Esau started to say something more, but he could not seem to find any words for it. Len moved farther away. He started up the bank, slowly at first and then faster and faster until he was running, with the tears hot in his eyes and his own mind shouting at him, Coward, coward, he’s going to Bartorstown and you don’t dare!
He did not look back again.
Mr. Hostetter stayed three days in Piper’s Run. They were the longest, hardest days Len had ever lived through. Temptation kept telling him, You can still go. And then Conscience would point out Ma and Pa and home and duty and the wickedness of running away without a word. Esau had not given Uncle David and Aunt Mariah a second thought, but Len could not feel that way about Pa and Ma. He knew how Ma would cry, and how Pa would take the blame on himself that he hadn’t trained Len right somehow, and that was the biggest part of his cowardice. He didn’t want to be responsible for making them unhappy.
There was a third voice in him, too. It lived way back of the others and it had no name. It was a voice he had never heard before, and it only said
He moped and sulked and brooded around the farm, burdened with his secret, bobbling his chores and making excuses not to go into town when the family did, until Ma worried and dosed him heavily with physics and sassafras tea. And all the time his ears were stretched and quivering, waiting to hear hoofbeats on the road, waiting to hear Uncle David rush in saying that Esau was gone.
On the evening of the third day he heard hoofbeats, coming fast. He was just helping Ma clear off the supper dishes, and the light was still in the sky, reddening toward the west. His nerves jerked taut with a painful snap. The dishes became slippery and enormous in his hands. The horse turned in to the door-yard with the cart rattling behind him, and after that a second horse and cart, and after that a third. Pa went to the door, and Len followed him, with a sickness settling in all his bones. One horse and cart for Uncle David he had expected. But three—
Uncle David was there, all right. He sat in his own cart, and Esau was beside him, sitting still and as white as a sheet, and Mr. Harkness was on the other side of him. Mr. Hostetter was in the second cart with Mr. Nordholt, the schoolmaster, and Mr. Clute was driving. Mr. Fenway and Mr. Glasser were in the third.
Uncle David got down. He motioned to Pa, who had gone out toward the carts. Mr. Hostetter joined them, and Mr. Nordholt, and Mr. Glasser. Esau sat where he was. His head was bent forward and he did not lift it. Mr. Harkness stared at Len, who had stayed in the doorway. His look was outraged, accusing, and sad. Len met it for a fractional second and then dropped his own eyes. He felt very sick now and quite cold. He wanted to run away, but he knew it would not be any use.
The men moved all together to Uncle David’s cart, and Uncle David said something to Esau. Esau continued to stare at his hands. He did not speak or nod, and Mr. Nordholt said, “He didn’t mean to tell, it just slipped out of him. But he did say it.”
Pa turned and looked at Len and said, “Come here.”
Len walked out, quite slowly. He would not lift his head to look at Pa, not because of the anger in Pa’s face, but because of the sorrow that was there.
“Len.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is it true that you have a radio?”
“I—yes, sir.”
“Did you read certain books that were stolen? Did you know where they were, and didn’t tell Mr. Nordholt? Did you know what Esau was planning to do, and didn’t tell me or Uncle David?”
Len sighed. With a gesture curiously like that of an old and tired man, he raised his head and threw his shoulders back. “Yes,” he said. “I did all those things.”
Pa’s face, in the deepening dusk, had become like something cut from a gray rock.
“Very well,” he said. “Very well.”
“You can ride with us,” said Mr. Glasser, “Save harnessing up, just for that little distance.”
“All right,” said Pa. And he gave Len a cold and blazing glance that meant Come with me.
Len followed him, He passed close to Mr. Hostetter, who was standing with his head half turned away, and under his hatbrim Len thought he saw an expression of pity and regret. But they passed without speaking, and Esau never stirred. Pa climbed up into the cart with Mr. Fenway, and Mr. Glasser climbed in after him.
“Up behind,” said Pa.
Len climbed slowly onto the shelf, and every movement was an effort. He clung there, and the carts jolted off in line, out of the dooryard and across the road and out around the margin of the west field, toward the woods.
They stopped about where the sumacs grew. They all got out and the men spoke together. And then Pa turned and said, “Len.” He pointed at the woods. “Show us.”
Len did not move.
Esau spoke for the first time. “You might as well,” he said, in a voice heavy with hate. “They’ll get it anyway if they have to burn the whole woods.”
Uncle David cuffed him backhanded across the mouth and called him something angry and Biblical.
Pa said again, “Len.”
Len yielded. He led the way into the woods. And the path looked just the same, and so did the trees, and the tiny stream, and the familiar clumps of thorn apple. But something was changed. Something was gone. They were only trees now, and thorn apples, and the rocky bed of a trickle of water. They no longer belonged to him. They were withdrawn and unwelcoming, and their outlines were harsh, and the big boots of the men crushed down the ferns.
They came out on the point at the meeting of the waters. Len stopped beside the hollow tree.
“Here,” he said. His voice sounded unfamiliar in his ears. The bright glow of the west fell clearly here ‘t along the open stream, painting the leaves and grass a lurid green, tinting the brown Pymatuning with copper. Crows flapped homeward overhead, dropping their jeering laughter as they went. It seemed to Len that the laughter was meant for him.
Uncle David gave Esau a rough, hard shove. “Get it out.”
Esau stood for a minute beside the tree. Len watched him, and the look that was on him in the sunset light. The crows went away, and it was very still.
Esau reached into the hollow of the tree. He brought out the books, wrapped in canvas, and handed them to Mr. Nordholt.
“They’re not hurt,” he said.
Mr. Nordholt unwrapped them, moving out from under the tree so he could see better. “No,” he said. “No, they’re not hurt.” He wrapped them again and held them against his chest.
Esau lifted out the radio.
He stood holding it, and the tears came up into his eyes and glittered there but did not fall. A hesitancy had come over the men. Mr. Hostetter said, as though he had said it before but was afraid it might not have been understood, “Soames had asked me if anything happened to take his personal belongings and give them to his wife. He had shown me the chest they were in. The people at the preaching were about to loot his wagon. I did not stop to see what was in the chest.”
Uncle David stepped forward. He knocked the radio from Esau’s hands, driving his fist downward like a hammer. It lay on the turf, and he stamped on it, over and over with his heavy boot. Then he picked up what was left of it and flung it out into the Pymatuning.
Esau said, “I hate you.” He looked at them all. “You can’t stop me. Someday I’ll go to Bartorstown.”
Uncle David hit him again, and spun him around, and started to march him back through the woods. Over his shoulder he said, “I’ll see to him.”
The rest followed in a straggling line, after Mr. Harkness poked his hand around in the hollow of the tree to make sure nothing more was in there. And Mr. Hostetter said,
