I ATTENDED THE ROBERTS HEARINGS

18. I ATTENDED THE ROBERTS HEARINGS:

"I'm not going to rage against an immeasurable night or day and I'm not about to come across as insincere either" he said to no one in particular as the entire class (glazed) just sat there wishing for somewhere else and quick "but I'll be damned if I'm going to allow this entire atmosphere to become poisoned by people in a position to know better doing nothing but adding negative emphasis to whatever they hear" and at that someone hooted and the rest laughed and the next thing I knew old man Marshall had transformed the hall into a ghetto of blindness and had a few guys lined up against lockers and doorways and was resoundingly beating on them one at a time with high-glissendo scatter-wail of black rubber which evidently had last seen service in Sudan and just before the police came and arrested him two people had been bludgeoned into unconsciousness and they really didn't move much and a few months later - at a hearing - Marshall claimed temporary insanity due to situations unforseen and they actually let him off with nothing more than 58 hours of community service and although he eventually lost his position at the college it wasn't for that infraction - even though that one malfeascance was merely the beginning of an entire jumble of bad work - and he claimed 'traitors' lurked everywhere and 'the people in positions of power had been taken over by the Devil' and their original selves had been replaced by replicates doing the evil work of the 'other' side and the takeover was complete and no one even realized it and 'every one of the smarmy bastards should have their heads cut off at the neck and just like reptiles and lizards they'll wiggle to survive and probably grow back whatever they'd lost but it's all over now it's all too late and nothing about it matters now anyway for we've lost the universe-at-large and gained for ourselves NOTHING but a hollow hole of despair and deceit to live in' and then (he said) 'we're all too fucked up stupid to understand what's happened to ourselves and to the world around us' and the last I heard after that he was claiming to be Gaugin and had run off to some island somewhere - just east of Sumatra but slightly to the left of Rye New York and the posters he left in the alley were now completely overrun by dominos and mice and the only erstwhile reason anyone would care was so that this would never be allowed to happen to them (or like Ted Willams' severed head - frozen in some separated time of its own) - so the landmark decisions are all still waiting to happen and the hearings were closed with a prayer - (or was that a lick and promise - I really can't recall) - but it was ALL over by sundown and the hangman had already brought the rope for the party.