“Maybe you can help get me out of here.”

The idea, from the confused cloudiness of his eyes, clearly hadn’t occurred to him. “How could I?” he asks.

“I’ve heard you get away from here from time to time. For rest and recreation.”

“Man doth not live by bread alone.”

“Wherever it is you go, there’s got to be an American consul or a U.N. agency.”

“I can’t go anywhere anymore,” he says bitterly. “Not since the war began and they sealed off the borders.”

“You can still get to Baghdad. Any American general or chaplain or the Coalition Provincial Authority would…”

“Baghdad’s full of thieves, assassins, and thousands of trigger-happy kids.”

“All you have to do is tell anybody I’ve been kangaroo’d.”

“I go a yard and a half out of Assama I’d be scragged by somebody I don’t even know. Thing is…”

“What?”

“They got an ugly war up there. They don’t want anybody disturbing the peace down here.”

“Abdul al Sadr’s going to kill the hell out of me.”

“What I’m tryna say, nobody up north is going to reverse Abdul’s verdict—it’s a done deal. So why can’t we just talk about your funeral?”

“No.”

“How can I help you if you won’t cooperate?”

“You can’t, really. Good-bye, Dewey.”

We share a limp handshake and the visit is over. But at the door, waiting for a guard to unlock it, “Still,” he says, “if you change your mind, I’d appreciate your letting me know as soon as possible. I have to prepare, you know, if my remarks are to be creatively structured.”

SIX
FAREWELL TO COLLEGE JOYS

I never did get my doctorate. I fooled around, trying to work up some outrage toward John Lambert, the lawyer Chatterton was apprenticed to. Lambert used to search the youth’s desk drawer and tear up his manuscripts, but the more I studied Chatterton’s poetry, the more I sympathized with his employer.

Such depravity in intellectual circles does not go undetected. It was not long after my return from Baltimore that I was summoned to the office of my committee chairman.

Dr. Guthrie Armbruster was usually designated to the off-campus community as “our metaphysical man,” not because of any deep transcendental leaning but for his discipline, the metaphysical poets. He had a certain peculiarity: he sat on pillows, for he suffered from hemorrhoids, that occupational hazard of scholars. We’ve all known people who elicit thought with some autistic gesture, wrinkling the nose, rubbing the chin, chewing a lower lip—that sort of thing. Armbruster achieved the same effect by leaning to his left and, using his right hand as a sort of tamper, pushing back his piles. One got the impression that his most inspired ideas came out of his ass.