seven

Harold Jenks got off the bus, took one look around, and said, “Fuck this.”

What the hell was he doing in this one-horse, Okie shithole? He stood with his duffel over his shoulder, took another look up and down University Boulevard hoping it would seem better this time.

It didn’t.

Pickup trucks, flannel shirts, and feed caps. Redneck city. No place for a brother like Harold Jenks. He pulled his coat tighter around him. What was it, twenty degrees? Colder? Fumbee, Oklahoma, was the asshole of the planet.

Maybe Spoon was right. Maybe his plan was insane in the head, and Jenks was just asking for an assload of trouble.

Fuck that. Jenks could pull it off. Nobody else would dare.

Jenks crossed the street to the campus. He pulled a folded wad of paper out of his back pocket and read until he saw what he needed. The administration building.

He stopped a slender white girl with blond hair in the courtyard, asked her which way to Administration. She was polite, but took a step back, eyes wary. Like you never seen a black man before. She pointed down the sidewalk to a gray, domed building.

“Thanks,” Jenks said.

The girl frowned and walked away fast.

At the main administration desk, Jenks was shuffled to the registrar. The gray-faced bureaucrat in that registrar’s office said that since he was a week late for classes, his schedule had been forwarded to the English Department.

“Where’s that?” Jenks asked.

The lady sighed, dramatic, shoulders slumped. She handed Jenks a folded map. “Albatross Hall,” she said. “Building 41 on the map.”

“Thanks.” Bitch.

He found Albatross Hall and ducked inside, stood a moment in the entrance letting himself get warm. A sign on the wall said ENGLISH DEPARTMENT and pointed him left. He followed the arrow.

The English Department office was barren of life. Jenks stood in front of the outer desk and waited in case a secretary or someone official happened along. Nobody did. He shuffled loudly, dropped his duffel bag with a heavy whuff. Nobody heard. He looked for a bell to ring, or a sign-in sheet or anything. He didn’t have a clue.

Just left of the front desk was a door marked WHITTAKER. It also said ENGLISH DEPARTMENT CHAIR and was slightly ajar. He pushed it open, looked in.

A big white guy with a heavy black beard stood wearing a woman’s hat and looking at himself in a hand mirror.

“Aw shit.” Jenks stared, scratched his head.

Whittaker glanced over his shoulder. “Who is it? Can I do something for you?” As he spoke, he turned back to the mirror, cocked the hat at a jaunty angle on his head.

“I’m-” He almost said he was Harold Jenks. “I’m Sherman Ellis.”

Whittaker put down the mirror, went to his desk, and began leafing through a stack of papers. “Ellis, Ellis, that name sounds familiar.”

“I’m supposed to be paid for,” Jenks said. “My school is free.”

“Yes.” Whittaker pulled a list from the stack. “Sherman Ellis. You have a graduate assistantship in the tutoring lab. You’re a week late.”

Jenks didn’t say anything.

“We thought maybe you’d forfeited the assistantship. We almost assigned it to someone else. The waiting list is pretty long.”

“What about the free schooling?”

Whittaker frowned, cleared his throat. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“And a place to stay,” Jenks said.

“You’ll have to take that up with graduate housing. Their waitlist is even longer. Might be a problem.”

“Hey, man. I got it right here I’m supposed to have a place to stay. For free.” He shook the letter in the air, one of the documents he’d taken off of Ellis. He’d get all up in this guy’s business about his rights and shit.

The gun in his coat pocket hung heavy. A.32 revolver with a short barrel, the serial number filed off. Spoon had given it to him, told him the little heater would be easy to hide when he was on campus. The Glock was in the duffel. Harold Jenks wasn’t planning on letting any of these white college motherfuckers get over on him.

Whittaker’s face hardened. “Nobody’s going to take away your entitlement, Mr. Ellis.” He said it through gritted teeth.

“I’ll get a lawyer.” But Jenks took a half step back. The guy was big, lady’s hat or not, and Jenks saw he was getting mad. Jenks’s hand dug into his coat pocket, closed over the butt of the pistol. He didn’t like the way the dude’s face twitched when he said entitlement.

“Here.” Whittaker handed Jenks a manila folder stuffed with paper. “You need to see Dr. Annette Grayson about your one-hour comp-rhet practicum. They’ll start you in the tutoring lab, I imagine. Pair you up with one of the veteran tutors until you learn the ropes. Your schedule’s in there as well. I’d find all of your professors soon, get syllabi, and find out what you’ve missed.”

“Right.” Jenks had no fucking idea what he was talking about.

“If you have any more questions, I suggest you talk to Professor Jay Morgan. He’s been assigned as your faculty advisor. Or ask Professor Grayson. You’ll be working closely with her too.”

“What about the place to stay? I’m supposed to have a free place to live.”

“The housing office.”

“Where’s that?”

“You have a campus map?”

“Yeah.” He handed it to Whittaker.

The dean unfolded it, squinted at the small print. “Building 9.” He gave the map back to Jenks.

“Later.” Jenks left, grabbed his duffel on the way out.

After Ellis left, Whittaker reminded himself that he was not a racist. But the sheer arrogance of these kids! Still, he’d have to tread lightly. The university was in a delicate position. He pulled the memo from his desk drawer, the one university president Lincoln Truman had sent directly concerning Sherman Ellis. He read it again.

He did not need the brief overview of the university’s checkered past, but he read it anyway. Enrollment just fifteen years ago had been over twelve thousand. But bad choices and bad administration had caused the school to fall on hard times. At its worst, enrollment had fallen to a catastrophic thirty-two hundred students. Instructors had been laid off. Crusty, tenured professors had been strongly encouraged into retirement. Funds had been slashed in every department. The football team, the fighting Buffalo Skinners, had been reduced to a Division III joke.

Indeed, the university had almost been closed altogether. There had been serious talk about turning it into a branch campus for OSU.

But superadministrator and divine savior Lincoln Truman had turned the school around. Enrollment had been up the last four years in a row, and the student body was now a healthy 6,857 students. Eastern Oklahoma University was entering a glorious new renaissance.

In only one area was the school drastically behind the rest of the nation. Diversity.

They weren’t. Diverse. At all.

Out of nearly seven thousand students only forty-one were Native American, the school’s largest minority. Twenty-three were Hispanic.

Eastern Oklahoma had only five African-American students. Now six with Sherman Ellis.

Granted, it had been hard to attract black students after the lynching. But that was nearly ten years ago. Still, Lincoln Truman had vowed to erase the university’s stained reputation as a “Klan Kollege” as one muckraking newspaper had put it.

Whittaker pulled Ellis’s file. His grades were solid. His GRE scores were through the roof. He returned the file to the cabinet.

Okay. A smart kid with a bad attitude. Whittaker had seen it before. Once Ellis realized he was among people who wanted to see him succeed, he’d ease off the tough-guy routine.

If not, well, Whittaker was known to be rather a tough cookie himself. He picked up the hand mirror again and went back to adjusting the hat.