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Living Witness(10)

By:Jane Haddam


“Shelley,” she said.

“I just don’t like being yelled at,” Shelley said. “Is that so strange? I don’t like being followed around and yelled at. Especially not by those people. All they ever want to say to me is that I’m going to rot in Hell.”

“They say it to Mallory and Hannah,” Judy said. “In school. Mallory came home in tears the other day. But we can’t let that matter to us. We can’t. What kind of chance do you think you have of being able to get out of here any time soon?”

“Oh, God,” Shelley said. “Steve told me that Sun Dynamics is thinking of expanding the campus and moving all their operations out here. Sometimes I think we’re going to be stuck in this godforsaken place for decades.”

“I heard the same thing from Dan,” Judy said. “We can’t let it happen this way. We can’t. We’ve got a right to a decent education for our children. We’ve got a right to our own beliefs. They’re not gods, these people here. As far as I’m concerned, some of them are barely human.”

“Alice McGuffie,” Shelley said, with a little puff of laugher.

“Exactly,” Judy said. “We had every right to sue, under the circumstances, and we have every right to win the suit. And we’re going to win it. And we’re going to be here a long time after that. So we might as well brave it out. I went to Evolvefish and ordered a Darwin fish for the car. You should do it yourself.”

“The car will get vandalized,” Shelley said.

“Then we’ll file a complaint and get the police to find the vandals,” Judy said. “We’ll just do it and do it and do it. It’s time Snow Hill, Pennsylvania, entered the twenty-first century. I mean, for God’s sake. ‘Intelligent design.’ What is that? It’s just the same old creationism with a fancy new name, and you know what it will mean. You can kiss the Ivy League good-bye. The kids will never get the SAT scores. You can kiss any kind of decent life good-bye. The kids will end up dropping out of school at sixteen and working in convenience stores. Or worse. They’ll get religion and start lecturing you about having a glass of wine with dinner. They’ll turn in to people like them.” Judy motioned vaguely in the direction of the parking lot. “They’ll turn in to troglodytes.”

“I do believe in God,” Shelley said, dubious.

“I believe in God, too,” Judy said. “I just don’t believe in a stupid God. And that’s all you get out here. Stupid God. You know why we don’t go to church since we’ve been out here? We tried three churches and they were all the same. Praise Jesus! Get saved! Run and hide from the evil liberals! I never thought of myself as a liberal until I came here, but I sure as Hell do now. And I’m going to run for school board at the end of the year. Henry Wackford asked me to.”

“Really?” Shelley said.

“It’s not just the creationism,” Judy said. “It’s everything. These people have a stupid God and they’re stupid themselves, if you ask me. Think of the construction on the new school. It’s stalled—there’s not a thing going on. We’re never going to get that school finished if we don’t get rid of the people who think anybody who’s graduated from the fifth grade is a pointy-headed intellectual. And there are enough of us in town now to swing an election.”

“Look,” Shelley said. “It’s Annie-Vic. That woman is amazing.”

Judy looked. Annie-Vic was just passing the entrance to the parking lot, doing her power walk. She looked like she had more energy than most people Judy’s age.

“They say Franklin Hale is ready to kill her,” Judy said. “He’s absolutely livid that she didn’t go along with the textbook change, and then of course she joined the lawsuit. Henry Wackford says Franklin really expected to have a unanimous board so that he could say that intelligent design was the will of the people, or some crap like that.”

“I just hope she doesn’t drop dead in the middle of all this,” Shelley said. “It’s got to be such a strain.”

“She doesn’t look like she’s about to drop dead,” Judy said. Then she popped open her car door and started to climb out. “Let’s go,” she said. “I don’t care who yells at me. If they try to give you pamphlets, don’t take them. Maybe we should go further than that. Maybe I should order some material from the Council for Secular Humanism. You know, to hand back to them. When they hand out tracts.”

“You’re really bad,” Shelley said. “You’re going to get into trouble. Those people are dangerous.”