The Long Tomorrow

He sat up cross-legged under the wagon bed, the blanket pulled around his shoulders. Esau had not come yet. Len stared across at Uncle David’s wagon, hoping maybe Esau had gone to sleep himself. It was a long way, and cold and dark, and they would get caught sure. Besides that, he had felt guilty all through supper, not wanting to look straight at Pa. It was the first time he had, deliberately and of choice, disobeyed his father, and he knew the guilt must show all over his face. But Pa hadn’t noticed it, and somehow that made Len feel worse instead of better. It meant Pa trusted him so much that he never bothered to look for it.

There was a stir in the shadows under Uncle David’s wagon, and it was Esau, coming quietly on all fours.

I’ll tell him, thought Len. I’ll say I won’t go.

Esau crept closer. He grinned, and his eyes shone bright in the glow of the banked-up fire. He put his head close to Len’s and whispered, “They’re all asleep. Roll your blanket up like you were still in it, just in case.”

I won’t go, thought Len. But the words never came out of his mouth. He rolled up his blanket and slid away after Esau, into the night. And right away, as soon as he was out of sight of the wagon, he was glad. The darkness was full of motion, of a going and a secret excitement, and he was going too. The taste of wickedness was sweet in his mouth, and the stars had never looked so bright.

They went carefully until they came to an open lane, and then they began to run. A high-wheeled cart raced by them, the horse stepping high and fast, and Esau panted, “Come on, come on!” He laughed, and Len laughed, running. In a few minutes they were out of the fairgrounds and on the main road, deep in dust from three rainless weeks. Dust hung in the air, roiled up by the passing wheels and roiled again before it could settle. A team of horses loomed up in it, huge and ghostly, shaking foam off their bits. They were pulling a wagon with an open tilt, and the man who drove them looked like a blacksmith, with thick arms and a short blond beard. There was a stout red-cheeked woman beside him. She had a rag tied over her head instead of a bonnet and her skirts blew out on the wind. From under the tied-up edge of the tilt there looked a row of little heads, all yellow as corn silk. Esau ran fast beside the wagon, shouting, with Len pounding along behind him. The man pulled down his horses and squinted at them. The woman looked too, and they both laughed.

“Lookit ’em,” the man said. “Little flat-hats. Where you goin’ without your mama, little flat-hats?”

“We’re going to the preaching,” Esau said, mad about the flat-hat and madder still about the little, but not mad enough to lose the chance of a lift. “May we ride with you?”

“Why not?” said the man, and laughed again. He said some stuff about Gentiles and Samaritans that Len did not quite understand, and some more about listening to a Word, and then he told them to get in, that they were late already. The horses had not stopped all this time, and Len and Esau were floundering in the roadside briers, keeping up. They scrambled in over the tailboard and lay gasping on the straw that was there, and the man yelled to the horses and they were off again, banging and bumping and the dust flying up through the cracks in the floor boards. The straw was dusty. There was a big dog in it, and seven kids, all staring at Len and Esau with round-eyed hostility. They stared back and then the oldest boy pointed and said, “Looka the funny hats.” They all laughed. Esau asked, “What’s it to you?” and the boy said, “This’s our wagon, that’s what’s it to me, and if you don’t like it you can get out.” They went on making fun of their clothes, and Len glowered, thinking that they didn’t have much room to talk. They were all seven barefoot and had no hats at all, though they looked thrifty enough, and clean. He didn’t say anything back though, and neither did Esau. Three or four miles was a long way to walk at night.

The dog was friendly. He licked their faces all over and sat on them impartially, all the way to the preaching ground. And Len wondered if the woman on the wagon seat would get down on the ground and roll, and if the man would roll with her. He thought how silly they would look, and giggled, and suddenly he was not mad at the yellow-haired kids any more.