In the years following the bitter Civil War, a former Union general took a holiday originated by former Confederates and helped spread it across the entire country.
The holiday was Memorial Day, an annual commemoration was born in the former Confederate States in 1866 and adopted by the United States in 1868. It is a holiday in which the nation honors its military dead.
Yet when General Logan established the holiday, he acknowledged its genesis among the Union’s former enemies, saying, “It was not too late for the Union men of the nation to follow the example of the people of the South.”
I’m a scholar who has written – with co-author Daniel Bellware – a history of Memorial Day. Cities and towns across America have for more than a century claimed to be the holiday’s birthplace, but we have sifted through the myths and half-truths and uncovered the authentic story of how this holiday came into being.
Generous acts bore fruit
During 1866, the first year of this annual observance in the South, a feature of the holiday emerged that made awareness, admiration and eventually imitation of it spread quickly to the North.
During the inaugural Memorial Day observances which were conceived in Columbus, Georgia, many Southern participants – especially women – decorated graves of Confederate soldiers as well as, unexpectedly, those of their former enemies who fought for the Union.
Civil War Union Gen. John A. Logan. Library of Congress Glass negatives
Shortly after those first Memorial Day observances all across the South, newspaper coverage in the North was highly favorable to the ex-Confederates.
“The action of the ladies on this occasion, in burying whatever animosities or ill-feeling may have been engendered in the late war towards those who fought against them, is worthy of all praise and commendation,” wrote one paper.
On May 9, 1866, the Cleveland Daily Leader lauded the Southern women during their first Memorial Day.
“The act was as beautiful as it was unselfish, and will be appreciated in the North.”
The New York Commercial Advertiser, recognizing the magnanimous deeds of the women of Columbus, Georgia, echoed the sentiment. “Let this incident, touching and beautiful as it is, impart to our Washington authorities a lesson in conciliation.”
Power of a poem
To be sure, this sentiment was not unanimous. There were many in both parts of the U.S. who had no interest in conciliation.
“It struck me that the South was holding out a friendly hand, and that it was our duty, not only as conquerors, but as men and their fellow citizens of the nation, to grasp it.”
Finch’s poem seemed to extend a full pardon to the South: “They banish our anger forever when they laurel the graves of our dead” was one of the lines.
Not just poems: Sheet music written to commemorate Memorial Day in 1870. Library of Congress
Almost immediately, the poem circulated across America in books, magazines and newspapers. By the end of the 19th century, school children everywhere were required to memorize Finch’s poem. The ubiquitous publication of Finch’s rhyme meant that by the end of 1867, the southern Memorial Day holiday was a familiar phenomenon throughout the entire, and recently reunited, country.
General Logan was aware of the forgiving sentiments of people like Finch. When Logan’s order establishing Memorial Day was published in various newspapers in May 1868, Finch’s poem was sometimes appended to the order.
‘The blue and the grey’
It was not long before Northerners decided that they would not only adopt the Southern custom of Memorial Day, but also the Southern custom of “burying the hatchet.” A group of Union veterans explained their intentions in a letter to the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph on May 28, 1869:
“Wishing to bury forever the harsh feelings engendered by the war, Post 19 has decided not to pass by the graves of the Confederates sleeping in our lines, but divide each year between the blue and the grey the first floral offerings of a common country. We have no powerless foes. Post 19 thinks of the Southern dead only as brave men.”
Other reports of reciprocal magnanimity circulated in the North, including the gesture of a 10-year-old who made a wreath of flowers and sent it to the overseer of the holiday, Colonel Leaming, in Lafayette, Indiana, with the following note attached, published in The New Hampshire Patriot on July 15, 1868:
“Will you please put this wreath upon some rebel soldier’s grave? My dear papa is buried at Andersonville, (Georgia) and perhaps some little girl will be kind enough to put a few flowers upon his grave.”
President Abraham Lincoln’s wish that there be “malice toward none” and “charity for all” was visible in the magnanimous actions of participants on both sides, who extended an olive branch during the Memorial Day observances in those first three years.
Although not known by many today, the early evolution of the Memorial Day holiday was a manifestation of Lincoln’s hope for reconciliation between North and South.
^^^
This is an updated version of an article originally published on May 25, 2018.
In the late May evening the soul of summer had gone suddenly incarnate, but the old man, indifferent and petulant, thrashed upon his bed. He was not used to being ill, and found no consolations in weather. Flowers regarded him observantly—one might have said critically—from the tables, the bureau, the window-sills: tulips, fleurs-de-lis, pansies, peonies, and late lilacs, for he had a garden-loving wife who made the most of “the dull season,” after crocuses and daffodils, and before roses. But he manifested no interest in flowers; less than usual, it must be owned, in Patience, his wife. This was a marked incident. They had lived together fifty years, and she had acquired her share of the lessons of marriage, but not that ruder one given chiefly to women to learn—she had never found herself a negligible quantity in her husband’s life. She had the profound maternal instinct which is so large an element in the love of every experienced and tender wife; and when Reuben thrashed profanely upon his pillows, staring out of the window above the vase of jonquils, without looking at her, clearly without thinking of her, she swallowed her surprise as if it had been a blue-pill, and tolerantly thought:
“Poor boy! To be a veteran and can’t go!”
Her poor boy, being one-and-eighty, and having always had health and her, took his disappointment like a boy. He felt more outraged that he could not march with the other boys to decorate the graves to-morrow than he had been, or had felt that he was, by some of the important troubles of his long and, on the whole, comfortable life. He took it unreasonably; she could not deny that. But she went on saying “Poor boy!” as she usually did when he was unreasonable. When he stopped thrashing and swore no more she smiled at him brilliantly. He had not said anything worse than damn! But he was a good Baptist, and the lapse was memorable.
“Peter?” he said. “Just h’ist the curtain a mite, won’t you? I want to see across over to the shop. Has young Jabez locked up everything? Somebody’s got to make sure.”
Behind the carpenter’s shop the lush tobacco-fields of the Connecticut valley were springing healthily. “There ain’t as good a crop as there gener’lly is,” the old man fretted.
“Don’t you think so?” replied Patience. “Everybody say it’s better. But you ought to know.”
In the youth and vigor of her no woman was ever more misnamed. Patient she was not, nor gentle, nor adaptable to the teeth in the saw of life. Like wincing wood, her nature had resented it, the whole biting thing. All her gentleness was acquired, and acquired hard. She had fought like a man to endure like a woman, to accept, not to writhe and rebel. She had not learned easily how to count herself out. Something in the sentimentality or even the piety of her name had always seemed to her ridiculous; they both used to have their fun at its expense; for some years he called her Impatience, degenerating into Imp if he felt like it. When Reuben took to calling her Peter, she found it rather a relief.
“You’ll have to go without me,” he said, crossly.
“I’d rather stay with you,” she urged. “I’m not a veteran.”
“Who’d decorate Tommy, then?” demanded the old man. “You wouldn’t give Tommy the go-by, would you?”
“I never did—did I?” returned the wife, slowly.
“I don’t know’s you did,” replied Reuben Oak, after some difficult reflection.
Patience did not talk about Tommy. But she had lived Tommy, so she felt, all her married life, ever since she took him, the year-old baby of a year-dead first wife who had made Reuben artistically miserable; not that Patience thought in this adjective; it was one foreign to her vocabulary; she was accustomed to say of that other woman: “It was better for Reuben. I’m not sorry she died.” She added, “Lord forgive me,” because she was a good church member, and felt that she must. Oh, she had “lived Tommy,” God knew. Her own baby had died, and there were never any more. But Tommy lived and clamored at her heart. She began by trying to be a good stepmother. In the end she did not have to try. Tommy never knew the difference; and his father had long since forgotten it. She had made him so happy that he seldom remembered anything unpleasant. He was accustomed to refer to his two conjugal partners as “My wife and the other woman.”
But Tommy had the blood of a fighting father, and when the Maine went down, and his chance came, he, too, took it. Tommy lay dead and nameless in the trenches at San Juan. But his father had put up a tall, gray slate-stone slab for him in the churchyard at home. This was close to the baby’s; the baby’s was little and white. So the veteran was used to “decorating Tommy” on Memorial Day. He did not trouble himself about the little, white gravestone then. He had a veteran’s savage jealousy of the day that was sacred to the splendid heroisms and sacrifices of the sixties.
“What do they want to go decorating all their relations for?” he argued. “Ain’t there three hundred and sixty-four days in the year for them?”
He was militant on this point, and Patience did not contend. Sometimes she took the baby’s flowers over the day after.
“If you can spare me just as well’s not, I’ll decorate Tommy to-morrow,” she suggested, gently. “We’ll see how you feel along by that.”
“Tommy’s got to be decorated if I’m dead or livin’,” retorted the veteran. The soldier father struggled up from his pillow, as if he would carry arms for his soldier son. Then he fell back weakly. “I wisht I had my old dog here,” he complained—”my dog Tramp. I never did like a dog like that dog. But Tramp’s dead, too. I don’t believe them boys are coming. They’ve forgotten me, Peter. You haven’t,” he added, after some slow thought. “I don’t know’s you ever did, come to think.”
Patience, in her blue shepherd-plaid gingham dress and white apron, was standing by the window—a handsome woman, a dozen years younger than her husband; her strong face was gentler than most strong faces are—in women; peace and pain, power and subjection, were fused upon her aspect like warring elements reconciled by a mystery. Her hair was not yet entirely white, and her lips were warm and rich. She had a round figure, not overgrown. There were times when she did not look over thirty. Two or three late jonquils that had outlived their calendar in a cold spot by a wall stood on the window-sill beside her; these trembled in the slant, May afternoon light. She stroked them in their vase, as if they had been frightened or hurt. She did not immediately answer Reuben, and, when she did, it was to say, abruptly:
“Here’s the boys! They’re coming—the whole of them!—Jabez Trent, and old Mr. Succor, and David Swing on his crutches. I’ll go right out ‘n’ let them all in.”
She spoke as if they had been a phalanx. Reuben panted upon his pillows. Patience had shut the door, and it seemed to him as if it would never open. He pulled at his gray flannel dressing-gown with nervous fingers; they were carpenter’s fingers—worn, but supple and intelligent. He had on his old red nightcap, and he felt the indignity, but he did not dare to take the cap off; there was too much pain underneath it.
When Patience opened the door she nodded at him girlishly. She had preceded the visitors, who followed her without speaking. She looked forty years younger than they did. She marshaled them as if she had been their colonel. The woman herself had a certain military look.
The veterans filed in slowly—three aged, disabled men. One was lame, and one was palsied; one was blind, and all were deaf.
“Here they are, Reuben,” said Patience Oak. “They’ve all come to see you. Here’s the whole Post.”
Reuben’s hand went to his red night-cap. He saluted gravely.
The veterans came in with dignity—David Swing, and Jabez Trent, and old Mr. Succor. David was the one on crutches, but Jabez Trent, with nodding head and swaying hand, led old Mr. Succor, who could not see.
Reuben watched them with a species of grim triumph. “I ain’t blind,” he thought, “and I hain’t got the shakin’ palsy. Nor I hain’t come on crutches, either.”
He welcomed his visitors with a distinctly patronizing air. He was conscious of pitying them as much as a soldier can afford to pity anything. They seemed to him very old men.
“Give ’em chairs, Peter,” he commanded. “Give ’em easy chairs. Where’s the cushions?”
“I favor a hard cheer myself,” replied the blind soldier, sitting solid and straight upon the stiff bamboo chair into which he had been set down by Jabez Trent. “I’m sorry to find you so low, Reuben Oak.”
“Low!” exploded the old soldier. “Why, nothing partikler ails me. I hain’t got a thing the matter with me but a spell of rheumatics. I’ll be spry as a kitten catchin’ grasshoppers in a week. I can’t march to-morrow—that’s all. It’s darned hard luck. How’s your eyesight, Mr. Succor?”
“Some consider’ble better, sir,” retorted the blind man. “I calc’late to get it back. My son’s goin’ to take me to a city eye-doctor. I ain’t only seventy-eight. I’m too young to be blind. ‘Tain’t as if I was onto crutches, or I was down sick abed. How old are you, Reuben?”
“Only eighty-one!” snapped Reuben.
“He’s eighty-one last March,” interpolated his wife.
“He’s come to a time of life when folks do take to their beds,” returned David Swing. “Mebbe you could manage with crutches, Reuben, in a few weeks. I’ve been on ’em three years, since I was seventy-five. I’ve got to feel as if they was relations. Folks want me to ride to-morrow,” he added, contemptuously, “but I’ll march on them crutches to decorate them graves, or I won’t march at all.”
Now Jabez Trent was the youngest of the veterans; he was indeed but sixty-eight. He refrained from mentioning this fact. He felt that it was indelicate to boast of it. His jerking hand moved over toward the bed, and he laid it on Reuben’s with a fine gesture.
“You’ll be round—you’ll be round before you know it,” he shouted.
“I ain’t deef,” interrupted Reuben, “like the rest of you.” But the palsied man, hearing not at all, shouted on:
“You always had grit, Reuben, more’n most of as. You stood more, you was under fire more, you never was afraid of anything— What’s rheumatics? ‘Tain’t Antietam.”
“Nor it ain’t Bull Run,” rejoined Reuben. He lifted his red nightcap from his head. “Let it ache!” he said. “It ain’t Gettysburg.”
“It seems to me,” suggested Jabez Trent, “that Reuben he’s under fire just about now. He ain’t used to bein’ disabled. It appears to me he’s fightin’ this matter the way a soldier ‘d oughter— Comrades, I move he’s entitled to promotion for military conduct. He’d rather than sympathy—wouldn’t you, Reuben?”
“I don’t feel to deserve it,” muttered Reuben. “I swore to-day. Ask my wife.”
“No, he didn’t!” blazed Patience Oak. “He never said a thing but damn. He’s getting tired, though,” she added, under breath. “He ain’t very well.” She delicately brushed the foot of Jabez Trent with the toe of her slipper.
“I guess we’d better not set any longer,” observed Jabez Trent. The three veterans rose like one soldier. Reuben felt that their visit had not been what he expected. But he could not deny that he was tired out; he wondered why. He beckoned to Jabez Trent, who, shaking and coughing, bent over him.
“You’ll see the boys don’t forget to decorate Tommy, won’t you?” he asked, eagerly. Jabez could not hear much of this, but he got the word Tommy, and nodded.
The three old men saluted silently, and when Reuben had put on his nightcap he found that they had all gone. Only Patience was in the room, standing by the jonquils, in her blue gingham dress and white apron.
“Tired?” she asked, comfortably. “I’ve mixed you up an egg-nog. Think you could take it?”
“They didn’t stay long,” complained the old man. “It don’t seem to amount to much, does it?”
“You’ve punched your pillows all to pudding-stones,” observed Patience Oak. “Let me fix ’em a little.”
“I won’t be fussed over!” cried Reuben, angrily. He gave one of his pillows a pettish push, and it went half across the room. Patience picked it up without remark. Reuben Oak held out a contrite hand.
“Peter, come here!” he commanded. Patience, with her maternal smile, obeyed.
Patience’s eyes filled. But she hid them on the pillow beside him—he did not know why. She put up one hand and stroked his cheek.
“Just as if I was a johnnyquil,” said the old man. He laughed, and grew quiet, and slept. But Patience did not move. She was afraid of waking him. She sat crouched and crooked on the edge of the bed, uncomfortable and happy.
.
Out on the street, between the house and the carpenter’s shop, the figures of the veterans bent against the perspective of young tobacco. They walked feebly. Old Mr. Succor shook his head:
“Looks like he’d never see another Decoration Day. He’s some considerable sick—an’ he ain’t young.”
“He’s got grit, though,” urged Jabez Trent.
“He’s pretty old,” sighed David Swing. “He’s consider’ble older’n we be. He’d ought to be prepared for his summons any time at his age.”
“We’ll be decorating him, I guess, come next year,” insisted old Mr. Succor. Jabez Trent opened his mouth to say something, but he coughed too hard to speak.
“I’d like to look at Reuben’s crop as we go by,” remarked the blind man. “He’s lucky to have the shop ‘n’ the crop too.”
The three turned aside to the field, where old Mr. Succor appraised the immature tobacco leaves with seeing fingers.
“Connecticut’s a great State!” he cried.
“And this here’s a great town,” echoed David Swing. “Look at the quota we sent—nigh a full company. And we had a great colonel,” he added, proudly. “I calc’late he’d been major-general if it hadn’t ‘a’ been for that infernal shell.”
“Boys,” said Jabez Trent, slowly, “Memorial Day’s a great day. It’s up to us to keep it that way— Boys, we’re all that’s left of the Charles Darlington Post.”
“That’s a fact,” observed the blind soldier, soberly.
“That’s so,” said the lame one, softly.
The three did not talk any more; they walked past the tobacco-field thoughtfully. Many persons carrying flowers passed or met them. These recognized the veterans with marked respect, and with some perplexity. What! Only old blind Mr. Succor? Just David Swing on his crutches, and Jabez Trent with the shaking palsy? Only those poor, familiar persons whom one saw every day, and did not think much about on any other day? Unregarded, unimportant, aging neighbors? These who had ceased to be useful, ceased to be interesting, who were not any longer of value to the town, or to the State, to their friends (if they had any left), or to themselves? Heroes? These plain, obscure old men?—Heroes?
.
So it befell that Patience Oak “decorated Tommy” for his father that Memorial Day. The year was 1909. The incident of which we have to tell occurred twelve months thereafter, in 1910. These, as I have gathered them, are the facts:
Time, to the old, takes an unnatural pace, and Reuben Oak felt that the year had sprinted him down the race-track of life; he was inclined to resent his eighty-second March birthday as a personal insult; but April cried over him, and May laughed at him, and he had acquired a certain grim reconciliation with the laws of fate by the time that the nation was summoned to remember its dead defenders upon their latest anniversary. This resignation was the easier because he found himself unexpectedly called upon to fill an extraordinary part in the drama and the pathos of the day.
He slept brokenly the night before, and waked early; it was scarcely five o’clock. But Patience, his wife, was already awake, lying quietly upon her pillow, with straight, still arms stretched down beside him. She was careful not to disturb him—she always was; she was so used to effacing herself for his sake that he had ceased to notice whether she did or not; he took her beautiful dedication to him as a matter of course; most husbands would, if they had its counterpart. In point of fact—and in saying this we express her altogether—Patience had the genius of love. Charming women, noble women, unselfish women may spend their lives in a man’s company, making a tolerable success of marriage, yet lack this supreme gift of Heaven to womanhood, and never know it. Our defects we may recognize; our deficiencies we seldom do, and the love deficiency is the most hopeless of human limitations. Patience was endowed with love as a great poet is by song, or a musician by harmony, or an artist by color or form. She loved supremely, but she did not know that. She loved divinely, but her husband had never found it out. They were two plain people—a carpenter and his wife, plodding along the Connecticut valley industriously, with the ideals of their kind; to be true to their marriage vows, to be faithful to their children, to pay their debts, raise the tobacco, water the garden, drive the nails straight, and preserve the quinces. There were times when it occurred to Patience that she took more care of Reuben than Reuben did of her; but she dismissed the matter with a phrase common in her class, and covering for women most of the perplexity of married life: “You know what men are.”
On the morning of which we speak, Reuben Oak had a blunt perception of the fact that it was kind in his wife to take such pains not to wake him till he got ready to begin the tremendous day before him; she always was considerate if he did not sleep well. He put down his hand and took hers with a sudden grasp, where it lay gentle and still beside him.
“Well, Peter,” he said, kindly.
“Yes, dear,” said Patience, instantly. “Feeling all right for to-day?”
“Fine,” returned Reuben. “I don’t know when I’ve felt so spry. I’ll get right up ‘n’ dress.”
“Would you mind staying where you are till I get your coffee heated?” asked Patience, eagerly. “You know how much stronger you always are if you wait for it. I’ll have it on the heater in no time.”
“I can’t wait for coffee to-day,” flashed Reuben. “I’m the best judge of what I need.”
“Very well,” said Patience, in a disappointed tone. For she had learned the final lesson of married life—not to oppose an obstinate man, for his own good. But she slipped into her wrapper and made the coffee, nevertheless. When she came back with it, Reuben was lying on the bed in his flannels, with a comforter over him; he looked pale, and held out his hand impatiently for the coffee.
His feverish eyes healed as he watched her moving about the room. He thought how young and pretty her neck was when she splashed the water on it.
“Goin’ to wear your black dress?” he asked. “That’s right. I’m glad you are. I’ll get up pretty soon.”
“I’ll bring you all your clothes,” she said. “Don’t you get a mite tired. I’ll move up everything for you. Your uniform’s all cleaned and pressed. Don’t you do a thing!”
She brushed her thick hair with upraised, girlish arms, and got out her black serge dress and a white tie. He lay and watched her thoughtfully.
“Peter,” he said, unexpectedly, “how long is it since we was married?”
“Forty-nine years,” answered Patience, promptly. “Fifty, come next September.”
“What a little creatur’ you were, Peter—just a slip of a girl! And how you did take hold—Tommy and everything.”
“I was ‘most twenty,” observed Patience, with dignity.
“You made a powerful good stepmother all the same,” mused Reuben. “You did love Tommy, to beat all.”
“I was fond of Tommy,” answered Patience, quietly. “He was a nice little fellow.”
“And then there was the baby, Peter. Pity we lost the baby! I guess you took that harder ‘n I did, Peter.”
Patience made no reply.
“She was so dreadful young, Peter. I can’t seem to remember how she looked. Can you? Pity she didn’t live! You’d ‘a’ liked a daughter round the house, wouldn’t you, Peter? Say, Peter, we’ve gone through a good deal, haven’t we—you ‘n’ me? The war ‘n’ all that—and the two children. But there’s one thing, Peter—”
Patience came over to him quietly, and sat down on the side of the bed. She was half dressed, and her still beautiful arms went around him.
“You’ll tire yourself all out thinking, Reuben. You won’t be able to decorate anybody if you ain’t careful.”
“What I was goin’ to say was this,” persisted Reuben. “I’ve always had you, Peter. And you’ve had me. I don’t count so much, but I’m powerful fond of you, Peter. You’re all I’ve got. Seems as if I couldn’t set enough by you, somehow or nuther.”
The old man hid his face upon her soft neck.
“There, there, dear!” said Patience.
“It must be kinder hard, Peter, not to like your wife. Or maybe she mightn’t like him. Sho! I don’t think I could stand that…. Peter?”
“Don’t you think you’d better be getting dressed, Reuben? The procession’s going to start pretty early. Folks are moving up and down the street. Everybody’s got flowers—See?”
Reuben looked out of the window and over the pansy-bed with brilliant, dry eyes. His wife could see that he was keeping back the thing that he thought most about. She had avoided and evaded the subject as long as she could. She felt now that it must be met, and yet she parleyed with it. She hurried his breakfast and brought the tray to him. He ate because she asked him to, but his hands shook. It seemed as if he clung wilfully to the old topic, escaping the new as long as he could, to ramble on.
“You’ve been a dreadfully amiable wife, Peter. I don’t believe I could have got along with any other kind of woman.”
“I didn’t used to be amiable, Reuben. I wasn’t born so. I used to take things hard. Don’t you remember?”
But Reuben shook his head.
“No, I don’t. I can’t seem to think of any time you wasn’t that way. Sho! How’d you get to be so, then, I’d like to know?”
“Oh, just by loving, I guess,” said Patience Oak.
“We’ve marched along together a good while,” answered the old man, brokenly.
Unexpectedly he held out his hand, and she grasped it; his was cold and weak; but hers was warm and strong. In a dull way the divination came to him—if one may speak of a dull divination—that she had always been the strength and the warmth of his life. Suddenly it seemed to him a very long life. Now it was as if he forced himself to speak, as he would have charged at Fredericksburg. He felt as if he were climbing against breastworks when he said:
“I was the oldest of them all, Peter. And I was sickest, too. They all expected to come an’ decorate me to-day.” Patience nodded, without a word. She knew when her husband must do all the talking; she had found that out early in their married life. “I wouldn’t of believed it, Peter; would you? Old Mr. Succor he had such good health. Who’d thought he’d tumble down the cellar stairs? If Mis’ Succor ‘d be’n like you, Peter, he wouldn’t had the chance to tumble: I never would of thought of David Swing’s havin’ pneumonia—would you, Peter? Why, in ’62 he slept onto the ground in peltin’, drenchin’ storms an’ never sneezed. He was powerful well ‘n’ tough, David was. And Jabez! Poor old Jabez Trent! I liked him the best of the lot, Peter. Didn’t you? He was sorry for me when they come here that day an’ I couldn’t march along of them…. And now, Peter, I’ve got to go an’ decorate them.
“I’m the last livin’ survivor of the Charles Darlington Post,” added the veteran. “I’m going to apply to the Department Commander to let me keep it up. I guess I can manage someways. I won’t be disbanded. Let ’em disband me if they can! I’d like to see ’em do it. Peter? Peter!”
“I’ll help you into your uniform,” said Patience. “It’s all brushed and nice for you.”
She got him to his swaying feet, and dressed him, and the two went to the window that looked upon the flowers. The garden blurred yellow and white and purple—a dash of blood-red among the late tulips. Patience had plucked and picked for Memorial Day, she had gathered and given, and yet she could not strip her garden. She looked at it lovingly. She felt as if she stood in pansy lights and iris air.
“Peter,” said the veteran, hoarsely, “they’re all gone, my girl. Everybody’s gone but you. You’re the only comrade I’ve got left, Peter…. And, Peter, I want to tell you—I seem to understand it this morning. Peter, you’re the best comrade of ’em all.”
“That’s worth it,” said Patience, in a strange tone—”that’s worth the—high cost of living.”
She lifted her head. She had an exalted look. The thoughtful pansies seemed to turn their faces toward her. She felt that they understood her. Did it matter whether Reuben understood her or not? It occurred to her that it was not so important, after all, whether a man understood his wife, if he only loved her. Women fussed too much, she thought; they expected to cry away the everlasting differences between the husband and the wife. If you loved a man you must take him as he was—just man. You couldn’t make him over. You must make up your mind to that. Better, oh, better a hundred times to endure, to suffer—if it came to suffering—to take your share (perhaps he had his—who knew?) of the loneliness of living. Better any fate than to battle with the man you love, for what he did not give or could not give. Better anything than to stand in the pansy light, married fifty years, and not have made your husband happy.
“I ‘most wisht you could march along of me,” muttered Reuben Oak. “But you ain’t a veteran.”
“I don’t know about that,” Patience shook her head, smiling, but it was a sober smile.
“Tommy can’t march,” added Reuben. “He ain’t here; nor he ain’t in the graveyard either. He’s a ghost—Tommy. He must be flying around the Throne. There’s only one other person I’d like to have go along of me. That’s my old dog—my dog Tramp. That dog thought a sight of me. The United States army couldn’t have kep’ him away from me. But Tramp’s dead. He was a pretty old dog. I can’t remember which died first, him or the baby; can you? Lord! I suppose Tramp’s a ghost, too, a dog ghost, trottin’ after—I don’t know when I’ve thought of Tramp before. Where’s he buried, Peter? Oh yes, come to think, he’s under the big chestnut. Wonder we never decorated him, Peter.”
“I have,” confessed Patience. “I’ve done it quite a number of times. Reuben? Listen! I guess we’ve got to hurry. Seems to me I hear—”
“You hear drums,” interrupted the old soldier. Suddenly he flared like lightwood on a camp-fire, and before his wife could speak again he had blazed out of the house.
The day had a certain unearthly beauty—most of our Memorial Days do have. Sometimes they scorch a little, and the processions wilt and lag. But this one, as we remember, had the climate of a happier world and the temperature of a day created for marching men—old soldiers who had left their youth and strength behind them, and who were feebler than they knew.
The Connecticut valley is not an emotional part of the map, but the town was alight with a suppressed feeling, intense, and hitherto unknown to the citizens. They were graver than they usually were on the national anniversary which had come to mean remembrance for the old and indifference for the young. There was no baseball in the village that day. The boys joined the procession soberly. The crowd was large but thoughtful. It had collected chiefly outside of the Post hall, where four old soldiers had valiantly sustained their dying organization for now two or three astonishing years.
The band was outside, below the steps; it played the “Star-spangled Banner” and “John Brown’s Body” while it waited. For some reason there was a delay in the ceremonies. It was rumored that the chaplain had not come. Then it went about that he had been summoned to a funeral, and would meet the procession at the churchyard. The chaplain was the pastor of the Congregational Church. The regimental chaplain, he who used to pray for the dying boys after battle, had joined the vanished veterans long ago. The band struck up “My Country, ’tis of Thee.” The crowd began to press toward the steps of the Post hall and to sway to and fro restlessly.
Then slowly there emerged from the hall, and firmly descended the steps, the Charles Darlington Post of the Grand Army of the Republic. People held their breaths, and some sobbed. They were not all women, either.
Erect, with fiery eyes, with haughty head—shrunken in his old uniform, but carrying it proudly—one old man walked out. The crowd parted for him, and he looked neither to the right nor to the left, but fell into the military step and began to march. In his aged arms he carried the flags of the Post. The military band preceded him, softly playing “Mine Eyes have Seen the Glory,” while the crowd formed into procession and followed him. From the whole countryside people had assembled, and the throng was considerable.
They came out into the street and turned toward the churchyard—the old soldier marching alone. They had begged him to ride, though the distance was small. But he had obstinately refused.
“This Post has always marched,” he had replied.
Except for the military music and the sound of moving feet or wheels, the street was perfectly still. No person spoke to any other. The veteran marched with proud step. His gray head was high. Once he was seen to put the flag of his company to his lips. A little behind him the procession had instinctively fallen back and left a certain space. One could not help the feeling that this was occupied. But they who filled it, if such there had been, were invisible to the eye of the body. And the eyes of the soul are not possessed by all men.
Now, the distance, as we have said, was short, and the old soldier was so exalted that it had not occurred to him that he could be fatigued. It was an astonishing sensation to him when he found himself unexpectedly faint.
.
Patience Oak, for some reasons of her own hardly clear to herself, did not join the procession. She chose to walk abreast of it, at the side, as near as possible, without offense to the ceremonies, to the solitary figure of her husband. She was pacing through the grass, at the edge of the sidewalk—falling as well as she could into the military step. In her plain, old-fashioned black dress, with the fleck of white at her throat, she had a statuesque, unmodern look. Her fine features were charged with that emotion which any expression would have weakened. Her arms were heaped with flowers—bouquets and baskets and sprays: spiraea, lilacs, flowering almond, peonies, pansies, all the glory of her garden that opening summer returned to her care and tenderness. She was tender with everything—a man, a child, an animal, a flower. Everything blossomed for her, and rested in her, and yearned toward her. The emotion of the day and of the hour seemed incarnate in her. She embodied in her strong and sweet personality all that blundering man has wrought on tormented woman by the savagery of war. She remembered what she had suffered—a young, incredulous creature, on the margin of life, avid of happiness, believing in joy, and drowning in her love for that one man, her husband. She thought of the slow news after slaughtering battles—how she waited for the laggard paper in the country town; she remembered that she dared not read the head-lines when she got them, but dropped, choking and praying God to spare her, before she glanced. Even now she could feel the wet paper against her raining cheek. Then her heart leaped back, and she thought of the day when he marched away—his arms, his lips, his groans. She remembered what the dregs of desolation were, and mortal fear of unknown fate; the rack of the imagination; and inquisition of the nerve—the pangs that no man-soldier of them all could understand. “It comes on women—war,” she thought.
Now, as she was stepping aside to avoid crushing some young white clover-blossoms in the grass where she was walking, she looked up and wondered if she were going blind, or if her mind were giving way.
The vacant space behind the solitary veteran trembled and palpitated before her vision, as if it had been peopled. By what? By whom? Patience was no occultist. She had never seen an apparition in her life. She felt that if she had not lacked a mysterious, unknown gift, she should have seen spirits, as men marching, now. But she did not see them. She was aware of a tremulous, nebulous struggle in the empty air, as of figures that did not form, or of sights from which her eyes were holden. Ah—what? She gasped for the wonder of it. Who was it, that followed the veteran, with the dumb, delighted fidelity that one race only knows of all created? For a wild instant this sane and sensible woman could have taken oath that Reuben Oak was accompanied on his march by his old dog, his dead dog, Tramp. If it had been Tommy— Or if it had been Jabez Trent— And where were they who had gone into the throat of death with him at Antietam, at Bull Run, at Fair Oaks, at Malvern Hill? But there limped along behind Reuben only an old, forgotten dog.
This quaint delusion (if delusion we must call it) aroused her attention, which had wavered from her husband, and concentrated it upon him afresh. Suddenly she saw him stagger.
A dozen persons started, but the wife sprang and reached him first. As she did this, the ghost dog vanished from before her. Only Reuben was there, marching alone, with the unpeopled space between him and the procession.
“Leave go of me!” he gasped. Patience quietly grasped him by the arm, and fell into step beside him. In her heart she was terrified. She was something of a reader in her way, and she thought of magazine stories where the veterans died upon Memorial Day.
“I’ll march to decorate the Post—and Tommy—if I drop dead for it!” panted Reuben Oak.
“Then I shall march beside you,” answered Patience.
“What ‘ll folks say?” cried the old soldier, in real anguish.
“They’ll say I’m where I belong. Reuben! Reuben! I’ve earned the right to.”
He contended no more, but yielded to her—in fact, gladly, for he felt too weak to stand alone. Inspiring him, and supporting him, and yet seeming (such was the sweet womanliness of her) to lean on him, Patience marched with him before the people; and these saw her through blurred eyes, and their hearts saluted her. With every step she felt that he strengthened. She was conscious of endowing him with her own vitality, as she sometimes did, in her own way—the love way, the wife way, powerfully and mysteriously.
So the veteran and his wife came on together to the cemetery, with the flags and the flowers. Nor was there a man or a woman in the throng who would have separated these comrades.
In the churchyard it was pleasant and expectant. The morning was cool, and the sun climbed gently. Not a flower had wilted; they looked as if they had been planted and were growing on the graves. When they had come to these, Patience Oak held back. She would not take from the old soldier his precious right. She did not offer to help him “decorate” anybody. His trembling mechanic’s fingers clutched at the flowers as if he had been handling shot or nails. His breath came short. She watched him anxiously; she was still thinking of those stories she had read.
“Hadn’t you better sit down on some monument and rest?” she whispered. But he paid no attention to her, and crawled from mound to mound. She perceived that it was his will to leave the new-made graves until the others had been remembered. Then he tottered across the cemetery with the flowers that he had saved for David Swing and old Mr. Succor and Jabez Trent, and the cheeks of the Charles Darlington Post were wet. Last of all he “decorated Tommy.”
The air ached with the military dirge, and the voice of the chaplain faltered when he prayed. The veteran was aware that some persons in the crowd were sobbing. But his own eyes had now grown dry, and burned deep in their sunken sockets. As his sacred task drew to its end he grew remote, elate, and solemn. It was as if he were transfigured before his neighbors into something strange and holy. A village carpenter? A Connecticut tobacco-planter? Rather, say, the glory of the nation, the guardian of a great trust, proudly carried and honored to its end.
Taps were sounding over the old graves and the new, when the veteran slowly sank to one knee and toppled over. Patience, when she got her arms about him, saw that he had fallen across the mound where he had decorated Tommy with her white lilacs. Beyond lay the baby, small and still. The wife sat down on the little grave and drew the old man’s head upon her lap. She thought of those Memorial Day stories with a deadly sinking at her heart. But it was a strong heart, all woman and all love.
“You shall not die!” she said.
She gathered him and poured her powerful being upon him—breath, warmth, will, prayer, who could say what it was? She felt as if she took hold of tremendous, unseen forces and moved them by unknown powers.
“Live!” she whispered. “Live!“
Some one called for a doctor, and she assented. But to her own soul she said:
“What’s a doctor?”
The flags had fallen from his arms at last; he had clung to them till now. The chaplain reverently lifted them and laid them at his feet.
Once his white lips moved, and the people hushed to hear what outburst of patriotism would issue from them—what tribute to the cause that he had fought for, what final apostrophe to his country or his flag.
“Peter?” he called, feebly. “Peter!“
But Patience had said he should not die. And Patience knew. Had not she always known what he should do, or what he could? He lay upon his bed peacefully when, with tears and smiles, in reverence and in wonder, they had brought him home—and the flags of the Post, too. By a gesture he had asked to have these hung upon the foot-board of his bed.
He turned his head upon his pillow and watched his wife with wide, reflecting eyes. It was a long time before she would let him talk; in fact, the May afternoon was slanting to dusk before he tried to cross her tender will about that matter. When he did, it was to say only this:
“Peter? I was goin’ to decorate the baby. I meant to when I took that turn.”
Patience nodded.
“It’s all done, Reuben.”
“And, Peter? I’ve had the queerest notions about my old dog Tramp to-day. I wonder if there’s a johnnyquil left to decorate him?”
“I’ll go and see,” said Patience. But when she had come back he had forgotten Tramp and the johnnyquil.
“Peter,” he muttered, “this has been a great day.” He gazed solemnly at the flags.
Patience regarded him poignantly. With a stricture at the heart she thought:
“He has grown old fast since yesterday.” Then joyously the elderly wife cried out upon herself: “But I am young! He shall have all my youth. I’ve got enough for two—and strength!”
She crept beside him and laid her warm cheek to his.
^^^
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was a controversial 19th century feminist.
As always, here at Audere Magazine, we ask you to take a moment to think about the military men and women who gave their lives to let you have the freedom to grill your burgers in the backyard. Long ago, defending the country was the responsibility of all.
Here are a couple of Memorial Day articles, from these pages, which touch on that theme.
Steven S. Drachman asked us, back in 2019, to remember a couple of his ancestors who gave their lives in the Revolutionary War. It is startling to think that many soldiers have died for our freedoms and are not remembered today by a single soul. “This Memorial Day,” he wrote, “I’m remembering two ancestors of mine, who seem heroic and larger-than-life, but who are memorialized only in a little family history book, which I found with my grandmother’s possessions, after her death.”
Take a look, and pause a moment to think of Samuel Ward and Samuel Ward Jr., a father and son, both dead in an American War.
Our dearly departed old friend Alan N. Levy wrote a terrific reflection on Memorial Day shortly before his death, asking us to leave partisanship behind when we remember soldiers who died protecting us. “When Ronald Reagan was our president,” he wrote, “I was proud to be an American. When Jimmy Carter sat in the Oval Office, I was proud to be an American. And whether our president was named Truman, Eisenhower, Clinton, Obama, or Trump, I have been proud to be an American.”
MARY sat quietly and watched the handsome man’s legs blown off; watched further as the great ship began to crumple and break into small pieces in the middle of the blazing night. She fidgeted slightly as the men and the parts of the men came floating dreamily through the wreckage out into the awful silence. And when the meteorite shower came upon the men, gouging holes through everything, tearing flesh and ripping bones, Mary closed her eyes.
“Mother.”
Mrs. Cuberle glanced up from her magazine.
“Hmm?”
“Do we have to wait much longer?”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
Mary said nothing but looked at the moving wall.
“Oh, that.” Mrs. Cuberle laughed and shook her head. “That tired old thing. Read a magazine, Mary, like I’m doing. We’ve all seen that a million times.”
“Does it have to be on, Mother?”
“Well, nobody seems to be watching. I don’t think the doctor would mind if I switched it off.”
Mrs. Cuberle rose from the couch and walked to the wall. She depressed a little button and the life went from the wall, flickering and glowing.
Mary opened her eyes.
“Honestly,” Mrs. Cuberle said to a woman sitting beside her, “you’d think they’d try to get something else. We might as well go to the museum and watch the first landing on Mars. The Mayoraka Disaster—really!”
The woman replied without distracting her eyes from the magazine page. “It’s the doctor’s idea. Psychological.”
Mrs. Cuberle opened her mouth and moved her head up and down knowingly.
“Ohhh. I should have known there was some reason. Still, who watches it?”
“The children do. Makes them think, makes them grateful or something.”
“Ohhh.”
“Psychological.”
Mary picked up a magazine and leafed through the pages. All photographs, of women and men. Women like Mother and like the others in the room; slender, tanned, shapely, beautiful women; and men with large muscles and shiny hair. Women and men, all looking alike, all perfect and beautiful. She folded the magazine and wondered how to answer the questions that would be asked.
“Mother—”
“Gracious, what is it now! Can’t you sit still for a minute?”
“But we’ve been here three hours.”
Mrs. Cuberle sniffed.
“Do—do I really have to?”
“Now don’t be silly, Mary. After those terrible things you told me, of course you do.”
An olive-skinned woman in a transparent white uniform came into the reception room.
“Cuberle. Mrs. Zena Cuberle?”
“Yes.”
“Doctor will see you now.”
Mrs. Cuberle took Mary’s hand and they walked behind the nurse down a long corridor.
A man who seemed in his middle twenties looked up from a desk. He smiled and gestured toward two adjoining chairs.
“Well—well.”
“Doctor Hortel, I—”
THE doctor snapped his fingers.
“Of course, I know. Your daughter. Ha ha, I certainly do know your trouble. Get so many of them nowadays—takes up most of my time.”
“You do?” asked Mrs. Cuberle. “Frankly, it had begun to upset me.”
“Upset? Hmm. Not good. Not good at all. Ah, but then—if people did not get upset, we psychiatrists would be out of a job, eh? Go the way of the early M. D. But, I assure you, I need hear no more.” He turned his handsome face to Mary. “Little girl, how old are you?”
“Eighteen, sir.”
“Oh, a real bit of impatience. It’s just about time, of course. What might your name be?”
“Mary.”
“Charming! And so unusual. Well now, Mary, may I say that I understand your problem—understand it thoroughly?”
Mrs. Cuberle smiled and smoothed the sequins on her blouse.
“Madam, you have no idea how many there are these days. Sometimes it preys on their minds so that it affects them physically, even mentally. Makes them act strange, say peculiar, unexpected things. One little girl I recall was so distraught she did nothing but brood all day long. Can you imagine!”
“That’s what Mary does. When she finally told me, doctor, I thought she had gone—you know.”
“That bad, eh? Afraid we’ll have to start a re-education program, very soon, or they’ll all be like this. I believe I’ll suggest it to the senator day after tomorrow.”
“I don’t quite understand, doctor.”
“Simply, Mrs. Cuberle, that the children have got to be thoroughly instructed. Thoroughly. Too much is taken for granted and childish minds somehow refuse to accept things without definite reason. Children have become far too intellectual, which, as I trust I needn’t remind you, is a dangerous thing.”
“Yes, but what has this to do with—”
“With Mary? Everything, of course. Mary, like half the sixteen, seventeen and eighteen year olds today, has begun to feel acutely self-conscious. She feels that her body has developed sufficiently for the Transformation—which of course it has not, not quite yet—and she cannot understand the complex reasons that compel her to wait until some future date. Mary looks at you, at the women all about her, at the pictures, and then she looks into a mirror. From pure perfection of body, face, limbs, pigmentation, carriage, stance, from simon-pure perfection, if I may be allowed the expression, she sees herself and is horrified. Isn’t that so, my dear child? Of course—of course. She asks herself, why must I be hideous, unbalanced, oversize, undersize, full of revolting skin eruptions, badly schemed organically? In short, Mary is tired of being a monster and is overly anxious to achieve what almost everyone else has already achieved.”
“But—” said Mrs. Cuberle.
“This much you understand, doubtless. Now, Mary, what you object to is that our society offers you, and the others like you, no convincing logic on the side of waiting until age nineteen. It is all taken for granted, and you want to know why! It is that simple. A non-technical explanation will not suffice—mercy no! The modern child wants facts, solid technical data, to satisfy her every question. And that, as you can both see, will take a good deal of reorganizing.”
“But—” said Mary.
“The child is upset, nervous, tense; she acts strange, peculiar, odd, worries you and makes herself ill because it is beyond our meagre powers to put it across. I tell you, what we need is a whole new basis for learning. And, that will take doing. It will take doing, Mrs. Cuberle. Now, don’t you worry about Mary, and don’t you worry, child. I’ll prescribe some pills and—”
“No, no, doctor! You’re all mixed up,” cried Mrs. Cuberle.
“I beg your pardon, Madam?”
“What I mean is, you’ve got it wrong. Tell him, Mary, tell the doctor what you told me.”
Mary shifted uneasily in the chair.
“It’s that—I don’t want it.”
The doctor’s well-proportioned jaw dropped.
“Would you please repeat that?”
“I said, I don’t want the Transformation.”
“D—Don’t want it?”
“You see? She told me. That’s why I came to you.”
The doctor looked at Mary suspiciously.
“But that’s impossible! I have never heard of such a thing. Little girl, you are playing a joke!”
Mary nodded negatively.
“See, doctor. What can it be?” Mrs. Cuberle rose and began to pace.
THE DOCTOR clucked his tongue and took from a small cupboard a black box covered with buttons and dials and wire.
“Oh no, you don’t think—I mean, could it?”
“We shall soon see.” The doctor revolved a number of dials and studied the single bulb in the center of the box. It did not flicker. He removed handles from Mary’s head.
“Dear me,” the doctor said, “dear me. Your daughter is perfectly sane, Mrs. Cuberle.”
“Well, then what is it?”
“Perhaps she is lying. We haven’t completely eliminated that factor as yet; it slips into certain organisms.”
More tests. More machines and more negative results.
Mary pushed her foot in a circle on the floor. When the doctor put his hands to her shoulders, she looked up pleasantly.
“Little girl,” said the handsome man, “do you actually mean to tell us that you prefer that body?”
“Yes sir.”
“May I ask why.”
“I like it. It’s—hard to explain, but it’s me and that’s what I like. Not the looks, maybe, but the me.”
“You can look in the mirror and see yourself, then look at—well, at your mother and be content?”
“Yes, sir.” Mary thought of her reasons; fuzzy, vague, but very definitely there. Maybe she had said the reason. No. Only a part of it.
“Mrs. Cuberle,” the doctor said, “I suggest that your husband have a long talk with Mary.”
“My husband is dead. That affair near Ganymede, I believe. Something like that.”
“Oh, splendid. Rocket man, eh? Very interesting organisms. Something always seems to happen to rocket men, in one way or another. But—I suppose we should do something.” The doctor scratched his jaw. “When did she first start talking this way,” he asked.
“Oh, for quite some time. I used to think it was because she was such a baby. But lately, the time getting so close and all, I thought I’d better see you.”
“Of course, yes, very wise. Er—does she also do odd things?”
“Well, I found her on the second level one night. She was lying on the floor and when I asked her what she was doing, she said she was trying to sleep.”
Mary flinched. She was sorry, in a way, that Mother had found that out.
“To—did you say ‘sleep’?”
“That’s right.”
“Now where could she have picked that up?”
“No idea.”
“Mary, don’t you know that nobody sleeps anymore? That we have an infinitely greater life-span than our poor ancestors now that the wasteful state of unconsciousness has been conquered? Child, have you actually slept? No one knows how anymore.”
“No sir, but I almost did.”
The doctor sighed. “But, it’s unheard of! How could you begin to try to do something people have forgotten entirely about?”
“The way it was described in the book, it sounded nice, that’s all.” Mary was feeling very uncomfortable now. Home and no talking man in a foolish white gown….
“Book, book? Are there books at your Unit, Madam?”
“There could be—I haven’t cleaned up in a while.”
“That is certainly peculiar. I haven’t seen a book for years. Not since ’17.”
Mary began to fidget and stare nervously about.
“But with the tapes, why should you try and read books—where did you get them?”
“Daddy did. He got them from his father and so did Grandpa. He said they’re better than the tapes and he was right.”
Mrs. Cuberle flushed.
“My husband was a little strange, Doctor Hortel. He kept those things despite everything I said.
“Dear me, I—excuse me.”
The muscular, black-haired doctor walked to another cabinet and selected from the shelf a bottle. From the bottle he took two large pills and swallowed them.
“Sleep—books—doesn’t want the Transformation—Mrs. Cuberle, my dear good woman, this is grave. Doesn’t want the Transformation. I would appreciate it if you would change psychiatrists: I am very busy and, uh, this is somewhat specialized. I suggest Centraldome. Many fine doctors there. Goodbye.”
The doctor turned and sat down in a large chair and folded his hands. Mary watched him and wondered why the simple statements should have so changed things. But the doctor did not move from the chair.
“Well!” said Mrs. Cuberle and walked quickly from the room.
The man’s legs were being blown off again as they left the reception room.
MARY considered the reflection in the mirrored wall. She sat on the floor and looked at different angles of herself: profile, full-face, full length, naked, clothed. Then she took up the magazine and studied it. She sighed.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall—” The words came haltingly to her mind and from her lips. She hadn’t read them, she recalled. Daddy had said them, quoted them as he put it. But they too were lines from a book—”who is the fairest of—”
A picture of Mother sat upon the dresser and Mary considered this now. Looked for a long time at the slender, feminine neck. The golden skin, smooth and without blemish, without wrinkles and without age. The dark brown eyes and the thin tapers of eyebrows, the long black lashes, set evenly, so that each half of the face corresponded precisely. The half-parted-mouth, a violet tint against the gold, the white, white teeth, even, sparkling.
Mother. Beautiful, Transformed Mother. And back again to the mirror.
“—of them all….”
The image of a rather chubby girl, without lines of rhythm or grace, without perfection. Splotchy skin full of little holes, puffs in the cheeks, red eruptions on the forehead. Perspiration, shapeless hair flowing onto shapeless shoulders down a shapeless body. Like all of them, before the Transformation.
Did they all look like this, before? Did Mother, even?
Mary thought hard, trying to remember exactly what Daddy and Grandpa had said, why they said the Transformation was a bad thing, and why she believed and agreed with them so strongly. It made little sense, but they were right. They were right! And one day, she would understand completely.
Mrs. Cuberle slammed the door angrily and Mary jumped to her feet. She hadn’t forgotten about it. “The way you upset Dr. Hortel. He won’t even see me anymore, and these traumas are getting horrible. I’ll have to get that awful Dr. Wagoner.”
“Sorry—”
Mrs. Cuberle sat on the couch and crossed her legs carefully.
“What in the world were you doing on the floor?”
“Trying to sleep.”
“Now, I won’t hear of it! You’ve got to stop it! You know you’re not insane. Why should you want to do such a silly thing?”
“The books. And Daddy told me about it.”
“And you mustn’t read those terrible things.”
“Why—is there a law against them?”
“Well, no, but people tired of books when the tapes came in. You know that. The house is full of tapes; anything you want.”
Mary stuck out her lower lip.
“They’re no fun. All about the Wars and the colonizations.”
“And I suppose books are fun?”
“Yes. They are.”
“And that’s where you got this idiotic notion that you don’t want the Transformation, isn’t it? Of course it is. Well, we’ll see to that!”
MRS. CUBERLE rose quickly and took the books from the corner and from the closet and filled her arms with them. She looked everywhere in the room and gathered the old rotten volumes.
These she carried from the room and threw into the elevator. A button guided the doors shut.
“I thought you’d do that,” Mary said. “That’s why I hid most of the good ones. Where you’ll never find them.”
Mrs. Cuberle put a satin handkerchief to her eyes and began to weep.
“Just look at you. Look. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve this!”
“Deserve what, Mother? What am I doing that’s so wrong?” Mary’s mind rippled in a confused stream.
“What!” Mrs. Cuberle screamed, “What! Do you think I want people to point to you and say I’m the mother of an idiot? That’s what they’ll say, you’ll see. Or,” she looked up hopefully, “have you changed your mind?”
“No.” The vague reasons, longing to be put into words.
“It doesn’t hurt. They just take off a little skin and put some on and give you pills and electronic treatments and things like that. It doesn’t take more than a week.”
“No.” The reason.
“Don’t you want to be beautiful, like other people—like me? Look at your friend Shala, she’s getting her Transformation next month. And she’s almost pretty now.”
“Mother, I don’t care—”
“If it’s the bones you’re worried about, well, that doesn’t hurt. They give you a shot and when you wake up, everything’s moulded right. Everything, to suit the personality.”
“I don’t care, I don’t care.”
“But why?”
“I like me the way I am.” Almost—almost exactly. But not quite. Part of it, however. Part of what Daddy and Grandpa meant.
“But you’re so ugly, dear! Like Dr. Hortel said. And Mr. Willmes, at the factory. He told some people he thought you were the ugliest girl he’d ever seen. Says he’ll be thankful when you have your Transformation. And what if he hears of all this, what’ll happen then?”
“Daddy said I was beautiful.”
“Well really, dear. You do have eyes.”
“Daddy said that real beauty is only skin deep. He said a lot of things like that and when I read the books I felt the same way. I guess I don’t want to look like everybody else, that’s all.” No, that’s not it. Not at all it.
“That man had too much to do with you. You’ll notice that he had his Transformation, though!”
“But he was sorry. He told me that if he had it to do over again, he’d never do it. He said for me to be stronger than he was.”
“Well, I won’t have it. You’re not going to get away with this, young lady. After all, I am your mother.”
A bulb flickered in the bathroom and Mrs. Cuberle walked uncertainly to the cabinet. She took out a little cardboard box.
“Time for lunch.”
Mary nodded. That was another thing the books talked about, which the tapes did not. Lunch seemed to be something special long ago, or at least different. The books talked of strange ways of putting a load of things into the mouth and chewing these things. Enjoying them. Strange and somehow wonderful.
“And you’d better get ready for work.”
“Yes, Mother.”
THE office was quiet and without shadows. The walls gave off a steady luminescence, distributed the light evenly upon all the desks and tables. And it was neither hot nor cold.
Mary held the ruler firmly and allowed the pen to travel down the metal edge effortlessly. The new black lines were small and accurate. She tipped her head, compared the notes beside her to the plan she was working on. She noticed the beautiful people looking at her more furtively than before, and she wondered about this as she made her lines.
A tall man rose from his desk in the rear of the office and walked down the aisle to Mary’s table. He surveyed her work, allowing his eyes to travel cautiously from her face to the draft.
Mary looked around.
“Nice job,” said the man.
“Thank you, Mr. Willmes.”
“Dralich shouldn’t have anything to complain about. That crane should hold the whole damn city.”
“It’s very good alloy, sir.”
“Yeah. Say, kid, you got a minute?”
“Yes sir.”
“Let’s go into Mullinson’s office.”
The big handsome man led the way into a small cubby-hole of a room. He motioned to a chair and sat on the edge of one desk.
“Kid, I never was one to beat around the bush. Somebody called in little while ago, gave me some crazy story about you not wanting the Transformation.”
Mary said “Oh.” Daddy had said it would have to happen, some day. This must be what he meant.
“I would’ve told them they were way off the beam, but I wanted to talk to you first, get it straight.”
“Well, sir, it’s true. I don’t. I want to stay this way.”
The man looked at Mary and then coughed, embarrassedly.
“What the hell—excuse me, kid, but—I don’t exactly get it. You, uh, you saw the psychiatrist?”
“Yes sir. I’m not insane. Dr. Hortel can tell you.”
“I didn’t mean anything like that. Well—” the man laughed nervously. “I don’t know what to say. You’re still a cub, but you do swell work. Lot of good results, lots of comments from the stations. But, Mr. Poole won’t like it.”
“I know. I know what you mean, Mr. Willmes. But nothing can change my mind. I want to stay this way and that’s all there is to it.”
“But—you’ll get old before you’re half through life.”
Yes, she would. Old, like the Elders, wrinkled and brittle, unable to move right. Old. “It’s hard to make you understand. But I don’t see why it should make any difference.”
“Don’t go getting me wrong, now. It’s not me, but, you know, I don’t own Interplan. I just work here. Mr. Poole likes things running smooth and it’s my job to carry it out. And soon as everybody finds out, things wouldn’t run smooth. There’ll be a big stink. The dames will start asking questions and talk.”
“Will you accept my resignation, then, Mr. Willmes?”
“Sure you won’t change your mind?”
“No sir. I decided that a long time ago. And I’m sorry now that I told Mother or anyone else. No sir, I won’t change my mind.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Mary. You been doing awful swell work. Couple of years you could be centralled on one of the asteroids, the way you been working. But if you should change your mind, there’ll always be a job for you here.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“No hard feelings?”
“No hard feelings.”
“Okay then. You’ve got till March. And between you and me, I hope by then you’ve decided the other way.”
Mary walked back down the aisle, past the rows of desks. Past the men and women. The handsome, model men and the beautiful, perfect women, perfect, all perfect, all looking alike. Looking exactly alike.
She sat down again and took up her ruler and pen.
MARY stepped into the elevator and descended several hundred feet. At the Second Level she pressed a button and the elevator stopped. The doors opened with another button and the doors to her Unit with still another.
Mrs. Cuberle sat on the floor by the T-V, disconsolate and red-eyed. Her blond hair had come slightly askew and a few strands hung over her forehead. “You don’t need to tell me. No one will hire you.”
Mary sat beside her mother. “If you only hadn’t told Mr. Willmes in the first place—”
“Well, I thought he could beat a little sense into you.”
The sounds from the T-V grew louder. Mrs. Cuberle changed channels and finally turned it off.
“What did you do today, Mother?” Mary smiled.
“Do? What can I do, now? Nobody will even come over! I told you what would happen.”
“Mother!”
“They say you should be in the Circuses.”
Mary went into another room. Mrs. Cuberle followed. “How are we going to live? Where does the money come from now? Just because you’re stubborn on this crazy idea. Crazy crazy crazy! Can I support both of us? They’ll be firing me, next!”
“Why is this happening?”
“Because of you, that’s why. Nobody else on this planet has ever refused the Transformation. But you turn it down. You want to be ugly!”
Mary put her arms about her mother’s shoulders. “I wish I could explain, I’ve tried so hard to. It isn’t that I want to bother anyone, or that Daddy wanted me to. I just don’t want the Transformation.”
Mrs. Cuberle reached into the pockets of her blouse and got a purple pill. She swallowed the pill. When the letter dropped from the chute, Mrs. Cuberle ran to snatch it up. She read it once, silently, then smiled.
“Oh, I was afraid they wouldn’t answer. But we’ll see about this now!”
She gave the letter to Mary.Mrs. Zena Cuberle Unit 451 D Levels II & III City Dear Madam:
In re your letter of Dec 3 36. We have carefully examined your complaint and consider that it requires stringent measures. Quite frankly, the possibility of such a complaint has never occurred to this Dept. and we therefore cannot make positive directives at the moment.
However, due to the unusual qualities of the matter, we have arranged an audience at Centraldome, Eighth Level, Sixteenth Unit, Jan 3 37, 23 sharp. Dr. Elph Hortel has been instructed to attend. You will bring the subject in question.Yrs, DEPT F
Mary let the paper flutter to the floor. She walked quietly to the elevator and set it for Level III. When the elevator stopped, she ran from it, crying, into her room.
She thought and remembered and tried to sort out and put together. Daddy had said it, Grandpa had, the books did. Yes, the books did.
She read until her eyes burned and her eyes burned until she could read no more. Then Mary went to sleep, softly and without realizing it, for the first time.
But the sleep was not peaceful.
“LADIES and gentlemen,” said the young-looking, well groomed man, “this problem does not resolve easily. Dr. Hortel here, testifies that Mary Cuberle is definitely not insane. Drs. Monagh, Prinn and Fedders all verify this judgment. Dr. Prinn asserts that the human organism is no longer so constructed as to create and sustain such an attitude through deliberate falsehood. Further, there is positively nothing in the structure of Mary Cuberle which might suggest difficulties in Transformation. There is evidence for all these statements. And yet we are faced with this refusal. What, may I ask, is to be done?”
Mary looked at a metal table.
“We have been in session far too long, holding up far too many other pressing contingencies. The trouble on Mercury, for example. We’llhave to straighten that out, somehow.”
Throughout the rows of beautiful people, the mumbling increased. Mrs. Cuberle sat nervously, tapping her shoe and running a comb through her hair.
“Mary Cuberle, you have been given innumerable chances to reconsider, you know.”
Mary said, “I know. But I don’t want to.”
The beautiful people looked at Mary and laughed. Some shook their heads.
The man threw up his hands. “Little girl, can you realize what an issue you have caused? The unrest, the wasted time? Do you fully understand what you have done? Intergalactic questions hang fire while you sit there saying the same thing over and over. Doesn’t the happiness of your Mother mean anything to you?”
A slender, supple woman in a back row cried, “We want action. Do something!”
The man in the high stool raised his hand. “None of that, now. We must conform, even though the question is out of the ordinary.” He leafed through a number of papers on his desk, leaned down and whispered into the ear of a strong blond man. Then he turned to Mary again. “Child, for the last time. Do you reconsider? Will you accept the Transformation?”
“No.”
The man shrugged his shoulders. “Very well, then. I have here a petition, signed by two thousand individuals and representing all the Stations of Earth. They have been made aware of all the facts and have submitted the petition voluntarily. It’s all so unusual and I’d hoped we wouldn’t have to—but the petition urges drastic measures.”
The mumbling rose.
“The petition urges that you shall, upon final refusal, be forced by law to accept the Transformation. And that an act of legislature shall make this universal and binding in the future.”
Mary’s eyes were open, wide. She stood and paused before speaking.
“Why?” she asked, loudly.
The man passed a hand through his hair.
Another voice from the crowd, “Seems to be a lot of questions unanswered here.”
And another, “Sign the petition, Senator!”
All the voices, “Sign it, sign it!”
“But why?” Mary began to cry. The voices stilled for a moment.
“Because—Because—”
“If you’d only tell me that. Tell me!”
“Why, it simply isn’t being done, that’s all. The greatest gift of all, and what if others should get the same idea? What would happen to us then, little girl? We’d be right back to the ugly, thin, fat, unhealthy-looking race we were ages ago! There can’t be any exceptions.”
“Maybe they didn’t consider themselves so ugly.”
The mumbling began anew.
“That isn’t the point,” cried the man. “You must conform!”
And the voices cried “Yes” loudly until the man took up a pen and signed the papers on his desk.
Cheers, applause, shouts.
Mrs. Cuberle patted Mary on the top of her head.
“There, now!” she said, happily, “Everything will be all right now. You’ll see, Mary.”
THE Transformation Parlor Covered the entire Level, sprawling with its departments. It was always filled and there was nothing to sign and no money to pay and people were always waiting in line.
But today the people stood aside. And there were still more, looking in through doors, TV cameras placed throughout the tape machines in every corner. It was filled, but not bustling as usual.
Mary walked past the people, Mother and the men in back of her, following. She looked at the people. The people were beautiful, perfect, without a single flaw.
All the beautiful people. All the ugly people, staring out from bodies that were not theirs. Walking on legs that had been made for them, laughing with manufactured voices, gesturing with shaped and fashioned arms.
Mary walked slowly, despite the prodding. In her eyes, in her eyes, was a mounting confusion; a wide, wide wonderment.
The reason was becoming less vague; the fuzzed edges were falling away now. Through all the horrible months and all the horrible moments, the edges fell away. Now it was almost clear.
She looked down at her own body, then at the walls which reflected it. Flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone, all hers, made by no one, built by herself or someone she did not know. Uneven kneecaps, making two grinning cherubs when they bent, and the old familiar rubbing together of fat inner thighs. Fat, unshapely, unsystematic Mary. But Mary.
Of course. Of course! This was what Daddy meant, what Grandpa and the books meant. What they would know if they would read the books or hear the words, the good, reasonable words, the words that signified more, much more, than any of this.
The understanding heaped up with each step.
“Where are these people?” Mary asked half to herself. “What has happened to them and don’t they miss themselves, these manufactured things?”
She stopped, suddenly.
“Yes! That is the reason. They have all forgotten themselves!”
A curvacious woman stepped forward and took Mary’s hand. The woman’s skin was tinted dark. Chipped and sculptured bone into slender rhythmic lines, electrically created carriage, stance, made, turned out.
“All right, young lady. We will begin.”
They guided Mary to a large, curved leather seat.
From the top of a long silver pole a machine lowered itself. Tiny bulbs glowed to life and cells began to click. The people stared. Slowly a picture formed upon the screen in the machine. Bulbs directed at Mary, then redirected into the machine. Wheels turning, buttons ticking.
The picture was completed.
“Would you like to see it?”
Mary closed her eyes, tight.
“It’s really very nice.” The woman turned to the crowd. “Oh yes, there’s a great deal to be salvaged; you’d be surprised. A great deal. We’ll keep the nose and I don’t believe the elbows will have to be altered at all.”
Mrs. Cuberle looked at Mary and smiled. “Now, it isn’t so bad as you thought, is it?” she said.
The beautiful people looked. Cameras turned, tapes wound.
“You’ll have to excuse us now. Only the machines allowed.”
Only the machines.
The people filed out.
Mary saw the rooms in the mirror. Saw things in the rooms, the faces and bodies that had been left; the woman and the machines and the old young men standing about, adjusting, readying.
Then she looked at the picture in the screen.
And screamed.
A woman of medium height stared back at her. A woman with a curved body and thin legs; silver hair, pompadoured, cut short; full sensuous lips, small breasts, flat stomach, unblemished skin.
A strange, strange woman no one had ever seen before.
The nurse began to take Mary’s clothes off.
“Geoff,” the woman said, “come look at this, will you. Not one so bad in years. Amazing that we can keep anything at all.”
The handsome man put his hands in his pockets.
“Pretty bad, all right.”
“Be still, child, stop making those noises. You know perfectly well nothing is going to hurt.”
“But—what will you do with me?”
“That was all explained to you.”
“No, no, with me, me!”
“Oh, you mean the castoffs. The usual. I don’t know exactly. Somebody takes care of it.”
“I want me!” Mary cried. “Not that!” She pointed at the screen.
HER chair was wheeled into a semi-dark room. She was naked now, and the men lifted her to a table. The surface was like glass, black, filmed. A big machine hung above.
Straps. Clamps pulling, stretching limbs apart. The screen with the picture brought in. The men and the woman, more women now. Dr. Hortel in a corner, sitting with his legs crossed, shaking his head.
Mary began to cry above the hum of the mechanical things.
“Shhh. My gracious, such a racket! Just think about your job waiting for you, and all the friends you’ll have and how nice everything will be. No more trouble now.”
The big machine hurtling downward.
“Where will I find me?” Mary screamed, “when it’s all over?”
A long needle slid into rough flesh and the beautiful people gathered around the table.
They turned on the big machine.
THE END
^^^
This story originally appeared in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, September 1952. It was later adapted into a memorable, classic episode of Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone” TV show.
Now that the world is adjusting to a new-normal Covid world that will involve fewer lockdowns, some of us wonder whether our favorite world (that is, the virtual one) is bound to peter out.
It will depend on a few things. The continuing excellence of virtual nightlife seems to us to be the safest bet, with clubs and bars that are nothing less than excellent already. But a few other observations are in order. VR for the workplace is important, and it needs to be made much, much more user-friendly. If you want us to vacation in VR, we need to be able to read a book on the beach. The broad acceptance of cybershoes that will let us walk around in VR (and hike through the mountains in Daisy’s Shaw’s “Solitude” world)! And while we’ve heard a lot about coming improvements in avatar-realism, not a lot has been said about improving facial expressions. That is, if you scowl, cry, frown, your avatar should not be smiling. We’re not sure how to fix that.
For this week, though, we’ll focus on the future of VR entertainment.
The Future of Movies?
It seems to us that VR has the potential to create a new world for movies, but content creators need to figure out what they want to do to do with the format.
Some visionaries are building theatrical complexes, and see the future of theater in VR. (See our profile of Shu Shu, a few months back.)
Mostly, VR cinema is stuck. While you can watch 3D movies in VR with the whole family (in the Big Screen app, for example), you can watch true immersive VR films only alone, which severely limits their appeal. And VR content producers mostly still feel that immersive VR needs to be a “game.”
For an example, see the progression of the immersive content offered by Baobab Studios. Their Bonfire, from 2019, sounded like an immersive cinematic adventure. With a star turn by Ali Wong, Bonfire is an alien adventure in which the viewer “stars” as Scout 817, exploring an alien world as a possible future home for mankind. But it’s a gimmick; you throw a few logs at aliens, you can’t move around within the static environment, and, depending on which story line you choose, the entire narrative can tie up briefly. Baobab’s subsequent, star-studded Baba Yaga tells the story of a young girl, played by Daisy Ridley, who, accompanied by you (her brother or sister), seeks a cure for her mother (Glenn Close!) from the wicked witch of the forest (Kate Winslet!!). Baba Yaga was a vast improvement over Bonfire; the viewer can move about in the virtual environment, the story is more complex and the visuals, which are more engaging, benefit from multiple scene changes. Still, there are some gimmicky vestiges of gaming, and one unnecessary alternate plotline. And you are unlikely to be moved or to find the whole thing especially compelling. 2021’s Namoo, on the other hand, is a real short film, set in an immersive scene through which you may roam freely, a grassy knoll in which scenes from a man’s life unspool, as a tree grows from a sapling. Directed by Erick Oh, and available for free in Oculus’s animation app, Namoo is not wildly emotional, but it’s beautifully crafted, it’s free of gimmicky gaming tropes, and it’s the perfect theme for VR, which shows what the format may someday become.
And some good movie news this week! Two more episodes of the amazing fantasy-noir VR serial, Lustration, are now available to view for free in Oculus’s animation app. We wrote about this terrific show last month, a creepy, involving story about the earthly world, the afterlife, the in-between, and how we all interact, with direction by Ryan Griffen, from his graphic novel, that discovers new and surprising ways to use the format. The show is only getting more complex, funny, troubling and, above all, vastly promising.
Concert of the Week: Josh Daniel at the Infiniverse Outdoor Cinema Room
Every Wednesday, from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm (EST), at the Infiniverse Outdoor Cinema Room, in Multiverse, free
We’ve written before about the “Infiniverse,” a community that sits within the VR app called “Metaverse.” This app has done so much to design a community of tomorrow in Virtual Reality. with neighborhoods created by members and organized by interest. In response to some demand among members for a more robust nightlife, Metaverse’s Wendy Cummings writes us, “We’ve just started hosting a weekly live music concert. It’s about 2 hours, screened in our Outdoor Cinema Room, and features live music by Josh Daniel.” The Outdoor Cinema Room is decidedly beautiful, and Josh Daniel, who plays what’s described as a combination of roots rock, bluegrass and soul, is the perfect artist for the Infiniverse’s first music residency. Writes Infiniverse organizer and music district founder Andrew Rallo, “The Infiniverse has an uncanny way of revealing to us the musical path and what steps to take next. It’s all about the community, so what the community wants, we’ll deliver.”
The show begins at 6:30 with an opening set by the eclectic Robinson Treacher, and Josh Daniel begins at 7. If you’ve never been there before, drop by the day before so you can be sure you know the way to the Outdoor Cinema Room. The Multiverse/Infiniverse is a big place!
Out in space, as Science Officer Kelatrin had predicted, the unpredictable happened. Up until the last five hundred kilometers of its journey to Ghilos 4, the Dohlfaleer’s sensors reported nothing unusual. Soon after, however, the crew of the Jolatrin vessel began to experience what they assumed were hallucinations.
At first these “visions” felt inconsequential. Mission Biologist Giselle Amethyst noticed that the holocube of family photos perched on her workstation was now showing photos from ten years earlier than before. An image of her twelve-year-old son had been replaced by an image of him when he was a toddler. Other crew members reported similar incidents. But everyone agreed that they had nothing to fear from an anomaly that produced such minor effects.
As the Dohlfaleer came closer to Ghilos 4, however, the temporal displacements caused by the anomaly became more severe. At five thousand kilometers, objects began to oscillate between different temporal states. Chief Engineer Dravulen, for instance, saw the contents of his tool cabinets change in rapid fire. From one moment to the next, a spectroscope might be replaced with an earlier model or worse, with an ancient magnifying glass.
Unbeknownst to the ship’s crew and passengers the anomaly’s most disturbing distortions of space-time loomed on the horizon. At approximately four hours into this badly distorted region of the Cosmos, an assortment of life forms materialized at random, throughout the ship. Whether sentient or not, they were confused, frightened and in some cases violent.
Verthani herself saw a female Jolatrin materialize before her eyes. From the intruder’s purple silk robes, stiff leather sandals and gold shoulder clasp embossed with a blazing star, Verthani knew at once whom she was dealing with. This, she decided, must be a priestess of the cult of Jolatrinaar, which dated back at least eight thousand years.
Strangely, the priestess had lost none of her composure, despite arriving in a strange environment without warning. Simplifying matters even further, the ship’s AI was sufficiently versed in ancient languages to translate her archaic dialect.
“What demonry is this?” the priestess asked. “Return to Jolatrinaar’s Way or face her eternal condemnation!”
The situation went downhill from there, as more and more displaced creatures of various species along with a chaotic array of objects and substances filled the decks of the Dohlfaleer. Though he was as shocked as anyone, Captain Steretak’s single-minded focus was on operations. He convened an emergency staff meeting of his top officers.
“Report,” he said. “Navigation, helm control? Engineering, hull integrity? Communications, are we hearing any chatter from the planet’s surface?”
Communications Officer Togepal piped up immediately.
“At first, Captain,“ she said. “We received standard credentials messaging. You know, approach vectors, landing protocols and so on. Then there was a wild burst of activity. It was like everyone on the planet was trying to call out at once. And now … silence. I’ve checked the sensors and, well, it doesn’t look as if Ghilos 4 even has a communications array anymore.”
The Captain nodded and swallowed his rising panic. He projected an air of calm as the other officers reported in. When they were finished, he spoke as decisively as his racing heart would let him.
“Get this vessel into orbit and let’s see where we are,” he said. “Our famous archaeologist wanted this planet, so I figure the sooner we give it to her, the sooner we can get out of this … zoo. Security, put any stray creature or dangerous object you find in isolation, preferably in stasis. Same for any sentient you can’t reason with. Shut down all non-essential systems. Channel that power into our shields. Maybe if we put up enough resistance on our end, we can create a safe zone around the ship.”
Genion Baltor shook his head.
“That might work briefly,“ he said. “The problem is that this anomaly is so volatile, we’ll be lucky if this area of space-time doesn’t collapse like a soap bubble and take us with it.”
“Nothing like a little realism,” said Steretak. “Work with Engineering. See if you can rig up a new type of shield against this anomaly. Now, let’s get moving.”
.
By now, Verthani had led the priestess, who called herself Lorneavi, to a large view screen at the end of the main residential bulkhead. The ancient woman’s jaw dropped.
“So these are the heavens?” she asked. “And this, a mere boat, has risen to greet them? What blasphemers you are, to have studied the Dark Arts so assiduously.”
Verthani shook her head.
Why did I think she’d understand? she thought, and decided to try a different tack.
“You must be hungry,” she said. “Let me bring you proper refreshment as befits a guest to my … my boat.”
Verthani brought the priestess to her quarters, where the displaced female’s’ astonishment flared up again. Where, she demanded, was Verthani’s “ark of holy nectarcomb”? After several tense minutes, during which Verthani wracked her brain to recall her ancestors’ ancient lore, she took Lorneavi to meet Athcarone. Fortunately, the savvy Linguist managed to win Lorneavi’s trust, by quoting a few key passages from Jolatrin’s most sacred texts. He went on to explain their current predicament, in terms more compatible with Lorneavi’s ancient frame of reference.
“What crime against Jolatrinaar must these Ghilostri have committed to be punished in this way?” she asked. Verthani reached a delicate hand out to touch Lorneavi’s forearm.
“That is why we would … sojourn … here,” she said. “To learn what became of the Ghilostri, these many cycles.”
Lorneavi smiled.
“Then you are blessed,” she said. “Jolatrinaar has sent me to your boat to help you. For by my sacred talisman, I know the ways of Evil and can lead you to its source on the surest feet.”
.
“We are grateful for her wisdom,” said Athcarone. “And for yours. Now, because we have not reached our destination, you may wish to rest in Verthani’s quarters until we arrive.”
“Oh no, I am not in the least fatigued, my son,” said Lorneavi. “Take me now to your sacred shrine that I may pray for continued strength.”
Verthani cast a pained glance at Athcarone who waved her away with a reassuring flick of his hands. Somehow, she knew, he’d find a way to smooth over this latest obstacle to Lorneavi’s acceptance of the truth.
The truth? she asked herself. What actually counts for truth right now?
Had Lorneavi been displaced into her timeframe, or had she herself been thrust into the deep past? Did the concept of “timeframe” hold up in a situation like this? Every sign pointed to the conclusion that she, Lorneavi and everyone aboard the Dohlfaleer, were more or less unstuck from Time. Too bad she had no idea what the phrase meant. Obviously, Time still had some hold on her, because her dorsal aorta hadn’t stopped. In fact, it was pumping faster than ever.
Small favors, she told herself.
Besides, her highly trained mind saw in this bizarre phenomenon an unprecedented opportunity to explore the roots of Jolatrin society. Provided, that is, she survived long enough to return to her own timeline and capture her observations in a holobook.
So while she took modest comfort from the tantalizing prospect of a major scientific discovery, it was quickly shattered by the violent tremors that shook the Dohlfaleer. Her trim insectoid frame was thrown to the floor. She watched, her head throbbing, as bits of emergency equipment, usually tethered to a corridor wall, came loose and careened into the opposite side of the corridor.
Then, as suddenly as the shaking began, it stopped. Captain Steretak’s steady voice echoed out of the ship-wide comlink.
“This is the captain,” he said. “We apologize for the turbulence, You’ll be glad to know it was for a good cause. We should be spared any more strange visitors from here on out.“
Wary, arms aching, Verthani pulled herself upright and caught the attention of a passing crew member in a dark green Engineering uniform.
“Mind explaining what’s happening here?” she asked.
“Quarks if I know,’ said the crew member. “The official explanation is that the Chief cooked up a rapidly oscillating space fold field — so we’re neither in this patch of space-time nor out of it.”
“Think it will hold?” asked Verthani.
“Maybe,” said engineer. “As long as the meaning of ‘hold’ hasn’t changed. Don’t bet on it. Gotta go.”
Verthani looked after her and wondered what it was like to remain calm in the face of so many unknowns. What she hadn’t taken into account was the sentient mind’s ability to use abject fear as a shield against every other emotion, including itself. Still shaken, Verthani took a deep breath, picked herself up, walked over to her workstation and began scanning the surface of Ghilos 4. Had the temporal distortions that rocked this star system also demolished the prize she’d traveled so far to examine?
Her first thought was to call up the coordinates for the lost city of Yeltrex-Drobai that Athcarone had painstakingly derived. Her workstation’s telescopic sensors, which required recalibration, due to the anomaly, sent back disturbing footage. It showed the abandoned city relatively intact, except for some curious gaps.
The magnificent high towers for which the city was famed in song and poetry were now hollow husks. It was as if some creature had stripped out everything required to sustain a high-tech civilization. From wiring and heating systems to water pumps, ventilation — most of it had gone missing. Verthani zoomed in closer and saw grand structures crumbling after centuries of neglect. In one poignant image, she saw a once-elegant hover car stuck nose-first into a broad circular fountain at the center of a large public square.
Life had stopped dead, as if the predator-scenario that she’d concocted to intimidate her superiors back home had nevertheless come true. Later, over the evening meal, she shared her impressions with Athcarone.
“There was a predator” she told him. “The Ghilostri preyed on themselves.”
“Come along now, Verthani,” said the always even-tempered Linguist. “Why would they….”
“Oh not intentionally,’ said Verthani. “Still, who else can you think of could have pulled off this colossal temporal screw up? “
Athcarone smiled.
“I know what Lorneavi would tell you,” he said. “Fortunately, we won’t see her for a while. Once she heard we were a ship full of ‘unbelievers,’ she set off on a crusade to bring us the Way of Jolatrinaar’.”
Good luck with that, thought Verthani.
On second thought, she could think of at least ten lonely crew members who might respond to Lorneavi’s unwavering faith. And, truth be told, she envied the priestess plucked from Time. Verthani’s own mission was in shambles, and what would she make of what she’d already seen on the planet’s surface? And what if, despite the Chief Engineer’s ingenuity, they were stuck in this broken-down part of the Cosmos for all of its fractured eternity?
A new Episode of Anomaly appears every other Monday.
^^^
Mark Laporta is the author of Probability Shadow and Entropy Refraction, the first two novels in the science fiction series, Against the Glare of Darkness, which are available at a bookstore near you, on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble. He is also the author of Orbitals: Journeys to Future Worlds, a collection of short science fiction, which is available as an ebook.
It’s not always easy to be OK with being below average. We always want more, and we believe that we are destined for great things. But what if you’re not? What if you’re below average? Is that really so bad?
First of all, how can you tell? Bad grades? No success in business? Well, Bill Gates was a drop-out, and plenty of successful entrepreneurs bounced back after bad starts. No, early failure is no indication that that you are below average. It might mean the opposite.
So how should you go about evaluating your own potential? Well, to start, consider your talents. Do you have any? Have you developed them? Are they useful? If so, then congratulations.
But what if you don’t have any special talents? What if you’re a below-average average Joe or Jane? That’s not so bad either. After all, the world needs below-average people. We can’t all be geniuses or prodigies. Somebody has to do the ordinary jobs that keep society running. And that’s OK. You don’t have to be destined for great things to live a happy and fulfilling life. Embrace your ordinariness and be content with who you are. It’s not so bad, really. In fact, it might even be kind of nice.
What does below-average mean? The bottom of the barrel? Nope. First of all, it depends how we are averaging. If we are looking at a median average, then being below average just means you are in the bottom half of the population — not so bad! If we’re going by a “mean” average, then the highest performers skew the average upward. You could be “below average” and still more “successful” than most people.
But there are also plenty of ways of measuring your own self-worth. For example, you could have a lousy job but have great kids who love you more than they possibly could if you were a busy billionaire. Or, for example, you could be an artist but never sell a painting in your life. That doesn’t mean you’re not a good artist. You could be a great artist, but a “below-average” marketer of your own talents.
But what if you are below-average in everything you can think of? That’s OK too. Maybe you’re not destined for greatness, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find happiness in your ordinariness. Embrace it and be content with who you are. That’s the best way to live a happy life.
What if you feel like you’re stuck in a rut? If you’re not sure how to move forward, here are some tips:
– Talk to a therapist or counselor
– Read self-help books
– Join a support group
– Find a hobby or activity that makes you happy
– Spend time with loved ones and close friends
– Volunteer your time to help others
No matter where you are in life, remember that it’s OK to be below average. If you’re struggling with feeling like you’re not good enough, remember that you are not alone. We all feel that way sometimes. But it’s important to remind ourselves that we are all special and unique, no matter where we fall on the spectrum of averages.
So be content with who you are today and find happiness in your everyday life. That’s the best way to live a fulfilling life.
