The Long Tomorrow

He swung around to include Len in the circle of his wrath. “Haven’t you got any thankfulness in your hearts, either of you? Can’t you be grateful for a good harvest, and good health, and a warm house, and plenty to eat? What more does God have to give you to make you happy?”

The door opened again. Ma Colter’s face appeared, round and pink and full of reproof, framed in a tight white cap. “Elijah! Are you raising your voice to your mother, and on the Sabbath day?”

“I had provocation,” said Pa, and stood breathing hard through his nose for a minute or two. Then, more quietly, he said to Len, “Go to the barn.”

Len’s heart sank down into his knees. He began to shuffle away across the yard. Ma came clear out the door, onto the stoop.

“Elijah, the Sabbath day is no time—”

“It’s for the good of the boy’s soul,” said Pa, in the voice that meant no more argument. “Just leave this to me, please.”

Ma shook her head, but she went back inside. Pa walked behind Len toward the open barn doors, Gran sat where she was on the steps.

“I don’t care,” she whispered. “Those things were good.” After a minute she repeated fiercely, “Good, good, !” Tears ran slowly down her cheeks and dropped onto the bosom of her drab homespun dress.

Inside the barn, warm and shadowy and sweet with the stored hay, Pa took the length of harness strap down from its nail on the wall, and Len took off his jacket. He waited, but Pa stood there looking at him and frowning, drawing the supple leather through his fingers. Finally he said, “No, that’s not the way,” and hung the strap back on the wall.

“Aren’t you going to lick me?” Len whispered.

“Not for your grandmother’s foolishness. She’s very old, Len, and the very old are like children. Also, she lived through terrible years and worked hard and uncomplainingly for a long lifetime—perhaps I shouldn’t blame her too much for thinking of the easeful things she had in her childhood. And I suppose it’s not in the nature of a human boy not to listen to it.”

He turned away, walking up and down by the stanchions, and when he stopped he kept his face turned from Len.

He said, “You saw a man die. That’s your trouble, isn’t it, and the cause of all these questions?”

“Yes, Pa. I just can’t forget it.”

“Don’t forget it,” said Pa with sudden forcefulness. “Since you saw it, remember it always. That man chose a certain path, and it led him to a certain end. The way of the transgressor has always been hard, Len. It’ll never be easy.”

“I know,” said Len. “But just because he came from a place called Bartorstown—”

“Bartorstown is more than a place. I don’t know whether it exists or not, in the way that Piper’s Run exists, and if it does, I don’t know whether any of the things they say about it are true. Whether they are or not doesn’t matter. Men believe them. Bartorstown is a way of thought, Len. The trader was stoned to death because he chose that way.”

“The preaching man said he wanted to bring the cities back. Is Bartorstown a city, Pa? Do they have things there like Gran had when she was little?”

Pa turned and put his hands on Len’s shoulders. “Many and many is the time, Len, that my father beat me, here in this very place, for asking questions like that. He was a good man, but he was like your uncle David, quicker with the strap than he was with his tongue. I heard all the stories, from Mother and from all the people of the generation before her who were still alive then and remembered even better than she did. And I used to think how fine all the luxuries must have been, and I wondered why they were so sinful. And Father told me I was headed straight for hell and strapped me until I could hardly stand. He’d lived through the Destruction himself, and the fear of God was stronger in his heart than it was in mine. That was bitter medicine, Len, but I’m not sure it didn’t save me. And if I must, I’ll treat you the same way, though I’d rather you didn’t make me.”

“I won’t, Pa,” Len said hastily.

“I hope not. Because you see, Len, it’s all so useless. Forget for a moment about whether it’s sinful or not, and just think about the solid facts. All those things that Gran talks about, the teevees, the cars, the railroads, and the airplanes, depended on the cities.” He frowned and made motions with his hands, trying to explain. “Concentration, Len. Organization. Like the works of a clock, every little piece depending on every other little piece to make it go. One man didn’t make an automobile, the way a good wainwright makes a wagon. It took thousands of men, all working together, and depending on thousands of other men in other places to make the fuel and the rubber so the automobiles could run when they did build them. It was the cities that made those things possible, Len, and when the cities went they were not possible any more. So we don’t have them. We never will have them.”

“Not ever, as long as the world?” asked Len, with a wistful sense of loss.