Miss Taylor shared a smile of spiritual affinity with the Reverend Claxton.
“Anyway,” she concluded, “it was Dorrell and Cummings.”
Grimm nodded. “Just those two. That’s good news, at least. Dorrell I suspected. His heart hasn’t really been in this school since his wife died a couple of years ago. I can see how he might go that way. Cummings is a surprise. You’re sure it was Augie who went along with Sprawley and the others?”
Sharon was about to explain that she easily recognized Augie’s blocky handwriting when a new voice — a deep and cavernous voice — entered the conversation: “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
This from Augie Cummings in the flesh — a large, burly, ham-fisted sheep rancher in his fifties. Augie was the only board member who lived in Sanpete County (earning his seat because of his militant Gentile status: he was an outspoken Baptist in an overwhelmingly Mormon county). Augie had been listening outside a door that Sharon had inadvertently left slightly ajar. Now the door was open and Augie had stepped fully into the room.
“And you’re aware, Miss Taylor,” he appended, “that what you just did could result in your dismissal from this school.”
“I would fight that effort tooth and nail, Cummings,” responded Grimm.
“Do you want me to leave the room, Tim?” asked Sharon.
“No. Stay. Sit. Augie, I don’t get it. By your single vote you’ve put me and the rest of this school in a terrible fix. I don’t understand how you could go along with it. Your politics have never run toward platitudinous spread-eagleism.”
“The school’s getting a reputation, Tim. I happen to like what you’re doing here, but perception is changing: we’re not just some college-prep boarding school for the kids of boondock ranchers and National Park rangers anymore. The word now is that Sanpitch is becoming a lefty school — like one of those Greenwich Village little Red schoolhouses. Look, I hauled myself thirty miles across the county to cast my vote for Adlai Stevenson both times, even though I knew that he didn’t have a prayer when it came to winning this state, so don’t question my own progressive credentials. But the Westerners who send their kids here — they may be a live-and-let-live bunch, but they aren’t Wobblies, and if Sanpitch starts to get known as the place where Rocky Mountain Reds board their Marxist brood, the other parents — the kind who’ve been the backbone of this school from the beginning — they’re gonna start yanking their sons and daughters right out of here. This loyalty oath is going to make a lot of those parents feel better.”
“What happens to my teachers — the ones who won’t sign?”
“Well, you’ll just have to make them sign, Tim. You have to explain to them why it’s important for them to swallow their pride and do what in the end is really the best thing for the school.”
“Can you at least get the second sentence taken out?”
Cummings nodded. “I think I could even get Dorell to go along with it.”
Grimm thought for a moment. “So I really have no other choice, do I?” This question was posed to his friend, the Reverend Claxton.
“To be human is to compromise, Tim. Only Jesus Christ was allowed to stick unwaveringly to his principles.”
“I think,” interjected Cummings, “that you’ll be surprised how few of your teachers would be willing to sacrifice their jobs for a principle.”
“Or how many would choose to stay simply because of their affinity for you, Tim.” The reverend was smiling warmly at his friend.
In the end, after much handwringing and soul-searching, only one teacher refused to sign the contract, which was tantamount to agreeing to the loyalty oath. It was Mr. Gage, who taught junior high mathematics. The fact that in the end he was the only one to object to the point of taking a hard stand came as a surprise to both Superintendent Grimm and to his right-hand men, the Reverend Claxton and Director Rainwater, in spite of what had been speculated on board review day. Grimm decided to talk to Gage. He could always be called upon to speak his mind and he had a reputation for not holding back, regardless of the circumstances.
“It isn’t what you think at all, Tim,” said Gage, as the two men strolled through the darkened campus on the night before the students would be released for their much-anticipated winter break. “I’m almost sixty. I’ve spent nearly two-thirds of my life as a teacher here at Sanpitch. Excepting service in the military, there is no other job in this country that demands as much of one’s time and attention as being a boarding school teacher. Right now as we’re walking and talking I’m wondering in the back of my mind if my eighth-grade boys are really all asleep or have a few of them stolen down to the common room to trade Lash LaRue comic books and watch John Wayne on the late show. And this being the last night in this term, I have a mind to be intentionally negligent and creep right off to bed without checking on them.”
Harley Gage chuckled over the recklessness of his contemplated dereliction.
“Lookit, Tim — I wake up in the morning thinking about these boys, about all of our kids, and I go to bed at night praying that they get all the good breaks when they grow up and leave this place. This school has been my life and I’ve been quite blessed. It is all that I’ve had and all that I’ve ever wanted — to make some kind of small difference in these youngsters’ lives. I do hate sometimes the direction this country is headed, but I know that we’re raising kids who will be equipped to help make it better.
“Do I advocate the overthrow of this government by force or other unlawful means? What a question! And how terribly inconsequential when set beside those things that really do matter. But it’s important for at least one of us to send a message on behalf of all of the rest of us.”
Men in 1957 rarely showed the kind of physical affection that would come so much easier to their grandsons over fifty years later. But on that night, beneath a spangled late autumn sky in the Sanpete Valley of central Utah, two men shook hands in a way that more-than-adequately expressed the strength and solidity of their friendship — a friendship cemented by serious shared purpose. And John Wayne, with Mr. Gage’s blessing, fought the outlaws and the Apaches into the wee hours of the morning with no small number of rapt eighth-grade boys as witnesses.
1958 EXPLOSIVE IN SOUTH CAROLINA
2212, 03/12/58
Doris Daltry makes her husband Air Force Lieutenant Kenneth Daltry a Scotch and soda. It’s late. He’s tired. He’s also jittery and needs to relax.
“Did you collect all the pieces?” asks Doris, massaging her husband’s tight shoulders through his t-shirt.
“By the hardest. There was one little boy who really dug in his heels — wouldn’t give up any of what he’d found. His father really had to work on him. Pretty uncomfortable situation. The kid’s crying, the mother’s standing there giving me the evil eye.” Kenneth groans at the memory. Then he moans, this time with pleasure. “Ah, that knot right there. Really dig in, honey.”
As Doris kneads harder, she asks, “Have they finished combing the area?”
Kenneth shakes his head. “They’ll be going over it for a week at least.”