“I wish my wagon to be searched.”
Mr. Harkness said, “We’ve known you a long time, Ed. I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”
“No, I demand it,” said Hostetter, speaking so that everyone could hear. “This boy has made an accusation that I can’t let pass. I want my wagon searched from top to bottom, so that there can be no doubt as to whether I possess anything I should not have. Suspicion once started is hard to kill, and news travels. I wouldn’t want
A shiver ran through Len. He realized suddenly that Hostetter was making an explanation and an apology.
He also understood that Esau had made a fatal mistake.
It seemed a long way back across the west field. This time the carts did not enter the farmyard. They stopped in the road and Len and Pa got down, and the others shifted around so that Esau and Uncle David were alone in their own cart. Then Mr. Harkness said, “We will want to see the boys tomorrow.” His voice was ominously quiet. He drove away toward the village, with the second cart behind him. Uncle David started the other way, toward home.
Esau leaned out of the cart and shouted hysterically at Len. “Don’t give up. They can’t make you stop thinking. No matter what they do to you they can’t—”
Uncle David turned the cart sharp around and brought it into the farmyard.
“We’ll see about that,” he said “Elijah, I’m going to use your barn.”
Pa frowned, but he did not say anything. Uncle David went across to the barn, shoving Esau roughly in front of him. Ma came running out of the house. Uncle David called out, “You bring Len. I want him here.” Pa frowned again and then said, “All right.” He put out his hands to Ma and drew her aside and said a few words to her, very low, shaking his head. Ma looked at Len. “Oh no,” she said. “Oh Lennie, how could you!” Then she went back to the house with her apron up over her face, and Len knew that she was crying. Pa pointed to the barn. His lips were set tight together. Len thought that Pa did not like what Uncle David was going to do, but that he did not feel he could question it.
Len did not like it either. He would rather have had this just between himself and Pa. But that was like Uncle David. He always figured if you were a kid you had no more rights or feelings than any other possession around the farm. Len shrank from going into the barn.
Pa pointed again, and he went.
It was dark now, but there was a lantern burning inside. Uncle David had taken the harness leather down off the wall. Esau was facing him, in the wide space between the rows of empty stanchions.
“Get down on your knees,” said Uncle David.
“No.”
“Get down!” And the harness strap cracked.
Esau made a noise between a whimper and a curse. He went down on his knees.
“Thou shalt not steal,” said Uncle David. “You’ve made me the father of a thief. Thou shalt not bear false witness. You’ve made me the father of a liar.” His arm was rising and falling in cadence with his words, so that every pause was punctuated by a sharp
Esau was not able to keep silent any longer. Len turned his back.
After a while Uncle David stopped, breathing hard. “You defied me a bit ago. You said I couldn’t make you change your mind. Do you still feel that way?”
Crouched on the floor, Esau screamed at his father. “Yes!”
“You still think you’ll go to Bartorstown?”
“Yes!”
“Well,” said Uncle David. “We’ll see.”
Len tried not to listen. It seemed to go on and on.
Once Pa stepped forward and said, “David—” But
Uncle David only said, “Tend to your own whelp, Elijah. I always told you you were too soft with him.” He turned again to Esau. “Have you changed your mind yet?”
Esau’s answer was unintelligible but abject in surrender.
“You,” said Uncle David suddenly to Len, and jerked him around. “Look at that, and see what boasting and insolence come to in the end.”
Esau was groveling on the barn floor, in the dust and straw. Uncle David stirred him with his foot.
“Do you still think you’ll go to Bartorstown?”
Esau muttered and moaned, hiding his face in his arms. Len tried to pull away but Uncle David held him, with a hot heavy hand. He smelled of sweat and anger. “There’s your hero,” he said to Len. “Remember him when your turn comes.”
“Let me go,” Len whispered. Uncle David laughed. He pushed Len away and handed Pa the harness strap. Then he reached down and got Esau by the neckband of his shirt and pulled him up onto his feet.
“Say it, Esau. Say it out.”
Esau sobbed like a little child. “I repent,” he said. “I repent.”
“Bartorstown,” said Uncle David, in the same tone in which Nahum must have pronounced the bloody city. “Get out. Get home and meditate on your sins. Good night, Elijah, and remember—your boy is as guilty as mine.”
They went out into the darkness. A minute later Len heard the cart drive off.
Pa sighed. His face looked tired and sad, and deeply angry in a way that was much more frightening than Uncle David’s raging. He said slowly, “I trusted you, Len. You betrayed me.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“But you did.”
“Yes.”
“Why, Len? You knew those things were wrong. Why did you do them?”
Len cried, “Because I couldn’t help it. I want to learn, I want to
Pa took off his hat and rolled up his sleeve. “I could preach a long sermon on that text,” he said. “But I’ve already done that, and it was breath wasted. You remember what I told you, Len.”
“Yes, Pa.” And he set his jaw and curled his two hands up tight.
“I’m sorry,” said Pa. “I didn’t ever want to have to do this. But I’m going to purge you of your pride, Len, just as Esau was purged.”
Inside himself Len said fiercely, No, you won’t, you won’t make me get down and crawl. I’m not going to give them up, Bartorstown and books and knowing and all the things there are in the world outside of Piper’s Run!
But he did. In the dust and straw of the barn he gave them up, and his pride with them. And that was the end of his childhood.
7
He had slept for a while, a black heavy sleep, and then he had waked again to stare at the darkness, and feel, and think. His body hurt, not with the mere familiar smart of a licking but in a serious way that he would not forget in a hurry. It did not hurt anything like as much as the intangible parts of him, and he lay and wrestled with the agony in the little lopsided room under the eaves that was still stifling from the day’s sun. It was almost dawn before anything stood clear from the blind fury of grief and rage and resentment and utter shame that shook around in him like big winds in a small place. Then, perhaps because he was too exhausted to be violent any more, he began to see a thing or two, and understand.
He knew that when he had groveled in Esau’s tracks in the dust and forsworn himself, he had lied. He was not going to give up Bartorstown. He could not give it up without giving up the most important part of himself. He
