I had expected a small cottage, befitting a dead man's grandmother, but the house turned out to be a large, rambling affair, long in the tooth and down on its luck. Paint flaked from the weather-beaten Victorian exterior and the roof was missing an eighth of its shingles. The grass had grown to a length it found agreeable and was holding steady.

  I rang the bell and waited, wishing I were somewhere else. And rang again, wondering how long the somber November sky would hold its peace. The star felt icy against my chest.

  A tiny hand snatched aside the curtain behind the door's glass panes and Rachel Silver peered up at me. She stood every inch of five feet tall and was not particularly grandmotherly in appearance. Apparently satisfied, she opened the door wide.

  "Mrs. Silver, I'm Captain Simon Payne," I said, holding up my military ID. "We spoke on the phone?"

  "I can still remember as far back as yesterday, Captain," she said, retreating a step. "Come in, then. And call me Rachel."

  She appeared lean, not gaunt, and agile rather than spry. Short-cropped silver hair topped off a plaid flannel shirt and faded jeans, both evidently intended for a very small man. A grimy pair of ballet slippers completed the ensemble. "Swan Lake" played in another room and I wondered briefly if she had been dancing.

  "You're a big one," she said without conveying approval. "How tall do you run, Captain?" Blue eyes glittered. She was either extremely spirited or feverish.

  "Six-two," I said. "And Simon's fine."

  "And what do you want from me, Simon? Coffee? Black, am I right?"

  "Black would be great. Rachel."

  She spun and hurried out of the room. I heard a click and Tchaikovsky abruptly resumed his long slumber.

  The room was a mad clutter of unwanted clues to this woman's life and to that of the boy I would help her bury. I wandered across braided throw rugs floating on scarred hardwood, glancing at this keepsake, that curiosity. Thick volumes, most in paper cover, loitered on block-and-board bookshelves: Skinner and Thoreau; Kierkegaard and Nietzsche; Aeschylus. A boldly colored poster advertised Seville's Plaza de Toros on one wall and beside it flew a flock of framed photographs, two of them featuring uniformed men. One was an aviator from an earlier war and the other, I suspected, was the subject of my visit.

  Private First Class Jeffrey Bagwell wore dress greens, as did I, and stared resolutely over the photographer's head. I recognized it as a Basic Training portrait, the sort a recruit was encouraged to have taken for his wife, girlfriend, or mother. Or in this case, grandmother. It looked like every other soldier's photo I'd ever seen, including mine. A stringless violin hung next to Bagwell, loosely complementing the bassoon leaning in the corner.

  Rachel Silver interrupted my inventory by thrusting a steaming mug at me. "Do you take rum in it?" she asked. Before I could reply, she poured a dollop from the bottle in her other hand. "These Yankee winters will chill you to the bone."

  Her speech was softened by a trace of the South—Virginia, perhaps—and I noticed a slightly pejorative use of "Yankee."

  "Thank you, ma'am—Rachel," I said. "Could we sit down?"

  She nodded at an overstuffed chair whose seams were close to parting. The fabric bore a riot of aging daisies on a once-white background. I sat gingerly as she perched on a blue canvas director's chair, drew her knees to her chest, and embraced them. "You're here about Jeff," she said.

  "I am," I replied, grateful to be on course. I put the mug on a coffee table after a tentative sip and opened my pasteboard folder. "These are official records from Private Bagwell's military personnel file," I said. "As his named beneficiary, you have fifteen thousand dollars coming to you from the government."

  "You know, it's a great puzzlement," she said, ignoring my statement entirely. "I could see his father going off to war—too young for the Big One, but then Farley never could stand prosperity. He had to go and try Korea, and of course, it killed him. Well, he was daft as a brush, that's all. But Jeff had sense. What could have possibly gotten into that boy's head to make him march downtown and enlist?"

  I found a convenient cliché. "Maybe he just wanted to serve his country."

  "Serve his country," she said, looking as though she wanted to spit. "Indeed! Serve it where? In Vietnam? Serving whom, young man? Or what?"

  I didn't like the direction the conversation was taking. "Mrs. Silver, I'm not here to debate the merits of the war. I've been assigned to assist you in closing Private Bagwell's affairs. I'm here to help you, if I can, in my official capacity as your Survivor's Assistance liaison."

  She considered the words, tasted them and said, "I suppose you're bent on telling me what that means."

  I opened my mouth, closed it, and took refuge in the script they'd given me. "I will assist you in having the body transferred to the facility of your choice. I will arrange for a military funeral if you so desire. I will see to it that you receive whatever benefits are due you. I will secure his uniform, decorations and any and all personal effects for you. I will—"

  "Did you know Jeff?"

  I looked up, nonplussed. "Uh . . . no, ma'am."

  She coaxed a pack of cigarettes from her shirt pocket, plucked one out with two fingers. I stood and held my lighter for her. I wanted one myself, but as always, there was a regulation. After a deep drag, she exhaled blue smoke through her nostrils. "Then why," she began, but was interrupted by a spasm of coughs. When her breath returned, she rasped, "Why are you here doing this?"

  "It was my turn," I admitted. Head and Headquarters Company maintained one rotating duty roster for Notification of Next of Kin and another for Survivor's Assistance. My name had appeared at the top of the latter and during my twenty-four hours on call, Jeffrey Bagwell had died. It was his bad luck and mine.

  "You drove out here today because my grandson died in service to his country?"

  I paused and thought it over. "Yes."

  "Then perhaps you'll tell me how it is," she said, "that he died serving it in Georgia? I don't recall a war in Georgia . . . not since Sherman, at least."

  "I'd like to hear the answer to that one myself."

  A tall young man in gray sweats strode through the door to the kitchen, drying his face and long, frizzy hair with a towel.

  "Oh, hello, dear," said Rachel. "How was your run? Captain Simon Payne, this is Paul Kaufman."

  Kaufman was dark, muscular and angry. I stood and extended my hand. He folded his arms.

  "Were you related to Private Bagwell?" I asked.

  "We were lovers." It was clearly a confrontational comment. He searched my face for shock or disapproval, but having known a few homosexual men in college, I was able to disappoint him.

  "I see. It's my understanding that your friend died in a training accident during an FTX at Fort Benning, Georgia." I looked at Rachel. "Surely you've been told the details?"

  She nodded and tapped half an inch of ash into a piece of ceramic sculpture, glazed deep blue. "Oh, they told me. But I still don't understand."

  I sat down and took a long swallow of the laced coffee. "I was commissioned at Benning two years ago. Maybe I can clarify?"

  Neither said a word. Kaufman began pulling off his sweats, revealing running shorts and lean, well-defined legs. His sweat-drenched T-shirt featured a tribute to a recently deceased Janis Joplin. The silence was palpable.

  I beat back a powerful urge to leave and continued. "An FTX is a Field Training Exercise. According to my information, Private Bagwell and his—"

  "Do you think you could call him Jeff?" Kaufman asked. "Or would that be a breach of your precious conduct?"

  I felt a sudden anger, suppressed it out of habit. The Army had taught me to know and judge the men I could trust and Kaufman wasn't one of them. I didn't like him much, but I also didn't like feeling this way about any civilian, particularly one so obviously in pain.

  "Absolutely, Mr. Kaufman," I replied evenly. "Jeff and his training company were engaged in an assault in force. In Vietnam, these assaults are routinely mounted by helicopter, and this was the case at Benning. Jeff's chopper set down. The men jumped out . . . Look, you have to understand that—"

  "Understand?" Kaufman interrupted. "How the hell am I supposed to understand?" Defeated by his adamant grief, I sat back and nodded, trying to muster at least a mechanical sympathy. He turned to Rachel. "What in God's name drove him to volunteer for the infantry?"

  "What drives men to go to war?" she asked her cloud of smoke.

  I said, "The draft board plays a part."

  "Hell, he wasn't drafted!" Kaufman exclaimed. "The damned fool enlisted!"

  "With a war on, that wouldn't have made much difference."

  "He was going to be drafted," Rachel said. "You know that, Paul."

  "But he could have been honest," Kaufman insisted. "He could have just told them what he was."

  Rachel stared hard at her grandson's lover, blew a stream of smoke his way. "And what was that?" she asked, a danger stirring. "He was a man, wasn't he? That's all they were after."

  Kaufman said nothing, but swiped angrily at his legs with the towel. I watched the two of them, trying to guess the roots of their tension, and finally spoke. "Would anyone like me to continue?"

  Rachel stood up and poured more rum into my mug. "Yes," she said with grim politeness. "Please. Tell us the rest."

  "Right. A helicopter on the ground is extremely vulnerable. Vulnerable to enemy fire, mortars, rocket-powered grenades . . . the works. They teach the pilots to unload and take off as quickly as possible. And they teach the men riding in them to protect the chopper before they do anything else. In this case, the student pilot—"

  Kaufman stood up abruptly. "Student pilot?"

  I glanced at Rachel, raised an eyebrow. I saw that she had already been told. She stubbed out her cigarette and took another from her pack. I reached for my lighter again.

  "There's no way for student pilots to simulate actual combat experience," I said, lighting Rachel's cigarette, "other than to train with the troops."

  Kaufman shook his head and threw the towel into a corner. I watched him pace, boxed between anguish and rage, working hard at what seemed an uncharacteristic silence.

  "When you dismount a helicopter," I continued doggedly, "everyone forms a defensive perimeter—a circle—around the chopper, well beyond the sweep of the rotor—" I paused, but nothing was said. "—and you drop and prepare to fire. You're all facing outward, toward the tree line . . . the enemy."

  "You sound as though you've done this," Rachel said. "The real thing, I mean." I might have heard sweet Southern sarcasm.

  "I served in Vietnam, if that's what you're asking. According to my information, Jeff was at the twelve o'clock position of the circle—directly ahead of the chopper."

  "So what?" Kaufman finally dropped into a chair. "They take off straight up."

  "Common misconception," I said. "They tilt forward and move forward. I can't tell you whether the pilot tipped too far forward, or if Jeff was too close, or if he wasn't low enough to the ground—"

  "Or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin," Rachel murmured.

  "—or what actually happened. I can't tell you because I wasn't there, and because I've never seen an accident of this sort. I'm just trying to paint a picture for you."

  "And the helicopter chopped him to pieces," Kaufman whispered in disbelief. The last trace of lingering anger deserted him.

  "Three," said Rachel. "Three pieces. How would that work out, Simon? Would his legs have been two? Or just one? And his head? Was that . . . three?" Her own head slumped forward, into silence. The partially smoked cigarette fell from her fingers.

  I had seen this kind of suffering before. I had even lived it, so I stood up, went to her, and placed a hand awkwardly on her shoulder. Kaufman shouldered me aside and pushed the table out of his way. He knelt before the suddenly old woman and embraced her fully, one hand pressing her head into the hollow of his shoulder.

  I stepped back, helpless, envying them their grief. I wanted to say something . . . something that would help. I hadn't known the proper words in Brooklyn or Fair Haven, hadn't found them in a place called Chu Lai, and I wasn't going to learn them here.

  Not knowing what else to do, I picked up the cigarette Rachel had dropped, stubbed it out, and went to the window. Beyond its grimy pane, the weather appeared to be holding, though another obscenely long November night was already settling onto New Jersey. I returned to my chair, drank more coffee-flavored rum, and began reassembling the record of a military career that had lasted less than eight months.

  "I don't think we're going to accomplish very much more today." My voice sounded unnaturally loud as I bent and scribbled on Rachel's crossword puzzle. "I've left a number here where you can reach me. I'll be in touch soon."

  I waited for a moment, but there was no response. They were still clinging to each other, silently exploring the hurt, as I closed the door quietly behind me.

~

  Our scout dog, Lacy, had been in country too long. The German shepherd had been trained to alert instantly on any sound that didn't fit the mix and she was still sharp enough to hear the minute hum of a breeze passing over a tripwire fifty meters away. But after fourteen ragged months and hundreds of patrols, she was starting to alert on any sound at all, even my own patrol's footsteps.

  The dog was a nervous wreck and nobody trusted her. So when she froze on a little trail through the jungle that afternoon, even I didn't lend much credibility to her actions. I had good men following me, and as Lieutenant Payne, their commander, it was my job to assess every alarm and make the right decision.

  I made one. "Garcia, take her back to the barn."

  "She seems upset, Lieutenant," he said.

  "Always does," said Vickers. "Bitch is on the rag seven days a week."

  "Vickers, shut the fuck up," I said. All my men were wet and filthy, and some, I'm sure, were stoned. Each wore the jungle stink; I stank with them. We were all on edge, but it was a dull one. The squad hadn't seen contact for three weeks, and then it was just a sniper, an aging Vietcong who had chained himself up in a tree and waited for us to wander by.

  I said, "Get her back to the firebase, Garcia. I'll start looking for a replacement dog tomorrow."

  For some reason, it seemed darker when the dog and her handler were gone. The departure left only Carney walking point, Vickers behind him. It was Carney's turn on my rotating duty roster, a roster that seemed to shrink daily. How many men had I lost in eight months? The list ran through my mind, names and hometowns. If I ever got back, I would have to visit the families. It would be an interesting way to see the country.

  One . . . two . . .

  It was mid-afternoon, but little sunlight struggled through the jungle canopy. I was trying to count photons, but couldn't seem to get past five without losing count.

  Five . . . five . . . five . . .

  The tree in front of Carney shattered into a kaleidoscope of red-orange-yellow, and all the hundreds of ball bearings from a salvaged Claymore flew outward from their bed of plastique, suddenly outnumbering the available photons. I was walking behind my RTO when he and the twenty-five-pound radio on his back flew backwards, knocking me down and covering my body with what remained of his.

  Automatic fire from every quarter. My men—those with living tongues—screaming. More visits. "Beauty is truth; truth, beauty—that's all, folks." Both grenades still on my web gear, pinned beneath—What's his fucking name?—Anton. Cleveland Anton, Youngstown, Ohio, former RTO, still serves his superior by shielding me from the goddamned Kalashnikovs.

  We had walked into an L-shaped ambush, and Charlie was kicking our ass. As Anton's body jerked with the impact of each heavy, tumbling round, I dreamed I picked up his radio handset. And spoke with what seemed a remarkable calm.

  "Fire City, this is Funky Broadway Twelve, over."

  "Twelve, Fire City. Hear you five-by, over."

  "City, contact. I say again, contact. I have no grid. From RP Hula add one-fifty, right fifty. Marking round, over."

  "Twelve, you say you're engaged?"

  Any calm I'd felt disappeared. "Marking round now, right on top of my fucking head! I say again, now!"

  I pushed Anton's body toward the rattling weapons and found my grenades. I pulled a pin, counted two and lobbed one over Charlie's head. In my mind, I could see its slow-motion arc. Parabola, I thought. I pulled the other pin and lobbed the other over all those delicate Communist heads. Or are they closet Christian existentialists?

  The dog had been right.

  I lay my M-16 across Anton, heard the two hammering reports of my grenades, and emptied a clip into the bushes. I reached for another clip and glanced around the clearing. I couldn't see much at first in the gloom and smoke. Then: Whoosh—bam! Fire City's marking round exploded just behind them, where my grenades had landed. There was an uproar from the blackhats—white phosphorous smarts like hell. A fearful roaring answered them from the killing zone; it took that to realize it was issuing from my lips.

  Sudden light. My men were strewn about me, some of them broken into grotesque fragments. There had to have been another mine besides the Claymore trigger. Nine soldiers and a dog had followed me into the jungle and only the dog and her handler had escaped the consequences of a poor decision. In that moment of illumination—by the rocket's red glare—I saw nothing but torn and silent bodies.

  Enriquez—Taos, New Mexico—was the closest man to me, not counting Anton. His gut was one huge gaping hole, but he wasn't complaining; half his head was blown away. For an instant, I thought he had three arms but realized one of them had once been attached to someone else's shoulder. His shredded boots touched the head of Charlie Haskell—Fair Haven, New Jersey—whom we'd called "Bullet," for his frequent boast, "It'll take more than one bullet to stop me!" Prophetic words: it had taken a thousand. I didn't want to think about Vickers and Carney, or their quaint little homesteads.

  Appalled and strangely dulled, I grabbed the handset. "Fire City, on the money! Same coordinates, Hotel Echo, ground-burst, fire for effect!"

  "Easy does her, Twelve. High explosives on the way. You boys put your heads down, over."

  "They're down, City . . . they're all down. Send me choppers. Send me bags. Out."

  I burned another clip, but the round of Willie Petes had sent Charlie home early. When nobody returned my fire, I went looking for survivors. I crawled toward John Howdy—Brooklyn, N.Y.—just in time to see him die, then headed for Woody Allen. I swear that was his name. He was alive despite a sucking chest wound and was desperately trying to breathe. Bloody foam covered his mouth and chin. I ripped off his shirt and undershirt, took a sterile gauze pad from my first-aid pouch, and tore the plastic cover off. He stared at me, unable to speak.

  "I'm not going to Oregon to meet your damned mama, Woody," I said and slapped plastic onto the entry wound. "Not ever." With trembling fingers, I put the pad on the plastic and turned him onto it. By the book. Finding no head trauma, I popped a morphine syrette through his pants and into his thigh, hoping it would suppress his circulation. He was the only man I had left.

  I flattened, protecting myself from the incoming artillery fire with another human body. I knew I should go back to the radio and call it off, but I was tired, so goddamned tired. Hearing the dull thump of rotors, I tossed out a grape smoke canister to guide in the choppers, put my head on Woody Allen's shoulder, and cried.

  I awoke with a customary violence months later in the stateside safety of my room in Fort Monmouth's Bachelor Officers Quarters. I remembered, as always, that the ambush was just a dream but that, as always, it had happened. My hand moved to the star hanging on its chain around my neck. I crawled in the darkness to my footlocker, found bottle and flashlight and my box of photographs. When the whiskey finally asserted itself, I worked my ritualistic way through the photos—a nun counting her beads—all the while fingering the amulet's glossy surface. They had given me the Silver Star, they said, for single-handedly driving off the enemy and, despite my report, no one ever seemed interested in investigating the reason I was alone.

  The Army doesn't make poor decisions.

~

  Nobody was more surprised than I was when Rachel Silver decided to give her grandson the military funeral that was due him. Paul Kaufman was angered by the decision, but had nothing to say about it. He saw to it, though, that the local homosexual community was well represented. A sizeable contingent of Hell's Angels cleared a path for the funeral cortege and stayed for the ceremony. I wondered how many of them had seen combat.

  I did all I could, but wound up wishing it could have been more inspiring. A Unitarian clergyman, wearing a monk's tonsure along with his jeans, sandals, and beaded guayabera, searched for something good to say about dying in military training. He finally settled uneasily on the issue of responsibility beyond oneself. When I saw the cross hanging on its chain around his neck, my hand moved involuntarily to my chest.

  At the end, there was no available bugler to play "Taps," bugling apparently being a lost art. Instead, they played a scratchy recording over a tinny public address system. It was Fort Monmouth's copy and the only one I could dig up on short notice.

  Six of Bagwell's friends, none of them military, bore his casket to the open grave while Kaufman stood by in a black suit and yarmulke and sobbed inconsolably. Rachel looked on with little expression, but occasionally bowed her head. My six-man detail stood at attention in polished helmet liners and impeccable fatigues and fired three blanks on my command. I doubted the dead man ranked any shots in his honor, and I didn't know how many guns were supposed to fire how many shots—whether for Bagwell or Eisenhower—but no brass was on hand to contradict me. I could have kept a battery of 165s out there all afternoon if I'd wanted.

  Rachel had surprised me by wearing a dark tailored suit and pearls, and I was grateful for the effort. A small, silver peace symbol was pinned over her breast. After my soldiers folded the flag that had draped the coffin, I took it from them and presented it to her with all the ceremony I could muster.

  She accepted it and stared into the blue canvas of stars for a long time. Finally, she stepped forward, placed it neatly on the burnished casket, and stepped back again.

  It was time for the box to go into its hole, but no one knew what to do about the flag. Eventually, I said, "Bury it with him. He earned it." And they did.

  After the funeral, I drove to Rachel's dilapidated wedding-cake house, parked, and took my box from the glove compartment. It was slick, Kodak-yellow, and far heavier than its photographic contents warranted.

  The party was in full swing. The Hell's Angels were there, strangely juxtaposed with men I assumed were homosexual and women about whom I assumed nothing. The minister was there for the food, and a few neighbors completed the group—a far more eclectic mix than one would normally associate with a military funeral. John Coltrane was noodling "My Favorite Things" and the air was sweet with the aroma of marijuana. Rachel may have been all of Bagwell's family, but he appeared to have had plenty of friends.

  I approached Kaufman and engaged in polite conversation. "Nice turnout."

  "What was that business with the rifles?" he demanded, unexpectedly. "And the tin horn at the end?"

  I sighed. "I know you don't like me, Kaufman. I'm not all that crazy about you, either."

  He bristled. "You have a problem with faggots, Payne?" He waved his arm, indicating the crowd. "Welcome to Hell."

  "I have no feelings one way or the other about homosexuals," I said. "It's you in particular I dislike. Call it chemistry."

  "Why?" he said. "I haven't killed my share of babies? Or men?"

  I stared at him, breathing deeply. The box felt bulky in the pocket of my Class A's. "You're grieving for your friend," I said, "so I'm going to let that pass. But you have no idea what in hell you're talking about."

  "Maybe I don't," he said begrudgingly. "It's been a rough day." We both stood down.

  "For all of us."

  He took a drink of something red in a paper cup, swished it around, swallowed. "I keep forgetting you never knew him," he said.

  "I just know what was in the report, and what little I've heard from you and Rachel."

  Kaufman stared into the crowd, remembering. When he finally spoke, his voice had softened entirely. "See . . . everybody liked Jeff. He wasn't like me. He had straight friends, gay friends . . . even girlfriends—can you believe it?"

  "Gay? Is that the term?"

  "I prefer it. Here's the thing, Payne. People respected him. They listened when he said something, anything." His eyes sought mine. "He was like you."

  "Me?"

  "Hell, yes. You didn't notice that Rachel listens to every word you say? You think she's that way with everybody?"

  "Honestly . . . I hadn't noticed she was any way at all. Are you jealous? Is that the problem here?"

  He finished the drink with a graceful gesture. "Maybe I am."

  "Well," I said, "you're about done with me. This detail's finished."

  A period of silence accompanied a prolonged nodding motion from Kaufman. "I still can't figure out why he did it," he said, returning inevitably to the object of his grief. "Why he volunteered and died. For nothing."

  "Would you feel better if he'd died in combat?"

  He looked at me as if noticing my uniform for the first time. "Yeah," he said, putting his hand in his pocket. "I guess I would. It would have seemed more like he was accomplishing something, whether I believed in it or not. You know?"

  Kaufman stiffened for a moment when I placed my hand on his shoulder—wired tight like a frozen scout dog—but relaxed when I spoke. "Yeah Paul, I know. It seems that way. If it helps . . . that goddamned war killed Jeff just as surely as it killed all the other . . . people in Vietnam."

  "Yeah . . . maybe." He stared, unseeing, into a personal haze. I left him there and looked through the house for Rachel.

  I found her in the kitchen, alone. She had traded her suit and pearls for an outsized artist's smock daubed with paint. She was also wearing heavy cotton work gloves in lieu of potholders and was in the process of lifting something hot and spicy from the oven. She turned toward me, glass baking dish in hand. "Oh, Simon, it's you. Tamale pie?"

  "Smells great," I said, and watched her, with a remarkable economy of movement, carry it to a counter and place it on a horseshoe that doubled as a trivet. Every available kitchen surface was crowded with dishes brought by guests, from store-bought cake to paella.

  "It should set a minute before I serve it," she said, and again I heard that soft hint of Dixie. She ran her hands quickly through her short hair, a gesture I'd now seen many times. Her eyes were puffy, but she seemed quite composed. I glanced down and noticed that she was again wearing toe shoes.

  I had to ask. "Do you dance?"

  She looked down at the worn slippers. "Yes. I used to teach," she said. "And Jeff did so love to watch me practice." She paused and her throat worked at suppressing a cough or an unwanted display of emotion. "He'd conduct the music—which meant waving a pencil at the stereo." A ragged laugh embroidered the memory.

  I said, "Paul's having a pretty rough time."

  She nodded. "I'm worried about that boy," she said. "He was drawn to Jeffrey like a moth to a kettle fire. And everything is black and white to him."

  "Yeah, I know. He was less than thrilled about the military funeral. What made you decide on it, Rachel? Just out of curiosity."

  "Well, something made Jeff go off to war," she said, wiping her hands on an enormous beach towel. "I don't know what. Just did him the same way I did Farley, that's all. I think he'd have wanted to be put to rest the same way as his daddy."

  I nodded.

  "How about you, Simon?" she said. "What are you doing in that uniform?"

  I took out the yellow box, passed it nervously from hand to hand, placed it on the counter. Rachel glanced at it but focused her attention on me.

  "I was going to be drafted," I said. "So I enlisted and volunteered for the same training as Jeff. It was a way of putting off my tour for six months or so. I thought if I kept volunteering for things, maybe the war would end and I wouldn't have to go."

  We both looked at the box.

  "It didn't work," she said, sitting on a wicker stool and reaching for her cigarettes. On cue, I found my lighter and moved toward her. She held my eye and inhaled thoughtfully. As I watched smoke drift elegantly from her nostrils, it occurred to me that she must have been an extraordinarily beautiful woman once upon a summer.

  I made my decision. Looking around, I spotted the Bacardi bottle. I found glasses in the cupboard, poured a great deal of strong island rum into one, and took a big gulp. Bringing the glasses and bottle back to Rachel, I put them down next to the tamale pie.

  "Show and tell," I said and pulled my stool so close our knees almost touched. I picked up the box and, rubbing its varnished surface, told my story: the ambush, Woody Allen's death on the chopper on the way back to the firebase, my visits to Brooklyn and Fair Haven, the only two so far. In Brooklyn I had been treated civilly; I now avoided driving through Fair Haven whenever possible.

  I poured more liquor. Rachel drank it like a man; I merely sought the familiar numbing. The box opened, showing her all the men I had managed to kill. "Allen," I recited, "Woodrow. I thought I'd saved him. Carney, Michael. Cheated better at cards than any eighteen-year-old I ever knew. Delgado, Arturo . . ."

  When the grim parade was over, I dried my eyes on the beach towel. Rachel stood and embraced me. My head dropped onto her shoulder and she held me in exactly the same way I had seen Kaufman hold her.

  "Do you have family, Simon?"

  "Your tamale pie's getting cold."

  "Do you have family?"

  My laugh held little humor. "Oh, hell, Rachel. I'm the goddamned war hero of New Glarus, Wisconsin! My family thinks I'm Audie Murphy. They worship me."

  The door opened and Kaufman leaned in. "Uh . . . Rachel, you've got some pretty hungry people out here." The sight of my red eyes stopped him. "Oh," he said. "Sorry." His embarrassment was obvious as he retreated to the other room.

  "Well, I don't worship you," Rachel said, ignoring the intrusion. "But I like you. You're welcome here any time, Simon Payne. Come and give an old woman some conversation. Call it . . . call it Survivor's Assistance."

  "I will." I knew I wouldn't.

  She retrieved a ceramic picture frame from the windowsill above the sink and extracted a photograph I nearly failed to recognize. I'd only seen Bagwell's training portrait and military ID photo; this version had him sporting shoulder-length brown hair and the smock Rachel was wearing.

  "Will you keep this with the others?" she said. "Whether you like it or not, I think he's one of yours now."

  The picture was slightly out of focus. "Happy kid," I observed, half to myself.

  "Yes . . . he was." I watched a tear make its way down her face.

  It was such a small gesture she asked, the simple addition of one tiny square of resin-coated paper. I hefted the box and considered the relative weight of eight dead men. What was one more?

  It was one too many. "I can't take your grandson, Rachel. I just can't. I'm sorry. I'm carrying every bit I can manage right now."

  She nodded numbly. "No," she said, taking the picture from my hand, "I suppose . . . I suppose I shouldn't ask you that."

  Feeling like a poor excuse for an S.A. liaison, I decided to make my own gesture. After removing my tie, I unbuttoned my shirt and pulled the little chain over my head. I held the medal up for her to inspect.

  "What's this?" she asked.

  "Silver Star," I said. "For valor under combat conditions."

  She stared at me, apparently trying to read more meaning into my words. "You won this?"

  "That's as good a way to put it as any."

  "Why did they give it to you?"

  "Because I didn't die. Look, Rachel, I don't deserve the damned thing and I can't wear it another day. I want you to keep it for me. Or for Jeff, if that makes any more sense."

  I hung the chain around her neck. The star gleamed against its background of paint splotches. Seeing it there, I experienced a measure of comfort, the comfort of seeing a thing in its place.

  The door opened slowly and Kaufman reappeared, clearing his throat more loudly than necessary. Rachel balanced the star on her fingertips and gazed at it thoughtfully. When she looked up and nodded, I realized I had been too long in that house.

  "I have to go," I announced. I bent and kissed Rachel's cheek, shook Kaufman's hand briskly, and walked out of the house into an afternoon as chill and gray as the day I arrived.

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