Shortest Day by Jane Langton Page A

coffeehouse is open to all comers,” said the minister of First Parish Unitarian, smiling at him graciously.
    â€œOur public-relations expertise is at your service,” suggested the clergyman from First Church Congregational, his face bright with sympathy.
    â€œOur copy machine is yours to command,” said the rector from Christ Church. “And our bathrooms are always open.” He made a joke. “We call it our Latrine Ministry.”
    â€œYou must know about our free dinners,” said the priest from Saint Paul’s. “Some of our churches serve dinner to all comers one night a week. Monday at Massachusetts Avenue Baptist in Inman Square, Tuesday at First Parish Unitarian in Harvard Square, Wednesday—”
    Palmer would have none of it. “Thanks,” he said, “but no thanks.”
    The truth was, he didn’t want to share his ragtag glory with any of these clever and powerful people. Oh, the churchwomen were all right, the ones who brought food—big containers of soup and coffee and spaghetti, laundry baskets of sandwiches, big bags of muffins and cookies. And the girl who collected leftovers from local restaurants was okay too—the day-old croissants from Au Bon Pain, the sausages and cheeses from the Wursthaus, and the vichyssoise from the Stockpot. Actually, there was a run on vichyssoise, and people were complaining. “Oh, no, not vichyssoise again.”
    Palmer himself was a clever escapee from alimony and child support. He had been living by his wits on the street for years. He was contemptuous of all those people who thought there was only one way to live, who wanted to pin a person down with a mortgage and payments on a car and three levels of taxes and four kinds of insurance and lifelong responsibility for a wife and a couple of bratty kids.
    Palmer had long since sloughed off wife and kids. It had been easy, like dumping kittens from a car window.

CHAPTER 15
    I danced with the scribe and the pharisee ,
    But they would not dance
    And they would not follow me .
    â€œThe Lord of the Dance”
    T he most annoying thing about the tent city at Harvard’s very door was not its seventy-five homeless residents, it was the infection spreading in the student body and among the so-called liberal members of the faculty. Students and professors were flocking to the overpass, bringing along their expensive Arctic camping equipment, demonstrating their sympathy, sleeping out all night under the cold stars.
    â€œIt’s politically correct, that’s why,” said Ellery Beaver, Associate Vice-President for Government and Community Affairs, in his office in Massachusetts Hall. “They’ll go along with anything dumb, as long as it’s in behalf of the retarded, the alcoholic, the criminal, the drug-addicted, the promiscuous.”
    Ernest Henshaw looked at him nervously. He had been bending over a file drawer, counting the files. “It’s too much,” he said vaguely. “It’s just too much.”
    â€œYou said a mouthful. It certainly is a bit much. So the question is, do we talk to the ringleader, this guy Nifto, or do we just ignore the whole thing and not give it the cachet of our official notice?”
    Henshaw wasn’t listening. “All these files,” he said, making a sweeping gesture at the four large cabinets in the corner of his office, “it’s too much.” He walked to the window and stared across the Yard at the bare branches of the trees around University Hall. It occurred to him how much better they looked now than in the summertime, when they were clothed in tens of thousands of leaves. How many leaves were there really? He could imagine himself next summer, standing on a ladder to count them, one leaf at a time.

    Nature was so excessive! But people were even worse. Look at the way the mail poured in! At this time of year there were catalogues in the mail every day. And then his wife