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!