The old man was very shrunken and feeble and like most aged people he had an impersonal way about him as though he saw the world but not its people individually. He seemed to take Wilfred for granted. He did not allude to the difficulty of crossing the street. “I want to get my check,” he said.
“Yes, where is it?” Wilfred asked him.
“It’s in the post office; some months it’s late but not usually. I got to go to Kingston for examination on the twenty-fifth.”
“Oh, you mean your pension?” Wilfred asked.
“You know Doctor Garrison there?”
“No, I don’t know anybody in Kingston,” Wilfred said.
“He’s the one I’ll have.”
“Yes, what for?”
“Pension raise. I put in an application; if I’m bad enough off I’ll get it. It’ll be raised from fifty to eighty. I can’t see none out of this yere eye, this left one. I got a claim on total disable; can’t work no more.”
Wilfred was about to say that he hoped his charge might be “bad enough off.” But he thought it would not sound well to say that.
“Two eyes does it sure,” the old man said. “I ony got a single eye. But I got rheumatiz, that oughter help. Trouble is gettin’ there.”
The words single eye used so innocently by this poor, little old man, made Wilfred wince a little, for he had ceased to think about the lost emblem.
“I gotta get t’ the Kingston Hospital,” said the old man. “If the doctor looks me over he’ll pass me; I got a bad heart too. That’s like ter be total disable, ain’t it? I ain’t hankerin’ after bein’ shook up by one of them buses; I got sciatici too—comes and goes. Them doctors is on the watchout on total disable work.”
It seemed to Wilfred that this poor old man had more ailments than he really needed, that he possessed a small fortune in the way of infirmities. He took him to the post office and watched the poor, old, shriveled hand tremblingly open the long envelope in which Uncle Sam, without letter or salutation of any kind, enclosed his monthly check which was the sole support of the old veteran. The old man took particular pains proudly to explain to Wilfred that any merchant would cash that check; he even offered to demonstrate the government’s credit by inviting Wilfred to witness the transaction in the adjoining drug store. It was plain that he believed in Uncle Sam.
While his friend was in the drug store on this momentous monthly business, Wilfred stamped and mailed his letter home and listened to a few words from the loquacious postmaster touching the old man.
“Who is he? Oh, that’s Pop Winters. He saw smoke in his day, that old codger. He lives in that little shack up the road............