This patch of earth is held within a half stadium of limestone cliffs and mountain pastures. On the surface, the Swago Farm is quiet and solid, green in summer and in winter deep with snow. It has its level fields, its fence rows and hilly pastures. There are some two hundred acres of trees and bluegrass, running water, and the winding, dusty paths that cattle and humans have kept open through the years. There are three small woodlands, two of them still virgin and mostly of oak. On one of the knolls is the weedy myrtle-grown graveyard where we have buried our people for 150 years. Before then, we buried them where we now forget. We call the knoll the Graveyard Hill, and the cattle graze there outside its wire fence and crooked gate. Higher up on the ridge-top and canting over toward Captain Jim's orchard is a rusty pole set like a crucifix—a television antenna that stands as though it were put there to mark our soldiers' graves. One grave is for Captain Jim, my father's father, who went with the Virginia Rebels; another is for the boy, Elbert Messer, who was fatally wounded in World War I.
