434
MAUREEN
HOWARD
1
Yes. In the picture, "Space-wife with Agent," he discerned her cheap
smile of victory. Priceless, this coverage in the national media. Oh,
bring them down. All around him these crazies, Shelley's white–
robed people, were striving for honesty and it seemed that he alone
wore a sweater of dissent. What did the world expect of him? It
was too hard, the pieces too various - as though there were a
thousand scattered bits of glass or fool's gold and he was asked to
assemble them into a mirror. The folly of Clauson's store-front tem–
ple bewildered him: incense and Indian bells you could buy in any
gift shop. Yet there was no disputing fact: the room was still and
full of peace. Tears streamed down Jim Cogan's face.
Shelley was beside him, holding him, begging
his
forgiveness.
He could come with her always to Clauson's. Jim told her that
his
whole soul seemed to laugh and cry in torment. He was torn
be–
tween visions of freedom and the dutiful years ahead. "I'm going
to college," he confessed.
"You're so involved
in
that," Shelley said.
His mother had planned a celebration, he knew. He knew her
ways - given hope once more, he knew all the little embellishments
that she would foist upon his triumph to make it her own. Now she
would put away an uncut cake, rejected by her wandering son. She
had not boozed all the long afternoon. The children were washed
and dressed. Their father was home, but now he would go out to
find a card game. At Jim's own place on the kitchen table a large
present gaily wrapped awaited him 'and he could not guess what lay
inside. His tears were blotted by Shelley's hair.
"Cry," she said, "Go on - cry."
It was a real breakthrough he knew, to cry with this weird
girl. In her white robe, in the candlelight a beauty flared in her
and in a torrent of words he confessed it - that he had wanted her
one more time.
"Sex," she said, "is unimportant."
"My friends," he cried in final confusion, "I haven't seen my
friends in a month."
The voice of Clauson rose as though out of Jim Cogan's emo–
tion: "My friends, let us observe the lesson. Upon his feast day
Krishna Nuru received from the Prince Dhrahman a farm which
was old and in great disrepair. Thinking that the god Krishna would
list the property among his dominion but would not care to see the
farm, Dhrahman was well pleased with himself. Immediately Krish-
