 Why was the cemetery joke a faux pas?
The first man to return from beyond the Great Frontier may be welcomed ... but will it be as a curiosity, rather than as a hero...? There was the usual welcoming crowd for a celebrity, and the usual speeches by the usual politicians who met him at the airport which had once been twenty miles outside of Croton, but which the growing city had since engulfed and placed well within its boundaries. There he sat between the mayor and a nervous young coed chosen as homecoming queen, and looked out at the police and fire department bands, the National Guard, the boy scouts and girl scouts, the Elks and Masons. Several of the churches in town had shown indecision as to how to instruct their parishioners to treat him. They had rehabilitated, spruced up, almost rebuilt the entire outside and grounds. The head of the American Legion and the chief of police, who had escorted him on this trip from the square, didn't ask to go in with him. He walked up what had once been a concrete path and was now an ornate flagstone path. They held onto each other as if seeking mutual support, the thirty-three-year old woman and ten-year-old boy. Carlisle had said his position was analogous to Columbus', to Vasco De Gama's, to Preshoff's when the Russian returned from the Moon—but more so. They had feared for him, having read of the many launchings gone wrong even in continent-to-continent experimental flight. Without waiting for an answer, he waved his hand—it shook; a ten-year-old boy's hand that shook—and ran from the room and from the house. He saw twin beds separated by an ornate little table with an ornate little lamp, and this looked more ominous a barrier to him than the twelve-foot concrete-and-barbed-wire fence around the experimental station. The body scars were faint, the scars running in long lines, one dissecting his chest, the other slicing diagonally across his upper abdomen to disappear under his trousers. Which was not what he'd considered at all important on leaving Walter Reed Hospital early this morning; which was something he found distasteful, something he felt beneath them both. And, at the same time, he began to understand that there would be many things, previously beneath them both, which would have to be considered. After all, he was still Henry Devers, the same man who had left home eleven months ago, with a love for family and friends which was, if anything, stronger than before.
 Henry had died, but nobody was comfortable enough to talk about it.
 Henry had watched many people die recently, including his own commanding officer.  Henry himself had almost died and did not want to be reminded of the trauma.  The joke was so old that made everyone uncomfortable to hear again.  Henry had died, but nobody was comfortable enough to talk about it.