One

by David Karp

  Hughes sat for a few moments, listening thoughtfully to Cumbers’ footsteps on the stairs. When he arose and looked for the light switch the lights went out as if the switch had divined his purpose. When Hughes got out into the hall he saw that all but the entry light was off and decided that Mrs. Doughton somehow controlled the lights from another part of the house.

  In his own room Hughes rested on the bed in the dark, unable to fall asleep. Cumbers puzzled him. He was not at all the little, gentle, colorless man he thought he was. Cumbers had fears and longings and needs as deep and dark as anyone Hughes had known. But then, Hughes thought, he had not known so many people. As far as he was concerned, these people were the first. He felt as a man might feel coming from another world to earth. He neither liked nor disliked these people. All he felt about them was a curiosity, an interest, a little pity. Actually, the only person he felt any affection for was Cumbers and he was not certain now that he knew Cumbers at all. The thought did not distress him. Instead, it occurred to him that much of the life about him was only visible in fragmentary form. Much of it was subterranean, and it would not be fair to decide upon any of it until he had seen more—much more.

  ii

  Hughes and Cumbers spent much of their time outside the house although the December week end was cold and blustery. The town’s regularity began to pall on Hughes during the long walks and he began to understand Cumbers’ lack of interest in New Buxton. Apparently there were three stages of awareness to the town. The first was wonder and excitement of the variety he felt upon first viewing it, and that was followed by a sense of despair over its sameness and regularity. Evidently the third stage was the one shared by all the regular dwellers—a sort of anesthetized eye, a glazed indifference, and a sure instinct for choosing one’s own block and one’s own house without reference to street or avenue signs.

  From Cumbers he learned that he would be working for the Quartermaster section of the Defense Arm. Cumbers said he had tried to find out all he could about Hughes’ job so he should be able to help him a bit with it before he began. He had brought home manuals on the organization of the Defense Arm and Hughes began to read them carefully, underlining words he did not understand. Cumbers was most patient and thorough in explaining each of the words that tripped up his friend but by Sunday evening Hughes felt that he would never completely understand the tables of organization and the administrative schematics.

  Monday came and Hughes went off to work. Evidently Cumbers had prepared everything in advance so he was sent directly to his supervisor. It was an enormous room in which he was finally put to work and all the walls were lined with charts from ceiling to floor. For each section of chart a clerk was assigned with a lightweight rolling aluminum ladder, a box of chalk, dusters, and inventory reports from all the units in the Defense Arm. The sight of all those busy clerks marching up and down the ladders, erasing a figure here, chalking in another figure, and rolling their ladders back and forth bewildered Hughes. His own chart was devoted to small arms and there seemed to be a bewildering array of such types. There were, for instance, six classes of pistols, from atomic hand weapons to antique gunpowder revolvers in various calibers. Hughes had to take all the figures from all the units, add them up for each class of weapon on an adding machine, and then enter the figures in the appropriate spaces on the chalk boards. It was important to sort out weapons according to type, caliber, year of manufacture, condition, and availability. Hughes discovered that three to four hours had to be spent on reports before a figure could be changed on the chalk board. Each clerk seemed to have his own method. The more athletic and energetic men were constantly changing figures as new unit reports came in. More cautious men waited until the end of the day before entering all the new figures or allowing the old figures to stand. It was most important, Hughes learned, to have absolutely accurate figures at the end of the day. To change them as one went along in the reports meant a great deal of climbing and dismounting during the day, but to change them all at once an hour before the end of the day meant that there was a great responsibility involved, since some two hundred different figures had to be changed or checked and once it was done there was no time left for counterchecking what one had put up on the boards.

  During the day a steady parade of officers and enlisted men came into the chart room to study the figures or to copy them. The job, Hughes learned, was one of great and exacting responsibility.

  Within a few days Hughes caught the hang of it and because it broke the monotony of numbers and sitting at the desk with the computer he became one of the clerks who was constantly scurrying up and down the ladder. The bewildering maze of pistols, rifles, machine pistols, machine guns, the eighteen calibers of light mortars, antitank rifles, rocket and field bomb launchers, and all the other varieties of light weapons began to become routine to him and in a short time he was officially congratulated upon his speed and accuracy.

  The work, however, proved to be exhausting to Hughes, who found that once he returned to the rooming house he didn’t feel much like doing anything but eating his meals and retiring. Cumbers was highly pleased over his friend’s rapid adjustment and assured Hughes that soon he would be able to do his work with less fatigue and would not need to go to bed so early every evening.

  Christmas Day fell on a Friday so the various sections of the Defense Ann worked a half day on Thursday and then dismissed its people.

  Cumbers dropped by to pick up Hughes and on the way back to the rooming house the two men decided that they would accompany Mrs. Greevy to Christmas Eve services at the Church of State meetinghouse.

  During the pre-Christmas dinner, Hughes watched Ralph Doughton behave disagreeably at the table. Hughes suspected that the landlady’s nephew acted deliberately perverse for the attention it would net him. Perhaps, Hughes mused, the boy did not quite know how to be pleasant and be noticed and so had chosen the opposite tack. Cumbers, strangely enough, had taken just the reverse approach. He was all obliging, all sweetness, all light and gentleness and concern. Why couldn’t they just be themselves? What was wrong with that? Why did they have to play these roles? Ralph Doughton was surly but Hughes felt that, basically, Ralph was not a surly person. And Cumbers—Cumbers was kind but was he basically a kind person? The thoughts remained in Hughes’ mind throughout the dinner and afterward, while they walked with Mrs. Greevy through the chilled, deserted streets to the Church of State meetinghouse, Hughes expressed part of his thoughts aloud.

  “Ralph Doughton isn’t nearly as bad as he pretends,” Hughes said.

  “Oh, Mr. Hughes,” Mrs. Greevy said with a heavy sigh, “if you only knew what that poor woman had to put up with in that boy you wouldn’t say a thing like that. Mrs. Greevy’s known Mrs. Doughton a long, long time and all during that time there’s been no moment when the poor woman was free of worry or unhappiness over that boy.”

  “Still, I suppose he’s been the source of some comfort to the woman,” Cumbers said thoughtfully. Hughes glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. The role again, the pose.

  “Comfort is something she’ll get only when she’s gone from mortal desire,” Mrs. Greevy sighed. “The trouble with the boy is that he thinks only of himself—himself, himself, himself all the time. Oh, the Church of State would be such a comfort to the boy. It would open up his narrow heart. It would let in the world around him. You know, we of the Church of State are never really alone, Mr. Hughes.”

  “Yes, so I understand,” Hughes said. “But then, you do miss the captain so much, don’t you?”

  Mrs. Greevy’s eyes turned sidewise to look at Hughes and for a moment he felt he had said the wrong thing. “Mrs. Greevy knows what you’re thinking, Mr. Hughes. But the truth of it is that Mrs. Greevy has not been as true a believer as she might have been and it’s the source of all her grief. Don’t judge the Church of State by Mrs. Greevy, Mr. Hughes. She’s a poor, foolish woman afflicted with mortal desire.”

  Hughes nodded, pleased and interested
by the curious third-person manner of speech. He had heard that this was the mark of a Church of State worshiper and, of course, he had noticed it before in Mrs. Greevy’s speech but she had generally, in the past, managed a tricky, elusive sort of speaking so that she never referred to herself.

  The meetinghouse of the Church of State which Mrs. Greevy attended was a low, long shed, as unpainted outside as it was inside. It had no symbolic cruciform shape such as the Catholic churches, nor any marks on its outside to designate its special character. Hughes entered not quite certain what the interior would resemble but vaguely expecting an altar, or a pulpit of some sort. There was none. Nor was there any decoration of any sort—not even ordinary covering paint over the wooden walls and the ceiling. There were light brackets lining the walls with ordinary, unfrosted electric light bulbs that gave off a harsh, dazzling light. The room was filled with low benches in the form of a filled square and people sat in them facing toward the center of the square. There was an empty space in the center of the square no larger than a yard by a yard; otherwise the square was solidly filled with benches which were long in the rear, diminishing in size until they came to the short benches in the center, benches on which only three people could sit. Evidently they were late for services for a man was standing at his bench, all eyes turned toward him, and he was speaking.

  “And a teacher was born,” the man said, “and the teacher named Jesus Christ was ignored by the many and heeded by the few.” Hughes hesitated to work his way down the narrow aisles between the benches while the man spoke but Mrs. Greevy urged him ahead with her hand at his elbow.

  “And the many, hating the teacher, beseeched the governor of the province to have Him destroyed.” Hughes, Cumbers, and Mrs. Greevy eventually found places for themselves on a bench near the front.

  “The governor was from a foreign power,” a man said, springing up without ceremony. The man who had been speaking sat down and listened. “A foreign power that had seized the land of the Jews and held it against their wishes. The Jews had fought wars with the Romans for many years but at last the Jews were conquered and the conqueror set a governor over them.”

  “They set also a king,” a woman said, rising. The man, in turn, sat down. “And the king’s name was Herod. And it was to Herod that the three wise men came and said there is born today in the city of Bethlehem a great teacher. And to the Jews the teacher was the leader, the king, and Herod feared that the teacher might usurp his throne.”

  “Was He the Son of God?” a voice shouted and then Hughes was astonished to hear the group chorus, “No!”

  “God had no son!” Mrs. Greevy shouted, springing up. The woman who had spoken of Herod sat down. “As God is a ghost and a ghost may have no issue. God favored no one man. God favored us all and God said you are all equal, you are all my children. God said that God has no son—He has many sons. And He said He has no daughters—He has many daughters.”

  “We are all part of the design!” a young man cried, rising, and Mrs. Greevy sat down, folding her hands in her lap to listen. “No one man can suffer without all suffering. No one woman may rejoice without all rejoicing. That is the only mystery and the mystery is made clear.”

  “All is one and one is all,” the entire congregation boomed like an organ suddenly struck in the shed. Hughes glanced about him. They all listened so carefully, so intently that it puzzled him. There was none of the fidgeting he thought there might be in a place where no one led.

  “There are neither angels, nor devils, nor ghosts, nor spirits, nor seraphs, nor cherubs, nor saints, nor sinners,” the young man said heatedly, and applause came from the listeners, the sort of applause that might be expected in a theater. The young man hurried on over the applause, “nor is there heaven or hell, damnation or salvation, redemption or fall! We are all part of the human family, the family of mankind, the family of God. Good, bad, or indifferent, we are all filled with grace!”

  “Amen!” the congregation thundered and then, as an outburst of the affirmation, came music. No sooner did one begin to sing than another picked it up. Hughes listened to the words:

  “Oh sing and proclaim us all,

  Of blood one another,

  Of bone one another,

  Of birth, of death, of all.

  Oh sing and proclaim us all,

  In like one another,

  In life one another,

  In birth and death of all.”

  There were other choruses but Hughes did not understand them, for the sheer weight of the singing pounded against the roof, the walls, hammered down on his ears. Then when the song ended another began and it was taken up. Song followed song until someone cried, “Merry Christmas! The teacher is born!” The singing collapsed and the voices, like waves on a shore, murmured and muttered, “Merry Christmas! The teacher is born!” Benches began to scrape as people rose, smiling, chatting to one another, shaking hands.

  “Wasn’t it lovely?” Mrs. Greevy asked as they made their way through the crowds to the door.

  “Yes, it certainly was,” Cumbers said, and there was a look in his eye, a note in his voice that led Hughes to think that his friend meant precisely that. Mrs. Greevy squeezed both their hands and smiled over her shoulder at Hughes. “Oh, if you would only join us, Mr. Hughes!”

  “Well, I don’t know, Mrs. Greevy,” Hughes said, knowing that he never would.

  “The simplicity of it,” Mrs. Greevy said with a sigh, “each of us part of the other. No leaders, no followers, all men brothers, all women sisters, the great human family.” Mrs. Greevy shook her head with a sigh and under her breath began to sing, “Oh sing and proclaim us all, Of blood one another, Of bone one another, Of birth, Of death, Of all!”

  “Look, it’s snowing,” Cumbers said as they got to the door. A silent, heavy snowfall, filled the night. The people walking down the street away from the meeting place of the Church of State were already heavily coated with snow. Mrs. Greevy gave a delighted cry, let go of their hands, and skipped ahead happily, turning as she did to look up. Fat, heavy snowflakes struck her smiling face and the lashes of her eyes.

  “Wasn’t that thoughtful of the Lord?” Mrs. Greevy cried to them as they came up. “Mrs. Greevy loves snow. It’s a mortal desire, we all know, but isn’t it lovely?”

  “We’d better get moving,” Cumbers said, “otherwise we’ll be buried under it before we can get back to the rooming house.” They started off then into the night with the softly falling flakes, huge in size and falling heavy and straight. Mrs. Greevy loved it and held up her hands to catch flakes and she began to hum “Oh sing and proclaim us all.”

  For Hughes it was the first snowfall he could remember and it stirred and warmed him. It had such an enormous feeling of peace and it began to transform the regularity of the streets. Shapes that weren’t square began to spring up, houses lost their corners in soft, flowing lines of drifted snow, the severe lines that marked the pavement from the gutter softened as flakes rested one against another—billions of them taking away the straight lines of New Buxton, giving it a new spirit that flowed and made gentle curves and rounds.

  They were heavily laden with snow by the time they reached the rooming house and Mrs. Greevy playfully struck them to see the explosive shower of snow fly from their coats and hats. She ran ahead into the house laughing coquettishly, as if she fully expected to be chased and was deliciously afraid that she’d be caught. Cumbers and Hughes, however, had no such intentions. They clumped their boots prosaically on the top step in front of the entry to rid themselves of their snow and stepped into the entry. They hung up their dripping coats and hats. As they went toward the stairs they both stopped at the same sight.

  There was a gorgeous flood of color from the sitting room and as Hughes followed Cumbers toward it he realized what it was—the boardinghouse’s Christmas tree ablaze with glowing colored lights in the darkness of the room.

  “Imagine that woman willing to let her electric bill run up for this,” Cumber
s whispered, looking at the tree.

  “I think she left it on for us to see,” Hughes whispered, deciding that Mrs. Doughton was probably a wonderful woman to have had such an impulse.

  “I don’t believe it,” Cumbers said when something on the table near the sofa caught Hughes’ eye. The two men advanced and Hughes saw it was a tray covered with sugar cakes and ginger cookies. There was a note lying in the middle of the tray. “Dear Mrs. Greevy, Mr. Hughes, and Mr. Cumbers,” it read, “I expect you will be coming home late—too late for a snack with us. There’s coffee and cocoa left in the kitchen for you. Just heat it and enjoy yourselves. Please turn off the tree lights before you go up to bed. Merry Christmas to you all.”

  “Well?” Hughes asked softly. The only reply from Cumbers was the tiny crunch of his teeth biting into a ginger cookie.

  “Let’s go and get the coffee warm,” Cumbers said.

  “Shall I go upstairs and call Mrs. Greevy?” Hughes asked.

  “Don’t bother. I’ve got something to talk over with you that I’d rather she didn’t hear.” With that Cumbers went off to the kitchen.

  Because Hughes wanted to have the coffee and cakes in front of the tree, they took their cups back into the sitting room and sat down on the sofa. From where they sat they could both see the tree glowing with colored lights and catch a glimpse of the heavy snow falling in the street.