LINK
Lord, Lord, the Wheatfield!
POLLY
(_continuing_)
Cemetery Hill,
Little Round Top, Death Valley, and this here
is Cemetery Ridge.
LINK
(_pointing to the little flag_)
And colors flyin'!
We _kep_ 'em flyin' thar, too, all three days,
From start to finish.
POLLY
Have I learned 'em right?
LINK
_A_ number One, chick! Wait a mite: Culp's Hill:
I don't jest spy Culp's Hill.
POLLY
There wa'n't enough
kindlin's to spare for that. It ought to lay
east there, towards the kitchen.
LINK
Let it go!
That's whar us Yanks left our back door ajar
and Johnson stuck his foot in: kep' it thar,
too, till he got it squoze off by old Slocum.
Let Culp's Hill lay for now.--Lend me your marker.
(POLLY _hands him the hoe. From his chair, he reaches
with it and digs in the chips._)
Death Valley needs some scoopin' deeper. So:
smooth off them chips.
(POLLY _does so with her foot._)
You better guess't was deep
As hell, that second day, come sundown.--Here,
(_He hands back the hoe to her._)
flat down the Wheatfield yonder.
(POLLY _does so._)
God a'mighty!
That Wheatfield: wall, we flatted it down flatter
than any pancake what you ever cooked,
Polly; and't wa'n't no maple syrup neither
was runnin', slipp'ry hot and slimy black,
all over it, that nightfall.
POLLY
Here's the road
to Emmetsburg.
LINK
No,'t 'ain't: this here's the pike
to Taneytown, where Sykes's boys come sweatin',
after an all-night march, jest in the nick
to save our second day. The Emmetsburg
road's thar.--Whar was I, 'fore I fell cat-nappin'?
POLLY
At sunset, July second, sixty-three.
LINK
(_nodding, reminiscent_)
The Bloody Sundown! God, that crazy sun:
she set a dozen times that afternoon,
red-yeller as a punkin jack-o'-lantern,
rairin' and pitchin' through the roarin' smoke
till she clean busted, like the other bombs,
behind the hills.
POLLY
My! Wa'n't you never scart
and wished you'd stayed t' home?
LINK
Scart? Wall, I wonder!
Chick, look a-thar: them little stripes and stars.
I heerd a feller onct, down to the store,--
a dressy mister, span-new from the city--
layin' the law down: "All this stars and stripes,"
says he, "and red and white and blue is rubbish,
mere sentimental rot, spread-eagleism!"
"I wan't' know!" says I. "In sixty-three,
I knowed a lad, named Link. Onct, after sundown
I met him stumblin'--with two dead men's muskets
for crutches--towards a bucket, full of ink---
water, they called it. When he'd drunk a spell,
he tuk the rest to wash his bullet-holes.---
Wall, sir, he had a piece o' splintered stick,
with red and white and blue, tore'most t' tatters,
a-danglin' from it. 'Be you color sergeant?'
says I. 'Not me,' says Link; 'the sergeant's dead;
but when he fell, he handed me this bit
o' rubbish--red and white and blue.' And Link
he laughed. 'What be you laughin' for?' says I.
'Oh, nothin'. Ain't it lovely, though!'" says Link.
POLLY
What did the span-new mister say to that?
LINK
I didn't stop to listen. Them as never
heerd dead men callin' for the colors don't
guess what they be.
(_Sitting up and blinking hard_)
But this ain't keepin' school!
POLLY
(_quietly_)