The Long Tomorrow

by Leigh Douglass Brackett

  The willows turned yellow, and then a pale, feathery green. There were some warm days that made you feel all lazy and slithering like a winter snake thawing in the sun. New calves bawled and staggered after their mothers, with more yet to come. The cows were nervous and troublesome, and Len began to get an idea. It was so simple he wondered why he had not thought of it before. After evening chores, when Brother James had closed the barn, Len sneaked back and opened the lower door. An hour later they were all out in the cold dark rounding up cows, and when they got them back inside and counted, two were missing. Pa muttered angrily about the stupid obstinacy of beasts that preferred to run away and calve under a bush, where if anything went wrong there was no help. He gave Len a lantern and told him to run the half mile down the road to Uncle David’s house and ask him and Esau to help. It was as easy as that.

  Len covered the half mile at a fast lope, his mind busy foreseeing possibilities and preparing for them with a deceitful ease that rather horrified him. He had been given much to laziness, but never to lying, and it was awful how fast he was learning. He tried to excuse himself by thinking that he hadn’t told anybody a direct falsehood. But it didn’t do any good. He was like one of those whited sepulchers they told about in the Bible, fair without and full of wickedness within. And off to his right as he ran the woods showed in the starlight, very black and strange.

  Uncle David’s kitchen was warm. It smelled of cabbage and steam and drying boots, and it was so clean that Len hesitated to step into it even after he had scraped his feet outside. There was a scrap of rag rug just inside the door and he stood on that, getting his message out between gasping for breath and trying to catch Esau’s eye without looking too transparently guilty. Uncle David grumbled and muttered, but he began to pull on his boots, and Aunt Marian got his jacket and a lantern. Len took a deep gulp of air.

  “I think I saw something white moving down in the west field,” he said. “Come on, Esau, let’s look!”

  And Esau came, with his hat on crooked and one arm still out of his jacket. They ran away together before Uncle David could think to stop them, stumbling and leaping over rough pasture where every hollow was full from recent rain, and then into the west field, angling all the time toward the woods, Len muffled the lantern under his coat so that Uncle David could not see from the road when they actually entered the woods, and he kept it hidden for some time afterward, knowing the way pretty well even in the dark, once he found his trail.

  “We can say later that the lantern went out,” he told Esau.

  “Sure,” said Esau, in a strange, tight voice. “Let’s hurry.”

  They hurried. Esau grabbed the lantern and ran recklessly on ahead. When they got to the place where the waters met he set the light down and got out the radio with hands that could hardly hold it for shaking. Len sat down on the log, his mouth wide open, his arms pressed to his aching sides. Piper’s Run was roaring like a real river, bankfull. It made a riffle and a swirl where it swept into the Pymatuning. The water rushed by foaming, very high now, almost level with the land where they were, dim and disturbed in the starlight, and the night was filled with the sound of it.

  Esau dropped the radio.

  Len jumped forward with a cry. Esau made a grab, fast and frantic. He caught the radio by the protruding spool. The spool came loose and the radio continued to fall, but slower now, swinging on the end of the wire that unreeled from Esau’s hand. It fell with a soft thump into the last year’s grass. Esau stood staring at it, and at the spool, and the wire between.

  “It’s broken,” he said. “It’s broken.”

  Len went down on his knees. “No it isn’t. Look here.” He moved the radio close to the lantern and pointed. “See those two little springs? The spool is meant to come out, and the wire unwinds—”

  Enormously excited, he turned the knob. This was something they had not known or tried before. He waited until the humming began. It sounded stronger than it had. He motioned Esau to move back, and he did, reeling out the wire, and the noise got stronger and stronger, and suddenly without warning a man’s voice was saying, very scratchy and far away, “—back out to civilization myself next fall, I hope. Anyway, the stuff’s on the river ready to load as soon as the—”

  The voice faded with a roar and a swoop. Like one half stunned, Esau reeled the wire out to the very end. And a faint, faint voice said, “Sherman wants to know if you’ve heard from Byers. He hasn’t con—”

  And that was all. The roaring and whistling and humming went on, so loud that they were afraid it might be heard all the way to where the others were out hunting cows. Once or twice they thought they could hear voices again behind it, but they could not make any more words come clear. Len turned the knob and Esau rolled the wire on the spool and clipped it back in place. They put the radio in the hollow tree, and picked up the lantern, and went away through the woods. They did not speak. They did not even look at each other. And in the dim light of the lantern their eyes were wide and brightly shining.

  6

  The cloud of dust showed first, far down the road. Then the top of the canvas tilt glinted white where the sun fell on it, shining strongly through the green trees. The tilt got higher and rounder, and the wagon began to show underneath it, and the team in front lengthened out from a confused dark blob of motion to six great bay horses stepping along as proud as emperors, their harness gleaming and the trace chain all ajingle.

  High up on the wagon seat, handling the long reins lightly, was Mr. Hostetter, his beard rippling in the wind and his hat and shoulders and the trouser legs over his shins all powdered brown from the road.

  Len said, “I’m scared.”

  “What have you got to be scared about?” said Esau. “You ain’t going.”

  “And maybe you’re not, either,” muttered Len, looking up at the log bridge as the wagon rocked and rattled over it. “I don’t think it’s that easy.”

  It was June, in full bright leaf. Len and Esau stood beside Piper’s Run just at the edge of the village, where the mill wheel hung slack in the water and kingfishers dropped like bolts of blue flame. The town square was less than a hundred yards away, and the whole township was in it, everybody who was not too young, too old, or too sick to be moved. There were friends and relatives up from Vernon and down from Williamsfield, and from Andover and Farmdale and Burghill and the lonely farmsteads across the Pennsylvania line that were nearer to Piper’s Run than to any village of their own. It was the strawberry festival, the first big social event of the summer, where people who had perhaps not seen each other since the first snow could get together and talk and pleasantly stuff themselves, sitting in the dappled sunshine under the elms.

  A crowd of boys had run out along the road to meet the wagon. They were running beside it now, shouting up to Mr. Hostetter. The girls, and the boys still too little to run, stood along the edges of the square and waved and called out, the girls in their bonnets and their long skirts blowing in the warm wind, the tiny boys exactly like their fathers in homespun and broad brown hats. Then everybody began to move, flowing across the square toward the wagon, which went slower and slower and finally stopped, the six great horses tossing their heads and snorting as though they had done a mighty thing to get that wagon there and were proud of it. Mr. Hostetter waved and smiled and a boy climbed up and put a dish of strawberries in his hand.

  Len and Esau stayed where they were, looking at Mr. Hostetter from a distance. Len felt a curious thrill go through him, partly of sheer guiltiness because of the stolen radio and partly of intimacy, almost of comradeship, because he knew a secret about Mr. Hostetter and was in a sense set apart himself. Somehow, though, he did not want to meet Mr. Hostetter’s eyes.

  “How are you going to do it?” he asked Esau.

  “I’ll find a way.”

  He was staring at the wagon with a fanatic intensity. Ever since that night when they had heard voices Esau had turned somehow strange and wild, not outside but inside, so that s
ometimes Len hardly knew him any more. I’m going there, he had said, meaning Bartorstown, and he had been like one possessed, waiting for Mr. Hostetter.

  Esau reached out and took Len by the arm, his grip painfully tight. “Won’t you come with me?”

  Len hung his head. He stood for a moment, quite still, and then he said, “No, I can’t.” He moved away from Esau. “Not now.”

  “Maybe next year. I’ll tell him about you.”

  “Maybe.”

  Esau started to say something more, but he could not seem to find any words for it. Len moved farther away. He started up the bank, slowly at first and then faster and faster until he was running, with the tears hot in his eyes and his own mind shouting at him, Coward, coward, he’s going to Bartorstown and you don’t dare!

  He did not look back again.

  Mr. Hostetter stayed three days in Piper’s Run. They were the longest, hardest days Len had ever lived through. Temptation kept telling him, You can still go. And then Conscience would point out Ma and Pa and home and duty and the wickedness of running away without a word. Esau had not given Uncle David and Aunt Mariah a second thought, but Len could not feel that way about Pa and Ma. He knew how Ma would cry, and how Pa would take the blame on himself that he hadn’t trained Len right somehow, and that was the biggest part of his cowardice. He didn’t want to be responsible for making them unhappy.

  There was a third voice in him, too. It lived way back of the others and it had no name. It was a voice he had never heard before, and it only said No—danger! whenever he thought of going with Esau to Mr. Hostetter. It spoke so loud and so firm without ever being asked that Len could not ignore it, and in fact when he tried to it became a physical restraint on him just like the reins on a horse, pulling him this way and that past a word or an action that might have been irretrievable. It was Len’s first active encounter with his own subconscious. He never forgot it.

  He moped and sulked and brooded around the farm, burdened with his secret, bobbling his chores and making excuses not to go into town when the family did, until Ma worried and dosed him heavily with physics and sassafras tea. And all the time his ears were stretched and quivering, waiting to hear hoofbeats on the road, waiting to hear Uncle David rush in saying that Esau was gone.

  On the evening of the third day he heard hoofbeats, coming fast. He was just helping Ma clear off the supper dishes, and the light was still in the sky, reddening toward the west. His nerves jerked taut with a painful snap. The dishes became slippery and enormous in his hands. The horse turned in to the door-yard with the cart rattling behind him, and after that a second horse and cart, and after that a third. Pa went to the door, and Len followed him, with a sickness settling in all his bones. One horse and cart for Uncle David he had expected. But three—

  Uncle David was there, all right. He sat in his own cart, and Esau was beside him, sitting still and as white as a sheet, and Mr. Harkness was on the other side of him. Mr. Hostetter was in the second cart with Mr. Nordholt, the schoolmaster, and Mr. Clute was driving. Mr. Fenway and Mr. Glasser were in the third.

  Uncle David got down. He motioned to Pa, who had gone out toward the carts. Mr. Hostetter joined them, and Mr. Nordholt, and Mr. Glasser. Esau sat where he was. His head was bent forward and he did not lift it. Mr. Harkness stared at Len, who had stayed in the doorway. His look was outraged, accusing, and sad. Len met it for a fractional second and then dropped his own eyes. He felt very sick now and quite cold. He wanted to run away, but he knew it would not be any use.

  The men moved all together to Uncle David’s cart, and Uncle David said something to Esau. Esau continued to stare at his hands. He did not speak or nod, and Mr. Nordholt said, “He didn’t mean to tell, it just slipped out of him. But he did say it.”

  Pa turned and looked at Len and said, “Come here.”

  Len walked out, quite slowly. He would not lift his head to look at Pa, not because of the anger in Pa’s face, but because of the sorrow that was there.

  “Len.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is it true that you have a radio?”

  “I—yes, sir.”

  “Did you read certain books that were stolen? Did you know where they were, and didn’t tell Mr. Nordholt? Did you know what Esau was planning to do, and didn’t tell me or Uncle David?”

  Len sighed. With a gesture curiously like that of an old and tired man, he raised his head and threw his shoulders back. “Yes,” he said. “I did all those things.”

  Pa’s face, in the deepening dusk, had become like something cut from a gray rock.

  “Very well,” he said. “Very well.”

  “You can ride with us,” said Mr. Glasser, “Save harnessing up, just for that little distance.”

  “All right,” said Pa. And he gave Len a cold and blazing glance that meant Come with me.

  Len followed him. He passed close to Mr. Hostetter, who was standing with his head half turned away, and under his hatbrim Len thought he saw an expression of pity and regret. But they passed without speaking, and Esau never stirred. Pa climbed up into the cart with Mr. Fenway, and Mr. Glasser climbed in after him.

  “Up behind,” said Pa.

  Len climbed slowly onto the shelf, and every movement was an effort. He clung there, and the carts jolted off in line, out of the dooryard and across the road and out around the margin of the west field, toward the woods.

  They stopped about where the sumacs grew. They all got out and the men spoke together. And then Pa turned and said, “Len.” He pointed at the woods. “Show us.”

  Len did not move.

  Esau spoke for the first time. “You might as well,” he said, in a voice heavy with hate. “They’ll get it anyway if they have to burn the whole woods.”

  Uncle David cuffed him backhanded across the mouth and called him something angry and Biblical.

  Pa said again, “Len.”

  Len yielded. He led the way into the woods. And the path looked just the same, and so did the trees, and the tiny stream, and the familiar clumps of thorn apple. But something was changed. Something was gone. They were only trees now, and thorn apples, and the rocky bed of a trickle of water. They no longer belonged to him. They were withdrawn and unwelcoming, and their outlines were harsh, and the big boots of the men crushed down the ferns.

  They came out on the point at the meeting of the waters. Len stopped beside the hollow tree.

  “Here,” he said. His voice sounded unfamiliar in his ears. The bright glow of the west fell clearly here ‘t along the open stream, painting the leaves and grass a lurid green, tinting the brown Pymatuning with copper. Crows flapped homeward overhead, dropping their jeering laughter as they went. It seemed to Len that the laughter was meant for him.

  Uncle David gave Esau a rough, hard shove. “Get it out.”

  Esau stood for a minute beside the tree. Len watched him, and the look that was on him in the sunset light. The crows went away, and it was very still.

  Esau reached into the hollow of the tree. He brought out the books, wrapped in canvas, and handed them to Mr. Nordholt.

  “They’re not hurt,” he said.

  Mr. Nordholt unwrapped them, moving out from under the tree so he could see better. “No,” he said. “No, they’re not hurt.” He wrapped them again and held them against his chest.

  Esau lifted out the radio.

  He stood holding it, and the tears came up into his eyes and glittered there but did not fall. A hesitancy had come over the men. Mr. Hostetter said, as though he had said it before but was afraid it might not have been understood, “Soames had asked me if anything happened to take his personal belongings and give them to his wife. He had shown me the chest they were in. The people at the preaching were about to loot his wagon. I did not stop to see what was in the chest.”

  Uncle David stepped forward. He knocked the radio from Esau’s hands, driving his fist downward like a hammer. It lay on the turf, and he stamped on it, over and over with his heavy boot. The
n he picked up what was left of it and flung it out into the Pymatuning.

  Esau said, “I hate you.” He looked at them all. “You can’t stop me. Someday I’ll go to Bartorstown.”

  Uncle David hit him again, and spun him around, and started to march him back through the woods. Over his shoulder he said, “I’ll see to him.”

  The rest followed in a straggling line, after Mr. Harkness poked his hand around in the hollow of the tree to make sure nothing more was in there. And Mr. Hostetter said,

  “I wish my wagon to be searched.”

  Mr. Harkness said, “We’ve known you a long time, Ed. I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

  “No, I demand it,” said Hostetter, speaking so that everyone could hear. “This boy has made an accusation that I can’t let pass. I want my wagon searched from top to bottom, so that there can be no doubt as to whether I possess anything I should not have. Suspicion once started is hard to kill, and news travels. I wouldn’t want other people to think of me what they thought of Soames.”

  A shiver ran through Len. He realized suddenly that Hostetter was making an explanation and an apology.

  He also understood that Esau had made a fatal mistake.

  It seemed a long way back across the west field. This time the carts did not enter the farmyard. They stopped in the road and Len and Pa got down, and the others shifted around so that Esau and Uncle David were alone in their own cart. Then Mr. Harkness said, “We will want to see the boys tomorrow.” His voice was ominously quiet. He drove away toward the village, with the second cart behind him. Uncle David started the other way, toward home.