The Day They Came to Arrest the Book (15 page)

Back at the center of the storm, while the townspeople had at first enjoyed all the attention from outsiders, there was soon a growing sense of discomfort and embarrassment at being under this particular kind of national scrutiny.

“It’s very distressing,” Reuben Forster, chairman of the school board, said to his wife one evening. “We must look like a bunch of flatheads to the rest of the country. From now on, people will think of this town as the place where they arrest books.”

“Come now,” his wife said, “you’re exaggerating terribly. You can’t arrest a book!”

Reuben Forster put his pipe down because it was giving him no pleasure. “I’ve been thinking about this a good deal, my dear. Once a book is not allowed to circulate freely, once a book cannot move freely from
one reader to another, it’s just as if the book had been arrested and had its liberty curtailed. It’s all very distressing. How are we going to get new businesses, new plants, to come here if we look as if we’re some backwater village from the nineteenth century?”

The
Daily Tribune
, in a series of editorials, took a similar view. “There is a difference between publicity and notoriety,” one of the editorials said, “and this town is becoming notorious wherever anybody can read. We’re getting a reputation for narrow-mindedness that is going to make us the laughingstock of the country unless we do something about it.”

Not all the townspeople, by any means, agreed with the editorial writer; but many of them did. In the letters column of the
Tribune
, there was now a clear, rising increase in the proportion of readers who wanted no action taken against Huck Finn. Wrote one indignant citizen: “If I want
my
child to study
Huckleberry Finn
in school, where are
my
rights as a free American citizen when some group of vigilantes acts to limit access to the book not only to their own children but to
all
kids at George Mason High School?”

Three days before the school board meeting on the fate of Huck Finn, the
Tribune
featured on its front page a letter from its managing editor, Sandy Wicks, who had been part of the majority of four in the review committee decision to keep
Huckleberry Finn
under guard in the high school.

Sandy Wicks wrote that she had, of course, been paying close attention to the views of the
Tribune’s
readers. And on rereading the book, she had decided that in view of the superior quality of the teachers and students at George Mason, she had now come to the conclusion that the true antibigotry message of
Huckleberry Finn
would come through clearly in the classrooms and in the library. There was no need to restrict the book.

She wished, Wicks added, that she could change her review-committee vote, but that was not possible under the rules of procedure. However, she hoped the school board would take her change of mind into consideration.

“Humph,” Nora Baines said to Deirdre Fitzgerald as she tossed the
Daily Tribune
onto a chair. “Where was she when we needed her?”

“Oh, this will help,” Deirdre said. “And I hear-though I don’t know for sure—that Helen Cook and Frank Sylvester may co-sign a similar letter to the
Tribune
. Do you know that some of the other faculty members have not been speaking to them?”

“I do indeed.” Nora smiled. “I am one of them. Traitors is what they are. How can a teacher approve locking up a book?”

Deirdre laughed. “You’re a regular avenger. I can’t do that, you know. I can’t stop speaking to people because I don’t agree with them. How can you be for a free exchange of ideas if you shut off dialogue just because you don’t like what the other person is saying?”

“Stuff and nonsense,” Nora Baines said. “Freedom of speech also means you have the right not to speak.”

“You’re evading my point, Nora,” Deirdre said.

“ ‘I am what I am,’ said Popeye the Sailor Man,” Nora Baines explained.

“Okay.” Deirdre grinned. “That puts an effective end to any attempt at logic in this discussion. Nora, I’m beginning to be optimistic about the school board vote. I think Huck’s going to come out all right.”

“If you’re right,” Nora said, “this will bear out the Baines Theory of Battle Against the Forces of Darkness.”

“And that theory is?”

“Well,” Nora said, “we are the forces of light, right?”

“Shining all the time,” Deirdre said.

“Therefore, the more light we keep getting on our side, the stronger we are. Therefore, the way to fight censorship—not only here, but anywhere—is to let the whole story hang out, from the moment of the first attack, so that it gets in the papers and on television and on radio. Again and again and again. The reason Mighty Mike got away with locking up books before is that he did it in the dark. Nobody on the outside knew anything about it. That’s what I hope school people all around the country are going to learn from this. The censors can’t stand light. Any more than Dracula could stand the cross.”

   In his office at We-Have-It-All headquarters, Reuben Forster was engaged in an intense dialogue with himself.

“I hear”—one voice was scratchy—“that they’re going
to have someone dressed as Mark Twain come and speak for Huck Finn at the school board meeting. They say it’ll look great on television around the country.”

“I will not allow it,” Reuben Forster said in his own voice, as forcefully as he could. “Mr. Twain is not a member of this community. He does not pay taxes here.”

“Oh, they’d love that.” The scratchy voice went into a cackle. “Mark Twain thrown out of a school board meeting for speaking on behalf of free speech! What’ll you do if he won’t leave? Throw him in the jug? Hee-hee-hee.”

“Well, I’d not be having Mark Twain arrested. I’d be having some real person arrested for disturbing the peace.”

“That’s not the way it will look on the network news,” the other voice said. “It would be Mark Twain dragged away by the cops and put in jail right alongside his book.”

Reuben Forster now sounded conciliatory. “Do you suppose Mr. Twain might not come if he was told his presence would not be necessary? If he was told there’s no chance of any harm coming to his book? I happen to have information to that effect.”

“Maybe he’d decide to stay away,” said the scratchy voice. “But why should he believe you?”

“Now see here!” Forster was so angry that his teeth cracked the stem of his pipe. “Everybody knows I am a man of my word.”

“Even the dead?” The cackle had started again. “Do even the dead know that?”

“You’re mixing me up,” the chairman of the school board said.

“I’ll tell you what,” said the scratchy voice. “If you can get word out that he doesn’t have to worry about what’s going to happen to Huck, then maybe Mr. Twain might decide not to make the trip from wherever he is at present.”

Reuben Forster lit his pipe, walked around the room, walked around again, and then opened the door. “Would you get Mr. Moore on the phone,” he said to his secretary. “Tell him I want to see him right away. Fast as he can get here.”

Fifteen minutes later, the principal, smiling, entered the office, took a seat, and waited.

“Thank you for coming,” Mr. Forster said. “Informally, and therefore quite unofficially, I have taken a straw vote of the board. By a substantial majority, it would appear, the board tomorrow night will overturn the decision of the review committee.”

“Well, between me and you, Mr. Forster,” Moore said, “I thought the review committee was too soft. Of course, it’ll cause a lot of fuss, banning the book outright, but we can handle it. And I think in the long run, the board will win a lot of deserved respect for not giving in to all this emotional propaganda that’s been going on about so-called censorship. Our responsibility, after all, is to the youngsters and not to—”

“You misunderstand me, Mr. Moore.” Reuben Forster started to fill his pipe. “The majority of the board appears to be of a mind to place no restrictions whatsoever on the use of
Huckleberry Finn
in class or in the library.”

There was just the slightest blink before Mr. Moore said, smiling broadly, “Very well. The board is boss.”

“Indeed.” Reuben Forster nodded. “Also, after the open meeting, it is my sense that the board would like to have a closed session with you in a few days.”

“May I ask the nature of the agenda?”

“That interview in the school paper with Mrs. Salters,” the chairman said. “We think it’s time to review your policies, your
informal
policies, concerning the removal of books from the curriculum and from the open shelves of the school library. I can even give you a little preview of what the board has on its mind for the future. From now on, the board will want to be informed of
all
complaints concerning books and other materials—whether made formally or not. And we will want to know how each one of them is handled. The board intends to avoid any possibility of censorship behind closed doors.”

Mr. Moore kept on smiling. “The board has only to decree, and I shall obey. But as for the review, once all of you see the full record, you will realize that Mrs. Salters did not choose to give all the facts.”

“We shall see.” Reuben Forster had yet to return Mr. Moore’s smile. “Oh, there’s another thing, Moore.
Have you taken, or do you intend to take, any reprisals against Mrs. Salters because of what she said about you in that interview?”

“Why, my goodness,” Mr. Moore said, “such a thing never occurred to me, never could occur to me.”

Reuben Forster knocked the ashes out of his pipe. “You are not under oath, Mr. Moore, but I expect the truth. There has been no recent communication between you and her new employers?”

“Not yet. I mean, of course not. I wrote an enthusiastic recommendation for Mrs. Salters some months ago, and I have neither added to nor detracted from it since.”

“So”—Forster pointed the stem of his pipe at Mr. Moore—“there is not the slightest possibility that we on the board will ever hear of any
second
letter from you to Mrs. Salters’s new employer?”

“Not the slightest possibility,” the principal said with great sincerity.

“One last thing.” Reuben Forster rose from his seat behind the desk. “What I have just told you about the straw vote indicating the board’s ruling tomorrow night—”

“Yes?”

“That information is to go no farther than this room.”

“Of course.” The principal nodded his head vigorously.

The two shook hands, and Mr. Moore left.

Sitting back in his black leather chair, Reuben Forster looked benignly at the ceiling.

“The best way,” he purred, “the very best way to spread a piece of news is to make it confidential. Especially to someone like Moore who always likes to appear as if he’s on the inside of every little thing. I really do dislike that man. I must check the expiration date of his contract.”

The school board meeting, originally scheduled for the George Mason High School auditorium, was transferred to the considerably larger town hall. Leaning forward in his seat at the center of the stage a short time before the meeting was to begin, Reuben Forster dearly wished he could have banned all the television cameras. But since this was a public meeting, he didn’t see how he could do that without looking as if he and the board were hiding something.

Then, as he watched one crew testing its sound equipment, Forster brightened. Since he was quite certain how the vote was going to come out, it
was
a good thing the television cameras were there. Now the town would no longer be laughed at around the country as the place where even the Bible could get into trouble.

It looked as if most of the people in town had come. So many, in fact, that the overflow had to be directed
to a smaller meeting room where the proceedings would be shown on closed-circuit television.

“What’s the point of coming?” said a disgruntled citizen who had been shunted off to the auxiliary room along with his wife. “It’s just the same as watching from home.”

“Not if there’s a good fistfight or two,” his wife said cheerfully. “Then we could say we were right there.”

But there were no fistfights. Indeed, since many of the speakers were the same ones who had been heard at the review-committee meeting, the level of passion was somewhat lower. Since they had heard each other before, each side knew the moves the opposition was going to make at just about every turn. Even the bursts of anger were predictable.

Carl McLean did get up and say he had heard the school board had already made up its mind, and he warned them against going against the wishes of the black parents and their allies in the community. “You may have come in here thinking you were going to vote one way,” he said, pointing to the members of the board on stage, “but if you still want to be sitting there after the next election, you better start thinking again.”

One of the relatively few new speakers was Steve Turney, the thin, bespectacled black student who had refused to join the walkout from Nora Baines’s class that had been led by Gordon McLean in protest against the continued presence there of Huck Finn.

“I am a junior at George Mason High School,”
Turney said in a quick, clear voice, the rhythms of which were like that of a typewriter handled by a very assured typist. “I am here to speak for my right as a student not to have my education interfered with by people—well-meaning but uninformed people—outside the school. And I am here to speak for the same right for students who come after me.

“First of all,” Turney went on, “I have read this book. I have read this book in its entirety. From what I have heard at this meeting, and at the other meeting in the school auditorium, I do not believe that all the people complaining about this book have read it all. If they had, and if they
can
read, they wouldn’t have been saying what they said about it. Second, many of those complaining about this book say they want to protect
me
, as a black person, from certain words in this book. Well, it is too late to do that for
me
. I have already seen and heard those words. And since they are not new to me, and believe me they are not, I know when those words—I mean particularly ‘nigger’—are directed at
me
.”