She paused for a moment, reflecting. Then, nodding her head slightly, in confirmation, she concluded:
“But that was Bill Joyner for you! That’s just the kind of feller that he was.”
“So he was there that day?” said George.
“Yes, sir. He was right there standin’ next to father. Father was a Major, you know,” she said, with a strong note of pride in her voice, “but he was home on leave at the time the war ended. Why yes! he came home every now and then all through the war. Bein’ a Major, I guess he could get off more than the common soldiers,” she said proudly. “So he was there, with old Bill Joyner standin’ right beside him. Bill, of course—he’d come because he wanted to see Rance, and he knew he’d be comin’ back with all the rest of them. Of course, child,” she said, shaking her head slightly, “none of us had seen your great-uncle Rance since the beginning of the war. He had enlisted at the very start, you know, when war was declared, and he’d been away the whole four years. And oh! they told it, you know, they told it!” she half-muttered, shaking her head slightly with a boding kind of deprecation, “what he’d been through—the things he’d had to do—whew-w!” she said suddenly with an expostulation of disgust—“Why, the time they took him prisoner, you know, and he escaped, and had to do his travelin’ by night, sleepin’ in barns or hidin’ away somewheres in the woods all day, I reckon—and that was the time—whew-w!—‘Go away,’ I said, ‘it makes me shudder when I think of it!’—why that he found that old dead mule they’d left there in the road—and cut him off a steak and eaten it—‘And the best meat,’ says, ‘I ever tasted!’—Now that will give you some idea of how hungry he must have been!
“Well, of course, we’d heard these stories, and none of us had seen him since he went away, so we were all curious to know. Well, here they came, you know, marchin’ along on that old river road, and you could hear all the people cheerin’, and the men a-shoutin’ and the women folks a-cryin’, and here comes Bob Patten. Well then, of course we all began to ask him about Rance, said, ‘Where is he? Is he here?’
“Oh, yes, he’s here, all right,’ said Bob, ‘He’ll be along in a minute now. You’ll see him—and if you don’t see him’”—suddenly she began to laugh—“if you don’t see him,’ says Bob, ‘why, by God, you’ll smell him!’ That’s just the way he put it, you know, came right out with it, and of course, they had to laugh…. But, child, child!” with strong distaste she shook her head slightly—“That awful—oh! that awful, awful, odor! Poor feller! I don’t reckon he could help it! But he always had it…. Now he was clean enough!” she cried out with a strong emphasis, “Rance always kept himself as clean as anyone you ever saw. And a good, clean-livin’ man, as well,” she said.
“Never touched a drop of licker in all his life,” she said decisively, “No, sir—neither him nor father.—Oh father! father!” she cried proudly, “Why father wouldn’t let anyone come near him with the smell of licker on his breath! And let me tell you something!” she said solemnly, “If he had known that papa drank, he’d never have let your mother marry him!—Oh! he wouldn’t have let him enter his house, you know—he would have considered it a disgrace for any member of his family to associate with anyone who drank!” she proudly said. “And Rance was the same—he couldn’t endure the sight or taste of it—but oh!” she gasped, “that awful, awful odor—that old, rank body-smell that nothing could take out!—awful, awful,” she whispered. Then for a moment she stitched silently. “And of course,” she said, “that’s what they say about him—that’s what they called him——”
“What, Aunt Maw?”
“Why,” she said—and here she paused again, shaking her head in a movement of strong deprecation, “to think of it!—to think, they’d have no more decency or reverence than to give a man a name like that! But, then, you know what soldiers are—I reckon they’re a pretty rough, coarse-talkin’ lot, and of course they told it on him—that was the name they gave him, the one they called him by.”
“What?”