“You ought to see it,” Ben said.
“It’s a famous custom: people come from everywhere.”
But the older brother did not go.
Behind massed bands of horns, the trumpeting blare of trombones, the big crowds moved into the strange burial ground where all the stones lay flat upon the graves — symbol, it was said, of all-levelling Death.
But as the horns blared, the old ghoul-fantasy of death returned, the grave slabs made him think of table-cloths: he felt as if he were taking part in some obscene feast.
Spring was coming on again across the earth like a light sparkle of water-spray: all of the men who had died were making their strange and lovely return in blossom and flower.
Ben walked along the streets of the tobacco town looking like asphodel.
It was strange to find a ghost there in that place: his ancient soul prowled wearily by the cheap familiar brick and all the young facades.
There was a Square on high ground; in the centre a courthouse.
Cars were parked in close lines.
Young men loitered in the drug-store.
How real it is, Eugene thought.
It is like something we have always known about and do not need to see.
The town would not have seemed strange to Thomas Aquinas — but he to the town.
Ben prowled along, greeting the merchants with a grave scowl, leaning his skull against their round skulls of practicality, across their counters — a phantom soliciting advertisement in a quiet monotone.
“This is my kid brother, Mr. Fulton.”
“Hello, son!
Dogged if you don’t grow tall ‘uns up there, Ben.
Well, if you’re like Old Ben, young fellow, we won’t kick.
We think a lot of him here.”
That’s like thinking well of Balder, in Connecticut, Eugene thought.
“I have only been here three months,” said Ben, resting in bed on his elbow and smoking a cigarette.
“But I know all the leading business men already.
I’m well thought of here.”
He glanced at his brother quickly and grinned, with a shy charm of rare confession.
But his fierce eyes were desperate and lonely.
Hill-haunted?
For — home?
He smoked.
“You see, they think well of you, once you get away from your people.
You’ll never have a chance at home, ‘Gene.
They’ll ruin everything for you.
For heaven’s sake, get away when you can.
— What’s the matter with you?
Why are you looking at me like that?” he said sharply, alarmed at the set stare of the boy’s face.
In a moment he said: “They’ll spoil your life.
Can’t you forget about her?”
“No,” said Eugene. In a moment he added: “She’s kept coming back all Spring.”
He twisted his throat with a wild cry.
The Spring advanced with a mounting hum of war.
The older students fell out quietly and drifted away to enlistments.
The younger strained tensely, waiting.
The war brought them no sorrow: it was a pageant which might, they felt, pluck them instantly into glory.
The country flowed with milk and honey.
There were strange rumors of a land of Eldorado to the north, amid the war industry of the Virginia coast.
Some of the students had been there, the year before: they brought back stories of princely wages.
One could earn twelve dollars a day, with no experience.
One could assume the duties of a carpenter, with only a hammer, a saw, and a square.
No questions were asked.
War is not death to young men; war is life.