him but she never did. She just let Billie Jo cry and then bought some more crinkly material and patched it up real good. Anyhow, I think that was the only other time I really noticed. Billie Jo's crying over anything I mean. At Henry's leaving and over a crinkly blue dress. Of course, next year I get my first crinkly dress. I get to go to the sixth grade dance with a boy, if Papa can take us, and if that ole Roger Dawson asks me. Why, he'd better! After all, I give him the homemade buttered bread Mama puts in my lunch bag every day. That was the deal we made in third grade Mama's buttered bread every day if he'd promise to take me I mean, escort me to the sixth grade dance next November. Well, anyway Henry or should I call him Hank now? You know that time I told you how he wrote Mama that all those other Army guys called him Hank and it suited him better: said it made him feel more like a soldier. But he's always been Henry to me just the same. All right. I'll hurry and finish. I've got homework too. But thank heaven only one more week of school left. So here I was just watching from the upstairs window, practically falling out I was looking so hard. And I noticed the minute he came 'round the corner by the Bentley's. I noticed that he sure looked different. I mean not counting the Army uniform being gone and all. He looked different in the way he walked even. Seems like it was peculiar how he didn't swing his arms up and push that old peach branch out of his way like he used to. He just let it kind of brush over his head. And he looked older around the eyes. So much older you'd think he'd been gone for a hundred years instead of just one. So I watched him for a while and decided I'd wait and let him get closer to the house before I ran out and surprised him. I knew I would surprise him 'cause he was probably thinking Papa was at the store and today being Thursday, it was Mama's day to go and help Papa with the books. Of course, I should have been in school and since Billie Jo moved up to Bennettsville for good, she wouldn't come down till after school let out. Maybe that's why he was taking his time so and stopped to pick dandelions and throw that rock at Mrs. Lillian's old blind cat. Seemed like he didn't look down the road at our house at all until he got right to the gate. And I tell you, Jenny Lou Thompson, it was the most peculiar kind of looking I ever saw anybody do. Now Henry knows what our house looks like and it sure hasn't changed none since last summer. I tried staring at it like that today and all I could see was things that have been here for years and years: the same old crippled pink dogwood blossoming on the right side of the yard next to the fence, the weeping willow with the faded out white iron chairs underneath, Mama's flowering azalea bushes all lined up next to the house ,the ivy-covered lamp post out front with our name in big black letters MONTGOMERY written on it only its got so covered with ivy you can't read it any more. Now our plain white house with chipped green shutters a house that's just like half the other houses in Jones-boro why, it can't be all that interesting that Henry could stand and stare at it for nigh on twenty minutes. Stared, looked I don't rightly know what he was doing out there turning all around touching the blossoms on everything and first smiling and then, honest Jenny Lou, my big brother Henry started to cry. Not just a sad cry like at funerals, but a hard cry, like when Grandpa's best riding mule, Daisy, broke her leg and he had to shoot her right in the field in front of us. You know, it was a chest-hurting kind of cry. Well, by now I was completely confused and was downright afraid to go out there. Why, he bent down on his knees like he was going to pray and then he put his hands on his head, covering his ears, and started rocking back and forth just crying and crying and crying. And once I heard him yell out. I couldn't understand what he said right off, but I heard him swear and then he said it again. Yes, he said G. D. You know, God Damn! yeah, he said, "God damn war." And that was all and then he just kept rocking with his shoulders shaking back and forth. I felt like I stayed at that window forever Jenny Lou. I was so scared my body wouldn't move. But finally Mama and Papa drove up and ran over to Henry and tried to talk to him. He must not have heard them because they looked at each other in a real funny way not talking, just looking like they did when Billie Jo told them she was moving away to Bennettsville. So Papa tried to get Henry to walk but he just wouldn't. Then Papa almost fully picked Henry up and he and Mama took him upstairs and closed the bedroom door. I know he was sick because they put him in bed and called Dr. Davis. Mama never came out till they left this morning. Dr. Davis came to the house right away and Papa and he talked for a long, long time out in the kitchen. They talked way past eleven o'clock because Papa made me go to bed when the old clock struck eleven and I listened to them till I fell asleep. No, Jenny Lou. I don't know why. He just had to go to the hospital. No. Not the Blakely County Hospital. Some well, different kind of hospital in Atlanta. Oh yes. Mama says he'll be coming back home soon. She says Henry will come back just like always. He'll be back. AMERIKA FOR AMERICANS "My country, right or wrong!" Then why not correct it? "Give me liberty or give me death!" But what you die for should be right. "Remember the Main!" But forget the Philippines? "America - love it or leave it." I'm an American - love me or leave me alon. "I pledge allegiance to the flag." But not always what it stands for. "I love my country!" Then love it's people, too. All people All colors All minds All creeds Not just for God's sake But for us all. -KEVIN FOLKMAN