Shortest Day

by Jane Langton

  That was odd. Sarah didn’t buy candy and neither did Morgan. Candy, as far as they were concerned, was deadly poison.

  CHAPTER 27

  Brightest and best of the sons of the morning!

  Dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid …

  Appalachian folk hymn

  The sun hung sluggishly at the bottom of the analemma. It seemed stuck, as though it would never climb to the pinnacle of June.

  On the eighth floor of the Science Center, Arlo checked on his camera, which was still firmly anchored to the floor with duct tape.

  He looked at his watch. Did he have time to look for a Christmas present for his mother? She had called yesterday and made it plain that he was not to forget. Now, dear, don’t spend too much money on my present. Oh, I’ve bought you such a lovely gift!

  The trouble was, he didn’t have the faintest idea where to start. His mother was a loving and sentimental widow, and Arlo, she said, was her only chick and child. So far, his close acquaintance with the opposite sex had been only with his mother, Cindy the hockey player, and Totty the believer in astral energy. It didn’t give him much faith in women. He looked at the pretty girls in his classes, he enjoyed his friendship with Chickie Pickett, and he felt a hunger for sexual intimacy with some woman or other, some time, somehow. He imagined getting married and having children, but—God!—was there a sensible person out there anywhere, somebody to love and admire at the same time?

  Now, dear, don’t spend too much money on my present!

  One of the mirrors that bounced the sun’s image onto the observation table flickered, and Arlo glanced up. A face looked back at him for an instant. Oh, well, hell, it was Sarah Bailey. His psyche or aura or innermost spiritual being was judging him, telling him he was falling in love again. What a dumb idea.

  Then Arlo forgot his lugubrious analysis of the women in his life as Harley Finch came in and began barging around the room, looking for a book. “Where the hell did I put it?”

  “Hey, watch it, Harley, you almost bumped into my camera.”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  Harley was a big round-shouldered guy with thinning light hair and pop eyes. There were a number of large pale moles on his fat arms. Arlo often thought of him as an emission spectrum with a single bright line, his gift for abstract mathematics. Harley was a theoretician. He had no skill with mechanical things, he knew nothing about art or literature or music or history or the state of world affairs, and yet, oddly enough, he had a firm grasp on departmental politics.

  It occurred to Arlo to ask him about the rumor that somebody was about to be fired. “Any more news about shrinkage in the department?”

  Harley found his book and headed for the door. He looked embarrassed. “I don’t know. They say there’ll be an announcement soon.”

  He did know, but he wasn’t telling. Arlo guessed the worst.

  Oh, God, never mind. He had a class to prepare for, a whole lecture hall full of kids taking Astronomy 1. It was a course for non-science majors, some of whom were so ignorant they didn’t know which was farther away, the sun or the moon. Arlo spent much of his time explaining the basic principles of physics.

  Today it was Newton’s third law, To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Arlo snatched up his lecture notes and ran down seven flights to consult with the clever engineers in the Prep Room, who spent their time constructing gadgets for the teaching of any kind of scientific principle. They built contraptions to demonstrate simple things like inclined planes, or complex things like the systems of mirrors and lenses in a telescope.

  Today they were providing him with a really funny demonstration, a full-size vehicle that would whiz across the lecture hall, propelled by CO2 cartridges.

  “Is it ready?” said Arlo.

  “You bet.” The mechanical engineer wheeled it forward, grinning with pride. “Here she is, the Isaac Newton Whizbang.”

  “That’s great,” said Arlo. “Oh, say, that reminds me.” He looked around the Prep Room at the rows of shelves. “Have you guys got any wheels?”

  CHAPTER 28

  … And a box of my pills, take one tonight and two

  in the morning, and swallow the box at dinner time.

  If the box don’t cure you, the lid will.

  Traditional British Mummers’ Play

  “Homer? This is Sarah. Now, listen, Homer, dear.”

  Homer was on his way out the door with a battery charger. His car was dead, and his poor wife was trying to get her own car up the steep icy driveway. Through the window he could see her attack the hill again. No, goddamnit, she was running out of steam halfway up and backing down again. He snarled into the phone, “Well, go ahead, I’m listening.”

  “It’s Buck, he’s come down with flu.”

  “Buck? Who’s Buck?” Gun it, Mary, gun it.

  “Buck Zemowski, you remember Buck. He plays Father Christmas.”

  “Oh, right.” Good, good, that’s good! You’re going to make it! Oh, no—no—oh, damn.

  “He’s sick, so, please, Homer, I want you to take over his part.”

  “Who, me? Not on your life.” Come on, girl, start way back in the bushes this time.

  Sarah went on talking, urging, persuading. Homer stared out the window. He was only barely listening. Why the hell did they live in this crazy placet? Winter on the river was absolutely impossible.

  In the end Sarah talked him into it. Mary’s fourth attempt to mount the hill was successful, and Homer was so relieved, he said, “Well, okay, Sarah, anything you say.”

  Of course he was sorry almost immediately, but Sarah thanked him so affectionately and hung up so quickly, there was no opportunity to back out.

  Later on, after his last pre-Christmas class, Homer reported for duty in the great hall to be fitted with the red robe belonging to Father Christmas.

  “Hey, that’s great,” said Joan Hill. “Buck needed a pillow to make him fat enough, but you don’t need a pillow at all. Isn’t that marvelous!”

  “Thanks a lot,” growled Homer.

  Sarah too was delighted with Homer in his new persona. She handed him a script. “See, Homer, you stand around while Saint George is killed and then you encourage the Doctor to bring him back to life. It’s a really funny scene. Come on, they’re waiting for you.”

  Homer did his best. It was another opportunity to show off. “Pray, Doctor,” he roared, “what diseases can you cure?”

  “All sorts of diseases,” began the Doctor, opening his black bag, “whatever you pleases. The itch, the stitch”—reaching into the bag, he took out a bicycle pump—“the palsy and the gout, raging pain both inside and out!”

  It was Homer’s turn, but he had forgotten his line. It occurred to him to inquire whether Saint George had recently been exposed to arsenate of lead, but, no, that wasn’t right. Homer looked down at Arlo Field and invented a line of his own. “Well, Doctor, he’s a long time coming back to life. The Harvard Community Health Plan is going to hear about this.”

  Everybody laughed, and then it was the turn of the Fool, a computer programmer from Lexington—

  Stand aside; I’ll fetch him back to life,

  If this man’s not dead, but in a trance,

  We’ll raise him up and have a dance!

  Bending tenderly over Saint George, he laid a sprig of holly on his breast. At once Arlo raised his head, as if awakening from a deep sleep.

  “No, no, Saint George,” urged Jeffery Peck, “wait a little longer. We need more suspense.”

  Obediently Arlo dropped his head and closed his eyes. Then slowly he lifted his head again, got to his feet, and sang his song of resurrection—

  Good morning, gentlemen,

  a-sleeping I have been.

  I’ve had such a sleep as the like was never seen.

  Arlo’s voice was creaky and uneven, but Sarah smiled at him encouragingly, and then Walt came forward to sing “The Lord of the Dance.” When the performances began, all the peop
le in the audience would join hands and dance out into the corridor—

  Dance, then, wherever you may be,

  I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,

  And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,

  And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.

  Mary picked up her coat and started after Homer. It was time to go home. But as she left Sanders, she witnessed a classic little melodrama in the back of the hall.

  Sarah Bailey and Jeff Peck were sitting close together in whispered conference. Something struck them funny. They laughed, and Jeff put his arm around Sarah and squeezed her shoulder. Across the hall Mary could see Morgan Bailey staring at them, his face expressionless.

  At once her amateur psychological analysis reasserted itself. She remembered how miserable it had made her to see Homer goggling at that bewitching student of his—what was her name? Dora Somebody—Dora of the shining brown eyes and the long black hair. Homer, the idiot, had gaped at her and followed her around like a pet dog. It had never occurred to him, the fathead, to wonder what his wife was thinking. What dolts men were!

  Mary shrugged, and pushed through the swinging door as the Abbotts Bromley horn dancers came onstage with heavy rhythmic tread. She felt sorry for Morgan, but it wasn’t her problem. The poor guy was making his own hell.

  Across the floor of Sanders Theatre, on the other side of the mezzanine among the seats in the third row, the hell was real. Oh, God, look at his hand! He’s groping under her shirt! Why doesn’t she stop him? Oh, God, Sarah! Sarah, my God!

  With a wrench, Morgan looked away from Jeff and Sarah and tried to focus his attention on the horn dancers. They had mesmerized him in the past, with their ancient figures, their solemn twirling and turning. It was a salute to wildness, a reverence for the hunted beast. Morgan had the same reverence for his own wild geese, the same identification with that other empire populating the earth—the deer in the forest, the fish in the sea, the birds in the air.

  But it didn’t help Morgan’s wretchedness that the next thing on the rehearsal schedule was “The Cherry Tree Carol.” There they were, coming on stage, Joseph and Mary and the cherry tree. The guitar struck up its plangent chords, Kevin Barnes held up his arms like branches, and Walt began to sing. The young girl who played the part of Mary made beseeching gestures to Joseph, begging him to pick her some cherries because she was with child, and Joseph stamped his feet in rage—

  “Let the father of the baby

  Gather cherries for thee!”

  Was it on purpose? Had Sarah put it on the program on purpose for Morgan to see?

  Outdoors, Mary Kelly pulled her scarf up around her face and Homer clamped on a pair of earmuffs. The weather was raw, and the damp east wind penetrated to the bone. They made their way through the ramshackle village of Harvard Towers, and Mary wondered how its citizens were enduring the cold. “Look, Homer, some of them are gone.”

  Homer wasn’t surprised to see fewer tents. Making a quick survey, he counted only thirty. The population had begun to decline. “Well, no wonder they’re leaving, with weather like this.”

  “How do the rest of them stand it?” Hurrying away with Homer into the Yard, Mary vowed to come back tomorrow with a bagful of coats and blankets.

  It was true that the enthusiasm of the homeless citizens of Harvard Towers was waning. They were tired of freezing, tired of Portapotties, tired of being bossed around by Palmer Nifto, tired of the mess of sleeping bags and bundles of clothing and electric heaters and crazy rigged-up lamps in their tents, tired of being dirty, tired of having their sad gray faces photographed for television, tired of being chivied around by scandalized firefighters and policemen, tired of cold coffee, tired of kind people who wanted to help but didn’t have a clue what their lives were really like.

  But there were fewer departures than Homer had guessed. The territory of Harvard Towers had stretched to include the the west porch of Memorial Hall. A dozen wadded shapes crouched there out of the wind.

  A counselor from Bright Day House walked past them, looking at their faces, inquiring for Gretchen Milligan. The pregnant teenager was missing again. Had anyone seen her? They all shook their heads.

  “Foolish girl,” said the counselor. “She shouldn’t be out in the cold. Not at a time like this!”

  Jeffery Peck found three things in his mailbox when he got home to his apartment on Shepard Street—an overdue notice from the Cambridge Electric Light Company, a wistful postcard from his sister wanting to know if he was coming home for Christmas, and a letter. The bill and the postcard had been delivered by the U.S. Postal Service, but the letter had not been stamped. Someone had delivered it by hand.

  In the dim light of the entry Jeff tore open the envelope and read the letter. With a whoop of delight he read it again.

  It was from Sarah Bailey.

  CHAPTER 29

  His the doom, ours the mirth …

  Carol, “Personent Hodie”

  “Wheeled vehicles only,” the policewoman had said, groping for a reason to eliminate seventeen sofas from the parking spaces on Garden Street.

  “No problem,” said Arlo Field to Palmer Nifto. “Wheeled vehicles it shall be.”

  They spent the entire night of December twenty-first at the Furniture Bank, attaching wheels to a dozen of the sofas.

  It was easy enough for Arlo to stay awake. As a graduate student he had spent many a long night in the open dome of the observatory at Sacramento Peak making long exposures of the spectra of faint stars.

  Palmer too seemed tireless. They worked companionably side by side, drilling holes in the legs of the sofas, attaching the wheels with miscellaneous sizes of threaded bolts.

  “They don’t have to, like, work,” explained Palmer, turning off his electric drill.

  “I know,” said Arlo. “It’s just sort of a gag.” He untangled a set of Prep Room bicycle wheels and mounted them with Palmer’s help on a battered love seat. Standing up, they beamed at the result. The love seat reared up on its four wheels, ready to coast down Massachusetts Avenue.

  “All it needs is a steering wheel,” said Arlo. “Did you call the Chronicle?”

  “Oh, you bet. They’ll be there. TV too. First thing this morning, I said. You got to have your action early if you want to get on the evening news.”

  “You sure know a lot of stuff about the real world.” Arlo smiled to himself, thinking of the immense stretches of space beyond the galaxy about which he knew a great deal more than Palmer Nifto. Which was the real world?

  “Another thing,” said Palmer. “We’ve got to get this stuff on the street early. If they arrest you on Friday afternoon, you spend the whole weekend in jail.”

  It was a public-relations bonanza. Palmer Nifto had his sofas lined up neatly on Garden Street by six o’clock in the morning, with a dozen people from Harvard Towers to occupy diem. Bob Chumley was there, along with Guthrie Jones, Vergil Taylor, and old man Maggody. There they were, twelve homeless people bedded down on twelve sofas in twelve parking places in Harvard Square, just as they had been before—but now all the broken-down ratty-looking sofas were equipped with wheels—baby-carriage wheels, little-red-wagon wheels, lawn-mower wheels, and bicycle wheels. One sported automobile tires scrounged by Palmer Nifto from a wrecked-car lot.

  Arlo Field had phoned Mary and Homer Kelly. They drove in from Concord and made themselves useful. Mary moved up and down the sidewalk, dropping quarters into parking meters. Homer felt righteous, rebellious, and swaggering. He hadn’t done anything so politically audacious since the Vietnam War. “We’ll probably be arrested,” he said, grinning at Arlo Field.

  “That’s okay,” said Arlo from the depths of his new knowledge. “It’s early. Good time for it.”

  All the people passing through Harvard Square on their way to work got the joke about the wheels on the sofas. Palmer had seen to that. Last week the words of the police sergeant had been emblazoned in all the local papers, and even in the Boston Globe—WHE
ELED VEHICLES ONLY, DEMANDS POLICEWOMAN; HOMELESS SOFAS TICKETED.

  They got the joke and laughed and dropped money in the tin cans Palmer set out on the sidewalk.

  The Cambridge police sergeant laughed too, when she came charging up in her cruiser. She couldn’t help it, the sofas looked so funny. She tried to control herself, but she kept bursting out again in whoop after whoop. “You’re under arrest,” she gasped at last, wiping her eyes and grinning. “Palmer Nifto, I am placing you under arrest.”

  “Whatever for?” said Palmer innocently, spreading out his hands. He pulled Homer Kelly forward. “May I introduce my attorney?”

  “My God, Nifto, I’m not your attorney,” whispered Homer.

  “Mr. Kelly will insist upon a written certificate of arrest, naming the law we have violated. Right, Mr. Kelly?”

  “Oh, sure, sure,” mumbled Homer, looking at the woman officer in embarrassment, “you’ve got to have a warrant to arrest anybody.”

  But she was whipping a pad of forms out of her pocket. “Disturbing the peace, that’s one count. I’ll think of some more in a minute.”

  “Disturbing the peace? I’m not disturbing the peace.” Palmer turned to the row of sofas and spoke up loudly to the twelve occupants, who were sitting up and staring at the police sergeant. “We’re simply sleeping, peacefully sleeping, that’s all we’re doing.” At once they flopped back down.

  “You made me laugh, that’s how you disturbed the peace.” The police officer giggled. “I probably woke up a bunch of people living around here.”

  “Where?” Wide-eyed, Palmer gestured at the tombstones behind the iron fence. “In the cemetery?”

  It was the funniest thing to appear on the local television news in years. Of course Palmer had to load up his sofas again, and take them back to the Furniture Bank, but he had made his point. The homeless people of Cambridge were once more the center of attention.