The Long Tomorrow

“All right! It is him, of course it’s him. He was responsible for you. He was sworn for you to Sherman. What do you think?”

She glared at him, her thin brown hands curled into fists, her eyes flashing.

“You’re going to let him take you back, Len Colter? Aren’t you a man yet, for all that beard? Get on your feet. Let’s go.”

“No.” Len shook his head. “I never realized he was sworn.”

“He won’t be alone. There’ll be others with him.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“You are going to let him take you.” Her voice was shrill, breaking like a child’s. “He’s not going to take me. I’m going on.”

He spoke to her in a tone he had never used before. “You’ll stay by me, Joan.”

She stared at him, startled, and then came a look of doubt, a stirring of some dark apprehension.

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet. That’s what I got to decide.” His face had grown stony and hard, impassive as flint. “Two things I’m sure of. I ain’t going to run. And I won’t be taken.”

She stayed by him, quiet, frightened of she knew not what.

Len waited.

Two days. He has not come yet, but he will. He was sworn for me.

Two days to think, to stand waiting on the battlefield. Esau never fought this battle, nor Brother James. They’re the lucky ones. But Pa did, and Hostetter did, and now it is my time. The battle of decision, the time of choice.

I made a decision in Piper’s Run. It was a child’s decision, based on a child’s dreams. I made a decision in Bartorstown, and it was still a childish decision, based on emotion. Now I am finished with dreams. I am finished with emotions. I have fasted my forty days in the wilderness and I am through with penance. I stand stripped and naked, but I stand as a man. What decision I make I will make as a man, and there will be no turning back from it after it is made.

Three days, to tear away the last sweet sunlit hopes.

I will not go back to Piper’s Run. Whichever way I go, it will not be there. Piper’s Run is a memory of childhood, and I am finished with memories, too. That door is closed behind me, long ago. Piper’s Run was a memory of peace, but no matter which way I go I know now that I will never have peace.

For peace is certainty, and there is no certainty but death.

Four days, to set the stubborn feet firmly on the ground, teaching them not to run.

Because I am finished with running. Now I will stop and choose my way.

Sooner or later a man has to stop and choose his way, not out of the ways he would like there to be, or the ways there ought to be, but out of the ways there are.

Five days, in which to choose.

There were people in the town. It was the time of the fall trading, the hot dead time when the shinnery stands gray and stiff and the bear grass rustles in the wind and every plank of wood is as dry as a cracked bone. They came in from the outlying ranches to barter for their winter supplies, and the traders’ wagons were lined up in a row at the end of the one short, dusty street.

All over the land, he thought, it is the time of the fall trading. All over the land there are fairs, and the wagons are pulled up, and the men trade cattle and the women chaffer over cloth and sugar. All over the land it is the same, unchanging. And after the trading and the fair there is the preaching, the fall revival to stock the soul against the winter too. This is life. This is the way it is.

He walked the street restlessly, up and down. He stood by the traders’ wagons, looking into the faces of the people, listening to their talk.

They have found their truth. The New Ishmaelites have found theirs, and the New Mennonites, and the men of Bartorstown.

Now I must find mine.

Joan watched him from under the corners of her eyelids and was afraid to speak.

On the fifth night the trading was all done. Torches were set up around a platform in the trampled space at the end of the street. The stars blazed bright in the sky and the wind turned cool and the baked earth breathed out its heat. The people gathered.

Len sat on the crushed dry shinnery, holding Joan’s hand. He did not notice after all when the wagon rolled in quietly at the other side of the crowd. But after a while he turned, and Hostetter was sitting there beside him.

30

The voice of the preacher rang out strong and strident. “A thousand years, my brethren. A thousand years. That’s what we was promised. And I tell you we are already in that blessed time, a-heading toward the Glory that was planned for them that keeps the way of righteousness. I tell you—”

Hostetter looked at Len in the flickering light of the wind-blown torches, and Len looked at him, but neither of them spoke.

Joan whispered something that might have been Hostetter’s name. She pulled her hand away from Len’s and started to scramble around behind him as though she wanted to get to Hostetter. Len caught her and pulled her down.

“Stay by me.”

“Let me go. Len—”

“Stay by me.”

She whimpered and was still. Her eyes sought Hostetter’s.

Len said to both of them, “Be quiet. I want to listen.”