They told me the whole town gathers for homecoming. I understood: someone is coming home. I prepared for three days. I pressed my formal jacket. I wrote a short speech. I practiced the words: "Welcome home, hero. Your town never forgot you." I arrived at a football field. The whole town was there. Face paint. Foam fingers. A shirtless man painted blue from the waist up. It was 48 degrees. He did not care. A girl walked past with a teddy bear strapped to her chest by ribbons, bells, and small electric lights. I did not ask. I was the only person in a three-piece suit. I looked like the team's lawyer. I asked the painted man when the returning hero would arrive. "Bro," he said. "EVERYONE comes home for homecoming." Then, at halftime, the announcer's voice changed. "Folks. We have one more homecoming tonight." A soldier walked onto the field in uniform. Home from deployment. Nobody had told his little sister. She ran out of the cheer line and hit him so hard his cap fell off. The whole town stood up. The painted man beside me was crying into his foam finger. I stood in my formal jacket and bowed as deeply as I could. "Why does a whole town do this for one soldier?" I asked him. He looked at me like I had asked why people breathe. "He's one of ours," he said. After the game, I found the soldier and delivered my speech. All of it. Formal. He listened, holding his cap. When I finished, he hugged me. "Nobody ever wrote me a speech before," he said. He was nineteen.