The sun is out and the sky is clear for the moment. But the clouds of the last engagement weigh heavily on the drummer boy’s mind. A tear wells in his eye as he looks down the road to what may be the family farm and his memory of mother. Still, old and righteous tree roots reach for the very ground on which he stands and the very world in which he’s been raised. Though he’s matured far beyond his years, he is not the little man he’d hoped to be. Neither is his battlefield brother who plods forward in the background. Fear drives the cadence of his drum as he huddles with the group, framed by the old barren oaks and unbending sensibilities of his time. Certainly, “one marched home,” either to God or, God willing, an untended field of grain.