Sabbath lay quiet and heavy on the town. Len stuck to the alleys, walking steadily along in the dust. He did not have any idea where he was going, but habit and the general configuration of Refuge took him down to the river and onto the docks where Dulinsky’s four big warehouses stood in line. He stopped there, uncertain and sullen, only just beginning to realize that things had changed very radically for him in the last few minutes.
The river ran green as bottle glass, and among the trees of its farther bank the roofs of Shadwell glimmered in the hot sun. There was a string of river craft tied up along the dock. The men who belonged to them were either in the town or asleep below deck. Nothing moved but the river, and the clouds, and a half-grown cat playing a game with itself on the foredeck of one of the barges. Off to his right, further down, was the big bare rectangle of the new warehouse site. The foundation stones were already laid. Timbers and planks were set by in neat piles, and there was a sawmill with a heap of pale yellow dust below it. Two men, widely separated, lounged inconspicuously in the shade. Len frowned. They looked to him almost as though they were on guard.
Perhaps they were. It was a stupid world, full of stupid people. Fearful people, thinking that if the least little thing was changed the whole sky would fall on them. Stupid world. He hated it. Amity lived in it, and somewhere in it Bartorstown was hidden so it could never be found, and life was dark and full of frustrations.
He was still brooding when Esau came onto the dock after him.
Esau was carrying his own belongings in a hasty bundle, and his face looked red and ugly. His lip was swollen on one side. He threw the bundle down and stood in front of Len and said, “I’ve got a couple of things to settle with you.”
Len breathed hard through his nose. He was not afraid of Esau, and he felt low and mean enough now that a fight would be a pleasant thing. He was not quite as tall as Esau but his shoulders were wider and thicker. He hunched them up and waited.
“What did you want to go and get us thrown out of there for?” Esau said.
“I left. It was you that got thrown out.”
“Fine cousin you are. What did you say to old man Taylor to make him do that?”
“Nothing. Didn’t have to.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“He doesn’t like you, that’s what I mean. Don’t come picking a fight with me unless you mean it, Esau.”
“Sore, aren’t you? Well go ahead and be sore, and I’ll tell you something. And you can tell the judge. Nobody can keep me away from Amity. I’ll see her anytime I want to, and do anything I want to with her, because she likes me whether her father does or not.”
“Big mouth,” said Len. “That’s all you got, a great big windy mouth.”
“I wouldn’t talk,” said Esau bitterly. “If it hadn’t been for you I’d never left home. I’d be there now, probably with the whole farm by now, and a wife and kids if I wanted them, instead of roaming to hell and gone around the country looking for——”
“Shut up,” said Len fiercely.
“All right, but you know what I mean, and not even knowing where I’m going to sleep tonight. Trouble, Len. That’s all you ever made for me, and now you made it with my girl.”
In utter indignation, Len said, “Esau, you’re a yellow-bellied liar.” And Esau hit him.
Len had got so mad that he had forgotten to be on guard, and the blow took him by surprise. It knocked his hat off and stung most painfully on his cheekbone. He sucked in a sharp breath and went for Esau. They scuffled and banged each other around on the dock for a minute or two and then suddenly Esau said, “Hold it, hold off, somebody’s coming and you know what you get for fighting on the Sabbath.”
They drew apart, breathing hard. Len picked up his hat, trying to look as though he had not been doing anything. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mike Dulinsky and two other men coming onto the dock.
“We’ll finish this later,” he whispered to Esau.
“Sure.”
They stood to one side. Dulinsky recognized them and smiled. He was a big powerful man, run slightly to fat around the middle. He had very bright eyes that seemed to see everything, including a lot that was out of sight, but they were cold eyes that never really warmed up even when they smiled. Len admired Mike Dulinsky. He respected him. But he did not particularly like him. The two men with him were Ames and Whinnery, both warehouse owners.
“Well,” said Dulinsky. “Down looking over the project?”
“Not exactly,” said Len. “We—uh—could we have permission to sleep in the office tonight? We—aren’t rooming at the Taylors’ any more.”
“Oh?” said Dulinsky, raising his eyebrows. Ames made a sardonic sound that was not quite a snicker.
Len ignored that. “Is it all right, sir?”
“Of course. Make yourselves at home. You have the key with you? Good. Come along, gentlemen.”
He went off with Whinnery and Ames. Len got his bag and Esau his bundle and they walked back a way up the dock to the office, a long two-story shed where the paper work of the warehouses was done. Len had the key to it because it was part of his job to open the office every morning. While he was fiddling with the lock, Esau looked back and said, “He’s got ’em down there showing ’em the foundations. They don’t look too happy.”
Len glanced back too. Dulinsky was waving his arms and talking animatedly, but Ames and Whinnery looked worried and shook their heads.
“He’ll have to do more than talk to convince them,” said Esau.
Len grunted and went inside. In a few minutes, after they had gone up into the loft to stow their belongings, they heard somebody come in. It was Dulinsky, and he was alone. He gave them a direct, hard stare and said, “Are you scared too? Are you going to run out on me?”
He did not give them time to answer, jerking his head toward the outside.
“They’re scared. They want more warehouses, too. They want Refuge to grow and make them rich, but they don’t want to take any of the risk. They want to see what happens to me first. The bastards. I’ve been trying to convince them that if we all work together—— Why did the judge make you leave his house? Was it on account of me?”
“Well,” said Len. “Yes.”
Esau looked surprised, but he did not say anything.
“I need you,” said Dulinsky. “I need all the men I can get. I hope you’ll stick with me, but I won’t try to hold you. If you’re worried, you better go now.”
“I don’t know about Len,” said Esau, grinning, “but I’m going to stay.” He was not thinking about warehouses.
Dulinsky looked at Len. Len flushed and looked at the floor. “I don’t know,” he said. “It isn’t that I’m afraid to stay, it’s just that maybe I want to leave Refuge and go on down-river.”
“I’ll get along,” said Dulinsky.
“I’m sure you will,” said Len, stubbornly, “but I want to think about it.”
“Stick with me,” said Dulinsky, “and get rich. My greatgreat-grandfather came here from Poland, and he never got rich because things were already built. But now they’re ready to be built again, and I’m going to get in on the ground floor. I know what the judge has been telling you. He’s a negativist. He’s afraid of believing in anything. I’m not. I believe in the greatness of this country, and I know that these outmoded shackles have got to be broken off if it’s ever to grow again. They won’t break themselves. Somebody, men like you and me, will have to get in there and do it.”
“Yes, sir,” said Len. “But I still want to think it over.”
Dulinsky studied him keenly, and then he smiled. “You don’t push easily, do you? Not a bad trait—— All right, go ahead and think.”
He left them. Len looked at Esau, but the mood was gone and he did not feel like fighting any more. He said, “I’m going for a walk.”
Esau shrugged, making no attempt to join him. Len walked slowly along the dock, thinking of the westbound boats, wondering if any of them we
re secretly bound for Bartorstown, wondering if it was any use to go blindly from place to place, wondering what to do. He reached the end of the dock and stepped off it, going on past the warehouse site. The two men watched him closely until he turned away.
He was perhaps not consciously thinking of going there, but a few minutes more of wandering about brought him to the edge of the traders’ compound, an area of hard-packed earth where the wagons were drawn up between long ranks of stable sheds and auction sheds and permanent shelter houses for the men. Len hung around here a good bit. Partly his work for Dulinsky required him to, but there was more to it than that. There was all the gossip and excitement of the roads, and sometimes there was even news of Piper’s Run, and there was the never-ending hope that someday he would hear the word he had been waiting all these years to hear. He never had. He had never even seen a familiar face, Hostetter’s face in particular, and that was odd because he knew that Hostetter went South in the winter season and therefore would have to cross the river somewhere. Len had been at all the ferry points, but Hostetter had not appeared. He had often wondered if Hostetter had gone back to Bartorstown, or if something had happened to him and he was dead.
The area was quiet now, for no business was done on the Sabbath, and the men were sitting and talking in the shade, or off somewhere to afternoon prayer meeting. Len knew most of them at least by sight, and they knew him. He joined them, glad of some talk to get his mind off his problems for a while. Some of them were New Mennonites. Len always felt shy around them, and a little unhappy, because they brought back to him many things he would just as soon not think about. He had never let on that he had once been one of them.
They talked awhile. The shadows got longer and a cool breeze came up off the river. There began to be a smell of wood smoke and cooking food, and it occurred to Len that he did not have any place to eat supper. He asked if he could stay.
“Of course, and welcome,” said a New Mennonite named Fisher. “Tell you what, Len, if you was to go and get some more wood off the big pile it would help.”
Len took the barrow and trundled off across to the edge of the compound where the great wood stack was. He had to pass along beside the stable sheds to do this. He filled the barrow with firewood and turned back again. When he reached a certain point beside the stables, the lines of wagons hid him from the shelter houses and the men, who were now all getting busy around the fires. It was dark inside the stables. A sweet warm smell of horse came out of them, and a sound of munching.
A voice came out of them, too. It said his name.
“Len Colter.”
Len stopped. It was a hushed and hurried voice, very sharp, insistent. He looked around, but he could not see anything.
“Don’t look for me unless you want to get us both in trouble,” said the voice. “Just listen. I have a message for you, from a friend. He says to tell you that you’ll never find what you’re looking for. He says go home to Piper’s Run and make your peace. He says——”
“Hostetter,” Len whispered. “Are you Hostetter?”
“—get out of Refuge. There will be a bath of fire, and you’ll get burned in it. Get out, Len. Go home. Now walk on, as though nothing had happened.”
Len started to walk. But he said, into the dark of the stables, in a whispered cry of wild triumph, “You know there’s only one place I want to go! If you want me to leave Refuge, you’ll have to take me there.”
And the voice answered, on a fading sigh, “Remember the night of the preaching. You may not always be saved.”
10
Two weeks later, the frame of the new warehouse had taken shape and men were starting to work on the roof. Len worked where he was told to, now on the construction gang and now in the office when the papers got stacked too high. He did this in a state of tense excitement, going through a lot of the motions automatically while his mind was on other things. He was like a man waiting for an explosion to happen.
He had moved his sleeping quarters to a hut in the traders’ section, leaving Esau in full possession of Dulinsky’s loft. He spent every spare minute there, quite forgetting Amity, forgetting everything but the hope that now, any minute, after all these years, things would break for him the way he wanted them to. He went over and over in his mind every word the voice had said. He heard them in his light uneasy sleep. And he would not have left Refuge and Dulinsky now for any reason under the sun.
He knew there was danger. He was beginning to feel it in the air and see it in the faces of some of the men who dropped by to watch as the timbers of the warehouse went up. There were too many strangers among them. The countryside around Refuge was populous and prosperous farm land, and only partly New Mennonite. On market days there were always farmers in town, and the country preachers and the storekeepers and the traders came and went, and it was obvious that the word was spreading around. Len knew he was taking a chance, and he knew that it was perhaps not fair to Hostetter or whoever it was that had risked giving him that warning. But he was fiercely determined not to go.
He was angry with Hostetter and the men of Bartorstown. It was perfectly apparent now that they must have known where he and Esau were ever since they left Piper’s Run. He could think of half a dozen times when a trader had happened along providentially to help them out of a bad spot, and he was sure now that these were not accidents. He was sure that the reason he had never met Hostetter was not accidental either. Hostetter had avoided them, and probably the men of Bartorstown had avoided using the facilities of whatever town the Colter boys happened to be in. That was why there had never been a clue. Hostetter knew perfectly well why they had run away, and he had spread the warning, and for all these years the men of Bartorstown had been deliberately keeping them from all hope of finding what they were after. And at the same time, the men of Bartorstown could easily, at any moment, have simply picked them up and taken them where they wanted to go. Len felt like a child deceived by its elders. He wanted to get his hands on Hostetter.
He had not said anything about this to Esau. He did not like Esau very well any more, and he was not sure of him. He figured there was plenty of time for talking later on, and in the meantime everybody, including Esau, was safer if he didn’t know.
Len hung around the traders, not asking any questions or saying anything, just there with his eyes and his ears wide open. But he did not see anybody he knew, and no secret voice spoke to him again. If it was Hostetter, he was still keeping out of sight.
He would hardly be able to do that in Refuge. Len decided that if it was Hostetter, he was staying across the river in Shadwell. And immediately Len felt a compulsion to go there. Perhaps, away from people who knew him too well, another contact might be made.
He didn’t have any excuse to go to Shadwell, but it did not take him long to think one up. One evening as he was helping Dulinsky close the office he said, “I’ve just been thinking it wouldn’t be a bad idea if I was to go over to Shadwell and see what they think about what you’re doing. After all, if you’re successful, it’ll mean the bread out of their mouths.”
“I know what they think,” said Dulinsky. He slammed a desk drawer shut and looked out the window at the dark framework of the building rising against the blue west. After a minute he said, “I saw Judge Taylor today.”
Len waited. He was fidgety and nervous all the time these days. It seemed hours before Dulinsky spoke again.
“He told me if I didn’t stop building that he and the town authorities would arrest me and everyone connected with me.”
“Do you think they will?”
“I reminded him that I hadn’t violated any local law. The Thirtieth Amendment is a Federal law, and he has no jurisdiction over that.”
“What did he say?”
Dulinsky shrugged. “Just what I expected. He’ll send immediately to the federal court in Maryland, asking for authority or a federal officer.”
“Oh well,” said Len, “that’ll take a while. And public opinion—�
��”
“Yes,” said Dulinsky. “Public opinion is the only hope I have. Taylor knows it. The elders know it. Old man Shadwell knows it. This thing isn’t going to wait for any federal judge to jog trot all the way from Maryland.”
“You’ll carry the rally tomorrow night,” said Len confidently. “Refuge is pretty sore about Shadwell taking business away from them. The people are behind you, most of them.”
Dulinsky grunted. “Maybe it wouldn’t be amiss if you did go to Shadwell. This rally is important. I’ll stand or fall by the way it goes, and if old man Shadwell is fixing to come over and make me some trouble, I want to know it. I’ll give you some business to do, so it won’t look too much as though you’re spying. Don’t ask any questions, just see what you can pick up. Oh, and don’t take Esau.”
Len hadn’t been intending to, but he asked, “Why not?”
“You’ve got wit enough to stay out of trouble. He hasn’t. Do you know where he spends his nights?”
“Why,” said Len, surprised, “right here, I suppose.”
“Maybe. I hope so. You take the morning ferry, Len, and come back on the afternoon. I want you here for the rally. I need every voice I can get shouting Hooray for Mike.”
“All right,” said Len. “Good night.”
He walked past the new warehouse on his way. It smelled fragrantly of new wood and had a satisfying hugeness. Len felt that it was good to build. For the moment he agreed passionately with Dulinsky.
A voice challenged him from the shadow of a pile of planks, and he said, “Hello, Harry, it’s me.” He walked on. There were four men on guard now. They carried big billets of wood in their hands, and fires burned all night to light the area. He understood that Mike Dulinsky came down there every so often to look around, as though he was too uneasy to sleep.
Len did not sleep well himself. He sat around talking for a while after supper and then rolled in, but he was thinking about tomorrow, thinking how he would walk through Shadwell to the traders’ compound and Hostetter would be there, and he would say something to him, something quiet but significant, and Hostetter would nod and say, “All right, it’s no use fighting you any longer, I’ll take you where you want to go.” He played that scene over and over in his mind, and all the time he knew it was only one of those things you dream up when you’re a child and haven’t learned yet about reality. Then he got to thinking about Dulinsky asking where Esau spent his nights, and sleep was out of the question. Len wanted to know too.
American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-56 Page 50