"A man ain't nothing, when he's as old as us," Jim Liddel said, his skull sockets closed, "except what he done. _He_ ain't much any more, himself; he's mostly what he done with his life, whatever he done and left around that he can point to and say, 'I did that', that's all. And what's he got left if they take that away? We can't make it again. We made Smoky Creek; built it; wasn't a thing here that didn't come out o' us or ours. We made the valley, after God give it to us; wasn't a thing here we didn't let live or help live or make live. We made our families, and watched 'em fit into the town and the valley, like the valley fits into the world, and we watched 'em go on doing what we done before them: building and working and planting and raising families--going on, like people got to go on. That's the way it was. That's what we had. Until they dropped the bomb and killed it--killed all we done that made us men." Tears were squeezing out of the skull sockets, and Ben Bates caught Tom Pace's eye and looked away, out the window, at the green walls of the valley that was a coffin. "I just wish an airyplane would come around again," old Jim said. "_I--just--wish._ You know, Ben?" Ben tried to talk and had to clear his throat; he put out his cigar in the ashtray, as if that was what was wrong with his throat, and said, "I know, Jim. Sure. And maybe you'll get your wish." He pushed back his chair and tried to grin, but it came out sour. "Maybe you will, you old fire-eater--and what if one comes and we get spotted and it shoots us up or goes back and tells everybody we're here? That's one wish we don't want the good Lord to grant, ain't it? Ain't it, now?" Jim didn't say anything. Ben got up and said, "'Bout noon. Guess I'll go home for a bite and then go down and fish with Windy." Jim said, thinly, "I meant, I wish one would come and we'd _get_ it." "Well, maybe one will," Ben said, turning toward the door. "They built a slew o' them. And maybe _we_ will, if it does." * * * * * He stopped by the door of the Town Hall to listen carefully, his sharp old eyes half-shut. Behind him, at the far end of the room, somebody made a ringer, and Dave Mason said, "Nice, Owen," in his reedy voice. Ben listened and didn't hear what he was listening for. He stepped past the rifle that leaned beside the door and made his way to the end of the porch, walking close to the wall. The summer sun stood at noon, and the porch was in shadow; beyond, the street was a jumble of boards and broken glass, its canyon walls of leaning building-fronts and sagging porches, its caverns of empty windows and doorways shimmering in the heat. You couldn't see much dirt along the way; where the debris didn't come to your knees, it reached over your head. At the end of the porch Ben stopped and listened again; heard nothing. He stepped down and walked as fast as he could--damn arthritis again--to the porch of the next building.