The Day They Came to Arrest the Book (2 page)

“As for myself,” the history teacher went on, “I don’t have any problem using ‘he’ to mean both genders because I grew up that way. I have certainly always considered myself part of mankind, after all. But I
understand what you’re talking about, Kate. Just watch out that you don’t fall into such deformities of language as ‘clergyperson’ or ‘policeperson’ or ‘chairperson.’ I will not accept any such genderless abominations in any paper in this class.”

“The newspaper said last night,” Luke volunteered brightly, “that Mr. Moore is the new
chair
of the state principals’ association.”

“He can’t stand any more upholstering than he already has,” said a voice from the back of the room.

“Ridiculous!” Nora Baines sat down with a thump. “All right, let’s get on with nineteenth-century American history. Your first assignment, as you can see by the reading list, will be the numbered pages in Alexis de Tocqueville’s
Democracy in America
. He was a young French nobleman who came here in 1831 to find out what this young country was all about. And one of the things he found was that this was no fake democracy. The people really did rule. Or, as he put it, in America, ‘The people are the cause and the aim of all things; everything comes from them, and everything is absorbed in them.’ ”

Kate snorted. “Male, white people did all the ruling. Period.”

“Patience,” Nora Baines said. “You and Frederick Douglass will get your chance. If I may continue, this young Frenchman was worried, though. Even with all this democracy, something seemed to be missing. What do you suppose it was?”

Silence. Finally broken by Barney. “Well, it has to be what Kate said—only white males shared in that democracy.”

“That is obvious to some of us now,” Nora Baines said. “But what dangerous weakness in the new America did de Tocqueville see
then?”

All faces were blank. The teacher sighed and said, “De Tocqueville was worried that
individual
differences were getting blurred in this grand rule by the people. Here—” She picked up a paperback book. “He wrote: ‘Every citizen, being assimilated to all the rest, is lost in the crowd, and nothing stands conspicuous but the great and imposing image of the people at large.’ ”

There was still puzzlement among the students.

“Okay.” Nora Baines got up and started pacing again. “Just a short time before, a revolutionary war had been fought to get rid of British tyranny. But now, was there a danger that the democratic majority could be as tyrannical as a king? Mind you, this young Frenchman admired a lot about America, but he also wrote: ‘I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.’ Do you see? He was afraid that individual freedom of thought was being lost in that great democratic crowd. It was one thing to dissent against the British in 1776, but by 1831 de Tocqueville found very few Americans who dared to dissent publicly against popular opinion in this new nation.”

“That’s crazy,” Luke Hagstrom said. “Americans
have always been disagreeing with each other about all kinds of things. Look at the Abolitionists. Look at the Civil War, for God’s sake. Look at the Vietnam War. Just listen to all those people calling in on the radio talk shows all the time—biting each other’s heads off.”

“I don’t think it’s as simple as Luke says,” Barney broke in. “There are a lot of places in this country, and I bet there always have been, where if you’re all alone in what you think, and you say what you think, you get treated like a leper or a criminal.”

“Well, sure,” Luke said, “if you let them do that to you. I just wouldn’t
talk
to people that dumb.”

“Great,” said Kate. “That’d really help get your ideas across.”

“Is it possible that both Luke and Barney are right?” Nora Baines asked. “Think about it as you read de Tocqueville. By the way, does everyone have a reading list?”

All nodded.

“Democracy in America,”
Nora Baines said, “is our first text. There will be no one single textbook for the course. Now, on the supplementary reading list, the first title—which will be read along with de Tocqueville—is Mark Twain’s
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
. I want you to think about the state of individual liberties in America as shown in this story about a boy and a runaway slave going down the Mississippi on a raft some twenty years after the Frenchman came here. Then, through historians and other novelists, we shall
proceed more chronologically through the nineteenth century—but always keeping de Tocqueville and Mark Twain in mind.”

“That supplementary reading list,” Luke asked. “Do we have to read
all
the books on it?”

“Only those that are starred,” Nora Baines said. “Like
Huckleberry Finn
. First two chapters by next class. It will do you no harm to read the other books, however.”

“You mean, it won’t do our grades any harm?” Luke said archly.

“That is also a possibility, Mr. Hagstrom, Not a certainty, but a possibility. As for those unstarred books, there aren’t enough for everyone in the class, so you can sign up for the copies we do have with Miss Fitzgerald in the library. She’s taken Mrs. Salters’s place.”

“Why did Mrs. Salters leave?” Kate seized the opening.

“I believe,” Nora Baines said with unaccustomed hesitation, “she was offered a better job in another state.”

“That’s not what I heard,” Kate said.

“What
did
you hear?” Nora Baines looked at her with considerable interest.

Kate tugged at her hair. “Just enough to know she didn’t like it here anymore.”

“Any questions on the assignments?” The teacher looked around the room.

“Has Mrs. Salters left for that other job yet?” Barney asked.

“Uh, no.”

“Then I’ll call her,” Barney said. “Why she left might be a story for the paper.”

“Well”—Nora Baines picked up her books—“that would be up to Mrs. Salters, wouldn’t it?”

The next day Scott Berman, ambling down the corridor, just beginning to taste the after-school pizza only two hours away, felt a sharp tap on his shoulder. He stopped, turned, and saw an angry Gordon McLean.

“You read the first assignment in
Huckleberry Finn?”
McLean asked hoarsely.

“Naw. I’ll do it tonight. It’s not due until tomorrow. I never do anything early. Suppose the school burns down a week before the assignment’s due and you’ve already done it. It’s all wasted.” Berman smiled, but McLean’s scowl was unwavering.

“The book is full of ‘niggers,’ “McLean said. “Look.”

He pulled the paperback out of his pocket.

“On page four: ‘By and by they fetched the niggers in.’

“On page six: ‘Miss Watson’s big nigger, named Jim.’

“Page seven: ‘And he got so he wouldn’t hardly
notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in the country. Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over…. Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire.’ ”

Gordon McLean closed the book and shoved it back in his pocket. “What the hell kind of racist book is that to have in a school. God damn! How’d
you
like to pick up a book you’re supposed to be reading for class, and it’s full of ‘kikes.’ On every page, ‘kike’ comes right up at you. How’d you like that?”

“Oh,” Scott Berman said, “I’d just show it at home, and watch the fireworks when my father comes marching up here. That’d be the end of that book.”

“That’s just what I did.” Gordon McLean nodded. “I brought that
Huckleberry Finn
home, and my father is calling Mr. Moore today for an
immediate
appointment. You know, I figured Miss Baines was a decent lady, but she doesn’t give one damn about how somebody black like me feels having to read ‘nigger,’ ‘nigger’ all the time. And not in some Klan piece of garbage, but in a
school
book!”

“Unbelievable,” Scott Berman said sympathetically.

   That afternoon, in the coffee shop two blocks away from George Mason High School, Deirdre Fitzgerald leaned forward and asked, “What
did
happen last year that led Mrs. Salters to leave?”

“Well”—Nora Baines stirred the cream in her coffee
—“you’ve got to understand first that Karen Salters is no firebrand. The only crusade I ever knew her to get involved in was saving the whales. And since one of her ancestors was captain of a whaling ship out of New Bedford, I put that to guilt.

“So, when more than the usual number of would-be censors began to come around the school a couple of years ago,” Baines went on, “Karen used to say, ‘There aren’t many books I’
d
go to the stake for.’ She liked the job. She needed the money. What she didn’t need was trouble. Her husband had been sick for a long time before he died, so that took care of whatever they’d saved. What I mean is, Karen wasn’t carrying any banners. Not for the First Amendment, or anything else.”

“What kinds of censors were coming around?” Deirdre asked.

“The standard brands. Parents who didn’t want their children reading about sex or being exposed to words they weren’t allowed to use at home. No problem there, of course, so long as they wanted to prevent only their own kids from reading those books. You’d just give the kid something else. But some of the parents wanted to save every single child in the school from those books.

“Then”—Nora Baines buttered her English muffin—“there were people who
said
they were complaining only for themselves and their own children.
But
, they’d pull out a list of wicked books that looked exactly like lists we’d seen from other folks who said they were only acting for themselves. I must say, however, some did come straight out and say they were part of an
organization that was determined to clean up the whole school. And woe unto anybody who stood in their way. So it is that we have come to know, if not exactly love, Concerned Citizens, Parents for Morality in the Schools, and SOCASH. That is not a vegetable. That is ‘Save Our Children from Atheist Secular Humanism.’ ”

“I think I know the answer to what I’m going to ask,” Deirdre Fitzgerald said, “but which books were they after?”

“All the usual suspects.” Nora Baines signaled for more coffee.
“Go Ask Alice
. Poor dead child. They think she’s a vampire and keep driving silver stakes through her heart. And that aging menace,
Catcher in the Rye
. And, of course, sweet Judy Blume. With blazing eyes and flaring nostrils they have come after
Blubber
and
Forever
and
Then Again, Maybe I Won’t
and
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
. Oh, my, I think they would exorcise Judy Blume if they could get her to hold still. And Kurt Vonnegut too. Although I think they would rather skin him alive—to see all the creatures from hell popping out.”

Deirdre laughed. “Your review committee must be awfully busy.”

“That”
—Nora Baines banged her hand on the table—“is the problem. Oh, we have all the procedures ready to go. The complaint form for the child savers to fill out. The way in which the review committee is to be put together—from the school and the town—to examine the complaint. And if the book is arrested, how the trial is to be conducted.”

“I don’t understand,” Deirdre said. “So what’s the problem?”

“Our sneaky principal is the problem. Mr. Moore prefers to handle these complaints informally. They hardly ever get to the review committee. Mighty Mike meets with the indignant parent, or whoever, and then he takes care of the complaint.”

“What do you mean?” Deirdre asked.

“Let’s say it’s a library book,” Nora Baines said. “Not that we haven’t had some complaints about classroom books. He handles those the same way. Of course, he hasn’t had to deal with
me
yet. But if it’s a library book, Mr. Moore would have a word with Mrs. Salters. She used to imitate his performances on those occasions.”

Nora Baines squared her shoulders and, taking on a deep, buttery voice, impersonated Mr. Moore:

“ ‘My dear Mrs. Salters, with all the
good
literature available, surely we don’t need the questionable books, the offensive books, on our shelves. This title, for example. A number of parents have dropped by to talk to me about it. Surely this one book is not crucial to the education of our young charges. I am certain, Mrs. Salters, that someone of your broad experience and knowledge will easily be able to substitute a more balanced—well, why should I be ashamed to say it?—a more healthy book.

“ ‘I’m not criticizing you for having ordered this title. Not at all. I am merely suggesting that if you will reflect on this matter with me, you will agree that this book will
not be missed if it should be retired from the shelves. Or, if not wholly removed, at least placed on a restricted shelf.’ ”

“Oh, my God,” Deirdre Fitzgerald said. “One of those.”

“The Emperor of Smooth, my dear. Never, ever will you hear the word ‘censorship’ pass his plump, innocent lips. If Mighty Mike were a mortician, he would sooner give a discount than say ‘death.’ ‘Passed away’ is what he’d say. And so, when he kills or locks up a book, it is not censorship. It is simply selecting another book to take its place.”

“And Mrs. Salters,” the new librarian asked, “she went along with it without saying a word?”

“At first”—Nora Baines paused to finish her coffee—“Karen figured that one title, a few more titles, weren’t worth a battle. And she knew there would have been a fight. A mean fight. Karen was no dummy. She knew, for all the honey on Mr. Moore’s words, that she was getting orders; and if she didn’t follow those orders, he’d make her life miserable. She’d seen what he’d done to people who crossed him.

“But after a while,” Baines continued, “Karen got to where she couldn’t stand figuring out what to say to kids who came in for one of those books and who had to be told it was no longer in the library or that it couldn’t be touched unless the kid had a note from his parents. So I wasn’t surprised when Karen, quite agitated, told me one day, ‘This is not why I became a
librarian—to keep books
from
people.’ Soon after, she quit.”