Aurora Dawn (24 page)

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.

In which our hero learns that amputation is not

necessarily, in amorous afflictions, an easy cure
.

L
ADIES
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 control, 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.

As he wavered outside the sanctified portal, a strong hand gripped his elbow. “Hullo, you here, too? We’re almost late. Let’s
go in,” said the voice of Michael Wilde, and before the bemused Andrew could greet the painter, he had been propelled out
of the hot white sunshine into the peaceful dimness of the church. Still holding Reale’s arm, the artist sidled into one of
the rear pews and sat down with him. “Reale, your presence is a reassuring note,” he said in subdued tones. “It argues a flicker
of good conscience in you, whereas I have been thinking that you had died down to a complete advertising man. You have come,
I trust, to halt this horrid mummery?” Andrew glanced at the painter to see whether he was joking, but Wilde’s face was pale
and serious. The young executive stammered in a whisper that, on the contrary, he wished the couple all happiness, and saw
no reason to interrupt.