Although, he supposed, there were those who felt they needed them—something to make up for what they felt they might be missing, the excitement and adventure of those former days when man walked hand in hand with a death that was an utter ending. They thought, perhaps, that the present life was a drab affair, that it had no color in it, and that the purpose they must hold to was a grinding and remorseless purpose. There would be such people, certainly—the ones who would forget at times the breath-taking glory of this purpose in their first life, losing momentary sight of the fact that this life they lived was no more than a few years of preparation for all eternity.
He worked his way through the crowd and reached the hobby stand, which was doing little business.
Charley, the owner of the stand, was behind the counter, and as he saw Frost approaching, reached down into the case and brought out a stock card on which a group of stamps were ranged.
"Good morning, Mr. Frost," he said. "I have something here for you. I saved it special for you."
"Swiss again, I see," said Frost.
"Excellent stamps," said Charley. "I'm glad to see you buying them. A hundred years from now you'll be glad you did. Good solid issues put out by a country in the blue chips bracket."
Frost glanced down at the lower right-hand corner of the card. A figure, 1.30, was written there in pencil.
"The price today," said Charley, "is a dollar, eighty-five."
3
The wind had blown down the cross again, sometime in the night.
The trouble, thought Ogden Russell, sitting up and rubbing his eyes to rid them of the seeping pus that had hardened while he slept, was that sand was a poor
thing in which to set a cross. Perhaps, if he could find them, several sizable boulders placed around its base might serve to hold it upright against the river breeze.
He'd have to do something about it, for it was not mete nor proper that the cross, poor thing that it might be, should topple with every passing gust. It was not, he told himself, consistent with his piety and purpose.
He wondered, sitting there upon the sand, with the morning laughter of the river in his ears, if he had been as wise as he had thought in picking out this tiny island as his place of solitude. It had solitude, all right, but it had little else. The one thing that it lacked, quite noticeably, was comfort. Although comfort, he reminded himself quite sternly, had been a quality that he had not sought. There had been comfort back where he had come from, in that world he'd turned his back upon, and he could have kept it by simply staying there. But he had forsaken comfort, and many other things as well, in this greater search for something which he could sense and feel but which, as yet, he had not come to grips with.
Although I've tried, he thought. My God, how I have tried!
He arose and stretched, carefully and gingerly, for he had, it seemed, an ache in eveiy bone and a soreness in each muscle. It's this sleeping out, he thought, that does it, exposed to the wind and to the river damp, without so much as a ragged blanket to drape his huddled self. With almost nothing to cover him, in fact, for the only thing he wore was an ancient pair of trousers, chopped above the knees.
Having stretched, he wondered if he should set up the cross before his morning prayer, or if the prayer might be as acceptable without a standing cross. After all, he told himself, there would be a cross, a reclining cross, and surely the validity lay in the symbol of the cross itself and not its attitude.
Standing there, he wrestled with his conscience and tried to look into his soul and into the immutable mystery of that area which stretched beyond his soul, and which still remained illusive of any understanding. And there was still no insight and there was no answer, as there had never been an answer. It was worse this morning than it had ever been. For all that he could think of was the peeling sunburn of his body, the abrasions on his knees from kneeling in the sand, the knot of hunger in his belly, and the wondering about whether there might be a catfish on one of the lines he'd set out the night before.
If there were no answer yet, he told himself, after months of waiting, of seeking for that answer, perhaps it was because there was no answer and this had been a senseless course upon which he'd set himself. He might be pounding at the door of an empty room; might be calling upon a thing which did not exist and never had existed, or calling upon it by a name it did not recognize.
Although, he thought, the name would be of no consequence. The name was simply form, no more than a framework within which a man might operate. Really, he reminded himself, the thing he hunted was a simple thing—an understanding and a faith, the depth of faith and the strength of understanding that men of old had held. There must, he argued, be some basis for the belief that it existed somewhere and that it could be found.
Mankind, as a whole, could not be completely wrong. Religious faith, of any sort, must be something more than a mere device of man's own making to fill the aching void that lay in mankind's heart. Even the old Neanderthalers had laid their dead so that when they rose to second life they would face the rising sun, and had sprinkled in the grave the handsful of red ocher symbolic of that second life, and had left with the dead those weapons and adornments they would need in the life to come.
And he had to know! He must force himself to know! And he would know, when he had schooled himself to reach deep into the hidden nature of existence. Somewhere in that mystic pool he would find the truth.
There must be more to life, he thought, than continued existence on this earth, no matter for how long. There must be another eternity somewhere beyond the reawakened and renewed and immortal flesh.
Today, this very day, he'd rededicate himself. He'd spend a longer time upon his knees and he'd seek the deeper and he'd shut out all else but the search he had embarked upon—and this might be the day. Somewhere in the future lay the hour and minute of his understanding and his faith, and there was no telling when that hour might strike. It might, indeed, be close.
For this he'd need all his strength and he'd have his breakfast first, even before the morning prayer, and thus reinforced, he'd enter once again with a renewed vigor upon his seeking after truth.
He went along the sandspit to the willows where he had tied his lines and he pulled them in. They came in easily and there was nothing on them.
The hard ball of hunger squeezed the tighter as he stared at the empty hooks.
So it would be river clams again. He gagged at the thought of them.
4
BJ. rapped sharply on the table with a pencil to signal the beginning of the meeting. He looked benevolently around at the people there.
"I am glad to see you with us, Marcus," said BJ. "You don't often make it. I understand you have a little problem."
Marcus Appleton glowered back at B.J.'s benevolence. "Yes, B.J.," he said, "there is a little problem, but not entirely mine."
BJ. swung his gaze on Frost. "How's the new thrift campaign coming, Dan?" Frost said, "We are working on it." "We're counting on you," B J. told him. "It has to have some punch in it. I hear a lot of investment cash is going into stamps and coins…"
"The trouble is," said Frost, "that stamps and coins are a good long-range investment."
Peter Lane, treasurer, stirred uncomfortably in his chair. "The quicker you can come up with something," he said, "the better it will be. Subscriptions to our stock have been falling off quite noticeably." He looked around the table. "Stamps and coins!" he said, as if they were dirty words.
"We could put a stop to it," said Marcus Appleton. "All we need to do is drop a word or two. No more com-memoratives, no more semi-postals, no more fancy air mail issues."