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ride in one sometime in the next six months."
    "You ain't seen but one motorcar since you was born more than ten years ago. How come you're not only going to
see
another one in six months, but you're going to go
riding
in it to boot? Don't seem likely to me."
    "Just what I was thinking, Willie. But there's got to be a way. I just got to have that one satisfaction before the end comes."
    "Too bad you can't pray."
    "What do you mean?"
    "Well, when I want something impossible, I ask God for it because God can do the impossible. But you can't pray."
    "Why not? My father's the preacher. I'm a ten times better prayer than you are."
    "You don't believe in God no more. Remember?"
    "Well, I could pray just in case."
    "I don't think it would work. God would know."
    I ignored Willie and that evening slipped in a to-whom-it-may-concern prayer to say that before the world collapsed in dust and ashes, I would sure like to ride in a motorcar just once.

3. The Glorious Fourth
    W E ALWAYS GET EXCITED ABOUT THE F OURTH OF J ULY. Why wouldn't we? It is the biggest thing ever to happen in our town, if you don't count the ice storm that broke down half the trees and let us ice-skate down Main Street on Christmas Day a few years back. But that only happened once. Fourth of July happens every year.
    We love the parade. First comes the marshal, who also happens to be the mayor, and since we've had the same mayor all my life, it's always been Mr. Earl Weston. Mr. Weston is the mayor because no one else can spare the time. I don't mean that only lazy men go into politics, but Earl Weston has some mysterious source of money that means he doesn't have to farm, or work in the quarries or stone sheds, or slog away in the livery stable or blacksmith shop, or preach like my pa. He doesn't even clerk in his own store. He was the one, I understand, who thought a board of selectmen wasn't
a fancy-enough government for a growing town on the main line of the railroad and that we ought to have a mayor. When no one else could understand why, he volunteered. I reckon Mr. Weston figured out that somebody has to lead off the Fourth of July parade, and that it was only fitting that that someone be the town's mayor. If anybody grumbled, I never heard tell of it.
    So first comes the mayor. He is riding, of course. Up until that time Mr. Earl Weston had not been known to walk far, and since he owns his own buggy, he might as well ride in it. Then, mostly walking, come the veterans. Now, the Civil War was over in 1865, and this is 1899, so only the ones who went as youngsters are near spry anymore, and some of them is downright decrepit. But they are mostly walking behind Mr. Weston's buggy, except for Colonel Weathersby, who is a farmer and owns his own horse and thinks that a colonel should ride a horse if he's got one handy. And all of us boys agree. Colonel Weathersby's horse is a beautiful Morgan. He's black and sleek and adds a lot of class to the parade. The veterans need the dignity of that horse, because they are by and large shuffling along. Rafe Morrison lost an arm, and so he's got this empty sleeve sewed up, and Warren Smith is still on crutches on account of a missing leg, but he insists on walking the whole route even so. I think he's kind of thumbing his nose at Mr. Earl Weston, but I ain't heard anyone else say as much, so I keep it to myself.
    We got twenty-seven veterans in our town, but only about nineteen or twenty were in the parade. The other citizens that went to the Civil War are sleeping in the cemetery up on East Hill or in some cornfield grave down south.
    This year there are two men returned from the war in Cuba, but neither of them got further away than Tennessee. They are walking toward the back of the parade so as not to draw attention away from the real veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic.
    The town band follows the veterans. We got a pretty good band for a town our size. This is on account of Mr. Pearson, who used to teach music