Chapter 3

Our group traversed the quad towards the library. It wasn't a long walk. Bucklin College had a reasonably big-time reputation, but it wasn't a large school. The whole campus would have fit comfortably in an area the size of the typical suburban block or medium-security prison. 
 In fairness I should say that Bucklin was a fine school. Not that it was likely to be confused with the Princetons of the world, mind you. But by keeping its class size small, Bucklin could turn down enough qualified students to ensure that its rankings in the all-important annual college guidebooks would remain high. Preserving this reputation was an ongoing battle. It's no simple feat to attract 300 top-flight students each year to a campus that isn't so much the middle of nowhere as it is the outer provinces of nowhere. 
 The most obvious problem was the relative paucity of degrees above freezing on the typical Maine day, which is a polite if round-about way of saying that it's really fucking cold. But Bucklin's recruiters, showing the sort of canniness all too rare in the nonprofit sector, encouraged the most promising of the prospective students to visit in those few days at the very beginning or end of each school year when frostbite was unlikely. This strategy wasn't without its troubling consequences, as matriculating students did tend to arrive with insufficient winter clothing and an unfortunate abundance of beachwear. But most figured out what they were in for by late October, purchased garments more appropriate for the climate, and avoided any serious health consequences. Those that didn't, well, they probably weren't destined to graduate at the top of their class anyway.
 As for the quality of a Bucklin education, such things are notorious difficult to quantify. It had occurred to me once during my sophomore year to question the true value of the tutelage that Bucklin provided. I didn't feel $100,000 more intelligent than I used to be…or even $45,000 more intelligent, pro-rating for the portion of the education that I had consumed to that point. It was during my junior year that I finally figured out the school's scam. The high cost of tuition--together with some old buildings liberally draped with ivy and a few four-star ratings in college guidebooks--was enough to convince most casual observers that Bucklin offered the highest-quality education. And so long as people with jobs to fill bought into this thinking, it hardly mattered what the truth might be. From that day, I stopped voicing my private concerns about the quality of the education provided by the college, and started spouting the party line. 
 My school spirit increased exponentially. Whenever a survey was passed around, I gave Bucklin the highest marks. Once I had gone so far as to phone a college guidebook writer to let her in on some of Bucklin's inside secrets: that alcohol was freely available to even the youngest students in local bars, that the climate in coastal Maine was surprisingly temperate, and that Bucklin's students were all attractive and not even slightly repressed, whatever their reputation. I was pleased to see these facts translated into a coveted forth star in the guidebook's social rankings the following year.
Had I ever taken the time to notice, I also might have told the writer that the small town of Bridgeton was a beautiful, pastoral place to spend four years of one's life, surrounded as it was by some reasonably impressive pine trees on three sides and the postcard-quality Maine coastline on the fourth. Recently arrived students never failed to notice the smell of pine and salt air. By their second week on campus, the smell had faded into the background. And by the third week, Maine was covered in snow and everyone had a head cold, so smells no longer mattered much one way or the other, as evidenced by the odors emanating from many of the dorm rooms. Still, for that first week, there was nothing like it. 
 The snow that arrived in the fall tended to linger through April, then disappear in May, just like the students. Of course, few students bothered to venture further off campus than the neighborhood bars, so what did a little snow matter? We weren't driving anywhere. A college is a world unto itself.

By the time our clutch of protesters reached the library, we had slimmed further--only six left, I counted. Six was better than nothing, I supposed, but only by six, which frankly isn't much. With only one treefrog-related sign between us, we might not even be noticed. At least the light was still on in Professor Cousins' office. I had confirmed Cousins' office hours that afternoon before speaking with Letlee, but tenured professors are not renowned for their adherence to schedules and timetables, especially after they've taken long lunches in bars. 
 "I think we'd better come up with a treefrog chant or something here," I suggested. Letlee shot me a suspicious glance, but Dana was all for the idea.
 "Have something in mind?" she asked. 
 "How about 'We're blockading the library to prevent needless treefrog deaths'?" I offered.
 "Not exactly catchy," Dana said.
 "I couldn't think of a rhyme for 'treefrog.' Could we call them toads? I've worked out a pretty good rhyme using 'roads' and 'explodes'."
Dana chuckled--she must have thought I was kidding. Probably a good thing I hadn't just launched into the chant. The light flicked off in Professor Cousins' office. 
 "How about 'No more frog deaths'," Dana suggested. The rest of us agreed that that should do the job nicely.
When Cousins passed by a moment later, our group was marching in a circle in front of the library doors, chanting and thrusting our fists into the air with the vehemence called for by the obvious gravity of the occasion. Cousins paused to consider the scene, and spotted me. 
 "Frog deaths?" he asked. 
 "Frog deaths," I assured him, and was promptly given an extension. It was agreed that I could turn in my paper whenever the frog death situation improved to such a degree that my passing into the library could be morally justified. 
 Its purpose served, the treefrog protest drew to a close five minutes later. I wasn't certain how many treefrog lives my actions had saved, but the other members of the remaining group--all three of them--were sure the demonstration had been a complete success. On that count, I couldn't agree more. I'd been given an open-ended extension on my paper--one that I expected would turn into a very long extension, considering that I was due to graduate in a month--and was now walking to dinner with Dana, with whom I'd chant for amphibians anytime…Or were they reptiles? I'd have to look that up.
 "Mark tells me you used to be in charge of the Druids," I said, searching for conversation. "What made you give it up?"
 "I spent junior year in Bangladesh, and last semester in Uganda. I figured I should hand it off to someone who'd be around."
 "That explains why I haven't seen you around campus. How'd you wind up in Bangladesh and Uganda?"
 "Things looked the worst there. I wanted to go where I could do the most good."
 "Then I take it you weren't running guns."
The joke earned me a smile. 
 "I was working with relief agencies. I just came back to get my degree. As soon as I'm through with finals I'm heading to Spanish Guyana." Bucklin students were always traipsing off to various corners of the globe and apparently receiving class credit for it. But for the most part they stuck to places like London or Paris where the greatest risk was to their parents' charge cards.
 "You need to find a new travel agent," I suggested.
 "What about you?"
 "All the flights to Spanish Guyana were booked."
 "No, seriously. What are you doing after graduation?"
 "If I don't find a job soon, probably starving to death. In a couple months you'll be showing Spanish Guyanians my picture to raise money."
 "You shouldn't joke about the plight of Spanish Guyana," Dana admonished, but she was still smiling, and I was pretty sure that I was scoring points.
 "Sorry, I was only trying to joke about the plight of me."
 "You know, Mark warned me that you were a jerk."
 "Well remember to factor in that Mark's full of shit."
 "I don't know. He told me you once let him borrow your car then called the police and reported it stolen."
 "Yea, but I let him borrow it, didn't I? That's gotta count for something. And I told the cops it was a mistake."
 "Mark says you waited till the next day before you told the cops."
 "I was busy. I had to make sure my car was still running after I got it back from the thieves."
 "Mark's a nice person. You shouldn't take advantage of nice people like that."
 "Ahhh, Mark's wanted to be arrested his whole life. He keeps staging sit-ins in campus buildings in the hopes the cops will come and drag him away. Instead everyone just lets him sit there and steps over him. One time they had him carpeted."
Dana chuckled.
"Anyway, I always take advantage of nice people," I continued. "The way I see it, if they really are nice people, they have to forgive me. It's only if they're not really nice people that they won't. Then at least my taking advantage of them will have exposed these so-called nice people for the covertly not-nice people that they really are. And hypocrites have got that sort of treatment coming to them, I think."
 "I like to think that I'm a nice person," Dana noted. "Are you going to take advantage of me?"
 "I'm working on it," I thought, but instead changed the subject. "It seems like we ought to be able to do something to help the treefrogs cross roads."
 "We did do something. We just protested."
 "No, I mean do something to help them that might actually help them. I was thinking that maybe someone could build little tunnels for them under the roads."
 "Actually, that's not a bad idea," Dana admitted. "But they already tried it in England. When the English frogs tried to hop into the tunnels, they bumped their heads on the top and knocked themselves unconscious. Then they were eaten by snakes."
 "Bigger tunnels maybe?"
 "Bigger tunnels just wind up as homes for larger frog predators."
 "Maybe we could get little helmets for the frogs," I persisted. I hated to give up, even when I knew I was defeated.
 "Little helmets?"
 "Just an idea."
 After dinner I headed back to my apartment. Dana said she had to study. Under different circumstances I might have taken this as a brush off, but dinner had gone well, and Dana had given me her phone number. Technically speaking, this was unnecessary--all student phone numbers were listed in the campus directory--but some conventions are observed regardless of circumstance, and "Here's my number" had to be a more portentous beginning than "I'm listed in the student directory." 
"You look pleased with yourself," Dave noted when I got home. "You got out of that paper I guess."
 "I got out of the paper and met a woman. Wish I'd known about those environmental protests a long time ago."
 "Met a woman? Great. Invite her to our graduation party. There are never enough women at our parties."
 "Not a chance. She's the sensitive-liberal type. If she meets my friends, she'll find out that everyone I know is a jerk."
 "Don't take this the wrong way, Gwaf, but maybe that's because you're a jerk, too."
 "Yea, but Dana doesn't know that."
 "Then I take it she's not one of your smarter sensitive liberals."
I let that pass. But I was surprised to find that some part of me wanted to defend Dana's honor, or at least her intelligence. I recall what I thought at that moment. It was something on the order of "Uh-oh." 
 "Anyway, social crusaders like hippies, and I can pass for a hippie when I want to," Dave said. "Hippies might not bother to show any interest in social crusaders' causes or protests, but simply by wearing our hair long and tie-dying the occasional item of clothing we let them know that deep down, we're on their side."
 "Are you?"
 "Am I what?"
 "Are you on their side?"
 "I've found it's easier not to care one way or the other."
 "You genuinely don't care about any of these political or social protests they're always having on campus?" 
 "Nope."
 "You don't have any opinion?"
 "None. Why have an opinion about something I can't do anything about? I'd just wind up tearing myself up inside for no reason."
 "So even when these people are marching around rallying for causes that just don't have a shred of logic to back them up you don't get mad?"
 "Why get mad? What does it accomplish? There's only one reasonable response to virtually any situation, and that's the hippie approach."
 "Total indifference."
 "Total indifference or just total inaction. Either way's acceptable."
I had to admit, Dave made a good case. "You might be on to something."
 "If you say so."
 
"Who was that guy I saw you eating with?" Dana's roommate, Debbie Hargrove, asked when Dana returned to her dorm. It was one of the hazards of attending a small college that no romantic encounter, mealtime companion, or hallway conversation ever went unobserved by one's friends. This fact led some students to favor dates off campus, and others to take the sensible precaution of drinking heavily so that a friend's comment on a poorly thought-out relationship at least could be met with the reply "I must have been drunk."
 "Just some guy I met at the treefrog protest," Dana answered, since she wasn't the sort to be drunk before dinner.
 "Nice guy?"
 "Bit of a jerk, actually--but maybe not in such a bad way." 
Of course I didn't find out until much later that Dana already had it figured out that I was a jerk. If I had known sooner, it would have saved me more than a few thoughtful gestures, not to mention a small fortune in gifts. But that's water under the bridge now. 
 Debbie left the conversation at that. Earlier in the school year, she probably would have kept up the questions about me for a while, but in late April, it hardly seemed worth the trouble. Even if Dana was considering a relationship with the guy from the treefrog protest, there were not nearly enough weeks left for a relationship to take form, fall apart, and still leave time for Debbie to get together with him on the rebound. Not that this sort of thing was what Debbie was all about, mind you. I have it on the best of authority that she is a good person with a kind heart and charitable nature who cared only for her friends' interests, damn it. But college is a bit like a game of musical chairs dating-wise. You always could meet someone new while in school, but it was wise to have a solid relationship in place when the music stops at graduation, since the odds of meeting someone worth marrying in the real world fell to just a shade north of zero. 
 So Debbie left those questions unasked. "Looks like it's time for a new treefrog sign," she said instead.