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BARRY RUDD. Repentant—no. Regretful—yes. Abashed that my little protest was so futile. It has, however, taught me something about adults.
Senator SKYPACK. Namely.
BARRY RUDD. Namely, that what is commonly called juvenile delinquency is largely ineffective as protest because it simply acts out things that grownups would secretly like to do. The horror adults felt at what I did appeared to be in direct ratio to their envy of me. Mr. Cleary was beside himself with rage. I don't think I ever saw a person gnash his teeth before. It's a sort of rotary sharpening process.
Senator MANSFIELD. Why did you want to be caught by Dr. Gozar?
BARRY RUDD. Because I knew that she's strict about things that matter—such as letting a book be damaged by rain.
Senator MANSFIELD. Any other questions, gentlemen?
Senator VOYOLKO. This Piggy Kowalski, he get that tattoo in the Navy?
BARRY RUDD. I don't know, but there's an anchor tattooed on
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his left forearm. Entwined in a serpent.
Senator VOYOLKO. Anchor. See? I thought so. I thought he was in the Navy. You talk about national defense!
Senator MANSFIELD. If there are no further questions, gentlemen, I think the time has come to call it a day. Tomorrow, as I understand it, Mr. Broadbent, we'll take up the attack on the Rudd home.
Mr. BROADBENT. That's right, sir.
Senator MANSFIELD. O.K. We'll stand adjourned until ten in the morning.
(Whereupon, at 4:18 p.m., Monday, October 28, the hearing was recessed, subject to the recall of the Chair.)
(The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:15 a.m., in Ordinary Session, in Room 202, Capitol Offices, Senator Aaron Mansfield presiding. Committee members and counsel present.)
Senator MANSFIELD. We will come to order. Again I must caution our spectators against disturbing our committee in any way. We intend to be orderly and expeditious here, and if there are any disturbances we'll be obliged to clear the room forthwith. Mr. Broadbcnt, you may go ahead.
Mr. BROADBENT. First, this morning, I'd like to call the boy Charles Perkonian. Usher him in, please.
Senator MANSFIELD. Sit down over there again, sonny. In a talking mood this morning, I hope.
CHARLES PERKONIAN. Barry says sing, I sing.
TESTIMONY OF CHARLES PERKONIAN, MINOR, TOWN OF PEQUOT
Mr. BROADBENT. Yesterday, Master Perkonian, the boy Barry Rudd testified to us that you gave him advance warning of the attack on his home, and you yourself made some broad hints in testimony here yesterday morning that the child buyer knew all about the assault beforehand. You remember that?
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CHARLES PERKONIAN. Knew all about it? You can say that again. His baby.
Mr. BROADBENT. Are you suggesting that the child buyer engineered the attack?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. Like I said, it was his baby. Beginning to end.
Mr. BROADBENT. What makes you say that? How do you know it?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. What you think I got ears for? Flap off the flies?
Mr. BROADBENT. You heard something. What did you hear?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. The guy the flat hat, I heard him telling them fellas what to do, how to do it. A to Z.
Mr. BROADBENT. Where was this?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. Where was what?
Mr. BROADBENT. This conversation you overheard. These instructions.
CHARLES PERKONIAN. The drugstore.
Mr. BROADBENT. Ellithoip's drugstore?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. I don't know no names. The drugstore fella the stomach out to here.
Mr. BROADBENT. Mr. Ellithorp. Search your memory, Master Perkonian. Was this in Mr. Ellithorp's store?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. You're the one said that.
Mr. BROADBENT. The record will show that the alleged conversation took place in a drugstore in Pcquot, presumably Elli-thorp's. Please tell what happened.
CHARLES PERKONIAN. I already told. Stupid. Like I already told. The guy the flat fedora, cooking up the deal.
Mr. BROADBENT. How did you happen to overhear? What were you doing in the drugstore?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. Doing? Buying a bottle Bromo, my old lady got herself a head. Minding my own business.
Mr. BROADBENT. Where were they talking?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. In the back. I come in there after this bottle Bromo, nobody's around, the fat guy's usually got this white coat, like he's playing doctor like my pal Hairy Barry, anyway he's not there, nobody around. So I ease around behind the place he stashes all these bottles a medicine.
Mr. BROADBENT. And?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. Mumbo-jumbo in the back. The guy, the drugstore guy, he got this office in the way behind. I can hear 'em. So I crotch down, there's this trash barrel around the corner there, I crotch down where nobody can't see me, and I hear the whole thing.
Mr. BROADBENT. Who was there?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. I din see 'em, I only heard 'em.
Mr. BROADBENT. So far as you could tell from overhearing, who was there?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. I don't like to use no names. Gives me the hecmie-jeemies, I ain't no squealer. Just those guys in there.
Mr. BROADBENT. We know the child buyer and the druggist were in there. Who else?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. These two hoody guys. You want I should stool on 'em or something? I don't go for that stuff.
Mr. BROADBENT. What was the child buyer saying?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. The whole deal. What time. Motorcycles. Pick-up truck. Baseball bats. How to open up the chimblcy, side the house, pour this crap and stuff down it.
Mr. BROADBENT. Where did Barry come into all this?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. He dint.
Mr. BROADBENT. The police picked him up. You know that.
CHARLES PERKONIAN. You want to know about him, you ask him. I already talk too much. You get him in here, you want to know about him. Lay off from me on him.
Mr. BROADBENT. What was the purpose of the attack to be? Did you gather that?
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CHARLES PERKONIAN. They was going to scare the living—
Mr. BROADBENT. Watch your language, now.
CHARLES PERKONIAN. Daylights. Anything the matter with daylights? What's so dirty about daylights?
Mr. BROADBENT. I thought you had something else in mind. Goon.
CHARLES PERKONIAN. Stupid. I suppose you think daylights is dirty or something.
Mr. BROADBENT. Go on, Master Perkonian.
CHARLES PERKONIAN. Jeez, a guy can't even say daylights around here. I ain't surprise you got a hatful a guys down Clarkdale. A guy can't say nothing till you come along and decide he's a criminal or something like that. You call this a democracy, a guy can't even finish a sentence he's in Clarkdale.
Mr. BROADBENT. You were saying about the purpose of the attack.
CHARLES PERKONIAN. I don't know. You got me so I don't want a open my trap, find myself down Clarkdale again.
Senator MANSFIELD. We're not going to do anything to you, sonny. Just go ahead.
CHARLES PERKONIAN. Well, I'd like to know what gives with this stupid jerk. Can't even say daylights. They going to give me a vote like anybody else, one these days. I'll bomb this jerk when they give me a vote.
Senator MANSFIELD. Never mind, sonny, just answer the question.
CHARLES PERKONIAN. How'm I supposed to say it? They got this idea they're going to scare the . . . the . . . Look at him! Just can't wait to ship me off to the correction house! They call it justice! . . . O.K., O.K. Supposed to throw a scare into mostly Mrs. Rudd, so she'll up and sell Barry like this guy the flat fedora wants to buy him.
Mr. BROADBENT. The attack was to intimidate Mrs Rudd?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. You accuse me the dirty words, I ac-
cuse you words a guy can't understand. You oughta watch TV, mister, learn to talk like a normal person the way they talk on the programs there. You can understand ever
y single word.
Senator VOYOLKO. I agree with this boy. Wouldn't do you a bit of harm, Mr. Broadback.
Mr. BROADBENT. You then joined up with the attack yourself at the appointed rendezvous?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. I don't know what you mean, that roundy-view, but sure I went along. Who wouldn't? It was going to be cool.
Senator SKYPACK. One more question, son. What do you think—should they sell Barry?
CHARLES PERKONIAN. Why not? What's to stop 'cm? People don't have no choice. My pal don't want to go, that's just tough . . . Oh-oh. Mr. Daylights looking down my tonsils again, looking for dirty words. I was only going to say, Just tough luck. Barry don't have a look-in. Did they ask me, did I wanta go down Clarkdale? A free country, only trouble is, it don't work that way. Under twenty-one, it ain't always all that free.
Senator MANSFIELD. All right, sonny. Thank you.
CHARLES PERKONIAN. What's all this about, anyway? What's the fuss about? What's so special about Mr. Barry Rudd Esquire? Who ast me when they sent me down Clarkdale? Did they have these Senators and all this Mr. Daylights jazz then? I don't get the whole thing.
Senator MANSFIELD. All right, sonny. You're excused now.
Mr. BROADBENT. I will ask for Master Barry Rudd.
Senator MANSFIELD. Take your place, sonny.
TESTIMONY OF BARRY RUDD, MINOR, TOWN OF PEQUOT
Mr. BROADBENT. Now, Master Rudd, yesterday you told us that on last Tuesday afternoon your friend Flattop informed
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you about the imminent attack on your home. What did you and he do?
BARRY RUDD. What do you mean? Together?
Mr. BROADBENT. Flattop has testified here that he took part in the attack, and we know about the police apprehending you at the end of it. How did you and he enlist in the attack?
BARRY RUDD. You have the whole thing wrong.
Mr. BROADBENT. How wrong?
BARRY RUDD. About my role.
Mr. BROADBENT. Would you kindly give an account of the attack, then, from your point of view?
BARRY RUDD. As I explained to you, Charley Perkonian told me about the plan that afternoon at the bowling alleys. I went home about six o'clock. Father bowls in a league on Tuesday nights, and he'd already left for the lanes when I got home; we must have passed each other in transit—of course I was on foot and he was driving. It had been summery that afternoon, but it was suddenly turning snappy, I could see my breath as I walked.
Mr. BROADBENT. What did you do when you got home?
BARRY RUDD. I warned Momma and my sister Susan. I stood in the living room, still in my coat, hat, sweater, and gloves, and I tried to tell Momma all I had understood of what Flattop had told me. It was hard for me to get it out.
Mr. BROADBENT. What did your mother do?
BARRY RUDD. Momma got redder and redder, and then purple, and almost blue, until I thought she might have an attack of some kind and die. She was transformed. She was gradually transmogrified into something I had never seen before, as if she were going from larva to pupa—or, rather, the other way around, regressing from pupa to larva. Why, the sons of bitches!' she finally roared. 'The dirty lowdown sons of bitches!' I'd never heard such words from my mother's lips, and it seemed as if her
body had changed and become coarser. From a proud, timid, genteel lady she had turned into a big, coarse woman, with a broad, florid face slashed by deep furrows across the forehead. Her hair, which is naturally curly, stood out in a bush all around. Her eyes were their usual remarkable clear light blue, but her mouth seemed thick and had no lipstick on it and was twisted. She wore a drab, beltless, dirty, hanging dress, and under it her bosoms hung long and huge, like the milch bags of Capra hircus, and out from short sleeves came two great, muscular, hairy arms. I'd never seen my mother look like that. I'd certainly never heard her shout the way she did, yet at first, rather than being frightened or mortified by her, I was overcome with pity for the big, helpless, cursing hulk she'd turned into.
Mr. BROADBENT. Go on.
BARRY RUDD. Suddenly she whirled and towered over me. 'How do I know you're telling me the truth? It's one of their slimy tricks—sending my little boy in here to scare me!' I was terrified that she would hurl herself at me and crush me in that mass of angry transformed flesh. Susan had begun to cry. The bastards came in here this morning with their sleazy threats, and they told me to call them up and give in to them—they said by seven o'clock—them and their bastardly deadlines and ultimatums; but they don't know Maudie Rudd. By Christ! Let them come, let the sod-hearted bastards come, I'll break every dad-blasted chicken drumstick in their dad-blasted white-meat bodies.' Then Momma burst into tears, and she fell in a heap on the sofa, and she wailed, 'Oh, Paul, Paul, why did you have to go bowling this night of all nights?' I was surprised to hear myself say, during a lull in her typhoon, 'Don't you think we ought to get ready for them?' Momma turned off the torrents, as if with a faucet, and she got up and surged toward me and looked as if she would fling those suddenly huge bear arms
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around me in gratitude and affection, and I was just as fearful of being suffocated by love as I had been of being squashed in her fury, and she shouted, 'Dear Barry!' Momma lurched into the kitchen, where, behind the display of linen, she evidently looked at the clock, because she cried out, 'A quarter to eightf The bastards! . . . First off/ she added in a quieter voice, Til put this wash away so we can have more room to fling around in. Susie! Come here with the big basket. Susie! Lively!' Susan ran into the kitchen. I took off my coat and hat and gloves but not my sweater, because it was chilly in the house; the only heat in the two rooms came from the kitchen stove—though both Susan and Momma only wore cotton dresses. I went in the kitchen. Soon all the clean things were mounded in a huge reed laundry basket, and Momma took the rope down from its hooks and threw it in a box in the corner, and once the linen was out of the way I was hit by the mess in the room; I was saddened, so my hands and feet felt heavy and I thought I'd cry, by the realization that Mother's gentility had all along been only a skin, which she could easily burst and shed—a meaningless thing of touches, like the pot of African violets, Saintpaulia ionantha r on the window sill under the street-side window. The daybed where I slept was unmade, and the things in the room were cheap, crude, and battered, like Momma herself just then— the iron coal-burning stove, the deep, low, galvanized sink for both laundry and dishes, the dented pots and chipped plates; the coal dust on the floor by the scuttle, the glasses on the shelves mottled with soap-and-grease spots. I realized that Momma really is a slattern. In the last few minutes she'd become one for me to see. Little to choose between her and Mrs. Perkonian—sickening idea! I felt weak. Anyway, Momma began thinking out loud, and her thoughts were like thunder. The kitchen door to the street's O.K., it's like the door of a damned old safe in a bank, let 'em try to crack that one! But
the door in the back. I've been nervy about it for months. We've got to back it up. Come on, Sue-sue. Come on, son/ And Momma led us into the living room and lifted one end of the ragbag sofa and roared to the two of us to grab the other end. 'H'ist!' Momma shouted, and we managed to get our end off the floor, and Momma heaved sofa and us and all toward the door. The thing was too wide to cram between the bureau by the door and the side wall, and it had to be canted up on its side, and not only clothes and magazines but also a thimble and two spoons and some change and other odds and ends fell onto the floor and scattered around like fleeing vermin, Cimici lectu-larii or Periplanetae americanae. We got the sofa jammed against the door. We went back into the kitchen. I asked, 'What if they came in a window?' Momma said the windows were all nailed. 'If they come in a window, they'll have to smash it first. If they do that, we'll just have to pick 'em off one by one. Let's see. . . .' Momma began to look around for a weapon. She took a broom from a corner and held it in the air and shook it, but it must have seemed too light; she handed it to me, and I
clutched it as tight as I could. 'Aha!' she then shouted. 'I know what's loose.' She went to the kitchen table, lifted one corner, and pulled a thick leg out of its socket. She took it by its bottom end and swung it, and looked pleased. Slowly the table fell awry, with a sliding metallic sound of shifting kitchen cutlery. Susan suggested calling the police, but Momma was scornful of that idea. She said, 'Did you ever hear of calling the firemen before you set the house on fire?' The clock pointed to eight o'clock; the three of us in the kitchen fell silent. Then I had an idea. I asked Momma if we hadn't better turn the lights out. That way we could see them, and they wouldn't be able to see us—there was a moon out. 'You're a darling boy!' Momma said, but it didn't seem to me there was any real love left in her. We turned the lights out, and I thought of Father's long five-
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battery flashlight that he kept under his bed, and I ran out and got it and offered it to Momma. 'Keep it/ she said. 'You can use it to knock the brains out of them, such as they have. Give the broom to Sue.' We stood in the dark then. It was still within and without, except that Momma's breathing, which was beginning to be asthmatic because of her emotion, sounded like wind going intermittently through a Pinus strobus —
Senator SKYPACK. All right, boy, enough of that foreign talk.
BARRY RUDD. A white pine. After a long time she took the flashlight from my perspiring hands and shone it briefly on the clock, which said fourteen minutes past eight; she threw the beam then straight in my face, and she rasped, Tou little bastard, you wouldn't be trying to make a fool of Momma, would you?' She'd never talked to me like that, ever, and I would have cried, I guess, but she suddenly said, 'Bah! You're a good little boy,' and she snapped off the light and handed it back to me. We waited another eternity and then we began to hear something in the far distance, just a hum, at first, remote and low. Gradually the sound increased, until it seemed like a faraway flight of planes. That's them,' Momma whispered with a great wheeze. Then, speaking very loud, in a voice that made me jump, she said, 'We'd best have a lookout in each room. Boy, you stay here in the kitchen. Sue, you go in the bathroom. And I'll take my parlor, and Lord love the bastard that gets in there/ Parlor. It shook me to hear her use that word—a vestige of the gentility that had so suddenly peeled off her. You know about the appearance of that room, yet she always called it her parlor. Susan began to whimper. 'I don't want to go in there alone/ 'Git!' Momma roared, and Susan gat, sniveling and whining. I went to a front window. The moon was shining whitely now, and I could see the bright ribbon of the street beyond the porch and the sidewalk, and beyond that Mr. Zimmer's beautybush, KoZ-