The Long Tomorrow

Mrs. Taylor went out, carrying two serving dishes into the kitchen. At the hall door, the judge seemed on the point of going to his study, as he always did immediately after the final grace. Esau turned suddenly and gave Len a covert glare of anger, and whispered, “Stay out of this.”

Amity walked toward the kitchen door, balancing the stack of cups in her two hands. Her yellow hair hung down her back in a thick braid. She wore a dress of gray cotton, high in the neck and long in the skirt, but it did not look on her at all the way a similar dress did on her mother. She had a wonderful way of walking. It made Len’s heart come up in his throat every time he saw it. He glared back at Esau and started after her with his own load of plates, making long strides to get ahead. And Judge Taylor said quietly from the hall door, “Len—come into the study when you’ve put those down. They can get along without you for one washing.”

Len stopped. He gave Taylor a startled and apprehensive look, and said, “Yes, sir.” Taylor nodded and left the room. Len glanced briefly at Esau, who was openly upset.

“What does he want?” asked Esau.

“How should I know?”

“Listen. Listen, have you been up to anything?”

Amity went slowly through the swinging door, with her skirt moving gracefully around her ankles. Len flushed.

“No more’n you have, Esau,” he said angrily. He went after Amity and put his pile of dishes down on the sink board. Amity began to roll her sleeves up. She said to her mother, “Len can’t help tonight. Daddy wants him.”

Reba Taylor turned from the stove, where a pot of wash water simmered over the coals. She had a mild, pleasant, rather vacuous face, and Len had marked her long ago as one of the incurious ones. Life had passed over her so easily.

“Dear, dear,” she said. “Surely you haven’t done anything wrong, Len?”

“I hope not, ma’am.”

“I’ll bet you,” said Amity, “that it’s about Mike Dulinsky and his warehouse.”

“. Dulinsky,” said Reba Taylor sharply, “and get about your dishes, young lady. They’re your concern. Run along, Len. Very likely the judge only wants to give you some advice, and you could do worse than listen to it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Len, and went out, across the dining room and into the hall and along that to the study, wondering all the way whether he had been seen kissing Amity in the garden, or whether it was about the Dulinsky business, or what. He had often gone to the judge’s study, and he had often talked with him, about books and the past and the future and sometimes even the present, but he had never been called in before.

The study door was open. Taylor said, “Come in, Len.” He was sitting behind his big desk in the angle of the windows. They faced the west, and the sky beyond them was dull black as though it had been wiped all over with soot. The trees looked sickly and colorless, and the river lay at one side like a strip of lead. Taylor had been sitting there looking out, with an unlighted candle and an unopened book beside him. He was rather a small man, with smooth cheeks and a high forehead. His hair and beard were always neatly trimmed, his linen was fresh every day, and his dark plain suit was cut from the finest cloth that came into the Refuge market. Len liked him. He had books and read them and encouraged other people to read them, and he was not afraid of knowledge, though he never made a parade of having any more than he needed in his profession. “Don’t call undue attention to yourself,” he often told Len, “and you will avoid a great deal of trouble.”

Now he told Len to come in and shut the door. “I’m afraid we’re going to have a really serious talk, and I wanted you here alone because I want you to be free to think and make your decisions without any—well, any other influences.”

“You don’t think much of Esau, do you?” asked Len, sitting down where the judge had set a chair from him.

“No,” said Taylor, “but that is neither here nor there. Except that I’ll say further that I do think a great deal of you. And now we’ll leave personalities alone. Len, you work for Mike Dulinsky.”

“Yes, sir,” said Len, and began to bristle up a bit, defensively. So that was it.

“Are you going to continue working for him?”

Len hesitated only a short second before he said again, “Yes, sir.”

Taylor thought, looking out at the black sky and the ugly dusk. A beautiful forked blaze ran down the clouds. Len counted slowly, and when he reached seven there was a roll of thunder. “It’s still quite a ways off,” he said.

“Yes, but we’ll catch it. When they come from that direction, we always do. You’ve done a lot of reading this last year, Len. Have you learned anything from it?”

Len ran his eye lovingly over the shelves. It was too dark to see titles, but he knew the books by their size and place and he had read an awful lot of them.

“I hope so,” he said.

“Then apply what you’ve learned. It isn’t any good to you shut up inside your head in a separate cupboard. Do you remember Socrates?”

“Yes.”