Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [218]
'Can I ask you something, Ms Lortz?'
'Of course, Sam. That's what I'm here for - to answer questions.'
'It's about the Children's Library,' he said, 'and the posters. Some of them surprised me. Shocked me, almost.' He expected that to come out sounding like something a Baptist preacher might say about an issue of Playboy glimpsed beneath the other magazines on a parishioner's coffee table, but it didn't come out that way at all. Because, he thought, it's not just a conventional sentiment. I really was shocked. No almost about it.
'Posters?' she asked, frowning, and then her brow cleared. She laughed. 'Oh! You must mean the Library Policeman ... and Simple Simon, of course.'
'Simple Simon?'
'You know the poster that says NEVER TAKE RIDES FROM STRANGERS? That's what the kids call the little boy in the picture. The one who is yelling. They call him Simple Simon - I suppose they feel contempt for him because he did such a foolish thing. I think that's very healthy, don't you?'
'He's not yelling,' Sam said slowly. 'He's screaming.'
She shrugged. 'Yelling, screaming, what's the difference? We don't hear much of either in here. The children are very good - very respectful.'
'I'll bet,' Sam said. They were back in the foyer again now, and he glanced at the sign on the easel, the sign which didn't say
SILENCE IS GOLDEN
or
PLEASE TRY TO BE QUIET
but just offered that one inarguable imperative:
SILENCE!
'Besides - it's all a matter of interpretation, isn't it?'
'I suppose,' Sam said. He felt that he was being maneuvered - and very efficiently - into a place where he would not have a moral leg to stand on, and the field of dialectic would belong to Ardelia Lortz. She gave him the impression that she was used to doing this, and that made him feel stubborn. 'But they struck me as extreme, those posters.'
'Did they?' she asked politely. They had halted by the outer door now.
'Yes. Scary.' He gathered himself and said what he really believed. 'Not appropriate to a place where small children gather.'
He found he still did not sound prissy or self-righteous, at least to himself, and this was a relief.
She was smiling, and the smile irritated him. 'You're not the first person who ever expressed that opinion, Sam. Childless adults aren't frequent visitors to the Children's Library, but they do come in from time to time - uncles, aunts, some single mother's boyfriend who got stuck with pick-up duty . . . or people like you, Sam, who are looking for me.'
People in a pinch, her cool blue-gray eyes said. People who come for help and then, once they HAVE been helped, stay to criticize the way we run things here at the Junction City Public Library. The way I run things at the Junction City Public Library.
'I guess you think I was wrong to put my two cents in,' Sam said good-naturedly. He didn't feel goodnatured, all of a sudden he didn't feel good-natured at all, but it was another trick of the trade, one he now wrapped around himself like a protective cloak.
'Not at all. It's just that you don't understand. We had a poll last summer, Sam -it was part of the annual Summer Reading Program. We call our program Junction City's Summer Sizzlers, and each child gets one vote for every book he or she read. It's one of the strategies we've developed over the years to encourage children to read. That is one of our most important responsibilities, you see.'
We know what we're doing, her steady gaze told him. And I'm being very polite, aren't I? Considering that you, who have never been here in your life before, have presumed to poke your head in once and start shotgunning criticisms.
Sam began to feel very much in the wrong. That dialectical battlefield did not belong to the Lortz woman yet - at least not entirely - but he recognized the fact that he was in retreat.
'According to the poll, last summer's favorite movie among the children was A Nightmare on Elm Street, Part 5. Their favorite rock group is called