the ribs, and skipping away with a triumphant “Hah! Got you that time!”
There was forever in that town a smell of raw tobacco, biting the nostrils with its acrid pungency: it smote the stranger coming from the train, but all the people in the town denied it, saying: “No; there is no smell at all.” And within a day the stranger too could smell it no more.
On Easter morning he arose in the blue light and went with the other pilgrims to the Moravian cemetery.
“You ought to see it,” Ben said. “It’s a famous custom: people come from everywhere.” But the older brother did not go. Behind massed bands of horns, the trumpeting blare of trombones, the big crowds moved into the strange burial ground where all the stones lay flat upon the graves—symbol, it was said, of all-levelling Death. But as the horns blared, the old ghoul-fantasy of death returned, the grave slabs made him think of table-cloths: he felt as if he were taking part in some obscene feast.
Spring was coming on again across the earth like a light sparkle of water-spray: all of the men who had died were making their strange and lovely return in blossom and flower. Ben walked along the streets of the tobacco town looking like asphodel. It was strange to find a ghost there in that place: his ancient soul prowled wearily by the cheap familiar brick and all the young facades.
There was a Square on high ground; in the centre a courthouse. Cars were parked in close lines. Young men loitered in the drug— store.
How real it is, Eugene thought. It is like something we have always known about and do not need to see. The town would not have seemed strange to Thomas Aquinas, —but he to the town.
Ben prowled along, greeting the merchants with a grave scowl, leaning his skull against their round skulls of practicality, across their counters—a phantom soliciting advertisement in a quiet monotone.
“This is my kid brother, Mr. Fulton.”
“Hello, son! Dogged if you don’t grow tall’uns up there, Ben. Well, if you’re like Old Ben, young fellow, we won’t kick. We think a lot of him here.”
