Standing in the shelter of the tent -- a rejected hospital tent on which the rain now dripped, no longer drumming -- Adam watched his own hands touch the objects on the improvised counter of boards laid across two beer barrels.
There was, of course, no real need to rearrange everything.
A quarter inch this way or that for the hardbake, or the toffee, or the barley sugar, or the sardines, or the bitters, or the condensed milk, or the stationery, or the needles -- what could it mean?
Adam watched his own hands make the caressing, anxious movement that, when rain falls and nobody comes, and ruin draws close like a cat rubbing against the ankles, has been the ritual of stall vendors, forever.

He recognized the gesture.
He knew its meaning.
He had seen a dry, old, yellowing hand reach out, with that painful solicitude, to touch, to rearrange, to shift aimlessly, some object worth a pfennig.
Back in Bavaria he had seen that gesture, and at that sight his heart had always died within him.
On such occasions he had not had the courage to look at the face above the hand, whatever face it might be.

Now the face was his own.
He wondered what expression, as he made that gesture, was on his face.
He wondered if it wore the old anxiety, or the old, taut stoicism.
But there was no need, he remembered, for his hand to reach out, for his face to show concern or stoicism.
It was nothing to him if rain fell and nobody came.
Then why was he assuming the role -- the gesture and the suffering?
What was he expiating?
Or was he now taking the role -- the gesture and the suffering -- because it was the only way to affirm his history and identity in the torpid, befogged loneliness of this land.

This was Virginia.

He looked out of the tent at the company street.
The rain dripped on the freezing loblolly of the street.
Beyond that misty gray of the rain, he saw the stretching hutment, low diminutive log cabins, chinked with mud, with doorways a man would have to crouch to get through, with roofs of tenting laid over boughs or boards from hardtack boxes, or fence rails, with cranky chimneys of sticks and dried mud.
The chimney of the hut across from him was surmounted by a beef barrel with ends knocked out.
In this heavy air, however, that device did not seem to help.
The smoke from that chimney rose as sluggishly as smoke from any other, and hung as sadly in the drizzle, creeping back down along the sopping canvas of the roof.

Over the door was a board with large, inept lettering: home sweet home.
This was the hut of Simms Purdew, the hero.

The men were huddled in those lairs.
Adam knew the names of some.
He knew the faces of all, hairy or shaven, old or young, fat or thin, suffering or hardened, sad or gay, good or bad.
When they stood about his tent, chaffing each other, exchanging their obscenities, cursing command or weather, he had studied their faces.
He had had the need to understand what life lurked behind the mask of flesh, behind the oath, the banter, the sadness.
Once covertly looking at Simms Purdew, the only man in the world whom he hated, he had seen the heavy, slack, bestubbled jaw open and close to emit the cruel, obscene banter, and had seen the pale-blue eyes go watery with whisky and merriment, and suddenly he was not seeing the face of that vile creature.
He was seeing, somehow, the face of a young boy, the boy Simms Purdew must once have been, a boy with sorrel hair, and blue eyes dancing with gaiety, and the boy mouth grinning trustfully among the freckles.

In that moment of vision Adam heard the voice within himself saying: I must not hate him, I must not hate him or I shall die.

His heart suddenly opened to joy.

He thought that if once, only once, he could talk with Simms Purdew, something about his own life, and all life, would be clear and simple.
If Simms Purdew would turn to him and say: "Adam, you know when I was a boy, it was a funny thing happened.
Lemme tell you now" --

If only Simms Purdew could do that, whatever the thing he remembered and told.
It would be a sign for the untellable, and he, Adam, would understand.

Now, Adam, in the gray light of afternoon, stared across at the hut opposite his tent, and thought of Simms Purdew lying in there in the gloom, snoring on his bunk, with the fumes of whisky choking the air.
He saw the sign above the door of the hut: home sweet home.
He saw the figure of a man in a poncho coming up the company street, with an armful of wood.

It was Pullen James, the campmate of Simms Purdew.
He carried the wood, carried the water, did the cooking, cleaning and mending, and occasionally got a kick in the butt for his pains.
Adam watched the moisture flow from the poncho.
It gave the rubberized fabric a dull gleam, like metal.
Pullen James humbly lowered his head, pushed aside the hardtack-box door of the hut, and was gone from sight.

Adam stared at the door and remembered that Simms Purdew had been awarded the Medal of Honor for gallantry at Antietam.

The street was again empty.
The drizzle was slacking off now, but the light was grayer.
With enormous interest, Adam watched his hands as they touched and shifted the objects on the board directly before him.
Into the emptiness of the street, and his spirit, moved a form.

The form was swathed in an army blanket, much patched, fastened at the neck with a cord.
From under the shapeless huddle of blanket the feet moved in the mud.
The feet wore army shoes, in obvious disrepair.
The head was wrapped in a turban and on top of the turban rode a great hamper across which a piece of poncho had been flung.
The gray face stared straight ahead in the drizzle.
Moisture ran down the cheeks, gathered at the tip of the nose, and at the chin.
The figure was close enough now for him to see the nose twitching to dislodge the drop clinging there.
The figure stopped and one hand was perilously freed from the hamper to scratch the nose.
Then the figure moved on.

This was one of the Irish women who had built their own huts down near the river.
They did washing.
Adam recognized this one.
He recognized her because she was the one who, in a winter twilight, on the edge of camp, had once stopped him and reached down her hand to touch his fly.
"Slice o' mutton, bhoy"?
She had queried in her soft guttural.
"Slice o' mutton"?

Her name was Mollie.
They called her Mollie the Mutton, and laughed.
Looking down the street after her, Adam saw that she had again stopped and again removed one hand from the basket.
He could not make out, but he knew that again she was scratching her nose.
Mollie the Mutton was scratching her nose.

The words ran crazily in his head: Mollie the Mutton is scratching her nose in the rain.

Then the words fell into a pattern: "Mollie the Mutton is scratching her nose, Scratching her nose in the rain.
Mollie the Mutton is scratching her nose in the rain".

The pattern would not stop.
It came again and again.
He felt trapped in that pattern, in the repetition.

Suddenly he thought he might weep.
"What's the matter with me"?
He demanded out loud.
He looked wildly around, at the now empty street, at the mud, at the rain.
"Oh, what's the matter with me"?
He demanded.

When he had stored his stock in the great oak chest, locked the two big hasps and secured the additional chain, tied the fly of the tent, and picked up the cash box, he moved up the darkening street.
He would consign the cash box into the hands of Jed Hawksworth, then stand by while his employer checked the contents and the list of items sold.
Then he --

Then what?
He did not know.
His mind closed on that prospect, as though fog had descended to blot out a valley.

Far off, in the dusk, he heard voices singing, muffled but strong.
In one of the huts a group of men were huddled together, singing.
He stopped.
He strained to hear.
He heard the words: "Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee!
Let the water and the blood From Thy riven side flow!"

He thought: I am a Jew from Bavaria.

He was standing there, he thought, in Virginia, in the thickening dusk, in a costly greatcoat that had belonged to another Jew.
That other Jew, a young man too, had left that greatcoat behind, in a rich house, and marched away.
He had crossed the river which now, beyond the woods yonder, was sliding darkly under the mist.
He had plunged into the dark woods beyond.
He had died there.

What had that man, that other young Jew, felt as he stood in the twilight and heard other men, far away, singing together?

Adam thought of the hutments, regiment after regiment, row after row, the thousands of huts, stretching away into the night.
He thought of the men, the nameless thousands, huddling in them.
He thought of Simms Purdew snoring on his bunk while Pullen James crouched by the hearth, skirmishing an undershirt for lice, and a wet log sizzled.
He thought of Simms Purdew, who once had risen at the edge of a cornfield, a maniacal scream on his lips, and swung a clubbed musket like a flail to beat down the swirl of Rebel bayonets about him.

He thought of Simms Purdew rising up, fearless in glory.
He felt the sweetness of pity flood through him, veining his very flesh.
Those men, lying in the huts, they did not know.
They did not know who they were or know their own worth.
In the pity for them his loneliness was gone.

Then he thought of Aaron Blaustein standing in his rich house saying: "God is tired of taking the blame.
He is going to let History take the blame for a while".

He thought of the old man laughing under the glitter of the great chandelier.

He thought: Only in my heart can I make the world hang together.

Adam rose from the crouch necessary to enter the hut.
He saw Mose squatting by the hearth, breaking up hardtack into a pan.
A pot was boiling on the coals.
"Gonna give Ole Buckra all his money"?
Mose asked softly.

Adam nodded.

"Yeah", Mose murmured, "yeah.
And look what he done give us".

Adam looked at the pot.
"What is it"?
He asked.

"Chicken", Mose said, and theatrically licked his lips.
"Gre't big fat chicken, yeah".
He licked his lips again.

Then: "yeah.
A chicken with six tits and a tail lak a corkscrew.
And it squealed for slop".
Mose giggled.
"Fooled you, huh?
It is the same ole same, tell me its name.
It is sowbelly with tits on.
It is salt po'k.
It is salt po'k and skippers.
That po'k, it was so full of skippers it would jump and run and not come when you say, hoo-pig.
Had to put my foot on it to hole it down while I cut it up fer the lob-scuse".

He dumped the pan of crumbled hardtack into the boiling pot of lobscouse.
"Good ole lob-scuse", he mumbled, and stirred the pot.
He stopped stirring and looked over his shoulder.
"Know what Ole Buckra et tonight"?
He demanded.
"Know what I had to fix fer Ole Him"?

Adam shook his head.

"Chicken", Mose said.