Shortest Day (5 page)

Seventeen rows in front of Morgan Bailey, Homer Kelly glowered as the chorus began to sing. They were all pretending to frolic as if it were the jolliest party anybody ever saw—like a cocktail party on Fayerweather Street, thought Homer sardonically.

“Okay,” shouted Sarah, “time for the boar's head. Boar's head, where are you?”

In spite of himself, Homer was charmed as four girls in bright tunics carried onstage a giant tray on which lay a huge papier-mâché boar's head in a nest of ivy. When the chorus struck up “The Boar's Head Carol,” he couldn't help nodding his shaggy head in time to the music.

From then on Homer forgot his hostility and basked in this fanciful Cambridge version of the Middle Ages. It was nice, it was the
Très Riches Heures
come to life, enhanced by the mystic Victorian woodwork of Memorial Hall, with its thick varnish in which were magically embedded a few fragments of the Round Table. The playful enchantment of the Revels had taken hold.

When Mary's part of the rehearsal was over, she met Homer in the deathlike chill of the memorial corridor. “Oh, Homer, I was right. You didn't like it, did you?”

He was not yet ready to confess his transformation. “Well, I don't know,” he said gruffly. “The Morris dancers were okay, I guess.”

Mary introduced him to Sarah and Morgan Bailey. Sarah was enchanted with Homer. She gaped up at him. “So this is the famous Homer Kelly! Nobody told me you were ten feet tall.”

“Only nine feet, actually,” murmured Homer, who was used to being stared at, and liked it.

“No, no,” said Mary. “He's only six feet six.”

“Oh, Homer,” pleaded Sarah, taking his arm, “will you be our giant? We were going to do without one, but you're just right. We've never had anybody so tall.”

“Great idea,” said Tom Cobb, grinning at Homer. “How about it?”

Homer demurred bashfully, and then, to Mary's astonishment, he grinned and gave in. “Well, what the hell, I have to be in this building all the time anyway to teach our class.” He cleared his throat and roared, “FEE-FI-FO-FUM—is that the general idea?”

Sarah threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, Homer, that's great.”

Homer looked pleased with himself, his entire attitude toward childish playacting and Christmas frivolity and grown men and women making fools of themselves suddenly abandoned.

Mary was amused. She glanced at Morgan, Sarah's husband, and laughed. Morgan was smiling too, but his eyes were on Sarah.

“Saint George,” cried Sarah. “Has anyone seen Saint George?”

Homer looked at his wife and raised his eyebrows. “Saint George?”

“Oh, you know, Homer, Saint George has to kill the dragon. And then he has to be killed himself, you see.”

“No, I don't see.”

Before Mary could explain, an interpreter loomed up beside them, a gaunt woman in thick glasses. Her enormously magnified eyes gazed at Homer. She launched into a lecture. “Dying and reviving gods, you see. The hero combat. In remote times the kings of Babylon were put to death after reigning for a single year. It's the sacrifice of the god-king, you see, to save the world. Among the Musurongo of the Congo the king is put to death after only a single day.”

Mary was struck dumb. She repeated stupidly, “The Musurongo of the Congo?” Then she pulled herself together. “How do you do? I'm Mary Kelly, and this is my husband, Homer.”

“Marguerite Box.
Dr
. Marguerite Box. Lecturer in mythology and folklore, the safeguarding of the life-spirit, the forms of taboo, the emblems of fertility, the worship of Adonis, the slaying of the god-king, et cetera.” Dr. Box wore a large purple hat. Briefcases hung from her shoulders like panniers on a beast of burden.

Homer's eyes glazed over. Dr. Box was a bore. She fixed him with her magnified eye. “The legend of Saint George is merely a winter-solstice festival to revive the light, a new incarnation of a dying and reviving God.” Then a blast of chill air smote Dr. Box, and she snatched at her purple hat.

Parents were shepherding children out the north door. They were a wriggling crowd in puffy coats and woolly hats, screeching in the cold, blocking the entrance for someone on his way in. The newcomer was Arlo Field. He crushed himself against the doorjamb to let them go by.

Sarah Bailey hugged him and dragged him inside. “Oh, Arlo, here you are. Saint George in person, come to save us from the dragon.”

Mary and Homer Kelly followed the children out, while Sarah tucked one arm into Saint George's and the other into Tom Cobb's and hurried them into Sanders Theatre, trailed by Dr. Box.

Morgan Bailey followed Dr. Box, asking himself,
Who is the dragon?
, answering grimly,
I am. I am the dragon
.

CHAPTER 6

Here come I, St George, I've many hazards run
,

And fought in every land that lies beneath the sun
.

I am a famous champion
,

Likewise a worthy knight
,

And from Britain did I spring

And will uphold her might
.

Traditional British Mummers' Play

A
rlo's part of the rehearsal was over. He had put on the tunic of the Red Cross Knight, he had killed the comic dragon and been killed in turn by the swords of the Morris dancers. Then he had been brought back to life by the funny Doctor, and Sarah Bailey had hugged him again, and told him to come back tomorrow.

He was released. Opening the north door of the memorial corridor, he stepped out into the cold night air, looked up to see what the universe was doing, and set off for his office in the Science Center. As an assistant professor in the astronomy department, Arlo had the use of the laboratory on the eighth floor. That was his professional address—Room 804, Science Center, Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138. His home address was in Cambridge too—Apartment B, 329 Huron Avenue.

It amused him sometimes to remember the way he had written his address as a twelve-year-old boy in Belmont, seventeen years ago—

Arlo Thomas Field

47 Orchard Street

Town of Belmont

County of Middlesex

Commonwealth of Massachusetts

New England

Atlantic Seaboard

United States of America

Continent of North America

Western Hemisphere

The Earth

The Solar System

The Milky Way Galaxy

The Universe

Some of his friends, clever snotty little kids like himself, had written their addresses like that too. Later on, Arlo had run across the same thing in a play by Thornton Wilder, the cosmic address of one of the protagonists, beginning with Grovers Corners, New Hampshire, and ending with

The Mind of God

At twelve, Arlo had been a strict atheist, and he had left out the mind of God. Now, as an adult, he didn't exactly believe in a Christian God, but he wasn't an atheist either. How could an astronomer be an atheist? How could he look at his photographs of solar flares in the light of the alpha line of hydrogen—immense magnetic explosions one hundred thousand kilometers across—or see X-ray images of coronal holes blotching the face of the sun, how could he examine the faint spectra of star systems on the remote edges of the visible universe—and not be some kind of mystics?

Most of the time Arlo didn't bother to think about it. He lived and walked and breathed in a giant globe of stars and galaxies and dark matter and interstellar dust, he was penetrated by neutrinos from the sun's core and cosmic rays from somewhere in deep space. It was the ground of his being.

Now, as he crossed the mall over Cambridge Street under a sky emptied of stars by the glare of the city, Arlo's upward gaze was rewarded by nothing but the starboard lights of a plane heading for Logan. The Science Center was a checkered pyramid of light. Beyond its glassy geometry the other buildings along Oxford Street were dark shapes, hard and crystalline, as if they might shatter in the cold. Arlo knew they housed a hundred branches of scientific study—in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, for example, there was an exhibit of blown-glass flowers and a spider collection and a stuffed pangolin with round glass eyes—but now the museum was only a chunk of frozen brick and stone.

The night was really freezing. The cold was no surprise, because the days were growing shorter as the Northern Hemisphere leaned away from the sun and raced into the shadow. Arlo hunched his shoulders and thrust his gloved hands into his pockets and warmed himself by thinking about Sarah Bailey. Her embraces were worth remembering. Sarah was all warmth and red cheeks, frowsy red hair, uncoordinated pieces of clothing, and pillowed surfaces. In Sarah a generous mother nature had created a messy masterpiece. Her affection was a congratulation from the center of the earth. Unfortunately, it didn't mean anything in particular. Sarah hugged everybody. Her wholesome regard for the entire human race radiated in all directions, landing on tables and chairs.

It was too bad. Arlo thought of the other women in his life, a couple of girlfriends with whom he had been violently in love at one time or another. They had been like fleshly gardens full of flowering promise, but just below the surface they had turned out to be rock, solid rock, like the granite ledges under his mother's lawn.

The first had been a pretty woman with the perfect features of her wealthy ancestors, people with their pick of eligible mates. Cindy had learned in prep school to rule nations and govern empires. Her voice was loud and commanding. Arlo guessed she would settle for running the Milton Academy phonathon and the capital drive for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

The second was classic New Age. To try was all scented candles, aromatherapy, Tarot cards, and Birkenstocks. For his birthday she had given him a crystal to dangle over his arm. He couldn't make it work. “Look,” Totty said, “see what happens when I do it.” Suspended over her own arm, the crystal began at once to swing gently, then faster and faster. “You're making it do that,” said Arlo. “No, no, I swear, it's my own subconscious energy. I'm not doing a thing.”

Arlo the scientist had said, “What exactly do you mean by energy?” and Totty had talked about vibrations and auras and forces and pretty soon they were shouting at each other.

From these two, Arlo had learned to be wary of hockey trophies and loud voices, bangles, spacey music, and Indian sitars. Therefore he was cautious, perhaps too cautious. Probably he just didn't know how to talk to women.

But with Sarah Bailey you wouldn't have to figure out how to talk. You could just be yourself. Well, it didn't matter. Sarah was unavailable, she was married. Naturally she was married. All the good ones were attached to somebody else. Arlo wondered what her husband was like when he wasn't committing manslaughter. Did he deserve a wife like Sarah?