Ramsey Milholland

Excerpt

"Yes, we'll all feel gay when Johnnie comes marching home again," he finished, with a musing chuckle.

"Did you, Grandpa?" the boy asked.

"Did I what?"

"Did you all feel gay when the army got home?"

"It didn't get home all at once, precisely," the grandfather explained. "When the war was over I suppose we felt relieved, more than anything else."

"You didn't feel so gay when the war was, though, I guess!" the boy ventured.

"I guess we didn't."

"Were you scared, Grandpa? Were you ever scared the Rebels would win?"

"No. We weren't ever afraid of that."

"Not any at all?"

"No. Not any at all."

"Well, weren't you ever scared yourself, Grandpa? I mean when you were in a battle."

"Oh, yes; then I was." The old man laughed. "Scared plenty!"

"I don't see why," the boy said promptly. "I wouldn't be scared in a battle."

"Wouldn't you?"

"'Course not! Grandpa, why don't you march in the Decoration Day Parade? Wouldn't they let you?"

"I'm not able to march any more. Too short of breath and too shaky in the legs and too blind."

"I wouldn't care," said the boy. "I'd be in the parade anyway, if I was you. They had some sittin' in carriages, 'way at the tail end; but I wouldn't like that. If I'd been in your place, Grandpa, and they'd let me be in that parade, I'd been right up by the band. Look, Grandpa! Watch me, Grandpa! This is the way I'd be, Grandpa."

He rose from the garden bench where they sat, and gave a complex imitation of what had most appealed to him as the grandeurs of the procession, his prancing legs simulating those of the horse of the grand marshal, while his upper parts rendered the drums and bugles of the band, as well as the officers and privates of the militia company which had been a feature of the parade. The only thing he left out was the detachment of veterans.

"Putty-boom! Putty-boom! Putty-boom-boom-boom!" he vociferated, as the drums—and then as the bugles: "Ta, ta, ra, tara!" He addressed his restive legs: "Whoa, there, you Whitey! Gee! Haw! Git up!" Then, waving an imaginary sword: "Col-lumn right! Farwud March! Halt! Carry harms!" He "carried arms." "Show-dler harms!" He "shouldered arms," and returned to his seat.

"That'd be me, Grandpa. That's the way I'd do." And as the grandfather nodded, seeming to agree, a thought recently dismissed returned to the mind of the composite procession and he asked:

"Well, why weren't you ever afraid the Rebels would whip the Unions, Grandpa?"

"Oh, we knew they couldn't."

"I guess so." The little boy laughed disdainfully, thinking his question satisfactorily answered. "I guess those ole Rebels couldn't whipped a flea! They didn't know how to fight any at all, did they, Grandpa?"

"Oh, yes, they did!"

"What?" The boy was astounded. "Weren't they all just reg'lar ole cowards, Grandpa?"

"No," said the grandfather. "They were pretty fine soldiers."

"They were? Well, they ran away whenever you began shootin' at 'em, didn't they?"

"Sometimes they did, but most times they didn't. Sometimes they fought like wildcats—and sometimes we were the ones that ran away."

"What for?"

"To keep from getting killed, or maybe to keep from getting captured."

"But the Rebels were bad men, weren't they, Grandpa?"

"No."

The boy's forehead, customarily vacant, showed some little vertical shadows, produced by a struggle to think....