The Child Buyer (7 page)

Senator MANSFIELD. There you go again, Mr. Broadbent, suddenly shifting your line of questioning.

Mr. BROADBENT. We have a lot of ground to cover, sir—

Senator MANSFIELD. I don't want to get left on that street corner again. Was there anything else there on the street corner, Doctor?

Dr. GOZAR. Mr. Wairy was ill at ease—I tower over him—and he said the talent-search charts were in my office, and Mr. Jones smiled—it's the first and last time I've seen him smile—the smile was like mud drying up and cracking in the sun—and the child buyer (of course I didn't know that that was what he was) said he'd like to visit me, and that displeased me so much that I turned my back and strode away. In a full skirt I can make forty-five inches to the stride.

Senator MANSFIELD. Thank you. Carry along, Mr. Broadbent.

Mr. BROADBENT. Concerning your conversation with Mr. Clcary on the talent search—

Dr. GOZAR. This boy Cleary is a shifty one; I'll bet he spun you a yarn. We were there by the jungle gym—he told you?—and I ragged him on his silly tests, and he agreed that some of them were meaningless, so I asked him why he gave them. He said because people want talent searches; the public wants them. 'It comes down to a question of what your aim is in life,' he said. Tou have to be a realist. The only way to get ahead is to operate. A man can't get to be Superintendent of Schools who doesn't politick and look at the angles.' I said I didn't want to be Superintendent: Who wants to be Willard Owing? I said, 'I just want to stir some of these kids up. I believe in the infinite potentiality of young people, and I think I can do something about it. Maybe I'm dreaming—but if I am, let's not wake me up.' 'That's all slop and sentiment,' he said. He half lifted himself on the bars of the jungle gym, stretching and tensing as if limbering up his powers. 'You've got to face facts,' he said; 'look at things as they are.' I said I thought there was such a thing as being too practical. He swung down off the frame like a chim-

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panzee and pushed his face right into mine and said, 'You'll pay for that belief someday*—as if he meant that he personally was going to get even with me for being idealistic. Pah! He's no match for a battle-scarred old bitch like me! I tell you, furthermore, I looked right back at him, and his big hypnotic stare sort of wavered and turned aside, and he changed the subject. 'Gad, what lovely weather/ he said, or shouted, letting go the bars, extending his arms overhead, and filling his lungs with the dry air that was already, so early in the morning, scented with leaf smoke. 'Don't these autumn days make you feel twice man-size?' He asked me that Why, the little snot! He knew I could wrestle him to a fall without being an inch bigger than I am. So I said, 'What do you want in life, Cleary?' And he said, 'I want to get out of this dump. I want to get to a nice rich suburban community—station wagons and swimming pools. Some place alive. This place . . . That dingy Intervale section!' I said, 'No, seriously: What do you really want? What keeps you going?' 'What do I want?' he said. 'I want a high salary, and a wife and house and kids, and a Mercedes igoSL, and—' I said, 'Hell, that's anybody. I mean you/ Then he said, 'I want to help people/ and I said, 'Don't make me laugh/ He got red and said, 'I want to be the best damn guidance man in the State/ That's more like it/ I said, 'but is that all?' He took one look at me, and then he had the sense to grin, which was a way of saying O.K., I give up. 'You're so full of questions/ he said, 'what makes you tick?' And I told him: 'Curiosity/

Mr. BROADBENT. What happened then, Doctor?

Dr. GOZAR. We looked up at a high tower of the schoolhouse, because up there the alarm bell fastened against the bricks had started a loud clatter. On the playground the noise of the bell ran through the shouting of the children like a cold blast of wind, and the crowd of pupils swayed and moved toward the building, and Cleary and I strolled toward the front entrance.

The school is an old, dark, brick, two-story contraption, a Norman fortress, built as if learning and virtue need a stronghold, one defended by old-fashioned weapons, a place of turrets and parapets, with narrow slits in the bricks through which scholars with crossbows can peep out at an atomic world. The building makes education itself seem archaic, monastic—shabby, too. The paint on its blinds and trim is cracking; its double front door, with its rattling push bars, is of a dirty tawny color. Above the entranceway, over an arch in relief that doesn't bear any structural weight, our State motto's written in parched and spalled cement letters, 'Land of Steady Habits/ The children hustled past us. A few ran, but the crowd as a whole didn't press, because this was the daily moment of anticipation—of excitement, regret, and fear in the face of another day in school.

Senator MANSFIELD. I remember that feeling. I used to get the shivers.

Dr. GOZAR. On the sidewalk by the street some distance behind us there was a cracking sound of high heels, and I heard a voice call Cleary, and I turned and saw Charity Perrin running along the concrete walkway trying to catch up to us. She's a woman past sixty, you know, very shy in her demeanor, a narrow person, having hardly more beam than one span of my hand—of course, my hand's as big as a big man's hand—and tiny shoulders, and pelvic bones no heavier, I'd guess, than the outspread wings of a sparrow; a delicate, homely woman, but that morning she was wearing the bold colors of autumn, and as she ran the colors turned and flew, so she was like a flurry of October leaves blown along the ground.

Mr. BROADBENT. And she spoke to Mr. Cleary about his talent search?

Dr. GOZAR. I'll say she did! She gave him what-for because Barry Rudd's name wasn't on the talent charts. He said it was so. She asked where. He said on the chart for leadership.

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Tab!' she said. 'Leadership, my foot/

Mr. BROADBENT. We thought she was more of a timid person.

Dr. GOZAR. It's true, this was a surprisingly spirited retort for her. She's usually much more humble than that. She's so modest that sometimes, I swear, she herself must see the absurdity of her protestations of inferiority. But now and then she'll amaze you. She'll stand up and fight like a cat.

Mr. BROADBENT. After this conversation?

Dr. GOZAR. I was doing some work in my office, when in comes the Super, puffing like a steam engine, wanting to talk with Clcary. So I went to fetch him. deary's office is a dark narrow cavity with a high slit of a window, formerly a coat closet that had a long rack down the middle; you can still see the rack's screw-holed round footprints marching down the center of the floor. Clcary's desk, at the window end, is a still-life portrait of an overburdened man with a procrastinating nature: it's a heap: things have been thrown on it not so much in disorder as in despair. I told him Mr. Owing was in my office and wanted to talk with him. Clcary was reading in some child's folder, and he carefully closed it, tossed it onto the mess on his desk, and stood up, brushing the front of his suit with his hands, as if he'd been having a little feast out of that folder and some gobbets and crumbs had fallen on his lap and chest.

Mr. BROADBENT. And did you sit in on this conference between the Superintendent and Mr. deary?

Dr. GOZAR. Certainly not. I can't stand the Super when he has a head of steam. Quandaries! I vacated.

Mr. BROADBENT. So you didn't know that Mr. Jones was trying to purchase a child until later?

Dr. GOZAR. That's right, but it wasn't much later. The Super hadn't been out of my office five minutes when this Mr. Jones came to call on me in person.

Mr. BROADBENT. What was your impression of him at the time of this visit?

Dr. GOZAR. High and mighty! The way he stares at the wrinkles on your forehead, as if your eyes are beneath him. He thinks he's a brave hunter. Soldat manque, that's my estimate.

Senator VOYOLKO. What kind of monkey you call him, miss?

Senator MANSFIELD. That was French. She was using French, Peter.

Senator VOYOLKO. See what I mean? It's getting like the United Nations around here. Some people don't even know what country they live in.

Mr. BROADBENT. This conversation was in your office?

Dr. GOZAR. Excuse me. You asked my impression of the child buyer, and I want to say just one more thing about him. The man has a terrifying ruthlessness. That bourbon-soaked nose is misleading, the child's-toy motorbike is misleading, the stuff he wears, the fake patience. Even what I was saying about him— the brave front. It doesn't hide what you'd expect. Underneath there's just one slogan: We Must All Obey! He's the devil himself.

Senator SKYPACK. I don't think I have to sit here and listen to that kind of libelous criticism of an outstanding businessman. Wisscy Jones, the concern he represents is making a contribution to the defense—I mean, you just don't know what you're talking about, Doctor.

Dr. GOZAR. This young man of yours asked me a question—

Senator MANSFIELD. That's all right now, Doctor. Mr. Broad-bent, go on with your interrogation.

Mr. BROADBENT. Mr. Jones came to talk with you in your school.

Dr. GOZAR. You remember my saying that Mr. Wairy told the child buyer about the talent-search charts in my office?

Mr. BROADBENT. That's right.

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Dr. GOZAR. He said he'd come to see them. My office is a big, square, dark room, with mahogany-stained wainscoting as high as your shoulder, and half a dozen bookcases with glass fronts, leather chairs, map globe—and deary's crazy charts plastered all over one wall. I said to him, 'Mister, I'm going to be blunt. I've made a lecture on the usefulness of literature, I've appeared at several English groups and reading circles giving that. On the nice way of saying things as opposed to the blunt way. For example, Victor Hugo said, "No army is as powerful as an idea whose time has come." Billy Whizbang said, "Cain't oppose bull-plop with buckshot."' You'll have to excuse me, gentlemen. This is a man's world, and I've gotten used to talking like a man to make my way in it. So I said to Jones, To be blunt: Phooey on the talent search/ I told him there was only one child in Pcquot worth bothering about for brains, that everyone knew who it was but his name wasn't even on the brain end of the talent-search chart. Jones asked who it was, and I told him, and he asked me if this was the boy who knew all the species of birds and animals, and I said that wasn't all he knew by a long shot.

Mr. BROADBENT. And this was the Rudd boy?

Dr. GOZAR. This was the Rudd boy, all right.

Mr. BROADBENT. Did Mr. Jones tell you his proposition?

Dr. GOZAR. Not just then. He asked me if Barry Rudd had a really extraordinary intelligence, and I said, 'I have a kind of contempt for intelligence all by itself. Coupled with energy and willingness, it'll go. Alone it winds up riding the rails/ So Jones got sarcastic on me and asked if I was one of your educators who believes in concentrating on the retarded. That's not educators/ I told him, 'that's missionaries. That's the missionary spirit. Leaving the ninety-nine sheep and going out for the lamb that's lost may be good theology, but it's mighty poor sheepery—and mighty poor schoolery, too/

Mr. BROADBENT. What is it that the Rudd boy has, then?

Dr. GOZAR. Enthusiasm! Quite early with children you encounter a certain enthusiasm. You work on that, and in some cases you find there's interest with only a small amount of understanding. You feel badly about that. But I've always found you can do more with that, you can play on that. I can think of some very successful professional men, former pupils of mine at Lincoln, who I don't think are very bright, but they're living up very close to their capacities. Bright ones sometimes get stuck along the route in some little byway of research and stay there all their lives. But when you get the one in a million with both —mind as clear as a window and incurable enthusiasm, too! That's Barry. That's Barry.

Mr. BROADBENT. Please go back to your talk with Mr. Jones.

Dr. GOZAR. He asked me Barry's I.Q. It's the highest I've ever seen in forty-six years in the school business, and it's the highest I'll ever see in my whole life. But who cares? Do you know what an I.Q. is, my boy?

Mr. BROADBENT. Why it ... it tells how bright a person is.

Dr. GOZAR. It does? Are you sure?

Mr. BROADBENT. Intelligence Quotient. I once sneaked a look in my high-school data folder in the principal's office and saw that I have an I.Q. of one hundred twenty-six. Is that—

Dr. GOZAR. Meaningless. Means nothing, unless you can tell me more. What test was it based on? There are fifty different tests, some good, some poor. You don't know. You don't even know the difference between an individual test and a group test.

Mr. BROADBENT. No, Doctor, I—

Dr. GOZAR. Yet you talk about I.Q. as if it were a thing.

Mr. BROADBENT. In school—

Dr. GOZAR. Personally, after forty-six years in this racket, I have more respect for the P.Q. than I have for the I.Q. I mean the Perspiration Quotient. I told Jones that. I told him that character is all that really matters. You take and give high in-

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telligence to a person with poor character, a person who uses his brains to further, rather than adjust, his natural selfish desires, then you're going to wind up with a dangerous enemy to the security of all of us.

Senator MANSFIELD. Could we get back to your conversation with the child buyer, please, Doctor?

Dr. GOZAR. I haven't gotten away from it. This is all what I told him. He began a lot of pompous talk then about national security—I guess he was leading up to his proposition—about a crisis in national defense. I told him crisis is the essence of democracy. The only way you can get forward motion is crisis. Ideal democracy is crisis, individual people gritting their teeth and doing their darnedest to overcome bad situations—cheating, chiseling, unfairness, discrimination, stupidity in high places. So what was he so excited about? Crisis! Well, he said he was worried about what was happening to the younger generation. And I told him, I said, 'I have a firm belief in the infinite potential of people; especially of young people. I suppose you think the younger generation is soft/ I said, 'that it doesn't have spunk, it's made up of loafers and beatniks who can't put their nose to the grindstone the way the older generation did. I belong to the older generation/ I said, 'and I think the younger generation is a distinct notch up. At times these young people don't thrill to the idea of work for work's sake, and in that they're the spit and image of people of our generation. You'll find kids break the law sometimes, but they don't break it anything like as horribly as grown people do. They can act silly in a meeting but not near as silly as some of your grown men in a fraternal-order initiation or even in the august halls of this State Capitol, Senators, excuse me. I've seen a high-school boy whooping with a couple of beers under his belt, but there's a dive called The Beach down our way, and it's so-called grownups who go there. For every juvenile delinquent, for every Sonny Wisecarver and