The Child Buyer

by Hersey John.

  Monday, October 28

  younger generation? First the stink bomb. Then our house. Then Barry's in this sex trouble. She's counting the disasters on her fingers. Barry in sex trouble? That was news to me. I knew he was advanced for his age mentally, but . . .

  Mr. BROADBENT. And?

  Mr. RUDD. She suddenly started taking off on Miss Perrin. That's Barry's teacher.

  Mr. BROADBENT. We know.

  Mr. RUDD. She said Miss Perrin was trying to get the meeting called off. She said Miss Perrin wasn't fit to be a teacher, all like that. She really railed along.

  Mr. BROADBENT. What did you say?

  Mr. RUDD. What did I say! I couldn't have wedged the narrow side of my putty knife in between the words. I didn't have a look-in. First thing I knew, I heard her say I was to be there at eight o'clock sharp and then I'm reading the word ROADMASTER on her rear end going down the street.

  Mr. BROADBENT. After that, what happened?

  Mr. RUDD. Well, I was just beginning to have my reaction, I'd been too surprised to even get proper mad, but after she left I was building up, I tell you I could've smashed some windows myself—when Mr. Brain-child comes sashaying home. Whistling. 'Surrey with a Fringe on Top*—most cheerful gol-dang song ever written.

  Mr. BROADBENT. And you then had a talk with him?

  Mr. RUDD. Which didn't exactly give me relief.

  Mr. BROADBENT. What do you mean?

  Mr. RUDD. I mean I asked him what his objection was to going off with Mr. Jones and saving his country, et cetera. And you know what he said? I remember the words. You want to hear what he said?

  Mr. BROADBENT. Yes, we do.

  Mr. RUDD. 'I don't give a fig for my country/ Either 'fig' or

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  'frig/ I'm not sure of anything any more in this world.

  Senator SKYPACK. Did you hear that, Mr. Chairman? Do you need more than that? Are you satisfied now?

  Mr. BROADBENT. What else, Mr. Rudd?

  Mr. RUDD. I asked him what he did give a fig for, or a frig for. Know what he said? 'The future of the animal kingdom/

  Mr. BROADBENT. Thank you, Mr. Rudd. That's all.

  Senator SKYPACK. My God! Don't you think it's about time we cracked down, Aaron?

  Senator MANSFIELD. All the same, Jack, don't forget that human beings are part of the animal kingdom.

  Senator SKYPACK. Now I've heard it all! You, Aaron!

  Mr. BROADBENT. I will call Miss Charity Perrin.

  Senator MANSFIELD. You've already taken your oath, Miss Perrin. Please just be seated.

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

  Mr. BROADBENT. We have information, Miss Perrin, that as the boy Barry Rudd's teacher you opposed the holding of the emergency Lincoln P.-T.A. meeting last Thursday evening. Is this correct, and if so, why did you take such a position?

  Miss PERRIN. I wouldn't say opposed, sir. It wouldn't be for me to—

  Mr. BROADBENT. Did you not solicit the support of Dr. Gozar in trying to prevent the meeting, and did you not telephone Mr. Owing and Mrs. Sloat on the subject?

  Miss PERRIN. I did make some calls, and I realize it wasn't for a teacher. . . . The initials P.-T.A.—I realize P. comes before T., I know I don't have any business—

  Mr. BROADBENT. Just tell us why, Miss Perrin. What was your angle?

  Monday, October 28

  Miss PERRIN. To be perfectly honest, there was one aspect . . .

  Mr. BROADBENT. Which was?

  Miss PERRIN. But, truly, it's giving me too much credit, to say I 'opposed/1 wouldn't have the nerve to—

  Senator SKYPACK. All right, all right, miss. Spit it out.

  Miss PERRIN. You mean, the aspect—?

  Senator SKYPACK. I mean, spit it out.

  Miss PERRIN. Well, there was one thing. Mind you, the parents at our school are good people, very kind people, and they put a lot of time and effort into school affairs. But it often seems to me—I'll say it sometimes seems to me—that they—I don't want to be too harsh—they miss the point.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Specifically?

  Miss PERRIN. This meeting, you see. It was to be a big explosive meeting about the troubles last week—about the decline and decay of the younger generation. About the unfortunate incident at Miss Henley's lecture, and the attack on the Rudds' home, and what someone saw Barry and Florence doing. The meeting was going to be all about those things. What's Wrong With American Youth?—and not a word, either before the meeting or at it, about the real point.

  Mr. BROADBENT. The real point?

  Miss PERRIN. The child buyer.

  Mr. BROADBENT. The proposition wasn't discussed?

  Miss PERRIN. Not a whisper. Neither before or during. It was just taken for granted, I guess. Forgive me, I know I have no right to criticize—but what I'd like to say is, if all you look for is delinquency, you're going to find it. There's so much good in young people—sometimes our best parents, I mean a cultured mother like Mrs. Sloat—it sometimes seems to me they're not really interested in good education for their children, they're only interested in getting school people fired.

  Senator SKYPACK. You trying to condone these perpetual

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  sex incidents, Miss Perrin?

  Miss PERRIN. No, of course not. I—

  Senator SKYPACK. How's your memory, miss?

  Miss PERRIN. Oh, I have a very poor memory, sir. I've often wished . . .

  Senator SKYPACK. It seems you have, miss. Do you remember a certain teachers' strike in the northeastern part of this State in the year—

  Senator MANSFIELD. Let's get back to that meeting, Jack.

  Senator SKYPACK. It's perfectly obvious, Aaron. This lady has no respect for the authorities. I mean we've got the facts, here, why don't we use them?

  Senator MANSFIELD. Pretty ancient facts, Jack. Mr. Wairy told us that had all been forgotten. Mr. Broadbent, the meeting.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Now I want you to confine yourself, Miss Perrin, to the teachers' side of things at the meeting. Mrs. Sloat will give us the parents' slant. What did the teachers have to say?

  Miss PERRIN. There was a lot of talk about Barry, of course.

  Mr. BROADBENT. What was said—strictly by teachers?

  Miss PERRIN. Dr. Gozar said he's a topnotch student who'll make an outstanding research scientist; that his interest is deep, scholarly, tending toward the theoretical . . . Gaining in poise . . .

  Mr. BROADBENT. Anyone else?

  Miss PERRIN. Miss Bagas, first grade, said she considered him extremely sympathetic—told how once another child had a stopped-up nose while reciting, and Barry blew his nose very hard several times, as if that would clear out the other child's nostrils.

  Mr. BROADBENT. You trying to say there was nothing but praise?

  Miss PERRIN. There were favorable comments. I hate to repeat unkind—

  Monday, October 28

  Senator SKYPACK. I'd advise you to be a co-operative witness, miss.

  Miss PERRIN. Why should I go against my—?

  Senator SKYPACK. The initials U.C.N.T. mean anything to you, miss?

  Miss PERRIN. Oh.

  Senator SKYPACK. Ever hear of the Union of Clerks, Nurses, and Teachers, miss? Ever hear about the rotten apples in that barrel, miss? Ever hear about the part it played in the upstate teachers' strike, back in the Depression?

  Miss PERRIN. I . . . Dear me, I . . .

  Senator MANSFIELD. Jack. I really feel—

  Senator SKYPACK. All right. Let her answer the questions, then. If she's going to sit there and pass judgment on parents and lawmakers.

  Miss PERRIN. Please. I want to do my duty. I know I have a responsibility. . . . Miss Songevine, it's common knowledge the children call her The Knife. She talked about him in the third grade, the beginning of the year they had a reader, Our Friends Around the Corner, and she said, TIe'd gone through the whole book the second day and remembered everything in it.' Miss Songevine
has this sarcastic edge to her voice. 'He had a good-humored tolerance/ she said.' "I've come to class; I have to sit here."' Miss Songevine said she thought she could use him to present some social-studies material on the blackboard 'with a little elegance/ she said, 'but he couldn't read his own writing/ She gave up using him for demonstration work. But I've heard Barry criticize her, too. Says she used double negatives.

  Senator SKYPACK. I don't see this is getting us anywhere, Aaron.

  Miss PERRIN. I do want to help, Senator. I do. Do you want more adverse comment on Barry? 'His attitude of superiority to

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  the work we're doing'—Miss Trent. Immature. Conceited. Lack of facial reaction. Strange chunky torso. That's what some of them say. Anything else you want? I do realize . . .

  Senator SKYPACK. It's this same sniveling attitude as before from this witness, Aaron. Couldn't we move on?

  Senator MANSFIELD. Were you finished, Mr. Broadbent?

  Mr. BROADBENT. I'm inclined to go along with Senator Sky-pack, Mr. Chairman. The witness . . .

  Senator MANSFIELD. Thank you for testifying, Miss Perrin, that will be all for now.

  Mr. BROADBENT. The next witness will be Mrs. William Sloat.

  Senator MANSFIELD. If you will just stand—in front of the chair there, please, Mrs. Sloat—and I'll swear you in.

  Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give on the matters now pending before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

  Mrs. SLOAT. I do.

  TESTIMONY OF MRS. JEFFERSON SLOAT, PRESIDENT, LINCOLN P.-T.A., PEQUOT

  Mr. BROADBENT. You are Mrs. William L. Sloat?

  Mrs. SLOAT. No. Mrs. Jefferson Sloat.

  Senator VOYOLKO. Crying out loud, we got the wrong witness?

  Mr. BROADBENT. We understood from our investigators that you were a Mrs. Bill Sloat. Bill L. Sloat.

  Mrs. SLOAT. I am called Bill.

  Mr. BROADBENT. That's your name?

  Mrs. SLOAT. No, it's my nickname.

  Mr. BROADBENT. That's your nickname? Your friends all call you Bill?

  Mrs. SLOAT. That's correct.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Your real name being?

  Mrs. SLOAT. Wilhelmina Langwell Sloat.

  Mr. BROADBENT. You are President of the Lincoln School Parent-Teachers' Association?

  Mrs. SLOAT. And concurrently President of the Pequot P.-T.A. Council. And President of the Pequot Republican Women's Club, and President—

  Mr. BROADBENT. Yes, madam, we understand you're a devoted public servant. As we understand it, madam, you called an emergency meeting of the Lincoln School P.-T.A. last Thursday evening, to discuss—

  Mrs. SLOAT. To discuss delinquency. The shocking looseness of our young people. I say 'young/ These things are happening at a younger and younger age; that's the disturbing thing.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Exactly. And would you mind describing the meeting for our benefit, madam?

  Mrs. SLOAT. We started with the usual business meeting, and this took longer than normally because we had a rather heated discussion of our next Get-Acquainted Night. Mrs. Toll wanted the traditional hot covered-dish supper, and Mrs. Bennett, who has only lived in Pequot nine years and, you know, she has the typical newcomer's desire to revolutionize everything, well, she wanted a Mexican-style smorgasbord. Toward the end of the discussion, in walked Mrs. Singerly, right down to a seat in front of the auditorium—she hadn't been invited, I purposely wanted to keep this meeting in the family; she's on the Board of Education, and she has an insufferable attitude and carriage. Walking down the auditorium—as if to say, 'Are you looking at me? Did you notice me yet?' Typical! I remember her when she was just a lowly program chairman at Pohadnock Elementary. She'd heard about our closed-doors meeting—

  Mr. BROADBENT. Excuse me, madam.

  Mrs. SLOAT. —and she made it her business—

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  Mr. BROADBENT. If I may interrupt.

  Mrs. SLOAT. —to come uninvited—

  Mr. BROADBENT. If you please, Mrs. Sloat. We are interested in the Rudd case. These Senators are busy men. If you would kindly confine your details.

  Mrs. SLOAT. Of course. We got to the delinquency problem at about a quarter to nine. I don't know if you've heard of the shocks we've had in our peaceful village the last few days.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Yes, madam.

  Mrs. SLOAT. One's at a loss—I think it must'vc been our young men going overseas, the last couple of wars, mixing with foreign riffraff, geisha girls, existentialists. Our Customs people ought to charge a duty on immorality. It's all imported. You know that.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Madam, I beseech you. The Rudd case.

  Mrs. SLOAT. Mrs. Bontecu told us that she remembered traveling on the train, I think it was to Springfield, this was last year, and the Rudd boy was on there, all alone. He was going to visit relatives, Easter-vacation time. Imagine sending a nine-year-old child on a train trip alone! They ought to abolish reformatories like Clarkdale and turn them into penitentiaries for parents. I mean it. Mrs. Bontecu said that boy would talk to anyone. She overheard him talking to this Jewish man about how the Egyptians buried their dead, the way they used to stiffen up the dead flesh for mummies. Then the thing happened that Mrs. Bontecu wanted to tell us. The boy had a pair of hamsters with him in a box, sort of like guinea pigs, and he took them out, and they were running all over the car, and then. One of them, it must have been a female, had a litter of babies right there just off the aisle. The boy gathered a whole crowd around to watch, and as Mrs. Bontecu said, she told this story to illustrate that this boy was already interested in sex in his ninth year. You talk about precocious.

  Monday, October 28

  Mr. BROADBENT. What else, madam?

  Mrs. SLOAT. Here's something I brought along with me. Two years ago Mrs. Parsons had to call on the Rudds in an every-parcnt membership-drive canvass, their home is a pigsty, anyway Mrs. Rudd was bragging about Barry, and she showed Mrs. Parsons this little sign that was tacked over the boy's work table. Molly Parsons was so scandalized that she asked Mrs. Rudd could she have it, and Mrs. Rudd seemed flattered and gladly gave it to her, and Molly kept it all this time and brought it to our meeting. Here, I'll just turn it over to you.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Thank you.

  Senator SKYPACK. What does it say, Broadbent?

  Mr. BROADBENT. It's a little sign, like an ad. It says, 'Are you

  getting DUMB? TRY PROFESSOR B. RUDD'S MACHINE THAT WILL MAKE YOU SMART.'

  Mrs. SLOAT. To show the conceit of that boy.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Could we admit this document into the record, Mr. Chairman?

  Senator MANSFIELD. It will be admitted.

  (The document referred to was marked 'Sloat Exhibit No. i' and filed.)

  Mr. BROADBENT. Please go on about the meeting, madam.

  Mrs. SLOAT. Mrs. Singerly—the School Board one—tried to take up for the boy, but I'm glad to say she was hooted down. She tried to say that Barry Rudd has a 'notable dissatisfaction with present explanations of the way the world works/ that he is 'non-Panglossian,' whatever that is, and a lot of other affected statements. But then fortunately we got off on trying to find constructive solutions. Maria Tenn, she's one of the sixth-grade room mothers, she proposed that we set up a committee to look into the Reading Shelf in Miss Perrin's room, see if it's some of this insidious material in the textbooks and outside-reading books that accounts for the promiscuity and lack of respect for prop-

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  erty in our youngsters. And Mrs. Toll introduced a resolution of censure of Mr. Scan Cleary, he's our man in charge of what they call Guidance, on account of the Tell-Who Test he used in the talent search, because he had questions in there like Tell who among your friends cheats a little on tests,' and Tell who's a liar in your class.' Any parent with any self-respect has been trying all these years to teach her children not to tattle, and he
re you have the school system insisting on it.

  Mr. BROADBENT. We understand you summoned Mr. Rudd to the meeting. What part did he play?

  Mrs. SLOAT. We'd intended to call him to task for his son's— I mean, it's up to a father to tighten the cinch, get a stiff curb bit in there, hike up on the reins.

  Mr. BROADBENT. What was said to Mr. Rudd?

  Mrs. SLOAT. We didn't have time.

  Mr. BROADBENT. What about Miss Perrin?

  Mrs. SLOAT. Well, I think this business of tenure. Now, she's a perfect example. Your hands are tied, you can't let a teacher like her go if you want to. They get entrenched in there, dug in—automatic raises every year.

  Mr. BROADBENT. In another connection, Mrs. Sloat. What do you feel the position of your organization would be with respect to the man Wissey Jones's proposal to buy Barry Rudd and take him—

  Mrs. SLOAT. The P.-T.A. couldn't meddle with that kind of thing. That's a business matter, the P.-T.A. has no right to get into questions of private enterprise. Of course, if you want my own personal opinion, it would be good riddance. They say the boy's a budding genius, and I say I don't trust geniuses.

  Senator SKYPACK. Other words, miss, you think the boy should be sold.

  Mrs. SLOAT. Definitely. I speak only for Bill Sloat, you understand. But definitely.

  Monday, October 28

  Senator SKYPACK. That's enough for me.

  Mr. BROADBENT. Thank you, madam. That will be all. Yes, you may step aside. The first door. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to call Master Barry Rudd.

  Senator MANSFIELD. O.K., sonny, just take your place again.

  TESTIMONY OF BARRY RUDD, MINOR, TOWN OF PEQUOT

  Mr. BROADBENT. Now, Master Rudd, we understand that you were present at the second interview in Pcquot between the man Wisscy Jones and your school Guidance Director, Mr. Cleary—the crucial interview, as we sec it, in turning the tide toward the violent events of this past week in Pequot. We want to question you about that conversation.

  Senator MANSFIELD. What day was that?

  Mr. BROADBENT. That was Saturday, sir, Saturday the nineteenth.

  Senator MANSFIELD. Then that was before any of the disturbances weVe been talking about? You keep dodging around so.