The Child Buyer

by John Hersey

  Mr. BROADBENT. Go ahead.

  Dr. GOZAR. A long, long time ago some schoolteachers in the hills up in the northern part of the state held up in front of me that there was something better than sprinkling a stove with perspiration in a mill-town tenement block, that if you worked

  Monday, October 28

  hard you could accomplish. Also they sold me, and my sister, too, on the idea that there is such a thing as vertical social mobility through education, and so my sister and I decided we'd have some of that. My sister's a year and a half older than I am, a full professor of biochemistry at Penniman Institute. She calls herself the uneducated half of the Gozars; she only has four graduate degrees, and I have six. Meg was one of New England's more famous women athletes in the early days, when women athletes were hampered by copious bloomers; nothing was supposed to show but the lowest part of the shinbone, even if you were competing in the hop, skip, and jump. Some people still take me for Meg, and I'm always flattered. Well. My mother was an ignorant immigrant woman who always put it up to her two daughters that if you tried hard enough you could do just about anything. I believed it then, and I still believe in it, and I talk it up energetically eight days a week. My first job was at age six: leading a horse to pull earth up out of a well that was being dug by hand. I had a paper route. I've always been obliged to do some things that are commonly reserved to the male sex. I graduated from eighth grade in a little one-room school in the foothills of the Berkshires. Father was a cow-and-vegetable farmer, a patient man who thought that if he just kept at it long enough, he'd be able to remove every single stone from a New England field; he was from Lithuania, he didn't know the stones were half a mile deep with just a pinch of clayey dirt sprinkled in for good measure. His persistence with his ever-willing team of oxen and his stone boat and his chain—the picture of him comes to my mind whenever I think I'm tired. Well, Father's farm went broke, and we missed a few meals here and there, but I've caught up on those in recent years, as you can see, and my sister Meg is even vaster than I am. Our school only went through eighth grade, and the nearest high school was thirty miles distant, so Meg and I struck a bargain with the teacher to start us off on something

  THE CHILD BUYER

  like a high-school education. She did. She was a fine inspiring lady named Danna French—one woman with eight grades and sixty people in her schoolroom, willing to take aboard two urchins who just wanted more. I've seen so much of that in schools in my time. She gave us a course in algebra and one in history, and in turn we helped her to do some of the cruder teaching. We also did coolie work—cleaned the place; and if you think I have powerful arms, they came originally from chopping firewood at Danna French's school. Meg and I were there that one year, then we made arrangements where we went to Galilee High School, thirty miles from home. We had to pay six dollars a month tuition, because they didn't have a district system to take care of us, and our room cost three dollars a month, and our food ran us six dollars a month. We didn't live too elegant on the tooth, but we weren't awful hungry. We worked various places; I remember I was some kind of sorter in a watch factory, and I assembled the two blades of shears. I must have put three hundred thousand pairs of scissors together with little screws. That was tedious —but when you took fifteen dollars a month out of your pay for fixed charges at one clump, you just had to get married to tedium, you were stuck with it. In the spring I helped with planting, in the fall I helped with the harvest. There was no stigma attached to hard work in those days. Danna French had held up the idea that if there was something better in the world, by gosh, you could go and get it. There were convenient places where my sister and I got work; there was a dairy not far from the school where we washed bottles. We had to start at four in the morning, but we got done before school. Out of twenty units of credit, I got nine A's and eleven B's. My sister reversed that. She was a better student than 1.1 tried to be as good a student as I could, and a good athlete, too. I wanted to look good to Meg. I still do. We had some great teachers who steered us both. Mrs. Ethel Le Grand. G. W. Sudland. Glenn B.

  Monday, October 28

  First. They were always holding up in front of you the possibilities of people to amount to something. When I got to college, at Silverbury, as I think I told you the other day, I decided on biology, and I took the two degrees, and then I settled out to teach, and so did Meg. And besides teaching I took on some of those jobs I was telling you about. One of them was in an iron foundry. It was an open shop, and I mean open—they put you doing whatever you could do, no matter what they were paying you. I was classified as a laborer, but at times I was doing molding, layout work, machine shop. One autumn I worked as an apple picker and saw them feed the people—they were itinerants, winos and bums, goodhearted broken folks—I saw the orchards feed these people on metal plates nailed to the tables, the knives and forks on chains; they washed up with fire hoses. All those years, whatever job I was on, I'd go to school on the side. Or maybe the job was on the side. I worked up an M.A. in biology in 19— at Springfield. Then I got a Ph.D. six years later at Colton College. I told you about all those semesters at Silver-bury. Then after the second war I picked up an M.A. in history at Manchester College. After that I figured I was in the education business and it would be a good gesture to get me an M.A. in elementary education, which I did at Perkins State Teachers. And so it went. I've had two hundred and eighty semester hours since my Ph.D.—seven full years the way the credits usually go. This doesn't affect my salary; don't think that's why I did it. I'm planning now to get a master's in either physics or math so I can keep up with the Space Age, you know? Right now I'm taking a correspondence course in meteorology with Silverbury. In my leisure time I write Westerns for rags like Highwayman and Big West, though I've never been west of Albany; it's all from reading. Course I do it under a pseudonym, I don't want a scandal. Then I'm an amateur photographer. I point and shoot. I'm a very amateur musician, play the clarinet for the Valley Power

  THE CHILD BUYER

  and Light Company Marching Band. I've had four offers to be a permanent college professor—but no. I'm me. In spare times I go to track meets. I've made every state track meet in the last twenty-four years—even helped coaching a bit. It's on account of Meg, that's obvious. I take pictures, about thirty at each meet, of the finishes, on a four-by-five Speed Graphic, then I have the prints made and I send a copy to every athlete who shows, to the winner a copy and the negative—because somebody did that for Meg back in 19—, bloomers and all. It was a man named J. F. Van Palent, a Dutch preacher, with an old Graflex, and he sent Meg a copy of her breaking the tape in the hundred-yard dash. For the past couple of decades I've been sending copies like that—'this is of you and this is on the house.' Sometimes they write, and sometimes they don't. Oh, I could have retired four years ago. I wasn't interested. I can retire at seventy, but I won't unless they give me the heave-ho, because if I keep feeling as good as I do now, I don't think I'll ever want to stop learning and trying to hand on some of it. ... Now do you see, gentlemen, why that stuff of Henley's about need reduction and reinforcement of rewards and restructuring the Gestalt field drove me to action? Do you begin to understand? How about you, Senator Skypack?

  Senator SKYPACK. All right. All right.

  Dr. GOZAR. All right. So now we get back to what I did in those twenty-three minutes between my leaving the lecture and the bomb going off. I flew like a hummingbird to Wairy High School, about a block and a half away from Lincoln, and I was feeling pretty ferocious; my old ticker was pounding a lot faster than my feet. I said hummingbird, though it's not an image that goes with my physique, to express speed, because I figured Miss Henley would talk about forty minutes, so I'd have to hurry. Speaking of pulse rates, did you know, by the way, that a hummingbird's heart beats six hundred and fifteen times per minute?

  Monday, October 28

  More than ten times a second? Barry found that out and told me it; we've had fascinating talks about the metabolism of bird
s. Anyway, I thought out my whole plan on the way to Wairy, and I charged up to the lab, and I found Barry and Flattop there— Barry was puttering around on some experiment, as he often does in after-school hours. I went right to work, and I never did anything with such dazzling speed. The two boys wanted to help me in whatever I was doing, but I wouldn't let them, because the law can take rather strict views of complicity, and Barry would just have slowed me down with his deliberate questions, anyway. I mixed ferrous sulphide and hydrochloric acid and a coloring agent in a globular vial in a matter of seconds. Then I took a large snap-type rat trap, and I—

  Senator MANSFIELD. Why a rat trap?

  Dr. GOZAR. Back during the second war I had to fill in for a couple of months for a sick high-school physics teacher, and I did a lecture on ancient engines of war, such as the testudo, the battering ram, Greek fire, and so on. I developed a slinging mechanism on the snapping arch of a rat trap to show the centrifugal hurling principle of the trebuchct, and the spring action of the ballista and catapult. Furthermore, to exercise the brighter youngsters' math, I conducted a series of experiments to calculate the trajectories of objects of various weights as thrown by my rat-trap engine, and I had used these same globular vials containing varying amounts of water as my projectiles. I was therefore able to weigh my stink-bomb vial and estimate fairly closely how high and how far it would carry. It took me only about half a minute to rig a timing mechanism—a kitchen timer I keep in the lab for experiments, to whose pointer I attached part of a wooden pencil, so I could simply set the timer alongside the trap and in due course the pencil would swing down on the bait-trigger of the trap.

  Senator SKYPACK. This woman's a Frankenstein!

  THE CHILD BUYER

  Dr. GOZAR. My maternal instincts, which haven't had much exercise in my lifetime, were turning out to be pretty formidable. It's the closest I've ever come, I guess, to imitating a mother tigress protecting her cub. I ran back to Lincoln, to the playground alongside the auditorium. I had to guess the interior distance from the window to the lectern, and, as it happens, I underestimated the distance by about eight to ten feet. I paced off the required distance outdoors, set my engin volant and timer, and shot back to my seat in the hall, and when I sat down I said in a loud whisper to my neighbor, 'What's she saying? Did I miss anything?' Pretending to be fascinated. 'I had to make a phone call/1 whispered. Cover-up.

  Senator MANSFIELD. What did you set the timer at?

  Dr. GOZAR. My entire errand had taken not more than thirteen or fourteen minutes. It was a gamble just how long Henley would shoot off her mouth, but, not wanting the bomb to go off too soon after my return to the auditorium, I had set it for eight minutes. Eight minutes! They were like eight months. One nice ironic note. At about the seven-minute point, as I estimated, Henley took a crack at me—my harming Barry by singling him out for special help in the lab. 'Just you wait a minute, Henley/ I said to myself, 'you'll have my answer to that stinking statement/ And after one minute—beautiful! I saw the little sphere glisten as it arched through the window. It didn't quite make the stage, but fell on the floor in front. A delightfully pretty yellow-green smoke curled up over the heads of the audience in the front rows. It began to spread. People jumped up. I said in a loud innocent voice to my neighbor, 'What's happened? Did you see what happened? What's going on?' Then I saw Owing and Cleary running around with their arms over their heads and Mil-licent Parmelee Henley, B.S., M.A., heading for the wings with her hands to her face.

  Senator SKYPACK. Are you completely finished, miss?

  Monday, October 28

  Dr. GOZAR. I'll never admit I'm completely finished, Senator.

  Senator SKYPACK. All I can say is, this has been one of the most disgusting, shameful, degrading exhibitions it has ever been my privilege as a State Senator to have to sit through and witness. I mean, here's an educationist, sitting here without once saying she's sorry, and she—

  Senator MANSFIELD. I found it instructive, Jack. Didn't you, Peter?

  Senator VOYOLKO. Who, me? What I want to know—what she want with that rat trap? I didn't dig that part. She trying to catch a rat or something?

  Senator MANSFIELD. Never mind, Peter. In any case, Mr. Broadbent, we'd better keep things rolling. And thank you, Dr. Gozar. Most instructive.

  Senator SKYPACK. Most disgusting! I mean, a person, we entrust our young people to a person . . .

  Mr. BROADBENT. I'll call Mr. Sean Cleary. Mr. Cleary.

  Senator MANSFIELD. You're sworn, Mr. Cleary. Take your seat. Good. Now, Mr. Broadbent.

  TESTIMONY OF MR. SEAN CLEARY, DIRECTOR OF GUIDANCE, TOWN OF PEQUOT

  Mr. BROADBENT. This afternoon, sir, we're discussing the Rudd-Renzulli incident. We understand you came in on the tag end of it.

  Mr. CLEARY. Yes, I did.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Would you give us your estimate—

  Senator SKYPACK. We're beyond 'estimates' now, Broadbent. We need some rock-bottom facts here. Wouldn't you say, Cleary, that this was one of the smuttiest, cheapest incidents in the history of education in this State? The younger generation, the deadbeats we're breeding in this State.

  THE CHILD BUYER

  Mr. CLEARY. Frankly, it was the adult, Dr. Gozar, who surprised me most when I first came on the scene. It was almost as if she was working toward some vicarious reward or climax.

  Senator SKYPACK. We're not interested in her, we're interested in that criminal little boy. I want to know what you did about this crying shame.

  Mr. CLEARY. First of all, Senator, I always try, when we have an incident involving a disturbed child, to get things out, get them talked about—not try to smother and hide them, because if you sweep oily rags off in a corner and cover them over you're just going to have spontaneous combustion and maybe a wicked fire. I therefore promptly called Mr. Owing, Mr. Wairy, Mrs. Sloat, Miss Henley, and Mr. Jones, and gave each of them a complete rundown on the facts.

  Senator MANSFIELD. Sounds more like stirring up a hornets' nest than ventilating rags.

  Senator SKYPACK. You wouldn't expect him to shush a scandal like that up, would you, Aaron?

  Senator MANSFIELD. From what we've seen here, I'm not sure that calling Bill Sloat is exactly the way to clear the air of inflammable fumes. I suppose this led to that P.-T. A. meeting.

  Senator SKYPACK. What else did you do, Cleary?

  Mr. CLEARY. I summoned the boy and gave him a Standardized Testing Institute Mirror-Image Personality Inventory.

  Senator SKYPACK. You wanted to see whether he was dangerous?

  Mr. CLEARY. This test is a remarkable instrument. I would estimate that it gives the equivalent of a three-year psychoanalysis in about twenty minutes. It makes use of carefully framed psyche-symbol questions, all answerable by yes or no, such as, 'Are you sometimes cranky before ten in the morning?' and, 'When a person catches a nose cold, is it his fault?' The choices are significant, the results strikingly revealing.

  Monday, October 28

  Senator SKYPACK. And what did you find out about this cheap incident?

  Mr. CLEARY. It appeared to be a manifestation of transmuted Puritan libido-thrusts. The rubber gloves . . .

  Senator SKYPACK. Let's not get high-flown, Cleary. Just a common garden-variety question. Was it good or bad?

  Mr. CLEARY. It was good (from my point of view) in that the boy's bad behavior tends to give Jones a good chance to bring a bad (from the boy's point of view) outcome of this United Lymphomilloid proposition. On the other hand, it was bad (for the child buyer) because the episode was really a good (in the boy, psychiatrically speaking) sign that he could do something bad to such good effect.

  Senator MANSFIELD. Mr. Cleary, that goes quite some ways beyond double talk. That's quadruple talk.

  Senator SKYPACK. What I would like to know is, how are you going to punish him?

  Mr. CLEARY. United Lymphomilloid—

  Senator MANSFIELD. Don't I remember your telling us, Mr. Cleary, the first time you appeared before thi
s committee, that there hadn't been time as yet for you to undertake psychological training? Do you think you're fully qualified—

  Senator SKYPACK. That's a dirty, unfair question, Aaron. I seem to remember you said we weren't to manhandle our witnesses here.

  Mr. CLEARY. No, Senator, I'd like to answer the Chairman's question. I think it stems from ignorance rather than malice. The psychological tests we use in the schools today, Mr. Chairman, are so foolproof, the norms are so stable, the scoring is so automatic, the interpretation is so ineluctible, that you need have no concern over one man's array of graduate degrees. In short, sir, we fenow about these children. Please calm your nerves about my training.

  THE CHILD BUYER

  Senator MANSFIELD. Another thing I seem to remember from your first appearance, Mr. Cleary, was your denial that the child buyer had done anything to influence you to help him. But we have heard testimony today that he is in fact finding you a new job.

  Mr. CLEARY. There's nothing to deny in that! He's lining me up a job down in Fairfield County. Assistant Super. Big jump salary-wise, but of course I don't care about that part of it. It's just that a tadpole feels great when he sheds his tail and gets out of the slimy little pond he's been trapped in—know what I mean?

  Senator MANSFIELD. You don't feel that there's anything irregular about this offer of his?

  Mr. CLEARY. The significance of this kindness on his part, it seems to me, is in the way it shows his extraordinary perspicacity —his almost frightening powers of devination, clairvoyance. He must have some extrasensory ability, otherwise how could he have known that I had my restless shoes on?