'Sure, I remember Dwayne,' she said. 'I had him in the American lit survey, two years ago. Who could forget him?'
'He's easy to notice,' I said.
Mary Ann winked at Susan. 'I'll say,' she said.
'Was he in regular attendance?' I said.
'In class? Hell no. He showed up once in a while and he'd come to conference in my office when it was scheduled. But he had practice, and then he had games, and it's hard for a kid. The course is required, and I'm sure was about things that he had no interest in. Imagine him reading Emily Dickinson?'
'He couldn't read,' I said.
'Excuse me.'
'He couldn't read Emily Dickinson. He can't read.'
'What do you mean he can't read?' Mary Ann said.
'He's illiterate,' Susan said.
'God, aren't they all,' Mary Ann said. 'But you mean really, don't you?'
'Yes.'
'Jesus Christ,' she said. 'What is he now? A senior?'
'Yes.'
'And he can't read,' she shook her head. 'Don't we look like a collection of prime jerks,' she said.
'Yes,' I said. 'You do.'
'We're interested in how that happened,' Susan said.
'It happens because nobody gives a goddamn. Me included. The students are the necessary evil in the teaching profession. Otherwise it's a pretty good deal. You don't work hard, you have a lot of time off. The pay's niot much, but nobody hassles you. You can lead and write and publish, pretty well unimpeded except for the students. Most of us don't like them much.'
'Anybody ever pressure you to give Dwayne a better grade or whatever?' I said.
'No,' she said. 'What did I give him?'
I consulted my list. 'C+,' I said.
'And he can't read,' she said. 'Boy, is this embarrassing or what?'
'Dwayne's embarrassed too,' Susan said.
'I don't give exams, and I don't take attendance. I give them two papers a semester, and I work on grading them. But I don't like bluebook knowledge and I don't like teaching kids who are there only because they're compelled.'
'So someone wrote Dwayne's papers for him,' Susan said.
'Sure,' Mary Ann said. 'I don't remember him now, but I probably suspected it when they came in sounding like an Oxford honors thesis, but frankly I figure you get more teaching done by keeping them in school than by flunking them out. Besides, the truth, charging him with plagiarism and flunking him is a pain in the ass. It's easier to let it go.'
'Why is it a pain in the ass?' Susan said.
'They come in and whine to you and swear they did it, but their roommate helped them, and . . .' Mary Ann made a push-it-all-away gesture with both hands. 'I'm doing a book on Ellen Glasgow, and I like to work on it when I'm not teaching.'
'No pressure not to catch him plagiarizing?' I said.
'None,' she said. 'That's the truth. What are you going to do about this?'
'I don't know,' I said.
'Will you tell people?' Mary Ann said.
'It's what Dwayne wanted to know,' I said.
'We're all ashamed of this,' Mary Ann said.
'That's the easy part,' I said.
Now and then I'd see Hawk, drifting across the street behind me. Parking at the other end of the block when I got out of my car. Motionless and barely real at the far end of a corridor as I stepped into someone's office. He was there, for a moment, with the morning light behind him when I went to see Harold Wagner.
Wagner taught Black History and had given Dwayne a D in the fall semester.
'He didn't do much,' Wagner said. 'And he didn't seem very interested.'
'Do you know that he can't read?' I said.
'I don't know it,' Wagner said. 'But I suspected it. He missed the midterm, and prevailed upon me to let him do a paper instead. He got an A on the paper. He said he was going to have to miss the final because of basketball. I said he'd have to make it up. I was skeptical about the paper. He missed two scheduled make-ups. He said an incomplete would make him ineligible to play. That Coach Dunham was a martinet, not his phrase, about such things. I knew what was riding on his having a good senior year. I said he could take a D for the course. His grades
