“Why is the administration trying to railroad this agreement though?” Mercy Altebopper’s eyes crossed with suspicion.
“I know that your doubts spring from the most idealistic motives,” Jonathan Relevant murmured to her, “but you also have to think of yourself. And there’s one thing you should remember.”
“What?”
“Tenure!”
Mercy Altebopper looked into the kindly face of Robert Donat playing kindly Mr. Chips. “Good-bye,” she said to kindly Jonathan Relevant as she signed and departed. Tenure.
Jonathan Relevant sidled up to Professor Rumpkis.
“Two very influential alumni have already approved this agreement,” he told the professor. “Are you going to stand opposed to them?”
“I hadn’t looked at it that way.” Professor Rumpkis broke wind. “What do you think?” he asked Jonathan Relevant deferentially.
“I think you should sign.” Jonathan Relevant belched.
The belch did it. Professor Rumpkis signed, burped his admiration and gratitute to Jonathan Relevant, and left.
“I don’t mind granting amnesty to most of the students involved,” the chancellor muttered. “They’re just dupes. But the leaders should be punished.”
“You must be kidding!” Minerva Kaufman was livid. “You don’t seriously expect us to agree to sell ourselves down the river!”
“Perhaps a compromise . . .” Dr. Umpmeyer suggested.
“Like maybe just shaft the black leaders?” G. P. sneered sarcastically.
“Chancellor.” Jonathan Relevant took him aside. “Do you know how leaders are made?”
“I don’t think I follow you, sir.”
“Leaders are made by the people who oppose them,” Jonathan Relevant said earnestly. “The more important the man in opposition, the more important he makes the person heading up the other side. And you are a very important man, Chancellor.” ‘
“Thank you, sir.”
“Right now those two” — Jonathan Relevant indicated G. P. and Minerva—“lead two small groups. If you punish them, then what you’re doing is broadening their base of power. Many students will follow them out of sympathy.”
“Are you saying that I’ll make them martyrs?”
“Not quite that. But you will increase their importance and their power as leaders. Whereas if you grant them amnesty, along with everybody else, to some extent they’ll merge back into the crowd.”
“I don’t know. . . .” The chancellor drummed his fingers on the table.
“And there’s one other thing,” Jonathan Relevant pointed out. “You’ve already agreed. In a sense, if you don’t sign, you’ll be going back on your word.”
“You’d put it that strongly?”
“I’d be disappointed in you.” Jonathan Relevant looked deep into the chancellor’s eyes. '
“Oh! Well, in that case . . .” The Chancellor signed.
Jonathan Relevant moved to G.P. and Minerva. “Look, you two,” he said, “you’ve gotten all of your demands. You’d be crazy not to sign.”
“I don’t know.” G. P. scratched his head. “I was thinking we should have included something in there about freeing Bobby Seale.”
“Save it for next time!” Jonathan Relevant told him.
“Right on, Eldridge.” G. P. signed.
“Suppose the Rotsy referendum doesn’t come out our way?” Minerva wondered.
“You don’t have much faith, do you?” Jonathan Relevant shook his head sadly.
“I suppose if we conduct an educational campaign it’ll be all right.” Minerva signed.
Jonathan Relevant turned toward Dr. Umpmeyer, but before he could speak the door to the room burst open and Hardcore entered, breathing hard. “Man!” He leveled an accusing finger at G. P. “I hear you sellin’ out!”
“What do you mean?” G. P. was taken aback.
“I hear you ’ greed to cover up Gabe’s dingus!”
“Well, yes, but —”
“Uncle Tom!”
“Now wait a minute—”
“I ain’t waitin’ no minute, boy! You college cats think you so smart you almos’ White! Well, we a lot tougher ’n that, an’ we ain’t buyin’ no tokenism!”
“But it’s a Swahili loincloth!” G. P. tried to explain.
“That manhood belong to us, baby! That’s my pecker hangin’ off Ol’ Gabe much as yours. An’ I wants it out there where Whitey can see what black manhood is.”
“He’s right.” G. P. sighed and reached for the paper.
“What are you doing?” Jonathan Relevant asked.
“Hell, Eldridge, the ghetto’s where it’s at. Not here at the white man’s college. I’m going to scratch my name off that agreement. We’re just going to have to go on fighting for Angel Gabriel’s black manhood.”
“Nonsense!” Dr. Umpmeyer took everybody by surprise. “The statue is not of the Angel Gabriel,” he explained, “and if it was, the Angel Gabriel wouldn’t be a black.”
“More ofay doubletalk!” Hardcore folded his arms.
“I don’t understand.” Even the chancellor was puzzled.
“I’ve done a little research,” Dr. Umpmeyer said calmly, smiling at the reassuring hum of his new hearing aid. “And I’ve found out that the statue we’re talking about was never intended to represent a black man—or a black angel for that matter.”
“Man, you blind? That statue black!” Hardcore snarled.
“It looks black. But it’s not. Take a knife and scratch at the surface and you’ll see what I mean.”
“You don’t mean it’s white?” G. P.’s brain was whirling.
“No. It’s red.”
“Huh?” Couched in different ways, that was the reaction of all of them.
“The statue was intended to be a representation of Chief White Flag, the leader of the tribe which once inhabited the land on which Harnell was built. The tribe was wiped out to the last man during an interracial peace parley.”
“So much for the first Brotherhood Week,” Jonathan Relevant murmured.
“It seems one of the white settlers present at the parley choked to death on the peace pipe and the other Whites assumed the Indians had deliberately poisoned him and went berserk. It was a massacre, and it culminated in the death of Chief White Flag. Just before he died, realizing that the Whites would take over the tribe’s land, he put a very strange curse on it. According to the legend, he suggested that the land be used to educate white men and prophesied that as the white man got smarter his education would destroy him.”
Of them all, only Jonathan Relevant fully comprehended that.
“Wait a minute!” G. P. interrupted. “If it’s a statue of an Indian, how come it’s been accepted as a statue of the black Angel Gabriel all these years.
“During the Civil War Union troops marched through this area and they pillaged and burned. But Old Man Harnell met them with open arms, claiming to be a Union sympathizer. He did a lot of things to make it seem credible. One of the things he did was paint the statue black and tell Northern officers he’d been educating Negroes on the sly. He made them believe it was a symbol-—the Angel Gabriel opening the gates to freedom.”
“Hey, man! If it’s a Indian, then how come ain’t got no dingus?” Hardcore wanted to know.
“That’s how they killed Chief White Flag,” Dr. Umpmeyer explained. “They castrated him—s1owly.”
“Art imitates life,” Jonathan Relevant observed.
“What do you think?” G. P. put the question directly to Hardcore.
“Makes no never-mind! Ain’t gonna sell our red brothers down Whitey’s river neither!” Hardcore grabbed the agreement, tore it into little pieces, and scattered it like confetti over the room. “An’ that’s where it’s at!” he announced. “Just where it was at before!”
Before the others could react, the door to the room was flung open and Leander Pigbaigh came hurtling through it with two beefy men right behind him. His abrupt entrance had caught him in midsentence: “——an’ since the Cee Ah Aih’s ’sponsible foah see-curity, that takes pree-cee-dence ovah youah jurisdiction an’ y’all got no right tew—”