Free Web and the Rock by Thomas Wolfe

said, 'it makes me shudder when I think of it!'--why that he found that old dead mule they'd left there in the road--and cut him off a steak and eaten it--'And the best meat,' says, 'I ever tasted!'-
 Now that will give you some idea of how hungry he must have been!
 "Well, of course, we'd heard these stories, and none of us had seen him since he went away, so we were all curious to know. Well, here they came, you know, marchin' along on that old river road, and you could hear all the people cheerin', and the men a-shoutin' and the women folks a-cryin', and here comes Bob Patten. Well then, of course we all began to ask him about Rance, said, 'Where is he? Is he here?'
 "'Oh, yes, he's here, all right,' said Bob, 'He'll be along in a minute now. You'll see him--and if you don't see him'"--suddenly she began to laugh--"'if you don't see him,' says Bob, 'why, by God, you'll smell him!' That's just the way he put it, you know, came right out with it, and of course, they had to laugh.... But, child, child!" with strong distaste she shook her head slightly--"That awful--oh! that awful, awful, odor! Poor feller! I don't reckon he could help it! But he al ways had it.... Now he was clean enough!" she cried out with a strong emphasis, "Rance always kept himself as clean as anyone you ever saw. And a good, clean-livin' man, as well," she said. "Never touched a drop of licker in all his life," she said decisively, "No, sir- neither him nor father.--Oh father! father!" she cried proudly, "Why father wouldn't let anyone come near him with the smell of licker on his breath! And let me tell you something!" she said solemnly, "If he had known that your papa drank, he'd never have let your mother marry him!--Oh! he wouldn't have let him enter his house, you know -he would have considered it a disgrace for any member of his family to associate with anyone who drank!" she proudly said. "And Rance was the same--he couldn't endure the sight or taste of it--but oh!" she gasped, "that awful, awful odor--that old, rank body-smell that nothing could take out!--awful, awful," she whispered. Then for a moment she stitched silently. "And of course," she said, "that's what they say about him--that's what they called him-----"
 "What, Aunt Maw?"
 "Why," she said--and here she paused again, shaking her head in a movement of strong deprecation, "to think of it!--to think, they'd have no more decency or reverence than to give a man a name like that! But, then, you know what soldiers are--I reckon they're a pretty rough, coarse-talkin' lot, and of course they told it on him--that was the name they gave him, the one they called him by."
 "What?"
 She looked at him quietly for a moment with a serious face, then laughed.
 "Stinkin' Jesus," she said shyly. "Whew-w!" she gently shrieked.
 "'Oh, you know they wouldn't say a thing like that!' I cried--but that was it, all right. To think of it!... And of course, poor fellow, he knew it, he recognized it, says, 'I'd do anything in the world if I could only get rid of it,' says, 'I reckon it's a cross the Lord has given me to bear.'... But there it was--that--old--rank--thing!--Oh, awful, awful!" she whispered, peering downward at the needle. "And say! yes! Didn't he tell us all that day when he came back that the Day of Judgment was already here upon us?--Oh! said Appomattox Court house marked the comin' of the Lord and Armageddon--and for us all to get ready for great changes! And, yes! don't I remember that old linen chart--or map, I reckon you might call it--that he kept strung around his neck, all rolled up in a ball, and hangin' from a string? It proved, you know, by all the facts and figures in the Bible that the world was due to end in 1865.... And there he was, you know, marchin' along the road with all the rest of them, with that old thing a-hangin' round his neck, the day they all came back from the war."
 She stitched quietly with deft, strong fingers for a moment, and then, shaking her head,