Gather Yourselves Together by Philip K Dick

Author:Philip K Dick
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2013-07-09T16:00:00+00:00

11

THE STATION MANAGER’S house was set apart from the rest of the buildings. It did not look like them at all. Once, it had been an old home in New England. The manager had noticed it during one of his business trips to the United States. He purchased it and had it shipped piece by piece all the way across the world, by boat, by pack train across mountains, finally assembled by workmen at the station. Now it stood, an old-fashioned American Colonial house, trim and white, its austere front rising up like some pale frosted cake, among refining plants and towering factory units and heaps of slag.

Around the house was a lawn and a border of flowers. At the edge of the lawn was a white picket fence and a tiny gate. Three trees, birch trees, grew at the side of the house. Under one was a bench, a plain wood bench.

Carl and Verne and Barbara stood at the fence, all of them a little awed.

“Just think,” Carl said. “We can open the gate and walk across the lawn and go inside the house.”

“If we can get the boards off,” Verne said. He fingered the crowbar.

“Let’s go,” Carl said. “I’m anxious to get inside.” He pushed the gate open.

“Don’t be in so much of a hurry.”

“I can’t help it.” Carl waited for them to catch up with him. “Just think—we could move in here, if we wanted to. We could move right in, live here for a whole week. Until they come. We could use his things, his kitchen, his chairs, his bed—”

“All right,” Barbara said.

Suddenly Carl stopped.

“What’s the matter?”

Carl looked around. “Maybe—”

“Maybe what?”

“You know, maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Well, maybe we shouldn’t break in this way, I—I don’t think we’re supposed to. That’s why they boarded it all up.”

“It was your idea.”

“I know.” Carl hung his head. “But now that we’re actually going to do it I’m not sure how I feel.”

“Come on,” Barbara said impatiently. “I’m kind of curious myself. I’d like to see how he lived. We heard so many different things.”

Carl hesitated, “Should we do it?”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m just letting my conditioned responses get the better of me. But it’s like breaking into a church. Where you’re not supposed to be. Like soldiers, the German Army during the war. Breaking in and sleeping in front of the altar, stealing things, breaking and tramping around.”

“The manager was no god of mine,” Verne said. They had come to the porch. Verne walked up the wide steps and tapped with the end of the crowbar on the boards that were nailed across the door, “This is going to be hard.”

“Then we’re really going in?” Carl asked. “I never realized how well I’d learned all the Company rules and taboos. I thought with everyone leaving—”

“They hang on,” Verne said. “Old superstitions.” He took Carl by the arm and turned him around. “Look. Do you see all that?” Carl was facing the great domain that was the land and property of the station.

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