Hocus Pocus Part 13

ANDREA WAKEFIELD WAS the 2nd person I spoke to after Tarkington fired me. Damon Stern was the first. I am talking about 1991 again. Practically everybody else was eating lobsters. Andrea came up to me after meeting Stern farther down on the Senior Walk.

"I thought you would be in the Pavilion eating lobster," she said.

"Not hungry," I said.

"I can't stand it that they're boiled alive," she said. "You know what Damon Stern just told me?"

"I'm sure it was interesting," I said.

"During the reign of Henry the 8th of England," she said, "counterfeiters were boiled alive."

"Show biz," I said. "Were they boiled alive in public?"

"He didn't say," she said. "And what are you doing here?"

"Enjoying the suns.h.i.+ne," I said.

She believed me. She sat down next to me. She was already wearing her academic gown for the faculty parade to graduation. Her cowl identified her as a graduate of the Sorbonne in Paris, France. In addition to her duties as Dean, dealing with unwanted pregnancies and drug addiction and the like, she also taught French and Italian and oil painting. She was from a genuinely distinguished old Philadelphia family, which had given civilization a remarkable number of educators and lawyers and physicians and artists. She actually may have been what Jason Wilder and several of Tarkington's Trustees believed themselves to be, obviously the most highly evolved creatures on the planet.

She was a lot smarter than her husband.

I always meant to ask her how a Quaker came to marry a professional soldier, but I never did.

Too late now.

EVEN AT HER age then, which was about 60, 10 years older than me, Andrea was the best figure skater on the faculty. I think figure skating, if Andrea Wakefield could find the right partner, was eroticism enough for her. General Wakefield couldn't skate for sour apples. The best partner she had on ice at Tarkington, probably, was Bruce Bergeron-the boy who was trapped in an elevator at Bloomingdale's, who became the youth who couldn't get into any college but Tarkington, who became the man who joined the chorus of an ice show and then was murdered by somebody who presumably hated h.o.m.os.e.xuals, or loved one too much.

Andrea and I had never been lovers. She was too contented and old for me.

"I WANT YOU to know I think you're a Saint," said Andrea.

"How so?" I said.

"You're so nice to your wife and mother-in-law."

"It's easier than what I did for Presidents and Generals and Henry Kissinger," I said.

"But this is voluntary," she said.

"So was that," I said. "I was real gung-ho."

"WHEN YOU REALIZE how many men nowadays dissolve their marriages when they become the least little bit inconvenient or uncomfortable," she said, "all I can think is that you're a Saint."

"They didn't want to come up here, you know," I said. "They were very happy in Baltimore, and Margaret would have become a physical therapist."

"It isn't this valley that made them sick, is it?" she said. "It isn't this valley that made my husband sick."

"It's a clock that made them sick," I said. "It would have struck midnight for both of them, no matter where they were."

"That's how I feel about Sam," she said. "I can't feel guilty."

"Shouldn't," I said.

"When he resigned from the Army and went over to the peace movement," she said, "I think he was trying to stop the clock. Didn't work."

"I miss him," I said.

"Don't let the war kill you, too," she said.

"Don't worry," I said.

"YOU STILL HAVEN'T found the money?" she said.

She was talking about the money Mildred had gotten for the house in Baltimore. While Mildred was still fairly sane, she deposited it in the Scipio branch of the First National Bank of Rochester. But then she withdrew it in cash when the bank was bought by the Sultan of Brunei, without telling me or Margaret that she had done so. Then she hid it somewhere, but she couldn't remember where.

"I don't even think about it anymore," I said. "The most likely thing is that somebody else found it. It could have been a bunch of kids. It could have been somebody working on the house. Whoever it was sure isn't going to say so."

We were talking about $45,000 and change.

"I know I should give a darn, but somehow I can't give a darn," I said.

"The war did that to you," she said.

"Who knows?" I said.

AS WE CHATTED in the suns.h.i.+ne, a powerful motorcycle came to life with a roar in the valley, in the region of the Black Cat Cafe. Then another one spoke, and yet another.

"h.e.l.l's Angels?" she said. "You mean it's really going to happen?"

The joke was that Tex Johnson, the College President, having seen one too many motorcycle movies, believed that the campus might actually be a.s.saulted by h.e.l.l's Angels someday. This fantasy was so real to him that he had bought an Israeli sniper's rifle, complete with a telescopic sight, and ammunition for it from a drugstore in Portland, Oregon. He and Zuzu were visiting Zuzu's half sister. That was the same weapon which would eventually get him crucified.

But now Tex's antic.i.p.ation of an a.s.sault by h.e.l.l's Angels didn't seem so comical after all. A mighty doomsday chorus of ba.s.so profundo 2-wheelers was growing louder and louder and coming closer and closer. There could be no doubt about it! Whoever it was, whatever it was, its destination could only be Tarkington!

23.

IT WASN'T h.e.l.l'S Angels.

It wasn't lower-cla.s.s people of any kind.

It was a motorcade of highly successful Americans, most on motorcycles, but some in limousines, led by Arthur Clarke, the fun-loving billionaire. He himself was on a motorcycle, and on the saddle behind him, holding on for dear life, her skirt hiked up to her crotch, was Gloria White, the 60-year-old lifelong movie star!

Bringing up the rear were a sound truck and a flatbed carrying a deflated hot-air balloon. When the balloon was inflated at the center of the Quadrangle it would turn out to be shaped like a castle Clarke owned in Ireland!

COUGH, COUGH. SILENCE. Two more: Cough, cough. There, I'm OK now. Cough. That's it. I really am OK now. Peace.

THIS WASN'T ARTHUR C. Clarke, the science fiction writer who wrote all the books about humanity's destiny in other parts of the Universe. This was Arthur K. Clarke, the billionaire speculator and publisher of magazines and books about high finance.

COUGH. I BEG your pardon. A little blood this time. In the immortal words of the Bard of Avon: "Out, d.a.m.ned spot! out, I say! One; two: why, then, 'tis time to do't. h.e.l.l is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?"

Amen. And especial thanks to Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Familiar Quotations.

I READ A lot of science fiction when I was in the Army, including Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, Childhood's End, which I thought was a masterpiece. He was best known for the movie 2001, the very year in which I am writing and coughing now. which I thought was a masterpiece. He was best known for the movie 2001, the very year in which I am writing and coughing now.

I saw 2001 2001 twice in Vietnam. I remember 2 wounded soldiers in wheelchairs in the front row at 1 of those showings. The whole front row was wheelchairs. The 2 soldiers had had their feet wrecked some way, but seemed to be OK from the knees on up, and they weren't in any pain. They were awaiting transportation back to the States, I guess, where they could be fitted with prostheses. I don't think either of them was older than 18. One was black and 1 was white. twice in Vietnam. I remember 2 wounded soldiers in wheelchairs in the front row at 1 of those showings. The whole front row was wheelchairs. The 2 soldiers had had their feet wrecked some way, but seemed to be OK from the knees on up, and they weren't in any pain. They were awaiting transportation back to the States, I guess, where they could be fitted with prostheses. I don't think either of them was older than 18. One was black and 1 was white.

After the lights went up, I heard the black one say to the white one, "You tell me: me: What was that all about?" What was that all about?"

The white one said, "I dunno, I dunno. I'll be happy if I can just get back to Cairo, Illinois."

He didn't p.r.o.nounce it "ky-roe." He p.r.o.nounced it "kayroe."

My mother-in-law from Peru, Indiana, p.r.o.nounces the name of her hometown "pee-roo," not "puh-roo."

Old Mildred p.r.o.nounces the name of another Indiana town, Brazil, as "brazzle."

ARTHUR K. CLARKE was coming to Tarkington to get an honorary Grand Contributor to the Arts and Sciences Degree.

The College was prevented by law from awarding any sort of degree which sounded as though the recipient had done serious work to get it. Paul Slazinger, the former Writer in Residence, I remember, objected to real inst.i.tutions of higher learning giving honorary degrees with the word "Doctor" in them anywhere. He wanted them to use "Panjandrum" instead.

When the Vietnam War was going on, though, a kid could stay out of it by enrolling at Tarkington. As far as Draft Boards were concerned, Tarkington was as real a college as MIT. This could have been politics.

It must have been politics.

EVERYBODY KNEW ARTHUR Clarke was going to get a meaningless certificate. But only Tex Johnson and the campus cops and the Provost had advance warning of the spectacular entrance he planned to make. It was a regular military operation. The motorcycles, and there were about 30 of them, and the balloon had been trucked into the parking lot behind the Black Cat Cafe at dawn.

And then Clarke and Gloria White and the rest of them, including Henry Kissinger, had been brought down from the Rochester airport in limousines, followed by the sound truck. Kissinger wouldn't ride a motorcycle. Neither would some others, who came all the way to the Quadrangle by limousine.

Just like the people on the motorcycles, though, the people in the limousines wore gold crash helmets decorated with dollar signs.

IT'S A GOOD thing Tex Johnson knew Clarke was coming by motorcycle, or Tex just might have shot him with the Israeli rifle he had bought in Oregon.

CLARKE'S BIG ARRIVAL wasn't a half-bad dress rehearsal for

Judgment Day. St. John the Divine in the Bible could only imagine such an absolutely knockout show with noise and smoke and gold and lions and eagles and thrones and celebrities and marvels up in the sky and so on. But Arthur K. Clarke had created a real one with modern technology and tons of cas.h.!.+

The gold-helmeted motorcyclists formed a hollow square on the Quadrangle, facing outward, making their mighty steeds roar and roar.

Workmen in white coveralls began to inflate the balloon.

The sound truck ripped the air to shreds with the recorded racket of a bagpipe band.

Arthur Clarke, astride his bike, was looking in my direction. That was because great pals of his on the Board of Trustees were waving to him from the building right behind me. I found myself deeply offended by his proof that big money could buy big happiness.

I yawned elaborately. I turned my back on him and his show. I walked away as though I had much better things to do than gape at an imbecile.

Thus did I miss seeing the balloon snap its cable and, as unattached as myself, sail over the prison across the lake.

ALL THE PRISONERS over there could see of the outside world was sky. Some of them in the exercise yard saw a castle up there for just a moment. What on Earth could the explanation be?

"THERE ARE MORE things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."-Bartlett's Familiar Quotations Familiar Quotations

THAT EMPTY CASTLE with its mooring snapped, a plaything of the wind, was a lot like me. We were so much alike, in fact, that I myself would pay a surprise visit to the prison before the Sun went down.

If the balloon had been as close to the ground as I was, it would have been blown this way and that at first, before it gained sufficient alt.i.tude for the prevailing wind to take it across the lake. What caused me to change course, however, wasn't random gusts but the possibility of running into this person or that one who had the power to make me even more uncomfortable. I particularly did not want to run into Zuzu Johnson or the departing Artist in Residence, Pamela Ford Hall.

But life being what it was, I would of course run into both of them.