Mars

DOSSIER: JAMES FOX WATERMAN

It was a neurotic assistant professor and a state police officer who made a student leader out of young James Waterman. The episode still haunted his dreams.

It had happened during Jamie’s sophomore year at Albuquerque. He was a quiet student, a loner who attended his classes and did his work without socializing much with the other students. Most of his teachers, if they remembered him at all, recalled an intense young man with the coppery broad-cheeked face of an Indian who hardly ever said a word in class yet turned in quality papers. Jamie got very high grades in most of his classes, but no recognition from either his peers or the faculty.

He lived off campus with friends of his grandfather’s, a Navaho family that ran a fashionable clothing shop on Albuquerque’s Old Town plaza. Jamie drove back and forth on a secondhand motor scooter and earned a few dollars by helping out in the shop on weekends.

With hardly anyone noticing it, Jamie was almost a straight — a student. The almost was his sophomore-level course in Shakespeare.

Jamie had done well in his freshman English survey course; he had enjoyed his first encounters with the rich literature that began with Beowulf and extended across the centuries to Eliot and Ballard. He had balked at Kipling, at first, with his freight of “white man’s burden.” But the sheer marvelous adventure of the man’s poems and stories had won Jamie over.

The sophomore course in Shakespeare was another matter. Assistant Professor Ferraro’s idea of teaching was to stand atop his desk and read all the roles of the Bard’s plays aloud to the class, declaiming dramatically and sawing the air with his gestures. It took only a week for Jamie to realize that the diminutive, middle-aged Ferraro was a frustrated actor who made all his classes into his personal stage.

By midterm Jamie was in trouble with Ferraro. The little man gave no quizzes, asked for no papers. He simply expected his students to watch his desktop performances with rapt attention. And then applaud. When Jamie asked why Othello—supposedly an intelligent leader of men—could fall so completely for the transparent schemes of Iago, Ferraro glared and told him to read the play until he understood it. When Jamie, genuinely puzzled, asked if Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were supposed to be homosexuals, Ferraro replied coldly: “I will not allow my class to be turned into a circus.”

Of course Jamie spent most of his time on his other subjects: geology, chemistry, advanced calculus, history. But he felt he was as well prepared for the Shakespeare midterm exam as anyone else in the class. He had read the plays and watched the videotapes. He had looked up the critical analyses listed in Ferraro’s syllabus. It was a jolt, then, when Ferraro read off the grades for the midterms and announced that James Waterman had received an F.

Shocked to the point where his insides were trembling, Jamie stayed after the class was finished to ask if he could retake the test. Ferraro refused flatly. Jamie saw the stack of blue books on the man’s desk, and asked if he could see his, go over it with the professor, find out where he had gone wrong.

“You may not see your blue book,” Ferraro said. Despite his thick-soled elevator shoes he had to crane his neck to look Jamie in the face now that he was standing on the classroom floor.

“But it’s my test,” Jamie said.

Ferraro placed a hand atop the pile of blue books. “These examination papers are the property of the university, not of the students. You may not take yours. I forbid it.”

Then he turned grandly and started toward the door. His interview with Jamie was concluded, as far as he was concerned.

Suddenly furious, Jamie riffled through the stack of blue books and found his own. He quickly flipped through the pages. Not a mark on them. Not a notation. Nothing at all except the big red F scrawled on the cover.

“What are you doing?” Ferraro screeched from the doorway. “Put that down!”

Clutching the test book in his hand Jamie strode toward the little man. “You didn’t even read my test! You just flunked me when you saw my name on the cover!”

“That test booklet is the property of this university!” Ferraro yelled, pointing a wavering finger at Jamie. “You can’t take it out of this classroom! That’s theft!”

Jamie brushed past the assistant professor, the test booklet tight in his fist, his teeth clenched in anger.

“I’ll take this to the student council,” he shouted back, over his shoulder. “I’ll take this to the dean!”

And he strode down the hall, oblivious to the startled glances of the students, while Ferraro bellowed, “Thief! Stop thief!”

No one tried to stop Jamie. He went to his motorbike and drove back to the room he rented in the Navaho shopkeeper’s home.

The state police officer arrived just as the family was sitting down to supper. The doorbell rang and one of the daughters went to answer it. She came back with drawn face and frightened eyes.

“It’s a state trooper. He wants you, Jamie.”

Wondering if he had committed a traffic violation of some sort with his bike, Jamie went to the front door. The state policeman looked about eleven feet tall in his uniform and mirrored sunglasses and broad-brimmed hat. The pistol in its holster at his hip seemed huge.

“James Waterman?” he asked in the voice of a robot.

Jamie nodded, his mind racing.

“We received a complaint that you have stolen state property.”

“What?” Jamie’s knees sagged.

The shopkeeper came up behind Jamie and laid a protective hand on his shoulder.

“Seems that you’re accused of stealing some papers from the university,” the trooper said. “You’re on the edge of a deep hole, young fella.”

“It’s my test paper,” Jamie mumbled. “My professor wouldn’t give me back my own test paper.”

The trooper slowly peeled off his sunglasses. His face instantly became human. “Is that what this is all about?”

Jamie nodded. “It’s in my room. My midterm exam.”

“This boy is no thief,” said the shopkeeper. “He’s a student at the university. Never been in any kind of trouble in his life.”

“A test paper? Your own exam?” The trooper looked incredulous.

“I can show it to you. I took it to show to the student council tomorrow. He flunked me without even reading what I wrote.”

The trooper blew out a breath from puffed cheeks. “All right. You get your ass back to the university first thing tomorrow morning and give that paper back to the professor you took it from. You understand me? First thing tomorrow. Otherwise he’ll probably swear out a god-dammed warrant for your arrest and we’ll have to post a goddammed APB on you.”

“Yessir. First thing tomorrow.”

The trooper put his glasses back on and headed down the stairs toward his powerful-looking car, muttering something about dangerous criminals and grand larceny.

After a sleepless night Jamie returned the test paper to the assistant professor. But not before making two photocopies of it. One he left with the dean of students, the other he handed to the president of the student council. Two tension-racked days passed before the dean called Jamie into his office. Ferraro was already there, sitting in a tight little glaring ball on a chair that looked two sizes too large for him.

From the comfortable swivel chair behind his broad desk the dean gestured Jamie to a stiff wooden seat in front of the desk. He was an amiable pink-cheeked beardless Santa of a man who had a reputation for avoiding trouble wherever it might arise.

“I think you owe Mr. Ferraro an apology,” said the dean, with a friendly smile.

Jamie said nothing. Ferraro said nothing.

“Your blue book is university property, you know. Technically speaking, you had no right to take it.”

Jamie’s throat felt tight and dry. “I had a right to see what’s in it. I had a right to discuss it with my teacher.”

Nodding, the dean said, “That’s why we’re here. To discuss the contents of your test. Mr. Ferraro, can you explain where this young man went wrong in his ideas about Othello?”

Slowly it dawned on Jamie that the dean had no intention of dealing with his “theft.” Ferraro mumbled through a series of excuses about Jamie’s test; the gist of it was that Jamie had no appreciation for the work of Shakespeare.

After several minutes Ferraro ran out of words. The dean nodded again and put his smile back on. Folding his hands on his desktop, he said, “I think we have a failure of communications here. Let me propose a compromise. Mr. Waterman can get credit for finishing the course without attending the remainder of the classes. Will that make you both happy?”

Ferraro glanced at Jamie, then looked away.

“What grade will I get?” Jamie asked.

“I think a gentleman’s C will do it,” the dean replied.

Jamie shook his head. “That’ll pull down my GPA.”

The dean’s smile turned waxy. “Your grade point average can survive a C, I think.”

“Considering your failing mark now,” Ferraro said, “you ought to be grateful for a C.”

“I’m failing because you didn’t read my test.”

“That’s a lie!”

“Now, now,” said the dean soothingly. “Mr. Waterman, if you’re unhappy with a C I’ll allow you to retake the course next semester. That’s as far as I intend to go.”

Jamie accepted the C only until the next election of student council members. For the first time in his life he had a cause: his own cavalier treatment by the faculty and administration. He had to open up to his fellow students, learn how to smile and greet them, learn how to listen to them as well as tell them his own story. His “theft” became a campus cause celebre and easily swept him to a seat on the council. He hated every moment of the campaign, hated the false smiles and fake good cheer, hated shaking hands with people who had ignored him only a few weeks earlier.

But he gritted his teeth and endured it. And won.

Once on the student council, Jamie found that there were much more important problems to deal with than Ferraro. Student housing, the quality of the cafeteria food, student access to computer time—these were real and pressing problems for all. He forgot about Ferraro. Almost. He became the hardest-working member of the council.

In his senior year Jamie was elected president of the student council. When he learned that his most trusted friend was suffering through Ferraro’s course and that the midterm would again be on Othello, very quietly Jamie asked his friend to copy out his old Shakespeare blue book and hand it in as his own. The student received a B-plus. Jamie confronted Ferraro in his cramped, book-strewn office with the evidence. No one knew except the assistant professor, Jamie, and his student henchman.

Jamie’s old C was upgraded to a B-plus. He graduated with honors. All his friends congratulated him, but Jamie took no pleasure in his victory. The memory still troubled his dreams.