Aurora Dawn

by Herman Wouk

  These same faces were happier today than usual, as though festivity had brightened the air. From the moment shortly before noon when the newspaper containing Jaeckel’s story had appeared on newsstands, this holiday feeling had invaded the building and bad been fed by jests and rumors. It was told that Chester Legrand had asked Mr. Marquis to meet with him; soon afterward it was known that Mr. Marquis had agreed to come to Mr. Legrand’s office at three o’clock; then it was happily bruited about that the chief of the corporation’s lawyers, Mr. Morphee, would be present at the encounter; and, biggest sensation of all, the word passed shortly before three o’clock that Andy Reale (who was well known among the inhabitants of the great cube) had brought Father Stanfield back with him from the West Virginia hills, and that the preacher was coming to the meeting. For once, Rumor spoke with no idle tongue. At five minutes to three, Talmadge Marquis strode grimly through the swinging glass portals, flanked by Grovill and Leach; two minutes later, there arrived Father Stanfield, Pennington, Van Wirt, and our hero; both antagonists proceeded to the top floor where, solitary in the luxuries of sunlight and ordinary air, lay the offices of Chester Legrand; and the door had scarcely closed on Van Wirt, the last to enter the sacred space, before everybody in the building knew that the Miltonic trial of strength had begun.

  Like most truly heroic conflicts of the twentieth century (setting aside the duels of machines in war), this fight took place around a table–a long, beautifully-stained mahogany piece, set in a surrounding of wood-paneled walls, thick blue carpets and drapes, wide windows and appropriate minor pieces of wood, leather, and chromium, all disposed to give the impression that here was a place for great decisions arrived at with good manners by powerful gentlemen. Legrand was at the head of the table. On one side sat the lawyer Morphee, Marquis, Grovill, and Leach, while arrayed opposite them were Stanfield, Pennington, Van Wirt, and Reale. Legrand opened a cigar box and passed it to the Faithful Shepherd, and while the tobacco went around he spoke.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, in a frank, mellow voice, “I have to thank both Mr. Marquis and Father Stanfield for the favor they have done me by meeting here in my office. Having started our business in this conciliatory way, I shall be very much surprised if we don’t compose the matter to everyone’s satisfaction in a very short time.” This mild utterance soothed like music, and Andrew Reale, in whose hierarchy Legrand was approximately the Pope, felt his forebodings melt away. He was consumed with admiration for this good-humored dignified, handsome personage whose very name was a synonym for Policy, whose abundant graying hair, sturdy frame, and nice dress gave him a presence that matched his position, and whose decent charm pervaded the room like autumn sunlight. To such a man, thought Andrew, nothing was impossible. All would yet be well.

  “Let’s talk,” went on Legrand, “with complete honesty. Let’s have the baby on the table and decide what to do with it. Shall I talk first? Mr. Morphee and I read with considerable surprise–”

  “Legrand, this doesn’t call for much discussion,” broke in Marquis, glowering at his clasped hands before him. “Father Stanfield, for reasons best known to himself, has proposed to deliver a sermon on my hour Sunday evening which I find unacceptable. I have always given him the utmost latitude, involving my company in serious difficulties on a previous occasion, but he has overstepped the mark this time. What be wants to say is scurrilous and subversive, I might say communistic, and casts reflections on the radio industry, on the advertising profession, and on my products. I have requested that he provide another sermon in its place, and I have come to this meeting with the full expectation that he will produce the same and end the matter at once.”

  Legrand looked inquiringly at the Faithful Shepherd.

  “I don’t want to waste nobody’s time,” said the cleric, “and my answer is what I told young Reale last night down in Pleasant-ville, only he thought I’d better say it to Mr. Marquis myself, which maybe he was right. I figger to go on the air same as usual Sunday night. My sermon will be ‘The Hog in the House.’”

  In the silence that followed, the blue wreaths of cigar smoke curled slowly through the room undisturbed by the speech or motion of any of the sitters at the table.

  “Well,” spoke Legrand at last, seriously, “that’s how we stand.

  Not quite in accord, at the moment. Before we go ahead, may Mr. Morphee and I read the disputed sermon? We have only Milton Jaeckel’s story for information.”

  “That is remarkably accurate,” said Marquis. “I’m sure Father Stanfield can give you a copy of the full text, since he evidently had several made for distribution to the press.”

  “I got to correct you,” said the preacher. “Someone in your outfit give the story to the papers, bein’ as how that copy I sent you is the only copy they is. I keep my sermons in my head. I cain’t hardly figger why any of you done it, but it don’t matter none.”

  “I regret to have to accuse you of bad faith,” cried Marquis, growing red in the face as he drew folded papers from his breast pocket and slapped them on the table, “but this copy has not left my possession since the moment I received it, and I have guarded it for the express purpose of keeping its contents from the eyes of reporters. You obviously wanted to force my hand by giving out the story, but I think you will find me a pretty stubborn cuss all the same. Pretty stubborn!”

  Father Stanfield regarded him gravely. “I ain’t often been called a liar,” he said. “The last time was long afore I took to preachin’. I cain’t hardly break a feller’s jaw fer him now, so I dunno what to do ’ceptin’ assure you that I fear God too much to tell lies.”

  Pouring into the bellicose atmosphere came Legrand’s deep, pleasant voice again. “May I say that the conversation is taking a wrong turn for no useful reason? How Milton Jaeckel got the story is beside the point, for the moment. He got it and printed it. Now we must minimize the damage. Allow me.” He picked up the sermon and read it, holding it so that the lawyer could see it. The other men indulged in their favored modes of fidgeting, all except the preacher, who had acquired the repose of a watching animal. Marquis puffed his cigar and scowled; Grovill looked hopefully from one face to another, ready to giggle at any encouragement; Pennington pulled out a large pocketknife and pared his nails; Andy and Van Wirt drummed their fingers in unconscious duet; while Leach’s ring rotated at a smoking speed.

  Legrand let fall the last page and glanced curiously at the Faithful Shepherd. “This is strong,” he said. Stanfield nodded and replied, “I reckon you-all will survive it,” at which everybody except Marquis laughed.

  “I’d like to make a suggestion.” A strange, hoarse voice from the lower end of the table said this. All attention turned toward Tom Leach who sat forward tensely with one forefinger upraised, his face white, his ring halted in its rotation.

  “Yes, Mr. Leach?” said Legrand, puzzled.

  The lips of the advertising man worked silently for a moment; then he said, with a slight stammer, “Mr. Marquis, I believe we should permit Father Stanfield to go on with the sermon as it stands. We have much more to gain than to lose.”

  Talmadge Marquis looked as astounded as if one of his legs bad suddenly vanished into air, but he recovered quickly and said, “I was under the impression you were working for me.”

  “I am, sir,” said Leach, “and it is my opinion that the best interests of Aurora Dawn require–”

  “Keep your G—n opinions to yourself when they flatly contradict my stated policies,” said Marquis.

  Leach wavered in his chair as though he had received a blow, and glanced around appealingly at the other men. Then he stood up in an unsteady way, and walked out of the room. There ensued dead quiet for long seconds.

  “Father Stanfleld,” said Legrand finally, “I’d like to make the position of our network clear to you. We pass no judgments and take no sides. The use of our microphones and sending stations belongs to Mr. Marquis on a certain hour each Sunday night. What is broadcast then, within the limits
of decency, of course, is in his power, and nobody else’s, to decide:”

  “Folks figger on hearin’ me,” said the Shepherd, “and I reckon they got a right, bein’ as how I’m the unworthy bearer of the Lord’s word to them. I hate contention, friend, but I got to preach my sermon Sunday night.”

  “I hope you understand,” said Legrand, with unvarying calm seriousness, “that for all purposes Mr. Marquis is master of the network at that time.”

  “He ain’t master of the radio sets tuned to listen to me,” said Stanfield. “It ain’t yer station that makes radio a business, it’s them sets. Mr. Marquis aims to reach into a powerful lot of homes and turn off the radios on Sunday night. That don’t set good on my stomach. I’ll part company with him gladly after this program, but I’m a-goin’ to preach ‘The Hog in the House.’”

  “Not on my time,” ground out Marquis, whose thin smile had made its appearance during Legrand’s explanation. Mr. Morphee, the lawyer, a silvery-haired, somber-mannered tall man, leaned forward and said to the Shepherd, “You see, Reverend, it’s a simple matter of contract under law; Mr. Marquis owns that time.”

  “They ain’t nobody owns Time,” exclaimed the Faithful Shepherd, “except the Lord God by whose word Time was created and by whose mercy Time don’t come to a stop in chaos at every second. I don’t know nothin’ about contracts or laws. The contract that says I cain’t preach ain’t no contract, and the law that says I cain’t preach ain’t no law. What I am or what I ain’t fer good or fer bad don’t signify. I carry the Word of the Holy One, and they ain’t no man made from the dust of the ground can stop me—”

  Now Marquis came to his Feet with an oath loud enough to drown out Stanfield’s next words. “I don’t propose to listen to this rustic faker sermonize for my benefit,” he shouted, and, leaving the table, he snatched up his wide tan hat and jammed it on his head. “Legrand, we’ll have a dance orchestra this Sunday night, and I will arrange thereafter–” Having his back to the table, he did not see the preacher lumber toward him with surprising swiftness. Stanfield reached him, spun him around and seized him by the shoulders.

  “It ain’t Let me to strike a man,” he said, “but yer a spoiled child in a man’s hide, and they’s scripture fer takin’ a rod to you. If you say another disrespectful word about my callin’, as you live and as I live I’ll pull down yer breeches and shame you before these gentlemen.” Stanfield was a very large man, but Marquis was large also, and it is to be recorded to the latter’s credit that he did not stir a hair while Stanfield was holding him, thus avoiding further unbecoming conflict. It is also to be recorded to his credit that when Stanfield released him with the words, “Now jump, if you still feel froggy,” he did not take up what might have forgivably been interpreted as a challenge, but confined himself to an indistinct murmur to the lawyer, Morphee, about the laws against assault and battery.

  The Faithful Shepherd picked up his black hat and turned toward the men at the table who had observed the brief scene in frozen dumbness; as he did so, Aaron Pennington rose and walked to his side. “Mr. Legrand,” said Stanfield, “I beg yer pardon fer raisin’ my voice in yer office. I ain’t no shinin’ example of a gentleman. Unless we got further business to transact now, I reckon I’ll see you Sunday night.” He surveyed the table from end to end, but there was no comment from anybody. “Good afternoon, and God bless you,” he said, and went out, followed by Pennington whose tough gray face presented as close a counterfeit of pure delight as it would ever do in this world.

  “The man is obviously cracked, and probably dangerous,” said Marquis after the door bad closed. “Reale, you did me no favor by involving me with him.” He glanced with distinct ill-feeling at our hero, who decided against reminding the soap king, at the moment, that the Faithful Shepherd had been procured for Aurora Dawn at Marquis’s urgent demand.

  “That was a painful and thoroughly unsatisfactory episode,” remarked Legrand gloomily.

  “The matter is dosed,” said Marquis. “Grovill will arrange to have a first-class dance band with an outstanding girl singer at the studio Sunday night.”

  “Yes, sir, the scripts will be ready late tomorrow,” hastily put in the faithful remainder of the Grovill-Leach partnership.

  “The network’s part, as I see it,” went on Marquis, “is simply to have enough studio police available to prevent that fanatic from disturbing the new Aurora Dawn show.”

  Legrand turned to the lawyer, who shrugged his shoulders, saying, “That’s it” Thereupon the network executive stood up to shake hands with Marquis. “We will do what we have to do,” said he in the traditional business tone of conclusion.

  The walls, doors, and floors of the room in which these great events occurred were extremely well made. It would take a wiser head than the historian’s to determine how it was that even before all the participants had departed from the scene, an accurate account was spreading through the corridors of the Republic Broad-casting Company, complete down to bits of dialogue, stimulating a rude community hilarity that could be likened to nothing so much as the Festum Asinorum, the Feast of Fools: the one day in the medieval year when all the solemnities of fealty were grossly burlesqued, and the ruling powers were personified for the day in a crowned and robed live jackass.

  CHAPTER 21

  In which our hero learns that amputation is not

  necessarily, in amorous afflictions, an easy cure.

  LADIES my next paragraph is for the gentlemen readers; do me the grace to stand aside. And you young men, the age of my hero, Andrew Reale, or greener yet, stand you aside, too, for I speak to others–but listen.

  Now then, my jolly boys who were young and are old; who were foolish and are sensible; who gutted the years recklessly and now number the days in wisdom; who desperately clasped girls and now fondly pat wives; open the closed books, wake the memories, sniff the dried roses of regret, and then let us fill a cup, and drink with love to that most noble, ridiculous, laughable, sublime departed figure in all our lives—the Young Man That Was. Let us drink to his dreams, for they were rainbow-colored; to his appetites, for they were strong; to his blunders, for they were huge; to his beloved, for she was sweet; to his pain, for it was sharp; to his time, for it was brief; and to his end, for it was–to become one of us. In the land where the bright sunlight fades not, where the flowers are spring flowers and the grass is an April green forever, he still walks his jaunty, infinitely mistaken way. God pity us all–with what precious coins have we bought our philosophy, eh, my boys? Drink up, drink up, and let us return to our tale. The candles are burning down, the hour is late, and not too much is left to tell.

  Andrew Reale stood irresolutely outside the church on Fifth Avenue where Laura Beaton and Stephen English were about to be married.

  For half an hour he had loitered on the corner across the street from the house of worship, watching the members of the wedding party arrive. Andrew was aware of the bucolic figure he must be cutting as he stood and stared while streams of people hurried past him northward and southward, but he could not help himself. Back in the Republic Building, his desk was piled with emergency work due to the sudden drastic change in the Aurora Dawn program; yet suddenly, forty minutes before the appointed time of the marriage, he had risen, put on his hat, and strode out of his office like a sleepwalker. Without volition, it appeared, he had walked to this corner and begun his senseless vigil.

  He hardly thought about the wedding. As the time wore on, all manner of disordered fancies took hold in his brain; for instance, with face after face after face rushing past him, it struck him all at once that the universal presence of ears on human heads was the most remarkable fact he had ever observed. Of all these hundreds of people flowing by, not one of them but had a pair stuck in the skull in about the same place, with about the same shape, just as though everyone had emerged from a factory making a standard model with slight variations; and when he reflected that all these ears had simply grown, without mold or contro
l, his head swam, and he trembled on the brink of superstitious awe of the Power that could cause such a wonder. He found himself scanning the crowd in the tense hope that someone without ears would appear; it seemed to him that such an advent would be reassuringly natural, a commonsense note amid this fantastic inexorability of two ears, two ears, two ears … The emergence of the white-clad Laura from a limousine snapped him out of this absurd preoccupation. As she vanished into the church with her companions, he wandered across the street and stood outside the solemn door, not knowing what to do next.

  Andrew felt as much out of place, standing on the threshold of the church, as the church itself looked, surrounded by the stone sides of high office buildings and the immense windows of department stores, a pathetic remembrance of the lost days when this area of earth had been green fields, dotted here and there with houses from which the first worshipers had come. Commerce had lapped around it, but still it stood, a quiet island of unprofitable sanctity amid the flooding tides of business. Our hero had passed the place a thousand times without noticing it. Churches, to him, were natural facts of existence, like fire plugs; they were to be seen in civilized communities, and surely were of use, but warranted no narrow inquiry into their origins. His religious outlook was as simple as the figure O: he would have conceded a God, because atheism was a difficult, not quite respectable flight of the imagination, but in practical life he forgot about such abstractions. There was for him this difference between the extinct god Jupiter and the current Christian deity, that the name of the latter made a more forceful oath. He had not prayed since he had prayed in vain at the age of twelve that his father might not die, and he had not been inside a church, save for weddings, in ten years. He was, in short, a thoroughly modern and enlightened young man.