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I never heard such boasting.
For two whole days while I was there
he never let up. He was the best axeman,
driver, horsebreaker, farmer, bullocky and judge
of standing timber "that ever God put guts in".
He'd also had the best dog, the best car,
the best crop of corn and the very best eight-day clock
and he'd been the best psalm-singer in his church, too.
Someone had let a little boy grow old;
I saw that all these things were a posy of flowers
snatched out of a funeral wreath and offered
to me, or to anyone,
not a wreath that would lie heaped on his grave
but the little special one that would go down
diminishing past clay, and trembling, on his coffin.
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