Free Prologue by Greg Ahlgren Page A

bar in order to smoke. This time, however, she shook her head.

“Let’s sit in the back.”

Must have something to talk about, Paul reasoned.

As she made her way to the back he ordered the usual from Sal, a pizza half mushroom and half hamburg , and without being asked Sal filled a pitcher with beer and handed two mugs to Paul. When he reached the rear booth Amanda already had her coat off. He filled both mugs.

“I got the decision today,” she began right off. “From the Committee.”

Paul sucked in his breath.

“It was filled with the usual summation. Crap about me espousing dangerous thoughts. Undergraduates find my seminar ideas uncomfortable and subversive. My teachings and lectures are basically ‘history with an agenda.’ That type of crap.”

She laughed. “It was just over 45 years ago the tide in this country was running the other way and everyone was witch-hunting Communists. Now look.” She laughed again, this time more ruefully. “You gotta’ love the irony.”

Paul took a swig from his mug and waited.

She stared off around the pub, not looking directly at him. Finally, she pursed her lips and turned toward him.

“They said they won’t approve my certification. They’ll even hold up my PhD.”

When Paul started to speak she held up her hand.

“Oh yeah, they can,” she said. “They can do it. They can keep me from getting a job at even a community college.”

“Isn’t, isn’t there any, any appeal?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No. Nothing.”

Paul sipped his beer. Amanda’s lay untouched in front of her.

“There’s no one you can go to? Nothing you can do?” he asked.

“There is something I can do,” she answered. “Their letter started off with their ‘findings.’ They concluded by saying that they thought I could benefit from some re-education. The bottom line is that if I agree to teach American history over in Leipzig , right in the heart of the Reds, they’ll grant me a provisional PhD. I think they need teachers over there and this is just a ruse to get one.”

She was angry, and despite the sarcasm Paul knew she was hurting.

“For how long?” he asked.

“Five years,” she answered immediately, and it was at the moment of hearing those words that Paul realized that no matter what, his life from that day forward would never be the same.

He sipped more beer, and then drained it off and refilled his mug. He studied Amanda’s face.

“I love you, Paul,” she said. “And I always will.”

“I love you too,” he answered, but she was already shaking him off.

“I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to marry you. I want to... I don’t need to teach. At least not in college. We can get married, and I can teach elementary school or junior high school, or heck, even high school, maybe. The Committee can’t do shit about that. We can settle in some small town, maybe even back in your New Hampshire in some place where they don’t give a fuck about the Committee. If we stay in the Northeast District they can’t touch us here. Not really. Not at the high school level. We can do it.”

The light from the fireplace was dancing off her face. She was beautiful, and on this evening the reflection from the glowing embers gave her face its own glow, one he had never seen before. She was so alive, full of spirit and fight. Her eyes were the color of Cayuga Lake, yet whenever he told her that she would laugh him off and ask if that were before or after it had become polluted.

It had all suddenly become so complicated. He struggled for words.

“If you’re teaching in Hicksville , where am I going to teach?” he asked. He knew he was at that point in his life his grandfather told him everyone reaches. Do you do what is most comfortable or do you do what is right?

“You can’t,” he said, wishing even as he spoke that he wasn’t saying it. “Amanda, you love history and research more than anyone. You live it. How long would we be