structure, and it was used chiefly by visiting preachers at open-air prayer meetings, but political speakers used it too at the time of a local or national election. Mike Dulinsky was going to use it tonight. Len remembered what Gran had told him about the old days, when a speaker could talk to everybody in the country at once through the teevee boxes, and he wondered with a quivering thrill of excitement if tonight was the start of the long road back to that kind of a world—Mike Dulinsky talking to a handful of people in a village named Refuge on the dark Ohio. He had read enough of Judge Taylor’s history books to know that that was the way things happened sometimes. His heart began to beat faster, and he walked nervously back and forth, vaguely determined that Dulinsky should talk, no matter who tried to stop him.
The preacher, Brother Meyerhoff, came out of the side door of the church. Four of the deacons were with him, and a fifth man Len did not recognize until they came into the light of one of the bonfires that burned there. It was Judge Taylor. They passed on and Len lost them in the crowd, but he was sure they were heading for the speaker’s stand. He followed them, slowly. He was about halfway across the grassy open when Mike Dulinsky came from the other side and there was a general motion toward the center, and the crowd suddenly clotted up so he couldn’t get through it without pushing. There were half a dozen men with Dulinsky, carrying lanterns on long poles. They put these in brackets around the speaker’s pulpit, so that it stood up like a bright column in the darkness. Dulinsky climbed up and began to speak.
Somebody pulled at Len’s sleeve, and he turned around. It was Esau, nodding to him to come away from the crowd.
“There’s boats on the river,” Esau said, when they were out of earshot. “Coming this way. You warn him, Len, I got to get back to the docks.” He looked furtively around. “Is Amity here?”
“I don’t know. The judge is.”
“Oh Lord,” said Esau. “Listen, I got to go. If you see Amity, tell her I won’t be around for a while. She’ll understand.”
“Will she? Anyway, I thought you were bragging how nobody could—”
“Oh, shut up. You tell Dulinsky they’re coming. Watch yourself, Len. Don’t get in any more trouble than you can help.”
“It looks to me,” said Len, “as though you’re the one in trouble. If I don’t see Amity, I’ll give the message to her father.”
Esau swore and disappeared into the dark. Len began to edge his way through the crowd. They were standing quiet, listening, very grave and intent. Dulinsky was talking to them with a passionate sincerity. This was his one time, and he was giving everything he had to it.
“—that was eighty years ago. No danger menaces us now. Why should we continue to live in the shadow of a fear for which there is no longer any cause?”
A ripple of sound, half choked, half eager, ran across the crowd. Dulinsky gave it no time to die.
“I’ll tell you why!” he shouted. “It’s because the New Mennonites climbed into the saddle and have hung onto the government ever since. They don’t like growth, they don’t like change. Their creed rejects them both, and so does their greed. Yes, I said greed! They’re farmers. They don’t want to see the trading centers like Refuge get rich and fat. They don’t want a competitive market, and above all they don’t want people like us pushing them out of their nice seats in Congress where they can make all the laws. So they forbid us to build a new warehouse when we need it. Now do you think that’s fair or right or godly? You there, Brother Meyerhoff, do you say the New Mennonites should tell us all how to live, or should our own Church of Holy Thankfulness have something to say about it too?”
Brother Meyerhoff answered, “It hasn’t to do with them or with us. It has to do with you, Dulinsky, and you’re talking blasphemy!”
A cry of voices, mostly female, seconded him. Len pushed himself to the foot of the stand. Dulinsky was leaning over, looking at Meyerhoff. There were beads of sweat on his forehead.
“Blaspheming, am I?” he demanded. “You tell me where.”
“You’ve been to church. You’ve read the Book and listened to the sermons. You know how the Almighty cleansed the land of cities, and bade His children that He saved to walk henceforth in the path of righteousness, to love the things of the spirit and not the things of the flesh! In the words of the prophet Nahum—”
“I don’t want to build a city,” said Dulinsky. “I want to build a warehouse.”
There was a nervous tittering, quickly hushed. Meyerhoff’s face was crimson above his beard. Len mounted the steps and spoke to Dulinsky, who nodded. Len climbed down again. He wanted to tell Dulinsky to lay off the New Mennonites, but he did not quite dare for fear of giving himself away.
“Who,” asked Dulinsky of Meyerhoff, “has been telling you about cities?” He paused, and then he pointed and said, “Is it you, Judge Taylor?”
In the glare of the lanterns, Len saw that Taylor’s face was oddly pale and strained. His voice, when he spoke, was quiet but it rang all over the square.
“There is an amendment to the Constitution of the United States that forbids you to do this. No amount of talk will change that, Dulinsky.”
“Ah,” said Dulinsky, in a satisfied voice as though he had made Judge Taylor fall into some trap, “that’s where you’re wrong. Talk is exactly what
He got a response on that. Dulinsky grinned. Out on the dark edges of the crowd a man appeared, and then another and another, coming softly from the direction of the river. And Meyerhoff said, in a voice shaking with anger, “Always, in every age, the unbeliever has prepared the way for evil.”
“Maybe,” said Dulinsky. He was looking out over Meyerhoff’s head, to the edges of the crowd. “And I’ll admit that I’m an unbeliever.” He glanced down at Len, giving him the warning, while the crowd gasped over that. Then he went on, fast and smooth.
“I’m an unbeliever in poverty, in hunger, in misery. I don’t know anybody who does believe in those things, except the New Ishmaelites, but I can’t recall we ever thought much of them. In fact, we drove ’em out. I’m an unbeliever in taking a healthy growing child and strapping it down with bands so it won’t get any taller than somebody thinks it should. I—”
Judge Taylor brushed past Len and mounted the steps. Dulinsky looked surprised and stopped in mid- sentence. Taylor gave him one burning glance and said, “A man can make anything he wants to out of words.” He turned to the crowd. “I’m going to give you a fact, and then we’ll see if Dulinsky can talk it away. If you break the township law it won’t affect Refuge alone. It will affect all the country around it. Now, the New Mennonites are peaceful folk and their creed forbids them from violence. They will proceed by due process of law, no matter how long it takes. But there are other sects in the countryside, and their beliefs are different. They look on it as their duty to take up the cudgel for the Lord.”
He paused, and in the stillness Len could hear the breathing of the people.
“You better think twice,” said Taylor, “before you provoke them into taking it up against you.”
There was a burst of applause from the outer edge of the crowd. Dulinsky asked scornfully, “Who are you afraid of, Judge—the farmers or the Shadwell men?” He leaned out over the rail and beckoned. “Come on up here, you Shads, up where we can see you. You don’t have to be afraid, you’re brave men. I got a lad here who knows how brave you are. Len, climb up here a minute.”
Len did as he was told, avoiding Judge Taylor’s eyes. Dulinsky pushed him to the rail.
“Some of you know Len Colter. I sent him to Shadwell this morning on business. Tell us what kind of a welcome you gave him, you Shads, or are you ashamed?”
The crowd began to mutter and turn around.
“What’s the matter?” cried a deep, rough voice from the background. “Didn’t he like the taste of Shadwell mud?” The Shadwell men all laughed, and then another voice, one that Len remembered only too well, called to him, “Did you give them our message?”
“Yes,” said Dulinsky. “Give the people that message, Len. Say it real loud, so they can all hear.”
Judge Taylor said suddenly, under his breath, “You’ll regret this night.” He ran down the steps.
