Once a Runner Read online

  The term they used was “riding,” which is to say that if one were going to copy from someone else’s paper, one would be “riding” that person through the exam. Such a technique was not hard to perfect in the crowded rooms where tests were given. One would, yawning immensely from the strain of all that heavy pondering, easily turn one’s body this way or that (just trying to loosen up, you understand) and return to one’s answer sheet with a string of pure knowledge: 3,2,2,2,1,4,2,4,1. Or was it 2,4,2?

  Whether the answers were right or not was entirely dependent on the rider’s skill in selecting his “mount.” On occasion the mount was a predetermined matter. Generally, though, the selection process was impromptu. A nervous footballer would study the other students carefully as they wandered into the exam room.

  “A fat ugly girl is the only horse for me,” insisted Harold Sloate, a pig-eyed maniac left guard who eventually made the Atlanta Falcon suicide squad. “Some folks swear by skinny guys with slide rules in they belts, but give me a ugly girl and I’ll win the fuggin’ Kentucky Derby. One with acne’s even better…”

  The whole process had become more or less a culturally ingrained institution that the athletic department looked upon with a kind of confused admiration (how could the boys, on their own, have come up with this grand way of eliminating expensive tutors?) It reached a point of outright hilarity when some of the more imaginative players showed up at the Farley training table on exam nights with cowboy boots and sterling silver spurs and waited in line for their feed yelling “Yippeeyi O Kiyaaaay! We gone Riiiide ta-night!”

  Old pig-eyed Sloate topped them all one night by bringing in a forty-five-pound hand-tooled imported brass-horn Western working saddle, complete with fittings and reins. Dragging it up on the coatrack, he ripped off his ten-gallon Stetson and exclaimed to the silently waiting multitudes paused midbite: “Make way, you varmints, there’s an EN 201 final tonight and the Pony Express is comin’ through!” He received a rather nice round of applause, but the next day Dick Doobey called the head dorm counselor and told him in no uncertain terms that although he thought the, um, horsing around was in its own way quite humorous, it was about time to call off the shenanigans. Word was getting around, and some of the more shall we say unathletically inclined faculty members were beginning to make references to measures which, if allowed to gather momentum, just might end up lopping off the head of the proverbial golden goose. In short, it was time to quit pissing in the soup.

  Thus it was that the fevered and unexplained local penchant for Western dress that had blossomed so suddenly in Kernsville, died just as suddenly, leaving overstocked haberdashers once more bewildered by the unfathomable vicissitudes of college fashion. The more entrenched trend of jocks “riding” through school, however, remained very much a part of the subculture.

  THAT JACK NUBBINS was not getting through exams on his own steam was not in question. In fact he talked about his indiscretions in a booming voice around the training table, mimicking the football players, whom he admired greatly: “Sheeit. I thought he was a thoroughbred, but then I got back muh grade an’ it was a measly C! He must have been just a old plow horse, but I swear he had horn-rim glasses an’ his own briefcase!” The technique of riding, for all its bravado, was alas only marginally successful. The athletes, using their own limited deductive abilities, figured that the best students were people who looked like good students. It never occurred to them that a well-muscled athletic type could pull an A. Neither did they figure that an unattractive female could miss so much as a question or two, what with all the free time she had to devote to her studies. And so it was that the riders were regularly amazed when their nefarious practices netted them mostly Cs, occasional Bs, a few giddy As, and, oh the shock of it all, even some Ds and Es (picture the sad irony of realizing you had superimposed someone else’s failure upon your own!). To blunder in such a manner meant not only did you pass up a chance to perhaps guess your way to a better score, but that you couldn’t even—hold on to your Stetsons, boys—cheat right, for chrissakes!

  And if that wasn’t enough of a pisser, consider the possibility that one might just be unlucky enough to sit in front of some snit who would take umbrage at one’s goggle-eyed yawns and turn one’s tender ass in to the exam proctor, which would entail Lord only knows what kind of unpasteurized shit; word had it that the so-called Honor Court even had the power to suspend rubbernecked scholars from school.

  IT WAS WITH CONSIDERABLE TREPIDATION that Jack Nubbins ripped open the envelope whose return address clearly indicated that it issued directly from the Office of the Prosecuting Solicitor of the Southeastern University Honor Court. The letterhead bore not only the standard blindfolded Maiden of Justice, holding her delicate scales, but also somewhat incongruously displayed a smiling caricature of Daryl the Swamp Dawg, the school’s unique and unswerving mascot, who seemed to be sniffing at Maid Justice’s scales as if tracking down some Alpo.

  If the comic impact of the letterhead was lost on Nubbins, the contents were not:

  Mr. Jack Nubbins

  Room 207, Hiram Doobey Memorial Hall

  Kernsville, Florida 32601

  Dear Mr. Nubbins:

  This office has undertaken an investigation as a result of certain reports made to this office involving yourself and another student during a recent Physical Science Progress examination in Humbolt Hall on September 2nd.

  Comparison of your paper with the other student in question (whom we now believe innocent of any wrongdoing) resulted in a Wrong Answer Correlation (WAC) of 98%. As you perhaps know, this office makes its decision on whether or not to prosecute a case based upon the number of wrong answers two suspects have in common. Generally speaking, a WAC of 60% is considered sufficient to indict.

  Your arraignment, therefore, has been set for the evening of October 12, at 7:30 P.M., in the Honor Courtroom at the Steven C. Prigman Student Union. You may be represented by counsel of your choice or we will appoint a student attorney for you. Please be prompt.

  I feel I should inform you, Mr. Nubbins, that a 98% WAC is, to my knowledge anyway, a Southeastern University record.

  Sincerely yours,

  A. William Duva,

  Esq.

  Solicitor General,

  Honor Court

  This last gratuitous paragraph was debated extensively, and though he had reservations himself, Cassidy decided to include it, reasoning that by the time Nubbins got to the end of the letter, he would be more or less reduced to a lump of quivering redneck paranoia and therefore quite unlikely to catch such a subtle clue.

  Which was the case. Nubbins received the letter on a Friday morning. Cassidy, who had been running a varsity meet in Knoxville, returned Sunday night to find no less than three notes pinned to his door, all from Nubbins. Delighted, he put his bags down and read them right in the hall in the order he figured they arrived:

  Dear Captin Cassady:

  Need to have a pow wow with you when you get back from Tennesee. Please come by my room, which is numbered 207.

  —Jack N.

  Capt.

  Since it is importunt that I speak with you right away, I thought I would say you can come by whether it is late or not (when you get back).

  —Jack

  Sir:

  This is you know who. I have decided to lay low awhile so if you call 392-1458 and ask for Betty Sue Applewhite, she will know where I am because it is still inportunt that I speak with you right away. I have told her what you’re voice sounds like so there will be no funny business.

  —You Know Who

  On the last note there was a postscript: P.S. I hope your as good a mouthpiece as everyone says you are.

  “WHO IS IT?”

  “Cassidy.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Cassidy.”

  Silence. Cassidy sighed, rolled his eyes to the back of his head. “We all live in a yellow submarine,” he muttered to the crack in the door.

  The door opened sli
ghtly wider and he was inspected by tiny frightened eyes.

  “Come on, Betty Sue,” said Cassidy, brushing by her. Nubbins sat on her bed with a humorous, resigned expression on his face. Cassidy thought: Too good, Jack. No one would ever think of looking for you in your girlfriend’s dorm room.

  “Looks like I’ve really stepped in it this time, Captain,” said Nubbins mournfully. Cassidy sat on the bed beside him and gave him a what’s-this-all-about pat on the knee. Betty Sue flicked off The Dating Game and perched at the end of the bed with her feet drawn up under her.

  Nubbins’s ROTC bivouac gear lay in a heap in the corner. Cassidy knew that somewhere in the equipment was Nubbins’s cherished purloined issue .45, which he kept loaded at all times. Why he had lugged all the stuff over here, Cassidy couldn’t figure. Perhaps Nubbins was thinking along the lines of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys. Cassidy pictured him set up somewhere in the Ocala National Forest with a regulation latrine, rain gullies, and perimeter warning devices. At night he would forage through the campgrounds, snatching limp hot dogs from vacationing Ohioans.

  “Jack,” Cassidy said, “you need to get a grip on yourself, son.” He put down the letter after a quick pretend read-through. He didn’t actually need to read it since he had typed it himself only three days earlier. But Nubbins’s fidgeting was keeping him from even doing a good acting job.

  “What do you think, Captain? They’ve got my ass nailed, don’t they?” Nubbins, trying hard to buck up, had adopted a fatalistic outlook. It seemed to comfort him to defer, military style, to Cassidy’s very unmilitary captaincy. This dorm room was his last stand before the bastards stormed the walls; his own personal Alamo. He envisioned perhaps a ballad about himself.

  “Well, Jack, I’ll lay it on the line to ya. It does look pretty bad.” Nubbins lowered his head and nodded.

  “But I’ll tell ya somethin’ else,” Cassidy continued, his voice quavering with emotion, “I’ve gotten some sons a bitches out of jams a helluva lot worse than this!” He gestured at the letter with the disdain of a man who saw paper threats for what they were, a man who dealt with his own crystalline brand of reality, using insight gained only where such knowledge is available: through hours in the breech, days on the firing line, weeks behind the eight ball. What’s more, he was clearly a man who did not abandon his friends when, as the attorney general himself used to say (before his indictment), the going got tough.

  “You no doubt have heard about my work on the defense side in the Honor Court?” Cassidy asked with a trace of pride. Nubbins became suddenly animated.

  “Why, they say that you’re—”

  Cassidy held up a hand; he was not a man who needed idle flattery.

  “But you’ll take my case?” Nubbins asked, wide-eyed.

  “Goddamn right I will!” Cassidy stuck his jaw out.

  Nubbins peered up at his counsel with relief and gratitude, brushed manfully at his glistening eyes, and tried to clear his throat.

  “And you think we can win?” he croaked.

  “Does a pigeon walk funny?”

  13.

  The Trial

  BUOYED BY HIS ATTORNEY’S CONFIDENCE, Nubbins returned warily to Doobey Hall. After all, hadn’t he been hearing for weeks tales of Cassidy’s remarkable courtroom prowess? Still, in those long hours between their numerous conferences, Nubbins’s spirits faltered. He was in considerable and very real distress most of the time.

  His thinking went like this: if worst came to worst and he found himself suspended from the university, it would cost him a year redshirting somewhere else, assuming that another school would take a convicted academic scoundrel. But he knew that even if he were able to transfer, he would have lost a great deal by not graduating from Southeastern (Coach Cornwall had gone out on a limb just to get him admitted on academic probation).

  And there was the additional shame of facing the many members of the Nubbins tribe, all of whom were as proud as they were baffled that some fancy-Dan university would not only let one of their wretched clan in, but would actually pay him real money just for pursuing an activity many of them had cultivated involuntarily while eluding various game officials, marine patrolmen, and deputy sheriffs; namely, hightailing it on foot. That this brilliant progeny should be shipped home in disgrace for some academic indiscretion would, of course, be accepted with a degree of sympathy and fatalism (it had been too good to be true after all), but on the other hand there would be a lingering suspicion that somehow the scatterbrained young’un had blown his big chance to become president.

  Such was the young runner’s discomfiture that Cassidy considered calling the whole thing off. An All-time Classic in the making was one thing, but watching this central Florida palmetto tramper sitting mute and bug-eyed over his scrambled eggs every morning was a bit more than Cassidy really needed in the way of humorous feedback. The kid was hooked, living out this awful fantasy in isolation while the others looked on with growing alarm. They all just wanted to bring the scenario to its dramatic conclusion, have a good laugh, and then let the poor boob down (hoping to God he was unarmed at the Moment of Truth). But having set the trial date themselves, they were stuck with it. Cassidy told Nubbins cockily that he had filed a motion to move the case along quickly and that on the night in question they would “wrap this turkey up once and for all.”

  For two more days Nubbins sweated out his future. The more frantic he became, the more unsure the plotters became. Mizner brought up the unpleasant thought that Jack might become so depressed he would decide to chew on the end of his own .45. Who would want to live with that?

  Cassidy had no doubts who would be damned if that happened. But he knew Nubbins well. Cassidy figured anyone who would squat with his ass in freezing water for three hours before dawn just for the chance to blast the feathers off a hapless mallard could damn well keep a date with Maid Justice without cracking. Cassidy kept everyone as calm as he could.

  But finally even Hosford, the most vindictive of the puppeteers, caught a case of nerves.

  “Geez, do you think we maybe ought to tell him? He’s getting a little flaky around the edges.”

  “I think he’ll make it okay,” said Cassidy, trying to memorize his lines. “He’s only got until tomorrow night.”

  “Yeah, but let me tell you. He came up to me this morning and started talking real strange. In this real cocky way—you know how he is—he starts telling me what a great lawyer you are and how he had personally seen you get people off who were guiltier than hell…” He looked at Cassidy. “You’ve never tried any cases for real, have you?”

  “Never been in a courtroom,” Cassidy chirped, studying his script.

  “Anyway, he told me you had pull with the chancellor, and that you and this Duva guy, the prosecutor, drink beer together all the…”

  “Who is a figment, of course.”

  “A figment?”

  “Of my own fevered imagination.”

  “Yes, well, he’s doing everything but hyperventilating. You really think he’ll do all right?”

  “I think he’ll make an excellent defendant. However, I have grave doubts—”

  “Doubts?”

  “About counsel’s ability to bring home the bacon.”

  THEY WERE ALL THERE. Mizner wearing his official blazer with the court seal over the pocket, Cassidy in an attorneyish double-breaster, the chancellor in his black robes and stern wire-rims, the prosecutor in a rather obnoxiously dashing sports jacket, and Betty Sue Whatsherface, whom Nubbins had timidly asked be allowed to sit in on the “proceedings.” And then there was Nubbins himself. Cassidy had told him to dress conservatively, using his own judgment. The lad wore a plain white shirt and black knit tie, and for his jacket selected a smart suede cowboy job with rather short fringe on the sleeves. The effect was prairie/ formal: Daniel Boone addressing a joint session of Congress. The various participants had been carefully screened by Cassidy and Mizner. There were a few others in the room who had simply he
ard about the spoof—despite the harsh oath of secrecy—and had begged to watch. All in all, the courtroom, which was never used for real trials at night, was about half full.

  The chancellor was a contradiction in terms: a law student with a sense of humor. He generously offered to lend his solemn presence to the occasion in exchange for a print of the eight-by-ten glossy Cassidy was having taken of the defendant and the various court officials. For this purpose a friend of Mizner’s was introduced to Nubbins as the “court photographer” who was going to “photograph key points in the proceedings for the record.” Nubbins nodded with the bland assent of a three-time loser being fingerprinted.

  Selecting the prosecutor had been difficult. Surprisingly, several sadistic individuals had clamored for the job. There resulted some hilarious tryouts during which Cassidy found himself doing a reasonably bitchy director: “Look, baby, you’ve got to give me some hostility, for chrissakes. This guy is a lousy cheater and you’re a self-righteous asshole, so let’s emote that to me, baby, eee-mote. Okay, let’s take if from if this treachery goes unscathed, our very foundations of self-government et cetera et cetera…”

  Eventually everyone got into the act. The rejects for the prosecutor’s job got to be the bailiff and the stenographer. Everyone dressed for his part with uncanny professionalism. It looked like Divorce Court without commercials.

  Cassidy thought the room itself was the perfect backdrop. In the manner of all effective courtrooms (as well as legislative chambers and religious edifices) it was designed to impress upon the single blinking supplicant that there was a power out there, a force all around that was fierce and swift and terrible in its retribution, an ascendancy that would—should he so much as fart without permission—crush him like the vermin he knew in his heart he was.