hank Jackie Hairr What? You want to hear it all? Well, I really don't know if I should tell. You know, Mama says folks sometimes should keep family business in the family. You promise? Well since you're my very best friend but then only if you swear yes, on the Bible, cause Papa says we're not to talk about it till Henry gets better and comes home. It is not! I tell you, Jenny Lou it's nothing so terrible. Mama explained it all to me tonight. How did it start? Well, that's hard to say right off. Let me tell you from the beginning and you see if it sounds so strange. It sure was a pretty day. I mean not just plain pretty, but one of those days when you wake up and smell the dogwood and magnolias before you even open the window. And if the grass has just been cut the day before, the morning dew makes it smell just like the watermelon patch on Gramma Harris' farm. I got up real early and when I first looked out I saw all that dew still on the grass. Then I thought that that's just how it ought to be with Henry coming home today and all. Last time I got up that early was last summer when you used to stay over. Remember how Henry would get up real early to go to work at old Mr. Stanley's Gas Station, how he'd stop when he passed my room and sometimes come in and pull our toes 'cause we always kicked the sheet off? Oh, I was so excited I stayed up and got my own breakfast before anybody else got up. Well, that morning seemed to drag on worse than Miss Lewis' history lesson on Sherman's march through Georgia. It seemed like I waited at that attic window all day long. An attic window sure is helpful though when you're wanting to see clear 'round the corner to the city bus stop. Well, I saw him coming down the sidewalk almost a block away. I don't know why but my mouth fell wide open when I didn't see a green uniform with that funny folding green hat that hat that wasn't like any hat Pap had ever worn and those shiny, shiny, almost wet-looking black shoes he always wore; all those little colored pins and ribbons, the dull silver buttons and those two stripes on the coat were what my eyes were waiting to see. Henry had never come home once in three years without that uniform on. "I am a soldier in the United States Army and will serve my country wherever they need me." That's what he said when Mama cried that day we took him to Atlanta and he left on that big plane to go overseas. Yessiree, he was soldier and proud of it. Yeah, Mama cried every time Henry came home and left again. But then it was funny how all of us Mama, Papa, me and even Billie Jo cried this last time. I never saw Billie Jo cry so, except for the time her boyfriend slammed her lacy lilac-blue formal dress in the car door and ripped a big hole in it. I expected Mama to yell at