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_)
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?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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