The Long Tomorrow

by Leigh Douglass Brackett

  The preacher, Brother Meyerhoff, came out of the side door of the church. Four of the deacons were with him, and a fifth man Len did not recognize until they came into the light of one of the bonfires that burned there. It was Judge Taylor. They passed on and Len lost them in the crowd, but he was sure they were heading for the speaker’s stand. He followed them, slowly. He was about halfway across the grassy open when Mike Dulinsky came from the other side and there was a general motion toward the center, and the crowd suddenly clotted up so he couldn’t get through it without pushing. There were half a dozen men with Dulinsky, carrying lanterns on long poles. They put these in brackets around the speaker’s pulpit, so that it stood up like a bright column in the darkness. Dulinsky climbed up and began to speak.

  Somebody pulled at Len’s sleeve, and he turned around. It was Esau, nodding to him to come away from the crowd.

  “There’s boats on the river,” Esau said, when they were out of earshot. “Coming this way. You warn him, Len, I got to get back to the docks.” He looked furtively around. “Is Amity here?”

  “I don’t know. The judge is.”

  “Oh Lord,” said Esau. “Listen, I got to go. If you see Amity, tell her I won’t be around for a while. She’ll understand.”

  “Will she? Anyway, I thought you were bragging how nobody could—”

  “Oh, shut up. You tell Dulinsky they’re coming. Watch yourself, Len. Don’t get in any more trouble than you can help.”

  “It looks to me,” said Len, “as though you’re the one in trouble. If I don’t see Amity, I’ll give the message to her father.”

  Esau swore and disappeared into the dark. Len began to edge his way through the crowd. They were standing quiet, listening, very grave and intent. Dulinsky was talking to them with a passionate sincerity. This was his one time, and he was giving everything he had to it.

  “—that was eighty years ago. No danger menaces us now. Why should we continue to live in the shadow of a fear for which there is no longer any cause?”

  A ripple of sound, half choked, half eager, ran across the crowd. Dulinsky gave it no time to die.

  “I’ll tell you why!” he shouted. “It’s because the New Mennonites climbed into the saddle and have hung onto the government ever since. They don’t like growth, they don’t like change. Their creed rejects them both, and so does their greed. Yes, I said greed! They’re farmers. They don’t want to see the trading centers like Refuge get rich and fat. They don’t want a competitive market, and above all they don’t want people like us pushing them out of their nice seats in Congress where they can make all the laws. So they forbid us to build a new warehouse when we need it. Now do you think that’s fair or right or godly? You there, Brother Meyerhoff, do you say the New Mennonites should tell us all how to live, or should our own Church of Holy Thankfulness have something to say about it too?”

  Brother Meyerhoff answered, “It hasn’t to do with them or with us. It has to do with you, Dulinsky, and you’re talking blasphemy!”

  A cry of voices, mostly female, seconded him. Len pushed himself to the foot of the stand. Dulinsky was leaning over, looking at Meyerhoff. There were beads of sweat on his forehead.

  “Blaspheming, am I?” he demanded. “You tell me where.”

  “You’ve been to church. You’ve read the Book and listened to the sermons. You know how the Almighty cleansed the land of cities, and bade His children that He saved to walk henceforth in the path of righteousness, to love the things of the spirit and not the things of the flesh! In the words of the prophet Nahum—”

  “I don’t want to build a city,” said Dulinsky. “I want to build a warehouse.”

  There was a nervous tittering, quickly hushed. Meyerhoff’s face was crimson above his beard. Len mounted the steps and spoke to Dulinsky, who nodded. Len climbed down again. He wanted to tell Dulinsky to lay off the New Mennonites, but he did not quite dare for fear of giving himself away.

  “Who,” asked Dulinsky of Meyerhoff, “has been telling you about cities?” He paused, and then he pointed and said, “Is it you, Judge Taylor?”

  In the glare of the lanterns, Len saw that Taylor’s face was oddly pale and strained. His voice, when he spoke, was quiet but it rang all over the square.

  “There is an amendment to the Constitution of the United States that forbids you to do this. No amount of talk will change that, Dulinsky.”

  “Ah,” said Dulinsky, in a satisfied voice as though he had made Judge Taylor fall into some trap, “that’s where you’re wrong. Talk is exactly what will change it. If enough people talk, and talk loud enough and long enough, that amendment will be changed so that a man can build a warehouse if he needs it to shelter flour or hides, or a house if he needs it to shelter his family.” He raised his voice in a sudden shout. “You think about that, you people! Your own kids have had to leave Refuge, and more and more of them will have to go, because they can’t build any more houses here when they get married. Am I right?”

  He got a response on that. Dulinsky grinned. Out on the dark edges of the crowd a man appeared, and then another and another, coming softly from the direction of the river. And Meyerhoff said, in a voice shaking with anger, “Always, in every age, the unbeliever has prepared the way for evil.”

  “Maybe,” said Dulinsky. He was looking out over Meyerhoff’s head, to the edges of the crowd. “And I’ll admit that I’m an unbeliever.” He glanced down at Len, giving him the warning, while the crowd gasped over that. Then he went on, fast and smooth.

  “I’m an unbeliever in poverty, in hunger, in misery. I don’t know anybody who does believe in those things, except the New Ishmaelites, but I can’t recall we ever thought much of them. In fact, we drove ’em out. I’m an unbeliever in taking a healthy growing child and strapping it down with bands so it won’t get any taller than somebody thinks it should. I—”

  Judge Taylor brushed past Len and mounted the steps. Dulinsky looked surprised and stopped in mid-sentence. Taylor gave him one burning glance and said, “A man can make anything he wants to out of words.” He turned to the crowd. “I’m going to give you a fact, and then we’ll see if Dulinsky can talk it away. If you break the township law it won’t affect Refuge alone. It will affect all the country around it. Now, the New Mennonites are peaceful folk and their creed forbids them from violence. They will proceed by due process of law, no matter how long it takes. But there are other sects in the countryside, and their beliefs are different. They look on it as their duty to take up the cudgel for the Lord.”

  He paused, and in the stillness Len could hear the breathing of the people.

  “You better think twice,” said Taylor, “before you provoke them into taking it up against you.”

  There was a burst of applause from the outer edge of the crowd. Dulinsky asked scornfully, “Who are you afraid of, Judge—the farmers or the Shadwell men?” He leaned out over the rail and beckoned. “Come on up here, you Shads, up where we can see you. You don’t have to be afraid, you’re brave men. I got a lad here who knows how brave you are. Len, climb up here a minute.”

  Len did as he was told, avoiding Judge Taylor’s eyes. Dulinsky pushed him to the rail.

  “Some of you know Len Colter. I sent him to Shadwell this morning on business. Tell us what kind of a welcome you gave him, you Shads, or are you ashamed?”

  The crowd began to mutter and turn around.

  “What’s the matter?” cried a deep, rough voice from the background. “Didn’t he like the taste of Shadwell mud?” The Shadwell men all laughed, and then another voice, one that Len remembered only too well, called to him, “Did you give them our message?”

  “Yes,” said Dulinsky. “Give the people that message, Len. Say it real loud, so they can all hear.”

  Judge Taylor said suddenly, under his breath, “You’ll regret this night.” He ran down the steps.

  Len glared out into the shadows. “They’re going to stop you,” he told the people of Refuge. “The Shads won’t l
et you grow. That’s why they’re here tonight.” His voice went up a notch until it cracked. “I don’t care who’s afraid of them,” he said. “I’m not.” He jumped over the rail onto the ground and charged into the crowd. All the helpless rage of the morning was back on him a hundredfold, and he did not care what anybody else did, or what happened to him. He butted his way through until a path was suddenly opened for him and the Shadwell men were standing in a bunch in front of him. Dulinsky’s voice was shouting something in which the names of Shadwell and Refuge were coupled together with the word fear. The crowd was beginning to move. A woman was screaming. The Shadwell men were pulling clubs out from under their coats. Len sprang like a panther. A great roar went up from the crowd, and the riot was on.

  Len bore his man down and pounded him. Legs churned around them and people fell over them. There was a lot of screaming now, boots flailed wildly.

  Somebody hit Len on the back of the head. The world turned upside down for a minute, and when it steadied again he was staggering along in the midst of a little boiling whirlpool of hard-breathing men, hanging onto somebody’s coat and punching blindly with his free hand. The whirlpool spun and heaved and threw him up against a shuttered window and passed on. He stayed there, confused and shaking his head, blowing blood out of his nose. The crowd had broken up. The lanterns still burned around the pulpit in the middle of the square, but there was nobody in it now, and nothing left on the grassy space around it but some hats and some gouged-out places in the turf. The fighting had moved off. He could hear it streaming away down the streets and alleys that led to the docks. He grunted and began to run after it. He was glad Pa could not see him now. He felt hot and queer inside, and he liked it. He wanted to fight some more.

  By the time he reached the docks the Shadwell men were piling into their boats as fast as they could, shaking their fists and cursing. The Refuge men were all lined up at the water’s edge, helping them. Three or four Shads were in the river and being hauled up into the boats. The air rang with hoots and catcalls. Mike Dulinsky was right in the middle of it, his dark coat torn and his hair on end, and a splatter of blood down his shirt from a cut mouth. “You going to stop us, are you?” he was yelling at the Shadwell men. “You going to tell Refuge what to do?”

  The men on either side of Dulinsky caught him suddenly and hoisted him up onto their shoulders and cheered him. The Shadwell men pulled slowly and sullenly out into the dark river. When they were out of sight the crowd turned, still carrying Dulinsky and cheering, to where the fires burned around the framework of the warehouse. They marched round and round, and the guards cheered too. Len watched them, feeling dizzy but triumphant. Then, looking around, he saw a blaze of light in the direction of the traders’ compound. He stared at it, frowning, and in the intervals of the noise behind him he could hear the distant voices of men and the whickering of horses. He began to walk toward the compound.

  Lanterns and torches burned all around to give light. The men were bringing their teams out of the stables and harnessing them, and going over their gear, and getting the wagons ready to go. Len watched a minute or two, and all the feeling of triumph and excitement left him. He felt tired, and his nose hurt.

  He saw Fisher and went up to him, standing by the head of the team while Fisher worked.

  “Why is everybody going?” he asked.

  Fisher gave him a long, stern look from under the brim of his broad hat.

  “The farmers went out of here primed for trouble,” he said. “They’ll bring it, and we don’t aim to wait.”

  He made sure his reins were clear and climbed up onto the seat. Len stood aside, and Fisher looked down at him, in something the same way Pa had looked so long ago.

  “I thought better of you, Len Colter,” Fisher said. “But them that picks up a burning brand will get burned by it. The Lord have mercy on you!”

  He shook the reins and shouted, and his wagon creaked and moved, and the other wagons rolled, and Len stood looking after them.

  12

  Two o’clock of a hot, still day. The men were laying up sheeting boards on the north and east sides of the warehouse, working in the shade. Refuge was quiet, so quiet that the sound of the hammers rang out like bells on a Sabbath morning. Most of the shipping was gone from the docks, and the wharves were empty.

  Esau said, “Do you think they’ll come?”

  “I don’t know.” Len looked searchingly at the distant roofs of Shadwell across the river, and up and down the wide stretch of water. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, Hostetter, a friendly face, anything to break the emptiness and the sense of waiting. All morning since before sunup, cartloads of women and children had been leaving the town, and there were some men with them too, and bundles of household goods.

  “They won’t do anything,” said Esau. “They wouldn’t dare.”

  His voice carried no conviction. Len glanced at him and saw that his face was drawn and nervous. They were standing at the door of the office, not doing anything, just feeling the heat and the quietness.

  Dulinsky had gone up into the town, and Len said, “I wish he’d come back.”

  “He’s got men out on the roads. If there’s any news, we’ll be the first to know it.”

  “Yes,” said Len. “I reckon.”

  The hammers rang sharp on the new yellow wood. Along the edges of the warehouse site, well back in the trees, men loitered and watched. There were more of them on the docks, restless, uneasy, gathering in little groups to talk and then breaking up again, moving back and forth. They kept looking sidelong at the office, and at Len and Esau standing in the doorway, and at the men working on the warehouse, but they did not come close or speak to them. Len did not like that. It made him feel alone and conspicuous, and it worried him because he could feel the doubt and uncertainty and apprehension of these men who were up against something new and did not quite know what to do about it. From time to time a jug of corn was pulled out of a hiding place behind a stump or a stack of barrels, passed around, and put away again, but only one or two of them were drunk.

  On impulse, Len stepped to the end of the dock and shouted to a group standing under a tree and talking. “What’s the news from town?”

  One of them shook his head. “Nothing yet.” He was one who had shouted the loudest for Dulinsky last night, but today his face showed no enthusiasm. Suddenly he stooped and picked up a stone and threw it at a little gang of boys who were skulking in the background watching hopefully for trouble. “Get out of here!” he yelled at them. “This ain’t no game for your amusement. Go on, git!”

  They went, but not far. Len returned to the doorway. It was very hot, very still. Esau shuffled, kicking his heel against the doorpost.

  “Len.”

  “What?”

  “What’ll we do if they do come?”

  “How do I know? Fight, I guess. See what happens. How do I know?”

  “Well, I know one thing,” said Esau defiantly. “I ain’t going to get my neck broke for Dulinsky. The hell with that.”

  “All right, you figure something.” There was an anger in Len now, a vague thing as yet, and undirected, but enough to make him irritable and impatient. Perhaps it was because he was afraid, and that made him angry. But he knew the way Esau’s thoughts were running, and he didn’t want to have to go through every step of it out loud.

  “You bet I’ll figure something,” said Esau. “You bet I will. It’s his warehouse, not mine. Let him fight for it. He sure wouldn’t risk his skin for anything of mine. I—”

  “Shut up,” said Len. “Look.”

  Judge Taylor was coming along the dock. Esau swore nervously and slid back through the door, out of sight. Len waited, conscious that the men were watching, as though what happened might have great significance.

  Taylor came up to the door and stopped. “Tell Mike I want to see him,” he said.

  Len answered, “He isn’t here.”

  The judge looked at him, deciding
whether or not he was lying. There was a pinched grayness about the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were curiously hard and bright.

  “I’ve come,” he said, “to offer Mike his last chance.”

  “He’s somewhere up in the town,” said Len. “Maybe you can find him there.”

  Taylor shook his head. “It’s the Lord’s will,” he said, and turned and walked away. At the corner of the office he stopped and spoke again. “I warned you, Len. But none are so blind as those who will not see.”

  “Wait,” said Len. He went up to the judge and looked into his eyes, and shivered. “You know something. What is it?”

  “The Lord’s will,” said the judge, “will be made clear to you when it is time.”

  Len reached out and caught him by the collar of his fine cloth coat and shook him. “Speak for yourself,” he said angrily. “The Lord must be sick to death of everybody hiding behind Him. Nothing happens in this town that you don’t have a finger in. What is it?”

  Some of the fey light went out of Taylor’s eyes. He looked down with a kind of shocked surprise at Len’s hands laid roughly upon him, and Len let him go.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I want to know.”

  “Yes,” said Judge Taylor quietly, “you want to know. That was always your trouble. Didn’t I tell you to find your limit before it was too late?”

  His face softened, became compassionate and full of a genuine sorrow. “It’s too bad, Len. I could have loved you like my own son.”

  “What have you done?” asked Len, moving a step closer, and the judge answered, “There will be no more cities. There is a law, and the law must be obeyed.”