Slip of the Tongue
By
Carter Swart

    Josh Maxwell leaned back in his chair and sipped lukewarm coffee, enjoying the brief sense of well-being the caffeine injection gave him.  He shuffled some papers, sighed, and lit a coarse, government issue cigarette.  One of life's last few pleasures, he brooded, eyeing the acrid smoke as it drifted toward the low ceiling.
    His fifteenth floor cubicle was much like a hundred others in the Department of Public Affairs, the 21st century's glistening stone and glass monument to Big Government efficiency.  One hundred-and-ten stories high, it towered above Chicago's poisonous brown skyline, like a clean, shining finger poking out of a dirty glove.
    The phone on his desk suddenly rang with a vicious, nerve jangling screech.  Josh quickly put down the coffee cup, snuffed his smoke, and snatched up the receiver. "Maxwell, speaking."
    "Maxwell, get your ass up here."  It was Rawlings Pennington, Josh's boss.
    "Right away, sir."  Josh put down the receiver, got up quickly, slipped into his threadbare sweater, lifted his pants above his sagging belly, and rushed out of the office to the elevator.  Moments later he was in Pennington's plush oak paneled office.  The man's secretary showed Josh a little smirk, then waved him into the top floor inner sanctum.
    Pennington, all jowls and florid face, was sitting stiffly behind his immense wooden desk like a feudal king.
    "Sit," he commanded.
    Josh sat.
    Pennington was entirely bald.  His suit, an immaculate blue wool herringbone, was tailored to perfection.  Tiny reading glasses perched precariously on his prominent red nose like a translucent butterfly on an overripe plum.  "I'm afraid I've got some disturbing news for you, Josh," murmured Pennington, not unkindly.
    "Yes?"
    "It's your kid.  Piedmont school called.  He's in deep shit."
    Josh turned crimson.  "What?  He's only eight years old, Mr. Pennington.  How can he--"
    "Be in deep shit?  Easy.  Apparently, he called some kid a--a--well, he used the N word.”
    Uh-oh.  Josh shivered and felt the weight of the world slide onto his shoulders.  This was a calamity, for over the years, supporters of political correctness had successfully promulgated a series of Supreme Court decisions making the utterance of "hate" words a federal crime.  And when, in 2054, the individual states were dissolved and replaced by the New Great Progressive Society, hate mongering became a serious felony.  This was the first of many rents that later shredded the 1st Amendment.  Thus, "keeping a civil tongue" became more than just desirable, it became a matter of personal survival.  The punishment for not doing so was often severe. "I, uh, will have go home," muttered Josh, whose skin had now taken on the color of paste.  "The police will be looking for me."
    "I know.  I hope--"  Pennington shrugged in sympathy.
    Josh nodded and rushed out the door.
    A half-hour later the dingy public hover craft (private air autos were for government employees only) dropped him off near his apartment, one of six hundred bleak look-alikes in Chicago's Park Ridge Cooperative.
    He took the elevator seven flights to his cold three-room flat, finding it crawling with cops.  He was immediately searched, cuffed, and placed on the sofa.  Told to shut his mouth, he waited anxiously for an Inspector Koster to arrive.  Sitting there there for an hour, sweating while drab looking men searched every scrap of paper and pried into every drawer and cupboard in the place, he trembled with fright.
    Finally, Josh spoke.  "Please, my son, where is he?  What's happening?"
    He was again told to be quiet.
    Eventually a little emaciated man with a bone white complexion, thin lips, and hooded eyes came through the door and sat down next to Josh.  He wore the bright silver and red jump suit of state security.  Putting a skeletal hand on Josh's arm, he murmured softly, "I'm Koster.  I'm going to ask you some questions and I want straight answers.  Understand?"
    "Yes, but--"
    "Please...try not to speak until advised."
     Josh’s paralyzing fear deepened.  He'd heard rumors of savage on-the-spot punishments doled out to persons who'd been grossly impolitic, especially when they'd used hate words.  But even state security wouldn't hurt a small boy, would they?
    "First, Maxwell, we're not exactly sure where your son learned that, uh, word.  Perhaps you can you enlighten us?"
    Josh violently shook his head.  "Not from me.  And Mark's a good boy.  Couldn't the other kid have been mistaken?"
    "`Fraid not.  There are a dozen witnesses."
    Josh tried to imagine Mark saying such a word.  He couldn't.  Where on earth had the boy learned that anachronistic abomination?
    "You can see that we need to know who infected the boy's mind with such filth.  It’s our duty to eradicate all such words from public discussion.  In a civilized society there can be only one way of thinking.
    "Of course."
    "Um, you live here alone with the kid?  You have no wife?"
    "She died of lung cancer last year."
    "Pity.  You know, we see a lot of this with single parents.  We’ve got some interesting, perhaps even radical notions about ending single parenthood.  State sanctioned, uh, but I digress.  Now, Maxwell, tell me, you're not hiding any ugly little secrets, are you?  Contraband books, maybe?”  Koster's hot little eyes narrowed, and his face took on the look of a Dark Ages inquisitor.  His claw like hand squeezed Josh's arm, giving him the sensation of being in the grip of a small bird of prey.
    Josh shivered.
    "Well?" pressed Koster.
    "N...no sir.  If my son actually uttered that word, he didn't get if from me.  I'm not crazy, for Christ sakes."
    Koster frowned and was about to reply, when one of his acolytes approached triumphantly and whispered something in his ear.  Just then, from down the hall, there came the most bloodcurdling shriek Josh had ever heard--followed by a moan of agony, then a long drawn-out cry of terror and desolation.  Koster hissed an oath, leaped to his feet, and rushed out the door, leaving Josh to cast anxious glances into the kitchen where the cupboards were being carefully emptied, one at a time.  Ten minutes later Koster reappeared.  He walked to the sofa and bent over Josh.  "Here, let me take off those cuffs."
    "What?"  Is this a trick?
    Koster keyed the cuffs, removed them, slipped them into his pocket, and sat down in a nearby chair.  "Looks like you're in the clear.  We've got our man."
    Just then there came another wild shriek from the hallway.  Moments later one could hear the sound of heavy blows landing on flesh.  Koster expressed irritation by allowing a scowl to lightly crease his brow.
    "Who was it?”
    "Man down the hall named Simpson.  Admitted filling your kid's mind with rubbish.  He'd let him read a copy of Huckleberry Finn.  Imagine.  That's where the blasphemy came from.  You really should be more careful about whom your son associates with.  The world is still peopled by far too many social deviates.  We simply won’t suffer such people anymore."
    “Uh...no,” Josh murmured, thinking that Simpson was just a harmless fool.  Poor devil.
    Koster sighed and looked around the ruined apartment.  "Sorry about this mess.  I'll have a couple of men come over tomorrow and help you clean up."
    "That's not necessary."
    Koster offered a ghastly smile.  "I insist.  After all, we're not monsters."
    Josh nodded.  "What about Mark?"
    "Sorry, that's up to school security and the principal; it's their call."
    "When do you think I can see him?"
    "Don't know.  Tell you what, I check it out, then give you a call this afternoon.  Okay?"
    "Thanks."
    Koster got up.  "Ugly business."
    "What about Simpson?  What will happen to him?"
    Koster shrugged.  "Up to the court.  Don't think it will be pretty, though.  We found a hidey-hole under the floor where he'd hidden a bunch of outlawed books, the worst kind--Steinbeck, Vidal, Twain, Hemingway--you know the really vile stuff, full of hate mongering and sexism."
    Josh trembled and stared at his shoes.  He was still worried sick about Mark--and that other thing.
    Koster suddenly smiled--a lenient beast.  "Buck up, Maxwell.  This wasn't your doing.  You're clean.  I'll call you when I know something."
    Later that afternoon Josh received a phone call from Koster.  The man's voice was noncommittal, giving away nothing.  "Maxwell?  Listen, your son will be dropped off around 7:00 p.m.  He'll be with the school nurse.  She'll give you instructions."
    "Nurse?  Instructions?  For what?"
    The phone clicked off, leaving a silence as cold and as uncertain as the tomb.
    Breaking into a sweat, Josh quickly shut the blinds, locked the door, and feverishly scrambled into the kitchen.  Jeez, I been so worried about Mark, I forget the  bastards are coming back tomorrow!
    Pulling down the ironing board, he tripped a hidden home-made electrical circuit; exposing a narrow opening.  Inside were a dozen well thumbed books, beautiful books, books that helped numb the pain of this highly regimented and featureless society.  He fondled the books lovingly, yet in his heart there lurked the terror of discovery, of sharing Simpson’s fate.  His sense of relief was palpable.  Thank God! they missed these, he thought. No one, not even Mark, knows about this place.  Can't take any chances, though.  I  was lucky today.  They may want to look around some more.  No, I can't risk it.  He reverently carried the books to the fireplace and proceeded to burn them one-by-one, his eyes filling with tears as he put to the flame the accumulated wisdom, knowledge, humor, and beauty of yesteryear.  It broke his heart.
    At 7:30 Mark came home.  His face was as pale as milk as he stumbled through the door on the arm of the school nurse.  He ran to his father, burying his face in Josh's sweater, moaning and sobbing.
    The nurse, middle-aged, severe, and silent, dropped a thin brochure and a bloody towel on the kitchen table.   "Read the brochure, Mr. Maxwell.  Your son will need to see the doctor once or twice before he goes to `special school.'   He should lie down now."
    "What?"
    "Just read the goddamn brochure," she snapped angrily.  Whirling around, she stalked out the door, closing it with a sharp bang.
    Yet Josh imagined that he heard her sob just as the door slammed shut.  Yes, I distinctly heard a sob, he thought.  He held Mark at arm's length.  The boy's gray pallor was in sharp contrast to the dried blood encrusting his lips.  "My God, son, what have they done to you?"
    Mark began to cry, his harsh sobs filling the room.  Josh looked closer, then stepped back and let out a howl of horror.  The punishment for a "hate crime” at Piedmont Middle School was severe indeed--the loss of one's tongue!

Copyright 1992, Carter Swart

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Slip of the Tongue first appeared in "Heliocentric Net" magazine, August, 1992