The Long Tomorrow

He was perhaps not consciously thinking of going there, but a few minutes more of wandering about brought him to the edge of the traders’ compound, an area of hard-packed earth where the wagons were drawn up between long ranks of stable sheds and auction sheds and permanent shelter houses for the men. Len hung around here a good bit. Partly his work for Dulinsky required him to, but there was more to it than that. There was all the gossip and excitement of the roads, and sometimes there was even news of Piper’s Run, and there was the never-ending hope that someday he would hear the word he had been waiting all these years to hear. He never had. He had never even seen a familiar face, Hostetter’s face in particular and that was odd because he knew that Hostetter went South in the winter season and therefore would have to cross the river somewhere. Len had been at all the ferry points, but Hostetter had not appeared. He had often wondered if Hostetter had gone back to Bartorstown, or if something had happened to him and he was dead.

The area was quiet now, for no business was done on the Sabbath, and the men were sitting and talking in the shade, or off somewhere to afternoon prayer meeting. Len knew most of them at least by sight, and they knew him. He joined them, glad of some talk to get his mind off his problems for a while. Some of them were New Mennonites. Len always felt shy around them, and a little unhappy, because they brought back to him many things he would just as soon not think about. He had never let on that he had once been one of them.

They talked awhile. The shadows got longer and a cool breeze came up off the river. There began to be a smell of wood smoke and cooking food, and it occurred to Len that he did not have any place to eat supper. He asked if he could stay.

“Of course, and welcome,” said a New Mennonite named Fisher. “Tell you what, Len, if you was to go and get some more wood off the big pile it would help.”

Len took the barrow and trundled off across to the edge of the compound where the great wood stack was. He had to pass along beside the stable sheds to do this. He filled the barrow with firewood and turned back again. When he reached a certain point beside the stables, the lines of wagons hid him from the shelter houses and the men, who were now all getting busy around the fires. It was dark inside the stables. A sweet warm smell of horse came out of them, and a sound of munching.

A voice came out of them, too. It said his name.

“Len Colter.”

Len stopped. It was a hushed and hurried voice, very sharp, insistent. He looked around, but he could not see anything.

“Don’t look for me unless you want to get us both in trouble,” said the voice. “Just listen. I have a message for you, from a friend. He says to tell you that you’ll never find what you’re looking for. He says go home to Piper’s Run and make your peace. He says—”

“Hostetter,” Len whispered. “Are you Hostetter?”

“—get out of Refuge. There will be a bath of fire, and you’ll get burned in it. Get out, Len. Go home. Now walk on, as though nothing had happened.”

Len started to walk. But he said, into the dark of the stables, in a whispered cry of wild triumph, “You know there’s only one place I want to go! If you want me to leave Refuge, you’ll have to take me there.”

And the voice answered, on a fading sigh, “Remember the night of the preaching. You may not always be saved.”

10

Two weeks later, the frame of the new warehouse had taken shape and men were starting to work on the roof. Len worked where he was told to, now on the construction gang and now in the office when the papers got stacked too high. He did this in a state of tense excitement, going through a lot of the motions automatically while his mind was on other things. He was like a man waiting for an explosion to happen.

He had moved his sleeping quarters to a hut in the traders’ section, leaving Esau in full possession of Dulinsky’s loft. He spent every spare minute there, quite forgetting Amity, forgetting everything but the hope that now, any minute, after all these years, things would break for him the way he wanted them to. He went over and over in his mind every word the voice had said. He heard them in his light uneasy sleep. And he would not have left Refuge and Dulinsky now for any reason under the sun.