“You’re scared,” said Len, in a slow, astonished voice. “I understand now, you’re scared. You think if a city grows up here the bombs will come again, and you’ll be under them. Did you tell the farmers you wouldn’t try to stop them if—”
“Hush,” said the judge, and held up his hand.
Len turned to listen. So did the men under the trees and along the docks. Esau came out from the doorway. And at the warehouse, one by one the hammers stopped.
There was a sound of singing.
It was faint, but that was only because it was still a long way off. It was deep, and sonorous, a masculine, sound, martial and somehow terrifying, coming with the solemn inevitability of a storm that does not stop or swerve. Len could not make out any words, but after he listened for a minute he knew what they were. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. “Good-by, Len,” said the judge, and was gone, walking with his head up high and his face white and stern in the heat of the July sun.
“We’ve got to go,” whispered Esau. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
He bolted back into the office, and Len could hear his feet clattering up the wooden stairs to the loft. Len hesitated a minute. Then he began to run, up toward the town, toward the distant, oncoming hymn. I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel… Glory! glory! Hallelujah, His truth is marching on. A tight, cold knot of fear cramped up in Len’s belly, and the air turned icy against his skin. The men along the docks and under the trees began to move too, straggling up by other ways, uncertainly at first and then faster, until they were running too. People had come out of their houses. Women, old men, children, listening, shouting at each other and at the men passing in the street, asking what it was, what was going to happen. Len came into the square, and a cart rushed past him so close that the foam from the horse’s bit spattered him. There was a whole family in it, the man whipping up the horse and yelling, the women screaming, the kids all clinging together and crying. There was a scattering of people in the square, some heading toward the main north road, some running around aimlessly, women asking if anybody had seen their husbands or their boys, asking, always asking, what is it, what’s happening? Len dodged through them and ran out on the north road.
Dulinsky was out on the edge of town, where the wide road ran between fields of wheat almost ripe for the cutting. There were perhaps two hundred men with him, armed with clubs and iron bars, with rifles and duck guns, with picks and frows. They looked grim and anxious. Dulinsky’s face, burned brick red by the sun, was only ruddy on the surface. Underneath it was white. He kept wiping his hands on his trousers, one after the other, shifting his grip on the heavy club he held. Len came up beside him. Dulinsky glanced at him but did not speak. His attention was northward, where a solid yellow-brown wall of dust advanced, spreading across the road and into the wheat on either side. The sound of the hymn came out of it, and a rhythmic thud and trample of feet, and across its leading edge there was a pricking here and there of brilliance, as though some bright thing of metal caught the sun.
“It’s our town,” said Len. “They’ve got no right in it. We can beat ’em.”
Dulinsky wiped his face on his shirt sleeve. He grunted. It might have been a question or a laugh. Len looked around at the Refuge men.
“They’ll fight,” he said.
“Will they?” said Dulinsky.
“They were all for you last night.”
“That was last night. This is now.”
The wall of dust rolled up, and it was full of men. It stopped, and the dust blew away or settled, but the men remained, standing in a great heavy solid blot across the road and in the trampled wheat. The spots of brilliance became scythe blades, and corn knives, and here and there a gun barrel. “Some of them must have walked all night,” said Dulinsky. “Look at ’em. Every goddamned dung-head farmer in three counties.” He wiped his face again and spoke to the men behind him. “Stand steady, boys. They’re not going to do anything.” He stepped forward, his expression lofty and impassive, his eyes darting hard little glances this way and that.
A man with white hair and a stern leathery face came forward to meet him. He carried a shotgun in the crook of his arm, and his walk was a farmer’s walk, heavy and rolling. But he stretched up his head and yelled out at the Refuge men waiting in the road, and there was something about his harsh strident voice that made Len remember the preaching man.
“Stand aside!” he shouted. “We don’t want killing, but we can if we have to, so stand aside, in the name of the Lord!”
“Wait a minute,” said Dulinsky. “Just a minute, now. This is our town. May I ask what business you think you have in it?”
The man looked at him and said, “We will have no cities in our midst.”
“Cities,” said Dulinsky. “Cities!” He laughed. “Now look here, sir. You’re Noah Burdette, aren’t you? I know you well by sight and reputation. You have quite a name as a preacher in the section around Twin Lakes.”
He stepped a little closer, speaking in an easier tone, as a man talks when he knows he is going to turn the argument his way.
“You’re a sincere and honest man, Mr. Burdette, and I realize that you’re acting on what you believe to be truthful information. So I know you’re going to be thankful to learn that your information is wrong, and there’s no need for any violence at all. I—”
“Violence,” said Burdette, “I don’t seek. But I don’t run from it, neither, when it’s in a good cause.” He looked Dunlinsky up and down, slowly, deliberately, with a face as hard as flint. “I know you, too, by sight and reputation, and you can save your wind. Are you going to stand aside?”
“Listen,” said Dulinsky, with a note of desperation coming into his voice. “You’ve been told that I’m trying to build a city here, and that’s crazy. I’m only trying to build a warehouse, and I’ve got as good a right to it as you’ve got to a new barn. You can’t come here and order me around any more than I could go to your farm and do it!”
“I’m here,” said Burdette.
Dulinsky glanced back over his shoulder. Len moved toward him, as though to say, I’m with you. And then Judge Taylor came up through the loose ranks of the Refuge men, saying, “Disperse, go to your homes, and stay there. No harm will come to you. Lay down your weapons and go home.”
They hesitated, looking at one another, looking at Dulinsky and the solid mass of the farmers. And Dulinsky said to the judge in weary scorn, “You sheepfaced coward. You were in on this.”
“You’ve done enough harm, Mike,” said the judge, very white and standing very stiff and straight. “No need to make everybody in Refuge suffer for it. Stand aside.”
Dulinsky glared at him and then at Burdette. “What are you going to do?”
“Cleanse the evil,” said Burdette slowly, “as the Book instructs us to, by burning it with fire.”
“In plain English,” said Dulinsky, “you’re going to burn my warehouses, and anything else that happens to take your fancy. The hell you are.” He turned around and shouted to the Refuge men. “Listen, you fools, do you think they’re going to stop at my warehouses? They’ll have the whole town flaming around your ears. Don’t you see this is the time, the act that’s going to decide how you live for decades yet to come? Are you going to be free men or a gang of belly-crawling slaves?”
His voice voice rose up to a howl. “Come on and fight, God damn you, fight!”
He spun around and rushed at Burdette, raising his club high in the air.
Without haste and without pity, Burdette swung the shotgun over and fired.
It made a very loud noise. Dulinsky stopped as though he had struck against a solid wall. He stood for a second or two, and then the club dropped out of his hands and he lowered his arms and folded them over his belly. His knees bent and he sank down onto them in the dust.
Len ran forward.
Dulinsky looked up at him with an expression of stunned surprise. His mouth opened. He
seemed to be trying to say something, but only blood came out between his lips. Then suddenly his face became blank and remote, like a window when somebody blows out the candle. He fell forward and was still.
“Mike,” said Judge Taylor. “Mike?” He looked at Burdette, his eyes widening. “What have you done?”
“Murderer,” said Len, and the word encompassed both Burdette and the judge. His voice broke, rising to a harsh scream. “Goddamned yellow-bellied murderer!” He put up his fists and ran toward Burdette, but the line of farmers had begun to move, as though the death of Dulinsky was a signal they had waited for, and Len was caught up in it as in the forefront of a wave. Burdette was gone, and facing him instead was a burly young farmer with a long neck and sloping shoulders and the kind of a mouth that had cried out the accusation against Soames. He carried a length of peeled wood like those used for fence posts, and he brought it down on Len’s head, laughing with a sort of cackling haste, his eyes gleaming with immense excitement. Len fell down. Boots clumped and kicked and stumbled over him and he curled up instinctively with his arms over his head and neck. It had become very dark and the Refuge men were far off behind a wavering veil, but he could see them going, melting away until the road was empty in front of the farmers and there was nothing between them and the town any more. They went on into Refuge in the hot afternoon, raising up the dust again as they moved, and when that settled there was only Len, and Dulinsky’s body lying three or four feet away from him, and Judge Taylor standing still in the middle of the road, just standing and looking at Dulinsky.
13
Len got slowly to his feet. His head hurt and he felt sick, but his compulsion to get away from there was so great that he forced himself to walk in spite of it. He went carefully around Dulinsky, avoiding the dark stains that were in the dust there, and he passed Judge Taylor. They did not speak, nor look at each other. Len went on toward Refuge until just a little bit before the square, where there was an apple orchard beside the road. He turned off among the trees, and when he felt that he was out of sight he sat down in the long grass and put his head between his knees and vomited. An icy coldness came over him, and a shaking. He waited until they passed, and then he got up again and went on, circling west through the trees.
There was a confused noise in the distance, toward the river. A puff of smoke rose in the clear air, and then another, and suddenly there was a dull booming roar and the whole river front seemed to burst into flame and the smoke poured up black and greasy and very thick, lighted on its underside by the kind of flames that come from stored-up barrels of pitch and lamp oil. The streets of the town were choked now with carts and horses and people running. Here and there somebody was helping carry a hurt man. Len avoided them, sticking to the back alleys and the peripheral fields. The smoke came blacker and heavier, rolling over the sky and blotting the sun to an ugly copper color. There were sparks in it now, and bits of flaming stuff tossed up. When he came to a high place, Len could see men on some of the roofs of the houses, and on the church and the town hall, making up bucket lines to wet the buildings down. He could see the waterfront, too. The new warehouse was burning, and the four others that had belonged to Dulinsky, but things had not stopped there. There was a scurrying, a tossing of weapons and a swaying back and forth of little knots of men, and all along the line of docks and warehouses new fires were springing up.
Across the river Shadwell watched but did not stir.
The stables of the traders’ compound were blazing when Len came by them. Sparks had fallen in the straw and the hay piles, and other sparks were smoldering on the roofs of the shelters. Len ran into the one he had been occupying and grabbed up his canvas bag and his blanket. When he came out the door he heard men coming and he fled hastily in among the trees at one side. The green leaves were already crisping, and the boughs were shaken by a strange unhealthy wind. A gang of farmers came up from the river. They paused at the edge of the compound, panting, staring about with bright hard eyes. The auction sheds were untouched. One of them, a huge red-bearded man with inflamed cheeks and a roaring voice, pointed to the sheds and bellowed something about moneychangers.
They made a hungry breathless sound like a pack of dogs after a coon and ran to the long line of sheds, smashing everything they could smash and piling it together and setting fire to it with a torch that one of them was carrying. Then they passed on, kicking over and trampling and breaking down anything in their path. Len thought of Judge Taylor, standing alone in the middle of the road, looking at Dulinsky’s body.
He would have a lot of things to look at when this day was over.
He went on cautiously between the trees, edging down to the river through a weird sulphurous twilight. The air was choked with the smells of burning, of pitch and wood and oil and hides. Ash fell like a gray and scorching snow. He could hear the fire bell ringing desperately up in the town, but he could not see much that way because of the smoke and the trees. He came out on the riverbank well below the site of the new warehouse and began to work his way back, looking for Esau.
The whole riverbank as far as he could see ahead of him was a solid mass of flame. The heat had driven everybody away and some of them had come downstream past the wreck of the new warehouse, men with their eyes white and staring in blackened faces, men with burned hands and torn clothing and a look of desperation. Three or four were bent over one who lay on the ground moaning and twisting, and there were others sitting down here and there, as though they had come that far and then quit. Most of them were just standing and watching. One man still carried a bucket half full of water.
Len did not see Esau, and he began to be afraid. He went up to several of the men and asked, but they only shook their heads or did not seem to hear him at all. Finally one of them, a clerk named Watts, who had come to the office frequently on business, said bitterly, “Don’t worry about him. He’s safe if anybody is.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean nobody’s seen him since the trouble began. He took off, him and the girl both.”
“Girl?” asked Len, startled out of his resentment at Watts’s tone.
“Judge Taylor’s girl, who else? And where were you, hiding in a hole somewhere? And where’s Dulinsky? I thought that son of a bitch was such a mighty fighter, to hear him tell it.”
“I was up on the north road,” said Len. “And Dulinsky’s dead. So I guess he fought harder than you did.”
A man standing nearby had turned around at the sound of Dulinsky’s name. Under the grime and the soot, the singed hair and the clothing burned partly off him, it was a minute before Len recognized Ames, the warehouse owner who had come down with Dulinsky and the other man that morning to look at the new warehouse and shake his head at Dulinsky’s plea for unity.
“Dead,” said Ames. “Dead, is he?”
“They shot him. A farmer named Burdette.”
“Dead,” said Ames. “I’m sorry. He should have lived. He should have lived long enough for a hanging.” He lifted his hands and shook them at the blaze and smoke. “Look what he’s done to us!”
“He wasn’t alone,” said Watts. “The Colter boys were in with him, from the beginning.”
“If you’d stuck by him this wouldn’t have happened,” Len said. “He asked you, Mr. Ames. You and Whinnery and the others. He asked the whole town. And what happened? You all danced around and cheered last night—yes, you too, Watts I saw you!—and then you all ran like rabbits at the first smell of trouble. There wasn’t a man of ’em up in the north road that lifted a hand. They left it up to Mike to get killed.”
Len’s voice had got loud and harsh without his realizing it. The men within earshot had closed in to listen.
“It seems to me,” said Ames, “that for a stranger, you take an almighty interest in what we do. Why? What makes you think it’s up to you to try and change things? I worked all my life to build up what I had, and then you come, and Dulinsky—”
He stopped. Tears were running
out of his eyes and his mouth trembled like a child’s.
“Yeah,” said Watts. “Why? Where did you come from? Who sent you to call us cowards because we don’t want to break the law?”
Len looked around. There were men on all sides of him now. Their faces were grotesque masks of burns and fury. The smoke rolled in a sooty cloud and the flames roared softly with a purring sound as they ate the wealth of Refuge. Up in the town the fire bell had stopped ringing.
Somebody spoke the name of Bartorstown, and Len began to laugh.
Watts reached out and cuffed him. “Funny, is it? All right, where did you come from?”
“Piper’s Run, born and raised.”
“Why’d you leave it? Why’d you come here to make trouble?”
“He’s lying,” said another man. “Sure he comes from Bartorstown. They want the cities back.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Ames, in a low, still voice. “He was in on it. He helped.” He turned around, his hands moving as though they groped for something. “There ought to be one piece of rope left unburned in Refuge.”
Instantly an eagerness came over the men. “Rope,” said somebody. “Yeah. We’ll find some.” And somebody else said, “Look for the other bastard. We’ll hang them both.” Some of them ran off down the riverbank, and the others began to beat the bushes looking for Esau. Watts and two others tackled Len and bore him down, savaging him with their fists and knees. Ames stood by and watched, looking alternately from Len to the fire.
The men came back. They had not found Esau, but they had found a rope, the mooring line of a skiff tied to the bank farther down. Watts and the others hauled Len to his feet. One of the men tied a clumsy slipknot in the rope and made a noose and put it over Len’s head. The rope was damp. It was old and soft and frayed, and it smelled of fish. Len kicked out violently and tore his arms free. They caught him again and hustled him toward the trees, a close-bunched confusion of men lurching along in short erratic bursts of motion with Len struggling in the center, kicking, clawing, banging them with his knees and elbows. And even so, he sensed dimly that it was not men he was fighting at all, but the whole vast soggy smothering continent from sea to sea and from north to south, millions of houses and people and fields and villages all sleeping comfortably and not wanting to be disturbed. The rope was cold and scratchy around his neck, and he was afraid, and he knew he couldn’t fight off the idea, the belief and way of life of which these men were only a tiny, tiny part.
The Long Tomorrow Page 12