"All the way," one of them yelled.
Ephraim cocked his arm and threw. The sphere sped like a rifle ball toward the target of the most distant glove, some seventeen rods away.
"Wow!" the youth to whom he had spoken admired. The young voice was so shocked with awe Ephraim had an uneasy feeling the boy was about to genuflect. "Gee. Get a load of that whip. The guy's got an arm like Joe DiMaggio...."
Supper was good but over before Ephraim had barely got started. Either the American stomach had shrunk or Gertie and her brother, despite their seeming affluence, were among the very poor. There had only been two vegetables, one meat, no fowl or venison, no hoe cakes, no mead or small ale or rum, and only one pie and one cake for the three of them.
He sat, still hungry, in the parlor thinking of Martha's ample board and generous bed, realizing she, too, must be dust. There was no use in returning to Middlesex. It would be as strange and terrifying as New York.
Benny offered him a small paper spill of tobacco. "Sis tells me ya was in the Army. What outfit was ya with?" Before Ephraim could tell him, he continued, "Me, I was one of the bastards of Bastogne." He dug a thumb into Ephraim's ribs. "Pretty hot, huh, what Tony McAuliffe tells the Krauts when they think they got us where the hair is short and want we should surrender."
"What did he tell them?" Ephraim asked politely.
Benny looked at him suspiciously.
"'Nuts!' he tol' 'em. 'Nuts.' Ya sure ya was in the Army, chum?"