Leigh Brackett - The Long Tomorrow

“But how can you say they’re right? Ignorant butchers like Burdette, hypocrites like the judge—”

“Honest men, Len, both of them. Yes, they are. Both of them got up this morning all fired up with nobility and good purpose and went and did the right as they saw it. There’s never been an act done since the beginning, from a kid stealing candy to a dictator committing genocide, that the person doing it didn’t think he was fully justified. That’s a mental trick called rationalizing, and it’s done the human race more harm than anything else you can name.”

“Burdette, maybe,” said Len. “He’s another one like the man at the preaching that night. But not the judge. He knew better.”

“Not at the time. That’s the hell of it. The doubts always come later, and they’re usually too late. Take yourself, Len. When you ran away from home, did you have any doubts about it? Did you say to yourself, I am now going to do an evil thing and make my parents very unhappy?”

Len looked down at the gleaming water for a long time without answering. Finally he said, in an oddly quiet voice, “How are they? Are they all right?”

“The last I heard they were fine. I didn’t go up this spring myself.”

“And Gran?”

“She died, a year ago last December.”

“Yes,” said Len. “She was terribly old.” It was strange how sad he felt about Gran, as though a part of his life had gone. Suddenly, with painful clarity, he saw her again sitting on the stoop in the sunlight, looking at the flaming October trees and talking about the red dress she had had so long ago, when the world was a different place.

He said, “Pa couldn’t ever quite make her shut up.”

Hostetter nodded. “My own grandmother was much the same way.”

Silence again. Len sat and watched the river, and the past lay heavy on him, and he did not want to go to Bartorstown. He wanted to go home.

“Your brother’s doing fine,” said Hostetter. “Has two boys of his own now.”

“That’s good.”

“Piper’s Run hasn’t changed much.”

“No,” said Len. “I reckon not.” And then he added, “Oh, shut up!”

Hostetter smiled.

“That’s the advantage I have over you. I’m going home. It’s been a long time.”

“Then you didn’t come from Pennsylvania at all.”

“My people did, originally. I was born in Bartorstown.”

An old anger rose and pricked at Len. “Listen,” he said, “you knew why we ran away. You must have known all along where we were and what we were doing.”

“I felt sort of responsible,” Hostetter admitted. “I kept tabs.”

“All right,” said Len, “why did you make us wait so long? You knew where we wanted to go.”

Hostetter said, “Do you remember Soames?”

“I’ll never forget him.”

“He trusted a boy.”

“But,” said Len, “I wouldn’t—” Then he remembered how Esau had put Hostetter in a bad place. “I guess I see what you mean.”

“We’ve got one unbreakable law in Bartorstown. That law is Hands Off, and because of it we’ve been able to keep going all these years when the very name of Bartorstown is enough to hang you. Soames broke it. I’m breaking it now, but I got permission. And believe me, that was the feat of the century. For one solid week I talked myself hoarse to Sherman—”

“Sherman,” said Len, straightening up. “Yes, Sherman. Sherman wants to know if you’ve heard from Byers—”

“What the hell are you talking about?” asked Hostetter, staring.

“Over the radio,” said Len, and the old excitement came back on him like a stroke of summer lightning. “The voices talking that night I let the cows out of the barn and we went after them down to the creek, and Esau dropped the radio. The spool thing reeled out, and the voices came—Sherman wants to know. And something about the river. That’s why we went down to the Ohio.”

“Oh yes,” said Hostetter. “The radio. That was the start of the whole thing, wasn’t it? I owed Esau something for stealing it. I owed him for the blood I sweated when I found it was gone.” Hostetter shivered. “Christ. When I think how close he came to exposing me—I’d never have made it back alive, you know. Your own people would have told me to go and never show my face again, but the word would have spread. I had to throw Esau to the wolves, and I won’t say I was sorry. But it was too bad you got dragged into it.”

“I never blamed you. I told Esau it wasn’t going to be that easy.”

“Well, you can thank the farmers, because if it hadn’t been for them I’d never have talked Sherman into letting me pick you up. I told him you were sure to get it from one side or the other, and I didn’t want your blood on my conscience. He finally gave in, but I’ll tell you, Len, the next time somebody gives you a piece of good advice, you take it.”

Len rubbed his neck where the rope had scratched it. “Yes, sir. And thanks. I won’t forget what you did.”

Quite sternly, speaking as Pa had used to speak sometimes, Hostetter said, “Don’t. Not for me particularly, or for Sherman, but because of a lot of people and ideas that might just depend on your not forgetting.”

Len said slowly, “Are you afraid you can’t trust me?”

“It isn’t exactly a question of trust.”

“What is it, then?”

“You’re going to Bartorstown.”

Len frowned, trying to understand what he was getting at. “But that’s where I want to go. That’s why—all this happened.”

Hostetter pushed the flat-brimmed hat back from his forehead so that his face showed clear in the moonlight. His eyes rested shrewdly and steadily on Len.

“You’re going to Bartorstown,” he repeated. “You have a place all dreamed up inside your head, and you call it by that name, but that isn’t where you’re going. You’re going to the real Bartorstown, and it’s probably not going to be very much like the place in your head at all. You may not like it. You may come to have pretty strong feelings about it. And that’s why I say, don’t forget you owe us something.”

“Listen,” said Len. “Can you learn in Bartorstown? Can you read books and talk about things, and use machines, and really think?”

Hostetter nodded.

“Then I’ll like it there.” Len looked out at the dark still country slipping by in the night, the sleeping, murderous, hateful country. “I never want to see any of this again. Ever.”

“For my sake,” said Hostetter, “I hope you’ll fit in. I’m going to have trouble enough as it is, explaining the girl to Sherman. She wasn’t included. But I couldn’t see what else to do.”

“I was wondering about her,” Len said.

“Well, she’d come down there to Esau, to try and help him get away. She said she couldn’t go back to her parents. She said she was going to stay with Esau. And it seemed like she pretty well had to.”

“Why?” asked Len.

“Don’t you know?”

“No.”

“Best reason in the world,” said Hostetter. “She’s got his child.”

Len sat staring with his mouth open. Hostetter got up. And a man came out of the deckhouse and said to him, “Sam’s talking to Collins on the radio. Maybe you’d better come down, Ed.”

“Trouble?”

“Well, it seems like our friend we dumped in the water back there meant what he said. Collins says two towboats went by together just after moonrise. They didn’t have any tow, and they were chock full of men. One was from Refuge, the other from Shadwell.”

Hostetter scowled, knocking the ashes out of his pipe and crushing them carefully under his boots. He said to Len, “We asked Collins to keep watch, just in case. He’s got a shanty-boat and acts as a mobile post. Well, come on. This is all part of being a Bartorstown man. You might as well get used to it.”