The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pipe of Peace, by James McKimmey

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Title: Pipe of Peace

Author: James McKimmey

Release Date: November 1, 2009 [EBook #30380]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_There's a song that says "it's later than you think" and it is
perhaps lamentable that someone didn't sing it for Henry that
beautiful morning...._

Pipe of Peace

By James McKimmey, Jr.

[Illustration]

The farmer refused to work. His wife, a short thin woman with worried
eyes, watched him while he sat before the kitchen table. He was thin,
too, like his wife, but tall and tough-skinned. His face, with its
leather look was immobile.

"Why?" asked his wife.

"Good reasons," the farmer said.

He poured yellow cream into a cup of coffee. He let the cup sit on the
table.

"Henry?" said the woman, as though she were really speaking to someone
else. She walked around the kitchen in quick aimless bird steps.

"My right," said Henry. He lifted his cup, finally, tasting.

"We'll starve."

"Not likely. Not until everybody else does, anyway."

The woman circled the room and came back to her husband. Her eyes
winked, and there were lines between them. Her fingers clutched the edge
of the table. "You've gone crazy," she said, as though it were a
half-question, a half-pronouncement.

The farmer was relaxing now, leaning back in his chair. "Might have.
Might have, at that."

"_Why?_" she asked.

The farmer turned his coffee cup carefully. "Thing to do, is all. Each
man in his own turn. This is my turn."

The woman watched him for a long time, then she sat down on a chair
beside the table. The quick, nervous movement was gone out of her, and
she sat like a frozen sparrow.

The farmer looked up and grinned. "Feels good. Just to sit here. Does
well for the back and the arms. Been working too hard."

"Henry," the woman said.

The farmer tasted his coffee again. He put the cup on the table and
leaned back, tapping his browned fingers. "Just in