It was a zoo day. The place was a zoo. First period the head of the English department—tough, smart, and formidable—came into his office and told him there was no way in hell her department was going to see John Steinbeck banished from the school. Hammermeister told her it was a matter between himself and the librarians, and she closed the door, took three powerful strides over to his desk, where he stood looking through his memos. “Now you just wait here, buster!” In casting this role, Harold was suddenly thinking in terms of Bette Midler or Cher on a tirade.

Boy! Twenty-five Hans Seyle stress points for that one. Hammermeister had tried to appeal to her sense of reason. “We’ve got a levy coming, we don’t need this right now. What will you say if I tell you we can’t buy new language-arts books this fall?” His voice was hollow. His legs, the shins especially, began to hurt more than the burn on his ass. He gulped down more codeine with the last of his cold coffee. Why in the hell had he come back to this hellhole? To nail Centrick Cline and Sean Duffy, that’s why—and from the stack of morning memos he could see that both of them had already called in sick. His secretary gave him their numbers, and he called them both at home. Neither of the malefactors answered their phones. Off somewhere together, drunk, sniggering in iniquitous delight.

Later that morning he was forced to phone the parent who had raised the hullabaloo about Cannery Row. She was a real kook. What the fuck! Yet Hammermeister deferred to her, sympathized and told her off the record that he was in full agreement with her. It was necessary to placate this woman. Dr. White had insisted upon it. Hadn’t he?

Events quickly came to a head when the issue was thrown in at the tail end of the monthly board of directors meeting the next evening. The librarians throughout the district were on hand, as were librarians from nearby school districts. The word spread fast. “Oh God,” Hammermeister thought, “a cause célèbre.” He had to go home and crash before the meeting, and then, heavily medicated, he overslept and showed up looking like Howard Beale coming in to deliver the news in that old movie Network. Harold’s buzz cut was sticky with tape, he needed a shave—he looked like a madman. But he was high and didn’t care. He had not prepared for the debate; he had decided to just “wing it.” Sometimes it paid to be spontaneous and genuine. You were walking on thin ice, but sometimes it did work.