Aurora Dawn

by Herman Wouk

  “Let a hog in yer house, and he’ll crawl on yer table.”

  Father Stanfield spoke these opening words, halted, and looked around at the crowded studio. It was an oblong cavern of a room, walled with a rough substance that eliminated echoes by absorbing sound and abolished cheer by being the coldest shade of green in the spectrum. In the middle of one of the long walls was a wide platform, and here the preacher stood, flanked by the penitential stools for the sinners and the golden pews for the redeemed –also by several queerly shaped pieces of radio equipment. Overhead there arched, in pink cardboard letters four feet high nailed to a wood frame, the legend, “AURORA DAWN PRESENTS,” forlorn as a campaign poster after elections. In the seats directly before the stage the folk of the Fold were grouped, and the rest of the studio, seats, aisles, and doorways alike, overflowed with human beings. This was against the company’s rules, but the usual controls for herding audiences had proved too flimsy to contain the mob which had glutted every foot of space. The glassed-in sponsor’s box to the right of the stage, where there were seats for sixteen persons, provided a contrast by holding only three: Andrew Reale, Talmadge Marquis, and Carol. In place of the train of attendants usually to be seen with Marquis on such occasions of state, were thirteen superbly upholstered empty armchairs.

  “That’s my text for tonight,” went on the Shepherd. “It ain’t from the Good Book, but it’ll serve. It’s a sayin’ of my father, who was a God-fearin’ man and lived long enough to know a few things and put ’em in words.

  “I’m gonna talk to you folks about this business we call advertisin’.”

  His eyes rested on Marquis, who shifted his gaze to the ash of his cigar and stared at it as though it were the most remarkable object on earth. Carol moved her hand so that it touched Andrew’s wrist and clung there like a kitten’s paw. Our hero glanced gratefully at her and returned his attention to the preacher.

  “They is a punchin’ bag in our land that every highbrow and scribbler swings at sooner er later–and that’s advertisin’. Seems nobody with a college education has got any more use fer advertisin’ than they got fer a dead polecat on a hot night–’ceptin’ the fellers who make a livin’ advertisin’, and even they get sorta bristly, like it’s a humpbacked kid o’ theirs and they’ll fight you if you speak mean about it. Now if I use five-and-ten-cent words and disappoint the perfessers and reformers who expect me to rip up the business with hacksaws, I’m sorry. I don’t think advertisin’ is no dead polecat and no humpbacked kid, neither. I ain’t even agin’ it.

  “When my pop he said, ‘Let a hog in the house and he’ll crawl on yer table,’ he wasn’t agin’ hogs, neither. Fact, we was all pretty near raised on pork. Pop was jest statin’ a plain fact about hogs. All I aim to do tonight is state plain facts.

  “Feller come out our way one winter when I was thirteen, and set up shop on the main street of town. Name was Slade, and he was a shoemaker. He hung up a little wood sign outside his shop, ‘Slade’s Shoes.’ Seems like he didn’t git enough trade to suit him, ’cause pretty soon up goes a big red and yaller sign, ‘Slade’s Special Superb Shoes.’ First time anyone put up such a big bright sign on Main Street. Plenty of folks stopped to gawk, and a few bought shoes, I reckon. Well, maybe Slade figgered he’d hit on a smart idee, er maybe he took a trip to a big city. Anyhow, one mornin’ in May I’m comin’ in town fer some kerosene to burn out caterpillars, and in front of Slade’s shop is a crowd, and on his roof is a sign bigger’n the whole shop. It’s a picture of a naked gal a-winkin’, and across her middle is a sash, and on it it says, ‘How Kin I Help Lovin’ A Feller With Slade’s Shoes On?’ But the crowd ain’t lookin’ at the sign, they’re lookin’ at Slade, who is quite a sight, all tar and feathers and astraddle of a fence rail. Some hooligans carry him to the town limits and come back and burn up the sign, and nobody never sees Slade no more, and we got a right quiet lot o’ signs along the main street to this day.

  “Signs is like hogs: nobody claims they’s pretty, but everybody knows you gotta have ’em, But Slade’s signs got to be like a hog in the house. God give folks power to see red and yaller so’s they could praise His glory in robins and dandelions, in the sunrise and the autumn, not so’s their attention could be yanked sharp by any yahoo with enough paint or ’lectric bulbs. God give man Woman to sweeten his way through the vale of tears, not to set him hankerin’ after nobody’s shoes. Slade’s sign invaded folks’ lives so’s they got mad and booted it out hard, which is what gen’rally happens sooner er later to a hog in the house.

  “They is some wild-eyed folks likes to holler, ‘Abolish advertisin’.’ Shucks, tryin’ to stop advertisin’ in this land is like tryin’ to stop freckles with a rubber eraser. Maybe in these here countries where the gov’ment makes everythin’ and hands out everythin’ and runs everythin’ they don’t have no such problem, but as long as you got different fellers makin’ and sellin’ the same thing and tryin’ to beat each other at it yet gonna have ’em hangin’ out signs. That’s all advertisin’ is, in radio, magazines, it don’t matter none where, it’s the same thing–hangin’ out signs.

  “Me, I had three years of life with the gov’ment handin’ out everythin’ and runnin’ everythin’, in the army. I’ll take the old way, signs and all. Only thing is, I look around our land and right now I say we ain’t got signs; by and large, we got a hog in the house.

  “Big hollerin’ displays all over the landscape, like them corkers you folks all seen across the Hudson, blottin’ out the sunset, blindin’ you to God’s wonders so’s they kin tell you about autos and salad oil–that’s hog.

  –That’s hog–

  “Promisin’ yer poor little homely daughter she’ll marry the star halfback if she’ll jest wash out her mouth with Reuben’s medicine or bathe herself with Simon’s Soap; promisin’ yer puny son he’ll be a champeen if he eats their bran mush; promisin’ any sad people to make ’em happy when they cain’t–that’s hog.

  “Bawlin’ slogans at you like you was dogs to train you to buy stuff–that’s hog. When some folks git mad enough to object they say, ‘It sells, don’t it?’ They reckon that’s as good an answer as sayin’, ‘It glorifies the Lord, don’t it?’

  “Takin’ Heaven’s newest gift to a undeservin’ world–pleasure sent through the air by radio–and readin’ their signs in yer parlor until it’s all signs and no pleasure–that’s hog.

  “Leadin’ yer prettiest daughters out o’ yer homes into big cities, undressin’ ’em and printin’ pictures of ’em to sweeten up their products with the sweetness of Eve and Mary–that’s a hog right in our laps. We all got so used to it none of us don’t even see it fer what it is.

  “All I’ve stated is plain facts that anybody knows. Here in America the Lord has spread the richest feast that a body of citizens has ever sat down to: fields, mines, forests, rivers, schools, industries, people–what have we got that ain’t the most and the best? But the banquet is kinder spoiled now, by a hog in the house. Jest like my pop said, he’s crawled up on the table and put one foot in the mash potatoes and the other in the cranberry sauce. They ain’t many Americans will object to a feller hangin’ out a sign when he got somethin’ to sell; but they ain’t many Americans either, I don’t think, will go on livin’ fer ever with a hog in the house.”

  This was the fateful utterance of Father Calvin Stanfield, word for word. Only because this history might seem incomplete with out it, has it been recorded, for it is a mild paraphrase of Michael Wilde’s Oration, and nothing else. We who have lived nine years since that night are inclined to give the sermon somewhat less importance than the newspapers, the Shepherd, and even Marquis attached to it. Spoken or not spoken, what difference did it really make? The sun rose next day, the insects ate the leaves, the birds ate the insects, the cats chased the birds, and all the wheels of the world rolled on as before, with scarcely a wobble to bear witness to the shattering event that had exploded on the little rock of Manhattan. If all mankind were to
give a single horrid shout and expire in a mass, the face of the planet would be marvelously little changed. Most happenings called epoch-making are smaller in effect than that, but we are endowed, possibly for our preservation, with the abiding illusion that what is about to take place this week overshadows all that has passed since Light was created.

  In these nine years much has occurred, including a war, but nothing has happened to the harmless profession of advertising except that its prosperity has increased. Our citizens in the happiness of their lot ignored Stanfield, and to this day still ignore the whole matter, even as dancing picnickers disregard the gnats on a fine summer’s day.

  Return we to the epoch-making moment, however, when the Faithful Shepherd spoke the last words. Observe the great things that ensued.

  CHAPTER 24

  Wherein the plot thickens, as all, plots should do

  near the end of the volume.

  MANY AMERICANS EITHER, I don’t think,” said the voice from about twenty million loudspeakers “will go on livin’ fer ever with a hog in the house.

  “Brothers and sisters, let us sing, ‘Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Souls Are Marching,’ written by our own Elder Bryce.”

  In the burst of song which followed, Stephen English reached a pallid hand out from under stiff hospital sheets and turned off the little radio on the white table beside his bed. “Lloyd,” he said to a fat, bald young man in a dark gray suit and bright red bow tie, who sat near the foot of the bed watching the banker’s face anxiously, “please call Mr. Marquis immediately–he must be at the studio or his home–and tell him that I would like him to arrange an emergency meeting of the board of directors of the Marquis Company for nine o’clock Tuesday morning.”

  The secretary said, “Steve, you won’t be out of here by Tuesday,” but the banker shook his head patiently. “I can walk on that ankle with a cane, it’s only sprained,” he said, “and the cuts are nothing. Look at those newspapers.” He pointed to a pile of the day’s gazettes which the secretary had brought, lying in disorder on the bed. “Aurora Dawn has suffered damage which must be repaired swiftly. I’m to blame for allowing Marquis such authority in public relations; sooner or later this had to happen.” He leaned back on the propped pillows and closed his eyes. “See how it is with Laura, Lloyd,” he murmured. The secretary left, and found the banker in the same position when he returned two minutes láter. “She’s awake now,” he reported, “but the doctor is with her. I couldn’t go in. The nurse says she was cheerful when she woke up.”

  “God help the poor girl,” said Stephen English.

  Two thousand seven hundred miles away, three miles above earth, in a metal machine moving westward, Flame Anders sat, smoking a cigarette and talking gaily to an extremely handsome man with long, curly black hair. You must know, reader, that she had run away two days earlier from Walter Grovill, reducing him to the piteous condition in which we have recently observed him. Her paramour was a models’ agent who had jilted her, just before her marriage to the advertising man, and had recently decided to win her back, this feat being accomplished by the expedient of telephoning her one afternoon. As garrulous now as she had been silent for two years, the red-haired beauty chattered continually through Starifield’s sermon–which traversed the continent, mounted into the sky, overtook the airplane, and emerged through Mrs. Grovill’s radio effortlessly, doing this in less time than it took the preacher to voice a single syllable. Quoth the happy Flame, when the sermon was over, “Oh, my, isn’t poor Walter in for it now! That Mike Wilde sure started something. Honest, Dan, I wish you had been there last Saturday night and heard him. He was out of this world.” A thought struck her, and her matchless face assumed the old pensive expression for a moment. “Last Saturday,” she repeated. “It was only last Saturday. Gosh, Dan, how much can happen in a week!” The fortunate, well-favored Dan answered nothing, being engaged in shuffling playing cards for a game of chance called gin rummy, and thus became the only person in this history to enter it and vanish beyond its scope without uttering a sound.

  In the sponsor’s booth in the big studio where the historic speech had just been delivered, Talmadge Marquis sat hunched, his arms extended along the sides of the deep soft chair, the cigar in his mouth growing cold, his face as gray as the cigar’s ash. When the Fold lifted their voices in song he sighed heavily, dropped the cigar into a chromium tray, and looked at Andrew and Carol with his lower jaw hanging open, a suffering glance.

  “It wasn’t so bad, Dad,” said Carol. “It’ll all be forgotten tomorrow.”

  Marquis said, “I have a fearful headache.” But when his daughter suggested that they go home be declared that he did not intend to slink away, and settled back morosely into his chair.

  Our hero, with Carol Marquis’s hand firmly and intimately clasped over his, felt the sensations of a weary marathon runner who sees the finish line in the distance and knows that the race is his. With the sense of assured triumph was tiredness of the bones, and a pang of doubt as to whether the trophy was worth the toil, a depressed view which he dismissed as a mood of fatigue. It was warm and comfortable, despite misgivings, to feel success. Carol’s display of affection, starting with an impulsive kiss when her father told her of Reale’s loyal stand for him, was extravagant, particularly in the number of times she loaded him with the terms “dearest” and “darling.” As he accepted her endearments and caresses with the passive dignity of a spent champion, Andy reflected that no young man, probably, ever realizes bow very calm he can feel in the great moment when at last he attains what he has wanted all his days.

  The Fold had not yet ended its song when an attendant in the livery of the broadcasting company entered the glass booth with many expressions of respect, attached a telephone to a cord hanging from the back wall and handed it to Marquis, saying, “Call from Mr. Stephen English’s secretary.” Marquis seized the telephone. The conversation was brief, and consisted on his part of several affirmative noises and a dry “Good-by,” after which he handed the instrument to the uniformed bearer, who backed politely out of the door. The soap man turned a stricken face to his companions and told them what English’s secretary had said. His fingers shook, but he made no effort to control them.

  “Once again,” he said in a quivering soprano voice, “once again I have to suffer for the incompetent stupidity of my subordinates and the treachery of everybody I trust Except you, Reale,” he added, “and even you I must hold responsible for the ill-advised notion of bringing Stanfield on the air.”

  “Andy has been wonderful and you know it, Dad,” said Carol quickly.

  “I said that of all the people around me he alone hasn’t utterly failed me,” grumbled Marquis.

  “Possibly,” said Andrew with great charm, “Mr.English’s meeting may prove pleasant.”

  “The last emergency meeting did not,” said Marquis, biting at his lower lip. “It was when everyone betrayed me on the change of the soap’s color, which to this day I know was a good idea.” He pulled himself up out of the deep armchair. “Serf and the others have been hoping for fifteen years that I would antagonize Steve English again. Well, I’ll face them. My policies in radio have made Aurora Dawn what it is. I have been absolutely right in this Stanfield business from start to finish, and if Leach and Legrand hadn’t stabbed me—” he broke off, with his hand on the slender aluminum rod that served as a doorknob. “I’ll be with the lawyers at Grovill’s office for a couple of hours, Carol. See you at home. ’Night, Reale.” Pale and stooped, the soap magnate walked out heavily.

  Now the packed-in audience began to fill the studio with laughter as Father Stanfield interviewed the first penitent sinner. Andrew reached over to the loudspeaker and snapped the button, and suddenly there was silence in the glass box as profound as that of an underground cave. Before the eyes of the young couple the people continued to go through the motions of mirth, but without the sound to make their antics intelligible they looked like badly worked marionettes. Andrew had no eye
for this interesting contrast. He turned to Carol and asked her how it was that her mighty parent could fear the opinion of Stephen English or anyone else in matters pertaining to his own company.

  Readily the girl confided to him what the reader will remember from the early sketch of the soap magnate: that the Marquis Company was not truly her father’s since his inspiration regarding the “Snow White, Snow Pure’ campaign, when English’s bank had taken a controlling interest as the price of rescuing the tottering finances, and had also compelled Marquis to give sizable portions of voting stock to his managers; that part of the bargain had been retention by Marquis of the presidency; but that English could topple him, and the managers devoutly wished for such a consummation. Carol outlined this state of things rapidly and nervously, with mounting disturbance of spirit. Her tense little hands made a thousand quick flutterings as she talked, and her eyes wandered about distractedly, shifting often to the large studio clock which Was nearing the hour of nine. Suddenly she jumped up, pressed the button which turned off the soft indirect lights of the booth, and pulled Andrew by the hand to the darkest corner, out of sight of the studio audience.

  “Oh, Andy darling,” she cried softly, pressing him in her arms, “I do appreciate everything you’ve done and tied to do for me. I wish things didn’t look so hopelessly messed.”

  Our hero felt singularly puissant at this moment. “Give me a little time, Carol, dear,” he said, “and I may pull your dad out of this. Don’t despair.”

  The girl hid her face against his chest for a moment; then she drew away from him and said, “I must go. Call me tomorrow at noon. Good-by.”

  “If you’re going to join your dad, let me come with you,” said Andrew, but Carol shook her black locks vehemently, gave him a swift kiss on the mouth, and slipped out through the door, leaving him alone in the gloomy, hushed, glass booth.