On the following Friday Lulu number two was found murdered in the same fashion as number one had been: impaled with a number one Dixon. In evidence was another cigarette butt. A vile-smelling thing filled with blackish tobacco. This one was not a Gitane, but it was unfiltered and it was foreign. Harold noticed such butts in an ashtray in Centrick Cline’s janitor’s closet. And what a place that was. There were militant anti-white slogans pasted on the wall, posters of Malcolm X and Huey Newton, and an accumulation of what seemed to be voodoo paraphernalia. Cline was not known to be a smoker. Yet most of the staff who smoked had keys to this closet and would sneak cigarettes there. Throughout the remainder of the day, Harold made hourly checks to see if any of the teachers had smoked such a cigarette during their prep periods. There were none to be found. But then there were none in the morning after the janitors’ shift either.

Because of the pace and the pressing events of the school, Hammermeister found himself playing catch-up. This alarmed him, since he was no procrastinator and was devoting every waking hour to his job. On a number of occasions the senior vice-principal came down hard on him, implying that his Ph.D. would have to wait until summer; there was a school to run. Hammermeister’s objective “breath of fresh air”—the Canadian jet stream—was getting stale. Harold heard the talk and could only hope another burst of energy was available, and with it some new inspiration. When he was state superintendent of education, when the book was made into the movie and he was pulling in fifty-thousand-dollar speaking-engagement fees, Rider would still be on his fat, Ahm a soul man, sweet potato pie ass, forever mired deep in the middle of Detroit’s blackboard jungle. In the meantime, not only was the staff all over him, but the students were becoming impossible to control. Harold was now somehow frightened by them—frightened terribly, and they could tell. Without Lulu next to him exuding encouragement, Harold grew scared and was overreacting. When he started nailing students with suspensions over petty grievances, Dr. White hit the ceiling.

White scheduled a personal one-on-one conference with Harold after school. He was far from courteous when he told Harold of the conference, and he did not stutter. The motherfucker was on the rag! Hammermeister staggered through the day, certain that he was about to be fired. But it wasn’t that at all. White dumped a book challenge on Harold. At issue was John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row—it had been called “filth” by an irate parent. White told Harold to handle it without saying exactly how. White just didn’t want to get his hands dirty, that was all. There was a levy vote coming up and “how” had to mean: get the library to pull the book. Or did it?