The tears that I had seen standing on his lids rolled down as
he did so.
The room was cumbered with the chattels of the last tenant. There was no
bed amongst them, but a roll of tattered carpet served me perfectly. I fell
asleep over a slab of hardtack. That evening, on waking, I bethought me of
Mammy.
My kind host allowed me to make a toilet in his back room behind the store.
It consisted of a superficial ablution and the loan of a handkerchief.
Mammy was not in. A neighbor of her sex and color offered me a chair in her
house, but I sat in Mammy's tiny porch.
This part of the city was unchanged, but I missed a familiar steeple which
had always been visible from Mammy's door.
It was late afternoon when Mammy came. She did not recognize me, but paused
at the gate.
"Ef you's a sick soldier you must go to the hospital; you kain' stay here,"
I heard her say before I roused myself sufficiently to speak.
"Mammy."
An ejaculation of the name of the Lord that brought the neighbor to her
door went up, and Mammy caught my hands and wept.
"Come in, my Gawd! Mahs William! you ain' hurted, is you?"
She pushed a chair to me and took one herself.
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