The Long Tomorrow

Esau’s hand withdrew from Len’s shirt and went back to stroke the smooth wooden surface of the box. At this close range Len could see that it had worn places on it around the knobs, made by the rubbing of fingers, and that one corner was chipped. These intimate things made it suddenly real. Someone had owned it and used it for a long time.

“I stole it,” Esau said. “It belonged to Soames, the trader.”

The familiar nerve tightened and twanged in Len’s middle. He grew back a little and looked up at Esau and then all around, as though he expected stones to come flying at them out of the thorn-apple clump.

“How did get it?” he asked, unconsciously dropping his voice.

“You remember when Mr. Hostetter put us in the wagon, he went to get something?”

“Yes, he got a box out of Soames’s wagon—oh!”

“It was in the box. There was some other stuff, too, books I think, and little things, but it was dark and I didn’t dare make any noise. I could that this was something different, like the old things Gran talks about. I hid it in my shirt.”

Len shook his head, more in amazement than reproach. “And all the time we thought you were fainted. What made you do it, Esau? I mean, how did you know there was anything in the box?”

“Well, Soames was from Bartorstown, wasn’t he?”

“That’s what they said at the preaching. But—”

Len broke off short as a corollary truth dawned on him, shining with a great light. He looked at the radio. “He was from Bartorstown. And there is a Bartorstown. It’s real.”

“When I saw Hostetter coming back with that box, I just had to look inside it. Coins or anything like that I wouldn’t touch, but this—” Esau caressed the radio, turning it gently in his hands. “Look at those knobs, and the way this part here is done. You couldn’t do that by hand in any village smithy, Len. It must have been machined. The way it’s all put together, and inside—” He squinted in through the grilled openings, trying to catch the light so it would reflect on what was beyond them. “Inside there’s the strangest things.” He put it down again. “I didn’t know what it was at first. I only felt what it was like. I had to have it.”

Len got up slowly. He walked over to the edge of the bank and looked down at the clear brown water, low and slack and half covered over with red and gold leaves. Esau said nervously, “What’s the matter? If you think you’re going to tell, I’ll say you stole it with me. I’ll say—”

“I ain’t going to tell,” said Len angrily. “You’ve had the thing all this time and never told me, and I can keep a secret as good as you.”

Esau said, “I was afraid to. You’re young, Lennie, and used to minding your pa.” He added with some truth, “Anyway, we’ve hardly seen each other since the preaching.”

“It don’t matter,” Len said. It did matter, of course, and he felt hurt and indignant that Esau had not trusted him, but he was not going to let Esau know that. “I was just thinking.”

“What?”

“Well, Mr. Hostetter knew Soames. He went to the preaching to try and help him, and then he took the box out of Soames’s wagon. Maybe—”

“Yes,” said Esau. “I thought of that. Maybe Mr. Hostetter is from Bartorstown, too, and not from Pennsylvania at all.”

Great vistas of terrifying and wonderful possibility were opened up in Len’s mind. He stood there on the bank of the Pymatuning, while the gold and scarlet leaves came down and the crows laughed their harsh derisive laughter, and the horizons widened and shone around him until he was dizzy with them. Then he remembered why he was here, or rather why it was that Pa had sent him into the fields and woods to meditate, and how he had made peace with God and the world just such a little time before, and how good it had felt. And now it was all gone again.

He turned around. “Can you hear voices with it?”

“I haven’t yet,” said Esau. “But I’m going to keep on till I do.”

They tried that afternoon, cautiously turning one knob and then another. Esau had turned one too far, or Len would never have heard it. They had not the remotest idea how a radio worked or what the knobs and openings and the spool of thin wire were for. They could only experiment, and all they got was the now-familiar crackle and hiss and squeal. But even that was a thing of wonder. It was a sound never heard before, full of mystery and a sense of great unseen spaces, and it was made by a machine. They did not leave it until the sun was so low that they were afraid to stay any longer. Then Esau hid the radio carefully in a hollow tree, wrapping it first in a bit of canvas and making sure that the main knob was turned clear around till it clicked and there was no more sound, lest the hum and crackles should attract the attention of some chance hunter or fisherman.