"I was a wild 'un back then," he confessed with a grin. "No flannel pants in them days! And no time for lallygaggin' round no drive-ins, like young 'uns in this Present Modern College of Today."
He seemed now altogether scornful of the students roundabout, whom he'd lately been praising. About his own childhood I found him similarly of two minds, declaring on the one hand his intention to see to it that his children enjoyed all the privileges himself had never known, and on the other that the modern generation was plumb spoilt by the luxuries of life in present-day NTC and would amount to nothing for want of such rigor as had been his lot.
"I run away from home at the age of fourteen," he said proudly. "Not that it was much of a home, with Paw a-drinkin' and Maw forever a-layin' the Good Book on me." The actual nature and location of his birthplace I could not discern: sometimes it appeared to have been the meanest hovel, sometimes a place of ancient grandeur. In any case he'd abandoned it, his parents, his patrimony and hied him into wilderness departments, to live off the land. His motives, as he characterized them, were praiseworthy: the pursuit of independence and escape from the debilitating influence of corrupt tradition. "My folks and me, we come to a fork in the road," he said: "they had their notions and I had mine, that's everything there was to it."
But Max questioned this assertion. "Yes, well, the way I read once, you were hooky-playing from school always, ja? And making trouble till they ran you out?"
Greene reckoned cheerfully that he'd made his share of mischief now and again, and acknowledged further that on his voyage into the wild, in a homemade vessel, he'd been accompanied by another fugitive, a Frumentian from a South-Quad chain-gang; that they'd saved each other's lives more than once, and had become fast friends despite their difference in race.
"But that's all we ever was, was pals," he insisted. "Old Black George and me (I used to call him Old Black George, despite he weren't old), we went through thick and thin together 'fore we parted company. I guess no boy ever had a better paclass="underline" that's why I bust out laughin' when they say I don't like darkies! But friends is all, and them smart-alecks that claim we was funny for each other — I'd like to horsewhip 'em!"
I remarked that I too had been fortunate enough to have a Frumentian friend by the name of George. Max considered his sarsaparilla.
Equally libelous, Greene assured us, was the gossip that he'd taken a daughter of his fellow-fugitive into the bush for immoral purposes: the truth was that an influential white lady had arranged to have Old Black George paroled into the custody of his family, all of whom were domestic workers in the boarding-school she operated; only his parole hinged on the condition that this particular daughter, who had taken to a lewd course of life, leave the premises. "O.B.G.," as Greene was wont to call his friend, had at first been reluctant, but upon Greene's offering secretly to take the girl with him and look after her, he accepted the condition.
" 'Tweren't my fault she turned out bad," he said. "I had my hands full clearin' land and huntin' meat and buildin' shelters and chasin' off redskins; I couldn't watch no sassy little pickaninny every minute."
"But you never touched her yourself?" Max demanded.
"Me touch her!" Greene grinned. "It was her pesterin' me all the time! And a-teasin'! And a-beggin'!" His eyes hardened. "And declarin' she'd tell Miss Sally Ann if I didn't watch out."
As best I could fathom it, he had permitted the Frumentian girl to share his sleeping bag, cook and wash for him, and mate with certain redskins. It was possible even to infer that his life had been preserved by those same aboriginals at her behest, but the story was vague. In any case, despite her inclination, if not positive passion, he had seldom actually serviced her, he vowed — perhaps never at all — for the reason that it "weren't decent." In the meanwhile, other adventurers had followed Greene's lead until at length a small quadrangle was established in the wilds; New Tammany College annexed the territory, and Tower Hall dispatched ROTC units to subdue the redskins, and schoolteachers to educate the settlers. Greene himself, from established habit, had declined formal schooling; but he taught himself reading, writing, and arithmetic — with no other light than the fire on his hearth, no other texts than the Old and New Syllabi, no other materials than a clean pine board and a stick of charcoal. And if his manners and speech were untutored, his courage, high spirits, and intelligence must have made up for them, for he wooed and won the pretty schoolmistress herself — Miss Sally Ann from back in the East Quads, whose mother was the boarding-school directress mentioned before.
"You can talk about your Grand Tutors," he sighed, and set his jaw; "Miss Sally Ann was Enos Enoch and His Twelve Trustees as far as I was concerned, and her word was the pure and simple Answer. Wasn't for her, I'd of been a beast of the woods: the way she prettied up the cabin and the schoolhouse was a wonder! And talk about your Finals: when Sally Ann got done with me I could recite you the Founder's Scroll backwards or forwards."
"Is that how to pass the Finals!" I exclaimed with a frown.
"Pfui," Max said. "It's how to flunk a whole college."
But Greene insisted that Miss Sally Ann was Founder and Chancellor and Examiners too, to his mind, and had besides the prettiest face and figure in the entire territory, durned if she didn't. She herself was the Answer: she had rescued him from the clutches of the Dean o' Flunks, from the way to failure, and he would let no vileness near her. It was chiefly for her sake, to provide her with every comfort known to studentdom, that when not yet twenty he claimed squatter's rights to vast tracts of virgin timber, formed his own Sub-Department of Lumbering and Paper Manufacture, built sawmills and factories, laid waste the wilderness, dammed the watersheds, spoiled the streams, and became a power in the School of Business and an influence in Tower Hall. For her sake too (though it wasn't clear whether she demanded these things or he volunteered them) he eschewed liquor and tobacco, and forbade them to others; left off cursing, gambling, and fist-fighting, of which he'd been fond; and had Old Black George's daughter committed to Main Detention as a common prostitute. By discharging in his office the energies previously wasted on idle pursuits, he grew at an early age more affluent than his neighbors. Yet though he swore by his union and career as by Commencement itself, he showed signs of restlessness: he began playing truant from his office, as formerly from the classroom; spent more time on the golf-links than at the mills; became a collector of famous paintings, expensive books, antique motorcycles, pornography, and big-game trophies. And he welcomed the chance to fight for New Tammany as an officer of infantry in Campus Riot II.
"I don't deny you fought like a hero," Max said. "He won the Trustees' Medal of Honor, George, for killing so many Bonifacists. A fine thing."
I was surprised to see that he spoke not at all sarcastically. "I thank you, sir," Greene said, in an accent much brisker and clearer than he'd used thitherto: a modest but military tone. I asked him whether it was in combat with the enemy that he'd lost his eye.
"I wish to Sam Hill it was," he said, and cocked his head ruefully. "Weren't, though." He then declared, for reasons not at once apparent, that the opinion commonly held of him outside NTC was a cruel untruth — namely, that he was henpecked; that his wife "wore the pants in the family" and was unhappy with the fit, as it were; that too much complaisance on his part had led her at first to discontentment, thence to shrewishness, and at last to the Faculty Women's Rest House, and everything kerflooey.