The Child Buyer (12 page)

Mr. BROADBENT. How were things left with Mr. Cleary the other day when he came to warn you?

Mrs. RUDD. He said not to decide anything without talking to him, as if he was our lawyer, or like that. I was all mixed up, nervy, the way I get if something new happens. All I wanted was what would be good for Barry. Paul came in from work a few minutes after the G-man left, and he was hungry and kind of edgy, wanted to know why supper wasn't ready. So I told him about the visit, the G-man, the child buyer. Right off the bat

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Paul was crazy to sell, he wanted to go right out and find the buyer and close the deal. He saw all this big money, saw how we could start and do favors for people. Said we wouldn't ever have to crawl again. I had an awful heavy feeling, as if some force I could dimly remember was going to interfere again in my life. I wanted to go slow. But then Barry came in the room while we were talking, and we told him. We told him exactly what was what.

Mr. BROADBENT. How did he take it?

Mrs. RUDD. As I say, it isn't easy to tell with him. But if anything, I wouldVe said he was delighted. It gave me the shivers, and that heavy feeling got worse.

Senator MANSFIELD. Mr. Broadbent, have you brought Mr. Rudd up here today?

Mr. BROADBENT. Yes, sir, he's available, sir.

Senator MANSFIELD. I'd like to question him.

Mr. BROADBENT. Call Mr. Paul Rudd.

Senator MANSFIELD. Thank you, Mrs. Rudd, we'll excuse you for now. Very helpful . . . Mr. Rudd? Please stand to be sworn.

Do you solemnly swear that you will tell this committee on its present business the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Mr. RUDD. I do.

TESTIMONY OF MR. PAUL RUDD, MACHINIST, TOWN OF PEQUOT

Senator MANSFIELD. Mr. Rudd, we've taken testimony from your wife about Mr. Cleary coming to your home, last Thursday, and how he broke the news to her about the child buyer, and she informed us under oath that on being told about this visit, you were eager to take up the deal. What I want to know, sir, is, what possessed you? How would a father want to sell his son?

Friday, October 25

Senator SKYPACK. Don't you suppose it's possible, Mr. Chairman, that this gentleman was influenced by patriotic motives? Just the way, in time of war, a man is proud to see his son sign up with the service, the colors? The nature of this deal was such—

Mr. RUDD. Yes, sir, that's the way I felt. I felt that way. Proud. I did.

Senator MANSFIELD. But, Mr. Rudd, your wife said you wanted the money.

Mr. RUDD. A son's supposed to earn his keep, he takes over and supports the parents. Is that unnatural? I mean on the other side, my father came from Czechoslovakia, and the thing you tried to do was to give birth to sons, so as they would grow up and support you. Girl children weren't worth anything, except they could have sons. You put in your sweat and earnings for a boy, food, schooling, getting him ready, and then the time comes, and it's his turn. Is that so unnatural?

Senator MANSFIELD. At ten years of age?

Mr. RUDD. They keep telling me he's got the mind of a eighteen-, twenty-year-old. A young fellow works with his body when he's grown into it, the same should go for working with his head. I don't see that that's so unnatural. My father went to work when he was eleven, in a tannery, he put me to work when I was thirteen. I send him money, room-and-board money, right today. Here's this boy, he's got a perfectly tremendious working capacity with his brain. I can't see it's so unnatural to want to make some use of it. Except the schools of today, they say nobody should work, just be happy, just goldbrick along and the world owes you a living. The older generation owes you the works, that's the attitude. My father, after he came to this country, he got to be a butcher, worked in this chain store, and he was a pretty good butcher, but what he liked to do, he liked to cruise around out-of-the-way lumberyards, and find these pieces of

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strange wood, fancy-grained, that would have a sounding-board quality, resonance, he could tell by just looking at them, and he would carve violins. In the cellar. A fiddler in his village on the other side taught him, and he made creditable instruments, I mean this big instrument company would buy them off my father, a hundred bucks, two hundred a throw. He has this knack with his hands, and he always liked it better than the butchering. So now he's retired, and his wife's with him, and right today I send half the money, my brother sends half, and it cats into my own living. This last summer Fred Zimmer and I, he lives across the street, we decided to make this skiff and buy us an outboard for picnics down the Pehadnock, at Sandy Point and above the light-company dam, and I tell you, I had to scrimp and dig up the cash from nowheres, and yet I'm still sending my old man fancy-wood money even though he can't really woodwork worth a darn any more, it's just to keep him from getting ill-tempered. We built the skiff all right, and got the outboard but it was darn hard. So why shouldn't I want my son to bring something in? Here's this offer, a tremendious sum of money right on a silver platter.

Senator MANSFIELD. Then you put your son's talents in a class with a knack for repairing machinery or trimming cuts of meat or so on?

Mr. RUDD. I've been rougher on the boy than his mother, I'll have to admit it. I spent years trying to make a regular kid of him, didn't realize how hopeless it was. I'm mechanical-minded, I like to tinker, and I never read a thing unless if it's the sports news in the papers. I don't understand a boy like Barry, I never have. I like to go bowling, I'm in the Tuesday-night league, and I take the whole family to the lanes Tuesday nights, and the boy sits there either reading a book or lately he's taken up writing mystery stories, then he tears them up afterwards, it's only for his own amusement. I've always tried to get him outdoors, catch

a ball, get tousled and dirty, but it's just made him keep away from me. He hasn't got enough spunk to show resentment, he just keeps his distance, slinks off. He prefers his grandfather— my old man—to his own father. Oh, he dotes on Grandfather Rudd. It's because the old man tells him these legends, folk tales, from the other side. But I show up—the tail between the legs and out of sight.

Senator MANSFIELD. Then it's your view you have a perfect right to exploit this boy's talents in any way you want?

Mr. RUDD. Why not? I slaved for him for years. I been sitting at a machine over at Trucco eight hours, seven hours a day for years. I fed him, put shoes on him. Why shouldn't he do something for me? Before this deal came along, I was after his mother to put him on TV, get him on a quiz program, exhibit the master mind. Bring in some dough. God knows I tried first to make him regular. I spent months at a time balancing him on a two-wheeler, but the minute I let go, whammo! Off he falls. I'm good with my hands, I'm keeping a one-seventy-two average in my league in the bowling, it gives me the creeps to see him take aholt of a piece of bread at the table.

Senator SKYPACK. I just wanted to say, Mr. Rudd, you've been taking some rather hostile questioning here, but I feel you should know that some of us applaud your position, your patriotism. I mean, a decent father's instincts . . . I'm just surprised how lenient—

Senator MANSFIELD. All right, Mr. Broadbent, I've asked all I want to ask. Have you any questions?

Mr. BROADBENT. Nothing at present, sir.

Senator MANSFIELD. Then I think we should pick up with the boy. Thank you, Mr. Rudd.

Mr. BROADBENT. Please fetch Master Rudd.

Senator SKYPACK. Brother, I hope my blood vessels don't rupture on me.

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Senator MANSFIELD. All right, sonny, you're sworn. Please just take your seat.

TESTIMONY OF BARRY RUDD, MINOR, TOWN OF PEQUOT

Senator MANSFIELD. Just pick up where we broke off, Mr. Broadbent.

Mr. BROADBENT. So after Mr. Cleary left, your parents told you the situation. What was your reaction?

BARRY RUDD. At first I had a feeling of elation, a sudden lift, because somebody important was interested in me. But I've learned to distrust euphoria. I once thought it was a priceless state of ecstasy, a rapture, like a moment when Blake had one of his visions, say, or when Archimedes in his bath realized he could find out whether the tyrant Hieron's crown was pure gold or alloyed, by a simple displacement test. But I've come to understand that it's not a time of revelation—not for me. My moments of inspiration come when I least expect them, when I'm abstracted, walking up the public-library steps, playing gin rummy with Flattop. It seems as if it's the absent mind that solves the problems of this world—for me, anyway.

Mr. BROADBENT. What did you do?

BARRY RUDD. My homework.

Mr. BROADBENT. Where?

BARRY RUDD. No, we had supper first, then Momma and Father and the Monster stayed in the kitchen and I went in the other room to do my homework. I turned the main-room light on by a Rube Goldberg device I'd made. A string is attached to the doorknob, a system of pulleys and weights, and—

Senator MANSFIELD. I think we can picture it, sonny.

BARRY RUDD. There were two problems in connection with

the device. First, the lamp has a revolving switch rather than a chain pull. Second, turning the light on and off every other time, to allow for departures from the room, presented—

Senator MANSFIELD. Yes, sonny, go on.

BARRY RUDD. I went under the lamp, still burning (I was burning, I mean, not the lamp—though it was, too, in its way) with this euphoria—somebody powerful wanted to buy me!— and I began a childish game, very regressed, of playing with my shadow under the lamplight. I'd make my shadow, my other self, first bigger, then smaller; try to jump away from it, disconnect it; try to stamp on it, scare it away. I had thought of my shadow, when I was small, as a gauze thing that could be folded and put in a bureau drawer. Of course you know where that fantasy came from?

Mr. BROADBENT. Then?

BARRY RUDD. I suddenly needed advice, needed to talk with someone I trusted. I saw Grandpa Rudd's picture on the bureau. For years I believed that I could make pictures of people, snapshots, come to life if I could only find the key. I wanted to have a small man, about three inches high, to keep my desk neat at school, tell me stories; he would ride in my book bag. For a long time I thought the key might be to hold my breath and count, forwards or maybe backwards. I realize that this, too, was babyish, but I've clung to a feeling that the pictures, even if they couldn't come all the way to life, could think and see. So I took the picture of Grandpa in my hands, and I asked him what I should do, and something made me drop him, and I had a moment of unrealistic fear that I'd hurt him.

Mr. BROADBENT. What happened then?

BARRY RUDD. As I put my grandfather's picture back, there came over me a feeling of inadequacy—the thought that my heredity was deficient, that I came from a thin line. I thought of some verses of Horace that Dr. Gozar reeled off once when she

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was showing me a few basic facts of heredity through fruit-fly demonstrations: 'In steers, in steeds, appear the merits of their sires; nor do fierce eagles beget timid doves/ My euphoria drained away as I thought of familial talents: how Adams, the son of a president, became president; how vivid the two cousin Roosevelts were; that the Bachs were musical for three generations; that Addison was the son of a Royal Chaplain, Bulwer of an ambitious army general, Hugo of a king's aide, Boyle of a Lord High Treasurer of Ireland. And I remembered: Training increases inborn worth/ Horace went on to say; and I thought of the good fortunes of Mill, Pitt, Mozart, Michelangelo. Then I had to struggle to jack up my spirits, and I thought of unexpected greatness: of Lincoln; of Bunyan, the son of a tinker, Carlyle of a mason, Winckelmann of a cobbler, Canova of a stonecutter, Jansen of a peasant, Kant of a strapmaker. And I thought of my father, who'd said he wanted to let me go if he could get a good enough price, in the next room, watching Maverick on television.

Senator VOYOLKO. Great program.

BARRY RUDD. I finally got down to work. In order to ensure the success of my report on nomenclature, I first followed a ceremony that had helped me a great deal in the past: I sharpened my pencil, pointed the sharp end successively toward the north, east, south, and west, and then, holding it upright, tapped its eraser end repeatedly on the table while, with the fingers of my left hand, starting with the pinky and moving toward the thumb, I flipped the lobe of my left ear. The pencil, incidentally, was John Sano's. He got an A on his last research report, on bread mold, and I'd borrowed it from him, because a pencil that had written so well for him was bound to write well for me.

Senator SKYPACK. Pinky! My God!

BARRY RUDD. My tapping got out of phase with my earlobe flicking, and I began the whole deal over again, even to sharpen-

ing the pencil, to make sure. I know, Senator Skypack, you think this is foolish, you think reliance on this sort of thing—

Senator SYKPACK. You're damn tootin'.

BARRY RUDD. Momma has always dinned into me that leaning on luck, magic, is foolish, and I fenow, in the higher associa-tional and reasoning centers of my cortex, that she's right. Still, just in case. Deep down. But don't get me wrong. I work. I work long sessions. I've observed Dr. Gozar—I watch her by the hour, in her natural habitat, the lab, as if I were on a zoological field ramble, Homo sapiens, a noble specimen, and I've seen her marked willingness to stay at a task, to withstand discomfort, go without food, disregard fatigue and strain, forget a cold or a headache—above all, to face the possibility of failure, and facing that chance seems to me the first prerequisite of success, or completion. And I've learned concentration. I closed the shouting of Bart Maverick out of my mind. I fought the pencil across the page—how I hate the act of recording! But Til tell you something: no matter how awkward I may be at stickball or volleyball, no matter how much I'm the butt of the beefers on the playground—and no matter how jaggedly I write, nevertheless when I get in the lab, next to Dr. Gozar, and we're sorting Pro-methea, Cecropia, and Polyphemus moth larvae, or we're mounting beetles and bugs on pins, I can feel an unusual grace flowing into my fingers, like an electric current. I'm transformed.