Around him the forests splintered, towns burned, and the dead lay uncollected in the snow. Overhead, above the smoke, B-29s blacked out the moon, and artillery shells the size of garbage cans screamed across the sky. But he slept, a good soldier, hungry, dirty, too exhausted to be very much afraid, and dreamed of a blizzard of cotton, of a single, massive smokestack, of blood kin battling with tire irons and two-by-fours in the strike of ’33. Homer Barnwell might have dreamed something better, something gentler, but how do you dream of skyscrapers and swaying palms when a mill village is all you have ever known? He could see himself there, bare feet black as tar from walking on streets of smut, peanut butter on his mouth, graham crackers in his fist. He could see his neighbors, five hundred of them, see flour-sack shirts and snuff cans and severe, ankle-length dresses, their rundown brogans and scuffed, high-top shoes shuffling toward the gate. He could see Stewart Reynolds’ pinned-up sleeve, see Pop Romine’s scandalous, undone overalls.
