The Child Buyer (13 page)

Mr. BROADBENT. Is there a connection—

BARRY RUDD. Yes. You asked my reaction to the news about the child buyer. All through my preparation of the report, even thought I was concentrating fiercely, like a horse racing with blinders on, I felt an underlying malaise, but at the same time a remnant of my earlier lift. My unnatural delight was mixed now with a slow sinking feeling. I finished my work and got ready for bed. The Monster was already tucked in: I have to sleep on half

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the rollaway with her. Momma turned the lights out, and I lay on my back and rubbed my eyes, and I saw a sort of glowing head, a ghost head. I knew it was a mere phosphene, from the rubbing, but I connected it with the child buyer; it seemed threatening. I read for a while with a flashlight under the covers and ate some dried apricots. I've been hit by science fiction lately. My favorite at the moment is James Mull's The Moon-Skaters, and somehow the tartness and roughness of the apricots is just right for science fiction. And—Mr. Broadbent, I know you're worrying about the relevance—underneath I had this growing feeling of oppositcs, joy and fear, partly stemming from the reading but partly not.

Mr. BROADBENT. I see.

BARRY RUDD. When I had grown tired of reading I cut off the flashlight and I lay on my back thinking about a girl in my class, about her thigh area just above her kneecap.

Mr. BROADBENT. Florence Renzulli?

BARRY RUDD. No, Mr. Broadbent. You're strict about relevance; she wasn't in any part of this. I don't like to give names here, so I'll just say it was another girl in my class. You see, Flattop and I had been talking about the stickleback, and I was wondering about applying certain elements of the ritual— something in the book I'd been reading triggered—

Senator SKYPACK. Smut, I knew it was smut. These paperbacks . . .

BARRY RUDD. —but then I got thinking about moving her skirt up, centimeter by centimeter, just to the top of her stocking—picturing Sunday clothes, I mean. Excuse centimeters; from the lab I carry the metric system over into much of my thinking.

Senator SKYPACK. Scandalous.

BARRY RUDD. Then suddenly I was thinking about the child buyer's proposition. The G-man had told Momma that the

Friday, October 25

child buyer was hunting for geniuses. I thought of the refrain Dr. Gozar had put in my head: work! work! She was forever quoting the authorities. Flaubert: 'Genius, in the phrase of Buffon, is only long patience. Work/ Button's sentence actually was: 'La genie n'est autre chose qu'une grande aptitude a la patience. 1 Carlyle: 'Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains/ Michelangelo: 'If people knew how hard I work to get my mastery it would not seem so wonderful after all/ Padcrcw-ski: 'Before I was a genius I was a drudge/ I thought of going, being bought and going away to Arizona for the vague unclear experiment on me. I thought hard about it, because I habitually think the opposite of what I want in order to get my way. Then for some reason I thought about my grandfather; I wanted to make a dream about him.

Senator MANSFIELD. You wanted to make a dream?

BARRY RUDD. I have long believed I could make myself dream about the last person I thought about before falling off to sleep. I think of dreams as substances of light that are out in the room around me at night. The room is full of dreams, which possibly are tiny lights that come from the moon or stars. They come from the sky, the night makes them, and they get in the room, crowding around, and they sort of look at you, watching for an opening, and if you think about one of them, it can get in. I think of light as looking at you. A street lamp can see everything that passes; a candle sees the flickering room; a match sees the end of a cigarette. I think of human eyes as giving light. Did you ever see a cat's eyes beside the road?

Mr. BROADBENT. For a boy with a scientific bent of mind—

BARRY RUDD. I know, I know. The cat's eyes reflect your headlights. A street lamp has no optic nerve. I fenow all that, but these arc holdovers from a very early age. Sometimes I have a strange feeling, almost a sensation of being on an escalator or perhaps a treadmill, or of slipping or gliding—from one age

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level to another. An adult thought one moment, a babyish thought the next.

Mr. BROADBENT. And did you dream about your grandfather?

BARRY RUDD. No, I'm often disappointed. I fell into a deep sleep, and the next thing, I woke up with a start—saw the light going across the ceiling when a car passed outside. I knew which way it was going. I figured that out by logic one night a couple of years ago, and then to verify my conclusion I propped a mirror in the window sill and saw that Yd been right. The opposite way. As I lay there I was hit, as if by a blow, by the thought of my father's wanting to sell me. Suddenly I had the feeling that he was the most august yet compassionate creature on earth—a gentle king. I loved him. I wanted him to teach me. I thought of Montaigne's father, educating his son with utmost delicacy and consideration, even going so far as to waken the boy each morning with instrumental music. I thought of Jeremy Bentham learning Latin at three and the Greek of Lily's Grammar at four and five on his father's knee. Coleridge, Schelling, Pascal, Goethe, Leibnitz—all systematically taught by their fathers. Then my thoughts began subtly to shift toward the notion of fathers' exploiting their sons to gratify ambition or avarice: Robert Peers father consciously determining that he would mold his son into another Pitt; Mozart's father putting his son's absolute pitch and extraordinary powers of improvisation on display as if the child were a puppet. I thought of Samuel Johnson saying that in order to avoid being put on show as a prodigy he used sometimes to 'run up a tree.' Don't mistake me. I don't put myself in a class with ... I aspire but I don't arrogate. ... It only helps to make my own feelings clear if I ...

Mr. BROADBENT. But I gather that on the whole you and your father—

BARRY RUDD. At that particular moment I had a feeling of intense yearning for his love. I wanted his strong arms around me.

Then all at once the full horror of the child buyer's proposal came over me.

Senator SKYPACK. Horror? You don't seem to realize what kind of a deal this is. In a class with getting an appointment to West Point. Better even. Horror!

BARRY RUDD. At first the feeling wasn't explicit. I remembered a little girl in a Sunday-school class I was in several years ago who had a shriveled hand. Then I remembered being chased through the parking lot of the shopping center on Sycamore Street, last year, on my bike, by these big boys, and they kept calling me a queer. Tou know you're a queer, don't you?' I didn't want to fight. I thought that sticks and stones couldn't possibly hurt my bones as much as those taunts did, though I had no idea what they meant. I thought of my childhood fears: When I was three I was afraid of what I called 'polo'—infantile paralysis. Then I was terrified that the Russians would drop a 'hydrant bomb.' Being bitten by a big dog. Being run over. Fire. Spiders. I lay in my bed and wondered if I was going crazy. It had been drummed into me—I remember Miss Songevine used to din this into me—that precocious children grow up abnormal, neurotic, headed for imbecility or insanity. Early ripe, early rot. The Bible says, 'Much learning doth make thee mad.' Seneca: 'There is no great genius without some touch of madness.' Burton, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, speaking of men 'out of too much learning become mad/ Moreau de Tours, Lombroso, Langc-Eichbaum—'scientists' who 'proved' the relationship between brilliance and madness; Miss Songevine threw them at me. I felt doomed. Doomed. And in a minute I was overwhelmed by the Great Fear. I was terrified that if I went to sleep again I wouldn't wake up in the morning. I put my hand on my chest to feel my heartbeat—was it steady? I turned my head on my pillow to listen for the rush of blood pumping in my ear. I heard a dog howling in the distance—telling me of death, death.

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Then I desperately tried to save myself by classifying the creatures of this earth. Phylum One: Protozoa, the unicellular animals. Classes: Sarcodina, Mastigophora, Sporozoa, Infusoria. Phylum Two: Porifera, the sponges . . . And eventually I fell asleep. I waked up early, by habit, alive. I'd been getting up with Venus—usually to get a couple of hours of work with Dr. Gozar in the lab before breakfast. No Venus that morning, though: it was raining. Upon wakening I found the grip of my hand very weak. I felt as if Fd been running all night.

Senator MANSFIELD. All right. Thank you, sonny. Now, I think that's about all we have time for today, and we have the weekend coming up ahead of us. Is there anything farther you want to ask or add this afternoon, Mr. Broadbent?

Mr. BROADBENT. No, sir, as far as I'm concerned we could call it a day.

Senator MANSFIELD. We will stand in recess then, until ten o'clock Monday morning.

(Whereupon, at 5:10 p.m., Friday, October 25, the hearing was recessed, subject to the announced recall of the Chair.)

MONDAY, OCTOBER 28

(The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a m - * n Executive Session, in Room 429, Capitol Offices, Senator Aaron Mansfield presiding. Committee members and counsel present.)

Senator MANSFIELD. Senator Skypack asked for this Executive Session before we go down to the big room. So we'll be in order. Senator?

Senator SKYPACK. I just wanted to tell you people I did some thinking over the weekend about the kind of stuff we had to sit here and listen to in our hearing on Friday, and I just want to serve notice, and I wanted this on the record, serve notice that I'm going to do everything I can to get that arrogant little twerp before we drop these hearings.

Senator MANSFIELD. 'Get'? Just what do you mean?

Senator SYPACK. Show him up. Make him go, for one thing. Him sitting there and saying he doesn't choose to go along with the child buyer, with his plan!

Senator MANSFIELD. I'm rather surprised, Jack, I was very impressed with the boy. Charming. You mean you want to try to force his parents' hand? Make them sell?

Senator SKYPACK. You damn tootin'. I mean, you heard what the buyer told us, what they're doing down there. If this country's going to sit back and let the enemy outthink us, outrocket us, outeducate us. I'll tell you, I'm going to get him.

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Senator MANSFIELD. What do you think, Peter?

Senator VOYOLKO. Huh? Me?

Senator MANSFIELD. How did the boy strike you?

Senator VOYOLKO. Fat. He's too fat. He eat too much.

Senator SKYPACK. You can't tell me that boy doesn't know all about the bombing—

Senator MANSFIELD. Stink bombing. You and Mr. Broadbent seem to insist—

Senator SKYPACK. Bomb, stink bomb—what's the difference? What's it matter what's inside—gunpowder or that sulphur-and-acid mixture or whatever they use these days?

Senator MANSFIELD. Seems to me there's quite a difference. Boys make stink bombs. Seems you're familiar with the materials yourself, Jack.

Senator SKYPACK. That's beside the point. The point is, by his own admission he was in the lab there with that goon just before the bomb was tossed. The cops nabbed him red-handed when his own house and home was being shmcarcd. In trouble with that girl. Broadbent hints around about the child buyer and a morals rap—my God, what about this precocious little fiend? I think we got to think about stiffening up the state J.D. laws, you take a case like this.

Senatoi MANSFIELD. May I ask what you intend to do, Jack?

Senator SKYPACK. I don't know yet. I'm just going to sit back and mull for now—But I don't think we ought to fool around. I think we ought to get that delinquent punk in, for one thing.

Mr. BKOADBENT. He's here. He's right downstairs. I intend to call him, second witness this morning.

Senator SKYPACK. All right. Who's first?

Mr. BROADBENT. The buyer.

Senator SKYPACK. All right. I want you to take a good strong line now.

Senator MANSFIELD. Perhaps I ought to remind you, Jack, that I'm still Chairman of this Committee. ... I mean, we

no

Monday, October 28

ought at least to work out our tactics together. I'm inclined to give the kid a little leeway—

Mr. BROADBENT. I think I should tell you, Mr. Chairman, I hold with Senator Skypack on this. I mean this country ... we can't afford . . .

Senator SKYPACK. You bet your life we can't afford it.

Senator MANSFIELD. Peter, I wish I could get you to express—

Senator VOYOLKO. You take and put the kid on a diet. Then sell him. Get a better price, I bet you get a better price.

Senator SKYPACK. I told you I wanted to serve notice, and I've served it. So let's get down there and get to work.

Senator MANSFIELD. Very well. I just want to say, though, Jack, I hope and trust we won't rush things. Keep an even keel. I'm not at all convinced—

Senator SKYPACK. You haul your keel, Aaron, and I'll haul mine.

Senator MANSFIELD. I guess we can adjourn to Room 202, five or ten minutes.

(The committee moved to the designated room and came to order, in Ordinary Session, at 10:19 a.m.)

Senator MANSFIELD. We will be in order. I must give a strict warning to our visitors this morning, we've never been this jammed in here, and we want quiet and orderly behavior so we can conduct our business without interruption. Now, Mr Broadbent, you tell us you're calling Mr. Jones first off.

Mr. BROADBENT. Please bring in Mr. Wissey Jones.

Senator MANSFIELD. Sir, you have been sworn, so please just take your place over there. Thank you.

TESTIMONY OF MR. WISSEY JONES, OF UNITED LYMPHOMILLOED CORPORATION

Mr. BROADBENT. This morning, Mr. Jones, the Committee would like to hear about certain events that took place on Fri-

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day, the eighteenth—your visit to Miss Perrin's classroom at Lincoln Elementary, where, as we understand it, you first observed the boy Barry Rudd, and your interview later with the boy's parents, and with him, at his home. And I would like to add, sir, before starting the questioning, that we are anxious to help in any way we can to bring this matter to its desired conclusion. We—