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Decoration Day
by
“It all looks a sight bigger to me now than it did then,” said Henry Merrill. “Our goin’ to the war, I refer to. We didn’t sense it no more than other folks did. I used to be sick o’ hearin’ their stuff about patriotism and lovin’ your country, an’ them pieces o’ poetry women folks wrote for the papers on the old flag, an’ our fallen heroes, an’ them things; they didn’t seem to strike me in the right place; but I tell ye it kind o’ starts me now every time I come on the flag sudden,–it does so. A spell ago–‘long in the fall, I guess it was–I was over to Alton, an’ there was a fire company paradin’. They’d got the prize at a fair, an’ had just come home on the cars, an’ I heard the band; so I stepped to the front o’ the store where me an’ my woman was tradin’, an’ the company felt well, an’ was comin’ along the street ‘most as good as troops. I see the old flag a-comin’, kind of blowin’ back, an’ it went all over me. Somethin’ worked round in my throat; I vow I come near cryin’. I was glad nobody see me.”
“I’d go to war again in a minute,” declared Stover, after an expressive pause; “but I expect we should know better what we was about. I don’ know but we’ve got too many rooted opinions now to make us the best o’ soldiers.”
“Martin Tighe an’ John Tighe was considerable older than the rest, and they done well,” answered Henry Merrill quickly. “We three was the youngest of any, but we did think at the time we knew the most.”
“Well, whatever you may say, that war give the country a great start,” said Asa Brown. “I tell ye we just begin to see the scope on’t. There was my cousin, you know, Dan’l Evins, that stopped with us last winter; he was tellin’ me that one o’ his coastin’ trips he was into the port o’ Beaufort lo’din’ with yaller-pine lumber, an’ he roved into an old buryin’-ground there is there, an’ he see a stone that had on it some young Southern fellow’s name that was killed in the war, an’ under it was, ‘He died for his country.’ Dan’l knowed how I used to feel about them South Car’lina goings on, an’ I did feel kind o’ red an’ ugly for a minute, an’ then somethin’ come over me, an’ I says, ‘Well, I don’ know but what the poor chap did, Dan Evins, when you come to view it all round.'”
The other men made no answer.
“Le’s see what we can do this year. I don’t care if we be a poor han’ful,” urged Henry Merrill. “The young folks ought to have the good of it; I’d like to have my boys see somethin’ different. Le’s get together what men there is. How many’s left, anyhow? I know there was thirty-seven went from old Barlow, three-months’ men an’ all.”
“There can’t be over eight now, countin’ out Martin Tighe; he can’t march,” said Stover. “No, ’tain’t worth while.” But the others did not notice his disapproval.
“There’s nine in all,” announced Asa Brown, after pondering and counting two or three times on his fingers. “I can’t make us no more. I never could carry figur’s in my head.”
“I make nine,” said Merrill. “We’ll have Martin ride, an’ Jesse Dean too, if he will. He’s awful lively on them canes o’ his. An’ there’s Jo Wade with his crutch; he’s amazin’ spry for a short distance. But we can’t let ’em go far afoot; they’re decripped men. We’ll make ’em all put on what they’ve got left o’ their uniforms, an’ we’ll scratch round an’ have us a fife an’ drum, an’ make the best show we can.”
“Why, Martin Tighe’s boy, the next to the oldest, is an excellent hand to play the fife!” said John Stover, suddenly growing enthusiastic. “If you two are set on it, let’s have a word with the minister to-morrow, an’ see what he says. Perhaps he’ll give out some kind of a notice. You have to have a good many bunches o’ flowers. I guess we’d better call a meetin’, some few on us, an’ talk it over first o’ the week. ‘Twouldn’t be no great of a range for us to take to march from the old buryin’-ground at the meetin’-house here up to the poor-farm an’ round by Deacon Elwell’s lane, so’s to notice them two stones he set up for his boys that was sunk on the man-o’-war. I expect they notice stones same’s if the folks laid there, don’t they?”