We strengthened the doors and windows by piling more boxes up, leaving only holes to shoot through. Then we waited. The dark heat in the store just melted you; outside the sun hammered fit to knock your eye out. When it comes hot and still—deadly still—I can remember that hour's waiting in the store. I couldn't hold on to what I was thinking of for a minute; all my ideas flipped around like scart birds, and I sweat and sweat, and I was sick at my stomach, and the man I shot kept squirming. It was the same as sitting up in bed to find out your nightmare is real. To the devil with waiting! I tried to clamp my attention on mother, on Mary, on everybody I knew. Useless. I didn't seem to know anybody—they were only jokes, and mostly, the faces, as they skipped by, turned on me and grinned. At the same time I kept talking with the other boys and even laughed once in a while. I know they thought I was cool as a watermelon. I'm even with them there; I thought they were, too.
When Gonzales called, with a click in his voice, "Hist! Quid'ow! They come!" I could have raised both hands to heaven in thanks. There's nothing one-eighth as bad in getting killed as sitting around waiting for it.
I jumped for my window. There ain't a bit of what was in front of me but what's with me to stay. I could only see a small space that day—anything that wasn't in a ten-foot circle was dark. I leave the why to the doctors. It never troubled me again.
I had the south window, kind of slantwise facing the road, and about twenty foot from it, where it passed the store. There was a breastwork of canned goods shoulder high, with lots of loose cartridges spread on the inner top box. The box near me was open, and red labels on quart cans of tomatoes shone out—"Pride of the Garden." I wonder if the man that raised 'em, or he that canned 'em, ever imagined they were going to become the bulwarks of the State of Panama?
The shutters were heavy, with holes in 'em about four inches wide, which you could cover with a round piece of wood that swung on a screw. These holes were right in height for me to shoot through. The other boys had to stand on boxes, being shorter.
I took a peep through my gun-hole. There come the rebels, flap-flapping down the road in their bare feet, trailing their guns, their wide-brimmed hats shaking comical. And I felt happy when I saw it. These were real men, and for the last hour I'd been fighting ghosts. We didn't want 'em to hit us in a body, so I called cheerful to the other boys, "Bet you a can of tomatoes I draw first blood!" and let her flicker through the loop-hole.
XV
TOMATOES BY THE QUART
The barefoot soldiers expected to walk right through us. They come straight and fairly bunched, while we dropped them. They kept coming and we kept dropping them. Streaks of white flew out of the shutters and whiskers grew on the walls, but not a man of us was touched, while we laid them out something awful.