The Long Tomorrow

by Leigh Douglass Brackett

  Len said, “Fall Creek is just another town.”

  “You can’t get clear out of the world,” Hostetter said. “You can’t now and you couldn’t then. The houses are built of logs and slab because we had to build them out of what there was. Originally Fall Creek had electricity because it was the fashion then. Now it isn’t the fashion, so we don’t have it. Main thing is to look like everybody else, and then they don’t notice you.”

  “But a real secret place,” said Len. “A place nobody knew about.” He frowned, trying to puzzle it out. “A place you don’t dare let anybody know about now—and yet you just live openly in a town, with a road to it, and strangers come and go.”

  “When you start barring people out they know you have something to hide. Fall Creek was built first. It was built quite openly. What few people there were in this Godforsaken part of the country got used to it, got used to the trucks and a particular kind of plane going to and from it. It was only a mining town. Bartorstown was built later, behind the cover of Fall Creek, and nobody ever suspected it.”

  Len thought that over. Then he asked, “Didn’t they even guess it when all the new people started coming in?”

  “The world was full of refugees, and thousands of them headed for places just like this, as far back in the hills as they could get.”

  The shadow reached up and they went into it, and it was twilight. Lamps were being lit in the town. They were just lamps, such as were lit in Piper’s Run, or Refuge, or a thousand other towns. The road flattened out. The mules were tired, but they pricked their long ears forward and swung along fast, and the drivers yelled and made their whips crack like rifle shots. There was quite a crowd waiting for them under the cottonwoods, lanterns burning, women calling out to their men on the wagons, children running up and down and shouting. They did not look any different from any other people Len had seen in this part of the country. They wore the same kinds of clothes, and their manners were the same. Hostetter said again, as though he knew what Len was thinking, “You have to live in the world. You can’t get away from it.”

  Len said with a quiet bitterness, “There isn’t even as much here as we had in Piper’s Run. No farms, no food, nothing but rocks all around. Why do people stay here?”

  “They have a reason.”

  “It must be a mighty damn big one,” retorted Len, in a tone that said he did not believe in anything any more.

  Hostetter did not answer.

  The wagons stopped. The drivers got down and everybody that was riding got out, Esau lifting down a pale and rumpled Amity, who stared about her distrustfully. Boys and young men ran up and took the mules and led them away with the wagons. There were a terrible lot of strange faces, and after a while Len realized that they were nearly all staring at him and Esau. They hung together instinctively, close to Hostetter. Hostetter was craning his head around, yelling for Wepplo, and the old man came up grinning, with his arm around a girl. She was kind of a small girl, with dark hair and snapping dark eyes like Wepplo’s, and a face that was perhaps a little too sharp and determined. She wore a shirt with the neck open and the sleeves rolled up, and a skirt that came down just over the tops of a pair of soft high boots. She looked first at Amity, and then at Esau, and then at Len. She looked the longest at Len, and her eyes were not at all shy about meeting his.

  “My granddaughter,” said Wepplo, as though she was made of pure gold. “Joan. Mrs. Esau Colter, Mr. Esau Colter, Mr. Len Colter.”

  “Joan,” said Hostetter, “will you take Mrs. Colter with you for a while?”

  “Sure,” said Joan, rather sulkily. Amity hung onto Esau and started a protest, but Hostetter shut her up.

  “Nobody’s going to bite you. Go along, and Esau will come as soon as he can.”

  Amity went, reluctantly, leaning on the dark girl’s shoulder. She looked as big as a house, and not from the baby, either, which was still a long way off. The dark girl gave Len a sly laughing glance and then disappeared in the crowd. Hostetter nodded to Wepplo and hitched up his pants and said to Len and Esau, “All right, come on.”

  They followed him, and all along the way people stared at them and talked, not in an unfriendly way, but as though Len and Esau were of tremendous interest to them. Len said, “They don’t seem to be very used to strangers.”

  “Not strangers coming to live with them. Anyway, they’ve been hearing about you two for a long time. They’re curious.”

  “Hostetter’s boys,” said Len, and grinned for the first time in two days.

  Hostetter grinned too. He led them down a dark lane between scattered houses to where a fairly large frame house with a porch across its front was set on a slope, higher than the others and facing the mine. The clapboards were old and weathered, and the porch had been shored up underneath with logs.

  “This was built for the mine superintendent,” said Hostetter. “Sherman lives in it now.”

  “Sherman is the boss?” asked Esau.

  “Of a lot of things, yes. There’s Gutierrez and Erdmann, too. They have the say about other things.”

  “But Sherman let us come,” said Len.

  “He had to talk to the others. They all had to agree to that.”

  There was lamplight in the house. They went up the steps onto the porch, and the door opened before Hostetter could knock on it. A tall thin gray-haired woman with a pleasant face stood in the doorway, smiling and holding out her arms to Hostetter. He said, “Hello, Mary,” and she said, “Ed! Welcome home!” and kissed him on the cheek. “Well,” said Hostetter. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Eleven, no, twelve years,” said Mary. “It’s good to have you back.”

  She looked at Len and Esau.

  “This is Mary Sherman,” said Hostetter, as though he felt he had to explain, “an old friend. She used to play with my sister when we were all young—my sister’s dead now. Mary, these are the boys.”

  He introduced them. Mary Sherman smiled at them, half sadly, as though she had much she could say. But all she did say was, “Yes, they’re waiting for you. Come inside.”

  They stepped into the living room. The floor was bare and clean, the pine boards worn down to the grain. The furniture was old, most of it, and plain, of a kind Len had seen before that was made before the Destruction. There was a big table with a lamp on it, and three men were sitting around it. Two of them were about Hostetter’s age, and one was younger, perhaps forty or so. One of the older ones, a big square blocky man with a clean-shaven chin and light eyes, got up and shook hands with Hostetter. Then Hostetter shook hands with the others, and there was some talk. Len looked around uncomfortably and saw that Mary Sherman was already gone.

  “Come here,” said the big blocky man, and Len realized that he was being spoken to. He stepped into the circle of lamplight, close to the table. Esau came with him. The big man studied them. His eyes were the color of a winter sky just before snow, very keen and penetrating. The younger man sat beside him, leaning forward on the table. He had reddish hair and he wore spectacles and his face looked tired, not as though he needed to rest right now but as though it always looked tired. Behind him, in the shadows between the table and the big iron stove, was the third man, small, swarthy and bitter, with a neat pointed beard as white as linen. Len stared back at them, not knowing whether to be angry or awed or what, and beginning to sweat from sheer nervousness.

  The big man said abruptly, “I’m Sherman. This is Mr. Erdmann”—the younger man nodded—“and Mr. Gutierrez.” The small bitter man grunted. “I know you’re both Colters. But which is which?”

  They named themselves. Hostetter had withdrawn into the shadows, and Len heard him filling his pipe.

  Sherman said to Esau, “Then you’re the one with the—ah—expectant mother.”

  Esau started to explain, and Sherman stopped him. “I know all about it, and I’ve already given Hostetter his tongue-lashing for exceeding authority, so we can forget it, except for one thing. I want you to bring her he
re at exactly ten o’clock tomorrow morning. The minister will be here. Nobody needs to know about it. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Esau. Sherman was not threatening or unpleasant. He was just used to giving orders, and the answer was automatic.

  He looked from Esau to Len, and asked, “Why did you want to come here?”

  Len bent his head and did not say anything.

  “Go ahead,” said Hostetter. “Tell him.”

  “How can I?” said Len. “All right. We thought it would be a place where people were different, where they could think about things and talk about them without getting into trouble. Where there were machines and—oh, all the things there used to be.”

  Sherman smiled. It made him no longer a cold-eyed blocky man used to giving orders, but a human being who had lived a long time and learned not to fight it. Like Hostetter. Like Pa. Len recognized him, and suddenly he felt that he was not entirely among strangers.

  “You thought,” said Sherman, “that we’d have a city, just like the old ones, with everything in it.”

  “I guess so,” said Len, and he was not angry now, only regretful.

  “No,” said Sherman. “All we have is the first part of what you wanted.”

  Erdmann said, “And we’re looking for the second.”

  “Oh yes,” said Gutierrez. His voice was thin and bitter like the rest of him. “We have a cause. You’ll understand about that—you young men have a cause yourselves. Do you want me to tell them, Harry?”

  “Later,” Sherman said. He leaned forward and spoke to Len and Esau, and his eyes were hard again, and cold. “You have Hostetter to thank—”

  “Not entirely,” said Hostetter, breaking in. “You had your reason.”

  “A man can always find a reason to justify himself,” said Sherman cynically. “But all right, I admit I had one. However, most of it was Hostetter. Otherwise you would both be dead now, at the hands of the mob in that town—what’s the name—?”

  “Refuge,” said Len. “Yes, we know that.”

  “I’m not rubbing it in, merely getting the facts straight. We’ve done you a favor, and I won’t try to impress upon you what a very big favor it is because you won’t be able to understand until you’ve been here awhile. Then I won’t have to tell you. In the meantime, I’m going to ask you to repay it by doing as you’re told and not asking too many questions.”

  He paused. Erdmann cleared his throat nervously in the silence, and Gutierrez mattered, ”Give them the shaft, Harry. Swift and clean.”

  Sherman turned around. “Have you been drinking, Julio?”

  “No. But I will.”

  Sherman grunted. “Well, anyway, what he means is this. You’re not to leave Fall Creek. Don’t do anything that even looks like leaving. We have a great deal at stake here, more than you can possibly imagine as yet, and we can’t risk it.”

  He finished simply with three words. “You’ll be shot.”

  20

  There was another silence. Then Esau said, just a little too loudly, “We worked hard enough to get here, we’re not likely to run away.”

  “People change their minds. It was only fair to tell you.”

  Esau put his hands on the table and said, “Can I ask just one question?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Where the hell is Bartorstown?”

  Sherman leaned back in his chair and looked hard at Esau, frowning. “You know something, Colter? I wouldn’t answer that, now or later, if there was any way to keep it from you. You boys have made us quite a problem. When strangers come in here we keep our mouths shut and are careful, and that isn’t much of a worry because there are very few strangers and they don’t stay long. But you two are going to live here. Sooner or later, inevitably, you’re going to find out all about us. And yet you don’t really belong here. Your whole life, your training, your background, your conditioning, are totally at odds with everything we believe in.”

  He glanced at Len, harshly amused. “No use getting red around the ears, young fellow. I know you’re sincere. I know you’ve gone through hell to get here, which is more than a lot of us would do. But—tomorrow is another day. How are you going to feel then, or the day after?”

  “I should think you’re pretty safe,” said Len, “as long as you have plenty of bullets.”

  “Oh,” said Sherman. “That. Yes. Well, I suppose so. Anyway, we decided to take a chance on you, and so we haven’t any choice. So you’ll be told about Bartorstown. But not tonight.” He got up and shoved his hand unexpectedly at Len “Bear with me.”

  Len shook hands with his and smiled.

  Hostetter said, “I’ll see you, Harry.” He nodded to Len and Esau, and they went out again, into full dark and air that had a crisp edge of chill on it, and a lot of unfamiliar smells. They walked back through the town. Lamps were going on in every house, people were talking loud and laughing, and going from place to place in little groups. “There’s always a celebration,” said Hostetter. “Some of the men have been away a long time.”

  They wound up in a neat, solid log house that belonged to the Wepplos, the old man and his son and daughter-in-law, and the girl Joan. They ate dinner and a lot of people drifted in and out, saying hello to Hostetter and nipping out of a big jug that got to passing around. The girl Joan watched Len all evening, but she didn’t say much. Quite late, Gutierrez came in. He was dead drunk, and he stood looking down at Len so solemnly and for such a long time that Len asked him what he wanted.

  Gutierrez said, “I just wanted to see a man who wanted to come here when he didn’t have to.”

  He sighed and went away. Pretty soon Hostetter tapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, Lennie,” he said, “unless you want to sleep on Wepplo’s floor.”

  He seemed in a jovial frame of mind, as though coming home had not after all been as bad as he thought it would be. Len walked along beside him through the cold night. Fall Creek was quieter now, and the lamps were going out. He told Hostetter about Gutierrez.

  Hostetter said, “Poor Julio. He’s in a bad frame of mind.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s been working on this thing for three years. Actually, he’s been working on it most of his life, but this particular point of attack, I mean. Three years. And he’s just found out it’s no good. Clear the slate, try again. Only Julio’s beginning to think he isn’t going to live long enough.”

  “Long enough for what?”

  But Hostetter only said, “We’ll have to bunk in the bachelor’s shack. But that isn’t bad. Lots of company.”

  The bachelor’s shack turned out to be a long two-story frame building, part of the original construction of Fall Creek, with some later additions running out from it in clumsy wings. The room Hostetter led him into was at the back of one of these wings, with its own door and some stubby pine trees close by to scent the air and whisper when the breeze blew. They had brought their blanket rolls from Wepplo’s. Hostetter pitched his into one of the two bunks and sat down and began to take off his boots.

  “How do you like her?” he said.

  “Like who?” asked Len, spreading his blankets.

  “Joan Wepplo.”

  “How should I know? I hardly saw her.”

  Hostetter laughed. “You hardly took your eyes off her all evening.”

  “I’ve got better things to think about,” said Len angrily, “than some girl.”

  He rolled into the bunk. Hostetter blew out the candle, and a few minutes later he was snoring. Len lay wide awake, every surface of him exposed and sensitive and quivering, feeling and hearing. The bunk was a new shape. Everything was strange: the smells of earth and dust and pine needles and pine resin and walls and floor and cooking, the dim sounds of movement and of voices in the night, everything. And yet it was not strange, either. It was just another part of the world, another town, and no matter what Bartorstown turned out to be now it would not be anything at all that he had hoped for. He felt awful.
He felt so awful, and he was so angry with everything for being as it was that he kicked the wall, and then he felt so childish that he began to laugh. And in the middle of his laughing, the face of Joan Wepplo floated by, watching him with bright speculative eyes.

  When he woke up it was morning, and Hostetter had already been out somewhere because he was just coming back.

  “Got a clean shirt?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, get busy and put it on. Esau wants you to stand up with him.”

  Len muttered something under his breath about it being late in the day for formalities like that, but he washed and shaved and put on the clean shirt, and walked up with Hostetter to Sherman’s house. The village seemed quiet, with not many people around. He got the feeling that they were watching him from inside the windows of the houses, but he did not mention it.

  The wedding was short and plain. Amity was wearing a dress somebody must have loaned her. She looked smug. Esau did not look any way at all. He was just there. The minister was a young man and quite short, with an annoying habit of bobbing up and down on his toes as though he were trying all the time to stretch himself. Sherman and his wife and Hostetter stood in the background, watching. When it was over Mary Sherman put her arms around Amity, and Len shook hands rather stiffly with Esau, feeling silly. He was ready to go then, but Sherman said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like you to stay awhile. All of you.”

  They were in a small room. He crossed it and opened the door into the living room, and Len saw that there were seven or eight men inside.

  “Now there’s nothing to worry about,” Sherman said, and motioned them through the door. “Those three chairs right there at the table—that’s right. Sit down. I want you to talk to some people.”

  They sat down, close together in a row. Sherman sat next to them, with Hostetter just beyond him, and the other men crowded in until they were all clumped around the table. There were pens and paper on it, and some other things, and in the middle a big wicker basket with the lid down. Sherman named over the men, but Len could not remember them all, except for Erdmann and Gutierrez, whom he already knew. They were nearly all middle-aged, and keen-looking, as though they were used to some authority. They were all very polite to Amity.