The Child Buyer

by John Hersey

  Mr. JONES. More than ever. Even before this happened, I regarded him as potentially one of the finest specimens I've yet found. Mr. Cleary told me the other day that the boy had been given an individual I.Q. test when he was in school in Tree-hampstead, and I took the trouble to ride over to Treehamp-stead on my motorbike, and I looked up the record.

  Senator MANSFIELD. Did he do well?

  Monday, October 28

  Mr. JONES. Did he» He was five years and four months old at the time. The test was the Stanford-Binet. The examiner assigned him a basal age of six, and the boy made a perfect score at that level. He breezed through everything that the test demanded of a seven-year-old except to tie shoe knots. He got all of the eight-year-old items right, except that he did poorly, again, on coordination—did sloppily on finding an escape from a maze, because that meant holding a pencil. He got most of the nine- and ten-year-old questions right—at the ten-year level he was an eagle for errors of logic. On the twelve-year test he was still answering questions correctly, such as, 'In what way are the following things similar: crow, cow, lizard? 9 Only when he reached the fourteen-year-old test did the five-year-old boy fail everything. He was an assigned an I.Q. of one hundred eighty-nine. According to the Terman studies, this was approximately the I.Q. enjoyed by Bentham, Leibnitz, Macaulay, and Grotius, and is higher than those of Voltaire, Darwin, Descartes, Newton, and Lope de Vega.

  Senator MANSFIELD. Was the family ever told of this? Does the boy know it?

  Mr. JONES. Never. Of course not. An I.Q. figure like that is considered far too dangerous. In fact, the boy's teachers in Treehampstead were never told exactly what it was—only that it was 'quite unusual'—and no whisper of the figure ever leaked the nine miles to Pequot after the family moved.

  Senator VOYOLKO. Wait a minute there, mister. Crow, cow, lizard. That's the ones you said, right? What's the story on that?

  Mr. JONES. That would be easy, even at five, for Barry Rudd, for a future taxonomist. They're all animals.

  Senator VOYOLKO. Who you think you're kidding? A crow an animal? Ever see an animal could fly? Ever see a cow fly, mister? Watch out if he does!

  Mr. JONES. Barry could explain this better than I can, but

  THE CHILD BUYER

  they're one each from the animal vertebrate classes of birds, mammals, and reptiles.

  Senator VOYOLKO. Boy thinks cows can fly! He better get himself an umbrella.

  Senator SKYPACK. All right, Mr. Chairman, I know all I want to know from this witness.

  Senator MANSFIELD. Thank you once more, Mr. Jones. What next, Mr. Broadbent?

  Mr. BROADBENT. Charles Perkonian.

  Senator MANSFIELD. Just sit down in that chair you were in before, sonny.

  TESTIMONY OF CHARLES PERKONIAN, MINOR, TOWN OF PEQUOT

  Mr. BROADBENT. Now, Master Perkonian, we have information—

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. Where you get this 'master* stuff?

  Mr. BROADBENT. We have information through our preliminary interrogations that you know all about Barry Rudd's indiscretion with Florence Renzulli. Is that right?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. All those fifty-buck words, you flammer-gast me. I mean holy Moses.

  Mr. BROADBENT. You knew about what Barry did to Florence —right?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. Everybody and his uncle talking about it.

  Mr. BROADBENT. I mean at the time—before it was public knowledge.

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. The time? Man, I had the word way before it happened.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Barry told you his plan in advance?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. He told me? I told him!

  Monday, October 28

  Mr. BROADBENT. Please explain.

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. It's my idea. The works.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Exactly what are you telling us? Would you kindly give the committee the whole story?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. I given it. You stupid or something? I told you. My idea.

  Mr. BROADBENT. How did this happen to come up?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. Rudd the Crud ast me.

  Mr. BROADBENT. What did he ask you?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. He ast me what should he do.

  Mr. BROADBENT. When was this?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. What's today?

  Mr. BROADBENT. Monday, October twenty-eighth.

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. Monday. What day'd he fool around, you know, when he was messing around with her?

  Mr. BROADBENT. Last Wednesday, the twenty-third.

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. Wednesday. So. What'd you want to know?

  Mr. BROADBENT. When did Barry ask you whatever he asked you?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. What you say it is today?

  Mr. BROADBENT. Oh, forget it. Where did he ask this thing?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. The lanes. We was watching Piggy Kowalski. You should see him, he's got this two-finger ball, arms is like Popeye the Sailor, shoulders when Big Daddy Lipscomb's got his shoulder pads on, you know what I mean?—like he could belt that ball down there like it's a cat's eye, fastest ball you ever see. Not him. He's got this slow banana ball. Slow curve, say twenty boards. He puts that sixteen pounds down so careful you'd a thought it's a powder puff he's dusting his old lady's bee-hind.

  Mr. BROADBENT. What was Barry's problem? What did he ask you?

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  CHARLES PERKONIAN. He says to me this guy the funny hat I was telling you about, he's after him.

  Mr. BROADBENT. The child buyer? So?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. So he wants to shake him, stupid.

  Mr. BROADBENT. And he asked you what to do. What did you advise?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. Get in trouble. Anybody knows that. Only way you'll ever get out of trouble is get in new trouble. Then they forget about the other.

  Mr. BROADBENT. You advised Barry to get in serious trouble in order to avoid being bought by Mr. Wissey Jones, is that it?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. Nobody wants a punk.

  Mr. BROADBENT. The idea was to be caught? Deliberately?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. Want to know something? That's easier than to not get caught.

  Mr. BROADBENT. And Barry liked the idea?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. He's not so dumb. You think he's dumb?

  Mr. BROADBENT. You cooked up this thing with Florence Renzulli. Why did you pick on her?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. She never in her life knew to say no.

  Mr. BROADBENT. You told her this was just to get Barry out of trouble?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. Nah. Nah. We tell her it's for kicks, see?

  Mr. BROADBENT. And you planned out with Barry the whole doctor act?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. Nah, that's his idea. I don't like the doctor bit. That's his brain-child, he likes it. He says he can read up on it, this Miss Cloud's his pal down the lie-berry.

  Mr. BROADBENT. And you then helped him persuade Miss Renzulli?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. I never did like that doctor idea. I hate

  Monday, October 28

  doctors, I'd like to punch 'em in the snozzle, I hate 'em. My idea, he should make like he's going to rape her.

  Senator SKYPACK. My boy, how old are you?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. Twelve.

  Senator SKYPACK. My gracious, boy, do you even know the meaning of the word 'rape'?

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. Sure. It's cool. There's this guy, see, and he has this thing, and what he wants is, he wants to put this thing inside this other thing that this girl has, only in rape it's different, 'cause this girl, see, she usually wants this thing, I mean the you know, the thing this guy has, to be .in this other thing that she has, only in rape it's different, she don't. I mean she don't want this thing—

  Senator SKYPACK. Thank you, boy, I know what the word means. I'm astonished that at your age—

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. Look, pop, us kids these days catch on all this stuff first thing. Like under teen age. I mean like Boy Scouts, 'Be Prepared.'

  Senator SKYPACK. I trust you realize that we have laws.

  CHARLES
PERKONIAN. Aw, come on, pop. We don't never do any that stuff. We set there and talk about it.

  Senator SKYPACK. That's good.

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. Like I mean my friend Hairy Barry. Come the showdown, what's he do? Plays doctor. Doctor wants a little peek now. Nurse want a peek at doctor? O.K., nurse, just one peek. See if they's any rash. Stuff like that. Laws is for grownups, pop, you know that. People your age, that's where you need 'cm. We're just kids.

  Senator SKYPACK. Kids! Going around advocating delinquency!

  Mr. BROADBENT. Mr. Chairman, this testimony puts a new light on the episode we've been discussing, and I think, if you agree, we ought to call the boy Barry Rudd.

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  Senator MANSFIELD. By all means.

  Mr. BROADBENT. This would seem to explain his cryptic statement that he got into the incident with the Renzulli girl 'on account of Mr. Jones/ I will call Master Barry Rudd, then.

  Senator MANSFIELD. You're excused, sonny. You were much more helpful today than last time, much more communicative. . . . You talked more.

  CHARLES PERKONIAN. Hairy Barry he said to go ahead talk, sing away. So—

  Senator SKYPACK. All right. Let's move along, young fellow.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Bring the Rudd boy in, please.

  Senator MANSFIELD. Take your place, Barry. Mr. Broadbent wants to ask you a few questions.

  TESTIMONY OF BARRY RUDD, MINOR, TOWN OF PEQUOT

  Mr. BROADBENT. We have just been informed by a witness under oath that your entire misadventure with Miss Renzulli was undertaken with the deliberate intention of being discovered, in the hope that your 'delinquency' would disqualify you from being bought by Mr. Wissey Jones. I ask you to affirm or deny this information.

  BARRY RUDD. It's true.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Would you please give us a full account of the events leading up to the incident?

  BARRY RUDD. I had a problem. My problem was that I didn't like being for sale.

  Senator SKYPACK. You mean your problem was that you wanted to chicken out on the national defense. That's more like it.

  BARRY RUDD. As always, when I have a problem, I set about trying to find a solution. Now, I have learned by experience that

  Monday, October 28

  there are three stages to solving a problem. First comes a period of rambling, when there's no sure destination, just meandering around in the underbrush of the mind trying to flush up ideas. This aimless beating around can be hard work for me, by the way, or seem like it. By Tuesday afternoon last week, after •school, when I was sitting talking with Charley Perkonian at the bowling alleys—

  Mr. BROADBENT. He told us you were watching a certain Mr. Piggy Kowalski.

  BARRY RUDD. That's correct. It was Piggy Kowalski who triggered my solution, indirectly, at least. By that afternoon I was downhearted. Flattop and I had been in the lab earlier in the afternoon when Dr. Gozar had come storming in and had made her stink bomb—which I gather you now know all about —and there'd been something so ferocious about her behavior, she'd been so brusque with me, that I'd been forced to conclude that somehow things were going badly for me. I knew about the Henley lecture; I assumed that the meeting was going against me. Then at the alleys, as we sat watching Piggy Kowalski, Flattop let me in on the plan for the attack on our home, which was to be that evening, and my heart really sank.

  Senator SKYPACK. Do you expect us to believe that—'heart really sank'—when you went right out and took part in the rumble yourself?

  BARRY RUDD. I don't expect you to believe, Senator Skypack, that I'd take part in a rumble, as you call it, against my own mother.

  Senator SKYPACK. The cops picked you up, didn't they?

  Senator MANSFIELD. That's another story, Jack. One thing at a time, please.

  Senator SKYPACK. All right. All right.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Please go on. At the bowling alley.

  BARRY RUDD. I told Flattop I was lonely. In his down-to-air

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  earth way he asked me why, and I said it was because of my eccentricity. He said that that was too long a word for him to bother with, and I explained it, and he said if being that way upset me, why didn't I get hep and be like everybody else? I told him that Dr. Gozar had made me realize that the essence of scientific creativity is disciplined eccentricity. Flattop said, Tor God sake!' I said that she had shown me how, even on cut-and-dried experiments and demonstrations in the lab, you could learn more, perhaps discover more, perhaps get on the path to true greatness, by not following the book too slavishly, by breaking rules beautifully, as she put it. Flattop said, 'You mean like Don Carter bowls the wrong way, with a bent elbow, looks like he's got arthur-itis, so he wins the national championship?' That was it, exactly. Flattop understands me. But I told him that people who break rules are lonely; that Mr. Cleary had said I was a quasi-foreigncr in my peer group. Then the old catalogue began riffling in my head. A few who were 'adjusted' occurred to me. Voltaire—apparently an all-round fellow, admired and beloved by his contemporaries in school. Thackeray—wonderfully social and good-humored. Victor Hugo—leader in the boys' games. But there were so many others who were lonely or rejected or overbearing. I told Flattop that Jeremy Bentham was almost a dwarf, so he was left out of children's play, but, having a mind of somebody twice his age, he treated all other children as dunces. That at the age of twelve Benjamin Franklin invented extension paddles for his hands and feet so he could outswim his friends; he had to be better than anybody. That at ten Mozart invented an imaginary kingdom, of which he made a map—and of which he, of course, was king. That when he was eight, Elie Metchnikoff, the Russian biologist, used to pay children to listen to his lectures on the local flora. That before he was five, Thomas Chatterton presided over his playmates as if they were his hired servants. Maladjusted, the whole kit and kaboodle.

  Monday, October 28

  Senator SKYPACK. Didn't Flattop think you were a bit conceited for comparing yourself to all those people?

  BARRY RUDD. No. He thinks they're just characters in television serials I've watched.

  Senator SKYPACK. Including Benjamin Franklin?

  BARRY RUDD. Sure. Sure. He used to watch See It Now. He told me once he thought Thomas Jefferson was cool—sort of like Phil Silvers, only not quite as funny; unlike Phil Silvers, he wore a wig; Phil Silvers could stand to use a wig, he said.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Let's get back to solving your problem, please, Master Rudd.

  BARRY RUDD. I hadn't talked with Flattop much about the child buyer, but now I suddenly began unburdening myself to him, and I told him what a nightmare it all was to me, and I asked him what in the world to do.

  Senator SKYPACK. Asking advice of a no-goodnik who still smells of the correction home!

  BARRY RUDD. He advised doing something bad. He said, They get feeling sorry for you.'

  Senator SKYPACK. Wanted you to violate that poor little virgin girl.

  BARRY RUDD. No, sir, he didn't have any specific suggestions at first, and we stopped talking about the problem altogether, and Charley was pointing out to me the delicacy of Piggy Kowalski's bowling style, so finicky for such a brute, he's a huge man, when I guess we both simultaneously noticed the floozy tattooed on Piggy's right arm in such a way—with her hands clasped behind her head and her legs straddling the biceps, tri-cepts, and brachialis muscles—that on the backswing and delivery she did a sort of grind and bump. And that was where the second stage of problem solving came in. This is the phase of inspiration—when in the midst of a recess from work on the problem, while not thinking about it at all, a flash comes up from the depths of the mind which doesn't quite give the so-

  THE CHILD BUYER

  lution but hints at it. Looking at that tattoo, I very nearly had itf And by a curious coincidence Flattop must have experienced the same illumination at the same moment, because he exclaimed, 'Jeez, Hairy Barry, I got the answer. "I Was a Pre-Tccn-Age Stickleback." '

  Senator SKYPACK. So the
n you picked your victim?

  BARRY RUDD. There followed the third phase of creative work. We knew we were on the right track, but we needed a period of consolidation, verification, elaboration. The basic notion was that I would break a rule beautifully, and get caught, that it would be with a female of the species, because we both sensed that here was where the rules were most deeply tribal. I would be not simply delinquent, I would be taboo. I would make my protest against civilization in terms as old as civilization itself. I give Flattop just as full marks as myself for this apt insight. You see, this is where Flattop, in his way, has a kind of talent. If only there were some way of harnessing it.

  Senator SKYPACK. So now you want to put an ordinary J.D., a time server, on a pedestal!

  BARRY RUDD. He deserves a pedestal, Senator. He'd be a worthy citizen if one could be found for him. Anyway, we discussed many details. For the central approach to my misbe-havioral adventure I adopted a line of which Flattop disapproved: the gynecological approach. Flattop wanted a more elemental action, something meatier. As things turned out, I think he may have been right. My crime passionel turned out to be a flimsy curiosity. Here we sit politely mulling it over, when what I needed was to be clapped into Clarkdale. But be that as it may, I told Flattop that I had to follow my own natural bent, which was, alas, scientific rather than lascivious. I could read up on my approach at the library, with Miss Cloud's help—and later I did.

  Senator MANSFIELD. How could you be sure you'd be caught?

  Monday, October 28

  BARRY RUDD. This again was Flattop's contribution, in large part. He had observed, during his frequent visits to the boys' bathroom, which is in the basement of Lincoln, that Dr. Gozar inspects the cellar installations of the school at two o'clock sharp every day, that her tour takes twelve minutes to the dot, and that afterwards she invariably returns to her office. I remembered the closet off her office. Florence Renzulli contributed the bit about planting her shoe in Dr. Gozar's office; Florence was most co-operative. I'm very fond of her, and very grateful. My time alone with her was fascinating. She has a mature development, prepubesccnce like young corn silk, excellent pelvis.

  Senator SKYPACK. I see you're not repentant in the slightest degree.