“Well,” he said. “I hope I’m not blowing some kind of cover here.”
“We’re not working undercover,” Molly said. “We’re hardly working, if you want to know the truth. Kevin wants somebody to keep an eye on things, so we’re keeping it, but there’s not much going on. The most these people seem to want to do to each other is yell.”
“But something was done, wasn’t it?” Gregor asked. “This woman, this Ann-Victoria Hadley, was assaulted.”
The waitress came back with Gregor’s coffee. Gregor thanked her and pulled it close to him. Under Bennis’s influence, he had stopped loading it up with cream and sugar. Under Bennis’s influence, he had also started eating a lot of vegetables. It was a terrible thing what a man would do to get a woman to marry him.
Molly was looking into the depths of her own coffee cup. “Your Miss Hadley was certainly assaulted,” she said, “and we’ve heard all the talk that it was all about the trial, but Evan and I don’t exactly buy it. Not that it’s impossible, I suppose.”
“There’s this guy,” Evan said. “Local lawyer. Heads the biggest firm in town.”
“He used to be the chairman of the school board before these guys were voted in,” Molly said. “Henry Wackford.”
“The firm is called Wackford Squeers,” Evan said. “Can you imagine that? If I had a firm with a name like that, I’d change it. To anything.”
“Ignore him,” Molly said. “Henry Wackford has been going around telling everybody who will listen that it was Franklin Hale, that’s the new chairman of the school board, anyway, that he was the one who went after Miss Hadley. According to Henry Wackford, the fundamentalists are evil, violent fascists and they’ve taken to going after scientists with their guns.”
“Ann-Victoria Hadley was a scientist?” Gregor was surprised.
“No,” Evan said. “That’s just how these people talk. There’s another one. Edna something or the other.”
“Edna Milton,” Molly said.
“That’s the one,” Evan said. “She’s going around saying there have been death threats against the judge sitting on this case—did Kevin tell you about the judge? Old Ham Folger, for God’s sake. A man so self-important he takes himself more seriously than God.”
“Kevin did tell me about that,” Gregor said. “He also said it was a no-go.”
“It is,” Molly said. “There have been no threats against Hamilton Folger. And I mean none. Not even nonviable ones. But according to this woman—”
“Edna Milton,” Gregor said.
“Yes, according to her, the fundamentalists are going to murder Judge Folger unless he flies right and decides the case their way. It’s driving us crazy. We can’t not check out the rumors when they come. They’ve got us running ourselves ragged checking out sheer nonsense.”
“And is the nonsense all from one side?” Gregor asked. “It’s all the evolution side talking about the Creationism side?”
“Hardly,” Evan said. “There’s Franklin Hale. He says Henry Wackford whacked the old lady because he can’t get over being voted out. Although why he’d do that, I don’t know. You’d think if Wackford was angry about being voted out, he’d go after Franklin Hale. He’s the new chairman.”
“And there’s a woman named Alice McGuffie; she and her husband own this diner, as a matter of fact,” Molly said. “She says that Henry Wackford did it because he wants to make ‘good Christian people’ look bad. She always says it that way. ‘Good Christian People.’ As if it were in capitals.”
“Both those claims seem pretty lame,” Gregor said. “They’re certainly as lame as the ones the evolution people are making.”
“In general,” Evan said, “you’ll find that the evolution side seems, at least on the surface, to have more rational arguments than the Creation side. About who assaulted Ann-Victoria Hadley, I mean. But it’s only on the surface. Once you start talking to them, they’re all equally crazy. And I, for one, just don’t get it.”
“No,” Molly agreed. “I don’t get it, either. You’d be amazed at what’s going on in this town. Even the children are beating each other up, both figuratively and literally. And over what? It isn’t as if the new board actually wanted to stop the teaching of evolution, or even to start the teaching of Creationism—”
“Intelligent Design,” Evan said. “It’s not the same thing.”