shuffling them in his stiff hands.

Ben sat down and stretched out his legs again.

After a second, old Jim said wistfully, "You know, I wish I could still handle a rifle, Ben. Or do anything but sit. No way for a man to live, to have dead legs and dying arms." He shifted in his cushions. "You know, I reckon when I start to really die—die all over—I'm gonna get up out o' this chair. I'll stand up, somehow, even if it kills me faster. A man oughta fall when he dies, like a tree, so they know he stood up in his time. A man oughtn'ta die sitting down."

"Sure, Jim," Ben said. "You're right about that."

"Never had a sick day in my life, until they dropped that bomb. Why, I could outpitch and outchop and outshoot any of you whippersnappers, until they ..." Old Jim walloped the chair arm. "Damn, I made up for it, though! Didn't I? They put me in a chair, I sat in it and I got me an airyplane, and that's more'n they could do to me, by golly, they couldn't kill me!"

"Sure, Jim," Ben said.

"And when my time comes, I'll be up and out o' this chair. Man oughta fall and make a noise when he dies."

"Sure, Jim," Ben said. "But that's a long ways off, ain't it?"

Jim closed his eyes, and his face looked like a skull. "You squirts always think a man lives forever."

From outside came the late morning sounds: the murmuring of Smoky Creek at the edge of town, under its cool tunnel of willows; the twittering of a flock of robins circling above; the constant soft rustle of the trees that crowded the green hills around. From the warehouse down by the tracks came the faint sounds of livestock—and the voices of the men whose job it was to look after them this week: to feed them, turn them out into the big pens for an hour's sunlight, then drive them back into the warehouse again.

Lucky the warehouse had stood the bomb—it was perfect for the use.

"Wonder how the war's going," Tom Pace said. He dropped some cards and bent painfully to retrieve them; his voice was muffled: "I just wonder how it's going, you know? Wonder who's killing more than who today.

"Maybe," Tom continued, coming up, "it's all over. Ain't seen no planes for couple years now. Maybe somebody won."

Ben shrugged. "Who knows. Don't 

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