Rich Friends by Jacqueline; Briskin

Oath, then Gene, burping tap beer, warmed by the glow of proximity to this admirably committed man, heard himself admit his cliché English Department dream. “Write,” he confessed slowly. “I did a series of columns on the UN for The Bruin . Undergrad stuff. But I want to do the real thing.”
    â€œJournalism?”
    â€œNo. Creative writing.”
    â€œPoetry?” There was a warning growl to this question. In LeRoy Duquesne’s office, next to his Ezra Pound: A Critique , was a stack of different quarterlies, each indexing a poem (#1, #2, and so on, up to #17) by L. Fitzgerald Duquesne.
    â€œPoetry’s beyond me.” Gene shook his head mournfully. “Just fiction. About the ordinary people, little people.” He gave an embarrassed smile. “My Norman Corwin syndrome.”
    LeRoy Duquesne, his territory intact, rubbed the bowl of his Dunhill against his Roman nose, inquiring, “What length work do you have in mind?”
    â€œA novel.”
    â€œWhy not start with a smaller canvas?” asked LeRoy Duquesne with a hint of his lectern irony.
    â€œA novella?”
    â€œA short story. A time-honored form, Gene, the short story.”
    It was well after two when Gene was back under his parents’ commodious roof, yet he sat at his desk, two-finger pecking on his Remington:
    Troopship
    A Short Story
    by
    Eugene Matheny
    And working through the night, he rough drafted a story of a young Pfc. shipping overseas. Like Gene, the young man had turned down, on principle, a chance at officers’ training. Through that foggy May, Gene rewrote and polished “Troopship.” He did another story. And another. Seven in all. He showed each in turn to Caroline. She thought them splendid. He discounted her opinion. She’s my girl, his sense of uncertainty averred, what else could she think?
    He did not show his work to LeRoy Duquesne. The professor’s good opinion was too important to risk.
    For by now the two men were friends.
    That summer and fall, with Mrs. Duquesne (“Call me Hilda”), a quiet, exophthalmic little woman, and Caroline, they passed compatible evenings discussing literature and civil liberties.
    â€œYou’re not his friend,” Caroline said once. “You’re his echo.”
    â€œWe agree. We’re on the same side.”
    â€œHe uses you to pump his ego.”
    â€œHe doesn’t need me for that.”
    â€œGenebo, there’s such a thing as having too much humility.” And Caroline said no more.
    Late in June, the oaths were mailed to university employees, faculty included, with a covering letter asking for a signature. Many didn’t sign. A substantial number of nonsigning researchers, TAs, junior faculty—in other words those without tenure—were denied reappointment.
    And in the fall of the same year, 1949, the regents issued an ultimatum. Even those professors with tenure would not receive their paychecks if they had not signed their loyalty by February 24, 1950. Or as Caroline quoted the punchline of an old joke, “No tickee, no washee.”
    A special faculty meeting was held in the recently constructed Shoenberg Hall. Before, everyone had been inoculated by fear. Now they were frozen by fear. In the well-lit new auditorium, speakers used two languages. Liberal for image. Nonsubversive (apolitical) for the finks surely present. Gene, who had a mathematical turn of mind, kept track of the number of times the matter of withholding paychecks came up. One hundred and eighty-seven times. Nobody, speakers kept reiterating, wanted to back down on so vital an issue as the Academic Senate’s Constitution-given freedom to hire and fire. But, they said obliquely. But.
    After the meeting, LeRoy Duquesne and Gene crossed the bleak, autumnal campus.
    Gene sighed. “Take the oath or be canned—even with Governor Warren on our side, there aren’t enough regents to stop it. God, Germany