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students bursting in from outside. As the elevator door closed, Arlo could see them ignoring him, hurrying past, staring straight ahead.
    Arlo forgot Guthrie as the elevator rose to the eighth floor. He was eager to check on his camera. Time was growing short. The last exposures would have to be just right.
    He found his graduate assistant in the astronomy lab, Chickie Pickett. “Hey, man,” Arlo’s colleague had said, after getting his first eyeful of Chickie, “how about sharing the goodies?” Because Chickie didn’t look like the other women graduate assistants, who went around in athletic pants and heavy sneakers. Chickie wore bows in her hair and went in for four-inch heels and plunging necklines. She was upholstered in pearly gobbets of flesh. Chickie was writing a dissertation on the convection layer under the solar photosphere, but she looked like Betty Boop.
    â€œIs everything okay?” said Arlo, tenderly inspecting his camera. It looked all right. It was still taped to the floor next to the big glass window, its lens pointing east to the sky above the roof of Memorial Hall.
    â€œI was here this morning at eight-thirty,” said Chickie, “and it opened and went click, right on the button. Only two more exposures, one a week from today and the last one on the shortest day.” Chickie fluttered her eyelashes at Arlo. “Then you can take a look at your whole year’s work. I can hardly wait. The analemma on film! Forty-four suns in one picture!”
    â€œI hope to God nothing goes wrong. If the power goes down, the timing will be off. It could ruin everything.”
    â€œOr what if somebody joggles the camera? That Professor Finch, he’s so clumsy.” Chickie was a squealer, and her high-pitched giggle pierced Arlo’s right ear. “He blunders around in here, keeps bumping into me.”
    Arlo could think of a good reason for bumping into Chickie, but he said nothing. Chickie could take care of herself.
    They left together to have a beer in the Square. Old man Guthrie was no longer crouched beside the door waiting to snatch at Arlo as he went by. But as they crossed the overpass they ran into him. He was one of a group of people moving around in the dark, legs and arms appearing in the light of a gasoline lantern, disappearing again. They were working on something, putting up a tent beside a ramshackle structure made of boards.
    â€œHey, guy, listen, I told you. Hey, guy, come here.”
    Arlo did not come. “Good night, Guthrie,” he said, setting off with Chickie in the direction of the Wursthaus on the other side of the Yard. Let Guthrie find another Saint George to fight his battles.

CHAPTER 7
    Mary had a baby, oh, Lord ,
    Mary had a baby, oh, Lord!
    Mary had a baby ,
    Mary had a baby ,
    Mary had a baby, oh, Lord!
    Black American tradition
    T he production of the Christmas Revels was an enormous undertaking requiring a permanent office in Kendall Square, the year-round attention of a salaried staff, and continuous efforts to raise money. Hundreds of talented people were involved, year after year, paid and unpaid—writers and artists, a music director and a couple of stage directors, a sound engineer, a properties manager, a technical director, a stage manager, a lighting designer, a set designer, a volunteer coordinator, and an organizer of the annual flock of children.
    Principal among the talented people was Walter Shattuck, the Old Master, who had begun the Revels years ago, whose singing voice still lent them its haunting mystery. Walt’s celebrity was one of the reasons why throngs of people crowded into Memorial Hall to fill Sanders Theatre sixteen times over during every Christmas season. It explained why hordes of volunteers came forward every year to help backstage, to work on costumes and sets, and arrange for tryouts and rehearsal halls, and raise money, and send out mailings.
    The volunteers would have explained their