Elizabeth Walrod

21 May 2004

She was pretty, but not in a way that distinguished her from any other woman of her age group. She had a wide mouth that pulled back across her gums when she smiled, revealing a left canine that just overlapped its neighbor. Braces had been one of many things she had done without as a child. Her hair was an unremarkable brown, and usually pulled back in a tight ponytail. Her eyes were her most compelling feature, not so much for their appearance, but for the intense expression they conveyed. They were bright, perhaps overly so, as though the last vestiges of childhood had yet to fade away. There was a look of quiet awe in her features, and she looked around herself in disbelieving joy, as though she did not truly trust her surroundings to be real.

She was from a small Texas town, not much more than a speck on the highway really. Back home everybody knew her. Her parents ran a barbeque restaurant that had been in the family for three generations, and Texas Monthly had named their pork ribs the best in the state for nearly as long. After school and on summer breaks she helped out wherever it was needed, but she preferred to work as a waitress. Like his father had before him, her father slaughtered his own pigs, a messy job that required a strong stomach and firm control over one’s sympathy. Her father called her a “tenderhearted fool”, and rarely let her shirk the task (Hardy 55). To her it was a “dismal, sordid, ugly spectacle,” and she was glad to leave it behind her when she moved away (Hardy 55). Just as everyone in that dusty, rural town knew her past, and could fit it neatly into theirs, they felt they knew her future as well, and saw it unfolding alongside their own. She would graduate from the local high school with her friends, marry some local boy, and continue the family trade. She, however, would not be content with that. She wanted scholarship, new experiences, and freedom from her past self. The University of Texas called to her: the massive, sprawling campus, filled with students with lives totally unlike her own, and people who would not know the girl she was before, or expect her to always be the same.

She got in, but just barely. She would have to prove herself first in summer school, and then maybe, just maybe, they would let her into the school of her choice. She arrived in Austin in the early evening hours of a golden June day. It was one of those Texas days when the afternoon stretches molasses slow into evening, and the moon is well into the sky before the light finally fades. Against the postcard-perfect blue sky the campus buildings took on a warm and welcoming glow. She hauled her things up the four flights of stairs to her tiny, cell-like dorm room, which had no sink, and an air conditioner whose coolest setting was just under lukewarm. Rather than stay and unpack in the heat, she stopped only long enough to grab an iced tea from the vending machine and set off on an impromptu tour of the campus.

Veering right from her dorm she cut across a parking lot and passed massive buildings full of classrooms that sat squat and square under their Spanish tile roofs. She turned off of 24^th Street and headed towards Inner Campus Drive, stopping for a moment at the Tower Memorial Garden. Turtles basked lazily in the last of the day’s sunlight, and in the slanting rays of light, she caught shadows of past students napping on the grass or relaxing between classes under the shade of the surrounding trees. How detached this serene place felt from the violent act it was intended to memorialize. Form the garden she could see the Tower looming above the campus, tall and stately. She found herself drawn to it, and soon her feet were propelling her forward once again. It is the heart of the campus; “to alumni all over the world, it has a significance that is personal to each one. It symbolizes the University” (Berry 565).

As she walked on she cherished the feeling of having this sprawling campus all to herself. It was a Saturday between terms; all of the spring students who were not staying for the summer had already returned home, and most of the summer students had yet to arrive. As the fading summer light twisted and bent the shadows, the campus became a dreamland, and all the ghosts of its past returned. Rancher poets ambled down the West Mall with well-worn boots on their feet, and well-worn notebooks in their hands. They crossed paths with briskly moving intellectuals and slow paced scholars, who took small, leisurely steps, and never lifted their eyes from the books held to their noses. One of those ambling cowboys, whose hair was white and wild, and whose laugh lines cut deep but friendly grooves into his leathery face, paused for a moment. Speaking at once to no one and everyone he said, “The earth does not think and does not care what people think, but it gives and takes with undeviating justice, and it remembers” (Dobie 323).

So the earth does not or cannot care for our reasons, but bears the scars of our actions just the same. Another shade, this one bearded and balding, hears this and responds, “Though the poisoned soil had been removed from the base of Treaty Oak, the tree was still full of Velpar, and the chemical crept slowly up its trunk and branched, killing off the leaves flush by flush. As a last desperate measure, the tree scientists drilled holes in the trunk of the tree and injected thirty-five gallons of a weak potassium-chloride solution, hoping that this salty flood would help the tree purge itself of the poison” (Harrigan 252).

Another ghost raises his voice, “I believe that we should be able to knock on the door of our conscience, which once was obliged to be the slave of the animal nature in man rather than on the humanity which resides on the other side of his heart… It is my desire for the peace of mankind which encouraged me in my voluntary labor to complete this long-dreamed gift for the city of Austin— this “Oriental Garden” (Taniguchi 258).

Then the second of the three, “In its soul Austin is a druid capital, a city filled with sacred trees and pools and stones, all of them crying out for protection… The idea of trees [is] still enshrined in the civic bosom” (Harrigan 248).

As the speakers retreated back into her mind she was reminded of how young this place was. The students, the university, the town, all were far predated by nature. Perhaps that was why some struck out at it. Those who felt insecure in their cultural infancy struck out at a victim that could not fight back. This was no Oxford; there were not aged stone monoliths or crumbling abbey walls to stake the claim of man. The buildings here sprang up raw and green, their foundations in the bare earth, rather than built atop a centuries of human settlement. This was at once daunting and liberating. She felt cast out, alone, and without guides, but also unburdened by past mistakes. Here she would not be bound to the actions of those before her. It was too new, and the paths still half formed and awaiting her choices.

The chiming of the Tower bells jolted her from her reflections. She looked around her and saw that the last of the daylight had finally faded. Seeing this and feeling that perhaps it was time to return to her dorm, she turned and began to retrace her steps. She passed the Undergraduate Library, a gray, boxy structure with large and incongruous latticed windows. It made her think of students trapped in study, a confinement she herself was looking forward to. Once again her path took her to the turtle ponds. They had all retreated into the water for the night, but occasionally she would hear a slight ripple of sound as one slipped his head above the surface. The illusion of solitude was complete now. She was a lone wayfarer in this academic haven. All the potential of this place seemed to belong solely to her. That gave rise to a feeling of satisfaction in she whose previous life had been defined by family and friends, and for a moment she was glad for their loss. She took her steps slowly as she made her way back to the dorm, savoring her freedom, and reveling in the sensation of untapped possibilities. She wanted to make this moment last; it would belong solely to her, and live in her memories as a flash of independence. She could fail in this venture; there were no guarantees for her, but succeed or not she was making the attempt under her own power, and that in itself was a heady revelation.

When her unhurried feet finally found their way back to her room, she was pleased to find that her roommate had not yet arrived. She did want to meet the girl; she was excited over the prospect of building a friendship without a common past, but for the moment, she wanted to cling to her solitude just a bit longer.

Berry, Margaret. “Brick by Golden Brick: A History of Campus Buildings at the University of Texas at Austin: 1883 – 1993.” Composition and Reading in World Literature. Vol. 2. Comp. Jerome Bump. Austin: Jenn’s, 2003. 537-584

Dobie, J. Frank. “The Mustangs.” Composition and Reading in World Literature. Vol. 2. Comp. Jerome Bump. Austin: Jenn’s, 2003. 318-360

Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure. Ed. Norman Page. New York: Norton, 1978.

Harrigan, Stephen. “The Soul of Treaty Oak.” Composition and Reading in World Literature. Vol. 1. Comp. Jerome Bump. Austin: Jenn’s, 2003. 246-254

Taniguchi, Isamu. “The Spirit of the Garden.” Composition and Reading in World Literature. Vol. 1. Comp. Jerome Bump. Austin: Jenn’s, 2003. 258