The top of the desk was uncluttered. Gran never left any half-finished work. A black phone with a dial and glowing buttons for reaching each extension of the Inn, a rinsed-out coffee mug, a desk lamp with a stained glass butterfly on it, a heavy glass ashtray, and two photos sat on the desk. One snapshot of Vi and Eric standing together in front of the house, their arms around each other. Gran had taken it with her Instamatic last year: Smile and say Gorgonzola, my lovelies! And beside it, in a thick gold frame, a black-and-white photo of Gran when she was young, from back in her med-school days. She was with an older man in a white coat with a neatly trimmed mustache and little round glasses. Vi had asked about this photo before, and Gran had told her the man was one of her professors and mentors. Vi looked at Gran’s face in the photo, wearing the half-smile Vi knew so well. The one Gran gave whenever she was asked to pose for a photograph, like a full smile was too much effort.
Vi picked up the photo to look at it more closely, seeking some sign of herself in her grandmother’s young face—she thought they looked the same around the eyes maybe. And that’s when she saw it: a small, flat brass key hidden beneath the edge of the heavy gold frame.
Vi set the photo down and removed the key, studying it for a second, then slipping it into the keyhole in the top drawer of the desk. It fit perfectly and turned easily.
“Thank you,” she whispered to the God of Keys. Then, “Please,” to the Clue-Finding God.
What could be in the drawer that Gran felt the need to keep locked up?
Surely nothing that important, or she would have hidden the key better.
Vi pulled the drawer open slowly, carefully, as if she expected a snake to jump out. She angled the beam of her little flashlight down.
Unlike the tidiness of the room and desktop, the drawer was a messy jumble of objects.
Two packs of cigarettes. Cough drops. Matchbooks. A little silver flask that Vi was sure must contain some of Gran’s gin. An unlabeled amber plastic vial of pills—Vi picked it up gingerly, saw tiny blue capsules inside.
At the bottom of the drawer was a hardcover book. Weird. Why would Gran keep a book in a locked drawer and not on the bookshelves with all the others?
Vi took it out, shone her light on it.
A Case for Good Breeding: The Templeton Family Study and the Promise of Eugenics by Dr. Wilson G. Hicks.
Eugenics?
Vi didn’t know what that word meant, and she felt a little spark of irritation, of failure—she prided herself on her vocabulary.
She opened the book, and there, on the first page, was a photograph of the author.
Vi recognized him instantly—the doctor in the white coat from the photo on Gran’s desk. She held the book up to the gold-framed photo, compared the faces under the glow of her penlight. It was the same man, no doubt. Same pinched face, round glasses, thin mustache. Gran’s professor. Her mentor.
“Hello, Dr. Wilson G. Hicks,” Vi whispered to the man in the old photo. She was solving mysteries already!
She turned a couple pages and began to skim.
Her mouth went dry. There was a heavy feeling in her stomach.
Good breeding of humans is no different than good breeding of chickens, horses, or cattle. It is possible, with proper planning, to weed the population of feeble-mindedness, criminal behaviors, and all forms of physical and mental malformations. Through controlled and proper breeding, we can eradicate all traits that make human beings unfit; perhaps even do away with crime, with the wretched living in squalor, with the howling mad who fill mental hospitals, with the savages and the gipsies, the prostitutes and the half-breeds and the imbeciles.
Vi flipped pages.
Survival and overall success of the species is dependent on those who are superior weeding out the weak and inferior.
We can—and must—control the inferior through whatever means necessary.
A big part of the book seemed to be about one family in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, a family Dr. Hicks called “the Templetons.” Charts and graphs traced the family back several generations. The Templeton family was full of people arrested for violent crimes, prostitution, gambling, public drunkenness. There was a chart that listed all the “feeble-minded” specimens and “imbeciles” in each generation and how many of the children were illegitimate. Dr. Hicks had created a table showing the monetary outlay by the state, decade by decade, spent on relief for the family, on criminal cases, and on the costs of keeping family members in prison, or institutionalizing those deemed too feeble-minded, insane, or deformed to live at home.
The costs, as you can see, greatly multiply with each generation of Templeton family members, as they continue to pass on, unchecked, their inferior traits and gross deformities. If there was any doubt before, the study of this family shows that idiocy, insanity, and criminal tendencies are hereditary.
It is clear, from a moral standpoint, that families such as the Templetons are an enormous tax to our systems of health care, social welfare, and criminal justice. For the sake of society, compulsory sterilization is both the correct and moral course of action.
Compulsory sterilization.
Vi let the words sink in.
Vi knew what sterilization meant. Cats and dogs had to be taken to the vet to get “fixed” so they wouldn’t make more babies.
Dr. Hicks wanted to do that with humans.
Maybe he had done it with humans. It made Vi feel a little sick to think about.
What kind of doctor would do something like that?
Vi flipped to the end of the book, where Dr. Hicks had written his acknowledgments. Her eye caught on one line:
I am forever indebted to my marvelous assistant, Helen Elizabeth Hildreth, whose research and fieldwork have proven invaluable—I know she will make a fine physician and a noble warrior in our cause.
The world began to spin. Vi put her head down on the desk for a minute, to take a deep breath.
The Gran she knew only wanted to help people. But wasn’t that what Dr. Hicks wanted too? In his own way? Didn’t he think not letting this family have any more babies was helping them?
It reminded Vi of what she’d read about the Nazis. About how they thought there was only one superior race of humans and everyone else should be destroyed. Shot and gassed and burned up in ovens.
Vi lifted her head up from the desk.
She heard an owl hoot, hoot, hooting.
No. Not an owl. Eric! Eric’s warning call.
She sat up, heart jolting.
She shoved the book back into the drawer, hastily tried to arrange things the way she’d found them, slammed the drawer closed, and locked it. She replaced the key beneath the photo frame, stood up, slid the chair back under the desk.
The owl call sounded again: Hurry, hurry, hurry.
Vi opened the office door a crack, didn’t see anyone or hear anything in the hallway. The lights were still dim. She slipped out, put the key in the dead bolt on Gran’s door, but it stuck, wouldn’t turn. She wiggled it. Behind her, she heard the front door opening.
She dropped the key, picked it up with trembling fingers, tried the lock on Gran’s door again. It turned at last. She pocketed the key and turned the corner just as the lights in the entryway came on. She had about ten feet of hallway to cover before she got to the back door. If whoever had just come through the front door looked to the right, she’d be caught.
Should she go back into Gran’s office and hide?
No, the God of Escape told her. Run!
She raced for the door, eyes on the red glowing EXIT sign, running on the toes of her sneakers so she wouldn’t make a sound. She heard loud footsteps crossing the front hall.
Vi got to the exit door and yanked, praying it was still unlocked. Thank you, God of Escape. She stepped out into the night, closing the door quickly but quietly behind her. Then she pressed her back against the brick wall and crept along the edge of the building. When she got to the corner, she ran, head down, in a sprint to the barn where Eric and Iris were waiting.
“Did she see you?” Eric asked.
Vi shook her head, catching her breath. “Was it Gran?”
“Yeah,” Eric said.
“What’s she doing here so late?” Vi asked. She looked at the building, waiting for the light in Gran’s office to come on, but it stayed dark.
Eric shrugged. “No clue, but we should get home so we’re there when she gets back.”
Vi nodded, and the three of them headed across the lawn, pushing their bikes. They’d made it all the way back to the house, climbing the front steps, when Vi reached into the pockets of her shorts and realized she didn’t have the flashlight.
Even worse, she still had the key to Gran’s office.
Patty was going to kill her.
The Helping Hand of God: The True Story of the Hillside Inn By Julia Tetreault, Dark Passages Press, 1980
INTRODUCTION