Hammermeister began slamming his personal supplies into a box. There wasn’t much. He picked up Blackboard Jungle 1999 and began to read. There was the truth. The American public would be shocked if they came to these schools and observed. Something very dangerous was going on inside. Well, the public did come. They were invited to come with open arms, but only to well-orchestrated events with canned speeches, lies, bullshit inspiration. If America really knew what was going on, it would be shocked. If they could see the school, day in and day out. The quality of education was an abomination!

Harold began to dictate into his personal recorder. “The school-board system: you’ve got a superintendent. What is his job? Why, he goes to a meeting now and then. He gets a haircut. Plays golf. Around levy time he sweet-talks some newspaper people. The taxpayers would be better off if they let the district secretary run things! When I came into this field I thought that by hard work and determination I could make a difference, but I have been swallowed up in chaos and futility. The American public has been greatly deceived! It is not only your hard-earned tax dollars that I am concerned about, it is our youth and the future of this once great nation! We need parental involvement. You can’t send them to us for seven hours and expect us to undo. They’re going loco. We need more metal detectors in the school. We need drug testing. We need a crime-prevention program. There should even be AIDS testing and quarantine like they’ve got over in Cuba. Are we going to let the rotten apples spoil the whole barrel? Goddammit, democracy just isn’t cutting it anymore. Someone has to step in and get the fucking trains running on time again or it’s closing time in the gardens of the West!”

Two uniformed police officers in squeaky leather jackets stepped warily into Hammermeister’s office. Harold looked at his watch. Fifteen minutes? “It hasn’t been fifteen minutes.”

“It’s time to go,” one of the police officers said.

Hammermeister looked at the box. He threw his thesis in it. He attempted to place Lulu’s glass cage in the box but it was too large. He set it back on the desk. He would have to carry the cage under one arm, and the box with the thesis, the Dixon pencils, coffee mug, Pepto-Bismol, aspirin, Tylenol #4s, Advil, his spare sports coat and neckties, etc., under the other arm. Except that now he was so spaced from the codeine and round-the-clock vodka drinking that he knew he would never manage it.

“Let’s go,” the officer said.