He cleared his throat. “Well, good-by, Minnie,” he said,
“Don’t you hire any feller for harvest without you write me,
And if any more of those lightning-rodders come around,
We don’t want no more dum lightning-rods.” He tried
To think if there was anything else, but there wasn’t.
She suddenly threw her big, red arms around his neck,
He kissed her with clumsy force. Then he got on the wagon
And clucked to the horses as she started to cry.
Up in the mountains where the hogs are thin
And razorbacked, wild Indians of hogs,
The laurel’s green in April—and if the nights
Are cold as the cold cloud of watersmoke
Above a mountain-spring, the midday sun
Has heat enough in it to make you sweat.
They are a curious and most native stock,
The lanky men, the lost, forgotten seeds
Spilled from the first great wave-march toward the West
And set to sprout by chance in the deep cracks
Of that hill-billy world of laurel-bells.
They keep the beechwood-fiddle and the salt
Old-fashioned ballad-English of our first
Rowdy, corn-liquor-drinking, ignorant youth;
Also the rifle and the frying-pan,
The old feud-temper and the old feud-way
Of thinking strangers better shot on sight
But treating strangers that one leaves unshot
With border-hospitality. The girls
Have the brief-blooming, rhododendron-youth
Of pioneer women, and the black-toothed age.
And if you yearn to meet your pioneers,
You’ll find them there, the same men, inbred sons
Of inbred sires perhaps, but still the same;
A pioneer-island in a world that has
No use for pioneers—the unsplit rock
Of Fundamentalism, calomel,
Clan-virtues, clannish vices, fiddle-tunes
And a hard God. They are our last frontier.
They shot the railway-train when it first came,
And when the Fords first came, they shot the Fords.
It could not save them. They are dying now
Of being educated, which is the same.
One need not weep romantic tears for them,
But when the last moonshiner buys his radio,
And the last, lost, wild-rabbit of a girl
Is civilized with a mail-order dress,
Something will pass that was American
And all the movies will not bring it back.
They are misfit and strange in our new day,
In Sixty-One they were not quite so strange,
Before the Fords, before the day of the Fords …
Luke Breckinridge, his rifle on his shoulder,
Slipped through green forest alleys toward the town,
A gawky boy with smoldering eyes, whose feet
Whispered the crooked paths like moccasins.
He wasn’t looking for trouble, going down,
But he was on guard, as always. When he stopped
To scoop some water in the palm of his hand
From a sweet trickle between moss-grown rocks,
You might have thought him careless for a minute,
But when the snapped stick cracked six feet behind him
He was all sudden rifle and hard eyes.
The pause endured a long death-quiet instant,
Then he knew who it was. “Hi, Jim,” he said,
Lowering his rifle. The green laurel-screen
Hardly had moved, but Jim was there beside him.
The cousins looked at each other. Their rifles seemed
To look as well, with much the same taut silentness.
“Goin’ to town, Luke?” “Uh-huh, goin’ to town,
You goin’?” “Looks as if I was goin’.” “Looks
As if you was after squirrels.” “I might be.
You goin’ after squirrels?” “I might be, too.”
“Not so many squirrels near town.” “No, reckon there’s not.”
Jim hesitated. His gaunt hands caressed
The smooth guard of his rifle. His eyes were sharp.
“Might go along a piece together,” he said.
Luke didn’t move. Their eyes clashed for a moment,
Then Luke spoke, casually. “I hear the Kelceys
Air goin’ to fight in this here war,” he said.
Jim nodded slowly, “Yuh, I heerd that too.”
He watched Luke’s trigger-hand. “I might be goin’
Myself sometime,” he said reflectively
Sliding his own hand down. Luke saw the movement.
“We-uns don’t like the Kelceys much,” he said
With his eyes down to pinpoints. Then Jim smiled.
“We-uns neither,” he said. His hand slid back.
They went along together after that
But neither of them spoke for half-a-mile,
Then finally, Jim said, half-diffidently,
“You know who we air goin’ to fight outside?
I heard it was the British. Air that so?”
“Hell, no,” said Luke, with scorn. He puckered his brows.
“Dunno’s I rightly know just who they air.”
He admitted finally, “But ’tain’t the British.
It’s some trash-lot of furriners, that’s shore.
They call ’em Yankees near as I kin make it,
But they ain’t Injuns neither.” “Well,” said Jim
Soothingly, “Reckon it don’t rightly matter
Long as the Kelceys take the other side.”
It was noon when the company marched to the railroad-station.
The town was ready for them. The streets were packed.
There were flags and streamers and pictures of Lincoln and Hamlin.
The bad little boys climbed up on the trees and yelled,
The good little boys had clean paper-collars on,
And swung big-eyed on white-painted wicket-gates,
Wanting to yell, and feeling like Fourth of July.
Somebody fastened a tin can full of firecrackers
To a yellow dog’s tail and sent him howling and racketing
The length of the street. “There goes Jeff Davis!” said somebody.
And everybody laughed, and the little boys
Punched each other and squealed between fits of laughing
“There goes Jeff Davis—lookit ole yellow Jeff Davis!”
And then the laugh died and rose again in a strange
Half-shrill, half-strangled unexpected shout
As they heard the Hillsboro’ Silver Cornet Band
Swinging “John Brown’s Body” ahead of the soldiers.
I have heard that soul of crowd go out in the queer
Groan between laughter and tears that baffles the wise.
I have heard that whanging band.
“We’ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour-apple tree.”
Double-roll on the snare-drums, double squeal of the fife,
“We’ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour-apple tree!”
Clash of the cymbals zinging, throaty blare of cornets,
“We’ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour-apple tree!”
“On to Richmond! On to Richmond! On to Richmond!”
“Yeah! There they come! Yeah! Yeah!”
And they came, the bearskin drum-major leading the band,
Twirling his silver-balled baton with turkey-cock pomp,
The cornet-blowers, the ranks. The drum-major was fine,
But the little boys thought the captain was even finer,
He looked just like a captain out of a book
With his sword and his shoulderstraps and his discipline-face.
He wasn’t just Henry Fairfield, he was a captain,
—Henry Fairfield worried about his sword,
Hoping to God that he wouldn’t drop his sword,
And wondering hotly whether his discipline-face
Really looked disciplined or only peevish—
“Yeah! There they come! There’s Jack! There’s Charlie! Yeah! Yeah!”
The color-guard with the stiff, new flapping flag,
And the ranks and the ranks and the ranks, the amateur
Blue, wavering ranks, in their ill-fitting tight
