The Sledding Hill (10 page)

Mr. Tarter rises and moves slowly toward Eddie, but when Eddie sees him he backs away. “Guess I better wrap this up,” he says. “But man, I've got so much more to testify to.”

Tarter motions for two church elders to move in on Eddie from the sides. Eddie steps toward the crowd to avoid them, but two larger members of the congregation move in from there. No escape.

Tarter moves faster. You can almost see his pulse in his neck from across the room. In fact if you're me, you can. The Reverend Tarter has a healthy heartbeat.

Eddie glances around, sees himself closed in on all sides, but all his fear is gone. He looks up at the
cue cards where I have written
RUN FOR IT
. Behind him, ten feet above the pulpit, is a huge stained-glass window with a picture of the Virgin Mary backed by a white halo, and below that window is a ledge. Eddie runs directly at the congregation, reverses direction three inches from two elders' outstretched fingers, and sprints past the pulpit; jumps, curls his fingers over the window ledge, pulls himself up far enough to get a grip on the handle at the bottom of the window, and pulls himself the rest of the way. He stands, looking down. The sun shines through the window, through the Virgin Mary's halo, and makes a perfect aura around Eddie Proffit.

Most of the men trying to get to him are too out of shape to pull themselves onto the ledge. Maxwell West, the most athletic, falls back to the floor when Eddie steps on his fingers.

The next card says JESUS.

“About Jesus,” he says. “What
would
Jesus do? I've read that book you are all supposed to help get
rid of because of how it's going to mess up our minds. Then I look around at all the people who like the book, and the ones who like it most are the ones who never get anything from our school and they never get anything from here either. They aren't cool. You know who they are? They're ‘the least of my brethren.' So the minute I say, ‘What would Jesus do?' I know the answer. He'd do what Billy's dad and Ms. Lloyd did. He'd give this book to people and read it to people, because Jesus was a guy who liked to make people feel better and that book makes some people feel better. So there.”

If I still had any influence, I would remind my friend that “So there” is probably not testimonial material.

Tarter motions to Mrs. Alexander, the church organist, but her eyes are riveted to Eddie, who looks seriously like an angel up there with the Virgin Mary's halo around his head.

“Man,” Eddie says, “the school
janitor
takes a
chance because he
does
like these kids and because he wants to do something nice for somebody after his own kid is gone, and he just finishes reading the book to them. That's all he does. He finishes reading the book. The school janitor did what Jesus would do. He read to the least of his brethren. And for that he gets fired. If Jesus is smart, he won't be coming back soon.”

Eddie's about to get off task. I've got WRAP IT UP on the next card, but he is not looking.

“And you know what? If Jesus did come back today, like everybody in this church thinks he will before they die, nobody would listen to him. Jesus would do what Jesus would do and you'd just think he was another Mr. Bartholomew. I mean, think about Jesus. I've been reading all about him. He was a rebel. He would be right up here with me, telling you guys that kids can think for themselves and it's okay for them to read about hard things.

“In fact I might
be
Jesus. What about that? I
might be Jesus. If you read the Bible Cliff Notes, you know that when he was young, he didn't even know he was Jesus. I mean, he knew his name was that, but he didn't know he was the Christ for sure. There were a whole bunch of things he had to do before he could be the Christ, which is a title and not a name, by the way, so you can use it in vain.”

I see Eddie's mom in the choir stall, looking on in horror. She does
not
want to have to explain to the congregation how her son thinks he's Jesus.

“Like, he had to stay out in the desert forty days and forty nights, which is a way long time if you've ever been to the desert. So he had to prove himself. And if he wouldn't of, then he wouldn't of been Jesus Christ and somebody else would of had to come along and do it. And now somebody has to come along and do it again. So maybe it's me. Maybe I haven't proved myself yet. Maybe one of the things I had to do was get up here out of your reach and yell at you and tell you that stupid book
is okay, and why don't you leave us alone.”

The Reverend Tarter has physically moved Mrs. Alexander to the organ, and she mercifully begins pounding out a really upbeat version of “The Church in the Valley by the Wildwood” and all of a sudden you can't hear Eddie Proffit anymore, but you can see his mouth moving, and I retire the cue cards completely and the church custodian is bringing the ladder, and this sermon on the ledge is about over.

The ladder comes up and Eddie comes down, sticks out his hands as if in surrender, and when the elders relax, he bolts for the door, is down the sidewalk, down the street, and gone.

T
he parking lot to the American Legion Hall is full by six thirty on Monday evening. The hearing starts at seven thirty. Bumper stickers in this lot are a little more evenly matched, one side sporting I READ BANNED BOOKS and INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM ROCKS and the other side declaring exactly how many men and women it takes to make a real marriage (one of each), next to the word
Jesus
inside the outline of a fish. There is a heaviness in the air. People have been arguing in the supermarket and
the drugstore. One fistfight broke out in the sawmill parking lot.

Most folks with differing opinions cannot talk about it civilly and have agreed not to try. Tonight, they have a forum. My friend Eddie Proffit isn't present because he is in the one room at the county hospital reserved for mental-health patients. It was the Jesus thing. Though he was only seen as hysterical for leaping up in front of the Virgin Mary, his “I might be Jesus” speech as related by Reverend Tarter seemed problematic to the mental-health professional, who has been on the job only a week and a half and was therefore susceptible to Tarter's concerns about Eddie's “delusions of grandeur.” Eddie's mom was easy to convince because she has become more and more accustomed to the worst thing happening and Tarter's idea that the devil got inside Eddie sounded about right. Eddie told her she is going to feel really stupid when he comes out evaluated sane while everybody in the Red Brick Church
is paranoid schizophrenic. He also called my dad to tell him what surprise to expect at the meeting on Monday. When he heard, I thought my dad would run up there and kiss him.

 

“Think they let you run cross country if you have a diagnosis?” Eddie asks me from his hospital bed. He's operating the motorized adjustment mechanism, raising his head, then his legs, then both.

“Want me to go find out?”

“Sure,” he says. “I got time.”

“They've never had reason to make a decision one way or the other,” I tell him, “but there's no written rule against it.”

“How do you know that? I thought you were gonna go find out.”

“I did. Dead guys waste no time. In fact, there's no such thing.”

“Man,” he says, “I sure hate to miss that meeting.”

“Won't matter,” I say back. “Fifteen minutes after
church yesterday, your message was out. No sense being redundant.”

“Yeah, well, go check it out and report back,” he says. “I wanna know if they like my little surprise.”

 

A buzz emanates from the American Legion Hall as the start time approaches. Almost everybody here knows Eddie went bananas in church over the censorship issue, but what most of them really heard is that he thinks he might be Jesus. The YFC kids sit together near the front, while most of my dad's furnace-room crew is grouped off to the side. Hundreds of adults fill the rest of the seats.

Mr. Northcutt, the school board chair, speaks. “The board has been here since seven,” he says, “and has taken care of our other business so we can focus exclusively on the curriculum issues at hand.” He reads the protest directly from the paperwork turned in by Maxwell West, who is not elected to the board yet but plans to be, and who has a seat at the board's
table because he is lodging the protest. Ms. Lloyd is also there, as the primary person opposing the challenge. She is both dressed and fit to kill.

When Mr. Northcutt finishes reading the formal challenge, he turns over the floor to Maxwell West. Maxwell reiterates what is in the formal statement, then, “We are at a moral crossroads in our nation's and our community's schools, and as parents and responsible adults it is time to turn and stand our ground. From school shootings, to allowing provocative language and dress, to passing out condoms, to banning God from our children's education, we are simply falling into an abyss. It is simply immoral to stand by and do nothing.” He speaks in a calm, reasonable tone. Max West is a pretty popular guy, even though plenty of folks don't agree with what sometimes seem like rigid views. He's a go-to guy when a community member dies or is hit by catastrophe, whether that person is a church member or not.

“The material in the book in question,
Warren Peece,
plainly and simply takes our children further down that path. It is time to let morality and common sense take over, and common sense tells me it is foolish to allow poison into our children's minds.” He makes his point twice more, and sits.

When it's her turn, Ms. Lloyd stands, leaning straight armed on the table, addressing the board first directly. “I've loved books all my life,” she says. “When I was a little girl, I knew I would be a librarian—not because I wasn't popular or athletic, because I was both those things. I loved books I liked and I loved books I hated. I got my first library card when I was six. By the time I was eight, my mother took all the restrictions off that card. She would have taken them off earlier, but she didn't know they were there. I learned things from the characters of Dr. Seuss, Harper Lee, Kurt Vonnegut, and Alice Walker. I have never read a book that didn't enrich me. Even a bad book taught me something
about storytelling. I simply can't remember a bad experience with a book.”

The Reverend Tarter shakes his head. There is unrest among the members of his congregation, who are seated together not far from the speakers.

“
Warren Peece
has gotten wonderful responses from many of the kids who were reading it,” Ms. Lloyd goes on. “When given the choice to read something else in its place, not one student took the option. There was lively discussion. Kids who don't read were reading or having the book read to them, exactly the response any good teacher would normally die to have. I sent home a permission slip, was more than willing to let parents who may have been offended by the language or the issues have their student read an alternate book. Not one did, until this challenge. It seems fine to me for any parent to object to a book and have his or her child read something else. It seems un-American to let that parent tell the school district or the parents of other
children what they can and should read in school.”

She steps back from the table and turns to face the audience full on.

A man named Jeremy Godfrey rises from the middle of the Red Brickers. He doesn't know his son sat through the furnace-room readings. “Ms. Lloyd,” he says. “I don't for one minute doubt your dedication to the kids or to books, but you're simply wrong on this one. We had one of our best students, a boy in your class, read the book and critique it on issues and language, and I for one simply cannot see how you think it's healthy for our kids to be reading this garbage—and I don't use that term lightly—when there are so many good books out there. For the life of me, I don't know why you chose that book, or any of Mr. Crutcher's books, for that matter. His positions are so clearly biased. Why didn't you choose something less controversial?”

“Because your kids won't read less controversial books,” Ms. Lloyd says back.

“You are a teacher,” he says. “It's your job to require our kids to read them.”

“You are offering me a solution that makes kids hate to read, Mr. Godfrey, and that is simply not acceptable.”

“What they read is just as important as
that
they read.”

“That's absurd. Reading is the door to learning.”

Another voice says, “Once we allow evil into our minds, it's impossible to eradicate it. We're against this book because it is irresponsible.”

Another says, “I can't believe an employee of the school knows so little about our kids that she would not pay attention to the kind of filth that is out there today. We can't stop it from being written, but we can stop it from infiltrating our schools. This is a perfect example of why we need to be vigilant.”

Several students laugh loudly, call taunts.

Things start to get a bit ugly then, and Mr. Northcutt pounds his gavel to restore order,
threatening to clear the room or end the meeting if people don't calm down.

I notice Montana West is not present to represent the furnace-room kids, and it takes me less than a minimillimicrosecond to find her three blocks away, wrapping up the homework her father told her she had to finish before she leaves the house. She rushes toward her car, which she has been forbidden to drive until she “straightens up.” She must be straightened, 'cause she's planning on getting in.

At the Legion Hall, person after person steps to the mike, calling alternately for decency or intellectual freedom. I can't help wishing Eddie were here to see what he started yesterday.

Chad Nash steps up. The audience waits, hears his nervous breathing into the mike, his mouth is so close. And he says it. “I'm gay,” he says. To a person, the YFC kids go wide-eyed. “And I'm a member of YFC. I'm so scared I can't see straight, because I believe in God and I don't want to go to hell, but I
don't want to live the rest of my life this scared. There is a character in the book who is also gay. When I read about him, I felt better. It was the first time in my life I ever read about a gay person being brave, except for the guy on 9/11 who helped bring the airplane down before it hit the Capitol building. I read
Warren Peece
and I felt
hope
. And then they took it away because of the very thing that I thought made it good. I feel awful right now because I know everybody is going to hate me.” His gaze darts until it falls on the YFC group. “But I'm glad I said it, because I'd rather have you hate me than hold this secret inside me anymore.” He stands a little longer, looking confused. “I guess I better go now.”

The meeting approaches two hours in length. Kids support Chad Nash; kids condemn him. A kid from the furnace room says
Warren Peece
is the only book he ever read; a kid from YFC says it's the most disgusting book he ever read. A kid from the furnace room says the kid from YFC didn't read it because it
got constipated. The kid from YFC says that's confiscated, you moron. Northcutt brings down the gavel on comments like that again and again.

Since I can be all places at once, I see my father at the back of the room, glancing at his watch, at the same time I see Eddie Proffit crouching in an orderly's closet about fifteen feet from his room in the county hospital, waiting for the hall to clear so he can sprint to his escape. My man Eddie is not going to miss this meeting and the great surprise just because he's crazy. He's been in the closet almost forty-five minutes, and each time he starts for the door another hospital employee appears in the hall. Suddenly all is clear, and he scurries to the exit, slides out unseen, and runs toward the American Legion Hall, just under three miles away.

 

A red Saturn pulls into the American Legion Hall parking lot when Eddie is still a mile away. My dad sees the headlights through the rear window and
quietly moves to the door to greet his invited guest.

“Calvin Bartholomew,” he says, extending his hand.

“Chris Crutcher,” the stranger says, gripping it.

“Glad you could make it,” Dad says.

“I think I am, too,” Crutcher says. “How bad is it?”

“About what you'd expect,” Dad says.

Crutcher says, “That bad. Is the Proffit boy here to introduce me?”

Dad shakes his head. “Long story, but he's in the county hospital awaiting a psychological evaluation.”

“I won't even guess how that came about.”

Dad smiles. “They're prescribing an exorcism.”

The two step into the back of the room and remain standing, unnoticed. “We'll let them talk a while longer, and when the board president calls for an end to public testimony, I'll introduce you.”

“Sounds good.”

The crowd is intimidating. Crutcher speaks before large groups often enough, but is usually
invited by people who pay him, which, he believes, means they want to hear what he has to say. Though he has been challenged and even banned before, he has never sat through a meeting where so many people came right out and called him evil. It works in his favor, though, because he feels a righteous anger rising, and he has the element of surprise.

When the line has dwindled, Mr. Tarter gets up. “I've been in this community more than twenty years,” he says, smiling and nodding to the crowd, “both as a teacher and a pastor. I may have as much investment in your town and your schools as anyone in this room.”

Nods from the members of his church, not so many from others, though many nonmembers believe they owe a great debt to Sanford Tarter. He is hard-nosed when it comes to discipline, but few students pass through his classroom without becoming competent in the written and spoken language. To say the least he is a formidable force.

“I have nothing but respect for Ruth Lloyd. She has been a valuable resource to me and other members of the faculty, and she is a tireless advocate for kids and for literacy. But this isn't about that. In an era of school shootings and declining family values and teachers being handcuffed from using tried-and-true disciplinary techniques, in this era of drugs and immoral behavior, the stakes are way too high. The characters in Chris Crutcher's books are disrespectful in their speech and in their actions. They are willful and to a great extent are left on their own to make decisions way too important for adolescents to make, again, particularly in light of our current culture. Either we protect our children and our values, or we don't. I for one think
this
is the place we start. Certainly Crutcher's book isn't the worst; it's simply the one that brought this problem to our attention. The truth is, I believe his stories are irrelevant and only marginally well written. The important factor is, Bear Creek, Idaho, can go against national trends
and reclaim our pride. I think we can be a beacon to the rest of the country, set an example of decency.