Straight Man

says. “They want to interview you?”
    “Trapped like a bug,” I declare.
    “I should have told you about that first?” Rachel laments.
    “Don’t be silly,” I say. “Aren’t you going to ask me if I killed the duck?”
    “No?”
    “How come?”
    “Because you didn’t? Because it wouldn’t be a very good joke?”
    It’s a wonderful thing to be perfectly understood, especially by a woman you could fall in love with under the right circumstances. Especially when the circumstances aren’t so terribly wrong. “Do you realize, Rachel, that if you published a book, our department secretary would be more distinguished than the faculty she serves?”
    I really should stop terrifying this poor woman, but I can’t help myself. Besides. Only part of her is terrified. Rachel’s fine secret heart is singing, because it has to be. My own is humming backup.
    “Will they hate me?” she wants to know.
    “They already hate you. For helping me.”
    “That reminds me?” she says, opening the three-ring binder she’s brought in with her, and extracting from it a thick booklet that I see is a copy of the English department’s operating paper. She hands it to me open to the page that describes the procedure for the recall of a department chair. She’s highlighted in yellow the passage she wants me to consider, which states that a three-fourths majority vote is required.
    “Huh,” I say. “I thought it was two-thirds.”
    “So does Finny? I heard him talking?”
    “It would be unusual for Finny to be wrong about something like this,” I say, checking the date on the front of the booklet.
    “It hasn’t been two-thirds since 1971, when Professor Quarry was recalled?”
    I vaguely remember this. It was Jim Quarry who hired Jacob Rose and me. No wonder they recalled him. What I can’t remember is how I voted. “How many voting members of the department are there?”
    “Twenty-eight?”
    “Make thirty copies,” I suggest. “Don’t tell anyone.”
    She hands them to me. Thirty copies. Amazing.
    When she’s gone, I peek out the door again, and I see that the crowd has swollen. Missy Blaylock has arrived and is doing her endless sound check. “You’re sure he’s in there?” I hear someone ask. “That office right there,” somebody else says, and everybody turns and looks right at the door I’m peeking from behind.
    I take a deep breath and step into the hall and the lights. Quickly Missy has me by the elbow and draws me toward the camera. Down the hall, placards are bouncing up and down and last Friday’s chant is raised again. “Stop Devereaux! Stop the slaughter!” My colleagues, the ones who aren’t in class, have come out into the hallway to witness this spectacle.
    “We’re here at the Railton Campus of West Central Pennsylvania University talking to Professor Henry Devereaux, chair of the English department. Professor, last Friday you threatened to kill a duck a day unless you got a budget. Early this morning a duck was found hanging from a tree limb here on campus.” (“Goose,” somebody corrects.) “Do you have any knowledge of the incident?”
    “No comment,” I tell her, and there’s a groan from the gallery.
    “He did it,” somebody shouts. “Look at him.”
    “Have you received the budget you demanded?”
    I confess that I have received no budget.
    “Is there a causal link between that fact and the dead duck?”
    “
Goose!
” somebody yells, exasperated. I search the crowd for Tony Coniglia.
    “No comment.”
    “We’ve just spoken with Richard Pope, the campus executive officer. Dr. Pope says he feels certain you are innocent of this crime.”
    “How could he know that?” I point out. “Unless he did it himself.”
    This wild inference throws Missy completely off stride. “Are you saying he’s involved?” Incredulity.
    “He doesn’t have a budget either,” I point out.
    “Do you think there will be further killings?”
    “Do you think I’ll get my budget?”
    When the light goes off on the camera, someone shouts, “Murderer!” and a new chant goes up. Lou Steinmetz makes his way through the crowd. Somebody yells, “Bust him!”
    Lou turns on the demonstrators, tells them to disperse, which they do, somewhat reluctantly. To me, Lou Steinmetz is beginning to look old, like a man who knows he isn’t going to have many more opportunities to crush a student revolt. Turning the key on a radical English professor might offer slender compensation. “A