The first day of class the professor shepherded the students through the maze of Dwinelle Hall and down the front stairs, broad as a stage, across the plaza where Mondays through Wednesdays a man lay on his back all day with his bicycle across his chest like a security blanket, his arms and legs clawing the air in slow motion like an upturned turtle; and into the grand lobby of Wheeler Hall, where an elderly blond man wearing a kung fu gi and curly-toed shoes like a court jester practiced tai chi, his ragged braid gently sweeping his yellow belt: and ending in the Grinnell Grove, where upon a fallen blue gum eucalyptus a bearded man lunched each day wearing Indian dress and twelve multicolored berets stacked on top of his head like a Dr. Seuss character. The point? By the end of the semester, the professor hoped they would be able to tell him.
On Fridays, the professor hosted Salon de Chat, an informal class with the tagline: People who don’t know their history are doomed to eat it! The desks were arranged as four-tops covered with butcher paper and a sandwich board was installed in the hallway. Their bistro, like all classrooms on the south side of Dwinelle Hall, overlooked a thin creek spanned by a wooden footbridge and straddled by a tree shed that blocked the worst of sound and sun. The first few weeks of class, Daron arrived early to ensure a seat near the window from which he could observe the world four stories below—the students eating along Strawberry Creek, rushing to and from the Bear’s Lair café, hustling through the breezeway leading to the bookstore—and imagine himself already a Berkeley graduate; a king of industry on high appointment in his city club; a Carnegie, but a true philanthropist. In his employ even the cafeteria worker who napped where the roots had riven the retaining wall and the earth opened into alcove would be warmed by his generosity. (He would never forget that workingmen, like his father, carried this litter, as the prof called it.) This fantasy lasted only so long as he was alone and soon gave way to fancying that the students tromping in behind were assembling to hear him speak. That whimsy he could retain only until hearing chalk scrape, sometimes a screech as anguished as a balloon at the edge of constraint.
He then was back in 512-A, a narrow classroom with chalkboards on the long walls and, on the ceiling, cocked fluorescent fixtures with those damned baffling fins, Candice never seated beside him. Those fantasies lasted only the first few weeks because by then it was apparent that the professor thought it impossible for a rich man to be a good man. Salon de Chat, though, was always fun. After being assigned to a table of three or four diners, each student received a menu of conversations.
SALON DE CHAT
Starter
Civil Disobedience
Entrée
Tradition and Social Justice
Dessert
Uncivil Disobedience and Protest
As usual, Daron and Charlie sat together, and Louis sat elsewhere with Candice. How Louis always managed to partner with Candice, Daron had not yet figured out. The prof lurched from table to table, ears out, eyes to the floor, finger to the ceiling, nodding, rarely talking, more a mascot than a teacher. Daron was still unaccustomed to this practice, most common among humanities professors, of mm-hmming more than speaking, which was the exact opposite of high school.
Laughter shot across the room. From Louis’s table. His three partners were all doubled over, and Louis wore his famous face of fatuity, eyes wide, mouth straight and slightly open, head back like he’d narrowly missed a slap, an expression that asked, Did I say something?
At Daron’s table, a junior from L.A. blathered about documentary filmmaking as the next social protest movement. Documenting protests, that is. A performative intervention, she explained, drawing the words out like a foreign term. Read Mark Tribe. She had hair blonder than Beyoncé’s (her dyed coif quite unlike, he imagined, her Southern cousin’s) and he doubted she could read anything through those sunglasses, maybe not even without.
Another volley of laughter from Louis’s table. Candice was literally crying, her mascara fanning like Tammy Faye’s. Why had she started wearing so much makeup? Last semester, she wore none, to honor her Native heritage.
L.A. continued her litany of the merits of documentaries.
Vous n’êtes pas sérieux? What is performative intervention? That could be sex, or shoplifting. Daron counted the options out on his fingers. Is sex or shoplifting going to change the world? Better yet, how ’bout shoplifting sex?
That would be rape. And that is not funny. That is very serious. Failing to believe the humor in that remark, I’m departing for another table. L.A. stood then, but not before daintily counting out three index cards on her seat. There are my notes for the next two courses. That should cover my portion of the bill.
She strutted off, shorts nibbling cheeks, perfectly painted legs tucked into huge furry boots, like she was wearing the feet of a baby wooly mammoth.
Daron clambered to his feet, but Charlie extended his arm like a parent coming to a sudden stop. She’ll be back.
Daron muttered his agreement. He believed Charlie. There was never a shortage of girls volunteering to be in Charlie’s group, and he wasn’t even on the football team, he only looked like it.
She was here until the shoplifting sex part. You can recover as long as you don’t apologize or follow her now. Saying sorry would be giving up the advantage.
Daron considered this. If that was the case, he should draft an official apology. Forget La-La Loosey, as they called her. He had forgotten about Kaya, his freshman obsession, it was now Candice who inflamed him. The way she laughed, like she had a big appetite.
Daron ignored the fun being had at Louis’s table. Louis probably could have gotten away with a shoplifting sex comment.
The professor chose a replacement from the five coeds who volunteered and soon they were again picking at their appetizer, but they would not have room for dessert because for their entrée someone mentioned reenactments. A few people were surprised to hear that a professor at Brown was holding reenactments of famous civil rights demonstrations. The immediate consensus: It was a joke. It had to be ironic.
They have a reenactment every year in my hometown, announced Daron.
That can’t be serious, piped La-La from her new table. Vous n’êtes pas cereal.
Pull, Daron mumbled, borrowing Louis’s skeet-inspired euphemism for shooting the bird. They’re real cereal.
A reenactment? ¿Por qué? ¿Por qué? Candice groaned as if someone had run a fat baby up a flagpole. ¿Por qué? ¿Por qué? was her way of saying: Why? … No! That’s not why. Have a seat. I’ll tell you the real reason, whether you want to know or not. Worse yet, her conversations had astral bodies, as Louis joked. They’d be hearing about this for weeks (as they had been about Ishi).
And she was not the only one. The table was shocked. The entire class in fact. They’d heard tell of Civil War reenactments, but they were still occurring? The War Between the States was another time and another country. As was the South. Are barbers still surgeons? Is there still sharecropping? What about indoor plumbing? Like an old Looney Tunes skit, Tex Avery tag ensued. Charlie gawked at Louis, who gawped at Candice, who generously suggested it as a capstone project to the professor, who Googled the event and announced that it coincided with spring break, Serendipity has spoken.
Candice’s eyes were still pinwheeling as they had when she’d learned about Ishi, last of the Yahi. In 1911, that wild Indian wandered into Oroville, CA, where he was caught stealing meat. ¿Por qué? Because, according to Candice, Ishi was driven to desperation by California’s Gold Rush–financed Indian removal campaign. Seeing as how the locals didn’t take neatly to theft, the sheriff took Ishi into custody for Ishi’s own protection. ¿Por qué? Because, according to Candice, Ishi’s scalp alone was worth $5 U.S. After reading about Ishi in the paper,