Shortest Day (16 page)

Officer Plover was outraged. Looking up at the humming generator on the back of the truck, he said, “Where did you get that?”

Palmer uttered the prestigious name, and Sumner Plover blanched. “Well, you can't have it here,” he said lamely.

“Why not?” said Palmer. “We're not borrowing one single ampere of electricity from the sacred power supply of Harvard University.”

Sumner was stymied. He changed the subject. “You asked for a meeting with Vice-President Henshaw? Well, it's been arranged. He can see you this afternoon at three-thirty. It's the only time available for the next three weeks, so you'd better be on time.”

Palmer smiled, and inspected his dirty fingernails. Flicking back his grubby cuff, he examined his watch, a fine specimen lifted from the wrist of a sleeping druggie in Central Square. It told the time in Rio, London, and Katmandu. “I'll see what I can do,” he said loftily. “My own schedule is pretty full.”

But of course Palmer appeared in Henshaw's office in Massachusetts Hall that afternoon, and only fifteen minutes late—an interval calculated to irritate Vice-President Henshaw without enraging him to the point of canceling the meeting.

It turned out that it was the Associate Vice-President who did most of the talking. Henshaw was in the room, but he said very little.

“You cannot deny,” said Nifto, jumping in with both feet, “the moral responsibility of this institution for the plight of the homeless people of Cambridge. Harvard University owns real estate all over the city. You have an endowment of six billion dollars. Surely some small fraction of your holdings would house all the homeless mothers, pregnant teenagers, and helpless old men at your very gates, people who are at this moment without shelter in the middle of winter?”

The interview was the strangest encounter of Ellery Beaver's career. “My dear Mr. Nifto,” he said smoothly, glancing at his boss, who was gazing at the rug, “I believe the university is already doing a great deal for the homeless people of Cambridge. The students of Phillips Brooks House, just as one example, are the sole staff of the shelter at University Lutheran. It is the active expression of their spiritual life. They also—”

“Oh, right,” said Palmer Nifto, “you mean Scottie and Brad and Millie, oh, sure, we're old buddies. But I'm talking about empowerment here. What precisely is the university going to do to supply permanent housing for the ninety-seven homeless people encamped on the overpass beside Harvard Yard during the Christmas season? I assure you, we are not going away.”

“If you are trespassing on our property,” said Ellery Beaver with a touch of menace in his voice, “I believe we can make you go away.”

“Your property?” said Palmer, leaping to take advantage. “I understand your ownership of the property is debatable. You can make us go away? Drag us out? We'll have cameras there from Channel Four so fast it'll knock your socks off. You might be interested to know that we're negotiating with the network right now for joint sponsorship of a stadium appearance by Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.”

This was a lie, but it gave Ellery Beaver a shock. There was a pause, into which Vice-President Henshaw inserted an odd question. “Tell me, Mr. Nifto, your tents, are they empty?”

“Empty?”

“I mean, you don't have curtains and pillows in your tents?”

“Curtains? Well, no, of course we don't have curtains. Tents don't have, like windows.”

This dialogue was certainly bizarre, and yet Ernest Henshaw and Palmer Nifto might have had something to say to each other if Ellery Beaver had been somewhere else. Both were alienated from a world gone mad. The only difference between them was that Henshaw turned away with horror and revulsion, while Nifto hurled every stick and stone that came into his hand.

Ellery Beaver broke in, trying to get the conversation back on track.

“Well, of course we're not going to evict you. We want to talk. We want to look at your problem from all sides. As I understand it, homelessness has many causes, both social and economic. We want to organize a symposium. We want you to conduct a seminar during the reading period, ‘Homelessness and the Urban Condition,' something of that sort. But of course we would expect you and your friends to leave the premises first. We cannot talk under pressure.”

Palmer was wary. “I heard you guys would do this, try to talk us to death. I mean, like there was a tent city at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the establishment wouldn't talk, they moved in with bulldozers and mashed everything down. But at least they were honest. What the hell good does it do to talk?”

Ellery Beaver laughed loudly. “Oh, MIT, they wouldn't have a clue. You people scared them out of their wits. But I assure you, this is a different sort of institution. We really care. We want to hear your ideas, your whole philosophical position, how you hope to relate to the city, the church, the university. Of course, you understand that we can do nothing inconsistent with the primary educational purposes of the university.”

“The point is,” said Palmer coldly, “talking is all very well, but what happens after that? Like I was thinking, they're repairing this building on Kirkland Street. Why don't you turn it over to us? Fix it up with, you know, apartments? We move in, we don't bother you any more.”

Ellery Beaver's ruddy face turned pale. He flicked a glance at Henshaw, whose stillness was the stillness of death. “You mean,” he said, stuttering, “Lowell Lecture Hall?”

“Yes, that's the one. Like it's got a lot of columns and pediments, right? It would do just fine. Get us off your back.”

“But, my God, Lowell Lecture Hall!”

Then Vice-President Henshaw raised his eyes at last, and spoke up. “What about armoires? Have you people got any armoires?”

Ellery Beaver looked away, embarrassed, but Palmer turned his head and looked squarely at Ernest Henshaw for the first time.

The man had a narrow face, a small nose, large round glasses, tiny ears, a high balding forehead, and gray hair cut short against his skull. His suit was gray, his Oxford-cloth shirt was blue as the summer sky, his necktie was patterned with tennis racquets. His shoes were brown and shining, his socks showed no speck of bare white leg. He was the perfect Harvard alumnus of the class of thirty years back—except for his eyes.

Henshaw's eyes were very small in their narrow slits. They glittered directly at Palmer Nifto, and he could see that they were insane.

CHAPTER 20

Down in yon forest there stands a hall:

The bells of paradise I heard them ring:

It's cover'd all over with purple and pall:

And I love my Lord Jesus above anything
.

In that hall there stands a bed:

The bells of paradise I heard them ring:

It's cover'd all over with scarlet so red:

And I love my Lord Jesus above anything
.

Under that bed there runs a flood:

The bells of paradise I heard them ring:

The one half runs water, the other runs blood:

And I love my Lord Jesus above anything
.

Carol from
Richard Hill's Commonplace Book
, circa 1500

T
he things that were going on inside and outside Memorial Hall had begun to intertwine.

In Sanders Theatre the back rows of benches were often occupied by people who leaked out of the tent city to get warm, then stayed to watch the succession of dramatic episodes on the stage.

And the Revels performers had begun to take an interest in the tent city. At lunchtime on Saturday the Morris men bounded around outdoors in heavy jackets, stamping on the yellow grass. The men and women of the chorus gathered beside Palmer Nifto's command center and sang “Masters in This Hall” and “Go, Tell It on the Mountain,” and then they led everybody in “Silent Night” and “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

Mary Kelly watched the tired gray faces light up as the residents of Harvard Towers sang the familiar words. They must have learned them as children when they were living in houses. The contrast between the solid walls of the past and the flimsy fabric of the present must surely be painful, but they were all smiling and laughing. Camping here out-of-doors, homeless and lacking in everything, they were experiencing Christmas, however pale and second-class.

Tom Cobb stood beside Mary, applauding. “It's a damn shame,” he said. “Why doesn't somebody do something about it?”

“About homelessness?” said Mary. “Oh, right.” She had heard the same thing so many times, she had said it herself so often, what good did it do to talk?

But Tom Cobb was in a talkative mood. Tom was a recently divorced estate attorney with a lucrative practice. He was Sarah Bailey's right-hand man, and the best dancer among the Morris men. When the six of them were stamping around on the stage, Mary always kept her eyes on Tom, because he was so lithe and strong and graceful, leaping higher than the rest. Everyone liked Tom Cobb. He was jocular and cheerful, a practical jokester with a corny sense of humor. His jokes were awful and made everybody groan, but they laughed at the same time. His world seemed so sunny and easygoing. Why wasn't it the true one, why wasn't everyone like Tom?

Even the homeless people liked him, although his simple-minded optimism had no solution to their predicament, only the superficial question
Why doesn't somebody do something?
—which was no answer at all.

They were singing again, “The First Noel.” “Have a choc?” said Tom, holding out a candy bar to Mary.

“Oh, no, thanks. I just had a couple of doughnuts.”

“Well, okay.” Tom bit off a big chunk. “Uh-oh, lunch break's over. Here comes Sarah.”

Sarah Bailey had come out to urge everyone back inside, but at once she noticed Gretchen Milligan in the circle of homeless people. She couldn't help wondering if she herself would ever be as big as that.

Fascinated, she approached Gretchen and struck up a conversation. “When's your baby due?”

“Oh, Jesus, it was due last week.”

“Is somebody looking after you? Shouldn't you be in the hospital?”

“Oh, God, no. When the time comes I'll go to Saint Elizabeth's. Jesus, I'm supposed to be at Bright Day right now. It's this place in Somerville.”

Sarah couldn't control her curiosity. “Do you feel all rights? Is the baby—you know, is it active?”

“Active!” Gretchen put her hands on her stomach. “My God, it's playing hockey in there. Feel it, go ahead, feel it.”

Timidly Sarah put one hand on Gretchen's big round ball. Yes, through her fingers came a thump and a restless drumming. Trembling, she dropped her hand, full of envy. She couldn't help seeing this very young girl as a matriarch with hordes of children and grandchildren around her knees. She felt like crying.

But rehearsal time was growing short. Sarah pulled herself together and shouted at everybody to come back inside.