The Long Tomorrow

“Women, too,” said Esau.

Len hugged his knees tighter. “How do you know? You never been.”

“I heard.”

“Women,” whispered Len. He shut his eyes, and behind the lids there were pictures of wild preachings such as a New Mennonite never heard, of great smoking fires and vague frenzies and a figure, much resembling Ma in her bonnet and voluminous homespun skirts, lying on the ground and kicking like Baby Esther having a tantrum. Temptation came upon him, and he was lost.

He stood up, looking down at Esau. He said, “I’ll go.”

“Ah,” said Esau. He got up too. He held out his hand, and Len shook it. They nodded at each other and grinned. Len’s heart was pounding and he had a guilty feeling as though Pa stood right behind him listening to every word, but there was an exhilaration in this, too. There was a denial of authority, an assertion of self, a sense of being. He felt suddenly that he had grown several inches and broadened out, and that Esau’s eyes showed a new respect.

“When do we go?” he asked.

“After dark, late. You be ready. I’ll let you know.”

The wagons of the Colter brothers were drawn up side by side, so that would not be hard. Len nodded.

“I’ll pretend like I’m asleep, but I won’t be.”

“Better not,” said Esau. His grip tightened, enough to squeeze Len’s knuckles together so he’d remember. “Just don’t let on about this, Lennie.”

“Ow,” said Len, and stuck his lip out angrily. “What do you think I am, a baby?”

Esau grinned, lapsing into the easy comradeship that is becoming between men. “ ’Course not. That’s settled, then. Let’s go look over the horses again. I might want to give my dad some advice about that black mare he’s thinking of trading for.”

They walked together along the side of the horse barn. It was the biggest barn Len had ever seen, four or five times as long as the one at home. The old siding had been patched a good bit, and it was all weathered now to an even gray, but here and there where the original wood was projected you could still see a smudge of red paint. Len looked at it, and then he paused and looked around the fairground, screwing up his eyes so that everything danced and quivered.

“What you doing now?” demanded Esau impatiently.

“Trying to see.”

“Well, you can’t see with your eyes shut. Anyway, what do you mean, trying to see?”

“How the buildings looked when they were all painted like Gran said. Remember? When she was a little girl.”

“Yeah,” said Esau. “Some red, some white. They must have been something.” He squinted his eyes up too. The sheds and the buildings blurred, but remained unpainted.

“Anyway,” said Len stoutly, giving up, “I bet they never had a fair as big as this one before, ever.”

“What are you talking about?” Esau said. “Why, Gran said there was a million people here, and a million of those automobiles or cars or whatever you called them, all lined up in rows as far as you could see, with the sun just blazing on the shiny parts. A million of ’em!”

“Aw,” said Len, “there couldn’t be. Where’d they all have room to camp?”

“Dummy, they didn’t have to camp. Gran said they came here from Piper’s Run in less than an hour, and they went back the same day.”

“I know that’s what Gran said,” Len remarked thoughtfully. “But do you really believe it?”

“Sure I believe it!” Esau’s dark eyes snapped. “I wish I’d lived in those days. I’d have done things.”

“Like what?”

“Like driving one of those cars, fast. Like even flying maybe.”

“Esau!” said Len, deeply shocked. “Better not let your pa hear you say that.”

Esau flushed a little and muttered that he was not afraid, but he glanced around uneasily. They turned the corner of the barn. On the gable end, up above the door, there were four numbers made out of pieces of wood and nailed on. Len looked up at them. A one, a nine with a chunk gone out of the tail, a five, with the little front part missing, and a two. Esau said that was the year the barn was built, and that would be before even Gran was born. It made Len think of the meetinghouse in Piper’s Run—Gran still called it a church—that had a date on it too, hidden way down behind the lilac bushes. That one said 1842—before, Len thought, almost anybody was born. He shook his head, overcome with a sense of the ancientness of the world.