I stood in the center of a circle chalked on the floor of the otherwise-empty bar. Outside, the bone-white moon hung low and full. A chill wind howled. It was the kind of night when ghosts walk. I was counting on that. There was a flash, and a portly gent with slicked-down hair, natty vest, foul cigar, and piercing eye appeared before me. He looked about, shrewdly sizing up his situation.
"Welcome to 1996, Mr. Mencken," I said, leading him from the circle.
He clicked his tongue. "Incredible. It is a sheer physical impossibility. As impossible as it would be for a schoolboy to weep over the burning down of his schoolhouse. Yet here I stand."
"Have a seat. Um, I brought you here, Mr. Mencken, to get your views on a certain matter."
He claimed a bar stool. "The older I grow, the more I distrust the doctrine that age brings wisdom."
"Well, I think you were, uh, are, uh-I consider you wise. I was reading this book...."
He gave a weary sigh. "Some people read too much: the bibliobibuli. Constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on...." His voice trailed off as his eyes fell upon the row of bottles behind the bar.
"May I offer you something? No, put that away; your money's no good here. Literally."
He chuckled. "I've made it a rule never to drink by daylight and never to refuse a drink after dark."
I opened a nice Soquel Vineyards Pinot and poured. "I was reading this book about freedom and censorship in cyberspace. The book describes a censorship trial in Tennessee, and...."
"Tennessee! Bryan's last days were spent in Tennessee. Fitting. His place in the Tennessee hagiography is secure. If the village barber saved any of his hair, it is curing gallstones down there today."
"That would be William Jennings Bryan, who argued for the prosecution in the Scopes trial? That's why I wanted to talk with you, because you covered that trial." He seemed to be enjoying the Pinot. "You know, that whole business of teaching evolution is still an issue in Tennessee."
"Yes. In the country towns, the clergy are still almost as influential as they were in Mather's day."
"This recent trial, though, the Thomas trial, was about pornography rather than evolution."
"Christian endeavor," he said, "is notoriously hard on female pulchritude."
"Well, this material wasn't just female pulchritude. I recall that in covering the Scopes trial, you wrote that Tennessee had the right to protect its children from 'whatever knowledge violated their superstitions.' But in the Thomas trial, the court, in the interest of protecting Tennessee children, restricted the free speech of people everywhere. Would you say it had that right?"
"The word is disgraced and debased by such use. When 'A' annoys or injures 'B' on the pretense of saving or improving 'X,' 'A' is a scoundrel." He began to fuzz around the edges, the spell apparently wearing off. "And of course this 'A' regards human life as a mere trial of rectitude and efficiency."
"When it is really-?"
"An agreeable adventure," he answered, smiling, then took another sip and faded away.
The Thomas trial is described in Sex, Laws, and Cyberspace, by Jonathan Wallace and Mark Mangan, (Henry Holt, 1996 ISBN 0-8050-4767-0). I later learned that everything H.L. Mencken said that night was something that he had said when he was alive. Apparently, ghosts don't invent.
Michael Swaine
editor-at-large
mswaine@cruzio.com