The Child Buyer (3 page)

Mr. BROADBENT. This is all most helpful, sir. Now, there's one other person—I understand this lady has been rather recalcitrant, been fighting the proposition the man Wissey Jones has put forward. I mean the Rudd boy's teacher, Miss Perrin. Could you tell us—

Mr. WAIRY. I know Miss Perrin a bit, I ought to, she's one of the old hands around home. She was teaching when I was in school; she taught me. Right now she's a delicate, white-haired

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woman in her middle sixties. She's kindhearted, homey, rather old-fashioned; she seems—she's always seemed—tired and puzzled by life. She's docile, on the surface, and she'll appear to follow any policy the Super or the Board puts out, but she holds to the familiar ways of doing things, and she's leery of a lot of the newfangled educational notions. And she's got a steel backbone, believe me, fragile as she looks and acts.

Mr. BROADBENT. We understand she was in some trouble, radical activity—

Mr. WAIRY. That's all gone and forgotten, my boy. Thirty years ago! There was a depression then, people got emotional, and weVe discounted what she did. I wouldn't go into that, if I were you.

Senator VOYOLKO. What about this kid? Some guy wants to buy some kid, right? What's with the kid?

Senator SKYPACK. Aaron, sometimes we sit here and we think our distinguished colleague from Winfield County isn't listening to the proceedings, and then he comes up with a question that's right in the bull's-eye. You'd think we'd forgotten what we were here to investigate, but not our enlightened friend from Winfield County!

Senator VOYOLKO. This kid. This guy wants to buy this kid.

Mr. BROADBENT. The boy, sir, Barry Rudd.

Mr. WAIRY. Well, I've heard he was pretty clever. Struck me as a mouth breather the one time I saw him close up. His upper lip is rather short, his large upper teeth are tilted slightly forward, and the mouth tends to sag open. It's a habit that detracts a little from the reputation for quickness. Personally I wouldn't hire—

Mr. BROADBENT. Do you know, then, why Mr. Wissey Jones, whom you have pictured as an outstanding businessman, wanted to buy him?

Mr. WAIRY. We have only Mr. Jones's word—and look here,

young fellow, don't try to sneak thoughts into my head that aren't there.

Senator MANSFIELD. Mr. Broadbent, you're way off the track again. This is extremely frustrating. Mr. Wairy was trying to put together a straight account. We left him on the corner there with Mr. Jones and Dr. Gozar and that druggist, and you come along—

Senator SKYPACK. Wait a minute, Aaron. I'd like to hear some more about the proposition myself; you can't have your ducks in a row for every shot, Aaron. Now, sir, just what was this purchase supposed to be about?

Mr. WAIRY. Well, it was most extraordinary, Senator, a daring innovation in human engineering, as I understand it. I just got a sniff or two of it. I think I should leave the details to the man himself. I really don't know much about it. He's been secretive, you know.

Senator VOYOLKO. About this bomb.

Mr. WAIRY. I beg your pardon?

Senator SKYPACK. We understood there was a bombing down there.

Mr. WAIRY. You must mean the little stink bomb at the lecture.

Senator MANSFIELD. For shame, Mr. Broadbent!

Senator VOYOLKO. Who they fling it at?

Mr. WAIRY. It was at a clarifying lecture by the State Supervisor for—

Senator MANSFIELD. Mr. Broadbent, you really must curb—

Mr. BROADBENT. We'll develop this aspect a little later, Mr. Chairman, and we'll—

Senator SKYPACK. There was mention of other incidents, Broadbent.

Mr. BROADBENT. The compromising situation of the boy, Barry Rudd, with the young lady, the mortician's daughter,

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Miss Renzulli, sir, would you tell us—?

Mr. WAIRY. These are ten-year-old children, young fellow. You make it sound . . . You'd better ask Dr. Gozar and Miss Perrin about all that.

Mr. BROADBENT. About the assault on the Rudd home. Here are these decent working people sitting quietly in their home at night, and out of nowhere—

Mr. WAIRY. I'm not the man to ask about such things. Ask the proper authorities. We have law-enforcement officers in Pequot, sir. We may be off the main throughways, but we don't live in the Middle Ages, you know.

Mr. BROADBENT. Sir, I think you rather shrugged off the question of the man Wissey Jones's motive for making this and similar purchases. There's a possibility of a morals line here, and we can't afford to dodge it.

Mr. WAIRY. Morals? I thought it was a matter of dollars and cents.

Senator SKYPACK. Look, Wairy, you heard the committee counsel warn you not to duck this just because it smells bad.

Mr. BROADBKNT. Do you seriously and sincerely believe, Mr. Wairy, that the purpose of Mr. Jones's transaction was quote educational unquote? I mean when a man in his late thirties goes around buying ten-year-old boys.

Mr. WAIRY. We have what the man says. I have no reason, in the way of firsthand knowledge, to question his word, nor have I any reason to believe it—of my own sure knowledge, that is.

Mr. BROADBENT. Thank you, Mr. Wairy, you may step aside.

Senator MANSFIELD. The committee wants to express its gratitude for you coming up here, a busy, successful man, and testifying for us, and we assuredly thank you, sir. And I certainly hope you won't have taken any offense over—

Mr. BROADBENT. I will call Mr. Wissey Jones.

Senator MANSFIELD. Please stand for your oath, Mr. Jones.

Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you will give here before us will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Mr. JONES. Yes, I swear it will be so.

TESTIMONY OF MR. WISSEY JONES, OF UNITED LYMPHOMBLLOID CORPORATION

Mr. BROADBENT. Please identify yourself for our record, sir.

Mr. JONES. Wissey Jones. Vice-President, United Lymphomil-loid of America, Incorporated, in charge of materials procurement.

Mr. BROADBENT. You regard small boys as 'materials?

Mr. JONES. Yes, sir. Indeed we do, sir.

Mr. BROADBENT. Sir, I will put it to you directly. Have you ever been booked on a morals charge?

Mr. JONES. I beg your pardon?

Senator SKYPACK. I think you heard him, mister.

Mr. JONES. Mr. Chairman, I think these subordinates of yours ought to know that my duties have an extremely high national-defense rating. I agreed to come up here—

Senator MANSFIELD. What a way to start, Mr. Broadbent! I really would suggest that you begin at the beginning for once.

Mr. BROADBENT. We have a responsibility—

Senator MANSFIELD. You heard Mr. Wairy's endorsement of Mr. Jones as a top businessman in the country, whom he admires. There's such a thing as common courtesy, Mr. Counsel.

Senator SKYPACK. All right, Broadbent, us 'subordinates' can come back to that stuff later.

Senator MANSFIELD. Senator Skypack is no subordinate but a co-equal colleague of mine, Mr. Jones, an able elected State Senator from Sudbury County. Only by virtue of a modicum of seniority—

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Mr. JONES. I humbly beg your pardon, Senator.

Senator SKYPACK. All right.

Mr. BROADBENT. Our Chairman, sir, desires that you begin at the beginning. Would you tell us what your first act was on your arrival in Pequot?

Mr. JONES. I requested and obtained an interview with the Superintendent of Schools, Willard Owing.

Mr. BROADBENT. You didn't bathe and change first?

Senator MANSFIELD. Now, Mr. Broadbent.

Mr. BROADBENT. Well, Mr. Chairman, you put me on a spot. Exactly where is the beginning of things?

Senator MANSFIELD. Spare your sarcasm, Mr. Counsel. Please proceed, Mr. Jones, as you were going. We invite as much detail as you care to give.

Mr. BROADBENT. Where did this meeting with Mr. Owing take place, sir?

Mr. JONES. The school administration offices in Pequot are in a former private house, or mansion, on, I believe, Second Street, a big Victorian affair with a widow's walk on an octagonal tower above the roof. I am told Mr. Owing can be seen up there on the widow's walk some evenings after closing time, pacing back and forth in the fresh air and trying to think up ways of avoiding decisions. That's his reputation, anyway. In the rooms of the house there are ornate fireplaces of pink Vermont marble, and the floors creak so loudly that I judge very little deep thinking can be done in there. There's a smell all through the house of mimeograph ink, and the rattle of the buzzer and the clicking of the jacks of the telephone switchboard in the foyer can be heard upstairs and down. I want to give you a picture of a school system informed with rectitude, paper progress, safe activity, hesitation. The roofs of all the school buildings in Pequot are pitched; no modernistic chicken coops—

Mr. BROADBENT. Your interview with Mr. Owing, when was this?

Mr. JONES. Thursday morning, October seventeenth, of this year, at nine oh four ante meridian.

Mr. BROADBENT. I take it the appointment was for nine o'clock.

Mr. JONES. I am always punctual. I may say I have been kept cooling my heels by certain other superintendents for far more than the four minutes Mr. Owing made me wait. I was ushered in by the receptionist-telephonist.

Senator SKYPACK. Listen, Jones, do you always buy ten-year-old boys?

Mr. JONES. Not at all, sir. Within the past month I have bought two excellent female specimens, eleven and thirteen years of age, respectively. It is true that the majority are males.

Senator MANSFIELD. Please, Jack. We were just getting onto a straight line for once. Kindly go on, sir; you were admitted to the Superintendent's office, and—

Mr. BROADBENT. What took place, Mr. Jones?

Mr. JONES. I was led in there, and I would say he looked satisfied. He was sitting behind his desk in a white-paneled room, a cheerful place, with his back to two big French windows, floor-to-ceiling almost, and their metal Venetian blinds sliced the morning sunlight into layers. Did I say he looked satisfied? Seemed he might bust. Everything about him was too tight: his collar, armpits of his coat, his vest—the buttons and buttonholes on it made a trail of parentheses down his chest and belly. Veins stood inflated on the backs of his hands, on his neck, and in the middle of his forehead. He gave an impression of a man containing a superabundance of oxygen, or maybe helium. He wasn't fat; he was just too well filled, and I vouch that what he was stuffed with was uncertainty. He looks like a naturally healthy animal, but I understand that people around town call him a politician. He's elusive, that's the point. Mr. Cleary, the Guidance Director, told me one of his colleagues once complained to him, after an interview with Mr. Owing, that he

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couldn't make out just what the Superintendent had been driving at, and Mr. Clcary told me he said, 'Nobody ever can. He's never what you think he is. Just when you think you have him pinned down as a worm he flies away as a moth/ It's apparently impossible to hold him to anything he says, because he cither denies having said it or declares on a stack of Bibles that that wasn't what he had meant, i don't intend to cast doubt on his integrity. No, I'm told he brings to everything he does a prodigious sincerity and decency which are crippling. A man just can't put that much cncigy into wanting to do the right thing and do it, too. His indccisivencss shows itself not only on school issues but also in trifles. I took him to lunch the other day, and you should have seen him trying to decide what to cat. He wrestled with the menu as if it had been a two-hundrcd-pound man.

Mr. RROADBF.NT. On the occasion of your first interview— Mr. JONES. Yes. I began by asking Mr. Owing what sort of provisions are made in the Pequot schools for children of the particular kind I buy. He was, at first, very cautious. Tin afraid of anything too special for these clever children,' he said to me. Tin afraid of it for our community. We don't like anything that smacks of privilege. But don't worry/ he said, 'we'll reach these children. We'll take care of 'em with enrichment.' Phoocy! Enrichment! He made it sound as if schools were bakeries and children were loaves. I may as well tell you at the outset, gentlemen, I have nothing but contempt for the wordy soft-hearted-ness, or maybe I should say -hcadedness, of the educational world, in which a simple spade is commonly called an Instrument for Soil Development. Mr. Owing was leaning back in his swivel chair, and he was toying with a pair of binoculars. Through the Venetian blinds behind him I could see, beyond a stretch of lawn, the backs of three white houses, and at first I assumed that Mr. Owing was an office-hour voyeur, but a little

later in our conversation I saw in the yard a feeding station around which a number of birds were playing who had a curious way of clinging to the wood, heads downward, looking out nervously at the dangerous world. He was a Watcher. I asked him what the birds were. 'Nuthatches/ he said. 'White-breasted. I think so anyway. I'm not positive. We have a child/ he said, 'of the kind that interests you. He can tell you the family, genus, species, and subspecies of every bird—every living thing you could imagine. In Latin/ And that was the first I heard of the Rudd boy. But of course the moment I expressed interest in him, Mr. Owing backed off. Began giving me the on-thc-other-hand treatment. Afraid he'd gone too far. Mr. Owing never asked why I was interested, or what my errand was. I guess he assumed I was just another teacher working on a doctoral thesis so as to get ahead. lie said he thought he'd better turn me over to the Guidance Director—a likable young man, he said, certainly a useful man, he said, on what he calls, with a characteristic parsimoniousncss of imagination, his 'educational team.'

Mr. BROADBENT. You mean to say he at no time asked you the actual purpose of your visit?

Mr. JONES. Not at that interview.

Mr. BROADBENT. And it did not occur to you to force this information on him?