The W. E. B. Du Bois High School librarian was dressed like a model of propriety. Armed with a thick packet of note cards, which she hardly ever seemed to look at, she gave a convincing pro–First Amendment presentation. This was followed by an eloquent statement by the head of the English department. Then Hammermeister suddenly found himself on his feet making counterarguments, all weak and vapid. The beneficial effects of the nap were short-lived. He was strung out from too much booze and Tylenol #4, and as he scanned the room looking for a sympathetic face, the fact that there seemed to be none inflamed him with hollow fury. This was a setup. The board members, the superintendent, and his own principal looked at him expectantly. The formality of the room was hard, as were the faces of the people sitting in the gallery. A press photographer snapped photos of Hammermeister, and as he did so, a feeling of depersonalization overcame the Canadian. Exhausted by the previous evening, the present onslaught was too much for him. He found himself saying, over and over again, that he was about to receive a doctorate in education, as if that were germane to the situation at hand. He said something about how a society that was too liberal became soft and festered with decay. Harold said something about the rightness of trying to change society for the better turning to “wrongness” when everyone focused on gender, sexual entitlement, and the color of skin. Whatever happened to genuine achievement leading to entitlement? You couldn’t play center for the Tigers just because you were white. No! You had to be the best center fielder in Detroit. So what was the problem? What did sex or color have to do with genuine achievement? Why did society have to allocate prizes and create heroes out of sex perverts and deluded, talentless know-nothings, be they black, white, or brown? Why did they have to hand the keys to power over to fools? The right-minded liberal inclination to make the “all men are created equal” utopia had led to ruin. Utopia-building, good in theory, simply did not work anymore. It only led to ruin, decay, and dispersion. It was time to resort back to the police state. Like Duffy had said—Singapore!

Somewhere in the back of his brain he realized it was the codeine talking—a medicinal “misadventure”—yet Hammermeister could not stop himself. He told the audience that America was going down the sewer as it coddled weaklings and slackers. He began to talk of racial polarization and the subway shooters, until finally the superintendent, aghast at Hammermeister’s presentation from the first, shot him a withering look and cut him off. “That will do, Mr. Hammermeister. Thank you for your views.”