The Child Buyer

by John Hersey

  Senator SKYPACK. Now, wait a minute there, boy. That plan has been given to this committee by Mr. Jones in confidence, strictly off the record. We're not going to have you shoot your mouth off and betray his trust in us. There are newspapermen here. You just drop that line of chatter, hear?

  Mr. BROADBENT. You say they planned their next steps. What were they?

  BARRY RUDD. I don't know exactly. As they were talking they both seemed to realize for the first time that I was there as a human consciousness. Cleary never had gotten around to calling on me for support. Now both of them turned on me. Where, until a few moments before, I'd been watching a fascinating fencing bout, I now saw both epees leveled in line at me—and the tips weren't blunted, either. The two men were suddenly allies. Mr. Jones said, 'You'll excuse us now, Barry. You can run home—I suppose you had your nose in a book this morning; what were you reading?' I told him about the Voltaire. Tou can run home to Monsieur Arouet/ he said. 'Mr. Cleary and I want

  THE CHILD BUYER

  to plot a little how to influence and change that stubborn little so-called mind of yours/ So I had no choice but to leave.

  Mr. BROADBENT. And I put it to you that this situation, after the interview—the two men joining ranks against you, as it were—led directly to your delinquencies of the following week. I put it to you that nobody else but Master Barry Rudd was at the bottom of the violence and delinquencies that ensued in Pequot, and that Master Rudd was motivated by the outcome of this talk.

  BARRY RUDD. That's a rather sweeping statement, sir—or perhaps I should say a sweeping misstatement.

  Mr. BROADBENT. I intend to prove it before we're finished with these hearings.

  Senator SKYPACK. Can I have the witness a minute, Broadbcnt? If we're through with that part of the questioning.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Certainly, sir; I have no more questions on that interview.

  Senator SKYPACK. Now, listen, boy, I want straight answers. You've already admitted you were in the lab the afternoon of the bombing—you and that delinquent punk. Right?

  BARRY RUDD. I don't think it's fair to Charles Perkonian to speak of him that way, Senator. He served out the full punishment under law for what he did, and he's working darn hard at his own rehabilitation.

  Senator SKYPACK. I'll thank you to confine your remarks to answers to my questions, my boy. And, by the way, I'll pick my words and you pick yours. Now I want to put it to you directly. Did you make and throw that stink bomb?

  BARRY RUDD. No, sir.

  Senator SKYPACK. You're not forgetting you're under oath. You know the meaning of the word 'perjury'?

  BARRY RUDD. From the French, parjurer, and originally from Latin, periurare, to forswear oneself, or, in other words, to

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  swear to tell the truth and then tell a lie.

  Senator SKYPACK, All right. You know what it means, and I assume you know the usual penalties for it. I'll repeat the question. Did you make and throw that bomb?

  BARRY RUDD. I did not, sir.

  Senator SKYPACK. Do you know who did?

  BARRY RUDD. Yes, sir, I do.

  Senator SKYPACK. Who was it?

  BARRY RUDD. I'd rather not tell.

  Senator SKYPACK. You know you're under oath to tell the whole truth, don't you?

  BARRY RUDD. There is no greater truth than that I'd rather not tell.

  Senator SKYPACK. Mr. Chairman, would you do me the kindness of directing the witness to answer?

  Senator MANSFIELD. Now, look here, Jack, are you sure you want to make an issue—

  Senator SKYPACK. You damn tootin' I want to make an issue. Was it that delinquent punk friend of yours, boy?

  BARRY RUDD. If you mean Flattop, he isn't a punk, and as to the stink bomb I have no intention of informing.

  Senator SKYPACK. Was it ... was it that fellow Cleary?

  BARRY RUDD. Are you crazy, Senator? He set up the meeting. He was on the stage with Miss Henley.

  Senator SKYPACK. Was it that teacher? That Miss Pcrrin?

  BARRY RUDD. I've already said that I don't intend to tell you who it was.

  Senator MANSFIELD. Let's move on, Jack. You're not going to get any satisfaction out of the boy on this one. Is there anything else you want to ask about?

  Senator SKYPACK. There certainly is. I want to ask about these dirty books he's been picking up at the public library. Tell me, boy, when did you first learn the facts of life?

  THE CHILD BUYER

  BARRY RUDD. If you mean about the reproductive process in humans, I got the first basic information about two months ago.

  Senator SKYPACK. Where did you pick this up?

  BARRY RUDD. From my friend Charley Perkonian. We were walking home from the movies, a matinee, I remember we were going along Second Street, where there's a series of white picket fences, and Flattop was tapping a stick along the palings, and we got talking about the kissing in the film we'd seen, and how it sort of made you sick to the stomach, when suddenly he launched into kissing as a first step toward copulation—I mean, he used street language; I've acquired a more exact vocabulary since then out of books—and he described the whole process to me. His information, I later learned from my reading, was astonishingly accurate, except for one detail. 'Before a guy can start with a woman/ he said, 'he has to get her ready by he lets her shove her finger into a ring with a precious jool on it. Thing is/ he said, 'this has a lot to do with can they make a baby. They can make one pretty easy if the fool's a diamond, and you take and have a big-size diamond on the ring, about the size of a raisin, it's a pushover. I mean it's like rolling off a log, it's nothing/ I now realize that I went off on my geology kick just after that talk. I'd noticed mica shining in the rocks in the detritus along the river in back of our house, also down near Sandy Point where my father and Mr. Zimmer used to take us on picnics with the boat they made, and now I had a fantasy about fabricating synthetic diamonds, for men to use in this interesting way, out of the mica. I'd been crazy about cacti just before that, but they were wearing off, and the first thing I knew, I was off to the races with rocks. I was directed to a dentist in Tunxis who had a big amateur collection, and he gave me a lot of his extras. Then on two weekends Dr. Gozar drove me to the Agassiz in Cambridge and the Peabody in New Haven, and I saw a billion specimens of rock. I found some stone up on the

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  ridge that crumbled into white powder, and I thought it might be gypsum, and I would 'discover' cement. My big adventure, though, was to go over to the old mica mine near Londonvillc, an open-pit mine which during the last couple of wars supplied mica for electronic uses. I had a prospector's pick, and I took out some rose quartz and garnet and some other pretty subgem stones. And mica. For men.

  Senator SKYPACK. All right, boy. Now about these smut books you been getting from the public library. This Miss Cloud—

  BARRY RUDD. To me things take on heightened reality after I have seen them on the printed page. Reading's just about the most important part of my life. We have a French conversation class at school, and when Miss Sejour asks, 'Que mangez-vous pour votre petit dejeuner? Qu'est-ce que vous faites dans la cuisine?', the other kids answer out of the book, 'Je mange le dindon,' or 'Je mange la tarte & la citrouille,' or John Sano says, 'Je mange peanut butter.' But I say, 'Je lise dans un livre de bi-ologie.' That's what I'd rather do than eat. Reading gives truth. I feel that, I really do. So whenever I come across something new, I want to read about it. Now. When Flattop talked about this new subject, there was an indefinable something—his knowing air, his controlled casualness, the curious feeling of intimacy I had with him while he was talking—that subtly made me realize that my approach to Miss Cloud for material on the subject would have to be circumspect. I understood later, when I'd read about adolescence, puberty, coming-of-age fertility rites among primitive peoples, and so on, that a particular reason for this being complicated in my case was that I have a physical age and a mental age which simply leap right
across adolescence. On top of that Dr. Gozar had talked perfectly openly to me about reproductive phenomena, heredity in fruit flics and all, and I'd seen hamsters and termites born and hatched, but never a word about the process of fertilization. Now there were, from Flattopy

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  mysterious suggestions of pleasure, of magic, what with the talk about diamonds, and even a whiff of right and wrong. So, to begin with, I kind of pussy-footed with Miss Cloud. But she's so understanding—she plunged right in and got me started right away on courtship rituals in fauna.

  Senator MANSFIELD. And, by the bye, sonny, just what does the stickleback do?

  BARRY RUDD. Oh, he's a rascal, but he's sort of pathetic, too. The three-spined stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus, is a little fish whose first dorsal fin and ventrals are dangerous pointed spines attached to bony shields of his endo-skeleton. He mates early in the spring in fresh water, in shallows. First he stakes out his home grounds and drives every other fish out of it. (This staking-out in the mating season is common to many creatures; Dr. Gozar once told me about a rose-breasted grosbeak, lie-dymeles ludovicianus, that she'd seen pecking at his reflection in a window because he thought it was another bird intruding on his nesting area.) Anyway, the stickleback digs a hole about two inches square in the bottom, picking up the soil mouthful by mouthful, like a tiny steam shovel, and it piles thread algae and grasses in the hole, plasters them with some goo from its kidneys, and pushes them into a mound. Then it makes a tunnel by wriggling through. At that point he suddenly turns from pale gray to brilliant red and bluish white, and he begins to watch for fat females—they've got about a hundred eggs in them— and when he sees one he goes at her with a kind of zigzag dance, until she approaches him with her head up and her tail dragging, so to speak. He leads her to the tunnel, flops over on his side, inserts his snout in the nest, and waggles his spines at his girl friend. She gets the idea and when he gets out she goes in, with her nose sticking out one end and her tail out the other. He nudges her tail with his nose, rhythmically, bump bump bump bump, and she lays the eggs, and she slips out and he slips in,

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  and he fertilizes the clutch. Then he chases her away, and she better scoot or hell bite her tail off! After a while he turns dark-colored and he hates everybody, male and female, and he fans water onto the eggs with his fins, and when they hatch out he worries himself sick over the babies; if one of them swims away from the brood, papa goes and brings him back in his mouth—

  Senator SKYPACK. That's enough of that! So as I understand it, boy, you gluttoned yourself up with a lot of sex and smut at the free public library and then picked out a perfectly decent young girl, what was her name again, Broadbcnt?

  Mr. BROADBENT. Florence Renzulli.

  Senator SKYPACK. Renzulli, and in broad daylight, in the storeroom of the principal's office—

  Senator MANSFIELD. Excuse me, Jack, but we're running along to lunchtime here, and I gather, Mr. Broadbent, from what you told me before we convened this morning, that you intend to develop this whole Renzulli incident at an early opportunity, is that correct?

  Mr. BROADBENT. Right after our recess. We're all set on it.

  Senator MANSFIELD. So if you don't mind, Jack, could we postpone—?

  Senator SKYPACK. Just as long as we don't lay down on the job and cover up for this clever little devil here.

  Senator MANSFIELD. Then we'll stand recessed until two o'clock.

  (Whereupon, at 12:25 p.m., Monday, October 28, 19—, the hearing was recessed.)

  AFTERNOON SESSION

  (The hearing was resumed in Committee Chamber 202 at 2:20 p.m.)

  Senator MANSFIELD. This committee will be in order. Go ahead Mr. Broadbent.

  Mr. BROADBENT. I will call Mr. Willard Owing. Please bring him in.

  Senator MANSFIELD. You're sworn before us, sir. Take your place, if you please.

  TESTIMONY OF MR. WILLARD OWING, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, TOWN OF PEQUOT

  Mr. BROADBENT. We've recalled you to testify, Mr. Owing, because you have final administrative responsibility for the Pequot school system, and we intend to go into the Rudd-Renzulli incident here this afternoon, and we want to ask you, first of all, to describe what actually took place, as you understand it, between those two children.

  Mr. OWING. I so enjoyed my visit with you Senators the other day. For the academic man to get out here in the hurly-burly of legislative life—it's heady, gentlemen, heady. I always say, 'A teacher's never too old to study.'

  Mr. BROADBENT. If you please, Mr. Owing, when did the

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  Rudd-Renzulli incident first come to your attention?

  Mr. OWING. These little episodes take place, you know, year in and year out. The important thing is to keep the sights high, keep your eye on the goals, don't forget that the schools' business is to manufacture citizens. First and foremost.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Please try to follow my questions, Mr. Owing. Who told you about the Rudd boy being caught in school hours and on school property with the Renzulli girl?

  Mr. OWING. I was saying at our Board meeting just night before last, you can't let a single incident loom too large in the foreground. Under law our schools are open at least one hundred and eighty-three days a year, and—

  Senator SKYPACK. Broadbent, I want this shilly-shallying to stop. Let me have this witness a minute or two.

  Mr. BROADBENT. With pleasure, Senator. And good luck, sir.

  Senator SKYPACK. All right, Owing. Now, I want direct answers to direct questions.

  Mr. OWING. As I said the other day, Senator, I'm here to help. In any way. Eager.

  Senator SKYPACK. Who caught these kids?

  Mr. OWING. At our Board meeting—

  Senator SKYPACK. Na na na! None of that, Owing! I want an answer. Who caught these kids?

  Mr. OWING. According to the first report I got ... May I proceed, Senator?

  Senator SKYPACK. Long as you're answering my question.

  Mr. OWING. The first report I received reminded me of a dictum I first heard from old Professor 'Ink-Spot' Channing, in my sophomore year at—

  Senator SKYPACK. Owing, I must warn you to answer my questions.

  Mr. OWING. But, Senator, try as I will, you cut me off. You're constantly interrupting. I'm not accustomed—

  THE CHILD BUYER

  Senator SKYPACK. You're not surrounded by a bunch of intimidated cross-stitch and rag-rug teachers here, Owing. I'll try again. Who caught these kids?

  Mr. OWING. When you say 'caught/ it seems to me your emphasis is wrong, Senator. 'Surprised/ yes. 'Came upon/ perhaps. I'd accept 'found.'

  Senator SKYPACK. I don't care what word you use, who caught them?

  Mr. OWING. There's a matter of principle here, Senator. It isn't just semantics. If your public schools' authorities take the stance of—

  Senator SKYPACK. All right, Owing. Who caught them?

  Mr. OWING. Professor Channing's dictum really does apply at this point, and if you'll permit me—

  Senator SKYPACK. No, I certainly won't permit you.

  Mr. OWING. He first delivered the dictum one day—

  Senator SKYPACK. WHO CAUGHT THEM?

  Senator VOYOLKO. Excuse, Senator. Yield a minute?

  Senator SKYPACK. I sure will. Brother!

  Senator VOYOLKO. This Renzulli—that's an Italian name. Right?

  Mr. OWING. Professor Clianning pulled out his watch, a magnificent gold turnip, and—

  Senator MANSFIELD. It's obviously an Italian name, Peter.

  Senator VOYOLKO. I thought so. That's what I thought.

  Senator SKYPACK. Let's get rid of this witness before my stack blows, Mr. Chairman. This is hopeless.

  Senator MANSFIELD. I'm inclined to agree with you. Have you finished your questioning, Mr. Broadbcnt?

  Mr. BROADBENT. I can't say I've even begun it, sir. I had hoped—

  Senator MANSFIELD. You may be excused, Mr. Owing. I'm a
fraid you haven't been wholly responsive—

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  Mr. OWING. A pleasure, Senator. Please feel free any time. Down in Pequot we—

  Senator MANSFIELD. Please stand down, Mr. Owing. We're a little pressed. . . . Mr. Broadbent?

  Mr. BROADBENT. Miss Charity Pcrrin.

  Senator MANSFIELD. Take your place again, please, Miss Perrin.

  TESTIMONY OF Miss CHARITY M. PERRIN, SCHOOLTEACHER, TOWN OF PEQUOT

  Mr. BROADBENT. Madam, we're questioning witnesses this afternoon on the incident involving the boy child Barry Rudd and his classmate Florence Renzulli.

  Miss PERRIN. I don't know why you call on me on that incident, sir. I don't know anything about it.

  Senator SKYPACK. What do you mean, you don't know anything about it? Those kids are in your home room, aren't they? They're in your grade?

  Miss PERRIN. They are.

  Senator SKYPACK. You're responsible for what they do in school hours, right?

  Miss PERRIN. Within reasonable limits.

  Senator SKYPACK. And you try to tell us you don't know anything about this shameful incident?

  Miss PERRIN. I not only try to tell you that, sir, I succeed in telling you that.

  Senator SKYPACK. I say you're those kids' teacher, you're directly responsible for what they did.

  Miss PERRIN. And I say you're talking through your hat, Senator Skypack.

  Senator SKYPACK. What gives with this witness, Broadbent? She comes in here, she's little Miss Country Mouse on two occasions, and now suddenly she's like she's got a poker up her back.

  THE CHILD BUYER

  Mr. BROADBENT. Dr. Gozar told us she might rear up and buck once in a while.

  Senator SKYPACK. Well, I don't like it, Look here, miss, you better co-operate with this committee if you know what's good for you.

  Miss PERRIN. Do you require me to lie under oath, sir?

  Senator SKYPACK. I'll tell you something, miss. I wasn't at all satisfied with the way you stammered and yeehawed that other time here when I was questioning you about the stink bombing. Not at all satisfied. Mr. Chairman, I think we should pursue that further.