Distant Flame

July 22,1914, 6:30-9:30 P.M.

July 22,1914, 6:30-9:30P.M. ATHERINE, CHARLIE'S DAUGHTER, SAT in the front seat of the landau, Lewis by her side, and her husband, Richard Phillips, driving the disciplined pair of chestnut roans. Charlie, blackcoated and formal, sat behind them in the seat opposite his granddaughter , Marianne, whose hair floated golden and dense around her shoulders. The coach had been Catherine's idea, a gentle glance back to what a few were already calling simpler times. "Granddaddy, what does it feel like?" asked Marianne, who was eleven. She wore a lovely blue dress and white gloves and had her Grandmother Amy's deep blue eyes. "What does what feel like, Cricket?" asked Charlie. He was better now but still weak, and he was trying desperately to order some thoughts for his speech. Richard drove them through town for the sheer joy of the ride, and the horses pulled the landau easily but unwhipped and very slowly. "Being so famous," she said softly. She fumbled with her gloved hands. The buildings here in town had held different trades when Charlie was a boy: Dockery's Mercantile, Calhoun's Embalmer's, Garfield Insurance, the Blue Diamond Company. "I'm not famous," said Charlie. "You are, too, famous," said Marianne. "You are the most famous C A Distant flame 285 man in the history of Branton. Everybody says it. And tonight you're giving a speech. That makes you famous." "Marianne, don't bother your granddaddy with such questions," said Catherine. "Leave her alone," said Charlie, smiling. Catherine had turned and looked at her father, and his skin seemed translucent, gray as morning in winter. A sorrow passed through her. "Being famousis for politicians and fools, honey. I just live alone in a big house and think back over a long life. That's all I do now. Maybe someday you'll be famous." "What could I be famous for?" asked Marianne. "For being stupid," said her brother Lewis from the front seat. "That's enough," said Richard Phillips. "Haw now,Jim. Haw, Jim." The carriage turned south. "You could be famous for being a singer or a composer or a writer," said Charlie. "You could be anything you want to be." "I couldn't be famous," said Marianne. "You're famous. Tonight you're famous." "Well, maybe I am for tonight," said Charlie. "Maybe I am." They clopped along the streets now, heading west, then north again, finallyreaching Main Street, where Slocum's troops had marched that cold November of 1864. Who would have thought that thousands of Yankees might come straight through Branton? The great houses passed by, and a few cars came around, spooking the horses that Richard held at short reins. Ezra Atkinson Park was only a mile away. A few old women who were not going to the anniversary party stood on their front porches and waved at the sight of the carriage. Charlie, who wore a flat-brimmed straw hat, doffed it at them and nodded, thinking: This is my final journey through these good people and I should enjoy it. There is no reason I should not enjoy it. "I forgot to tell you I got a sweet telegram from your sister," Charlie said to Catherine. When she turned, Charlie's daughter for a moment looked just like her mother, the same kind wisdom spread across her eyes, the glowing cheeks, the light of happiness. "From MarthaJane? How wonderful." "I thought so," said Charlie. He was feeling much better now, and he was beginning to feel rhetoric rise in him, the shape of a speech. The horses' hooves cupped out: Will she be there? Will she bethere? Will she be there? 286 PHILIP LEE WILLIAMS EZRA ATKINSON PARK WAS a green swale on the west side of Branton, now fragrant with barbecue pits and pinned on one corner by a twostory -tall statue of the drummer boy Ezra atop a marble pylon. He was perpetually poised in mid-strike, drumsticks above a skin of Vermont marble. A decade before, vandals had broken the original stone sticks off, but the boys had confessed in a glut of corn liquor and been sentenced to a year in jail. Public subscription bought another pair, which a sculptor from South Dakota crafted back into the stern boy's frozen hands. On the pediment were the words "For God and Country" and below them "Little Ezra...