Shortest Day (26 page)

It was painfully clear what must have happened. Maggody had shuffled away from the tent city, he had wandered in his aimless way across the intersection, clutching his blanket around him, and then, when he could go no farther, he had lain down under the monument. And the cold had worked its way inward through the blanket and the thin clothing and the wrinkled old skin, and penetrated to Maggody's bones and vital organs and stopped his heart.

Something rose up in Palmer Nifto's breast, but it wasn't pity. He saw at once that Maggody's death was a sparkling opportunity, a gift from heaven.
HOMELESS MAN FREEZES TO DEATH ON CAMBRIDGE COMMON
—what a godsend!

Then, standing in the blowing snow looking down at Maggody, Palmer realized that he could do better than Cambridge Common.
Much
better than Cambridge Common.

It was a good thing the old man was so small and shriveled. Picking him up, Palmer was surprised at the lightness of his burden. He set off in the direction of Berkeley Street, hoping to meet no one on the way.

CHAPTER 33

What shall I give to the Child in the manger?

What shall I give to the beautiful boy?

Grapes I will give to him, hanging in clusters
,

Baskets of figs for the Child to enjoy
.

Spanish carol

I
f Gretchen Milligan had been a reader, she might have thought of herself as Hans Christian Andersen's Little Match Girl, who sat barefoot in the snow beside the rich man's house, envisioning the comfort and luxury within. Gretchen too was peering into someone's glowing windows, eager to know what was going on inside.

But the Little Match Girl had frozen to death in the cold. Gretchen was perfectly warm and comfortable. All through the afternoon and all night she holed up in the heated garage of the Henshaws' beautiful house on Berkeley Street.

Nor was she likely to starve like the Little Match Girl. Nestled on the plush upholstery of Ernest Henshaw's Mercedes, Gretchen nibbled on goodies baked by the nice ladies from the church—brownies and muffins and oatmeal cookies. She had taken a big bagful from their table at Harvard Towers.

Half sitting up because it was too uncomfortable to lie down, she lay snuggled in the cozy back seat with her baby bumping around inside her—playing basketball, it felt like.

Gretchen was happy in the Henshaws' garage. She didn't know who they were, but she felt close to them just the same, as though she were living their lives at second hand. Sometimes she got out of the car and looked through the garage window into the window of the living room. There was also a clear view of the front door.

The mistress of the house had been at home all afternoon. Gretchen could see her now and then, moving from room to room. Once she stood at the window, and Gretchen ducked back out of sight. But the tall woman did not look out. She was unrolling some sort of fabric, trying it at the window, rolling it up again.

For a while Gretchen worried that somebody would come for one of the cars. They would open the garage door and find her there. But nobody did. And when the master and mistress of the house went out for the evening, they didn't take a car. They walked to the end of the street and turned the corner. Later on, Gretchen saw them returning the same way.

The night was really dark, except for the white snow, which kept falling like anything. Gretchen lay down on the back seat of the car and ate the crumbled pieces of another brownie. Then she brushed away the crumbs and went to sleep.

In the last month of pregnancy she always slept fitfully. At three-thirty in the morning it took only a small sound to jerk her awake—the click of the latch on the front gate.

Drowsily Gretchen heaved herself out of the back seat and went to the window. Oh, Jesus, who was that? A lumpy shape moved stealthily toward the front porch. It was a man carrying something over his shoulder.

Should she knock on the door between the garage and the kitchen and wake up the family? For a moment Gretchen had a vision worthy of the Little Match Girl—maybe they would thank her and take her inside and hug her and adopt her as their daughter and her baby as their grandchild. But Gretchen was too heavy, too sleepy. She couldn't summon the will to do anything but gaze out the window.

She saw the man creep up the steps and dump the thing he was carrying right against the door. The thing was a person. She watched as he rearranged the arms and legs, went down the steps, and turned to look back. At last he started up the walk, blowing on his hands.

Then he made his only mistake. He stopped to light a cigarette. Through the curtain of falling snow the glare of the burning match was like the mystical illumination of the matches in the hands of the Little Match Girl. For an instant it lighted up his face, and Gretchen knew at once who he was.

It was Palmer Nifto.

CHAPTER 34

When they bereaved his life so good
,

The moon was turned into blood
,

The earth and temple shaking stood
,

And graves full wide did open
.

Carol, “Wondrous Works”

I
t was a snow emergency in Cambridge. The city plows had begun working in the middle of the night, but by morning the cleared streets were once more inches deep, and they had to start over.

The emergency line was jammed with complaints. People on streets lined with three-deckers complained that Brattle Street always got the best service, and when were they going to plow Aberdeen Avenue?
I got to get to work, the kids are hungry, I need milk for the baby. We been waiting all morning, where the hell are you?

The callers from Brattle Street said there was entirely too much political correctness in the Public Works Department, which was ignoring the needs of the property owners who paid the highest taxes.
And, please, would you kindly avoid leaving a mountain of snow at the end of my driveway?

Ernest Henshaw did not call the Public Works Department. Nor did he call the police to say that there was a dead man on his doorstep. When he put on his coat and hat and galoshes and opened the front door, expecting to slog through the snow to Harvard Yard, he was stopped cold by the obstacle that lay across his path.

He stared down in shocked surprise at the body of Maggody, and for several moments he did not move or speak.

Then, very quiedy, he closed the door, slipped down the hall, and descended softly into the cellar to hide behind the furnace. He remained there the rest of the morning. His wife Helen sat at her desk riffling through sample books of wallpaper and upholstery fabric, picking out favorites, telephoning the wholesalers for ten rolls of this and a dozen yards of that. She had no idea her husband was still at home.

But Ernest Henshaw was too shaken to budge. The body on his doorstep was yet another piece of excess. It was like a bulky object delivered by UPS. He wanted no part of it, no part of it at all.

Therefore, when Palmer Nifto came back to his command tent at Harvard Towers and swept the snow off the roof and burrowed inside to watch the noontime news, he was dismayed that there was no scandalized report about Maggody. The jocular guy on the screen chattered about a couple of drug arrests and the latest loss by the Boston Celtics. Turning solemn for a moment before droning through the no-school announcements, he mentioned the death of Jeffery Peck. But he did not purse his lips in sorrow and announce that a poor old homeless man had frozen to death on the doorstep of Harvard's Vice-President for Government and Community Affairs.

Angrily Palmer switched off the set and hurried back to Berkeley Street, hardly bothering to greet his fellow protesters as they drifted back to Harvard Towers in twos and threes.

Gretchen Milligan, peering out the window of the Henshaws' garage, saw Nifto standing across the street staring at the front porch. The poor dead person was still there. She didn't know what it all meant—why Palmer had dumped the person there in the first place, why no one had done anything about it, and why Palmer had come back to the scene of the crime.

She didn't really care. She was having too good a time playing with all the perks in the Mercedes. Where was the key? It wasn't in the glove compartment. Gretchen soon found it under the carpet on the driver's side. At once she pushed it into the ignition and turned it one click. There! Now she could try the tape deck, inserting one cassette after another from the bin in the dashboard. But the tapes weren't Gretchen's kind of music. Oh, it was okay for these rich people to like classical music, but it always sounded the same to Gretchen, so she turned on the radio to her favorite heavy-metal station, very softly, and lay down on the back seat to listen, reaching into her bag of brownies, feeling the baby lurch inside her.
Oh, ouch
.

T
he storm was over. The sun was out, bright and clear in the blue sky, casting bold blue shadows on the dazzling white snow in the Henshaws' front yard as Palmer Nifto stopped to stare at it from across the street. Knobs and domes of snow lay on the foundation planting around the front porch.