The Child Buyer (9 page)

Mr. BROADBENT. So when did you find out what he wanted?

Miss PERRIN. The first approach was by Mr. Cleary, in the form of a sort of pitchman's talk.

Mr. BROADBENT. Where was this, please?

Miss PERRIN. He came to my classroom, during the Show-and-Tell Period. He just sneaked into the room and sat down at

the back and observed for the longest time—made me very nervous. A man from your own school administration snooping in your room is different from an outsider. Do you know in the old days on streetcars they used to have these company inspectors, in ordinary clothes, would just ride as passengers and watch the conductor to see he wasn't slipping any pennies in his own pocket? That's what Mr. Cleary made me feel like he was.

Mr. BROADBENT. When did he speak to you?

Miss PERRIN. He couldn't break right into the class.

Mr. BROADBENT. Was the class busy when he came in?

Miss PERRIN. I have thirty-nine children, and you have to keep that big a room busy every minute. I have four with very low I.Q.'s; one of them can't read yet, and he's thirteen. I'm trying to bring him along, but it's like molasses in January. Another one who's shrewd as a crow came to me last month fresh from the detention home. We call him Flattop from his haircut. His mother doesn't care where he is as long as he's not at home. The boy feels the prejudice of the other children—you can smell it in the room, it's strong as store cheese. He uses filthy language, and he refuses to do anything I ask, and he's aggressive, but he's unabusive to Barry. It's strange. They're bosom friends. Barry's the only one can manage him.

Mr. BROADBENT. What was the class doing when Mr. Cleary came in?

Miss PERRIN. It was supposed to be the Show-and-Tell Period, but in actual fact we were rearranging one corner of the room. We were dismantling the Humor Nook. You see, our whole room is built around Barry. He brings these interests in, and he's so forceful about them, so irresistible—I don't mean to suggest he's a forceful person, as let's say Flattop is. Barry's more on the gentle side, but he can be extremely infectious. I remember back: before Barry came in, my room was unappetizing in the

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extreme. There are these forty old hinge-top desks, with lots of initials and designs carved in them, and their steel bases bolted to the floor. We're on a corner of the building, and in the very tall sash windows on the two sides there are these frayed and worn black roller shades; a globe on a bookcase; pictures on the wall of Sir Galahad in black armor staring at the glow of the Grail as if it were the Firestone Hour, and Balboa looking at the Pacific for the first time, and President William Howard Taft in a chair that's a squeeze for him. That was all we had till Barry came in. Since then we've had a geology museum full of quartzes and micas and schists, and a tank of guppies—they carry their eggs within and seem to give birth as mammals do, pushing out these tiny foklccl-up babies; the children loved that—and a bench of cacti, and a display of bugs and beetles with their scientific names, and pressed leaves, and a word-game bank, and—

Mr. BROADBENT. How do you handle a boy like this Rudd boy, ma'am? Do you give him what you people call enrichment?

Miss PERRIN. Oh, yes, with a boy like that you have to. For example, the other day the health officer was coming to the school, and I sent Barry down to the office to straighten out the dentistry record before the health man came, and Barry did a good job, these cards had to be arranged in alphabetical order, a better job than us grownups would do, orderly and neat and accurate, and I asked him afterward if he'd want to be a doctor or dentist, but no; he was definite about that.

Senator MANSFIELD. You're wandering again, Mr. Broadbent. Could we get back on the subject? About Mr. Cleary. About the child buyer.

Mr. BROADBENT. Yes, sir. Miss Perrin, about Mr. Cleary?

Miss PERRIN. As I say, Mr. Cleary was sitting in the back of the room, and we were taking down the Humor Nook. The thing is, last summer Barry's mother thought he was too serious, and Barry, he adores his mother, and he sensed she thought he

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should be more humorous. So he went in the humor business. He got these anthologies of wit, these Bennett Cerf books, and joke, joke, joke! It was such a silly mistake. How could he do that? Well, it was easy for him, and the next thing, John Sano, he's a doctor's son, a very able sober boy, he caught the humor bug from Barry, and the first you know we had a Humor Nook on popular demand. It got too much, and I realized I was going to have to stop it. The last thing to do with a joke is put it on display, because it's like hanging a side of beef: it gets high pretty fast. So we agreed to dismantle the Humor Nook, and in its place we were going to set up a Word Market.

Mr. BROADBENT. Exactly what is that?

Miss PERRIN. Barry and his friends have been swapping long words lately, like stamps.

Mr. BROADBENT. Antidisestablishmentarianism?

Miss PERRIN. Oh, that's old hat in the long-word trade, and its meaning is fairly obvious on the surface. John Sano brings in these medical words, like haematospectrophotometer. Barry's found the longest one so far—pneumonoultromicroscopicsili-covolcanokoniosis. It's uncanny the way Barry can decipher these marathon words. John Sano brought one in the other day and asked Barry what it meant—eccentroostcochondrodysplasia, and Barry didn't bat an eye. 'Let's sec/ he says. 'Eccentro- means off center, out of line; -osteo-, bone; -chondro-, cartilage; -c/ys-, wrong or bad; -plasia, connection. Guess that gives you the main idea, John,' he says. He's very offhand but not at all superior about it.

Mr. BROADBENT. And you were setting up a market for these words.

Miss PERRIN. Some people do think he acts superior. Several of the teachers. I think it's because he's expressionless. When he gets excited there's only a flicker of facial expression. Some of the teachers ask me about him physically. 'He walks funny. Does he have club feet?' 'Isn't that a strange thick waist for a

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ten-year-old?' It's curious how jealous teachers can be.

Senator MANSFIELD. About your 'market/ Miss Perrin. And Mr. Clcary.

Miss PERRIN. At the end of the period Mr. Cleary came up to me, and he told me Barry was being considered for sale, and all about it.

Mr. BROADBENT. Was he for it, or against it?

Miss PERRIN. He was strong for it, he was pushing me to the wall about it. Let's see, this was on the Monday. I heard later that on the previous Thursday he'd been running around to the family and all, arguing against it. But the child buyer must have clone a selling job on him before the Monday.

Mr. BROADBENT. And what was your reaction?

Miss PERRIN. Mr. Cleary rubs me the wrong way: I don't believe in all that newfangled psychiatry and mental curing in schoolrooms. Sociometrics! Social adjustment—like it was a cream that you applied it thickly morning and evening, then massage it gently till it's penetrated deeply into the pores, wipe it off with tissue. I told him I didn't want any part of it.

Senator SKYPACK. I trust Mr. Cleary explained to you this is part of a national-defense project.

Miss PERRIN. How can you defend a country by taking a boy out of school and away from his mother?

Senator SKYPACK. Are you to judge your nation's defense, miss?

Miss PERRIN. I just feel in my bones it's wrong.

Senator SKYPACK. As a citizen you have certain —

Miss PERRIN. Sometimes when people in authority shout at a teacher, she begins to feel like a second-class citizen.

Senator SKYPACK. i WASN'T SHOUTING! . . . Are we going to have to go into the trouble this person got herself into—when was that strike—twenty, twenty-five years ago?

Miss PERRIN. I'm sorry, sir. I ... I lost my head. I know I

shouldn't talk that way. The trouble with being a teacher is that people expect you to be more than human. I think I know what a teacher ought to be like, and I try to be like that, but a hundred times a day I feel I'm falling short. I try to be sensitive to other people's feelings, and I'm willing to give sympathy even where it isn't needed. I want to help. I defer to you, sir; you surely know more than I do about these things. But as a teacher I can't help resenting being stepped on, yet it makes me feel dizzy and sick when I think about getting back at the people who step on me. I'm determined to be a good person.

Senator SKYPACK. Mr. Chairman, we're being treated to a disgusting display of self-pity here. I submit—

Senator MANSFIELD. Thank you, Miss Perrin. That will do for now. You may step down.

Mr. BROADBENT. I will call Barry Rudd. Bring him in, please.

Senator MANSFIELD. Present yourself to take your oath, sonny.

Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you will give before the Standing Committee on Education, Welfare, and Public Morality of the State Senate will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

BARRY RUDD. I'm not sure I believe in God. Can lie help a skeptic to tell the truth?

Senator MANSFIELD. If you want my advice, sonny, you'd better swear this oath.

BARRY RUDD. O.K. I do. I just wanted to make sure.

TESTIMONY OF BABKY RUDD, MINOR, TOWN OF PEQUOT

Mr. BROADBENT. Your name?

BARRY RUDD. Barry Rudd.

Mr. BROADBENT. And you are?

BARRY RUDD. Ten years of age. Is that what you meant?

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Senator VOYOLKO. So you're the kid.

Mr. BROADBENT. I put it to you directly, Master Rudd. Where were you at approximately three o'clock last Tuesday afternoon?

BARRY RUDD. Three o'clock, Tuesday. I was in the biology lab of Wairy High School.

Mr. BROADBENT. Wouldn't that be an ideal place to make a contrivance which, upon being burst, would produce a very bad smell? Commonly called a stink bomb?

BARRY RUDD. A chem lab would be a better place than a biology lab.

Mr. BROADBENT. Does Wairy High School have separate chemistry and biology laboratories?

BARRY RUDD. No, sir, The same room is used for both.

Mr. BROADBENT. I warn you, young man, not to be slippery here.

BARRY RUDD. I didn't mean to be. ... I was doing a biology experiment.

Mr. BROADBENT. Who was with you?

BARRY RUDD. A friend of mine, Charles Perkonian.

Mr. BROADBENT. Isn't he the one you call Flattop?

BARRY RUDD. Yes, we call him that.

Mr. BROADBENT. A juvenile delinquent, recently returned from Clarkdalc Reformatory? Isn't that right?

BARRY RUDD. He's gone square. He really has.

Mr. BROADBENT. Tell me, Master Rudd, do you know the State Supervisor for Exceptional Children, who was lecturing in Lincoln School auditorium at that hour? Do you have anything against that lady?

BARRY RUDD. I know her. Miss Millicent P. Henley. I seem to be one of her wards, as Flattop is one of Clarkdale's—though I realize the analogy isn't too tidy. Miss Henley reminds me of the word 'bipinnatifid.' I'm not sure exactly why, unless it's that Miss Henley uses the first-personal singular pronoun so much, and

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there are four i's in bipinnatifid. By the way, do you know a common eight-letter word, we all use it every day, with only one vowel in it?

Senator MANSFIELD. We better not take time now—

BARRY RUDD. It's an easy word. Anyway, to get back to 'bi-pinnatifid.' When I was in second grade, I saw a brown thrasher for the first time, Towstoma rufum, and heard it sing its mocking song, like a mockingbird's, only funnier, truly humorous, and I didn't know what it was, so I described it to Miss Songe-vine, my teacher at that time, and she showed me the color plate, Common Birds of America, in the big Webster, and I remember that 'bipinnatifid' was at the top of the opposing page, and I looked up its meaning, and that got me interested in leaves and their comparative forms. I pressed them for a while.

Mr. BROADBENT. Wairy High School is only one block and a half from Lincoln Elementary, where the State Supervisor was lecturing last Tuesday afternoon, isn't that so?

BARRY RUDD. Yes, sir, that is so.

Senator MANSFIELD. Mr. Broadbent, I should think with this witness of all witnesses! . . . Begin at the beginning, sonny.

BARRY RUDD. I suppose you mean the beginning of ... of this. For me it began on Thursday—a week ago yesterday.

Senator MANSFIELD. Very good. Start right in. Tell us everything. Don't leave anything out.

BARRY RUDD. When school let out, I walked with my social-studies textbook in my hand up away from the Flats, where Lincoln is ; into the hills on the west side of the river.

Mr. BROADBENT. Were you going home?

BARRY RUDD. No, my house is right in the town, in the Intervale section, the poorer part of Pequot, we have the ground floor of the Slatkowski tenement block on River Street; no, I was just going for what I call a field ramble, a zoological hobby of mine, observation—but I'll get to that. For a while I followed

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the Trechampstead Road; it climbs in a series of curves onto the ridge where the woods are, and I wasn't long getting out of the town. The town is narrow because it clings to the river; if Pequot were a strip of adhesive plaster you could yank it up off the ground and nothing would be left but the river, no dams or anything, just the river and its valley. As you know, the first part of October this year was mild, almost shy, what I'd call frugal, and then we had that tail end of Hurricane Ella, and then that was followed, remember, by two clear nights with north winds and frosts, light, nibbling frosts, you know, and that sequence had brought the explosive change that every leaf on every tree had been waiting for. The hills beyond the first step of the ridge are round, and they're easy, not too steep, so they'd had farms on them in former years, and I went along their shoulders and eventually left the tarred road and walked down the unmain-taincd dirt track that leads to the abandoned knife-and-scissors works on Chestnut Burr Creek—through patches of woods of various stages of growth, depending on when the farmers who'd been there had given up and quit, past newly grown-up sprout land of sumacs and hardback and meadow cedars and young wild cherries, and past other sections—of course you had stone walls dividing these growths, right through the woods—other sections with middle-sized popples and sapling elms and dirty birches, and then past adult forests, great maples, hickories, ashes, oaks, and I tell you, all these woods were dressed in colors you simply couldn't imagine. That afternoon was a climax. I don't know if there'll be but two or three more such days this year, and maybe none that bright, and I guess there won't ever be another one in my whole lifetime exactly like that one, because October around here, as you know, is just a mass of colors in constant motion; the colors arc fugitive, you can't stop them from changing and running away. Even every minute that afternoon they changed. There was a blue haze hanging on