“Is that why they killed the man?” asked Len. “Because they’re afraid he might bring all that back again—the cities, and all?”
“Isn’t that what they said at the preaching?” said Gran, knowing full well, since she had been to preachings herself many decades ago when the terror brought the great boiling up of faith that birthed new sects and strengthened the old ones.
“Yes. They said he tempted the boys with some kind of fruit, I guess they meant from the Tree of Knowledge like it says in the Bible. And they said he came from a place called Bartorstown. What is Bartorstown, Gran?”
“You ask your pa,” she said, and began to fuss with her apron. “Where’d I put that handkerchief? I know I had it——”
“I did ask him. He said there wasn’t any such place.”
“Hmph,” said Gran.
“He said only children and fanatics believed in it.”
“Well, I ain’t going to tell you any different, so don’t try to make me.”
“I won’t, Gran. But was there ever, maybe a long time ago?”
Gran found her handkerchief. She wiped her face and her eyes with it, and snuffled, and put it away, and Len waited.
“When I was a little girl,” said Gran, “we had this war.”
Len nodded. Mr. Nordholt, the schoolmaster, had told them a good bit about it, and it had got connected in his mind with the Book of Revelations, grand and frightening.
“It came on for a long time, I guess,” Gran continued. “I remember on the teevee they talked about it a lot, and they showed pictures of the bombs that made clouds just like a tremendous mushroom, and each one could wipe out a city, all by itself. Oh yes, Lennie, there was a rain of fire from heaven and many were consumed in it! The Lord gave it to the enemy for a day to be His flail.”
“But we won.”
“Oh yes, in the end we won.”
“Did they build Bartorstown then?”
“Before the war. The gover’ment built it. That was when the gover’ment was still in Washington, and it was a lot different than it is now. Bigger, somehow. I don’t know, a little girl doesn’t care much about those things. But they built a lot of secret places, and Bartorstown was the most secret of all, way out West somewhere.”
“If it was so secret, how did you know about it?”
“They told about it on the teevee. Oh, they didn’t tell where it was or what it was for, and they said it might be only a rumor. But I remember the name.”
“Then,” said Len softly, “it was real!”
“But that’s not saying it is now. That was a long time ago. It’s maybe just the memory of it hung on, like your pa said, with children and fanatics.” She added tartly under her breath that she wasn’t either one of those, herself. Then she said, “You leave it alone, Lennie. Don’t have any truck with the Devil, and he won’t have any with you. You don’t want happening to you what happened to that man at the preaching.”
Lennie turned hot and cold all over again. But curiosity made him ask in spite of that, “Is Bartorstown such a terrible place?”
“It is,” said Gran with sour wisdom, “if everybody thinks it is. Oh, I know! All my life I’ve had to watch my tongue. I can remember the world the way it was before. I was only a little girl, but I was old enough for that, almost as old as you. And I can remember very well how we got to be Mennonites, that never were Mennonites before. Sometimes I wish——” She broke off, and looked again at the flaming trees. “I did love that red dress.”
Another silence.
“Gran.”
“Well, what is it?”
“What were the cities like, really?”
“Better ask your pa.”
“You know what he always says. Besides, he never saw them. You did, Gran. You can remember.”
“The Lord in His infinite wisdom destroyed them. It’s not up to you to question. Nor me.”
“I’m not questioning—I’m only asking. What were they like?”
“They were big. A hundred Piper’s Runs wouldn’t have made up a half of even a small city. They had all hard pavements, with walks at the side for the people, and big wide roads in the middle for the cars, and there were great big buildings that went way up in the air. They were noisy, and the air smelled different, and there were always a lot of people hurrying back and forth. I always liked to go to the city. Nobody thought they were wicked then.”
Len’s eyes were large and round.
“They had big movie theaters, huge, with plush seats, and supermarkets twice as big as that barn, with every kind of food in them, all in bright shiny packages—the things you could buy any day in the week that you’ve never even heard of, Lennie! White sugar, we thought nothing of it. And spices, and fresh vegetables all winter, frozen into little bricks. And the things there were in the stores! Oh, so many things, I couldn’t begin to tell you, clothes and toys and ’lectric washers and books and radios and teevee sets——”
She rocked back and forth a little, and her old eyes flashed.
“Christmas time,” she said. “Oh, at Christmas time with the windows all decorated and the lights and the carols! All colors and brightness and people laughing. It wasn’t wicked. It was wonderful.”
Len’s jaw dropped. He sat that way, with his mouth open, and a heavy step vibrated along the floor from inside, and he tried to tell Gran to hush, but she had forgotten he was there.
“Cowboys on the teevee,” she mumbled, reaching far back across the troubled decades. “Music, and ladies in beautiful dresses that left their shoulders all bare. I thought I would look like that when I got big. Picture books, and Mr. Bloomer’s drugstore with the ice cream and the chocolate rabbits at Easter——”
Pa came out the door. Len got up and went down to the bottom of the steps. Pa looked at him, and Len crumbled inside, thinking that life had been nothing but trouble for the last three weeks.
“Water,” said Gran, “that ran out of shiny faucets when you turned them. And a bathroom right in the house, and ’lectric light——”
Pa said to Len, “Did you get her talking?”
“No, honest,” said Len. “She started off herself, about a red dress.”
“Easy,” said Gran. “All easy, and bright, and comfortable. That was the world. And then it was gone. So fast.”
Pa said, “Mother.”
She glanced up at him, sidelong, and her eyes were like two faded sparks, snapping and flaring. She said, “Flat-hat.”
“Now, Mother——”
“I wish I had it back,” said Gran. “I wish I had a red dress, and a teevee, and a nice white porcelain toilet, and all the other things. It was a good world! I wish it hadn’t ended.”
“But it did end,” said Pa. “And you are a foolish old woman to question the goodness of God.” He was talking less to her than to Len, and he was very angry. “Did any of those things help you to survive? Did they help the people of the cities? Did they?”
Gran turned her face away and would not answer.
Pa came down and stood in front of her. “You understand me, Mother. Answer me. Did they?”
Tears came into Gran’s eyes, and the fire died out of them. “I’m an old woman,” she said. “It isn’t right for you to yell at me that way.”
“Mother. Did those things help one single person to survive?”
She let her head fall forward and moved it slowly from side to side.
“No,” said Pa, “and I know because you told me how no food came in any more to the markets, and nothing would work on the farms because there was no power any more, and no fuel. And only those who had always lived without all the luxuries, and done for themselves with their own hands, and had no truck with the cities, came through without hurt and led us all in the path of peace and plenty and humility before God. And you dare to scoff at the Mennonites! Chocolate rabbits,” said Pa, and stamped his boots on the earth. “Chocolate rabbits! No wonder the world fell.”
He swung around to include Len i
n the circle of his wrath. “Haven’t you got any thankfulness in your hearts, either of you? Can’t you be grateful for a good harvest, and good health, and a warm house, and plenty to eat? What more does God have to give you to make you happy?”
The door opened again. Ma Colter’s face appeared, round and pink and full of reproof, framed in a tight white cap. “Elijah! Are you raising your voice to your mother, and on the Sabbath day?”
“I had provocation,” said Pa, and stood breathing hard through his nose for a minute or two. Then, more quietly, he said to Len, “Go to the barn.”
Len’s heart sank down into his knees. He began to shuffle away across the yard. Ma came clear out the door, onto the stoop.
“Elijah, the Sabbath day is no time——”
“It’s for the good of the boy’s soul,” said Pa, in the voice that meant no more argument. “Just leave this to me, please.”
Ma shook her head, but she went back inside. Pa walked behind Len toward the open barn doors. Gran sat where she was on the steps.
“I don’t care,” she whispered. “Those things were good.” After a minute she repeated fiercely, “Good, good, good! ” Tears ran slowly down her cheeks and dropped onto the bosom of her drab homespun dress.
Inside the barn, warm and shadowy and sweet with the stored hay, Pa took the length of harness strap down from its nail on the wall, and Len took off his jacket. He waited, but Pa stood there looking at him and frowning, drawing the supple leather through his fingers. Finally he said, “No, that’s not the way,” and hung the strap back on the wall.
“Aren’t you going to lick me?” Len whispered.
“Not for your grandmother’s foolishness. She’s very old, Len, and the very old are like children. Also, she lived through terrible years and worked hard and uncomplainingly for a long lifetime—perhaps I shouldn’t blame her too much for thinking of the easeful things she had in her childhood. And I suppose it’s not in the nature of a human boy not to listen to it.”
He turned away, walking up and down by the stanchions, and when he stopped he kept his face turned from Len.
He said, “You saw a man die. That’s your trouble, isn’t it, and the cause of all these questions?”
“Yes, Pa. I just can’t forget it.”
“Don’t forget it,” said Pa with sudden forcefulness. “Since you saw it, remember it always. That man chose a certain path, and it led him to a certain end. The way of the transgressor has always been hard, Len. It’ll never be easy.”
“I know,” said Len. “But just because he came from a place called Bartorstown——”
“Bartorstown is more than a place. I don’t know whether it exists or not, in the way that Piper’s Run exists, and if it does, I don’t know whether any of the things they say about it are true. Whether they are or not doesn’t matter. Men believe them. Bartorstown is a way of thought, Len. The trader was stoned to death because he chose that way.”
“The preaching man said he wanted to bring the cities back. Is Bartorstown a city, Pa? Do they have things there like Gran had when she was little?”
Pa turned and put his hands on Len’s shoulders. “Many and many is the time, Len, that my father beat me, here in this very place, for asking questions like that. He was a good man, but he was like your uncle David, quicker with the strap than he was with his tongue. I heard all the stories, from Mother and from all the people of the generation before her who were still alive then and remembered even better than she did. And I used to think how fine all the luxuries must have been, and I wondered why they were so sinful. And Father told me I was headed straight for hell and strapped me until I could hardly stand. He’d lived through the Destruction himself, and the fear of God was stronger in his heart than it was in mine. That was bitter medicine, Len, but I’m not sure it didn’t save me. And if I must, I’ll treat you the same way, though I’d rather you didn’t make me.”
“I won’t, Pa,” Len said hastily.
“I hope not. Because you see, Len, it’s all so useless. Forget for a moment about whether it’s sinful or not, and just think about the solid facts. All those things that Gran talks about, the teevees, the cars, the railroads, and the airplanes, depended on the cities.” He frowned and made motions with his hands, trying to explain. “Concentration, Len. Organization. Like the works of a clock, every little piece depending on every other little piece to make it go. One man didn’t make an automobile, the way a good wainwright makes a wagon. It took thousands of men, all working together, and depending on thousands of other men in other places to make the fuel and the rubber so the automobiles could run when they did build them. It was the cities that made those things possible, Len, and when the cities went they were not possible any more. So we don’t have them. We never will have them.”
“Not ever, as long as the world?” asked Len, with a wistful sense of loss.
“That’s in the hands of the Lord,” said Pa. “But we won’t live as long as the world. Len, you’d as well hanker after the Pharaohs of Egypt as after the things that were lost in the Destruction.”
Len nodded, deep in thought. “I still don’t see, though, Pa—why did they have to kill the man?”
Pa sighed. “Men do what they believe to be right, or what they think is necessary to protect themselves. A terrible scourge came onto this world. Those of us who survived it have labored and fought and sweat for two generations to recover from it. Now we’re prosperous and at peace, and nobody wants that scourge to come back. When we find men who seem to carry the seeds of it, we take steps against them, according to our different ways. And some ways are violent.”
He handed Len his jacket. “Here, put it on. And then I want you to go into the fields and look around you, and think about what you see, and I want you to ask God for the greatest gift He has in His power to give, a contented heart. And I want you to think of the dead man as a sign that was given you to remind you of the wages of folly, which are just as bad as the wages of sin.”
Len pulled his jacket on. He nodded and smiled at Pa, loving him.
Pa said, “Just one more thing. Esau got you to go to that preaching.”
“I didn’t say——”
“You don’t have to, I know you and I know Esau. Now I’m going to tell you something, and you needn’t repeat it. Esau’s headstrong, and he makes it a point of pride to be off-ox and ornery about everything just to show he’s smart. He was born for trouble as the sparks fly upward, and I don’t want you tagging in after him like a pup at his heels. If it happens again, you’ll get such a thrashing as you never dreamed of. Understand?”
“Yes, sir !”
“Then get.”
Len did not make Pa tell him again. He went away across the dooryard. He passed the gate and the cart road and went out over the west field, moving sedately, with his head bowed and the thoughts going round and round in it until it ached.
Yesterday the men had cut corn here, the long sickle-shaped knives going whick-whick! against the rustling stalks, and the boys had shocked it. Len liked the harvest. Everybody got together and helped everybody else, and there was a certain excitement to it, a sense of final victory in the battle you had fought since planting time, a feeling of tucking in for the winter that was right and natural as the falling of the leaves and the preparations of the squirrels. Len scuffed along slowly between the stubble rows and the tall shocks, and he got to smelling the sun on the dry corn, and hearing the crows cawing somewhere in the edge of the woods, and then the colors of the trees began to get to him. Suddenly he realized that the whole countryside was ablaze and burning with beauty, and he walked on toward the woods, with his head up to see the crests of red and gold against the sky. There was a clump of sumacs at the edge of the field, so triumphantly scarlet that they made him blink. He stopped beside them and looked back.
From here he could see almost the whole farm, the neat pattern of the fields, the snake fences in good repair, the buildings tight and well-roofed with split shakes
, weathered to a silver gray that glistened in the sun. Sheep grazed in the upper pasture, and in the lower one were the cows, the harness mare, and the great thick-muscled draft team, all sleek and fat. The barn and the granary were full. The root cellar was full. The spring house was full, and in the home cellar there were crocks and jars, and flitches of bacon, and hams new from the smokehouse, and they had taken every bit of it from the earth with their own hands. A sense of warmth began to spread all through Len, and with it came a passionate, wordless love for this place that he was looking at, the fields and the house, the barn, the rough woods, the sky. He understood what Pa meant. It was good, and God was good. He understood what Pa meant about a contented heart. He prayed. When he was finished praying he turned and went in between the trees.
He had been this way so often that there had come to be a narrow path beaten through the brush. Len’s step was light now, and his head was high. His broad-brimmed hat caught in the low branches, and he took it off. Pretty soon he took off his jacket, too. The path joined a deer trail. Several times he bent to look at fresh signs, and when he crossed a clearing with long grass in it he could see the round crushed places where the deer had bedded.
In a few minutes he came into a long glade. The brush thinned, shaded out by the mighty maples that grew here. Len sat down and rolled up his jacket, and then he lay down on his back with the jacket under his head and looked up at the trees. The branches made a twisty pattern of black, holding a cloud of golden leaves, and above them the sky was so blue and deep and still that you felt you could drown in it. From time to time a little shower of leaves shook down, drifting slow and bright on the quiet air. Len meditated, but his thoughts had no shape to them any more. For the first time since the preaching, they were merely happy. After a while, with a feeling of absolute peacefulness, he dozed off. And then all at once he started bolt upright, his heart thumping and the sweat springing out on his skin.
American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-56 Page 44