The Day They Came to Arrest the Book Read Free Page A

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 willnot 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 alibrarian—to keep books
from
people.’ Soon after, she quit.”
    “Without a fight?” Deirdre Fitzgerald frowned.
    “There was one,” Baines said. “It was a doozy. But she’s going to have to tell you about that. So far as the record shows, Karen left this school on excellent terms with the principal. She has a grand letter of recommendation from the book killer.”
    “Sounds like they must have struck some kind of bargain,” Deirdre Fitzgerald said. “But what?”
    Nora Baines laughed. “I am sworn to say no more.