Wish You Were Here Read Online Free PDF Page A

sight. They then counseled the viewer to drink plenty of liquids. Cut to a commercial for, surprise, a soft drink.
    Harry reflected on her childhood. At thirty-three she wasn’t that old but then again she wasn’t that young. She thought the times had become more ruthlessly commercial. Even funeral directors advertised. Their next gimmick would be a Miss Dead America contest to see who could do the best work on the departed. Something had happened to America within Harry’s life span, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but something she could feel, sharply. There was no contest between God and the golden calf. Money was God, these days. Little pieces of green paper with dead people’s pictures on them were worshipped. People no longer killed for love. They killed for money.
    How odd to be alive in a time of spiritual famine. She watched the cat and dog playing tag and wondered how her kind had ever drifted so far away from animal existence, that sheer delight in the moment.
    Harry did not consider herself a philosophical woman, but lately she had turned her mind to deeper thoughts, not just to the purpose of her own life but to the purpose of human life in general. She wouldn’t even tell Susan what zigzagged through her head these days, because it was so disturbing and sad. Sometimes she thought she was mourning her lost youth and that was at the bottom of this. Maybe the upheaval of the divorce forced her inward. Or maybe it really was the times, the cheapness and crass consumerism of American life.
    Mrs. George Hogendobber, at least, had values over and above her bank account, but Mrs. Hogendobber vainly clung to a belief system that had lost its power. Right-wing Christianity could compel those frightened and narrow-minded souls who needed absolute answers but it couldn’t capture those who needed a vision of the future here on earth. Heaven was all very fine but you had to die to get there. Harry wasn’t afraid to die but she wouldn’t refuse to live either. She wondered what it must have been like to live when Christianity was new, vital, and exciting—before it had been corrupted by collusion with the state. That meant she would have had to have lived before the second century A . D ., and as enticing as the idea might be, she wasn’t sure she could exist without her truck. Did this mean she’d sell her soul for wheels? She knew she wouldn’t sell her soul for a buck, but machines, money, and madness were tied together somehow and Harry knew she wasn’t wise enough to untangle the Gordian knot of modern life.
    She became postmistress in order to hide from that modern life. Majoring in art history at Smith College on a scholarship had left her splendidly unprepared for the future, so she came home upon graduation and worked as an exercise rider in a big stable. When old George Hogendobber died, she applied for the post office job and won it. Odd, that Mrs. Hogendobber had had a good marriage and that Harry was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the opposite sex. She wondered if Mrs. Hogendobber knew something she didn’t or if George had simply surrendered all hope of individuality and that was why the marriage had worked. Harry had no regrets about her job, small though it might seem to others, but she did have regrets about her marriage.
    â€œMom’s pensive this morning.”
Mrs. Murphy brushed up against Tucker.
“Divorce stuff, I guess. Humans sure make it hard on themselves.”
    Tucker flicked her ears forward and then back.
“Yeah, they seem to worry a lot.”
    â€œI’ll say. They worry about things that are years away and may never happen.”
    â€œI think it’s because they can’t smell. Miss a lot of information.”
    Mrs. Murphy nodded in agreement and then added,
“Walking on two legs. Screws up their backs and then it affects their minds. I’m sure that’s the source of