“The house is pinched!” said a voice.
Chrisfield saw Judkins standing over him, a grin on his large red face. He got to his feet and sat sulkily in his chair again. Andrews was already sitting opposite him, looking impassive as ever.
The tables were full now. Someone was singing in a droning voice.
“O the oak and the ash and the weeping willow tree,
O green grows the grass in God's countree!”
“Ole Indiana,” shouted Chris. “That's the only God's country I know.” He suddenly felt that he could tell Andy all about his home and the wide corn-fields shimmering and rustling under the July sun, and the creek with red clay banks where he used to go in swimming. He seemed to see it all before him, to smell the winey smell of the silo, to see the cattle, with their chewing mouths always stained a little with green, waiting to get through the gate to the water trough, and the yellow dust and roar of wheat-thrashing, and the quiet evening breeze cooling his throat and neck when he lay out on a shack of hay that he had been tossing all day long under the tingling sun. But all he managed to say was:
“Indiana's God's country, ain't it, Andy?”
“Oh, he has so many,” muttered Andrews.
“Ah've seen a hailstone measured nine inches around out home, honest to Gawd, Ah have.”
“Must be as good as a barrage.”
“Ah'd like to see any goddam barrage do the damage one of our thunder an' lightnin' storms'll do,” shouted Chris.