The Child Buyer
Page 5
Mr. BROADBENT. What happened?
Mr. CLEARY. We went toward the main entrance, where we encountered Miss Charity Perrin. She addressed me in a quite unfriendly and critical fashion.
Mr. BROADBENT. She is Barry Rudd's teacher, right? Is she a good teacher?
Mr. CLEARY. Her pedagogical methodology is unorthodox. Her techniques of encouraging wholesome motivation for mastery of critical skills, habits, understandings, knowledges, and attitudes, and of achieving dynamic personality adjustment of the whole child to both the learning situation and the life situation are, though soundly rooted in the developmental tradition, rather eccentric, and indeed they defy exact categorization.
Senator MANSFIELD. But can she teach, Mr. deary?
Mr. CLEARY. We don't know. The children won't tell us.
Mr. BROADBENT. You said she criticized you. What for?
Mr. CLEARY. She said my talent search was a phony because teacher's pet, Barry Rudd, wasn't on it—not for intellectual gifts, anyway. He is on it in another category.
Mr. BROADBENT. But I thought he was the brightest child in the history of the Pequot system.
Mr. CLEARY. He was only in the sixty-fourth percentile in the Olmstead-Diff endorff Game.
Senator SKYPACK. Why won't the children tell you? About that teacher, I mean.
Mr. CLEARY. I have a theory, and it runs this way: Miss Perrin manifests a curious combination of maternal and infantile drives, so that the children love her on two levels, as if she were both a mother figure and a peer. Loving and being loved— that's all she lives for. You see, she's one of your kind that believes everyone is nice. She loves the world. 'People can sec something good in people if people look for it in people.' She gives more than lip service to bromides like that; she lives them —and the result is that admiration and pity are often synonymous for her, and when she feels repugnance for another person she turns it against herself. Evidence that people are not invariably nice, of which there seems to be plenty in Pcqnot, she uses as occasion for forgiveness, and this gives her a comforting feeling that she's nice. We psychologists have a term for her difficulties: she suffers from the Nice Mouse Syndrome.
Senator VOYOLKO. Jeest, Mr. Broadback, the minute you get talking about the boy you have to go off on a long tackle about some old maid.
Senator MANSFIELD. I agree, Mr. Broadbent. Let's hew—
Mr. BROADBENT. And after you talked with Miss Perrin, sir?
Mr. CLEARY. I entered the school and walked quickly across the dark front hall, which reverberated with children's shouts and struck my nostrils, as it always does, with the smells of floor oil, chalk, hanging clothes, and the queer, pungent dust that seems to lurk wherever knowledge is. Do you know what I mean?
Mr. BROADBENT. Please carry on.
Mr. CLEARY. You're interested in the Rudd boy, so I'll tell you that I saw him in the hall as I passed. I don't mind telling
47
THE CHILD BUYER
you I have a negative reaction to that boy. lie stood woodenly, his legs slightly parted, arms stiff at his sides, and he gave a whole effect of having been pampered by his mother. His clothes, and the boy himself, seemed to have just come out of the washing machine. Out from the starched tubes of the shirt sleeves came soft, reddish, round, clean arms, with tiny veins mottling the surface; his flesh looked like a certain kind of pink tourmaline. The torso was chunky and waistlcss; the hips ran straight up to the shoulders. I wondered: Could the boy have combed his hair that fussy way himself?
Mr. BROADBENT. And then?
Mr. CLEARY. I sat clown to some case-history work in my cubbyhole, and before long Dr. Gozar came in, saying that Mr. Owing was in her office, he'd walked—she said he was puffing like a choo-choo—all the way from the administration building to see me. I'm not in the habit of getting social calls from the Super every day, so I presented myself toot sweet. Dr. Gozar left us alone. I managed to get Dr. Gozar's desk chair, so I had an odd feeling—it almost made me chuckle out loud—that I was the Superintendent and he was the Guidance Director; and this feeling was reinforced by the fact that Mr. Owing had begun to perspire. He blurted right out that he was in a quandary. Mr. Owing saying he's in a quandary is like anybody else saying good-morning-how-are-you. You just come to expect it. But this time, I must say, the fix was an interesting one. He said he'd just talked with a man who wanted to buy a brilliant child —if we could provide just the right one.
Mr. BROADBENT. And he wanted you to name the right one?
Mr. CLEARY. It's never quite that direct with the Super. You have to wait him out, till he asks your advice.
Mr. BROADBENT. How do you mean?
Mr. CLEARY. He said it was sort of hard to know what to do, and I said we really didn't know enough, and he agreed with
Friday, October 25
me, but I didn't quite catch what he said so I begged his pardon, and he said he was thinking, so I offered him a penny for his thoughts, and he said he wasn't really thinking, he was just wondering, and I said sometimes I wondered myself, and he seemed relieved to hear that, and I said that, oh, yes, sometimes I lay awake nights, and he said he was a good sleeper, he thanked God, but it was the daytime that bothered him, and I asked what he meant by 'bothered/ and he said, 'Well, you know/ and I said, Tes, I know/ and he said he often had to stop and then start all over again, and I said the same went for me, and he asked me if I really felt that way, too, and I said some of the time, and he asked me when, mostly, and I said it wasn't easy to say exactly, and he said he supposed I was right, and I said I could see his point, though, and he said he was glad of that, and I said, 'I know, but . . . / and he said, 'That's the trouble/ and I knew he was about to explode, and I said 'Well?' and he was pretty near the end of his rope, and I said, 'Well?' again, and then it came out. He said, 'What do you think, Cleary?'
Mr. BROADBENT. By that time you'd had plenty of time to make up your mind.
Mr. CLEARY. I said that of course the Rudd boy was the only possibility.
Mr. BROADBENT. But he wasn't even on your talent-search chart for being brainy.
Mr. CLEARY. That's exactly what Mr. Owing pointed out. I said, bushwa, everyone knew Barry Rudd was the brightest boy we'd ever had in Pequot.
Mr. BROADBENT. You proposed selling him?
Mr. CLEARY. No. I've found it doesn't pay to move that fast with Mr. Owing, because he'll find doubts enough to wipe out a quick move. You let him stew, and stew, and stew, then what you tell him gives him such relief that you're in. Besides,
THE CHILD BUYER
I saw some advantage at first in playing against a sale, and I went straight to the family to get their backs up—I admit now it was a miscalculation.
Mr. BROADBENT. What made you realize that was a miscalculation?
Mr. CLEARY. The child buyer. Mr. Jones.
Mr. BROADBENT. Please explain.
Mr. CLEARY. I counted at first on strong resistance, both in the community and the school system, to his proposition, and I think it would have developed, but by the end of my first conversation with him I realized that he was the shrewdest thing Td ever seen on two legs. He's a devil. He's first and foremost a corrupter. His job is to find the irresistible temptation for each person who controls the destiny of the boy, and satisfy it, and, by golly, he's doing it; I believe he's doing it.
Mr. BROADBENT. I take it he found yours, Mr. Cleary.
Mr. CLEARY. You don't corrupt a man like me. It's the idealists—
Mr. BROADBENT. That sounds like an evasion, sir.
Mr. CLEARY. Why should I evade? Haven't I co-operated with you gentlemen? ... All I can say is, the child buyer has eyes that look right into your brain. He looks at your forehead, and the look goes right through, like an X ray, and he reads what's in there. I swear, I believe he does.
Senator MANSFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Cleary, you may stand down. Thank you. Edifying witness. Thank you. . . . Mr. Broadbent?
Mr. BROADBENT. Dr. Frcderika Gozar. Show her in, plea
se.
Senator MANSFIELD. Dr. Gozar, will you rise to be sworn, please?
Do you solemnly swear that your testimony in this matter now before us will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Dr. GOZAR. I do.
So
Friday, October 25
TESTIMONY OF DR. FREDERIKA GOZAR, PRINCIPAL, LINCOLN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, PEQUOT
Mr. BROADBENT. Your name is Dr. Frcderika Gozar, and you hold the post of principal of Lincoln Elementary School in Pequot. Is that correct, madam?
Dr. GOZAR. I'm not married. Just call me 'Doctor/ The answer is yes.
Mr. BROADBENT. Your residential address?
Dr. GOZAR. Number 17 Sycamore Street, Pequot.
Senator VOYOLKO. Mr. Chairman, thirty seconds. All I ask.
Senator MANSFIELD. Proceed, Senator.
Senator VOYOLKO. This kid, Dr. Gozall. What's he look like?
Dr. GOZAR. He's fat.
Senator VOYOLKO. I'm glad somebody told me that. It's time somebody around here told me that. Talk, talk, talk. The kid's fat. I'm glad you come here today, Dr. Gozall. Your floor, Mr. Chairman.
Senator MANSFIELD. I would urge, Mr. Broadbent—
Mr. BROADBENT. I know, sir. ... Dr. Gozar, we have heard testimony from Mr. Wairy, during the course of which he told us of the first arrival of the child buyer in Pequot, on last Wednesday, October sixteenth. He told us that while he and a certain Mr. Ellithorp were talking with the man Wissey Jones on the corner of River Street and Treehampstead Road, Mr. Jones being on his folding motorcycle—that you approached, Doctor.
Dr. GOZAR. That's right. I did.
Mr. BROADBENT. Could you tell us what took place there?
Dr. GOZAR. The first thing my eye fell on, gentlemen, when Mr. Wairy stopped me on the sidewalk with a greeting, was that
THE CHILD BUYER
motorcycle. It had the look of an everlasting child's toy about it. It sparkled. There was a chrome muffler with red cut-glass studs, like rubies, in a ring around its collar, and there was a black-carded airplane compass on the handlebars, and the speedometer had a blue face with luminescent numbers, and there were English-type bicycle hand brakes whose control wires ran down to the wheels through chrome-plated flexible insulation, and there were squirrel tails on the tips of the handlebars, and a red-Mr. BROADBENT. Did Mr. Jones speak to you? Dr. GOZAR. Mr. Jones tipped his hat to me, and it was flat as a pancake, his gesture was like lifting the hinged lid of a tankard. An apt thought, by the way, the tankard. That man looks to me like a drinker, under that lid he's probably full of booze. He's got one of those puffy, spongy noses—looks as if you could squeeze a half-pint of Old Crow out of it. Mr. BROADBENT. Anything else strike you about Mr. Jones? Dr. GOZAR. The man's eyes seemed to me odd. Negligible, reddish whites. Large brown irises, small pod-like openings. He aimed them at my forehead, and he said, 'Gozar? That wouldn't be Dr. Frcderika Gozar, one of the school principals, would it?' I got my mental dukes up at that. A New Englander born-and-bred doesn't like a stranger coming into the township and knowing too much about its affairs. Mr. Wairy said to me that Mr. Jones was interested in talented youngsters, and he said he'd just been telling Mr. Jones about Pequot's talent search. I groaned inside at that.
Mr. BROADBENT. Doctor, Mr. Cleary testified here concerning a conversation with you early on Thursday morning last—the day after the child buyer arrived—about this talent search. He claims it was his idea.
Senator MANSFIELD. There you go again, Mr. Broadbent, suddenly shifting your line of questioning.
Mr. BROADBENT. We have a lot of ground to cover, sir—
Senator MANSFIELD. I don't want to get left on that street corner again. Was there anything else there on the street corner, Doctor?
Dr. GOZAR. Mr. Wairy was ill at ease—I tower over him—and he said the talent-search charts were in my office, and Mr. Jones smiled—it's the first and last time I've seen him smile—the smile was like mud drying up and cracking in the sun—and the child buyer (of course I didn't know that that was what he was) said he'd like to visit me, and that displeased me so much that I turned my back and strode away. In a full skirt I can make forty-five inches to the stride.
Senator MANSFIELD. Thank you. Carry along, Mr. Broadbent.
Mr. BROADBENT. Concerning your conversation with Mr. Clcary on the talent search—
Dr. GOZAR. This boy Cleary is a shifty one; I'll bet he spun you a yarn. We were there by the jungle gym—he told you?—and I ragged him on his silly tests, and he agreed that some of them were meaningless, so I asked him why he gave them. He said because people want talent searches; the public wants them. 'It comes down to a question of what your aim is in life,' he said. Tou have to be a realist. The only way to get ahead is to operate. A man can't get to be Superintendent of Schools who doesn't politick and look at the angles.' I said I didn't want to be Superintendent: Who wants to be Willard Owing? I said, 'I just want to stir some of these kids up. I believe in the infinite potentiality of young people, and I think I can do something about it. Maybe I'm dreaming—but if I am, let's not wake me up.' 'That's all slop and sentiment,' he said. He half lifted himself on the bars of the jungle gym, stretching and tensing as if limbering up his powers. 'You've got to face facts,' he said; 'look at things as they are.' I said I thought there was such a thing as being too practical. He swung down off the frame like a chim-
53
THE CHILD BUYER
panzee and pushed his face right into mine and said, 'You'll pay for that belief someday*—as if he meant that he personally was going to get even with me for being idealistic. Pah! He's no match for a battle-scarred old bitch like me! I tell you, furthermore, I looked right back at him, and his big hypnotic stare sort of wavered and turned aside, and he changed the subject. 'Gad, what lovely weather/ he said, or shouted, letting go the bars, extending his arms overhead, and filling his lungs with the dry air that was already, so early in the morning, scented with leaf smoke. 'Don't these autumn days make you feel twice man-size?' He asked me that Why, the little snot! He knew I could wrestle him to a fall without being an inch bigger than I am. So I said, 'What do you want in life, Cleary?' And he said, 'I want to get out of this dump. I want to get to a nice rich suburban community—station wagons and swimming pools. Some place alive. This place . . . That dingy Intervale section!' I said, 'No, seriously: What do you really want? What keeps you going?' 'What do I want?' he said. 'I want a high salary, and a wife and house and kids, and a Mercedes igoSL, and—' I said, 'Hell, that's anybody. I mean you/ Then he said, 'I want to help people/ and I said, 'Don't make me laugh/ He got red and said, 'I want to be the best damn guidance man in the State/ That's more like it/ I said, 'but is that all?' He took one look at me, and then he had the sense to grin, which was a way of saying O.K., I give up. 'You're so full of questions/ he said, 'what makes you tick?' And I told him: 'Curiosity/
Mr. BROADBENT. What happened then, Doctor?
Dr. GOZAR. We looked up at a high tower of the schoolhouse, because up there the alarm bell fastened against the bricks had started a loud clatter. On the playground the noise of the bell ran through the shouting of the children like a cold blast of wind, and the crowd of pupils swayed and moved toward the building, and Cleary and I strolled toward the front entrance.
The school is an old, dark, brick, two-story contraption, a Norman fortress, built as if learning and virtue need a stronghold, one defended by old-fashioned weapons, a place of turrets and parapets, with narrow slits in the bricks through which scholars with crossbows can peep out at an atomic world. The building makes education itself seem archaic, monastic—shabby, too. The paint on its blinds and trim is cracking; its double front door, with its rattling push bars, is of a dirty tawny color. Above the entranceway, over an arch in relief that doesn't bear any structural weight, our State motto's written in parched and spalled cement letters, 'Land of Steady Habits/ The children hustled past us. A few ran, but the crowd as a whole did
n't press, because this was the daily moment of anticipation—of excitement, regret, and fear in the face of another day in school.
Senator MANSFIELD. I remember that feeling. I used to get the shivers.
Dr. GOZAR. On the sidewalk by the street some distance behind us there was a cracking sound of high heels, and I heard a voice call Cleary, and I turned and saw Charity Perrin running along the concrete walkway trying to catch up to us. She's a woman past sixty, you know, very shy in her demeanor, a narrow person, having hardly more beam than one span of my hand—of course, my hand's as big as a big man's hand—and tiny shoulders, and pelvic bones no heavier, I'd guess, than the outspread wings of a sparrow; a delicate, homely woman, but that morning she was wearing the bold colors of autumn, and as she ran the colors turned and flew, so she was like a flurry of October leaves blown along the ground.
Mr. BROADBENT. And she spoke to Mr. Cleary about his talent search?
Dr. GOZAR. I'll say she did! She gave him what-for because Barry Rudd's name wasn't on the talent charts. He said it was so. She asked where. He said on the chart for leadership.
//) 6
ss
THE CHILD BUYER
Tab!' she said. 'Leadership, my foot/
Mr. BROADBENT. We thought she was more of a timid person.
Dr. GOZAR. It's true, this was a surprisingly spirited retort for her. She's usually much more humble than that. She's so modest that sometimes, I swear, she herself must see the absurdity of her protestations of inferiority. But now and then she'll amaze you. She'll stand up and fight like a cat.
Mr. BROADBENT. After this conversation?
Dr. GOZAR. I was doing some work in my office, when in comes the Super, puffing like a steam engine, wanting to talk with Clcary. So I went to fetch him. deary's office is a dark narrow cavity with a high slit of a window, formerly a coat closet that had a long rack down the middle; you can still see the rack's screw-holed round footprints marching down the center of the floor. Clcary's desk, at the window end, is a still-life portrait of an overburdened man with a procrastinating nature: it's a heap: things have been thrown on it not so much in disorder as in despair. I told him Mr. Owing was in my office and wanted to talk with him. Clcary was reading in some child's folder, and he carefully closed it, tossed it onto the mess on his desk, and stood up, brushing the front of his suit with his hands, as if he'd been having a little feast out of that folder and some gobbets and crumbs had fallen on his lap and chest.