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The Life of the
Mind 
by Weldon Kees
Note: "The Life of the Mind" was
originally published by Robert Lowry in The State of the
Nation: 11 Interpretations, at his Little Man Press in Cincinnati in
1940. This story was later anthologized in Best Short Stories of
1941. Although it is a fine piece of Weldon Kees's social
commentary, it has not been included in the selections of his fiction
that Dana Gioia and I have edited.
J.R.
T oo many things were weighing on Dr Peate's mind.
There was his wife, for one thing. He did not know whether she was dead
or alive. He hoped she was dead. He had called his hotel at three
o'clock, but there had been no word, no telegram or phone call from
the hospital. He wished they would let him know. They really ought to
let him know one way or another. Cerebral hemorrhage, they had said. It
was a very dangerous business.
Then there was this matter of Jackson, the football player, who
had called to say that he would be over in a few minutes. Dr Peate
looked out of his office window, across the campus. He saw Jackson, in a
red sweater, hulking along past Jarvis Hall. There were so many of these
issues that came up all the time for Dr Peate to straighten out.
Dr Peate held the Harry Gunnison White Chair of English
Literature at the State University, and was in charge of the instructors
who taught Freshman English (English 101-108). He had played tackle as
an undergraduate, and still retained an abnormally active interest in
football. For many years he had taken it upon himself to see that all
football players got through their English courses without too much
difficulty.
Dr Peate lived by himself on the eleventh floor of the Whittier
Hotel. He had been separated from his wife for some years. His whole
married life had been unfortunate, and when he thought of it at all, he
thought of it as "a tragic mistake." During the first year he had
taught, he had foolishly and hastily married the best-looking girl in
his classes. That had been at a girls' school in Missouri. She had
been extravagant, silly, and too insatiable in a certain way for Dr
Peate, whose hiking activities seemed to take a lot out of him. At one
time he had been first vice-president of a national hiking association.
When he had come North to work on his Ph.D., his wife had bothered him
incessantly when he was trying to write. She could not even type, and
refused to learn; and he had had to spend a good deal of money getting
his thesis typed by a woman who charged him exorbitantly. He had
dedicated his thesis on — Nature in the writings of Charles Lamb —
to the memory of his mother. His mother had been a stout woman with a
fervent interest in women's rights and Navajo rugs.
Five years after he had married Gloria, she had run away with a
man who operated a roach-exterminating concern in Chicago. Dr Peate went
to Chicago after her, very much perturbed, and found her alone in a
disreputable hotel on Woodlawn Avenue. Her lover, the
roach-exterminator, had abandoned her. Gloria had learned of two other
wives that he had neglected to tell her about; perhaps there were
others. Dr Peate had been overjoyed to see his wife. Their reunion had
been tender. They had been happier then than at any other time since
their courtship and engagement.' Dr Peate took her to see Otis Skinner
in Kismet, which was playing in Chicago at the time. He got $8.80
seats, the best in the house. The next day they returned to University
City by train. She cried frequently and told him repeatedly how ashamed
she was and that from then on she would be a good wife to him.
She wasn't. For several weeks she cooked, baked, cleaned,
scrubbed, and mended his clothes, sewing the buttons on his shirts with
so much thread that they were difficult to fasten into the buttonholes.
After the several weeks, she gave up. The house became run-down and
dirty. She began to go around with the wife of a man in the Sociology
Department, a Pole, who got her started smoking and drinking. They went
to many movies and sent away for photographs of Rudolph Valentino. Dr
Peate became terribly afraid for his reputation. He lectured to her a
great deal, but it had no effect. Sometimes she laughed at him. She
ridiculed his Sunday hikes. She refused to accompany him to football and
basketball games, and put on a good deal of weight. She changed the
manner of fixing her hair almost weekly, and when it began to turn gray,
dyed it herself with something that caused her scalp to take on a
strange green color.
She took up with fortune tellers. One night he had come back to a
dinnerless home to find her sprawled out on the davenport, drunk, her
hair falling every which way. There were playing cards scattered over
the floor beside the davenport, and in her hand she had the ace of
spades, which she waved at him frenziedly. "Death!" she said drunkenly.
"Death! You're going to die, Jim Peate!"
He had her put away in the Woodlawn Hospital for Mental Cases. It
cost him a good deal. Occasionally he went down to see her, but she no
longer recognized him. She was perfectly happy and totally harmless so
long as she had plenty of movie magazines to look at. She cut out the
pictures and filled many scrapbooks with them.
It was shortly after he put his wife in the Woodlawn Hospital
that Dr Peate began to take an absorbing interest in the destinies of
football players. He defended them at every chance, took them out to
dinner, sometimes going along with them on out-of-town trips. He got a
good deal of pity from people because of his broken home, especially
from faculty wives. He was frequently asked out to dinner, and people
never failed to mention how jovial and entertaining Dr Peate could be,
in spite of all the tragedy that had come into his life. They marveled
at the knowledge he had of the world of sport, particularly at his
ability to give the scores of any football game that was brought up. He
liked their pity, too; but what he felt more than anything else when he
went home at night was relief — relief that he did not have to face
Gloria.
When Jackson arrived, Dr Peate greeted him pleasantly and asked
him to sit down while he attended to a little matter. He actually had
nothing to attend to, but he often employed this technique when people
came in. It showed he was a busy man.
He looked at his visitor, a two hundred-pound young man wearing a
red sweater. He needed a shave badly and was chewing on a match. He must
be close to thirty, Dr Peate thought. There was no use in dwelling on
that, however. He could not help admiring Jackson's muscular arms and
broad shoulders, recalling Jackson's admirable interference in
Saturday's game. Jackson was certainly one of their best men. It
irritated him that young Milstein was gumming up the works for Jackson.
Milstein was a new man in the department and evidently had a few things
to learn.
Sitting at his desk, where he had dealt with so many weighty
academic matters, Dr Peate chewed thoughtfully on the fifteen-cent cigar
that had been given to him that morning by a textbook salesman. It was
an excellent cigar, but he had been curt with the salesman. He had not
liked his looks nor his intellectual air. Salesmen took up far too much
of his valuable time. Dr Peate stared glassily at the rows of books in
the case above his desk, many of them sample textbooks which had been
presented to him by other young salesmen whose looks he had not liked.
Most of the books had numerous uncut pages, He pretended to finish what
he had pretended he was doing.
"So Milstein said he was going to flunk you, did he?" he said
finally.
"Yeh, that's what he said."
"Just what seems to be the trouble between you and Milstein,
Jackson?"
"I don't know. I just can't seem to get that stuff through my
head, Doc. It's tough. He springs tests on us all the time."
"Doesn't give you warning, eh?"
It was a practice Dr Peate frowned on. At the beginning of each
quarter, Dr Peate handed out a complete outline of the work, indicating
the dates of the examinations and how much each counted towards the
final grade. He had suggested that this procedure be followed by all
instructors of Freshman English, but a few, like Milstein, totally
disregarded his suggestion.
Dr Peate took the cigar from his mouth and looked at it. It had
gone out. He noticed that he had slobbered a good deal. He decided to
take a new approach with Jackson.
"Jackson, what is a participle?"
"Huh? Participle? You got me there."
"Don't you know what a participle is?"
"Doc, I don't see the percentage in that course. I came here
instead of going to Wisconsin because they made it look good to me, see?
And if I have to mess around with grades all the time — well, I just
don't see the percentage."
"I think that I'll be able to straighten it out all right," Dr
Peate said reassuringly. "You've been attending Milstein's classes
regularly, haven't you? Have to be careful about cuts, you know!"
"Hardly a cut. You think you can fix it up, Doc?"
"I think so. I think so. Don't worry about it." Dr Peate turned
the cigar between his fingers and decided that he ought to put in a few
words about discipline. "But I want you to start hitting the ball,
Jackson," he said. "Hit the ball, and learn how to study. After all,
you've got to make good at keeping up with your studies. You're in
college for something more than just football, you know!"
Just off-hand, Dr Peate did not know what else Jackson was in
college for. It was another thing, though, that was not worth dwelling
on.
Jackson hunched his shoulders and bit down on the match between
his teeth. "I do the best I can, but this course of Milstein's is
tough, know what I mean? He's always putting me in a tough spot."
Dr Peate became suddenly alert. "He is? Just how, Jackson? Just
how does he put you on the spot?"
"He kids me in class, gives me the razz in front of everybody.
Some day I'm going to take a poke at that kite."
"Now, now, I wouldn't advise that, Jackson. That's the wrong
attitude, altogether. Next quarter I'll get you transferred to Mr
Armstrong's class. For the time being, I want you to get along with Mr
Milstein."
"Think you can fix it up, Doc?"
"I feel confident of it."
"If you don't, I'll sure be up the creek."
"I'll do my best. And get all those foolish ideas out of your
head about doing Mr Milstein any physical harm. We don't get anyplace
that way, you know."
When Jackson had gone, Dr Peate sat in his swivel chair and
listened to the sound of the football player's heel-plates tapping on
the tile floor of the hallway. He kept thinking about his wife. He drank
a glass of water, irritably rattled some papers on his desk, and pulled
at the crotch of his pants. He had told Dr Ogilvie, the head of the
English department, not to hire Milstein in the first place. They had
never had any luck with Jews, he reflected. One of them had written
proletarian poems. They had got rid of him in a hurry. Another, Mr.
Kauffman, they had discovered after he had gone on to Harvard, had been
living with a blonde who worked as a typist for the Federal Housing
Authority. They had been quite open about it. A lot of people had known.
The blonde had been a good-looker, too. Rut in the face of both
examples, Ogilvie had been big enough fool to hire another Jew, this
Milstein. It demonstrated Ogilvie's lack of sense and administrative
ability well enough.
He took out his watch, which had been presented to him by the
team in 1928. It had his initials engraved on it. It was a quarter to
four. Milstein's afternoon class would be over very shortly. It was
a special class in English for students in the College of Dentistry.
Dr Peate opened a couple of letters that had come, trying to
shake off the uneasy feeling that had settled on him. Dealing with most
of the instructors, whom he knew were afraid of him, was perfectly easy.
With Milstein it would not be so easy. He had disliked Milstein from the
first. He had to read the message in his hand over again; he had been
considering how he would deal with Milstein. The situation was not
without its difficulties.
The message was a routine mimeographed affair from the 0ffice of
the Chancellor, announcing the appointment of Karl Leonard Schrunk,
B.S., Ph. D. (Northwestern), who was to take the place vacated by the
death of Dr Mirrilees. Dr Mirrilees had been the head of the Physics
Department. He had passed away following a boiler explosion in the
basement of his home several weeks before. The mimeographed announcement
did not mention the boiler explosion. Dr Peate regarded the appointment
with dissatisfaction. He felt that they should have given the job to Dr
Chambers, instead of bringing in a new man. He dropped the paper in the
wastebasket and opened the other envelope.
He would confront Milstein with his unfair treatment of Jackson
in the classroom. There was no possible excuse for that. He would remind
him that ridicule was out of place there. He would walk down the hall
and go into Milstein's once. "What's this business about Merle
Jackson?" he would begin. He would be affable at first, but firm, of
course. If Milstein seemed unpersuasive, he would get nasty.
The other envelope contained a reminder that his dues at the
Faculty Club were long past due. He put it in the wastebasket on top of
the Schrunck communication.
After the bell had rung, he waited for a few moments for the
halls to clear. He relighted his cigar, puffing with an air that
suggested thought. It was a good idea for him to have the cigar. It gave
a tone of authority.
Some dental students were standing in the hallway when he emerged
from his office, glumly examining the bulletin board. There had been
nothing new on it for weeks. Dr Peate glanced in Milstein's classroom.
It was empty. He went down to Milstein's office.
Milstein was standing by the window, smoking a cigarette and
blowing rings when Dr Peate entered without knocking. His face wore the
look of fatigue brought on by talking to dental students for a long
class period. Dr Peate knew that Milstein was a Jew, but he did not look
like a Jew. That is, he did not look like Dr Peate's idea of what a
Jew should look like. This always made him uneasy. Things like that
should be sharply defined, clear-cut, easy to pigeonhole. He would have
liked it better if Milstein looked like the cartoons one sometimes saw
of Jews. It would have simplified matters.
"Little problem I wanted to see you about, Mr Milstein," Dr Peate
began, removing the cigar from his mouth.
"Won't you have a chair?" Milstein asked politely. "Wonderful
weather, isn't it?"
Milstein was too affable. It threw Dr Peate off his guard for a
moment.
"I believe you have a student in 101b," said Dr Peate, declining
the offer of a chair. "Merle Jackson."
"Oh, yes," Milstein said. "Very stupid young man, too. He
hasn't been to class for almost two weeks now."
Things weren't going at all well. Dr Peate chewed on his cigar.
"Really?" he said. "Two weeks, eh?"
"Two weeks," Milstein said.
"Hmmm, that's not so good."
"He's very badly behaved in class, falls asleep, sits far in
the back and talks to a girl who's usually with him. Altogether one of
the worst students I have in all of my classes."
"Hmmm."
"What about him, Doctor?"
"Well, he was in to see, me just now, and he told me that you
make a practice of ridiculing him during the class hour."
"You don't say," Milstein said politely. "Well, on a couple of
occasions I reminded him, when he came in late, that the class met at
eight, not at eight-fifteen or eight-thirty. He must be unusually
sensitive. I had no idea I'd wounded his feelings. Football player,
isn't he?"
"Er, yes. Now, that's what I wanted to talk to you about,
Milstein. Some of these football men, like Jackson, have a rather
difficult time getting through school. Long practice hours, games;
Jackson's working his way through, you know; it puts a big burden on
some of the boys. Now if you turn Jackson in at the six weeks as
failing, it will mean that he'll be unable to finish out the
season."
"Play football, you mean?"
"Exactly," Dr Peate said, nodding.
"I hadn't thought of that."
It looked as though Milstein would be reasonable, Dr Peate
thought. Perhaps he had gotten the wrong idea about Milstein. He smiled.
"I think you appreciate the situation," he went on. "I'm sure that if
you don't turn him in this time, he'll snap right out of it and come
through with flying colors. I can virtually promise you that. I've
seen a lot of cases like this; taken a lot of them in hand myself and
pulled them through in great shape."
"I've already turned in the grades," said Milstein, putting his
cigarette out.
"Oh, well! There won't be any trouble about that. Just send a
note over to the office; say that it was an error on the part of your
reader. Very simple little matter to attend to."
Milstein was regarding him with a queer smile that Dr Peate did
not like at all.
"They won't think anything of it," Dr Peate went on hurriedly.
"Little errors like that are cropping up all the time."
"I'm sure they do," Milstein said calmly. He took a pack of
cigarettes from his coat. "Will you have a cigarette, Doctor? Oh, I'm
sorry; I didn't see your cigar."
"You don't consider this sort of thing questionable, I hope!"
Dr Peate said with a disarming laugh. "After all, I do feel that we have
to take a lot of factors into consideration. Jackson may be no great
shakes in the classroom, but he's one of the most important men on the
team this year. I hope you'll give me your word that you'll send
that little correction over to the once right away."
Milstein shook his head. He still wore the queer smile that Dr
Peate disliked. "I'm afraid it's utterly out of the question, Dr
Peate."
"And why is it out of the question?"
"Well, I was hired to teach English, and in my English class this
Jackson is without doubt absolutely moronic. He's surly, indifferent,
cocky. He hasn't demonstrated in any way that he even wants to learn
anything. In simple justice, Dr Peate, I can't give him anything but a
failing grade. If he shows improvement from now on, I'll be more than
happy to change his grade. But it isn't fair to ask me to pretend that
I made an error. I'm afraid that grade will have to stand."
Dr Peate was boiling. His face was red, and he could feel the
large vein on his temple beating. He pressed his cigar firmly between
his fingers. "I think you're making a very big mistake, Milstein," he
said shortly.
"I hope not, Doctor."
Dr Peate tried to get a grip on himself. The situation was
running away from him. "I want you to sleep on this," he said. "Think it
over; then let me know definitely in the morning. We don't want to
make any rash, foolish decisions."
"I'm afraid that I'll have to say the same thing in the
morning. I'm sorry."
"Very well, Milstein," Dr Peate said. "Very well, if that is to
be your attitude."
He walked hurriedly out of the office, tripping on the doorsill
and barely avoiding falling flat on his face. He attempted to recover
his dignity, but two of his students, coming out of the washroom, had
observed his embarrassment. He walked on down the hall erectly, his
shoulders back, his step springy. He had special arch-preservers fitted
into all of his shoes. The arch-preservers dated from his first days in
the hiking club.
His anger cooled when he got his hat from his own office and
started for home. It had been his intention, earlier in the day, to go
over to the stadium, as he often did, to watch the boys practice. He was
in no mood for it now. He would go home and take a bracing cold shower
and drink a glass of carrot juice. Those things had a way of relaxing
him, as well as pepping up his mind. He would get around Milstein some
way. He had had to deal with situations of this sort before.
He was anxious to see if there was any word at the hotel about
his wife. He hurried along the street.
Under the awning of the Whittier Hotel doorway, Dr Peate stopped
to buy an evening paper from the cripple who was there every evening,
The cripple was a war veteran with a complexion the color of old
oilcloth. Dr Peate did not like to look at him, but it did not seem
right to buy his paper elsewhere and then walk right by the cripple. He
waited for his two cents change and went into the lobby. Like the rest
of the hotel, it was plain but homelike. That was Dr Peate's way of
describing it.
The desk clerk handed him his key and a yellow envelope. The
clerk had once been a student of Dr Peate's at the University.
"Telegram for you, Dr Peate."
"Hmmm," Dr Peate said. "Thank you, Ronald."
In the elevator he removed his hat in deference to a heavyset,
perfumed woman with a fox terrier. She talked to it all the way up to
the ninth floor, where she got off. Dr Peate got off at the eleventh
floor.
He opened the telegram as soon as he was in his room. It was
beginning to get dark, and he sat down in his easy chair by the window
and snapped on the light.
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