Hocus Pocus - Kurt Vonnegut [39]
ROBERT W. MOELLENKAMP hadn’t heard yet that he and his wife and kids were as broke as any convict in Athena. So when I came into the Board Room back in 1991, he addressed me in the statesmanlike tones of a prudent conservator of a noble legacy. He nodded in the direction of Jason Wilder, who was then simply a Tarkington parent, not a member of the Board. Wilder sat at the opposite end of the great oval table with a manila folder, a tape recorder and cassettes, and a Polaroid photograph deployed before him.
I knew who he was, of course, and something of how his mind worked, having read his newspaper column and watched his television show from time to time. But we had not met before. The Board members on either side of him had crowded into one another in order to give him plenty of room for some kind of performance.
He was the only celebrity there. He was probably the only true celebrity ever to set foot in that Board Room.
There was 1 other non-Trustee present. That was the College President, Henry “Tex” Johnson, whose wife Zuzu, as I’ve already said, I used to make love to when he was away from home any length of time. Zuzu and I had broken up for good about a month before, but we were still on speaking terms.
“PLEASE TAKE A seat, Gene,” said Moellenkamp. “Mr. Wilder, who I guess you know is Kimberley’s father, has a rather disturbing story he wants to tell to you.”
“I see,” I said, a good soldier doing as he was told. I wanted to keep my job. This was my home. When the time came, I wanted to retire here and then be buried here. That was before it was clear that glaciers were headed south again, and that anybody buried here, including the gang by the stable, along with Musket Mountain itself, would eventually wind up in Pennsylvania or West Virginia. Or Maryland.
Where else could I become a Full Professor or a college teacher of any rank, with nothing but a Bachelor of Science Degree from West Point? I couldn’t even teach high school or grade school, since I had never taken any of the required courses in education. At my age, which was then 51, who would hire me for anything, and especially with a demented wife and mother-in-law in tow.
I said to the Trustees and Jason Wilder, “I believe I know most of what the story is, ladies and gentlemen. I’ve just been with Kimberley, and she gave me a pretty good rehearsal for what I’d better say here.
“When listening to her charges against me, I can only hope you did not lose sight of what you yourselves have learned about me during my 15 years of faithful service to Tarkington. This Board itself, surely, can provide all the character witnesses I could ever need. If not, bring in parents and students. Choose them at random. You know and I know that they will all speak well of me.”
I nodded respectfully in Jason Wilder’s direction. “I am glad to meet you in person, sir. I read your columns and watch your TV show regularly. I find what you have to say invariably thought-provoking, and so do my wife and her mother, both of them invalids.” I wanted to get that in about my 2 sick dependents, in case Wilder and a couple of new Trustees hadn’t heard about them.
Actually, I was laying it on pretty thick. Although Margaret and her mother read to each other a lot, taking turns, and usually by flashlight in a tent they’d made inside the house out of bedspreads and chairs or whatever, they never read a newspaper. They didn’t like television, either, except for Sesame Street, which was supposedly for children. The only time they saw Jason Wilder on the little screen as far as I can remember, my mother-in-law started dancing to him as though he were modern music.
When one of his guests on the show said something, she froze. Only when Wilder spoke did she start to dance again.
I certainly wasn’t going to tell him that.
“I WANT TO say first,” said Wilder, “that I am in nothing less than awe, Professor Hartke, of your magnificent record in the Vietnam War. If the American people had not lost their courage and ceased to support you, we would be living