Page "romance" Paragraph 327

`` Damn the world '', she thought.

She looked out at the corn field, the great green deep acres of it rolled out like the sea in the field beyond the whitewashed fence bordering the grounds.

The mayor envisioned factories there.

Homes and factories and schools and a big wide federal highway, instead of peaceful corn to rest your eyes on while you tried to rest your heart, while you tried not to look at the balloon and the bandstand and the uniforms and the flash of the instruments.

The bands were impatient, but they were the only ones.

The others, the ones in the stands, were spellbound, for hearing the mayor was for them like listening to a symphony was for sophisticated folks in New York City.

It was like being in the concert hall in the afternoon and hearing the piano virtuoso rehearsing.

He was good and they knew that what he was doing for them he would do all over the United States some day.

So they stayed quiet and hung not on what he said but on how he said it, not listening exactly, but rather, feeling.

If a man was good, if he was going to be governor, you felt it and you wanted him to go on forever.

You were sorry when he finished talking because while he was up there you were someone else and the world was something else too.

It was a place full of courage and hope and you were part of it.

You laughed and then your chest swelled and you felt you could cry for a little bit, and then a feeling hit you like a chill in your stomach and the goose bumps rippled along your arm.

He hit the theme about dying to defend your country, and you were ready to do it right then, without a second thought.

While he talked you wouldn't trade being a West Tennessee farmer for being anything else in the whole damned world, no matter if it hadn't, in six weeks, rained enough to wet a rat's ass.