Patchwork | Page 7

exercise in the constant demands from her friends and neighbors.
But Granny's greatest joy lay in the fond ministrations for her husband,
Old Aaron, as the town people called him, half pityingly, half
accusingly. For some said Old Aaron was plain shiftless, had always
been so, would remain so forever, so long as he had Granny to do for
him. Others averred that the Confederate bullets that had shattered his
leg into splinters and necessitated its amputation must have gone astray
and struck his liver--leastways, that was the kindest explanation they
could give for his laziness.
Granny stoutly refuted all these charges--gossip travels in circles in
small towns and sooner or later reaches those most concerned--"Aaron
lazy! I-to-goodness no! Why, he's old and what for should he go out
and work every day, I wonder. He helps me with the garden and so, and
when I go out to help somebody for a day or two he gets his own meals
and tends the chickens still. Some people thought a few years ago that
he might get work in the foundry, but I said I want him at home with
me. He gets a pension and we can live good on what we have without
him slaving his last years away, and him with one leg lost at
Gettysburg!" she ended proudly.
So Old Aaron continued to live his life as pleased his mate and himself.

He pottered about the house and garden and spent long hours musing
under the grape arbor. But there was one day in every year when Old
Aaron came into his own. Every Memorial Day he dressed in his
venerated blue uniform and carried the flag down the dusty streets of
Greenwald, out to the dustier road to a spot a mile from the heart of the
town, where, on a sunny hilltop, some of his comrades rested in the
Silent City.
Only the infirm and the ill of the town failed to run to look as the little
procession passed down the street. There were boys in khaki, the town
band playing its best, volunteer firemen clad in vivid red shirts, a low,
hand-drawn wagon filled with flowers, an old cannon, also hand-drawn,
whose shots over the graves of the dead veterans would thrill as they
thrilled every May thirtieth--all received attention and admiration from
the watchers of the procession. But the real honors of the day were
accorded the "thin blue line of heroes," and Old Aaron was one of these.
To Granny Hogendobler, who walked with the crowd of cheering
children and adults and kept step on the sidewalk with the step of the
marchers on the street, it was evident that the standard bearer was
growing old. The steep climb near the cemetery entrance left him
breathless and flushed and each year Granny thought, "It's getting too
much for him to carry that flag." But each returning year she would
have spurned as earnestly as he any suggestion that another one be
chosen to carry that flag. And so every three hundred and sixty-fifth
day the lean straight figure of Old Aaron marched directly under the
fluttering folds of Old Glory and the soldier became a subject worthy of
veneration, then with customary nonchalance the little town forgot him
again or spoke of him as Old Aaron, a little lazy, a little shiftless, a
little childish, and Granny Hogendobler became the more important
figure of that household.
Granny was fifteen years younger than her husband and was
undeniably rotund of hips and face, the former rotundity increased by
her full skirts, the latter accentuated by her style of wearing her hair
combed back into a tight knot near the top of her head and held in place
by a huge black back-comb.

From this style of hair dressing it is evident that Granny was not a
member of any plain sect. She was, as she said, "An Evangelical, one
of the old kind yet. I can say Amen to the preacher's sermon and stand
up in prayer-meeting and tell how the Lord has blessed me."
There were some who doubted the rich blessing of which Granny spoke.
"I wouldn't think the Lord blessed me so much," whispered one, "if I
had a man like Old Aaron, though I guess he's good enough to her. And
that boy of theirs never comes home; he must have a funny streak in
him too." "But think of this," one would answer, "how the Lord keeps
her cheerful, kind and faithful through all her troubles."
Granny's was a wonderful garden. She and Old Aaron lived in a little
gray cube of a house that had its front face set straight to the edge of
Charlotte Street. However, the north side of the cube looked into a
great