The Year They Burned the Books

Lisa Buel, tall and self-possessed, with an angular but not unattractive face, smiled warmly at her audience that evening from the stage of the school auditorium. “I think you’ll all agree,” she said, “that it’s definitely time for a change, for a return to traditional values. Now, I’m not sure that anyone here in Wilson, except perhaps for a few misguided but still good souls, has seriously departed from the values we all cherish. But I do feel we need to put the brakes on here and there, and be vigilant. It’s our children, after all, who are at stake, our most precious and most impressionable assets. I think we need to re-examine our priorities, and if I’m elected, I’ll try to help do that. Thank you.”

Tessa, who’d been squatting in the aisle in her red cape, snapped Mrs. Buel’s picture as she sat down to an enthusiastic round of applause. It was louder and longer, Jamie realized, scribbling on her notepad, than the applause Nomi’s mother had gotten a few minutes earlier.

The moderator called for questions, and Jamie was startled to hear her own mother’s voice. “Just where would you put on the brakes, Lisa?” Mrs. Crawford asked.

Mrs. Buel stood up again. “Why, I’m not sure of the specifics yet, Margaret,” she answered pleasantly. “I just think we need to take a long, careful look at a number of issues.”

“Curricular issues? As I recall, you have some objections to the new health curriculum.” There was an angry edge to Mrs. Crawford’s voice.

“That’s right,” Mrs. Buel said smoothly. “I do feel we need to take another look at that. At all issues, really.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Jamie saw her mother’s mouth tense.

“I don’t trust her,” Mrs. Crawford said angrily at home after the meeting, slamming the cocoa box down on the kitchen table, where Jamie and her father sat; Ronnie was in the living room, watching TV. “Do you realize—you must, Jamie; you’re a word person—that she didn’t say anything specific in her speech? And yet she sure was specific to the curriculum committee last summer, and I know she’s been talking to the people she’s gotten to support her. But she’s waiting till she’s elected before she comes out in the open to the town at large—a stealth candidate if I ever saw one.”

“What’s a stealth candidate?” Jamie asked.

“Someone who runs for office without being specific about what they stand for. Well, lots of politicians do that. But a stealth candidate does it more thoroughly than most, and has a real hidden agenda. Many stealth candidates are supported by national organizations, too, and don’t admit it. Anyway, Lisa Buel has certainly left the way wide open to surprise us all with anything she wants to do …”

“Hang on there, Maggie.” Jamie’s father got up and snatched the kettle, which was whistling, off the stove. “Maybe it is time for a reassessment. Can’t hurt, can it?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Crawford watched as her husband spooned cocoa powder into four mugs and poured water into them. “Yes, Dick, I’m afraid it can.”

“Well, maybe she won’t get in. Maybe Anna Pembar will beat her hollow. Ronnie! Cocoa’s ready!”

Although Tessa’s photos, which she’d developed at home after the meeting, were all good, it wasn’t hard to decide which to run: the better of the two that showed both candidates and the moderator onstage. “I wish we could use the single shots, too,” Jamie said before school Friday morning in the newspaper office. “But there’s no more space on that page.”

Matt looked up from checking the mechanical for the page in question. “You’ll have to get used to that, Tessa. ‘There’s no space’ is something every editor says about a hundred times an issue.”

“No problem.” Tessa smiled at Jamie. “Besides, that’s got to be better than too much space.”

“Yeah,” Terry called from where he and Cindy were reorganizing some of the paper’s files. “Important maxim, courtesy of Terry Gage: Empty papers don’t sell.”

Nomi rolled her eyes. “Let’s go, Terry.” She picked up Tessa’s photo and fastened it to a piece of paper on which she’d already written size directions. “Time to get the baby to bed.” She began gathering up her books.

Tessa looked inquiringly at Jamie.

“Take the last of the paper to the print shop,” Jamie translated.

Matt stood up, stretching. “And that’s it for Volume 8, Number 1. It’s a good first issue for the year, I think.”

“The letters page is pretty thin,” Jamie remarked. “‘Welcome Back,’ ‘Let’s Go Wilson Wolves,’ ‘How I Plan to Study This Year.’”

“Blagh,” Cindy commented, making a face on her way out. “If I’d known, I’d have gotten one of Jack’s friends to write one. See you!”

“Next issue,” Matt called after her, then turned to Jamie. “There’ll be plenty of reaction next time to your editorial anyway. Especially since”—he glanced at Nomi—“we don’t have an op-ed to balance it.”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Nomi said testily. “But like I told you, I’m an artist, not a writer. It wouldn’t have been any good.”

“She did consider doing it, Matt,” Jamie told him.

“Okay, okay.” Matt turned, picking up papers from his desk, and Jamie was surprised to see that he looked worried. Before she could say anything, though, Terry gave Nomi a little push. “We’re outta here,” he said. “You remember we’re going to the movies tonight, Jamie?”

“Yes, sure,” Jamie said absently, still watching Matt.

“Great. Come on, Nom’. If we don’t get this to the shop in a hurry, we’ll be late for homeroom. And they’ll kill us for holding up the rest of the issue.”

“Matt,” Jamie asked quietly when Nomi and Terry had left and Tessa was putting on her cape, “do you think there’s going to be real trouble about the editorial? Giving out condoms has been officially okayed, hasn’t it? Even though it’s controversial.”

“Yes, it’s been okayed. I don’t think there’ll be trouble. I admit I’d feel a lot better if we did have an op-ed, though.” Matt patted her shoulder. “Who knows, Jamie? We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“I did try to acknowledge the other side in what I wrote.”

“Yes, I know you did. And what you wrote is fine. You’re not supposed to be balanced in an editorial, for Pete’s sake. You were fair and accurate, not to mention persuasive, and that’s all anyone can ask for.” He gave Jamie’s shoulder another pat. “Don’t worry. It’ll be okay. Now let’s get out of here, you two. We’ll be seeing enough of this place anyway in the next few months!”

“Date?” Tessa asked Jamie when they were outside; as it turned out, there was still a while before the first bell.

“Huh?”

“You and Terry? When he asked you to remember the movies? It sounded like you have a date with him.”

Jamie laughed self-consciously. “It’s not really a date,” she said, “although we are going to the movies. Terry and Ernie Rivers and me.”

Tessa smiled, a slow warm smile, but her eyes still held questions. “Three’s a crowd, my mother says. So did my boyfriend last spring when I asked someone else to go out with us.”

“It’s not a crowd when the three are good friends,” Jamie managed to say. But Tessa’s words “my boyfriend” had stabbed through her like daggers. Jamie tried to freeze her face, to command it to show nothing.

“What’re you seeing? What movie?”

Conversation, Jamie told herself. Casual conversation is called for. “You know, I have no idea.” She stepped aside as Brandon Tomkins and Vicky Chase came out of the building, followed by Sam Mills and Karen Hodges, who continued past them into the parking lot.

“Hey, butch,” Brandon said, stopping. “Got a new girlfriend?”

Tessa looked puzzled, then angry, but Vicky gave Brandon a sharp shove. “Don’t mind him,” she said to Tessa, smiling at her and at Jamie. “I hear you’re photo editor,” Vicky added, ignoring Brandon, who was looking Tessa up and down—leering, Jamie thought. “Congratulations. I love your cape.”

“Hey, Tessa,” Brandon said, reaching out as if to pull her aside—but Tessa moved away. “I figure I should warn …”

“Thanks,” Tessa said calmly to Vicky, cutting Brandon off with a withering glance. “It’s from a thrift shop.”

“Cool,” Vicky replied. “They’ve got the best stuff. I wish we had one in Wilson. There’s a pretty good one in George-port, probably not as good as the ones you were used to in Boston, but I’ll let you know next time I go, if you want to come.”

“Thanks,” Tessa said again. “Who,” she asked Jamie when they’d left, “are those two? Ms. Gorgeous Sexy U.S.A. and Mr. Number One Macho Skinhead Creep?”

Jamie laughed. “That about sums it up,” she said. “But Vicky’s really nice as well as gorgeous and sexy. Brandon—well, he was the class bully when we were kids, along with his friend Al Checkers.”

“Looks like he’s still the class bully,” Tessa observed. “What’s with the girlfriend taunt?” When Jamie hesitated, she said, “Hey, we’ve got homophobic jerks in Boston, too. Anyone they don’t like, they say stuff like that to.”

“Yeah, Brandon’s been saying stuff like that for years,” Jamie answered carefully, willing herself not to blush and trying to ignore her suddenly sweating hands. “I guess I’ve kind of gotten used to it.”

Tessa hesitated a moment, too, and Jamie felt she was trying to look right through her. But then Tessa put her camera bag down on the school steps and shifted her stack of books. “I love movies,” she commented, as if nothing had happened, although her eyes followed Vicky and Brandon as they joined Sam and Karen in the parking lot. “But sometimes I watch the photography so much I don’t pay attention to the plot. Which means I’m no good talking to other people afterward, unless they’re photographers, too. Trouble is, I’ve never really met another photographer.”

“Is that what you want to do?” Jamie asked, not daring to ask about the boyfriend Tessa had mentioned, not sure she wanted to know more about him anyway. “I mean professionally? Be a photographer?”

“Oh yes,” Tessa answered emphatically. “A thousand times yes. It’s the only thing I want to do professionally. People don’t see, you know? I mean most people. They walk through the world, and their eyes—fall on things, but they don’t really see what their eyes look at. They don’t see the—oh, I don’t know. The pain on other people’s faces, or the joy, or the loneliness. They don’t see the feelings of animals, or the way a tree stands out against the sky, or, I don’t know, the alphabet in architecture, or the …”

“Whoa! The alphabet in architecture?”

“Yeah.” Tessa pointed to the school’s front door. “Look there. The hinges? They’re L’s. And that window at the top? That’s an O.”

“You’re right.” Jamie was intrigued now. “I bet you could find a neat alphabet down in the yacht basin. All those masts and lines. Or in the harbor.”

“I already did. I like the working harbor better.”

There was a pause, during which a seagull flew overhead, mewing raucously.

“A W!” Jamie cried, suddenly seeing one as the gull wheeled sharply. “A flying W!”

“Right!” Tessa faced Jamie. “How about you?” she asked. “What do you want to do?”

“Professionally, you mean?”

Tessa nodded.

“Something with newspapers,” Jamie said, suddenly feeling a little shy, but wanting very much to tell her. “Sometimes I think I want to be a reporter, maybe even a foreign correspondent. Sometimes I think I want to be a columnist, or maybe an editor. But—well, you know how you want to make people see? I guess I want the same thing, really, only my medium is words instead of pictures. I want to give people accurate information so they can make intelligent decisions, and I also want to make them see, I don’t know, the truth of things, I guess.”

“We’d make a good team, then.”

“Yeah.” Jamie felt an odd rush of adrenaline. “Hey,” she added recklessly, “maybe we should be a team this year, do stories together for the Telegraph. You know, at least sometimes. Maybe we could do a monthly photo feature.”

“Sure. Why not? And maybe someday we’ll both apply for jobs at the same paper and run into each other and have a big reunion.”

“Or maybe we’ll go to the same college.”

“Maybe.” Tessa pulled her cape closer around her. “But maybe I won’t go at all. My big brother Phil’s in college now, and he wants to go to medical school, too. My little sister Angela’s really smart, and she should go. That’s a lot of tuition money. Besides, you don’t really need college for photography.”

“Yeah, but if you want to go …”

Tessa smiled faintly. “I do. So I’ve applied to a bunch of places anyway, and I hope I get a scholarship. I do want to get away from—whoops!”

“What?”

“I’m sorry. I was going to say I want to get away from here. But that’s not—well, it’s your town.”

Jamie laughed. “There’s not a single kid here who doesn’t want to get out of Wilson.” She tried to read Tessa’s face. “Do you miss Boston?” she asked.

“Yes,” Tessa said, sounding almost grateful. “Yes, I do. Thanks for asking. I miss my friends and city noises and bustle—and even the homeless beggars. I put quarters in my pocket still, forgetting there’s no one here to give them to. I miss buses and stores and museums and sirens and libraries and the subway and—yes, I miss Boston.”

“But you’d like to go to church outdoors,” Jamie said, “in the woods or on the beach with the gulls and the sandpipers.”

Tessa laughed. “Yeah, well, I miss the Boston Public Garden, too, and Boston Common. I”—she leaned toward Jamie and dropped her voice—“am a mass of contradictions. I guess I’m many people. My best friend, Judy Evans, back in Boston used to say I don’t know who I am, and that’s why the cape and these.” She indicated her rings and earrings and the star in her nose. “But she’s wrong. Well, not all wrong. I know a lot of who I am, I think.”

“Yes,” said Jamie softly. “You seem to.”

Tessa stretched, her long body making a slender arc as she bent back. “Good,” she said, sounding satisfied. “Good. That’s how I’d like to seem.” She snapped her body upright again. “So, is Terry your boyfriend?” she asked abruptly.

“No,” Jamie answered, on guard herself now. “I mean—no. Um—what about your boyfriend? You mentioned him,” she added hastily, embarrassed.

Tessa shrugged and her gaze shifted to the parking lot, where Jamie now saw Nomi and Clark getting out of Clark’s car; Clark was holding the door for Nomi. “Kevin Allen Nottor’s in Boston and Tessa Gillespie’s in Wilson. And Kevin Allen’s always been too sure of himself to be interesting. He’s history, I think. Boys—men—are fine. Lots of them are downright nice, and some are ver-r-ry sexy. But right now I’m too busy, I think. And I haven’t seen much here that interests me.” She glanced at Jamie as if checking for her reaction. “Yes. Too busy. Too preoccupied. You, too?”

“I—well, sure. Right,” Jamie sputtered even as her mind flashed LIAR to her in bold-face capital italics. “I never thought of it in quite that way. But, yeah. I agree.”

Tessa’s eyes met Jamie’s. “Sorry. That’s probably none of my business. Judy also used to tell me I’m too intense. Too nosy, too, sometimes.”

“No, no, it’s not that. It’s just—you’re pretty direct, you know?”

“What’s the point in not being direct? I hate playing mind games, word games, any games like that with people. It’s a waste of time. Tomorrow I could get hit by a truck or diagnosed with cancer. I want to make every minute of my life count.”

Jamie took a deep breath. “Me, too,” she said lamely.

“I sound sure of myself,” Tessa was saying, “and most of the time I am, about most things. Not everything, though.” She put her head on one side and smiled faintly. “Are we going to be friends?” she asked softly.

“I—I’d like that.”

“So would I.” Tessa picked up her camera bag and her books. “I didn’t want to move here, and when we did, and I first walked into Wilson High and saw all those strangers’ faces, I told myself to keep to myself, that I probably wouldn’t find any true friends. I guess I was kind of snobby. Fishermen, I thought; fishermen and car mechanics.” She laughed. “Not that my family’s any better, but snobby Tessa decided it would be okay to be a loner because then she could concentrate on studying and photography. I guess I might have been wrong about some of that, hm?”

Jamie smiled. “I guess you might have been.”

“Well, friend,” said Tessa, “I’ve got to go. But I’m glad we had this talk. We’ll have another sometime, okay?”

“Of course okay. I’m glad you came to Wilson,” Jamie added awkwardly. “And I’m glad you’ll be on the paper, and …”

“Hey, let’s leave it at that,” Tessa answered. “Otherwise I’ll get stuck-up!”

It was freezing cold in the movie theater, as if the management had forgotten to turn off the air conditioning now that it was fall. At first Terry sat in the middle, between Jamie and Ernie, but after about fifteen minutes, Terry whispered to Jamie, “Let’s switch; being cold makes me want to cuddle with Ernie. We’d both better cuddle with you instead.”

They changed places, ignoring the grumbles of “Sit down!” from behind. Ernie seemed tense and preoccupied, even when all three of them huddled together as best they could. Jamie, in the middle, actually began to feel warm, but then Terry whispered, “It’s like being by a fire, you know? One side’s warm and the other’s freezing. Let’s get out of here.”

Jamie agreed readily, for the movie wasn’t all that good, and Ernie, especially, didn’t seem to be enjoying it.

“Hungry?” asked Terry, once they were outside, and warmer.

“Sure,” said Jamie.

“Ernie?”

Ernie shrugged.

“Look,” Jamie said, “we could go on back to Wilson and then you guys could, I don’t know—be together without me tagging along. I feel sort of in the way.”

“You’re not in the way,” Ernie said quickly, emphatically, as if forcing himself to emerge from his bad mood. “Really. Come on, let’s go get something to eat. That was a good idea.”

So they sat over fries and enormous hamburgers and Cokes in a loud mall restaurant where they had to shout to be heard. As it was, Terry and Jamie did most of the talking.

“I’m so full,” Terry announced, pushing his plate away when it was empty, “that I’m going to have to roll out of here.”

Ernie laughed, too loudly, Jamie thought, sure he was forcing it, and when they got to the front and had paid, Terry, as if desperate to make Ernie laugh genuinely, surprised Jamie by suddenly getting down on the floor and somersaulting out the door, which Jamie quickly opened for him and held. Several people stared, and one or two laughed. A middle-aged man, who had to step aside to let Terry’s curled body roll out the door, muttered “Kids!” disgustedly.

“No, no,” Terry said, scrambling to his feet, “it’s ‘Kids today.’ You’ve got to remember the ‘today’ part, because,” he shouted as Jamie, laughing in spite of herself, although Ernie looked painfully embarrassed, pulled him away—“because kids today are a lot worse than kids were yesterday, when you were a kid, or maybe day before yesterday, when …”

“Drunk,” the man muttered as he darted angrily inside.

Terry brushed himself off and draped his arm over Ernie’s shoulders. “Why do adults always think people our age are drunk when we’re just—I don’t know. Exuberant?”

Ernie pushed Terry away. “Don’t, Terry,” he said softly.

Terry froze, his face stricken. “Sorry,” he said stiffly.

“I—me, too,” Ernie said. “Sorry, I mean. I—I’m just no good tonight, I guess. My dad—oh hell, never mind.”

“What?” asked Terry. “Your dad what?”

But Ernie just shook his head.

Jamie glanced at Terry, who shrugged. “How about we drive around for a bit?” she suggested. “Or go home to Wilson and to Sloan’s Beach, maybe, and walk?” She touched Ernie’s arm shyly. “Would that help any?”

Ernie gave a short, bitter laugh. “Going home sure wouldn’t,” he said. “I mean going home to my house. Going home’s the problem.” He smiled thinly. “Sure. Let’s drive to Sloan’s Beach. Anywhere’s okay; Sloan’s Beach is fine.”

He headed for the parking lot, and Jamie and Terry quickly fell into step behind him.

“What a dumb movie,” Jamie said, trying to fill the awkward pause as they got into Terry’s car; Ernie got into the back, maneuvering around Jamie to do so, even though she tried to step aside to let him get in front with Terry. “We could write a better one easily.”

“Yeah,” Terry agreed, too heartily, as he backed the car out of its space. “Let’s see … Okay, I’ve got it. There’s this lonely typewriter …”

“Who falls in love with a computer,” Jamie supplied.

“Only the computer’s really in love with a copier …”

“But the copier likes the fax machine instead …”

Jamie glanced in the rearview mirror at Ernie, who was staring outside, not participating, probably not even listening, she thought—and she and Terry, after a few more feeble attempts at silliness, lapsed into silence.

The moon hung brightly over the water at Sloan’s Beach, but they needed the flashlight from Terry’s glove compartment to avoid slipping on rockweed. For a while they walked in silence, and Jamie, sandwiched uneasily between Terry and Ernie, hoped that the steady cold wind and the even sound of the sea lapping against the shore would calm whatever demons were in Ernie’s mind.

Finally Terry stopped. “My thinking place,” he said lightly to Ernie, indicating a large flat rock on which he and Jamie often sat. “Have a seat. Or would you rather go on walking?”

“Walking, I guess.”

“Okay.” Terry threw back his shoulders and took a deep breath. “Walking’s good. Clears the cobwebs, right, Jamie?”

“Something like that,” Jamie said quietly, watching Ernie.

“So what did your dad do?” Terry asked, watching him also. “Come on, Ernie, maybe you’ll feel better if you tell us. Jamie won’t mind. Will you, Jamie?”

“No, but maybe Ernie will. I could leave. I can walk home from here …”

“I don’t mind,” Ernie said. He drew a deep breath. “Okay. I told my father I had a date tonight. You know, implying it was with a girl. He’s been bugging me about seeing Terry so much,” Ernie explained to Jamie. “So he gives me this big wink and slaps me on the back and says, ‘Great, son, great. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’ That’s the first time he’s called me son since I stopped playing Little League.”

“Bastard,” Terry said softly; Jamie saw him reach for Ernie’s hand.

But Ernie moved away. “It’s other stuff, too. Yesterday at practice? A couple of the guys were talking about some kid at swimming camp this summer. They called him a faggot and said they used to duck him and hold him under a lot. One day they all left the locker room when he came in, and then they told the coach that he’d been, you know, eyeing them. And so the camp administration threw him out. Reminded me of my dad; he was an army recruiter for a while, and he’s bragged a million times that he could tell a guy was gay just by the way he walked. He ought to hire himself out to our pastor; last Sunday in church, you know, Lord’s Assembly”—Ernie’s voice was shaking now—“the pastor said the sex ed part of the new health curriculum’s going to cause a lot of trouble. He said he’d do everything he could to keep fornicators and homosexuals and pederasts out of Wilson. And a lot of people in the congregation kind of murmured ‘Yes.’ My dear parents included.”

He turned to Jamie. “Your friend Nomi? She was right there a couple of pews away with her folks, and they were smiling and nodding along with everyone else. Good old Al Checkers was there, too. He and his family looked like they wanted to jump up and cheer, you know, kill the faggots or something. I could almost hear him saying it.”

Ernie looked at Terry, as if pleading with him, and once more Jamie felt like an intruder. She tried to move away inconspicuously when Ernie spoke again, his voice low. “Terry, I …” He turned away, fists clenched.

Terry stepped toward him, standing close without touching. “It’s okay, Ernie,” Jamie heard him say, his voice catching a little as he spoke. “I’ve told you we can be friends for now. It’s okay. Let’s do that. I’d rather be just friends with you than lose you.”

But as she quickly walked away, Jamie saw the tears on Terry’s face.