The Long Tomorrow

“Murderers,” said Len. “Cowards. Bastards.” He cursed them until the words choked in his throat. “You should have seen them standing there across the road. And then Burdette shot him. He shot him just the way you’d shoot some vermin you found in the corn.”

“Yes,” said Hostetter slowly, “we’d have had you out of there sooner if you hadn’t gone up after Dulinsky. Poor devil. But I’m not surprised.”

“Couldn’t you have helped him?”

“Us? You mean Bartorstown?”

“He wanted the same things you want. Growth, progress, intelligence, a future. Couldn’t you have helped?”

There was an edge to Len’s voice, but Hostetter only took the pipe out of his mouth and asked quietly, “How?”

Len thought about that. After a while he said, “I suppose you couldn’t.”

“Not without an army. We don’t have an army, and if we did have we wouldn’t use it. It takes an almighty force to make people change their whole way of thinking and living. We had a force like that just yesterday as time goes for a nation, and we don’t want any more of them.”

“That’s what the judge was afraid of. Change. And he just stood there and watched Dulinsky die.” Len shook his head. “He died for nothing. That’s what he died for, .”

“No,” said Hostetter, “I wouldn’t say that. But it takes more than one Dulinsky. It takes a lot of them, one after the other, in different places—”

“And more Burdettes, and more burnings.”

“Yes. And someday one will come along at the right time, and the change will be made.”

“That’s a lot to look forward to.”

“That’s the way it is. And then all the Dulinskys will become martyrs to a great ideal. In the meantime, you’re disturbers of the peace. And damn it, Len, you know in a way they’re right. They’re comfortable and happy. Who are you—or any of us—to tell them it’s all got to be torn up and changed?”

Len turned and looked at Hostetter in the moonlight. “Is that why you just stand by and watch?”

Hostetter said, with just the faintest note of impatience in his voice, “I don’t think you understand about us yet. We’re not supermen. We’ve got all we can do just to stay alive, without trying to remake a country that doesn’t want to be remade.”

“But how can you say they’re right? Ignorant butchers like Burdette, hypocrites like the judge—”

“Honest men, Len, both of them. Yes, they are. Both of them got up this morning all fired up with nobility and good purpose and went and did the right as they saw it. There’s never been an act done since the beginning, from a kid stealing candy to a dictator committing genocide, that the person doing it didn’t think he was fully justified. That’s a mental trick called rationalizing, and it’s done the human race more harm than anything else you can name.”

“Burdette, maybe,” said Len. “He’s another one like the man at the preaching that night. But not the judge. He knew better.”

“Not at the time. That’s the hell of it. The doubts always come later, and they’re usually too late. Take yourself, Len. When you ran away from home, did you have any doubts about it? Did you say to yourself, I am now going to do an evil thing and make my parents very unhappy?”

Len looked down at the gleaming water for a long time without answering. Finally he said, in an oddly quiet voice, “How are they? Are they all right?”

“The last I heard they were fine. I didn’t go up this spring myself.”

“And Gran?”

“She died, a year ago last December.”

“Yes,” said Len. “She was terribly old.” It was strange how sad he felt about Gran, as though a part of his life had gone. Suddenly, with painful clarity, he saw her again sitting on the stoop in the sunlight, looking at the flaming October trees and talking about the red dress she had had so long ago, when the world was a different place.

He said, “Pa couldn’t ever quite make her shut up.”

Hostetter nodded. “My own grandmother was much the same way.”

Silence again. Len sat and watched the river, and the past lay heavy on him, and he did not want to go to Bartorstown. He wanted to go home.

“Your brother’s doing fine,” said Hostetter. “Has two boys of his own now.”

“That’s good.”

“Piper’s Run hasn’t changed much.”

“No,” said Len. “I reckon not.” And then he added, “Oh, shut up!”

Hostetter smiled.

“That’s the advantage I have over you. I’m going home. It’s been a long time.”

“Then you didn’t come from Pennsylvania at all.”

“My people did, originally. I was born in Bartorstown.”

An old anger rose and pricked at Len. “Listen,” he said, “you knew why we ran away. You must have known all along where we were and what we were doing.”

“I felt sort of responsible,” Hostetter admitted. “I kept tabs.”

“All right,” said Len, “why did you make us wait so long? You knew where we wanted to go.”

Hostetter said, “Do you remember Soames?”

“I’ll never forget him.”

“He trusted a boy.”

“But,” said Len, “I wouldn’t—” Then he remembered how Esau had put Hostetter in a bad place. “I guess I see what you mean.”