The Fancy Dancer

library,” she said. “I am a member of the school board, so I could demand to see the card files. And I was shocked to find that some highly unsuitable books are on the shelves for our children to read.”
    The minute Laura Shoup said anything, parliamentary procedures went out the window.
    “Laura,” said Mr. Meade, “you just lost a case, in court.”
    “The court is not infallible,” said Mrs. Shoup.
    “Are you appealing?” insisted Meade.
    Mrs. Shoup didn’t hesitate a moment. “Frankly, no,” she said.
    “Why?”
    “My lawyer thought it would be a waste of time,” she said. “Anyway, with the school library, we don’t have to go through the courts. It’s a simple matter of frightening the principal and the rest of the school board enough to take the books off the shelves.”
    “What books are you talking about?” asked Mrs. Shaw.
    Mrs. Shoup had a long list. “Salinger, Baldwin, Hemingway—”
    “ Hemingway P” said Mrs. Shaw.
    “It was Hemingway that got me to the problem,” said Mrs. Shoup. “My daughter Meg brought The Old Man and the Sea home for an English assignment. I was shocked to find that there’s a little scene where the old man, uh, relieves himself over the side of the boat.”
    “But that’s not pornography,” said Mrs. Pufescu.
    Mrs. Shoup kept on listing books as if she hadn’t heard. “Oscar Wilde—” she said.
    “What’s wrong with Wilde?” Mrs. Shaw said sharply. “He’s one of my favorite authors. Goodness, all my children have read him.”
    “People think those stories are for children, but
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    they’re not,” said Mrs. Shoup. “The author was a homosexual, and the stories are full of sick depravity and decadence.”
    I broke in too. “But Mrs. Shoup, they’re very Christian stories. There isn’t anything depraved about ‘The Selfish Giant.’ ”
    “Homosexuals aren’t Christians,” said Mrs. Shoup bluntly, turning the fiery blast of her black eyes on me. “Surely, Father, you aren’t defending homosexuals.”
    Mrs. Shaw cut in. “What about other classics in the school library?”
    “What about them?” said Mrs. Shoup.
    “You haven’t listed anybody earlier than 1900, except Wilde.”
    “Oh, I’m not after the old classics,” said Mrs. Shoup. “I’m after filthy modem writing.”
    ‘Why not? There’s plenty of seamy stuff in the classics,” said Mrs. Shaw. Her eyes did not waver before Mi's. Shoup’s gaze. “Shakespeare—the senior English class gets that. The Bible. Goodness, Laura, if you don’t like toilet stuff, read Gullivers Travels someday, that’s on the senior reading list . . . And Candide? That’s in the library too. It’s loaded with sadomasochism.”
    Mrs. Shoup opened her mouth, but I cut her off.
    “I agree with Mrs. Shaw,” I said. “You’re going to throw out half the library. What are the kids going to study?”
    It was always a mistake to have a public head-on collision with Mrs. Shoup, and now I made that mistake, deliberately. Maybe it. was the mood. I was in. Father Matt was right—I was a shell of a priest.
    Mrs. Shoup turned the full blast of her wrath on me.
    “Father, our society is awash with swingers and polymorphous perverts, and with books by these people. I can’t think of anything more practical or moral to do for the Bicentennial than helping rid Cottonwood of these things. And America.”
    I looked her right in the eye, thinking of what her daughter Meg had told me that very evening.
    “Mrs. Shoup,” broke in Mr. Meade, “you have the kind of mind that would see incest in The Bobbsey Twins. That isn’t going to help our country—”
    The meeting now broke up into the typical kind of squabble that I had gotten to dread. Everybody was talking and yelling at once. If the Holy Spirit had been hovering anywhere near, He was now flapping off in dismay.
    Mrs. Shaw didn’t have a gavel, but she kept pounding on the coffee table with her hand like a judge. “Order, order, everybody,” she kept saying. “Please!” Everybody quieted down. Mrs. Shoup looked flushed and sullen.
    Mrs. Shaw looked around at the council with a spark of wrath kindled in her own gentle brown eyes.
    “I think,” she said, “that the simplest way to approach this issue is by our usual way. Voting. Do we or don’t we want to be involved in the activity that Laura proposes, namely, getting books removed from the high-school library? Will someone make a motion to that effect?”
    “I do,” said Mr.