John D MacDonald - One More Sunday

by One More Sunday(Lit)

  Seven By eleven-thirty on Tuesday morning the guards had brought all the mail sacks into Receiving, and they had been opened and the contents dumped into the big bins on wheels, and the empty sacks had been put aside for pickup on Wednesday morning, when the next load of mail would come in.

  Jenny MacBeth, the mail-room supervisor, prowled the big room, aware at all times of every phase of the processing, of every person under her control, their strengths and weaknesses. Jenny was a cushiony woman in her late thirties, with a narrow waist and an elaborate styling of her red-gold hair which made her small and delicate features look even smaller.

  She wore a pale blue pants suit and a blue-and-white scarf at her throat. By special permission from Finn Efflander she was wearing blue-and-white New Balance running shoes over thick white Orion socks. She was very grateful to Finn because the concrete floor had begun to cause foot problems and had been spoiling what she had always considered to be her sunny disposition.

  One of the girls working at First Sort was new, and so Jenny MacBeth watched her frequently and carefully. The task of the women at First Sort was to grasp batches of multi-shaped, multi-colored envelopes, adjust them address side up, whack the batch smartly against the table to align the edges and then run them through the slots where the spinning razor edges slashed them open.

  The opened mail was then dropped into one of two outgoing boxes in front of each woman in First Sort, the box for envelopes that contained cash, check or money order, and the box for envelopes with no enclosure.

  Mail with no enclosure went to Secondary Sort, where the letters were extracted, stapled to the envelopes and scanned.

  Those with a credit card name and number and an authorized donation were bucked over to the credit desk, where the receipt slips were made out, ready for mailing back to the donor. Mail containing no donation, only questions or comments, was sent to Outgoing Mail for analysis and, if considered necessary, response.

  Incoming mail containing cash, checks or money orders was picked up from the boxes at First Sort by an Angel on quiet fiber-wheeled roller skates and taken to the cubicles where the terminal operators posted the donation to the proper account in the huge data bank. The couriers brought to the terminal operators the stapled mail and credit slips as well for posting.

  There were fifteen three-sided cubicles with computer terminals, and today there were fourteen operators. The couriers had to keep an eye on the backlog available to each operator and make certain there was no interruption due to lack of material to process.

  The terminal operations were the heart of the input process.

  The first step was to type the donor name on the terminal. If the printed name began to flash on the phosphor screen, the operator knew it was a duplicated name and went then to the next key, the street address. As soon as that donor was identified, the short-form response appeared on the screen, sorted from the central data bank, and the operator would scroll down to the previous donation and add the new one, with date, amount and mode of payment.

  If there was no flashing response and no further information, the operator knew it was a new donor. Basic information was added from the letter, and the packet was hand-stamped "NEW so that after it had gone to Banking for the makeup of the deposit for the day, the letter would be sent to Outgoing Mail for a special letter of thanks with the facsimile signature of Matthew Meadows or John Tinker Meadows so well done it could not be told from an original signature.

  After a time Jenny MacBeth realized the new girl at First Sort did not have to be watched. She gave the impression of moving without haste, which was a product of a deftness of hand and quickness of mind. Sometimes a woman at First Sort would make a very standard mistake. After whacking the aligned mail against the tabletop, she would insert the whacked side into the razor slot first, a move almost guaranteed to produce checks or cash or money orders mutilated by the spinning razors.

  Over the whacking sounds of the stacks of mail and the muted chuckling sounds of the terminals, Jenny MacBeth controlled the room by snapping her exceptionally strong fingers. One pop indicated a terminal operator running short of work to process. Two pops meant outgoing boxes ready for unloading.

  Whenever a woman had a problem, she raised her hand and Jenny was beside her in moments. A terminal operator raised her hand. Jenny leaned over her and looked at a screen loaded with garbage. The girl was one of the new operators.

  "What did you run last, sweetie?" Jenny asked.

  "A new donor, Miz MacBeth. And then it just..."

  "But didn't we then keyboard Control and then F to put the new data in the bank? Or did we go hopping along to the next donor?"

  "I'm sure I did like you said. Control and F."

  "Clear your screen and do the new donor again, dear."

  Jenny watched. It worked perfectly. She put a hand on the woman's shoulder, digging in with strong fingers.

  "Simple estupida, Iambic pie. We do not sit here dreaming of sweet kisses while our fingers go rattling all over the keyboard, do we? We sit here and we think of the work we are doing for the Eternal Church, don't we, cupcake?"

  The woman winced as Jenny gave a final squeeze of emphasis and then moved around to where she could see the woman's face, to make sure there was a glint of tears in the young eyes.

  "And what do we say now?" Jenny asked.

  "I... I'm sorry, Miz MacBeth. I won't do it again."

  "Of course you won't, sweetness. Now check to see if your new donor is safely nestled away in the data bank, and then go like mad because your incoming is loaded."

  The Angel swooped by, taking a recorded batch of donations over to Banking, and Jenny made a mental note that the guard posted near Banking was keeping his eye on the swaying rump of the skater rather than on the money. As has been the practice at large busy racetracks for many years, the incoming cash was weighed rather than counted. One hundred in random one-dollar bills, weighed on a delicate and accurate scale, will weigh exactly the same as five hundred in fives or one thousand in tens, falling within a range on the scale which will deviate slightly depending on how much new or old money is involved, but will not show an incorrect figure.

  Add or take away one bill and the needle swings beyond the limits.

  At the Banking table the money was weighed, banded, tabulated on deposit tape and made ready for armored pickup, along with the stacks of checks, money orders and the Visa and Mastercard slips.

  She prowled the room, slanting her quick glances from side to side, pleased with the smoothness of the flow. All letters, after processing, went on through the double doors into Outgoing Mail, where there was not as much need for haste, where the more highly skilled word-processing operators selected the appropriate paragraphs from the sample letters and also extracted factual information from the letters and filed them in the data bank in the long-form file for each donor.

  A death, an illness, a promotion, a birth all these went into the electronic memory on eight-inch Winchester disks which facilitated rapid retrieval, and held hundreds of millions of bytes of data. Joe Deets had been telling her that one day they would be switching over to bubble memory, whatever that was.

  When Finn Efflander had been hired six years before he had insisted that a letter be sent out acknowledging every donation, and that the letters appear to be individually typed, and that the letters enhance the feeling of the members of the Church that they were a special and select group, spiritually superior to their unsaved neighbors, and meriting life everlasting beyond the grave. The material that went into PathWays was intended to reinforce this sense of unity within a national audience.

  In the beginning they had thought Efflander's ideas too expensive and elaborate, but events had proved him right.

  Jenny MacBeth had believed in Efflander from the beginning, as had Matthew Meadows, knowing that close and intimate relationships with the flock made the Church strong. The radio Bible lessons, the complicated television schedules, the Bible Quiz Show, the gu
est sermons, the radio talk shows, the huge mailings of PathWays all these in themselves were not enough. Through studies ordered by Efflander and carried out by Joe Deets, it had been proven that the direct mail and the phone contacts were the most cost-effective ways of increasing donations.

  After the last woman at First Sort was finished, and after the last terminal operator had closed down her terminal and was free to go, and after the complete deposit was made up and double-checked and the totals in the various categories entered into the proper operating program in the mainframe computer, Jenny MacBeth, along with the armed guards, walked the bank bags out to Receiving and made certain the armored truck was on its way. She then walked back through her section, where the cleanup people were sweeping the bits of litter from the concrete floor, and on into Outgoing Mail, on into the brisk roar of over thirty Xerox Diablo 1640 Printers, all knocking out those treasured letters at forty characters per second.

  She went through and up the wide stairs to Finn Efflander's office. It was twenty minutes before three. Finn's secretary smiled and motioned to her to go on in. Jenny rapped, went in and closed the door behind her. Finn nodded toward the chair beside his desk. He was on the phone, saying, '... Yes, I did talk to Reverend Joe, and he told me you could give me a demographic sort on the West Coast tithes, showing increases and decreases by age and family status. Listen, Henry. You work for Joe, not for me. So if you see problems and he didn't anticipate any problems, you should take it to him, okay?"

  He hung up and reached out and she handed him the printout of the final total of donations by category. He studied it, lips pursed.

  "Not too bad, and not great."

  "Economic conditions. Big campaigns by the competition."

  He nodded and smiled.

  "All the usual excuses. I'm pleased with how well your section is operating, Jenny."

  Her cheeks felt warm.

  "Thanks. I've got some good people right now. Not that they don't need watching." She started to get up and he waved her back into the chair.

  "There might be some problems coming up, Jenny."

  She was startled.

  "Such as?"

  "Some problems of image, let's say. Some woman who came down to look for sin and sensation disappeared. Back in May.

  Now they are sending another woman down, supposedly a more experienced person. She works for the same magazine and our posture is complete cooperation."

  "I heard about that first woman. Some people say she must have found out something. That's ridiculous. What is there to find out?"

  "Maybe there is something you and I don't know about Some little scam that somebody has figured out. Maybe some kind of sexual fun and games. But it would be melodramatic nonsense to suppose that the Eternal Church of the Believer is so weak and vulnerable we'd have to protect ourselves by having a magazine person killed."

  "It's ridiculous, of course!"

  "What do you think of our first assistant pastor, the Reverend Doctor Walter Macy?"

  The abrupt change of subject confused her for a moment.

  When in doubt, she remembered, always repeat the question' "What do I think of him ? I don't know. I haven't really thought about him. I don't really have any contact with him. Why do you ask?"

  "Have you had any contact with Mrs. Macy?"

  "I know her, of course. Alberta. She keeps trying to organize things. Tea parties for the hired help."

  For a few moments he closed his eyes in thought, leaning back in his leather chair, fingers steepled. Then he looked at her, lips pursed, and finally said, "We've worked together for six years."

  "I know. You gave me a real chance to show what I can do and I'm very grateful to you, Doctor Efflander."

  From now on, we better be Fan and Jenny to each other."

  "I'd like that, sir. Just when we're alone, of course... Finn ' He nodded and said, This is going to be a very personal conversation, Jenny."

  "Does it have something to do with Reverend Macy and his wife?"

  "Yes, it does. I'll work my way around to specifics. But first I want to know... how committed you are in every way to the doctrine of the Eternal Church of the Believer."

  "Committed? I don't really know how to fit the way I feel to a word like that, Finn. If you work here you have to be a member. I tithe and I attend services and so on. I believe in the Church and in its teachings. I know you're not trying to trap me or anything. I guess I believe as much as the average member does. And I donate time to church work. But I guess I

  can't take much credit for that. It's sort of expected of me. Of everybody." She shrugged and smiled.

  He returned her smile and said, "I believe in God, and in eternal life, and in Jesus Christ, my savior, but I do not necessarily believe that the Meadows family and this organization is the one and only way to salvation." He watched her reaction and said, "No, Jenny, you're right. This isn't any kind of a trick or a test. By telling you this, I would be endangering myself if I didn't feel that we can trust each other."

  "Okay... Finn. I guess I think the way you do. I guess we've both known how the other person thinks, really. The thing I like the best about the whole setup is the job I've got. And the chance to work with you, because you let me have some authority and responsibility."

  "As you know, Jenny, I was hired away from a position I thought very complex and demanding. I was assistant to the chief executive officer of a corporation with five plants, nine subsidiaries, ten product lines and eight operating unions. I was hired for half again what I was making and I am now working half again as hard as I was there. The demands of the job are what motivate me. I am a clown riding a seven-wheeled bicycle across a high wire to see if it can be done."

  "But i..."

  "Be patient with me, Jenny. I don't get much chance to talk with any kind of absolute frankness to anyone on the team forgive the corny expression. I think we understand each other to a certain extent. While at the same time respecting each other's privacy. Okay, so the Church keeps growing. In one sense increasing power means an increasing invulnerability to slings and arrows and so forth. But with increased power comes increased visibility. And the bigger a target is, the easier it is to hit it. With increased power and importance we have little people within the organization who want to expand their own importance by playing on the vulnerability of other people who also work here. I like to keep tabs on our areas of vulnerability. I have my own little network of people who tell me things. You are a valued member of that network, mostly because you never bother me with trivia. I know that when you tell me something, it is going to be useful. I was given a quote from Alberta Macy the other day. She said that when her husband becomes as important in the Church as he deserves, libertines like Joe Deets and John Tinker Meadows are going to be exposed and thrown out, and understand I am using an exact quote there'll be no room here for sexual deviates like Jenny MacBeth and Jenny Albritton."

  c Jhejbright r 0m seemed to darken for a moment, and Finn tttlander s head and face looked four or five times life size. His mouth was moving but she could not hear what he was saying And then she could hear his words.

  |... are all right?"

  "I'm all right. It's just such a foul, filthy thing for that woman to say about us. It made me feel faint. I'm okay now, Finn."

  "And there is absolutely no truth to the accusation?"

  "None. We share a house. You knew that. She's my best friend. I can't tell her about this. It would hurt her terribly."

  "Let me explain something to you a couple of things. First, it is my intention to protect my people from false accusations.

  That is one of the obligations of any kind of leadership. It would hurt my standing here and hurt me personally if I were to protect you and then find out later that Mrs. Macy could prove her statement. Wait a minute. Let me finish. My final observation is that you do your job well and your personal life is your own. I avoid making moral judgments on anyone for anything that doesn't affect their work."
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  She started to speak and he interrupted her. Think it over for a little bit before you jump at it, Jenny."

  She felt her face grow hot and she pretended to feel faint again and buried her face against her knees to hide the telltale blush. While she was hiding from him, her mind was racing.

  How could that damned woman have suspected? How could she prove anything?

  "Consenting adults can pick any life style they choose," he said, 'just so long as it is between the two of them."

  "Can I explain something to you? Please? Will you try to understand?"

  Smiling, he held up his hand, palm toward her.

  "I don't want to pry into your personal life."

  Jenny MacBeth hesitated. He had interrupted her at exactly the wrong moment if he was seeking total disclosure. She realized the friendly little talk had been a form of manipulaY ?" How could he foresee any chance of defending her?