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)