Shortest Day (15 page)

Sarah wanted to know what Arlo's camera was for, what it was that he did up here, what his work was all about. Arlo explained about the analemma in a couple of sentences. Homer didn't understand, and he asked questions. Sarah said, “Oh, right, but—” Morgan was silent, Chickie squealed from the back of the room, and Tom Cobb opened the door and went out on the terrace.

They followed him, and everybody gasped at the view.

“Great place you've got up here,” said Tom, looking southwest at Harvard Square, glowing brightly beyond the dark blotch that was the university. Below them the tents of Harvard Towers glimmered from within with fiery sources of light.

Arlo and Homer leaned over the railing to the west and looked out over Cambridge Common. “Is it true you used to be a policeman?” said Arlo, who had heard a rumor somewhere. “A traffic cop?”

“Well, yes, for a while. Then I investigated homicides for the District Attorney of Middlesex County.”

“Homicides, no kidding! Did you catch any murderers?”

“One or two,” admitted Homer, puffed up with false modesty.

Tom moved to the east side of the terrace and looked beyond the dark bulk of Memorial Hall. “My God, you can see all of Boston from here.”

Morgan stood next to him and craned his neck over the railing to look at the courtyard far below. Directly below them was the glass roof of the Greenhouse cafeteria.
If you dropped something, it would fall a long way down
.

Drawing closer, he slipped something into the pocket of Tom's padded parka.

PART THREE

THE HERO COMBAT

TURKEY SNIPE

Battle, battle, battle I will call
,

And see which on the ground shall fall
.

KING GEORGE

Battle, battle, I will cry
,

To see which on the ground shall lie
.

Traditional British Mummers' Play

CHAPTER 19

In comes I, Old Beelzebub

Over my shoulder I carries my club
,

In my hand a dripping pan
,

Don't you think I'm a jolly old man?

Traditional British Mummers' Play

T
he power outage at Harvard University lasted only a few hours.

Donald Maderna, mechanical foreman for the North Yard, listened with relief to the dull rumble of the furnace in the basement of the Science Center. “How the hell did it happen anyhow?”

“God knows,” said the building manager.

On the eighth floor Arlo Field scribbled
8:14 p.m
. in his notebook and set to work at once to adjust the timer on his camera.

A lost scholar in Widener Library who had snuggled down on the floor and gone to sleep next to the bottom shelf of Indochinese folklore on Level D of the stacks, woke up as the lightbulb over his head turned on. Deep down in the center of the earth he was perfectly warm. He staggered to his feet, turned off the light switch, and lay down again, his head pillowed on the 1938 volume of the
Journal of the Siam Society
. Shutting his eyes, he went back to sleep.

“I
thought I told you these electrical connections are illegal,” said Sumner Plover, glaring at Palmer Nifto with his arms folded on his chest. Behind Sumner stood three more officers of the Harvard Police Department, glowering fiercely at Palmer.

“Do you expect us to freeze to death?” said Palmer piteously. He glanced around for bulging Gretchen, but she was nowhere in sight. “Linda,” he shouted. But Linda Bunting was enfolded between her children in her tent, and she wasn't about to get up.

“Disconnect everything,” commanded Sumner.

At once the four officers began jerking at extension cords, moving from tent to tent, commandeering electric heaters, microwave ovens, and toasters, while Palmer protested loudly, “Those appliances are private property. You are condemning us to death. There are small children here, mothers-to-be, helpless elderly men and women.”

“You should have thought of that before bringing them here,” said Sumner, doing his best to stand up to Palmer Nifto, who always had the best lines. “Come on, you people,” he bawled, “it's a cold night. We've got a bus to take you to the shelter at University Lutheran. Everybody out!”

They went—Emily Pollock, old man Maggody, Guthrie Jones, Linda Bunting and her two children, and all the rest—all but Bob Chumley and his dogs.

“It's a two-dog night,” said Bob, grinning at the Harvard cop who looked into his tent. “We'll be okay. Uny Lu wouldn't take the three of us anyway.”

Sumner Plover gaped. “Uny Lu?”

“University Lutheran,” murmured Bob, burrowing back down between his dogs.

When Gretchen came back from Berkeley Street, everybody but Bob had been picked up. Mary and Homer Kelly had been looking for her. They swept her up and drove her to Bright Day House in Somerville, where she was welcomed with hugs and scoldings.

“What's your due date, dean?” said the counselor, looking at her swollen tummy. “It must be pretty soon.”

“Oh, God, it was last week,” said Gretchen. “I'm overdue. The kid's really jumping around in there. Feel it.”

The counselor put her hand on Gretchen's abdomen. “It's knocking on the door, all right. Now, Gretchen, you are not to budge from this house again, do you hear me?”

“Okay,” said Gretchen, but she didn't mean it.

As for Palmer Nifto, shelters were not for him. Palmer had spent too many winter nights in the Pine Street Inn, where five hundred people were crowded in on top of one another, where there was no privacy, where some of the men were violent and some were crazies who shouted all night.

He had found a corner of Memorial Hall that was toasty and warm. It was the office of the director, right off the balcony above the great hall. There were stained-glass windows, a wall-to-wall carpet, a comfortable sofa, and the latest thing in telephones. Visiting the office one day on a phony errand, Palmer had stuffed a tiny piece of paper into the hole in the doorjamb. The latch clicked, but the door remained unlocked.

Tonight the telephone came in handy. Lounging on the sofa with the phone nestled on his shoulder, Palmer outfoxed Sumner Plover.

Next day he was back at Harvard Towers, beckoning to another truck. This one carried a very large and ugly machine. It was a secondhand generator, contributed by a neighbor on Francis Avenue, a professor of immense distinction who kept it in his garage. “Good, good,” shouted Palmer, walking in front of the truck. “A little more, a little more, okay, stop.”

The truck driver got out and climbed up on the back and wrestled with the generator. “Okay, now,” he said, “are you ready? I'll throw in the clutch.”

At once there was a loud whining noise, and a steady supply of electric current passed through the field coils to support the new collection of electric heaters that had appeared out of nowhere as if by magic.

The whole citizenry of Harvard Towers was back. Even Gretchen Milligan, ever loyal to the cause, stole out of Bright Day to display her bulging figure to the world in the cause of justice and mercy and housing for the homeless.