The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays by Gordon Bottomley et al. (i read a book TXT) 📗

that we was nothin' else but boys
  jest fallin' in love, with best gals left t' home—
  the same as you; and when the shot was singin',
  we pulled their picters out, and prayed to them
  'most morn'n the Almighty.

      (LINK looks up suddenly—a strange light in his face.
        Again, to a far strain of music, the bugle sounds.)

                                Thar she blows
  Agin!

                        POLLY
              They're marchin' to the graves with flowers.

LINK My Godfrey!'t ain't so much thinkin' o' flowers and the young folks, their faces, and the blue line of old fellers marchin'—it's the music! that old brass voice a-callin'! Seems as though, legs or no legs, I'd have to up and foller to God-knows-whar, and holler—holler back to guns roarin' in the dark. No; durn it, no! I jest can't stan' the music.

                        POLLY
       (goes to the work-bench, where the box is steaming)

                                Uncle Link,
  you want that I should steam this longer?

                        LINK
                    (absently)

                                                Oh,
  A kittleful, a kittleful.

                        POLLY
                (coming over to him)

                        Now, then,
  I'm ready for school.—I hope I've drawed the map
  all right.

                        LINK
        Map? Oh, the map!

(Surveying the woodpile reminiscently, he nods.)

                                      Yes, thar she be:
  old Gettysburg!

                        POLLY
                I know the places—most.

                        LINK
  So, do ye? Good, now: whar's your marker?

                        POLLY
                 (taking up the hoe)

Here.

                        LINK
  Willoughby Run: whar's that?

                        POLLY
    (pointing with the hoe toward the left of the woodpile)

                                      That's farthest over
  next the barn door.

                        LINK
                      My, how we fit the Johnnies
  thar, the fust mornin'! Jest behind them willers,
  acrost the Run, that's whar we captur'd Archer.
  My, my!

                        POLLY
          Over there—that's Seminary Ridge.

    (She points to different heights and depressions, as LINK
      nods his approval.)

Peach Orchard, Devil's Den, Round Top, the Wheatfield—

                        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)

I guess I'm learnin' somethin', Uncle Link.

                        LINK
  The second day, 'fore sunset.

(He takes the hoe and points with it.)

Yon's the Wheatfield. Behind it thar lies Longstreet with his rebels. Here be the Yanks, and Cemetery Ridge behind 'em. Hancock—he's our general— he's got to hold the Ridge, till reinforcements from Taneytown. But lose the Wheatfield, lose the Ridge, and lose the Ridge—lose God-and-all!— Lee, the old fox, he'd nab up Washington, Abe Lincoln, and the White House in one bite!— So the Union, Polly—me and you and Roger, your Uncle Link, and Uncle Sam—is all thar—growin' in that Wheatfield.

                        POLLY
                (smiling proudly)

                                         And they're growin'
  still!

LINK Not the wheat, though. Over them stone walls, thar comes the Johnnies, thick as grasshoppers: gray legs a-jumpin' through the tall wheat-tops, and now thar ain't no tops, thar ain't no wheat, thar ain't no lookin': jest blind feelin' round in the black mud, and trampin' on boys' faces, and grapplin' with hell-devils, and stink o' smoke, and stingin' smother, and—up thar through the dark— that crazy punkin sun, like an old moon lopsided, crackin' her red shell with thunder!

(In the distance, a bugle sounds, and the low martial music of a brass band begins. Again LINK'S face twitches, and he pauses, listening. From this moment on, the sound and emotion of the brass music, slowly growing louder, permeates the scene.)

                        POLLY
  Oh! What was God a-thinkin' of, t' allow
  the created world to act that awful?

                        LINK
                                      Now,
  I wonder!—Cast your eye along this hoe:

(He stirs the chips and wood-dirt round with the hoe-iron.)

Thar in that poked up mess o' dirt, you see yon weeny chip of ox-yoke?—That's the boy I spoke on: Link, Link Tadbourne: "Chipmunk Link," they call him, 'cause his legs is spry's a squirrel's.— Wall, mebbe some good angel, with bright eyes like yourn, stood lookin' down on him that day, keepin' the Devil's hoe from crackin' him.

(Patting her hand, which rests on his hoe)

If so, I reckon, Polly, it was you. But mebbe jest Old Nick, as he sat hoein' them hills, and haulin' in the little heaps o' squirmin' critters, kind o' reco'nized Link as his livin' image, and so kep' him to put in an airthly hell, whar thar ain't no legs, and worn-out devils sit froze in high-backed chairs, list'nin' to bugles—bugles—bugles, callin'.

      (LINK clutches the sides of his chair, staring. The music
        draws nearer. POLLY touches him soothingly.)

                        POLLY
  Don't, dear; they'll soon quit playin'. Never mind'em.

                        LINK
            (relaxing under her touch)

No, never mind; that's right. It's jest that onct— onct we was boys, onct we was boys—with legs. But never mind. An old boy ain't a bugle. Onct, though, he was: and all God's life a-snortin' outn his nostrils, and Hell's mischief laughin' outn his eyes, and all the mornin' winds a-blowin' Glory Hallelujahs, like brass music, from his mouth.—But never mind! 'T ain't nothin': boys in blue ain't bugles now. Old brass gits rusty, and old underpinnin' gits rotten, and trapped chipmunks lose their legs.

(With smouldering fire)

But jest the same—

(His face convulses and he cries out, terribly—straining in his chair to rise.)

                            —for holy God, that band!
  Why don't they stop that band!

                        POLLY
                      (going)

                                    I'll run and tell them.
  Sit quiet, dear. I'll be right back.

    (Glancing back anxiously, POLLY disappears outside. The
      approaching band begins to play "John Brown's Body."
      LINK sits motionless, gripping his chair.)

LINK Set quiet! Dead folks don't set, and livin' folks kin stand, and Link—he kin set quiet.—God a'mighty, how kin he set, and them a-marchin' thar