Living Witness(52)

Gary opened the other door and stepped back. “We fixed this up as an office for you,” he said. “It’s not completely adequate. It isn’t supposed to be an office.”

“It’s supposed to be a closet,” Tina said. “But it’s got a window, and it’s got heat, so we thought it might do.”

It also had a desk, a chair, and a computer and had been thoroughly cleaned out. Gregor stepped inside and immediately felt more than a little claustrophobic. It was very small. He would have to keep the door open. There was a thick manila folder on the desk. He picked it up and looked at it.

“That’s everything we know so far,” Gary Albright said. “We thought we’d put it on a hard copy and you could take it home with you if you wanted to. But it’s on the computer, too, and you can send the files to yourself, or Tina can send them. That way you can look at them off site, too. We weren’t sure what you would need.”

Gregor wasn’t sure what he needed either. “I take it Miss Hadley is still alive?”

“Alive and in a coma,” Tina said. “The hospital has orders to call here if there’s any change. I went up to see her myself the other day. It’s very sad. She just lies there. She doesn’t have the, I don’t know, whatever it is she had when I used to see her.”

“General cussedness,” Gary suggested.

“Oh, really,” Tina said. “She wasn’t like that at all, Mr. Demarkian. Not like some of them, if you know what I mean. Some of the Darwinists, I guess. She wasn’t like Henry Wackford, or those awful people in that organization he started. Mad at us, mad at themselves, mad at the world. She wasn’t like that at all.”

Darwinists, Gregor thought. He let it go. “Was she on the old school board, too?” he asked. “The one that mostly got thrown out by this new bunch?”

“No,” Gary said. “The old board had been in place for years, but they had a gap—Edna Milton had to resign last year because she had some medical thing—”

“Drying out, if you ask me,” Tina said.

“Some medical thing,” Gary said firmly. “Anyway, for some reason she had to drop out, so Henry asked Annie-Vic to run in her place. We were all a little surprised that she said yes. She doesn’t have a lot of use for Henry.”

“She doesn’t have a lot of use for anybody who speechifies all the time,” Tina said, “which I think is entirely to her credit. Anyway, I have to admit, it was a good thing she got on, even if it did mean we ended up in this lawsuit—”

“Annie-Vic isn’t the reason we ended up in this lawsuit,” Gary said, “no matter what anybody says. Even if the board had been unanimous, somebody would have sued. That was inevitable.”

“Well, the people in the development,” Tina started.

Gary shook his head. “It’s not the people in the development, not entirely, and you know it. You and I both know people who’ve been in town forever who are on that side of things. And not just Henry Wackford and his people. If you ask me, I don’t think they should teach anything at all about evolution or creation in the public schools. There’s no consensus. It doesn’t matter which side a school board takes. There’s always trouble. I don’t understand why they can’t leave all that to the colleges and let the school districts alone.”

“The way I understand it,” Gregor said, “evolution is the foundation of modern biology, so if you don’t teach evolution, you don’t teach modern biology.”

Gary waved this away. “We didn’t learn about evolution in high school here when I was a student, and we still learned lots about biology. Cells. Animals. Plants. Personally, I don’t see why evolution is necessary to any of that, but even if it is, my point stands. There’s no consensus. You can’t even discuss the subject without everything going to pieces. We’ve got people in this town who’ve known each other since they were in diapers, whose grandparents knew each other since they were in diapers, who aren’t talking to each other over this thing, and it’s not going to get better when the judge hands down the ruling. People have said things they’re not going to be able to take back. They’ve said things they won’t forget. And that’s a damn shame.”

“And it also means that nothing’s getting done, again,” Tina said. “In case you were wondering, Mr. Demarkian, the town didn’t elect the new school board to do something about evolution. They elected it because nothing was getting done. And I do mean nothing. I talked to Catherine Marbledale just this morning and she was tearing her hair out because some guy from the teachers’ union   was coming in today. The school board is supposed to deal with the teachers’ union  , but it isn’t. It’s doing this, so still nothing is getting done, and the union   is threatening to take the teachers’ out on strike if there isn’t some kind of movement on contract terms this week.”