little,” he said.  Though he felt like hell and he did have a headache.  But mostly he had that feeling of turmoil that follows a time of crisis.  He wasn’t calm enough yet to talk with her, and he felt that he might blurt out everything that happened if he continued talking.  So he told her he was going to lie down.

     They came into the house and she noticed that he had only a cup on the table, so she asked if he had eaten lunch.  He said that he hadn’t but that he didn’t feel like eating.  This troubled her, because he didn’t often lose his appetite.  She couldn’t remember his ever losing his appetite. 

     “Do you want me to make you some soup?” she asked.  Soup was her remedy for all bodily ailments, and he always felt well cared for when he had the flu.  She would come upstairs with a big bowl of soup on a tray and sit beside him and make sure he ate it all, which he usually did.

     But he said no and then went upstairs.  It was only a little after one o’clock when he kicked off his shoes and got into the bed.  He could hear her downstairs fixing herself some lunch.  Soon she would leave to pick up Teddy from school, and an hour after that she would get Angela.  Then she would start getting supper ready.  But he heard her call up the stairs saying that she was going out and that she would not be home until after she picked up Angela.

     “Did you hear me, Walter?” she called up again.

     “Yes, I heard you,” he called back.

     He lay back then and shut his eyes, trying to forget.  Soon he dozed.  The house was quiet and his doze was beginning to turn into sleep when he felt someone touch him.  He was lying on his back, his hands resting on his stomach,  and someone had stroked his arm.  He opened his eyes, expecting to see Rebecca beside the bed.  But no one was there.  He sat up, alarmed.  “What the hell,” he thought.  “I must have dreamed it.”  But his alarm had gotten him all aroused, and he couldn’t fall asleep again.  He lay there with his eyes open and his head really beginning to pound.  He was listening intently, listening for any sound, expecting to hear voices or doors creaking, but there was only silence.  After a while he began to doze again, and again he was wakened by a touch, this time on his forehead. 

     He got up, put his shoes on, and went downstairs.  He felt crazy.  He thought he was beginning to experience a breakdown and wondered if he ought to seek help.  He went into the TV room and sat down on the couch, reaching for the remote.  But he didn’t turn on the television.  Instead, he put his head back and closed his eyes, and in a few minutes he began to doze again.  That’s when he heard the voice.  It was a girl’s voice, and she seemed to be talking to him, but he couldn’t make out all of what she was saying.  He opened his eyes and closed them, and let himself drift, trying to keep his emotions in check, hoping the voice would stop.  But it didn’t.  He heard a stream of words, and they seemed to be just intelligible, on the edge of his hearing.  He heard. . . “watch,” “night,” “before,” “afraid,” “trouble,” “come,” and many words that he couldn’t make out, all repeated. When he opened his eyes, it all stopped.  He sat there for a while, certain he was losing it. 

     He was becoming afraid.  Schizophrenia was like this.  The combination of intense feelings, a sense of being surrounded by malevolence--especially, as he had been experiencing--and the hearing of voices, these were classic symptoms.  And, of course, there was the feeling of being persecuted.  But he didn’t dream his interview with the president this morning, and the accusations were really made; his emotional state was appropriate, given the circumstances.  What was happening to him? he thought. 

     He went into the kitchen and fixed himself a sandwich and poured a glass of orange juice.  Sandwich in one hand and glass in the other, he walked around the house.  First, all the rooms downstairs, then all the rooms upstairs, and in every room he paused, looked around, took a bite and a sip, and went on to the next.  When he finished eating, he went to his study and turned on his computer.  He might as well begin making up exams, he thought.  He worked intently until Rebecca came home with the children.

     The next day was Tuesday and he had only one morning class.  That was a seminar for seniors minoring in sociology, and it went well, and nobody seemed suspicious or behaved out of the ordinary.  He was relieved.  Afterward, he phoned the president’s office and asked his secretary if Dr. Brownlee had some free time to see him.  He made an appointment for just before lunch, and in the meantime he went to the campus center for coffee.  People around were behaving normally towards him, try as he may to notice any oddness in them.  He picked up his mail and crossed the campus back to his office, beginning to feel as though the whole thing was blowing over, and feeling rather comfortable about the visit to the president.

     Dr. Brownlee greeted him at his office door when he arrived, and ushered him in and told him to have a seat. 

     “Well, I think the whole thing is going to blow over, Walter,” he said, “without further ado.”

     “Can you tell me what you said and how he reacted?” Walter asked.

     “Briefly, Walter, because I have to run.  Basically, I told him to take his story to the dean.”

     “You told him what? to file a complaint?  Why did you do that?”

     “Because if he isn’t telling the truth, he won’t go that far with his story.  I warned him about libel.  And if he is telling the truth, that’s what he should do.”

     “How did he react?”

     “He seemed upset, he acted as though he thought I didn’t believe him.  He pretty much stormed out.  I don’t know what he wanted from me.  He has been involved in the efforts to get you fired, and I’m surprised he thinks I would just believe him.  Anyway, I think you can relax, now, Walter.  I’m pretty sure this business is over.  Now, I’ve got to go.  Friday is the last day and after that the break will take all our minds off this nastiness.”

     Dr. Brownlee rose from his desk, and Walter got up.  After shaking hands, he left the campus for home.  He was beginning to feel the whole affair was kind of stupid and that he shouldn’t have taken it so seriously and panicked the way he did.  But being accused of threatening the life of a student is not something that happens every day, and being accused of prowling theaters for sex with young men is something that never occurred to him would ever happen.  The very extremity of the accusations should have made him realize that nothing would come of them.  But the climate on campuses in the last decade had become weird.  He read all the time of sexual harassment by professors around the country.  As a people, our sensitivities to all kinds of social behaviors have been sensationally heightened.  Not so long ago a tenured sociology professor was fired from an Ivy League university for referring to Native Americans as Indians in his classroom.  Yet Native Americans refer to themselves as Indians, and any night of the week one can watch the Cleveland Indians play ball on TV.  Everything was changing, nothing was as it had been anymore.  And the idea of an older professor at a sleepy small college trying to make it with young male students would generate a media frenzy, he knew.  Truth would have nothing to do with it.  He had every right to shudder and feel like he was sinking.  The relief he felt upon leaving the president’s office was dissolving, and his nervousness was returning, for he didn’t believe this was the end of it.  There was too much energy invested in his removal.  Those who wanted him to leave would only regard this as a setback.  He was sure they would take another tack.  It wasn’t over.  Who would prevail? he wondered.

     Corey Tjarks, meanwhile, had dropped out of sight.  His friends knocked on his dorm-room door, left messages at his e-mail address and in his mail box and on his answering machine, and then they asked about him among each other.  They began to worry when he didn’t show up for classes, since Corey never cut them, and when he didn’t show up for Council meetings, they decided they should find out what happened to him.  So they asked the dorm resident to open his door to see if he was there, sick, or unconscious, or perhaps something worse.  And when they got in, they found the room a mess.  His clothes and books were scattered around as though someone had thrown them against the walls.  His toiletries were smashed against his locker door, and the room smelled of cologne.  The bed was turned over on its side.  Clearly, something had happened to Corey. 

     Talk started buzzing around campus that Corey had disappeared.  Some of his friends on the Religious Life Council began to wonder out loud whether Dr. Janson wasn’t involved.  It was common knowledge that Corey was one of Dr. Janson’s most fierce detractors and that he wrote many of the letters attacking him that appeared in the student newspaper.  It was only natural to suspect Dr. Janson of being involved in his disappearance.  People began to whisper all sorts of horrible things, and as the days passed and Corey didn’t show up, speculation began to run wild.  Things got ugly again. 

     By Friday, Dr. Janson found himself sitting alone in the snack bar and colleagues and students going out of their way to avoid him.  He had fewer than half his students in his Friday afternoon class, the last class before finals.  That was a real marker of how opinion was shaping itself on campus.  He began to feel that familiar sense of dread, like some kind of doom was looming out of the corners of his life, a thing he couldn’t avoid because he couldn’t understand it.  And the feeling of malevolence returned and resonated in him and scared him.

     He decided, after finishing making up exams, that he would carry them to the faculty secretary along with his exam schedule for next week and ask her to arrange to have them proxied.  He felt a powerful need to separate himself from campus, perhaps even to leave town for a while.  There was a conference in Chicago that he could attend, and he planned to make the arrangements as soon as he returned to his office.  But he never did.  A student had come to him all out of breath, a young woman who was one of his minors and one of his best students as well.  She said that Corey had been seen sneaking into his room and that shortly afterward he ran to the parking lot in front of his dorm and sped away in his car.  Word had been buzzing around and she had just heard and thought he would want to know. 

     “Whatever Corey is up to,” she said, “people will see that it doesn’t involve you.”

     “Thanks, Melissa.  That’s a relief to know.  Thanks for finding me and telling me.  I appreciate it.”

     “I know how this has been affecting you.  I hear such ugly talk.  It makes me angry the way people talk.”

     Melissa Palmer was also an honors student, and she had always felt contempt for Corey Tjarks, partly because she competed with him in the honors program, and partly because she despised the air of righteousness he generated, around himself as well as his friends.  She felt he was a phony and his campaign against Dr. Janson angered her.  She is the one who fought the petition and wrote counter letters to The Plainsman, and arranged a meeting between several of Dr. Janson’s better students and the trustees who had received letters from the Religious Life Council. 

     “I’ll bet he’s up to something, Dr. Janson.  I don’t trust him one bit.  Why would he come back and run off like that?  Well, at least he was seen.  So people know.”

     “I can’t imagine what he’s up to Melissa.  But I couldn’t imagine anything he’s done this semester.  He’s beyond our capacities to imagine, I’m afraid.  And you don’t the know half of it, Melissa.  He’s been worse than you know.”

     “Tell me, tell me.  What don’t I know?” she said, her eyes going wide and curiosity breaking out all over her.

     “Maybe someday I’ll tell you, but not now, because, I think, we’re still in the middle of it, and I’m afraid I have to keep things confidential.”  He had become certain that Corey was his accuser after his disappearance.  He hadn’t asked Dr. Brownlee, because he knew that he wouldn’t say, but he felt he didn’t have to.  He suspected it was him from the beginning, but he tried not to let the suspicion run rampant in his mind and feelings.  He played the game that his accuser should remain anonymous, but after Corey’s disappearance, he gave up pretending.

     “Well, I’m heading back to my office, Melissa, want to walk with me?”

     “No, I can’t,” she said, “I have to meet with Dr. Morrison for my senior project.  I’m turning in the final draft, and that’s done.  Next week I graduate.  Wish me luck,” she said, and took off across campus.

     Walter was surprised by the news of Corey’s appearance.  He was sure his disappearing was part of a conspiracy and that it involved a number of people, at a minimum those who were spreading the rumors about his involvement, perhaps as another campaign to discredit him.  He wasn’t so sure now.  Corey is up to something.  Melissa was right.  Now, he thought, it would be a mistake for him to leave town, and a mistake to have his exams proxied.  So he returned to the faculty secretary and recovered his exams.  He locked them up in his office and went home. 

     He decided it was time to tell Rebecca the story of this semester.  Whatever Corey was up to, it would come out soon, probably on Monday, and he had better prepare Rebecca for it.  He hoped he would be prepared for it himself.  The accusations Corey had made to Dr. Brownlee were not so subtle.  They were, in fact, so unsubtle that Dr. Brownlee was never tempted to believe them.  Yet Corey was bright.  Would he follow up with something really subtle now, something so believable that he would win his fight?  Something that would devastate him?  Or, believing he had lost his credibility, would he come up with something crude and vicious?  This line of thinking frightened him.  It made him feel vulnerable and helpless, because he couldn’t do anything.  He could only wait.  And when Corey decided his time was right, what could he do then?  Nothing, but hope people wouldn’t be so ready to believe what they heard and that Dr. Brownlee would not be duped.  He could do nothing.  He was actually a sitting duck.  The thought made him sick.

     It was late afternoon when he got home.  Angela and Teddy were busy with school work, sitting at the dining room table, and Rebecca was working in the garden, raking out leaves and bagging them, and preparing beds for parsley and basil.  She was wearing gloves and was red-faced from exertion.  She saw him walking towards her and rose up, wiped the perspiration from her forehead on the back of her glove, and said, “Hi, you’re later than usual.  Busy today?  Want to help?  Why don’t you go change and come out here and help me haul these bags out front and get the parsley and basil planted.  I want to finish up before supper.  It’s supposed to rain tomorrow and that will be good for the seeds.”

     “OK,” he said, “be right back.”

     It seemed odd to him, as he went back into the house, to do normal things, like gardening, planting seeds, even changing clothes.  Ordinary life had drifted away from him, and he anticipated working with Rebecca as a rare moment of calm wrested from the chaos and fearfulness that had been enveloping him. 

     When he returned, he said that he’d like to go out for a drink tonight because he needed to talk with her.  She said OK, no problem, because their baby sitter was available--she had only just been talking with her before he came home.  So they busied themselves in the garden.  He hauled the bags of leaves to the side of the house and then spaded the beds.  She raked them smooth, and in less than an hour they were done.  They put the tools back in the garage and kicked off their shoes before going into the house.  He felt good from the exertion, and together they went upstairs to wash and change.

     She had expected him to say that he had found a new position and that they could now begin planning to move.  When she heard his story, she was furious, angry at his not telling her what was going on from the beginning, and doubly angry at the way his colleagues were behaving towards him. 

     “What did they think you had done to this boy?  Kidnap him?  Murder him?” she said, in a tone of indignation and disbelief.  “How could they shun you?  They should have been giving you moral support, being there for you during such a horrible time.  What a bunch of spineless cowards and moral defectives they are!”

     He said nothing, pondering her outrage.  She was right.  Why didn’t he expect it?  He would have commiserated with any of his colleagues who had been the brunt of such gossip and rumor-mongering as he had been.  Yet he didn’t expect it and wasn’t surprised by it.  Why? 

     For a while they sat silently, sipping their drinks, and he thought about the difference between his and her expectations of his colleagues’ behavior.  Were they cowards, afraid for their jobs if they showed concern for him?  Afraid they would become targets of the students’ displeasure themselves or that they would be branded by talking with him?  These were supposed to be independent men and women, intellectuals, protected by academic freedom and tenure, and all that.  Why hadn’t he expected any of them to speak up for him?  To defend him in the newspaper?  To criticize the cabal that was trying to undo him?  What did their silence and their shunning of him say, about them and about the campus and about colleges and universities generally?

     “Americans pride themselves on their independence,” he said to Rebecca, after a while, “yet they are the world’s greatest conformists.  And university professors are American to the core.”

     “Blast them and their conformity,” she said.  “I want to leave here, I want you to just quit.  I don’t care if you don’t have another position.  While you’re looking, I’ll go to work.  I can’t bear the thought of you’re going back to that smug and self-righteous place in the fall.” 

     “I thought of that,” he said, “but I can’t quit this year for a bunch of reasons.”

     “I hope you’re not going to talk about honor!” she said.

     “No, not that.  But if I quit now, it’ll look like I caved in, or like I was guilty.  It will seem like Corey Tjarks and his Council buddies succeeded.”

     “Good.  That should put the fear into that herd of cowards and make their lives miserable, for a couple of years, at least.”

     He was glad he talked with Rebecca.  She had given him a perspective he sorely needed.  And she had observed that only Dr. Brownlee had any humanity in him and was the only person of conviction on the campus.  He hadn’t thought that way, taking Dr. Brownlee’s response to the student who made the accusations against him as professional in the best sense of that word.  He saw now that Dr. Brownlee was more aware of his situation than he was himself, and that he had in fact protected him. 

     He had had a couple of drinks and was beginning to feel a little light headed, so he said they should go home.  He helped her on with her jacket, left a tip on the table, paid the bill, and let her drive home.  It wasn’t very late and he decided to go to his study and read, something light and entertaining.  Rebecca had turned on the television and sat to watch the news.  He looked over his bookcases, trying to find something to lighten his mood.  He came across Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, which he had started to read some months ago, but which had been put aside when his troubles started.  He was enjoying the mystery of the various murders in the ancient monastery and decided to return to it.  He had been reading for about an hour when Rebecca came up.  She looked in on Angela and Teddy and then told him she was going to bed.  He said he wanted to read for another hour or so.  As usual, she left the hall light on. 

     It was approaching midnight when he heard the first noise.  It was the sound of a footstep on the stairs.  Every step of the old staircase creaked loudly, and he always joked that no one could ever sneak up on them during the night because the stairs were a built in alarm.  He raised his head from the book and listened.  But there was no repetition of the sound.  “Bad book to read tonight,” he said to himself.  But not long after he returned to it he heard the noise again.

     “This is too much,” he said aloud.  “I can’t stand it anymore.  It’s getting to me.”

     So he got up and went downstairs.  The house was dark and silent, and Rebecca had lowered the heat, so it was cool, as well.  He checked all the doors and windows, and everything was locked.  He checked the basement door, too. And that was closed.  But just to say that he covered everything, he turned on the basement light at the top of the stairs and went down to have a look.  The basement was crowded with things in storage, and dark shadows were everywhere.  But he walked around and looked into every corner.  Then he went back upstairs to his study.

     He was undecided whether to read any longer.  He knew he wouldn’t get far before being disturbed again, for he was sure that what he was experiencing was in his mind and that it wouldn’t go away.  But he wasn’t sleepy.  He stood in front of his chair for several moments trying to make up his mind when he heard a stair creak so loudly that he nearly jumped.  He rushed out the door of his study into the hallway and looked down the stairs.  But there was no one on the steps, as he knew would be the case. 

     “How can I sleep with this going on,” he said out loud to himself.  So he took up the book and sat on the steps, with the light from the hall pouring over his shoulder to illuminate the pages.  Sitting on the steps, he hoped, would make the noise stop, and if not, he would be able to tell what was making it.  But the staircase had a corner, which had to be rounded to go all the way down, and after reading a while he heard the creak on that part of the staircase. 

     “Damn,” he said aloud, and went down to the top of the steps just around the corner.  There wasn’t enough light to read there, so he just sat on the top step, leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, and let himself doze.  And just as he expected, nothing happened.  The creaking stopped.  But he knew he couldn’t sit there all night.  So after a while he got up and went to bed.

     He lay awake for some time, listening.  He felt like waking Rebecca and telling her of the noises and the voice he had heard.  Sharing it might just help him come out of it.  He was wide awake when he felt his arm stroked.  He looked at his arm and at the empty space beside the bed and felt an adrenaline rush.  It was a living hand that stroked his arm.  He had to struggle to keep calm.  But then he heard the voice.  A girl’s voice.  It said, “watch,” close enough to him to almost feel her breath. 

     He sat up then and, peering through the door, he could see someone walk across the hall.  It was dark, but enough light came in from his windows to make out a small person in what appeared to be a white nightgown.  Then he heard a thump and a weak cry.  He leaped from the bed and paced the distance to the door.  In the darkness of the hall, the person he saw looked like Angela standing in the middle of the hall in her nightgown.  Standing over her was a tall figure, dark like a huge shadow.  It had something in its right hand which he couldn’t make out.

     Just then it shoved the girl aside and lunged at him.  He gave a shout of surprise and fell backwards with the dark figure stumbling into the bedroom after him.  Walter was on his back on the floor and the figure, regaining its balance, knelt down on one knee and raised a hand over Walter’s face, about to strike him.  He shouted again as the hand descended.  Whatever it held bludgeoned him across the forehead, and he felt himself stunned by the blow and the room go all alight. 

     He heard screaming then.  A girl’s voice.  His daughter’s voice.  She had turned the light on.  Rebecca was awakened by his first shout, when he fell backwards into the room.  She had gotten out of bed and gone to the closet, but when she saw the dark figure stumbling in after him, for a moment she was paralyzed.  Then, when she saw it kneel and deliver the blow, she turned to the closet.  Inside, Walter kept an old walking stick he had bought in Austria.  It was shod in steel and had a gnarled top with a leather thong in it.  She had grabbed it and just as Angela turned on the light, she was wielding it like a baseball bat.  The figure saw her and took the blow at almost the same instant.  It was over. 

     The police talked with them for a long time.  It was nearly morning when they were alone again.  Walter had been taken to the hospital and had a CAT scan and was treated for trauma to the head, and she was given instructions not to let him sleep for at least eight hours.  He had taken a very bad blow, and his head was covered in bandages.  Corey Tjarks was knocked cold by the blow he received.  Rebecca caught him full swing at the temple with the knob of the stick.  He was dressed in black trousers and black turtle neck and had been in the house, police believed, for several hours, since there was no sign of forced entry.  He had to have come in while the baby sitter was there.  Where he hid himself was left to speculation. 

     It was Rebecca who carried Walter’s resignation to Dr. Brownlee.  She told him what she thought of the faculty, and he offered no excuses.  He said he would be moving on himself, probably within the year.  They shook hands.  Before she left, he said, “It’s not like this everywhere, you know.”  Then he smiled and walked with her to the corridor.  “You were victims, not so much of a crazed young man as of an attitude.  We live in a time of confused beliefs and passionate attitudes,” he said.  “It’s a sign of our weakness and soullessness.  Walter is an innocent, a naïf.  Keep him that way.”