The Day They Came to Arrest the Book Read Free

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 anorganization 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