Free Two Moons by Thomas Mallon Page A

says you’re always larking about.”
    Hugh laughed. “ That should worry me, I suppose.”
    “But it doesn’t. So then where is your morbidity, Mr. Allison?”
    “I think a lot about death, Mrs. Hall. I want to cheat him.”
    She appeared startled by the remark.
    “I don’t think of him as my enemy,” said Hugh. “Just my competitor.”
    “There is only one way to cheat death, Mr. Allison. And that’s why I’m relieved to see you carrying that.” She pointed to the tract in his right hand.
    “Oh,” said Hugh, laughing now. “I’m afraid I was only trying to be polite. That’s why I took it from the fellow back there.”
    “You disappoint me. Mr. Hall lacked religion when I first came to know him. But when we lived in Ohio, early in our marriage, I succeeded in securing his acceptance of Christianity. Too few of the men at the Observatory profess their faith seriously, I’m afraid, even while they go about investigating God’s domain.”
    “Then I suppose you’re saying I should read this.”
    Mrs. Hall’s full lips couldn’t help turning upward into a smile.
    “God wants to come into your heart, Mr. Allison.”
    “Can’t I go to Him instead?”
    Her expression withheld judgment on the nature of his question; she waited for some explanation.
    “He made us in His image, did He not, Mrs. Hall? What if we completed the job by giving our images an eternal life, equal to His?”
    “Are you speaking of a spiritual quest, or an astronomical one?”
    “I don’t know,” said Hugh, before he added, with a laugh, “but please don’t tell Mr. Hall, in any case. He’ll think I’ve larked straight over the edge. As it is, I suppose you think I’m blaspheming.”
    “If this is to be your work, Mr. Allison, you should pursue it against all discouragement from anyone.”
    Her mind—he could tell from the hard, set look on her face—was not in the religious empyrean where she spent half her time, but back upon her ambitions for her son, and the slights so long inflicted by astronomers upon Asaph Hall and herself.
    “You’re right, Mrs. Hall. Here’s to faith in unlikely schemes.” He raised an imaginary glass. “Now, before I have my oysters, I’m going to go back and contribute another half-dollar toward that Japanese New Testament!”

    Harry O’Toole, the landlady’s gaunt son, sat under the engraving of a mournful dog that dominated the boarders’ parlor on F Street.
    “Four hundred and seventy-six thousand, two hundred and six dollars and six cents from Internal Revenue,” he said, “and four hundred and eighty-six thousand, four hundred and ninety-one dollars and eighty-one cents from Customs.”
    Joan Park, the Treasury clerk who had asked him to read the daily balances from the front page of the newspaper, nodded seriously, as if the figures were her personal responsibility. Certain that her Pitman squiggles required as much brain power as Mrs. May’s logarithms, she sped up her embroidery needle to contrast with Cynthia’s idle grip on a teacup.
    Cynthia was sure that her absence from the supper table had been the boarders’ postprandial topic of conversation until a few moments ago, when she finally arrived to join them for the tea and cookies Mrs. O’Toole made Harry set out nightly—“a little lagniappe” was how she liked to put it, her conversation having reclaimed another of its Southernisms. Like many of the old secesh landladies in the District, she’d lately thrown off an obsolete caution before her Yankee transients.
    “Anything else of interest, Mr. O’Toole?” asked Joan Park.
    Harry scanned the Star. “More about the new ‘merit system’ over at Interior.” He looked over the newspaper at Cynthia to say, with admiration or sarcasm she couldn’t tell, “I’m sure Mrs. May would be distinguishing herself if she hadn’t changed places.”
    “Veterans will still get preference, ‘merit’ or no merit,” said Louis Manley, who had bought his way out of