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“Oh, Mr. Gale, I can’t stand it! Don’t they know what they’re doing? My boy lies there, my husband, and he’s crying for me to come to him and show I remember him. I tell you I can hear him, and his voice sounds like a rainy wind. I told him I’d go to Woodlawn all by myself, I said I’d fill my little basket with flowers, and crabapple blossoms, but he said he wanted the others to come too, he wanted a Decoration Day parade that would honor all the graves. Oh, I heard him—”

Mr. Gale had sprung up. He put his arm about her shoulder. He cried, “There will be a parade, ma’am! We’ll remember the boys, every one of them, every grave. You go in the house, honey, and you put on your bonnet, and pack a little sack for you and me to eat after the ceremony, maybe you’ll have time to bake a batch of biscuits, but anyway, in an hour or so, maybe hour and a half, you’ll hear the parade coming, and you be all ready. ” Mr. Gale’s voice had something of the ponderous integrity of distant cannon. He smoothed her disordered hair. He patted her, like the soft pawing of a fond old dog, and led her to the paint-blistered door of the house.

He went back to his canvas chair, scratching his scalp, shaking his head. Jimmy, who had edged away, returned and sighed, “Gee, I wisht I could do something. ”

“I bet you would, if you were a little older, James, but—better run away. This old Rebel has got to stir up his sleepy brain and conjure up a Federal parade, with a band and at least twenty flags, out of the sparrows in the street. Good-by. ”

After five minutes, or it may have been ten, of clawing at his chin, Mr. Gale looked happy. He hastened down the street. He entered the drug store, and from the telephone booth he talked to hotel clerks in three different towns within ten miles of Wakamin.

He hurried to the livery stable which operated the two cars in town that were for hire. One of the cars was out. The second was preparing to leave, as he lumbered up to the door.

“I want that car,” he said to the stableman-chauffeur.

“Well, you can’t have it. ” The stableman bent over, to crank up.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m going to take a skirt out for a spin, see?”

“Look here. I’m Mr. Gale who—”

“Aw, I know all about you. Seen you go by. You out-of-town guys think we have to drop everything else just to accommodate you—”

Mr. Gale puffed across the floor like a steam-roller. He said gently, “Son, I’ve been up all night, and I reckon I’ve had a lee-tle mite too much liquor. I’ve taken a fancy to going riding. Son, I’ve got the peacefulest heart that a grown-up human ever had; I’m like a little playing pussy-cat, I am; but I’ve got a gun in my back pocket that carries the meanest . 44–40 bullet in the South. Maybe you’ve heard about us Southern fire-eaters, heh? Son, I only want that car for maybe two hours. Understand?”

He bellowed. He was making vast, vague, loosely swinging gestures, his perspiring hands very red. He caught the stableman by the shoulder. The man’s Adam’s apple worked grotesquely up and down. He whimpered:

“All right. I’ll take you. ”

Mr. Gale pacifically climbed into the car. “Joralemon, son, and fast, son, particular fast,” he murmured.

In the speeding car he meditated: “Let’s see. Must be forty years since I’ve toted any kind of a gun—and twenty years since I’ve called anybody ‘son. ’ Oh, well. ”