Len said slowly, “Are you afraid you can’t trust me?”
“It isn’t exactly a question of trust.”
“What is it, then?”
“You’re going to Bartorstown.”
Len frowned, trying to understand what he was getting at. “But that’s where I want to go. That’s why —all this happened.”
Hostetter pushed the flat-brimmed hat back from his forehead so that his face showed clear in the moonlight. His eyes rested shrewdly and steadily on Len.
“You’re going to Bartorstown,” he repeated. “You have a place all dreamed up inside your head, and you call it by that name, but that isn’t where you’re going. You’re going to the real Bartorstown, and it’s probably not going to be very much like the place in your head at all. You may not like it. You may come to have pretty strong feelings about it. And that’s why I say, don’t forget you owe us something.”
“Listen,” said Len. “Can you learn in Bartorstown? Can you read books and talk about things, and use machines, and really
Hostetter nodded.
“Then I’ll like it there.” Len looked out at the dark still country slipping by in the night, the sleeping, murderous, hateful country. “I never want to see any of this again. Ever.”
“For my sake,” said Hostetter, “I hope you’ll fit in. I’m going to have trouble enough as it is, explaining the girl to Sherman. She wasn’t included. But I couldn’t see what else to do.”
“I was wondering about her,” Len said.
“Well, she’d come down there to Esau, to try and help him get away. She said she couldn’t go back to her parents. She said she was going to stay with Esau. And it seemed like she pretty well had to.”
“Why?” asked Len.
“Don’t you know?”
“No.”
“Best reason in the world,” said Hostetter. “She’s got his child.”
Len sat staring with his mouth open. Hostetter got up. And a man came out of the deckhouse and said to him, “Sam’s talking to Collins on the radio. Maybe you’d better come down, Ed.”
“Trouble?”
“Well, it seems like our friend we dumped in the water back there meant what he said. Collins says two towboats went by together just after moonrise. They didn’t have any tow, and they were chock full of men. One was from Refuge, the other from Shadwell.”
Hostetter scowled, knocking the ashes out of his pipe and crushing them carefully under his boots. He said to Len, “We asked Collins to keep watch, just in case. He’s got a shanty-boat and acts as a mobile post. Well, come on. This is all part of being a Bartorstown man. You might as well get used to it.”
15
Len followed Hostetter and the other man, whose name was Kovacs, into the deckhouse. This was about two thirds the length of the boat, and it was built more as a roof over the cargo hold than it was to provide any elegance for the crew. There were some narrow bunks built in around the walls, and Amity was lying in one of them, her hair all tumbled around her head and her face pale and swollen with tears. Esau was sitting on the edge of the bunk, holding her hand. He looked as though he had been sitting there a long time, and he had an expression Len could not remember seeing on him before, haggard and careworn and concerned.
Len looked at Amity. She spoke to him, not meeting his eyes, and he said hello, and it was like speaking to a stranger. He thought, with an already fading pang, of the yellow-haired girl he had kissed in the rose arbor and wondered where she had gone so swiftly. This was a woman here, somebody else’s woman, already marked by the cares and troubles of living, and he did not know her.
“Did you see my father, Len?” she asked. “Is he all right?”
“He was, the last I saw him,” Len told her. “The farmers weren’t after him. They never touched him.”
Esau got up. “You get some sleep now. That’s what you need.” He patted her hand and then pulled down a thin blanket that had been nailed overhead by way of a curtain. She whimpered a little, protestingly, and told Esau not to go too far away. “Don’t worry about that,” said Esau, with just the faintest trace of despair. “There isn’t any place to go.” He glanced quickly at Len, and then at Hostetter, and Len said, “Congratulations, Esau.”
A slow red flush crept up over Esau’s cheekbones. He straightened his shoulders and said almost defiantly, “I think it’s great. And you know how it was, Len. I mean, why we couldn’t get married before, on account of the judge.”
“Sure,” said Len. “I know.”
“And I’ll tell you one thing,” said Esau. “I’ll be a better father to it than my dad ever was to me.”
“I don’t know,” said Len. “My father was the best in the world, and I didn’t turn out so good either.”
He followed Hostetter and Kovacs down a steep hatch ladder into the cargo hold. The barge did not draw much water, but she was sixty feet long and eighteen wide, and every foot of space in her was crammed with chests and bales and sacks. She smelled strongly of wood and river water, flour and cloth, old tallow and pitch, and a lot of things Len could not identify. From beyond the after bulkhead, sounding muffled and thunderous, came the thumping rhythm of the engine. Just under the hatch a sort of well had been left so that a man could come down the ladder and see that nothing had broached or shifted, and the ladder looked like a solid piece of construction butting onto a solid deck. But a square section of the planking had been swung aside and there was a little pit there, and in the pit was a thing that Len recognized as a radio, although it was larger than the one he and Esau had had, and different in other ways. A man was sitting beside it, talking, with a single lantern hung overhead to give him light.
“Here they are now,” he said. “Wait a minute.” He turned and spoke to Hostetter. “Collins reckons the best thing would be to contact Rosen at the falls. The river’s fairly low now, and he figures with a little help we could slip them there.”
“Worth trying,” said Hostetter. “What do you think, Joe?”
Kovacs said he thought Collins was right. “We sure don’t want any fights, and they’re bound to catch up to us, running light.”
Esau had come down the ladder, too. He was standing by Len, listening.
“Watts?” he asked.
“I guess so. He must have gone scurrying around clear over to Shadwell to get men.”
“They’re crazy mad,” said Kovacs. “They can’t very well get back at the farmers, so they’ll take it out on us. Besides, we’re fair game whenever you find us.” He was a big burly young man, very brown from the sun. He looked as though it would take a great deal to frighten him, and he did not seem frightened now, but Len was impressed by his great determination not to be caught by the boats from Refuge.
Hostetter nodded to the man at the radio. “All right, Sam. Let’s talk to Rosen.”
Sam said good-by to Collins and began to fiddle with the knobs. “God,” said Esau, almost sobbing, “do you remember how we worked with that thing and couldn’t raise a whisper, and I stole those books—” He shook his head.
“If you hadn’t happened to listen in at night,” said Hostetter, “you never would have heard anything.” He was crouched down beside the pit now, hanging over Sam’s shoulder.
“That was Len’s idea,” said Esau. “He figured you’d run too much risk of being seen or overheard in the daytime.”
“Like now,” said Kovacs. “We’ve got the aerial up—pretty obvious, if you had light enough to see it.”
“Shut up,” said Sam, bending over the radio. “How do you expect me to—Hey, will you guys give me a clear channel for a minute? This is an emergency.” A jumble of voices coming in tinny confusion from the speaker clarified into a single voice which said, “This is Petto at Indian Ferry. Do you want me to relay?”
“No,” said Sam. “I want Rosen. He’s within range. Lay low, will you? We’ve got bandits on our tail.”
“Oh,” said the voice of Petto. “Sing out if you want help.”
