Leigh Brackett - The Long Tomorrow

Len sat on the crushed dry shinnery, holding Joan’s hand. He did not notice after all when the wagon rolled in quietly at the other side of the crowd. But after a while he turned, and Hostetter was sitting there beside him.

The voice of the preacher rang out strong and strident. “A thousand years, my brethren. A thousand years. That’s what we was promised. And I tell you we are already in that blessed time, a-heading toward the Glory that was planned for them that keeps the way of righteousness. I tell you—”

Hostetter looked at Len in the flickering light of the wind-blown torches, and Len looked at him, but neither of them spoke.

Joan whispered something that might have been Hostetter’s name. She pulled her hand away from Len’s and started to scramble around behind him as though she wanted to get to Hostetter. Len caught her and pulled her down.

“Stay by me.”

“Let me go. Len—”

“Stay by me.”

She whimpered and was still. Her eyes sought Hostetter’s.

Len said to both of them, “Be quiet. I want to listen.”

“—and except you go as little children, the Book says, you won’t never get in. Because Heaven wasn’t made for the unrighteous. It wasn’t made for the scoffer and the unbeliever. No sir, my brothers and sisters! And you ain’t in the clear yet. Just because the Lord has chose to save you out from the Destruction, don’t you think for a minute—”

It was on another night, at another preaching, that I set my foot upon the path.

A man died that night. His name was Soames. He had a red beard, and they stoned him to death because he was from Bartorstown.

Let me listen. Let me think.

“—a thousand years!” cried the preacher, thumping on his dusty Book, stamping his boots on the dusty planks. “But you got to work for it! You can’t just set down and pay no heed! You can’t shirk your bounden duty to the Lord!”

Let it blow through me like a great wind. Let the words sound in my ears like trumpets.

I can speak. A power has been given me. I can kill another man as that boy killed Soames, and free myself.

I can speak again, and lead the way to Bartorstown as Burdette led his men to Refuge. Many will die, just as Dulinsky died. But Moloch will be thrown down.

Joan sits rigid beside me. The tears run on her cheeks. Hostetter sits on the other side. He must know what I am thinking. But he waits.

He was part of that other night. Part of Refuge. Part of Piper’s Run and Bartorstown, the one end and the other and in the middle.

Can I wipe it all away with his blood?

Hallelujah!

Confess your sins! Let your soul be cleansed of its burden of black guilt, so the Lord won’t burn you again with fire! Hallelujah!

“Well, Len?” said Hostetter.

They are screaming as they screamed that night. And what if I rise and confess my sin, offering this man as a sacrifice? I will not be cleansed of knowledge. Knowledge is not like sin. There is no mystical escape from it

And what if I throw down Moloch, with the bowels of fire and the head of brass?

The knowledge will still exist. Somewhere. In some book, some human brain, under some other mountain. What men have found once they will find again. Hostetter is rising to his feet. “You’re forgetting something I told you. You’re forgetting we’re fanatics too. You’re forgetting I can’t let you run loose.”

“Go ahead,” said Len. He stood up, too, dragging Joan with him by the hand. “Go ahead if you can.”

They looked at each other in the torchlight, while the crowd stamped and raised the dust and shouted hallelujah.

I have let it blow through me, and it is just a wind. I have let the words sound in my ears, and they are nothing but words, spoken by an ignorant man with a dusty beard. They do not stir me, they do not touch me. I am done with them, too.

I know now what lies across the land, the slow and heavy weight. They call it faith, but it is not faith. It is fear. The people have clapped a shelter over their heads, a necessity of ignorance, a passion of retreat, and they have called it God, and worshiped it. And it is as false as any Moloch. So false that men like Soames, men like Dulinsky, men like Esau and myself will overthrow it. And it will betray its worshipers, leaving them defenseless in the face of a tomorrow that will surely come. It may be a slow coming, and a long one, but come it will, and all their desperation will not stop it. Nothing will stop it.

“I ain’t going to speak, Ed. Now it’s up to you.”

Joan caught her breath and held it in a sob.

Hostetter looked at Len, his feet set wide apart, his big shoulders hunched, his face as grim and dark as iron under his broad hat. Now it was Len’s turn to wait.

If I die as Soames died, it will not matter except to me. This is important only because I am I, and Hostetter is Hostetter, and Joan is Joan, and we’re people and can’t help it. But for today, yesterday, tomorrow, it is not important. Time goes on without any of us. Only a belief, a state of mind, endures, and even that changes constantly, but underneath there are two kinds—the one that says, Here you must stop knowing, and the other which says, Learn.

Right or wrong, the fruit was eaten, and there can’t ever be a going back.

I have made my choice.

“What are you waiting for, Ed? If you’re going to do it, go on.”

Some of the tightness went out of the line of Hostetter’s shoulders. He said, “I guess neither one of us was built for murder.”

He bent his head, scowling, and then he lifted it again and gave Len a hard and blazing look.

“Well?”

The people cried and shouted and fell on their knees and sobbed.

“I still think,” said Len slowly, “that maybe it was the Devil let loose on the world a hundred years ago. And I still think maybe that’s one of Satan’s own limbs you’ve got there behind that wall.”

The preacher tossed his arms to the sky and writhed in an ecstasy of salvation.

“But I guess you’re right,” said Len. “I guess it makes better sense to try and chain the devil up than to try keeping the whole land tied down in the hopes he won’t notice it again.”

He looked at Hostetter. “You didn’t get me killed, so I guess you’ll have to let me come back.”

“The choice wasn’t entirely mine,” said Hostetter. He turned and walked away toward the wagons. Len followed him, with Joan stumbling at his side. And two men came out of the shadows to join them. Men that Len did not know, with deer rifles held in the crooks of their arms.

“I had to do more than talk for you this time,” said Hostetter.

“If you had denounced me, these boys might not have been able to save me from the crowd, but you wouldn’t have grown five minutes older.”

“I see,” said Len slowly. “You waited till now, till the preaching.”

“Yes.”

“And when you threatened me, you didn’t mean it. It was part of the test.”

Hostetter nodded. The men looked hard at Len, clicking the safeties back on their guns.

“I guess you were right, Ed,” one of them said. “But I sure wouldn’t have banked on it.”

“I’ve known him a long time,” said Hostetter. “I was a little worried, but not much.”

“Well,” said the man, “he’s all yours.” He did not sound as though he thought Hostetter had any prize. He nodded to the other man and they went away, Sherman’s executioners vanishing quietly into the night.

“Why did you bother, Ed?” asked Len. He hung his head, ashamed for all that he had done to this man. “I never made you anything but trouble.”

“I told you,” said Hostetter. “I always felt kind of responsible for the time you ran away.”