sandbagged by his fraternity brothers, he walked away from the conversation. Tony didn’t like problems, particularly when they were caused by wrongheaded people. If the kid was Jewish, why didn’t he just go to Tulane? It wasn’t Tony’s freight to carry.
Tomorrow morning, Tuesday, he and his attorney were scheduled to meet with the Iberia Parish district attorney. The D.A. had already presented the available choices for Tony in the most draconian terms. He would either accept a grant of immunity for his cooperation in the investigation of his father or be considered a suspect himself. Either way, he or his father was going to prison. Or maybe both of them would. “You’ve got the key to the jailhouse door,” the district attorney had said. “We’ll try to protect you up at Angola, but you wouldn’t be the first white college boy to get spread-eagled on the bars. Let me know what you decide.”
The image made Tony’s skin crawl, his buttocks constrict.
All this because of a wino on a road. All this because Monarch Little, in order to save his own black ass, had told the cops where his old man had gotten the Buick repaired. What had he ever done to Monarch Little? He hadn’t even known Monarch Little existed until the run-in at McDonald’s.
Tony could not get tomorrow’s meeting with the D.A. out of his mind. There had to be a way out. He had told his lawyer he had no knowledge about the wino’s death, but it was obvious the lawyer didn’t believe him.
“Your father or you ran over the guy, Tony,” the lawyer had said. “Unless you lent the car to somebody. You think that might have happened?”
“It could have,” Tony replied, watching the lawyer’s face.
“Forget I mentioned that,” the lawyer said.
Would his courage fail him? Could he take the weight and actually risk time on Angola Farm, where he would hoe soybeans under mounted guards who carried quirts and shotguns? Was he actually as small and frightened and weak as he felt? The D.A. obviously thought so. For the first time in his life, he understood why people killed themselves.
When he did not think his morning could get any worse, the professor in his political science class started in on institutionalized class and ethnic prejudice, asking Tony, in front of a hundred other students, if he believed campus fraternities and sororities had the right to discriminate in their admission policies.
“Isn’t ‘discrimination’ just another word for judgment?” Tony said. “People discriminate in the kind of food they eat or what part of town they live in. That’s how standards are established. People have a right to choose, don’t they, sir?”
“Let’s put it another way. Is the issue one of inclusion or exclusion?” the professor asked from behind his lectern, which was mounted on a stage, high above the class. “Doesn’t a fraternity pride itself on who it keeps out rather than who it lets in? What’s the value of money if it doesn’t buy privilege? ‘Melting pot’ sounds good on paper, but the mix may not always be good for everyone. Is that the case, Tony?”
Tony couldn’t keep track of the professor’s logic, but he knew it was a trap of some kind, an effort to make him look like a pampered rich kid who didn’t care about the rights of others. He could feel words forming in his mouth that he knew he shouldn’t speak.
“I don’t think fraternities and sororities are the problem. I think the problem is people who-”
“Who what?” the professor said. His face was effeminate and narrow and stippled with gin roses, his teeth small and sharp inside a neatly trimmed gray-and-brown beard that reminded Tony of mouse fur.
“People who are professional victims,” Tony said. Then he thought of a joke he had heard at the fraternity, one whose implication he didn’t actually share. But the professor had tried to tar him. All right, let’s see how far the professor wanted to run with it. “Like the NAACP-the National Association of Always Complaining People. I mean, should people feel guilty because they work hard and make a lot of money?”
The lecture hall became absolutely quiet. The black students in the room put their pens down and either looked into space or twisted in their seats to get a better view of Tony Lujan.
“You raise an interesting point,” the professor said. “Maybe the vote of one group in our society should count more than another group. But which group fights the wars? Rich people or poor people? It seems that blue-collar young men and women go to war in greater numbers than rich ones. So using your own logic, shouldn’t their vote count for more than yours or mine?”
Tony’s head was pounding, his forehead breaking with sweat. This was about something else. The professor had been Tony’s freshman adviser and had relatives in New Iberia. Did the professor know about Yvonne Darbonne? Was this about Yvonne? Was he calling Tony an elitist hypocrite? Tony felt the room spinning around him. “I didn’t mean to offend anyone, sir. I apologize for my remark.”
Then he realized his apology was actually sincere, and for just a moment he felt good about himself. Out of the corner of his eye he saw several black students pick up their pens again.
“I appreciate your candor, Tony. This is a political science class. If you have a thorn in your head, this is the place to pull it out.” The professor looked at the clock on the back wall. “See you all on Wednesday.”
Candor? What was candor.
After the lecture hall had emptied, Tony still sat in his desk, his eyes fastened on the professor, who was putting his notes and books in a briefcase. The professor glanced up and smoothed his beard. “Something you want to ask me?” he said.
“What did you mean by that, Dr. Edwards?”
“By what?”
“This being the place to pull a thorn out. Were you saying something about me? Just tell the truth.”
“Supposedly that’s why I get paid.”
“Sir?”
“I get paid to tell the truth.” The professor gave it up. “I was saying that the idea of class superiority has one basic function-it allows people to justify their exploitation of their fellow human beings. The exploitation happens on many levels, Tony, the most common of which is financial or sexual. It’s taught in fraternities, it’s taught in churches. People screw down and marry up.”
Tony got up from his seat and approached the lectern, his stomach churning, a sound like an electrical short buzzing in his head. “Are you accusing me of sexually using a girl from a poor family?”
“Excuse me?”
“I didn’t have anything to do with her death,” he said. “We had something special. It just didn’t last. It just went to hell, all at once. I don’t even know why.”
“I’m afraid I don’t-”
“You were talking about Yvonne. You were doing it in front of the whole class.”
The professor stared at him. “You have a few minutes, Tony? Why don’t you and I go for a cup of coffee?”
Tony looked at the confusion in the professor’s face and realized the terrible mistake he had made. “I’m sorry, I misunderstood. I’m not feeling too good, Dr. Edwards. I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“You’re a fine boy. One day you’ll discover who you are and none of this will matter.” The professor seemed to smile with a level of compassion Tony did not think him capable of. But was it compassion, or perhaps something else? “Come talk to me when you have a chance. We’ll have a drink in my backyard. I can make a grand martini.”
But Tony was already walking rapidly up the aisle toward the exit, his footsteps echoing in the empty room, his face red with shame.
THE FRATERNITY HOUSE had been created out of a large white three-story Victorian home, one whose gables and cornices were visible through the crepe myrtle and azaleas and live oaks like the hard edges of a medieval fortress. The pledges mowed the lawn, raked the leaves, and trimmed the hedges, and kids whose families couldn’t afford the fraternity’s costs worked off their room and board by cooking and serving meals and cleaning the house.
Tony shared a room on the third floor with Slim Bruxal, one with a small balcony that provided a magnificent view of the trees and rooftops in the neighborhood. The room was the most desirable in the house, and when Slim requested it, none of his fraternity brothers objected, although others had more seniority than Slim and wanted it.
Tony’s insides were like water when he returned to the house from his poli-sci class. He tried to tell Slim about what had happened, how he had made a fool out of himself, how Dr. Edwards had looked at him as though
