FADE OUT

E-Ticket to 'Namland

Introduction

I was born in 1948. By the time Kennedy was elected in 1960, World War II seemed like ancient history. Not just to me ... everything is ancient history to a twelve-year-old ... but, I believe, to most people in America then. The countless veterans had come home, and while many individuals had to deal with the traumas of war, the vast majority of them put the war behind them in various ways: went on to school on the Gl Bill or got on with starting families, bought homes, and renewed their lives. Many of the men and women in my parents' generation had changed during the war, but most for the better. Travel and combat had brought some half-sensed maturity to the men; work and participation in the war effort had brought some inexpressable confidence and widening of horizons to the women. America had changed forever—gone for-ever was the isolationist, essentially rural nation recover-ing from the trauma of the Depression. I was born into the world's greatest superpower. We had the Bomb, economic prosperity, an unlimited future, and a young president who promised a New Frontier.

World War II was ancient history. Fifteen years had passed since our victory over the dictatorships, and even the brutal dress rehearsal of Korea hadn't changed our op-timism. The real war was long ago and far away.

As I write this, fifteen years have passed since the last Americans fled Vietnam. Seventeen years have gone by since we withdrew our fighting forces. Two decades

—a fifth of our century—have elapsed since the height of our involvement there. Yet, I feel, we're just beginning to find some collective peace of mind about Vietnam.

I suppose someone has suggested the parallel (it may be a cliche by now, for all I know), but it occurs to me that the stages of our national response to the trauma of Vietnam closely reflect the classic stages of response to the death of a loved one or the reaction to learning one has a terminal illness. Just look at our movies about Viet-nam over the past twenty years.

First, denial: No major films. Nada.

Then anger: The cathartic "Coming Home" mental re-writes where the veterans were either anti-war martyrs or nutcases, followed by the revisionist fantasies of Rambo and his clones.

Then depression: The one brilliant depiction of the war was "Apocalypse Now," but Coppola jumped a stage in our recovery cycle so his effort was shunned. If he had waited until after we'd sickened of our Rambo fantasies, the film would have been received quite differently.

Finally, acceptance: "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket" and "Casualties of War" and the other post-trauma films have—despite the ballyhoo to the contrary—little content, less philosophy. What they do have is a shockingly correct texture—something quite close to the real smell of sweat and crotch rot, something surprisingly near to the actual language and true fatigue and terrible claustrophobia of a patrol in the boonies, something almost right about the fear that rises from the actors on the screen and spreads to the audience like the stench from a day-old corpse.

And so, after two decades and with an entire new gen-eration which has grown up bored with the whole topic, after more changes in the texture of daily life than we can imagine or accept, I think we're finally beginning to feel—if not really understand—the true dimensions of the terrible national traffic accident that was Vietnam.

But for some people, that's just the beginning of the process.

* * *

The twenty-eight Huey gunships moved out in single file, each hovering a precise three meters above the tar-mac, the sound of their rotors filling the world with a roar that could be felt in teeth and bones and testicles. Once above the treeline and gaining altitude, the helicopters sep-arated into four staggered V-formations and the noise di-minished to the point where shouts could be heard.

"First time out?" cried the guide.

"What?" Justin Jeffries turned away from the open door where he had been watching the shadow of their heli-copter slide across the surface of the mirrored rice paddies below. He leaned toward the guide until their combat hel-mets were almost touching.

"First time out?" repeated the guide. The man was small even for a Vietnamese. He wore a wide grin and the uniform and shoulder patch of the old First Air Cav Divi-sion.

Jeffries was big even for an American. He was dressed in green shorts, a flowered Hawaiian shirt, Nike running sandals, an expensive Rolex comlog, and a U.S. Army hel-met that had become obsolete the year he was born. Jeffries was draped about with cameras; a compact Yashika SLR, a Polaroid Holistic-360, and a new Nikon imager. He returned the guide's grin. "First time for us. We're here with my wife's father."

Heather leaned over to join the conversation. "Daddy was here during ... you know

... the war. They thought it might be good for him to take the Vet Tour." She nodded in the direction of a short, solid, gray-haired man leaning against the M-60

machine-gun mount near the door's safety webbing. He was the only person in the cabin not wearing a helmet. The back of his blue shirt was soaked with sweat.

"Yes, yes," smiled the guide and stepped back to plug his microphone jack into a bulkhead socket. His voice echoed tinnily in every helmet and from hidden speakers.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please notice the treeline to your right." There was a lurch as the passengers shifted their posi-tions and craned for a view. Ten-year-old Sammee Jeffries and his eight-year-old sister Elizabeth shoved their way through the crowded space to stand next to where their grandfather sat by the open door. The barrel of Elizabeth's plastic M-16 accidentally struck the older man on his sunburned neck but he did not turn or speak.

Suddenly a series of flashes erupted from the treeline along one rice paddy. The passengers gasped audibly as a line of magnesium-bright tracer bullets rose up and lashed toward their ship, missing the rotors by only a few meters. Immediately one of the gunships at the rear of their V-formation dove, curved back the way they had come in a centrifugally perfect arc, and raked the treeline with rocket and minigun fire. Meanwhile, at the guide's urging, Sammee stood on a low box, grasped the two-handed grip of the heavy M-60, swung it awkwardly to bear in the gen-eral direction of the now-distant treeline, and depressed the firing studs. The passengers instinctively clutched at their helmets to block their ears. Heavy cartridges, warm but not hot enough to burn anyone, clattered onto the metal deck.

An explosion split the treeline, sending phosphorous streamers fifty meters into the air and setting several tall palms ablaze. Bits of flaming debris splashed into the quiet rice paddy. The passengers laughed and applauded. Sammee grinned back at them and flexed his muscles.

Elizabeth leaned against her grandfather and spoke loudly into his ear. "Isn't this fun, Grandpa?"

He turned to say something but at that second the guide announced that their destination would be coming up on the left side of the ship and Elizabeth was away, shoving her brother aside to get a better view, eager to see the village appear below out of the heat-haze and smoke.

Later that evening five men sat around a table on the fifth-floor terrace of the Saigon Oberoi Sheraton. The air was warm and humid. Occasional gusts of laughter and splashing sounds came up from the pool on the fourth-floor terrace. It was well past nine, but the tropical twilight lingered.

"You were on the village mission-tour this morning, weren't you?" asked Justin Jeffries of the young Oriental next to him.

"Yes, I was. Most interesting." The man sat in a re-laxed manner, but something about his bearing, the pre-cisely creased safari suit, the intensity of his gaze, suggested a military background.

"You're Nipponese, aren't you?" asked Justin. At the man's smile and nod, Justin went on. "Thought so. Here with the military mission?"

"No, merely on leave. 'R and R' I believe your people used to call it." "Christ," said the overweight American who sat next to Justin's father-in-law. "You've been up north in the PRC fighting Chen's warlords, haven't you?"

"Just so," said the Nipponese and extended his hand to Justin. "Lieutenant Keigo Naguchi."

"Justin Jeffries, Kansas City." Justin's huge hand en-closed the lieutenant's and pumped twice. "This here is my father-in-law, Ralph Disantis."

"A pleasure," said the lieutenant with a quick nod.

"Pleased to meet you," said Disantis.

"I believe I saw you with your grandchildren at the vil-lage today," said Naguchi. "A boy and a girl?"

Disantis nodded and sipped his beer. Justin gestured to the heavy-set man next to his father-in-law. "And this is Mr. ... ah ... Sears, right?"

"Sayers," said the man. "Roger Sayers. Nice to make your acquaintance, Lieutenant. So how's is going up there? Your guys finally getting those little bastards out of the hillcaves?"

"Most satisfactory," said Lieutenant Naguchi. "The sit-uation should be stabilized before the next rainy season."

"Japanese brains and Vietnamese blood, huh?" laughed Sayers. He turned to the fifth man at the table, a silent Vietnamese in a white shirt and dark glasses, and added quickly, "No offense meant. Everybody knows that your basic Viet peasant makes the best foot soldier in the world. Showed us that forty years ago, eh, Mr. ... ah...?"

"Minh," said the little man and shook hands around the table. "Nguyen van Minh." Minh's hair was black, his face unlined, but his eyes and hands revealed that he was at least in his sixties, closer to Disantis's age than that of the others.

"I saw you on the plane from Denver," said Justin. "Visiting family here?"

"No." said Minh. "I have been an American citizen since 1976. This is my first trip back to Vietnam. I have no family here now." He turned toward Naguchi.

"Lieu-tenant, I am surprised that you chose to spend your leave on an American's Veterans' Tour."

Naguchi shrugged and sipped at his gin and tonic. "I find it a sharp contrast to modern methods. Up north I am more technician than warrior. Also, of course, learning more about the first of the helicopter wars is valuable to anyone who is interested in military history. You were a veteran of that war, Mr. Disantis?" Justin's father-in-law nodded and took a long swallow of beer.

"I just missed it," said Sayers with real regret in his voice. "Too young for Vietnam. Too goddamn old for the Banana Wars."

Justin grunted. "You didn't miss much there."

"Ah, you were involved in that period?" asked Naguchi.

"Sure," said Justin. "Everybody who came of age in the discount decade got in on the Banana Wars. The tour today could have been Tegucicalpa or Estanzuelas, just substitute in coffee plantations for the rice paddies."

"I want to hear about that," said Sayers and waved a waiter over to the table.

"Another round for everyone," he said. From somewhere near the pool a steel drum band started up, unsuccessfully trying to mix American pop tunes, a Caribbean beat, and local musicians. The sound seemed sluggish in the wet, thick air. Tropical night had fallen and even the stars appeared dimmed by the thick-ness of atmosphere. Naguchi looked up at a band of brighter stars moving toward the zenith and then glanced down at his comlog.

"Checking azimuth for your spottersat, right?" asked Justin. "It's a hard habit to break. I still do it."

Disantis rose. "Sorry I can't stay for the next round, gentlemen. Going to sleep off some of this jet lag." He moved into the air-conditioned brightness of the hotel.

Before going to his own room, Disantis looked in on Heather and the children. His daughter was in bed already, but Sammee and Elizabeth were busy feeding data from their father's Nikon through the terminal and onto the wallscreen. Disantis leaned against the door molding and watched.

"This is the LZ," Sammee said excitedly.

"What's an LZ?" asked Elizabeth.

"Landing Zone," snapped Sammee. "Don't you re-member anything?" The wall showed image after image of dust, rotors, the predatory shadows of Hueys coming in above Justin's camera position, the thin line of passengers in combat garb, men and women instinctively bent low despite obvi-ous clearance from the rotors, tourists clutching at their helmets with one hand and hugging cameras, purses, and plastic M-16s to their chests with the other, groups moving quickly away from the raised landing platform along rice paddy dikes.

"There's Grandpa!" cried Elizabeth. Disantis saw himself, aging, overweight, puffing heavily as he heaved him-self down from the helicopter, disdaining the guide's outstretched hand. Sammee tapped at the terminal keys. The picture zoomed and enlarged until only Disantis's grainy face filled the screen. Sammee shifted through colors and widened his grandfather's face until it became a purple balloon ready to pop.

"Stop it," whined Elizabeth.

"Crybaby," said Sammee, but some sixth sense made him glance over his shoulder to where Disantis stood. Sammee made no acknowledgment of his grandfather's presence but advanced the picture through a montage of new images. Disantis blinked and watched the jerky newsreel pro-ceed. The abandoned village of rough huts. The lines of tourist-troops along each side of the narrow road. Close-ups of huts being searched. Heather emerging from a low doorway, blinking in the sunlight, awkwardly lifting her toy M-16 and waving at the camera.

"This is the good part," breathed Sammee.

They had been returning to the LZ when figures along a distant dike had opened fire. At first the tourists milled around in confusion, but at the guides' urging they finally, laughingly, had taken cover on the grassy side of the dike. Justin remained standing to take pictures. Disantis watched as those images built themselves on the wallscreen at a rate just slower than normal video. Data columns flashed by to the right. He saw himself drop to one knee on the dike and hold Elizabeth's hand. He remembered noting that the grass was artificial.

The tourists returned fire. Their M-16s flashed and re-coiled, but no bullets were expended. The din was tremen-dous. On the screen a two-year-old near Justin had begun to cry.

Eventually the guides helped a young tourist couple use a field radio to call in an airstrike. The jets were there in less than a minute—three A-4D Skyhawks with anti-quated U.S. naval markings bright and clear on the white wings. They screamed in under five hundred feet high. Justin's camera shook as the explosions sent long shadows across the dikes and made the tourists cringe and hug the earth from their vantage point six hundred meters away. Justin had managed to steady the camera even as the na-palm continued to blossom upward.

"Watch," said Sammee. He froze the frame and then zoomed in. The image expanded. Tiny human forms, black silhouettes, became visible against the orange explosions. Sammee enlarged the image even further. Disantis could make out the silhouette of an outflung arm, a shirttail gusting, a conical peasant's hat flying off.

"How'd they do that, Grandpa?" asked Sammee with-out turning around. Disantis shrugged. "Holos, maybe."

"Naw, not holos," said Sammee. He did not try to hide his condescension. "Too bright out there. Besides, you can see the pieces fly. Betcha they were animates." Elizabeth rolled over from where she was sprawled. Her pajamas carried a picture of Wonder Duck on the front. "What'd Mr. Sayers mean on the way back, Grandpa?"

"When?"

"In the helicopter when he said, 'Well, I guess we re-ally showed Charlie today.' " Elizabeth took a breath. "Who's Charlie, Grandpa?"

"Stupid," said Sammee. "Charlie was the VC. The bad guys."

"How come you called him Charlie, Grandpa?" per-sisted Elizabeth. The frozen explosion on the wallscreen cast an orange glow on her features.

"I don't remember," said Disantis. He paused with his hand on the door. "You two had better get to bed before your father comes up. Tomorrow's going to be a busy day."

Later, alone in his room, sitting in silence broken only by the hum of the air-conditioner, Disantis realized that he could not remember why the Vietcong had been called Charlie. He wondered if he had ever known. He turned out the light and opened the sliding doors to the balcony. The humid air settled on him like a blanket as he stepped out. Three floors below, Justin, Sayers, and the others still sat drinking. Their laughter floated up to Disantis and mixed with the rumble of thunder from a storm on the distant and darkened horizon.

On their way to a picnic the next day, Mr. Sayers tripped a claymore mine. The guide had put them on a simulated patrol down a narrow jungle trail. Sayers was in the lead, paying little at-tention to the trail, talking to Reverend Dewitt, an air-waves minister from Dothan, Alabama. Justin and Heather were walking with the Newtons, a young couple from Hartford. Disantis was further back in line, walking be-tween Sammee and Elizabeth to keep them from quarrel-ing.

Sayers stepped into a thin tripwire stretched across the trail, a section of dirt erupted a meter in front of him, and the claymore jumped three meters into the air before ex-ploding in a white puff.

"Shit," said Sayers. "Excuse me, Reverend." The Viet-namese guide came forward with an apologetic smile and put a red KIA armband on Sayers. The Reverend Dewitt and Tom Newton each received a yellow WIA armband.

"Does this mean I don't get to go to the picnic?" asked Sayers. The guide smiled and directed the others on how to prepare a medevac LZ in a nearby clearing. Lieutenant Naguchi and Minn cleared underbrush with machetes while Heather and Sue Newton helped spread marker pan-els of iridescent orange plastic. Sammee was allowed to pop the tab on a green smoke marker. The dust-off bird came in with a blast of downdraft that flattened the tall grass and blew Disantis's white ten-nis hat off. Sayers, Dewitt, and Newton sat propped on their elbows and waved as their stretchers were loaded. The patrol resumed when the dust-off 'copter was just a distant throbbing in the sky.

Justin took point. He moved carefully, frequently hold-ing his hand up to halt the line behind him. There were two more tripwires and a stretch of trail salted with anti-personnel mines. The guide showed them all how to probe ahead with bayonets. For the last half-kilometer, they stayed in the grass on either side of the trail. The picnic ground was on a hill overlooking the sea. Under a thatched pavilion sat three tables covered with sandwich makings, salads, assorted fruits, and coolers of beer. Sayers, Newton, and Dewitt were already there, help-ing two guides cook hamburgers and hot dogs over char-coal fires. "What kept you?" called Sayers with a deep laugh.

After a long lunch, several of the tourists went down to the beach to swim or sunbathe or take a nap. Sammee found a network of tunnels in the jungle near the picnic pavilion and several of the children gathered around as the guide showed them how to drop in CS gas and fragmen-tation and concussion grenades before actually searching the tunnels. Then the children and a few of the younger adults wiggled in on their bellies to explore the complex. Disantis could hear their excited shouts as he sat alone at one of the picnic tables, drinking his beer and looking out to sea. He could also hear the conversation of his daughter and Sue Newton as they sat on beach towels a few meters away.

"We wanted to bring my daddy but he just refused to come," said the Newton woman. "So Tommy says, 'Well, shoot, so long as the government's paying part of it, let's go ourselves.' So we did."

"We thought it'd be good for my father," said Heather. "I wasn't even born then, but when he got back from the war, way back in the Seventies, he didn't even come home to Mother. He went and lived in the woods in Oregon or Washington or somewhere for a couple of years."

"Really!" said Sue Newton. "My daddy never did any-thing crazy like that."

"Oh, he got better after a while," said Heather. "He's been fine the last ten years or so. But his therapy program said that it'd be good for him to come on the Vet's Tour, and Justin was able to get time off 'cause the dealership is doing so good." The talk turned to children. Shortly after that it began to rain heavily and three Hueys and a lumbering Chinook picked them up to return them to the Sheraton. The dozen or so people in Disantis's group sang "Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall" during the short flight back.

There was nothing scheduled for the afternoon and af-ter the storm passed several people decided to go shopping at one of the large malls between the hotel complex and the Park. Disantis caught an electric bus into downtown Saigon where he walked the streets until nightfall.

The change of names to Ho Chi Minh City had never really taken and the metropolis had officially been re-named Saigon in the early Nineties. The city bore little re-semblance to the excited jumble of pedestrians, motorbikes, strip joints, bars, restaurants, and cheap hotels Disantis remembered from forty years earlier. The foreign money had all gone into the tourist enclaves near the Park and the city itself reflected the gray era of the New Social-ist Reality more than it did the feverish pulse of old Sai-gon. Efficient, faceless structures and steel and glass highrises sat on either side of busy boulevards. Occasion-ally Disantis would see a decaying sidestreet which re-minded him of the cluttered stylishness of Tu-Do Street in the late Sixties.

Nguyen van Minh joined him as Disantis waited for a light to change on Thong Njut Boulevard.

"Mr. Disantis."

"Mr. Minh."

The short Vietnamese adjusted his glasses as they strolled past the park where the Independence Palace had once stood. "You are enjoying the sights?" he asked. "Do you see much that is familiar?"

"No," said Disantis. "Do you?"

Minh paused and looked around him as if the idea had not pertained to him. "Not really, Mr. Disantis," he said at last. "Of course, I rarely visited Saigon. My village was in a different province. My unit was based near Da Nang."

"ARVN?" asked Disantis.

"Hac Bao," said Minh. "The Black Panthers of the First Division. You remember them, perhaps?"

Disantis shook his head.

"We were ... I say without pride ... the most feared fighting unit in all of South Vietnam ... including the Americans. The Hac Bao had put fear into the hearts of the communist insurgents for ten years before the fall."

Disantis stopped to buy a lemon ice from a street ven-dor. The lights were coming on all along the boulevard.

"You see the embassy there?" asked Minh, pointing to an antiquated six-story structure set back behind an ornate fence.

"That's the old U.S. Embassy?" asked Disantis without much interest in his voice. "I would have thought that the building would've been torn down by now."

"Oh, no," said Minh, "it is a museum. It has been re-stored very much to its original appearance."

Disantis nodded and glanced at his comlog.

"I stood here," continued Minh, "right here ... in April of 1975, and watched the helicopters take the last of the Americans off the roof of the embassy. It was only my third time in Saigon. I had just been released from four days in prison."

"Prison?" Disantis turned to look at Minh.

"Yes. I had been arrested by the government after members of my unit commandeered the last Boeing 727 out of Da Nang to Saigon. We fought civilians—women and children—to get aboard that plane. I was a lieutenant. I was twenty-three years old."

"So you got out of Vietnam during the panic?"

"They released us from jail when the North Vietnam-ese were in the suburbs," said Minh. "I was not able to leave the country until several months later."

"Boat?" asked Disantis. The lemon ice was melting quickly in the warm air. Minh nodded. "And you, Mr. Disantis, when did you leave Vietnam?" Disantis tossed the paper wrapper into a trashcan and licked his fingers. "I came here early in '69," he said.

"And when did you leave?" Minh asked again.

Disantis lifted his head as if to sniff the night air. The evening was thick with the scent of tropical vegetation, mimosa blossoms, stagnant water, decay. When he looked at Minh there was a dark gleam in his blue eyes. He shook his head. "I never left," he said.

Justin, Sayers, and Tom Newton came up to the guide as he sat alone at a table near the back of the hotel bar. The three Americans hesitated and looked at each other. Finally Justin stepped forward. "Howdy," he said.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Jeffries," said the guide.

"We ... uh ... we'd all, I mean the three of us and a couple of other guys, we wanted to see you about some-thing."

"Ahhh, there is some problem with the tour?" asked the guide.

"No, no, everything's great," said Justin and glanced back at the other two. He sat down and leaned toward the Vietnamese. His voice was a hoarse whisper. "We ... ah

... we wanted a little more than the regular tour."

"Oh?" The guide blinked. His mouth was not quite curled in a smile.

"Yeah," said Justin, "you know. Something extra."

"Extra?" said the guide.

Roger Sayers stepped forward. "We want some special action," he said.

"Ahhh," said the guide and finished his drink.

Justin leaned forward again. "Nat Pendrake told us it was OK," he whispered loudly.

"He said he ... uh ... ar-ranged it through Mr. Tho."

"Mr. Tho?" the guide said blankly. But the smile was there now.

"Yeah. Nat said that ... uh ... a special action would be about a thousand."

"Two thousand," the guide said softly. "Each."

"Hey," interjected Sayers, "Nat was here just a few months ago and..."

"Quiet," said Justin. "All right. That's fine. Here." He slid his universal card across the table.

The Vietnamese smiled and pushed Jeffries's card back. "Cash, please. Each of you will have it tonight. American dollars."

"I don't know about..." began Sayers.

"Where?" asked Justin.

"The frontage road beyond the hotel maintenance buildings," said the guide.

"Twenty-three hundred hours."

"Right," said Justin as the guide stood up. "See you then."

"Have a nice day," said the guide and was gone.

The trucks transported them to a point in the jungle where the road ended and a trail began. The five men jumped down and followed the guide through the dark-ness. The trail was muddy from the evening rains and wet fronds brushed at their cork-smudged faces. Justin Jeffries and Tom Newton kept close to the guide. Behind them, stumbling occasionally in the dark, came Sayers and Rev-erend Dewitt. Lieutenant Naguchi brought up the rear. Each man was in uniform. Each carried an M-16.

"Shit," hissed Sayers as a branch caught him in the face.

"Shut up," whispered Justin. The guide motioned them to a stop and the Americans pressed close to peer at a clearing visible through a gap in the dense foliage. A few kerosene lanterns threw cold light from the doorways of a dozen huts of the village.

"Vietcong sympathizers," whispered the guide. "They can tell you where the cadre headquarters is. Everyone in the village knows the VC."

"Huh," said Sayers. "So our job is to get the informa-tion, right?"

"Yes."

"And they're VC sympathizers?" whispered Tom New-ton.

"Yes."

"How many?" asked Lieutenant Naguchi. His voice was barely audible above the drip of water from palm leaves.

"Maybe thirty," said the guide. "No more than thirty-five."

"Weapons?" asked Naguchi.

"There may be some hidden in the huts," said the guide. "Be careful of the young men and women. VC. Well-trained."

There was a long silence as they stared at the quiet vil-lage. Finally Justin stood and clicked the safety off on his rifle. "Let's do it," he said. Together they moved into the clearing.

Ralph Disantis and Nguyen van Minn sat together in a dark booth in an old bar not far from what had once been Tu-Do Street. It was late. Minh was quite drunk and Disantis let himself appear to be in the same condition. An ancient juke box in the corner played recent Japanese hits and oldies-but-goodies dating back to the eighties.

"For many years after the fall of my country, I thought that America had no honor," said Minh. The only sign of the little man's drunkenness was the great care with which he enunciated each word. "Even as I lived in America, worked in America, became a citizen of America, I was convinced that America had no honor. My American friends told me that during the Vietnam War there was news from my country on the televisions and radios every day, every evening. After Saigon fell ... there was noth-ing. Nothing. It was as if my nation had never existed."

"Hmmm," said Disantis. He finished his drink and beckoned for more.

"But you, Mr. Disantis, you are a man of honor," said Minh. "I know this. I sense this. You are a man of honor."

Disantis nodded at the retreating waiter, removed the swizzle stick from his fresh drink, and placed the plastic saber in a row with seven others. Mr. Minh blinked and did the same with his.

"As a man of honor you will understand why I have returned to avenge my family," Minh said carefully.

"Avenge?" said Disantis.

"Avenge my brother who died fighting the North Viet-namese," said Minh. "Avenge my father—a teacher—who spent eight years in a reeducation camp only to die soon after his release. Avenge my sister who was deported by this regime for..." Minh paused. "For alleged crimes against morality. She drowned when their overcrowded boat went down somewhere between here and Hong Kong."

"Avenge," repeated Disantis. "How? With what?" Minh sat up straight and looked over his shoulder. No one was near. "I will avenge my family's honor by striking against the maggots who have corrupted my nation," he said.

"Yeah," said Disantis. "With what? Do you have a weapon?" Minh hesitated, licked his lips, and looked for a second like he was sobering. Then he leaned over and grasped Disantis's forearm. "I have a weapon," he whispered.

"Two of them. I smuggled them in. A rifle and my service automatic from the Hac Bao." He hesitated again. "I can tell you this, Mr. Disantis. You are a man of honor." This time it was a question.

"Yes," said Disantis. "Tell me."

Two of the huts were on fire. Justin and the other four had come in shouting and firing. There had been no oppo-sition. The thirty-two villagers, mostly children and old people, knelt in the dust at the center of the village. Sayers had knocked over a lantern in one of the huts and the thatch and bamboo had blazed like an incendiary flare. The fat American had beat uselessly at the flames until Justin called, "Forget the fucking hootch and get back here."

Tom Newton swung his rifle to cover the cringing vil-lagers. "Where are the VC?" he shouted.

"VC!" shouted Sayers. "Where are their tunnels? Tell us, goddammit!" A kneeling woman holding a baby bowed her forehead to the dust. Flames cast bizarre shadows on the dirt and the smell of smoke made the men's nostrils flare.

"They don't understand," said Reverend Dewitt.

"The hell they don't," snapped Justin. "They're just not talking." Lieutenant Naguchi stepped forward. He was relaxed but he kept his M-16 trained on the cowering villagers. "Mr. Jeffries, I will stand guard here if you wish to con-duct an interrogation."

"Interrogation?" said Justin.

"There is an empty hut there, away from the fire," said the lieutenant. "It is best to isolate them during ques-tioning."

"Yeah," said Justin. "I remember. Tom, cut a couple of them out of the herd. Hurry!"

Newton lifted a young man and an old woman by the arm and began moving them toward the hut.

"Not her," said Justin. "Too old. Get that one." He pointed to a wide-eyed girl of fifteen or sixteen. "She's probably got a brother or boyfriend fighting with the VC." Newton pushed the old woman back to her knees and roughly lifted the girl to her feet. Justin felt his mouth go dry. Behind him the flames had set a third hut on fire and sparks drifted up to mix with the stars.

Disantis set the ninth plastic saber carefully in a row with the others. "How about ammunition?" he asked.

Minh blinked slowly and smiled. "Three thousand rounds for the rifle," he said. He lifted his glass in slow motion, drank, swallowed. "Thirty clips for the .45 caliber service automatic. Enough..." He paused, swayed a sec-ond, and straightened his back. "Enough to do the job, yes?"

Disantis dropped the colored money on the table to pay the tab. He helped Minh to his feet and guided the smaller man toward the door. Minh stopped, grasped Disantis's arm in both hands, and brought his face close. "Enough, yes?" he asked. Disantis nodded. "Enough," he said.

"Shit," said Tom Newton, "he's not going to tell us anything." The young man from the village knelt before them. His black shirt had been pulled back to pin his arms. Blood was smeared from the corners of his mouth and nostrils. There were cigarette burn marks dotted across his chest.

"Bring the girl here," said Justin. Sayers pushed her to her knees, took a fistful of hair, and jerked her head back sharply.

"Where are the VC?" asked Justin. Smoke came through the open door of the hootch. "Tunnels? VC?"

The girl said nothing. Her eyes were very dark and di-lated with fear. Small, white teeth showed between her slightly parted lips.

"Hold her arms," Justin said to Newton and Sayers. He took a long knife out of its sheath on his web belt, slipped the point under her buttoned shirtfront, and slashed upward. Cloth ripped and parted. The girl gasped and writhed but the two Americans held her tightly. Her breasts were small, conical, and lightly filmed with mois-ture.

"Jesus," said Newton and giggled.

Justin tugged her black pants halfway down, slapped her knee aside when she kicked, and used the knife to tear the cloth away from her ankles.

"Hey!" yelled Sayers. The young Vietnamese had lurched to his feet and was struggling to free his arms. Justin turned quickly, dropped the knife, lifted the M-16, and fired three times in rapid succession. Flesh exploded from the boy's chest, throat, and cheek. He kicked back-ward, spasmed once, and lay still in a growing red pool.

"Oh, Jesus," Newton said again. "Jesus Christ, this is something."

"Shut up," said Justin. He placed the butt of his rifle against the dazed girl's collarbone and pushed her onto her back in the dirt. "Hold her legs," he said. "You'll get your turns."

After seeing Minh to his hotel room and putting him to bed, Disantis went back to his own room and sat out on the balcony. Some time after three a.m., his son-in-law and four other men materialized out of the darkness and sat down around one of the round tables on the abandoned ter-race below. Disantis could hear the sounds of beer cans being tossed into trash bins, the pop of more tabs, and bits of conversation.

"How the hell did all the firing start out there any-way?" asked Justin in the darkness. Several of the others giggled drunkenly.

A firm voice with a Japanese accent answered. "One of them ran. The Reverend opened fire. I joined him in stopping them from escaping."

"...damn brains all over the place." Disantis recog-nized Sayers's voice. "I'd like to know how they did that."

"Bloodbags and charges every six centimeters or so under the synflesh," came the slurred voice of the young man named Newton. "Used to work for Disney. Know all about that animate stuff."

"If they were animates," said the Sayers shadow and someone giggled.

"You damn well know they were," came Justin's voice. "We never got out of the damned Park. Ten thousand god-damn bucks."

"It was so ... real." said a voice that Disantis recog-nized as belonging to the airwaves minister. "But surely there were no ... bullets."

"Hell, no," said Newton. '"Scuse me, Reverend. But they couldn't use real slugs. Customers'd kill each other by mistake."

"Then how..."

"Lasered UV pulses," said Justin. "Triggered the charges under the skin," said Newton. "Easy to reset."

"But the blood," said Reverend Dewitt in the darkness. "The ... the brain matter. The bone fragments..."

"All right, already!" shouted Sayers so loudly that sev-eral of the other men shushed him. "Come on, let's just say we got our money's worth, okay? They can buy a lot of spare parts for that much, right?"

"You can buy a lot of spare gooks for that much," said Newton and there was a ripple of laughter. "Jesus," he went on, "did you see that gook girl wiggle when Jeffries slipped it to her the first time..."

Disantis listened for a few minutes more and then went into his room and carefully closed the sliding door.

The morning was beautiful with tall, white clouds pil-ing up above the sea to the east while the family had a lei-surely breakfast on the restaurant terrace. Sammee and Elizabeth had eggs, toast, and cereal. Heather ordered an omelette. Disantis had coffee. Justin joined them late, cra-dled his head in his hands, and ordered a Bloody Mary.

"You came in late last night, dear," said Heather.

Justin massaged his temples. "Yeah. Tom and some of us went to the gaming rooms and played poker 'til late."

"You missed the excitement this morning, Dad," said Sammee.

"Yeah, what?" Justin sipped at his drink and grimaced.

"They arrested Mr. Minh this mornin'," Sammee said happily.

"Oh?" Justin looked at his wife.

"It's true, dear," said Heather. "He was arrested this morning. Something to do with illegal contraband in his luggage."

"Yeah," said Sammee, "I heard the guy downstairs tellin' somebody that he had a rifle. You know, like ours, only real."

"Well, I'll be damned," said Justin. "Is he going to stand trial or what?"

"No," said Disantis. "They just asked him to leave. They shipped him out on the morning shuttle to Tokyo."

"There're a lot of nuts around," muttered Justin. He opened the menu. "I think I will have breakfast. Do we have time before the morning tour?"

"Oh, yes," said Heather. "The helicopters don't leave until ten-thirty this morning. We're going up the river somewhere. Dad says that it should be very interesting."

"I think all this junk is boring," whined Elizabeth.

"That's 'cause you think everything's boring, stupid," said Sammee.

"Be quiet, both of you," said Heather. "We're here for your grandfather's benefit. Eat your cereal."

The twenty-eight Huey slicks moved out in single file, climbed above the line of trees, and sorted themselves into formation as they leveled off at three thousand feet. The panorama of highways and housing developments beneath them changed to rice paddies and jungle as they entered the Park. Then they were over the river and heading west. Peasants poling small craft upstream looked up and waved as shadows of the gunships passed over them.

Disantis sat in the open door, hands hooked in the safety webbing, and let his legs dangle. On his back was Sammee's blue backpack. Justin dozed on a cushioned bench. Elizabeth sat on Heather's lap and complained of the heat. Sammee swung the heavy M-60 to the left and right and made machine-gun noises. The guide plugged his microphone into the bulkhead. "Ladies and gentlemen, today we are on a mission up the Mekong River. Our goal is twofold—to intercept illicit river traffic and to inspect any area of jungle near High-way 1 where movement of NVA regulars has been re-ported. Following completion of the mission, we will tour an eight-hundred-year-old Buddhist temple. Lunch will be served after the temple tour."

The helicopter throbbed north and westward. Elizabeth complained that she was hungry. Reverend Dewitt tried to get everyone to sing camp songs but few people were in-terested. Tom Newton pointed out historical landmarks to his wife. Justin awoke briefly, shot a series of images with his Nikon, and went back to sleep. Sometime later the guide broke the silence. "Please watch the river as we turn south. We will be searching for any small boats which look suspicious or attempt to flee at our approach. We should see the river in the next few mi-nutes."

"No, we won't," said Disantis. He reached under his flowered shirt and removed the heavy .45 from his waist-band. He aimed it at the guide's face and held it steady.

"Please ask the pilot to turn north."

The cabin resounded with babble and then fell silent as the guide smiled. "A joke, Mr. Disantis, but not a funny one, I am afraid. Please let me see the..." Disantis fired. The slug ripped through the bulkhead padding three centimeters from the guide's face. People screamed, the guide flinched and raised his hands instinc-tively, and Disantis swung his legs into the cabin. "North, please," he said.

"Immediately."

The guide spoke quickly into his microphone, snapped two monosyllabic answers to unheard questions from the pilot, and the Huey swung out of formation and headed north.

"Daddy," said Heather.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, Ralph?" said Justin. "Now give me that goddamn relic before someone gets..."

"Shut up," said Disantis.

"Mr. Disantis," said Reverend Dewitt, "there are women and children aboard this aircraft. If we could just talk about whatever..."

"Put the damn gun down, Ralph," growled Justin and began to rise from the bench.

"Be quiet." Disantis swung the pistol in Justin's direc-tion and the big man froze in mid-movement. "The next person to speak will be shot." Sammee opened his mouth, looked at his grandfather's face, and remained silent. For several minutes the only sound was the throb of the rotors and Heather's soft weep-ing.

"Take it down here," Disantis said at last. He had been watching the jungle, making sure they were well out of the Park. "Here."

The guide paused and then spoke rapid-fire Vietnam-ese into his mike. The Huey began to descend, circling in toward the clearing Disantis had pointed to. He could see two black Saigon Security hovercraft coming quickly from the east, the downblast of their fans rippling the leaf can-opy of the jungle as they roared ten meters above it.

The Huey's skids touched down and the high grass rip-pled and bent from the blast of the rotors. "Come on, kids," said Disantis. He moved quickly, helping Elizabeth out and tugging Sammee from his perch before Heather could grab him. Disantis jumped down beside them.

"The hell you say," bellowed Justin and vaulted down. Disantis and the children had moved a few feet and were crouching in the whipping grass. Disantis half-turned and shot Justin in the left leg. The force of the blow swung the big man around. He fell back toward the open doorway as people screamed and reached for him.

"This is real," Disantis said softly. "Goodbye." He fired twice past the cockpit windshield. Then he took Elizabeth by the hand and pulled her toward the jungle as the helicopter lifted off. A multitude of hands pulled Justin in the open door as the Huey swung away over the trees. Sammee hesitated, looked at the empty sky, and then stumbled after his sister and grandfather. The boy was sob-bing uncontrollably.

"Hush," said Disantis and pulled Sammee inside the wall of vegetation. There was a narrow trail extending into the jungle darkness. Disantis removed the light backpack and took out a new clip for the automatic. He ejected the old magazine and clicked the new one in with a slap of his palm. Then he grabbed both children and moved as quickly as he could in a counter-clockwise jog around the perimeter of the clearing, always remaining concealed just within the jungle. When they stopped he pushed the children down behind a fallen tree. Elizabeth began to wail. "Hush," Disantis said softly.

The Huey gunship came in quickly, the guide leaped to the ground, and then the helicopter was spiralling upward again, clawing for altitude. A second later the first of the Saigon Security hovercrafts roared in over the treetops and settled next to the guide. The two men who jumped out wore black armorcloth and carried Uzi miniguns. The guide pointed to the spot on the opposite side of the clear-ing where Disantis had first entered the jungle.

They lifted their weapons and took a step in that direc-tion. Disantis walked out behind them, dropped to one knee when he got to within five meters, braced the pistol with both hands, and fired as they turned. He shot the first policeman in the face. The second man had time to raise his gun before he was struck twice in the chest. The bul-lets did not penetrate the armorcloth but the impact knocked him onto his back. Disantis stepped forward, straightened his arm, and shot the man in the left eye.

The guide turned and ran into the jungle. Disantis fired once and then crouched next to the dead policeman as a wash of hot air struck him. The hovercraft was ten meters high and turning toward the trees when Disantis lifted the policeman's Uzi and fired. He did not bother to aim. The minigun kicked and flared, sending two thousand flechettes a second skyward. Disantis had a brief glimpse of the pilot's face before the entire canopy starred and burst into white powder. The hovercraft listed heavily to the left and plowed into the forest wall. There was the heavy sound of machinery and trees breaking but no ex-plosion.

Disantis ran back to the jungle just as the second hov-ercraft appeared. It circled once and then shot straight up until it was lost in the sun. Disantis grabbed the children and urged them on, circling the edge of the clearing again until they reached the spot where the guide had entered the forest. The narrow trail led away from the light into the jungle.

Disantis crouched for a second and then touched the high grass at the side of the trail. Drops of fresh blood were visible in the dappled light. Disantis sniffed at his fingers and looked up at the white faces of Sammee and Elizabeth. They had stopped crying.

"It's all right," he said, and his voice was soft and soothing. Behind them and above them there were the sounds of rotors and engines. Gently, ever so gently, he turned the children and began leading them, unresisting, along the path into the jungle. It was darker there, quiet and cool. The way was marked with crimson. The children moved quickly to keep up with their grandfather.

"It's all right," he whispered and touched their shoul-ders lightly to guide them down the narrowing path. "Ev-erything's all right. I know the way." Iverson's Pits

Introduction

We Americans have a knack for turning our most be-loved national shrines into something tacky and vulgar. Perhaps it's because we're too young to have a real sense of history; perhaps it's because our nation—not counting the Confederacy—has never been bombed or occupied or even invaded by a foreign power (no, I don't count the British when they burned Washington City ... few Amer-icans noticed and fewer cared), and there is little real sense of sacrifice to our shrines.

There are, of course, a few shrines that defy our efforts to tackify them. It's hard to stand in front of the Lincoln Memorial at night without beginning to feel like Mr. Smith just come to Washington. I had a Jimmy Stewart stammer for three days after my first midnight visit there.

But if you stand there long enough, you can almost hear the bureaucrats conferring with the Disney Imagineers behind the marble walls; come back six months later and Old Abe will probably stand, recite his Second Inaugural in Hal Holbrook's voice, wade the Re-flecting Pool, and tapdance down Constitution Avenue. All in good taste, of course.

But then there are the Civil War battlefields.

You've probably visited Gettysburg. Despite the best efforts of sincere people to preserve it, the place has been littered with statues and dusted with memorials. The Park Service erected a phallic monstrosity of a tower at the highest point so that there is no escaping the intrusion of 20th Century ugliness. Computerized dioramas blink lights in the museum and you can buy souvenir t-shirts in the local shops. It doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter.

As with a score of less famous Civil War battlefields, Gettysburg has an almost overpowering sense of tightness about it: an almost physical effect on the visitor and a psychic impact that must be felt to be believed. It is a haunt-ing place in every sense of the word. No castle in Scotland, no druidic circle of stones, no crypt beneath a Pharaoh's pyramid could be eerier or could channel more voices of the dead to the ears of the living.

And few places could be more moving or peaceful.

For what it's worth, this tale grew—literally—from a footnote, but every supporting detail in "Iverson's Pits" is as accurate as I could make it. The burial pits were real. One account in Glenn Tucker's classic High Tide at Get-tysburg records: The unhappy spirits of the slaughtered North Caro-lina soldiers were reputed to abide in this section of the battlefield. Lieutenant Montgomery returned in 1898, thirty-five years after the battle, and learned from John S. Forney that a superstitious ter-ror had long hung over the area. Farm laborers would not work there after night began to settle.

My Colonel Iverson is a fictional construct, of course. The real Colonel Alfred Iverson, Jr., did send his regiment to slaughter and was relieved after his men—his few surviv-ing men—refused to follow him, but there is no evidence that the real Iverson was anything other than a politically appointed military incompetent. Also, a fellow named Jessup Sheads did build a house on the site where the 97th New York had faced the 12th North Carolina. Local historians confirm that Sheads offered wine to visitors—wine from the arbors which grew so luxuriantly above Iverson's Pits.

* * *

As a young boy, I was not afraid of the dark. As an old man, I am wiser. But it was as a boy of ten in that distant summer of 1913 that I was forced to partake of commu-nion with that darkness which now looms so close. I re-member the taste of it. Even now, three-quarters of a century later, I am unable to turn over black soil in the garden or to stand alone in the grassy silence of my grand-son's backyard after the sun has set without a hint of cold fingers on the back of my neck. The past is, as they say, dead and buried. But even the most buried things have their connections to the present, gnarled old roots rising to the surface, and I am one of these. Yet there is no one to connect to, no one to tell. My daughter is grown and gone, dead of cancer in 1953. My middle-aged grandson is a product of those Eisenhower years, that period of endless gestation when all the world seemed fat and confident and looking to the future. Paul has taught science at the local high school for twenty-three years and were I to tell him now about the events of that hot first day and night of July, 1913, he would think me mad. Or senile. My great-grandchildren, a boy and a girl in an age that finds little reason to pay attention to such petty distinctions as gender, could not conceive of a past as ancient and irretrievable as my own childhood before the Great War, much less the blood-and-leather reality of the Civil War era from which I carry my dark message. My great-grandchildren are as colorful and mindless as the guppies Paul keeps in his expensive aquarium, free from the terrors and tides of the ocean of history, smug in their almost total ignorance of everything that came before themselves, Big Macs, and MTV.

So I sit alone on the patio in Paul's backyard (why was it, I try to recall, that we turned our focus away from the front porch attention to the communal streets and side-walks into the fenced isolation of our own backyards?) and I study the old photograph of a serious ten-year-old in his Boy Scout uniform. The boy is dressed far too warmly for such a hot sum-mer day—his small form is almost lost under the heavy, woolen Boy Scout tunic, broad-brimmed campaign hat, baggy wool trousers, and awkward puttees laced almost to the knees. He is not smiling—a solemn, miniature dough-boy four years before the term doughboy had passed into the common vocabulary. The boy is me, of course, stand-ing in front of Mr. Everett's ice wagon on that day in June when I was about to leave on a trip much longer in time and to places much more unimaginably distant than any of us might have dreamed.

I look at the photograph knowing that ice wagons exist now only as fading memories in aging skulls, that the house in the background has long since been torn down to be replaced by an apartment building which in turn was re-placed by a shopping mall, that the wool and leather and cotton of the Boy Scout uniform have rotted away, leaving only the brass buttons and the boy himself to be lost some-where, and that—as Paul would explain—every cell in that unsmiling ten-year-old's body has been replaced several times. For the worse, I suspect. Paul would say that the DNA is the same, and then give an explanation which makes it sound as if the only continuity between me now and me then is some little parasite-architect, blindly sitting and smirking in each otherwise unrelated cell of the then-me and the now-me. Cow manure.

I look at that thin face, those thin lips, the eyes nar-rowed and squinting in the light of a sun seventy-five years younger (and hotter, I know, despite the assurances of reason and the verities of Paul's high school science) and I feel the thread of sameness which unites that unsus-pecting boy of ten—so confident for one so young, so unafraid—with the old man who has learned to be afraid of the dark. I wish I could warn him.

The past is dead and buried. But I know now that buried things have a way of rising to the surface when one least expects them to.

In the summer of 1913 the Commonwealth of Pennsyl-vania made ready for the largest invasion of military vet-erans the nation had ever seen. Invitations had been sent out from the War Department for a Great Reunion of Civil War veterans to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the three-day battle at Gettysburg. All that spring our Philadelphia newspapers were filled with details of the anticipated event. Up to 40,000 veterans were expected. By mid-May, the figure had risen to 54,000 and the General Assembly had to vote additional monies to supplement the Army's budget. My mother's cousin Celia wrote from Atlanta to say that the Daughters of the Confederacy and other groups affiliated with the United Confederate Veterans were doing everything in their power to send their old men North for a final invasion.

My father was not a veteran. Before I was born, he had called the trouble with Spain

"Mr. Hearst's War" and five years after the Gettysburg Reunion he would call the trou-ble in Europe "Mr. Wilson's War." By then I would be in high school, with my classmates chafing to enlist and show the Hun a thing or two, but by then I shared my fa-ther's sentiments; I had seen enough of war's legacy.

But in the late spring and early summer of 1913 I would have given anything to join those veterans in Get-tysburg, to hear the speeches and see the battle flags and crouch in the Devil's Den and watch those old men reenact Pickett's Charge one last time.

And then the opportunity arrived.

Since my birthday in February I had been a Boy Scout. The Scouts were a relatively new idea then—the first groups in the United States had been formed only three years earlier—but in the spring of 1913 every boy I knew was either a Boy Scout or waiting to become one.

The Reverend Hodges had formed the first Troop in Chestnut Hill, our little town outside of Philadelphia, now a suburb. The Reverend allowed only boys of good char-acter and strong moral fiber to join: Presbyterian boys. I had sung in the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Boys' Choir for three years and, in spite of my frailness and total in-ability to tie a knot, I was allowed to become a Boy Scout three days after my tenth birthday.

My father was not totally pleased. Our Scout uniforms might have been castoffs from the returning Roughriders' army. From hobnailed boots to puttees to campaign hats we were little troopers, drowning in yards of khaki and great draughts of military virtue. The Reverend Hodges had us on the high school football field each Tuesday and Thursday afternoon from four to six and every Saturday morning from seven until ten, practicing close-order drill and applying field dressings to one another until our Troop resembled nothing so much as a band of mummies with swatches of khaki showing through our bandages. On Wednesday evening we met in the church basement to learn Morse Code—what the Reverend called General Service Code—and to practice our semaphore signals.

My father asked me if we were training to fight the Boer War over again. I ignored his irony, sweated into my khaki woolens through those warming weeks of May, and loved every minute of it.

When the Reverend Hodges came by our house in early June to inform my parents that the Commonwealth had requested all Boy Scout Troops in Pennsylvania to send representatives to Gettysburg to help with the Great Reunion, I knew that it had been Divine Intervention which would allow me to join the Reverend, thirteen-year-old Billy Stargill (who would later die in the Argonne), and a pimply-faced overweight boy whose name I cannot recall on the five-day visit to Gettysburg. My father was noncommittal but my mother agreed at once that it was a unique honor, so on the morning of June 30 I posed in front of Mr. Everett's ice wagon for a photograph taken by Dr. Lowell, Chestnut Hill's undertaker and official photographer, and at a little after two p.m. on that same day I joined the Reverend and my two comrades-in-arms for the three-hour train ride to Gettys-burg.

As a part of the official celebration, we paid the veter-ans' travel rate of one cent a mile. The train ride cost me $1.21. I had never been to Gettysburg. I had never been away from home overnight.

We arrived late in the afternoon; I was tired, hot, thirsty, and desperately needing to relieve myself since I had been too shy to use the lavatory aboard the train. The small town of Gettysburg was a mass of crowds, confu-sion, noise, horses, automobiles, and old men whose heavy uniforms smelled of camphor. We stumbled after Reverend Hodges through muddy lanes between buildings draped in flags and bunting. Men outnumbered women ten to one and most of the main streets were a sea of straw boaters and khaki caps. As the Reverend checked in the lobby of the Eagle Hotel for word from his Scouting superiors, I slipped down a side hall and found a public restroom.

Half an hour later we dragged our duffel bags into the back of a small motor carriage for the ride out southwest of town to the Reunion tent city. A dozen boys and their Scoutmasters were crowded into the three benches as the vehicle labored its way through heavy traffic down Frank-lin Street, past a temporary Red Cross Hospital on the east side of the street and a score of Ambulance Corps wagons parked on the west side, and then right onto a road marked Long Lane and into a sea of tents which seemed to stretch on forever.

It was past seven o'clock and the rich evening light il-luminated thousands of canvas pyramids covering hun-dreds of acres of open farmland. I craned to make out which of the distant hills was Cemetery Ridge, which heap of rocks the Little Round Top. We passed State Policemen on horseback, Army wagons pulled by Army mules, huge heaps of firewood, and clusters of portable field bakeries where the aroma of fresh-baked bread still lingered.

Reverend Hodges turned in his seat. "Afraid we missed the evening chow lines, boys," he said. "But we weren't hungry, were we?" I shook my head despite the fact my stomach was cramping with hunger. My mother had packed me a dinner of fried chicken and biscuits for the train, but the Rever-end had eaten the drumstick and the fat boy had begged the rest. I had been too excited to eat.

We turned right onto East Avenue, a broad dirt road between neat rows of tents. I looked in vain for the Great Tent I had read about—a huge bigtop with room for 13,000 chairs where President Wilson was scheduled to speak in four days, on Friday, the Fourth of July. Now the sun was low and red in the haze to the west, the air thick with dust and the scent of trampled grass and sun-warmed canvas. I was starving and I had dirt in my hair and grit between my teeth. I do not remember ever being happier.

Our Boy Scout Station was at the west end of East Av-enue, a hundred yards past a row of portable kitchens set in the middle of the Pennsylvania veterans' tent area. Rev-erend Hodges showed us to our tents and commanded us to hurry back to the station for our next day's assignments.

I set my duffel on a cot in a tent not far from the la-trines. I was slow setting out my bedroll and belongings and when I looked up the fat boy was asleep on another cot and Billy was gone. A train roared by on the Gettys-burg and Harrisburg tracks not fifty feet away. Suddenly breathless with the panic of being left behind, I ran back to the Scoutmasters' tent to receive my orders.

Reverend Hodges and Billy were nowhere to be seen but a fat man with a blond mustache, thick spectacles, and an ill-fitting Scoutmaster's uniform snapped, "You there, Scout!"

"Yessir?"

"Have you received your assignment?"

"No, sir."

The fat man grunted and pawed through a stack of yel-low cardboard tags lying on a board he was using as a desk. He pulled one from the stack, glanced at it, and tied it to the brass button on my left breast pocket. I craned my neck to read it. Faint blue, typewritten letters said: MONT-GOMERY, P.O., Capt, 20th N.C. Reg., SECT. 27, SITE 3424, North Carolina Veterans.

"Well, go, boy!" snapped the Scoutmaster.

"Yessir," I said and ran toward the tent entrance. I paused. "Sir?"

"What is it?" The Scoutmaster was already tying an-other ticket on another Scout's blouse.

"Where am I to go, sir?"

The fat man flicked his fingers as if brushing an insect away. "To find the veteran you are assigned to, of course."

I squinted at the ticket. "Captain Montgomery?"

"Yes, yes. If that is what it says."

I took a breath. "Where do I find him, sir?"

The fat man scowled, took four angry steps toward me, and glared at the ticket through his thick glasses. "20th North Carolina ... Section 27 ... up there." He swept his arm in a gesture that took in the railroad tracks, a distant stream lined with trees, the setting sun, and another tent city on a hill where hundreds of pyramid tents glowed redly in the twilight.

"Pardon me, sir, but what do I do when I find Captain Montgomery?" I asked the Scoutmaster's retreating back.

The man stopped and glowered at me over his shoulder with a thinly veiled disgust that I had never guessed an adult would show toward someone my age. "You do what-ever he wants, you young fool," snapped the man. "Now go." I turned and ran toward the distant camp of the Con-federates.

Lanterns were being lighted as I made my way through long rows of tents. Old men by the hundreds, many in heavy gray uniforms and long whiskers, sat on campstools and cots, benches and wooden stumps, smoking and talk-ing and spitting into the early evening gloom. Twice I lost my way and twice I was given directions in slow, Southern drawls that might as well have been German for all I un-derstood them. Finally I found the North Carolina contingent sand-wiched in between the Alabama and Missouri camps, just a short walk from the West Virginians. In the years since, I have found myself wondering why they put the Union-loyal West Virginian veterans in the midst of the rebel en-campment.

Section 27 was the last row on the east side of the North Carolina camp and Site 3424 was the last tent in the row. The tent was dark.

"Captain Montgomery?" My voice was little more than a whisper. Hearing no answer from the darkened tent, I ducked my head inside to confirm that the veteran was not home. It was not my fault, I reasoned, that the old gentle-man was not here when I called. I would find him in the morning, escort him to the breakfast tent, run the neces-sary errands for him, help him to find the latrine or his old comrades-in-arms, or whatever. In the morning. Right now I thought I would run all the way back to the Boy Scout Station, find Billy and Reverend Hodges, and see if any-one had any cookies in their duffel bags.

"I been waitin' for you, Boy."

I froze. The voice had come from the darkness in the depths of the tent. It was a voice from the South but sharp as cinders and brittle with age. It was a voice that I imag-ined the Dead might use to command those still beyond the grave.

"Come in here, Johnny. Step lively!"

I moved into the hot, canvas-scented interior and blinked. For a second my breath would not come.

The old man who lay on the cot was propped on his el-bows so that his shoulders looked like sharp wings in the dim light, predatory pinions rising above an otherwise in-distinct bundle of gray cloth, gray skin, staring eyes, and faded braid. He was wearing a shapeless hat which had once boasted a brim and crown but which now served only to cast his face into deeper shadow. A beak of a nose jut-ted into the dim light above wisps of white beard, thin pur-plish lips, and a few sharp teeth gleaming in a black hole of a mouth. For the first time in my life I realized that a human mouth was really an opening into a skull. The old man's eye sockets were darker pits of shadow beneath brows still black, the cheeks hollowed and knife-edged. Huge, liver-spotted hands, misshapen with age and arthri-tis, glowed with a preternatural whiteness in the gloom and I saw that while one leg ended in the black gleam of a high boot, the other terminated abruptly below the knee. I could see the rolled trouser leg pulled above pale, scarred skin wrapped tautly around the bone of the stump.

"Goddamnit, boy, did you bring the wagon?"

"Pardon me, sir?" My voice was a cicada's frightened chirp.

"The wagon, goddamnit, Johnny. We need a wagon. You should be knowin' that, boy." The old man sat up, swung his leg and his stump over the edge of the cot, and began fumbling in his loose coat.

"I'm sorry, Captain Montgomery ... uh ... you are Captain Montgomery, aren't you, sir?"

The old man grunted.

"Well, Captain Montgomery, sir, my name's not Johnny, it's..."

" Goddamnit, boy!" bellowed the old man. "Would you quit makin' noise and go get the goddamned wagon! We need to get up there to the Pits before that bastard Iverson beats us to it."

I started to reply and then found myself with no wind with which to speak as Captain Montgomery removed a pistol from the folds of his coat. The gun was huge and gray and smelled of oil and I was certain that the crazy old man was going to kill me with it in that instant. I stood there with the wind knocked out of me as certainly as if the old Confederate had struck me in the solar plexus with the barrel of that formidable weapon.

The old man laid the revolver on the cot and reached into the shadows beneath it, pulling out an awkward ar-rangement of straps, buckles, and mahogany which I rec-ognized as a crude wooden leg. "Come on now, Johnny," he mumbled, bending over to strap the cruel thing in place, "I've waited long enough for you. Go get the wagon, that's a good lad. I'll be ready and waitin' when you get back."

"Yessir," I managed, and turned, and escaped.

I have no rational explanation for my next actions. All I had to do was the natural thing, the thing that every fiber of my frightened body urged me to do—run back to the Boy Scout Station, find Reverend Hodges, inform him that my veteran was a raving madman armed with a pistol, and get a good night's sleep while the grownups sorted things out. But I was not a totally rational creature at this point. (How many ten-year-old boys are, I wonder?) I was tired, hungry, and already homesick after less than seven hours away from home, disoriented in space and time, and—perhaps most pertinent—not used to disobeying orders. And yet I am sure to this day that I would have run the en-tire way back to the Boy Scout Station and not thought twice about it if my parting glance of the old man had not been of him painfully strapping on that terrible wooden leg. The thought of him standing in the deepening twilight on that awful pegleg, trustingly awaiting a wagon which would never arrive was more than I could bear.

As fate arranged it, there was a wagon and untended team less than a hundred yards from Captain Montgom-ery's tent. The back of the slat-sided thing was half-filled with blankets, but the driver and deliverers were nowhere in sight. The team was a matched set of grays, aged and sway-backed but docile enough as I grabbed their bridles and clumsily turned them around and tugged them back up the hill with me. I had never ridden a horse or driven a team. Even in 1913, I was used to riding in automobiles. Chestnut Hill still saw buggies and wagons on the street occasionally, but already they were considered quaint. Mr. Everett, our iceman, did not allow boys to ride on his wagon and his horse had the habit of biting any child who came in range.

Gingerly, trying to keep my knuckles away from the grays' teeth, I led the team up the hill. The thought that I was stealing the wagon never crossed my mind. Captain Montgomery needed a wagon. It was my job to deliver it.

"Good boy, Johnny. Well done." Outside, in the light, the old man was only slightly less formidable. The long gray coat hung in folds and wrinkles and although there was no sight of the pistol, I was sure that it was tucked somewhere close to hand. A heavy canvas bag hung from a strap over his right shoulder. For the first time I noticed a faded insignia on the front of his hat and three small medals on his coat. The ribbons were so faded that I could not make out their colors. The Captain's bare neck re-minded me of the thick tangle of ropes dangling into the dark maw of the old well behind our house.

"Come on, Boy. We have to move smartly if we're to beat that son-of-a-bitch Iverson." The old man heaved himself up to the seat with a wide swing of his wooden leg and seized the reins in fists that looked like clusters of gnarled roots. With no hesitation I ran to the left side of the wagon and jumped to the seat beside him.

Gettysburg was filled with lights and activity that last, late evening in June, but the night seemed especially dark and empty as we passed through town on our way north. The house and hotel lights felt so distant to our purpose—whatever that purpose was—that the lights appeared pale and cold to me, the fading glow of fireflies dying in a jar.

In a few minutes we were beyond the last buildings on the north end of town and turning northwest on what I later learned was Mummasburg Road. Just before we passed behind a dark curtain of trees, I swiveled in my seat and caught a last glimpse of Gettysburg and the Great Reunion Camp beyond it. Where the lights of the city seemed pale and paltry, the flames of the hundreds of campfires and bonfires in the Tent City blazed in the night. I looked at the constellations of fires and realized that there were more old veterans huddling around them that night than there were young men in many nations' armies. I wondered if this is what Cemetery Ridge and Gulp's Hill had looked like to the arriving Confederate armies fifty years earlier. Suddenly I had the chilling thought that fifty years ago Death had given a grand party and 140,000 revelers had arrived in their burial clothes. My father had told me that the soldiers going into battle had often pinned small scraps of paper to their uniforms so that their bodies could be identified after the killing was finished. I glanced to my right as if half-expecting to see a yellowed scrap of paper pinned to the old man's chest, his name, rank, and home town scrawled on it. Then I realized with a start that I was wearing the tag.

I looked back at the lights and marveled that fifty years after Death's dark festival, 50,000 of the survivors had re-turned for a second celebration. We passed deeper into the forest and I could see no more of the fires of the Reunion Camp. The only light came from the fading glow of the summer sky through limbs above us and the sporadic winking of fireflies along the road.

"You don't remember Iverson, do you, Boy?"

"No, sir."

"Here." He thrust something into my hands. Leaning closer, squinting, I understood that it was an old tintype, cracked at the edges. I was able to make out a pale square of face, shadows which might have been mustaches. Cap-tain Montgomery grabbed it back. "He's not registered at the goddamn reunion," he muttered. "Spent the goddamn day lookin'. Never arrived. Didn't expect him to. Newspa-per in Atlanta two years ago said he died. Goddamn lie."

"Oh," I said. The horses' hooves made soft sounds in the dirt of the road. The fields we were passing were as empty as my mind.

"Goddamn lie," said the Captain. "He's goin' be back here. No doubt about it, is there, Johnny?"

"No, sir." We came over the brow of a low hill and the old man slowed the wagon. His pegleg had been making a rhythmic sound as it rattled against the wooden slat where it was braced and as we slowed the tempo changed. We had passed out of the thickest part of the forest but dark farmfields opened out to the left and right between stands of trees and low stone walls. "Damn," he said. "Did you see Forney's house back there, boy?"

"I ... no, sir. I don't think so." I had no idea if we had passed Forney's house. I had no idea who Forney was. I had no idea what I was doing wandering around the coun-tryside at night with this strange old man. I was amazed to find myself suddenly on the verge of tears.

Captain Montgomery pulled the team to a stop under some trees set back off the right side of the road. He panted and wheezed, struggling to dismount from the driv-er's seat. "Help me down, Boy. It's time we bivouacked." I ran around to offer my hand but he used my shoulder as a brace and dropped heavily to the ground. A strange, sour scent came from him and I was reminded of an old, urine-soaked mattress in a shed near the tracks behind our school where Billy said hobos slept. It was fully dark now. I could make out the Big Dipper above a field across the road. All around us, crickets and tree toads were tuning up for their nightly symphony.

"Bring some of them blankets along, Boy." He had picked up a fallen limb to use as a walking stick as he moved clumsily into the trees. I grabbed some Army blan-kets from the back of the wagon and followed him.

We crossed a wheat field, passed a thin line of trees, and climbed through a meadow before stopping under a tree where broad leaves stirred to the night breeze. The Captain directed me to lay the blankets out into rough bed-rolls and then he lowered himself until he was lying with his back propped against the tree and his wooden leg rest-ing on his remaining ankle. "You hungry, Boy?"

I nodded in the dark. The old man rummaged in the canvas bag and handed me several strips of something I thought was meat but which tasted like heavily salted leather. I chewed on the first piece for almost five minutes before it was soft enough to swallow. Just as my lips and tongue were beginning to throb with thirst, Captain Mont-gomery handed me a wineskin of water and showed me how to squirt it into my open mouth.

"Good jerky, ain't it, Boy?" he asked.

"Delicious," I answered honestly and worked to bite off another chunk.

"That Iverson was a useless son-of-a-bitch," the Cap-tain said around his own jawful of jerky. It was as if he were picking up the sentence he had begun half an hour earlier back at the wagon. "He would've been a harmless son-of-a-bitch if those dumb bastards in my own 20th North Carolina hadn't elected him camp commander back before the war begun. That made Iverson a colonel sort of automatic like, and by the time we'd fought our way up North, the stupid little bastard was in charge of one of Rodes's whole damn brigades."

The old man paused to work at the jerky with his few remaining teeth and I reflected on the fact that the only other person I had ever heard curse anything like the Cap-tain was Mr. Bolton, the old fire chief who used to sit out in front of the firehouse on Third Street and tell stories to the new recruits, apparently oblivious to the uninvited presence of us younger members of the audience. Perhaps, I thought, it has something to do with wearing a uniform.

"His first name was Alfred," said the Captain. The old man's voice was soft, preoccupied, and his southern accent was so thick that the meaning of each word reached me some seconds after the sound of it. It was a bit like lying in bed, already dreaming, and hearing the soft voices of my mother and father coming upstairs through a curtain of sleep. Or like magically understanding a foreign language. I closed my eyes to hear better. "Alfred," said the Captain, "just like his daddy. His daddy'd been a Senator from Georgia, good friend of the President." I could feel the old man's gaze on me. "President Davis. It was Davis, back when he was a senator too, who give young Iverson his first commission. That was back durin' the trouble with Mexico. Then when the real war come up, Iverson and his daddy got 'em up a regiment. Them days, when a rich goddamn family like the Iversons wanted to play soldiers, they just bought themselves a regiment. Bought the god-damn uniforms and horses and such. Then they got to be officers. Goddamn grown men playin' at toy soldiers, Boy. Only once't the real war begun, we was the toy soldiers, Johnny." I opened my eyes. I could not recall ever having seen so many stars. Above the slope of the meadow, constella-tions came all the way down to the horizon; others were visible between the dark masses of trees. The Milky Way crossed the sky like a bridge. Or like the pale tracks of an army long since passed by.

"Just goddamned bad luck we got Iverson," said the Captain, "because the brigade was good 'un and the 20th North Carolina was the best goddamn regiment in Ewell's corps." The old man shifted to look at me again. "You wasn't with us yet at Sharpsburg, was you, Johnny?"

I shook my head, feeling a chill go up my back as he again called me by some other boy's name. I wondered where that boy was now.

"No, of course not," said Captain Montgomery. "That was in '62. You was still in school. The regiment was still at Fredericksburg after the campaign. Somebody'd ordered up a dress parade and Nate's band played 'Dixie.' All of the sudden, from acrost the Rappahannock, the Yankee band starts playin' Dixie back at us. Goddamnest thing, Boy. You could hear that music so clear acrost the water it was like two parts of the same band playin'. So our band—all boys from the 20th—they commence to playin' 'Yankee Doodle.' All of us standin' there at parade rest in that cold sunlight, feelin' mighty queer by then, I don't mind tellin' you. Then, when our boys is done with 'Yan-kee Doodle,' just like they all rehearsed it together, both bands commence playin' 'Home Sweet Home.' Without even thinkin' about it, Perry and ol' Thomas and Jeffrey an' me and the whole line starts singin' along. So did Lieutenant Williams—young Mr. Oliver hisself—and be-fore long the whole brigade's singin'—the damn Yankees too—their voices comin' acrost the Rappahannock and joinin' ours like we'd been one big choir that'd gotten busted up by mistake or accident or somethin'. I tell you, Boy, it was sorta like singin' with ghosts. And sorta like we was ghosts our own selves."

I closed my eyes to hear the deep voices singing that sad, sweet song, and I realized suddenly that even grownups—soldiers even—could feel as lonely and home-sick as I had felt earlier that evening. Realizing that, I found that all of my own homesickness had fled. I felt that I was where I should be, part of the Captain's army, part of all armies, camping far from home and uncertain what the next day would bring but content to be with my friends. My comrades. The voices were as real and as sad as the soughing of wind through the mid-summer leaves.

The Captain cleared his throat and spat. "And then that bastard Iverson kilt us," he said. I heard the sound of buckles as the old man unstrapped his false leg. I opened my eyes as he pulled his blanket over his shoulders and turned his face away. "Get some sleep, Boy," came his muffled voice. "We step off at first light come mornin'."

I pulled my own blanket up to my neck and laid my cheek against the dark soil. I listened for the singing but the voices were gone. I went to sleep to the sound of the wind in the leaves sounding like angry whispers in the night.

I awoke once before sunrise when there was just enough false light to allow me to see Captain Montgom-ery's face a few inches from my own. The old man's hat had slipped off in the night and the top of his head was a relief map of reddened scalp scarred by liver spots, sores, and a few forlorn wisps of white hair. His brow was fur-rowed as if in fierce concentration, eyebrows two dark eruptions of hair, eyelids lowered but showing a line of white at the bottom. Soft snores whistled out of his broken gourd of a mouth and a thin line of drool moistened his whiskers. His breath was as dry and dead as a draft of air from a cave unsealed after centuries of being forgotten.

I stared at the time-scoured flesh of the old face inches from mine, at the swollen and distorted fingers clutching, childlike, at his blanket, and I realized, with a precise and prescient glimpse at the terrible fate of my own longevity, that age was a curse, a disease, and that all of us unlucky to survive our childhoods were doomed to suffer and per-ish from it. Perhaps, I thought, it is why young men go willingly to die in wars.

I pulled the blanket across my face.

When I awoke again, just after sunrise, the old man was standing ten paces from the tree and staring toward Gettysburg. Only a white cupola was visible above the trees, its dome and sides painted in gold from the sun. I disentangled myself from the blankets and rose to my feet, marveling at how stiff and clammy and strange I felt. I had never slept out of doors before. Reverend Hodges had promised us a camp-out but the Troop had been too busy learning close order drill and semaphore. I decided that I might skip the camp-out part of the agenda. Staggering up-right on legs still half asleep, I wondered how Captain Montgomery had strapped on his wooden leg without awakening me.

"Mornin', Boy," he called as I returned from the edge of the woods where I had relieved myself. His gaze never left the cupola visible to the southeast. We had breakfast while standing there under the tree—more beef jerky and water. I wondered what Billy, the Reverend, and the other Scouts were having down in the tents near the field kitchens. Pancakes, probably. Perhaps with bacon. Certainly with tall glasses of cold milk.

"I was there with Mr. Oliver when muster was called on the mornin' of the first," rasped the old man. "1,470 present for duty. 114 was officers. I wasn't among 'em. Still had my sergeant stripes then. Wasn't 'til the second Wilderness that they gave me the bar. Anyway, word had come the night before from A.P. Hill that the Federals was massin' to the south. Probably figurin' to cut us off. Our brigade was the first to turn south to Hill's call.

"We heard firin' as we come down the Heidlersburg Pike, so General Rodes took us through the woods 'til we got to Oak Hill." He turned east, smoothly pivoting on his wooden leg, shielding his eyes from the sun. "Bout there, I reckon, Johnny. Come on." The old man spun around and I rolled the blankets and scurried to follow him back down the hill toward the southeast. Toward the distant cu-pola.

"We come right down the west side of this ridge then, too, didn't we, Boy? Not so many trees then. Been marchin' since before sunup. Got here sometime after what should've been dinner time. One o'clock, maybe one-thirty. Had hardtack on the hoof. Seems to me that we stopped a while up the hill there so's Rodes could set out some guns. Perry an' me was glad to sit. He wanted to start another letter to our Ma, but I told him there wasn't goin' to be time. There wasn't, either, but I wish to hell I'd let him write the damned thing.

"From where we was, you could see the Yanks comin' up the road from Gettysburg and we knew there'd be a fight that day. Goddamnit, Boy, you can put them blankets down. We ain't goin' to need 'em today."

Startled, I dropped the blankets in the weeds. We had reached the lower end of the meadow and only a low, split rail fence separated us from what I guessed to be the road we had come up the night before. The Captain swung his pegleg over the fence and after we crossed we both paused a minute. I felt the growing heat of the day as a thickness in the air and a slight pounding in my temples. Suddenly there came the sound of band music and cheering from the south, dwindled by distance. The Captain removed a stained red kerchief from his pocket and mopped at his neck and forehead. "Goddamn idiots," he said. "Celebratin' like it's a county fair. Damned nonsense."

"Yessir," I said automatically, but at that moment I was thrilled with the idea of the Reunion and with the reality of being with a veteran— my veteran—walking on the ac-tual ground he had fought on. I realized that someone see-ing us from a distance might have mistaken us for two soldiers. At that moment I would have traded my Boy Scout khaki for butternut brown or Confederate gray and would have joined the Captain in any cause. At that mo-ment I would have marched against the Eskimoes if it meant being part of an army, setting off at sunrise with one's comrades, preparing for battle, and generally feeling as alive as I felt at that instant. The Captain had heard my "yessir" but he must have noticed something else in my eyes because he leaned for-ward, rested his weight on the fence, and brought his face close to mine. "Goddamnit, Johnny, don't you fall for such nonsense twice. You think these dumb sons-of-bitches would've come back all this way if they was honest enough to admit they was celebratin' a slaughterhouse?" I blinked.

The old man grabbed my tunic with his swollen fist. "That's all it is, Boy, don't you see? A goddamn abattoir that was built here to grind up men and now they're reminiscin' about it and tellin' funny stories about it and weepin' old man tears about what good times we had when we was fed to it." With his free hand he stabbed a finger in the direction of the cupola. "Can't you see it, Boy? The holdin' pens and the delivery chutes and the killin' rooms—only not everybody was so lucky as to have their skull busted open on the first pop, some of us got part of us fed to the grinder and got to lay around and watch the others swell up and bloat in the heat. Goddamn slaughterhouse, Boy, where they kill you and gut you down the middle ... dump your insides out on the god-damn floor and kick 'em aside to get at the next fool ... hack the meat off your bones, grind up the bones for fer-tilizer, then grind up everythin'

else you got that ain't prime meat and wrap it in your own guts to sell it to the goddamn public as sausage. Parades. War stories. Re-unions. Sausage, Boy." Panting slightly, he released me, spat, wiped his whiskers and stared a long minute at the sky. "And we was led into that slaughterhouse by a Judas goat named Iverson, Johnny," he said at last, his voice empty of all emotion. "Never forget that."

The hill continued to slope gently downward as we crossed the empty road and entered a field just to the east of an abandoned farmhouse. Fire had gutted the upper sto-ries years ago and the windows on the first floor were boarded up, but irises still grew tall around the foundation and along the overgrown lane leading to sagging outbuild-ings. "John Forney's old place," said Captain Montgom-ery. "He was still here when I come back in '98. Told me then that none of his farmhands'd stay around here after night begun to settle. Because of the Pits."

"Because of what, sir?" I was blinking in the early heat and glare of a day in which the temperatures certainly would reach the mid-nineties. Grasshoppers hopped mind-lessly in the dusty grass.

The old man did not seem to hear my question. The cupola was no longer visible because we were too close to the trees, but the Captain's attention was centered on the field which ran downhill less than a quarter of a mile to a thicker line of trees to the southeast. He withdrew the pistol from his coat and my heart pounded as he drew back the hammer until it clicked. "This is a double-action, Boy," he said.

"Don't forget that."

We forced our way through a short hedge and began crossing the field at a slow walk. The old man's wooden leg made soft sounds in the soil. Grass and thistles brushed at our legs. "That son-of-a-bitch Iverson never got this far," said the Captain. "Ollie Williams said he heard him give the order up the hill there near where Rodes put his guns out. 'Give 'em hell,' Iverson says, then goes back up to his tree there to sit in the shade an' eat his lunch. Had him some wine too. Had wine every meal when the rest of us was drinkin' water out of the ditch. Nope, Iverson never come down here 'til it was all over and then it was just to say we'd tried to surrender and order a bunch of dead men to stand up and salute the general. Come on, Boy." We moved slowly across the field. I could make out a stone fence near the treeline now, half-hidden in the dap-ple of leaf shadow. There seemed to be a jumble of tall grass or vines just this side of the wall.

"They put Daniels' brigade on our right." The Cap-tain's pistol gestured toward the south, the barrel just miss-ing the brim of my hat. "But they didn't come down 'til we was shot all to pieces. Then Daniels' boys run right into the fire of Stone's 149th Pennsylvania ... them damn sharpshooters what were called the Bogus Bucktails for some damn reason I don't recall now. But we was all alone when we come down this way before Daniels and Ramseur and O'Neil and the rest come along. Iverson sent us off too soon. Ramseur wasn't ready for another half hour and O'Neal's brigade turned back even before they got to the Mummasburg Road back there." We were half way across the field by then. A thin screen of trees to our left blocked most of the road from sight. The stone wall was less than three hundred yards ahead. I glanced nervously at the cocked pistol. The Cap-tain seemed to have forgotten he was carrying it.

"We come down like this at an angle," he said. "Bri-gade stretched about halfway acrost the field, sorta slantin' northeast to southwest. The 5th North Carolina was on our left. The 20th was right about here, couple of hundred of us in the first line, and the 23rd and 12th was off to our right there and sorta trailin' back, the right flank of the 12th about halfway to that damned railroad cut down there." I looked toward the south but could see no railroad tracks. There was only the hot, wide expanse of field which may have once borne crops but which had now gone back to brambles and sawgrass.

The Captain stopped, panting slightly, and rested his weight on his good leg. "What we didn't know, Johnny, was that the Yanks was all set behind that wall there. Thousands of them. Not showin' a goddamn cap or battle flag or rifle barrel. Just hunkerin' down there and waitin'. Waitin' for the animals to come in the door so the slaugh-ter could begin. And Colonel Iverson never even ordered skirmishers out in front of us. I never even seen an ad-vance without skirmishers, and there we was walkin' across this field while Iverson sat up on Oak Hill eatin' lunch and havin'

another glass of wine."

The Captain raised his pistol and pointed at the treeline. I stepped back, expecting him to fire, but the only noise was the rasp of his voice. "Remember? We got to that point ... 'bout there where them damn vines is grow-ing ... and the Yanks rise up along that whole quarter mile of wall there and fire right into us. Like they're comin'

up out of the ground. No noise at all except the swish of our feet 'n legs in the wheat and grass and then they let loose a volley like to sound like the end of the world. Whole goddamn world disappears in smoke and fire. Even a Yank couldn't miss at that range. More of 'em come out of the trees back up there..." The Captain ges-tured toward our left where the wall angled northwest to meet the road. "That puts us in an enfilade fire that just sweeps through the 5th North Carolina. Like a scythe, Boy. There was wheat in these fields then. But it was just stubble. No place to go. No place to hide. We could've run back the way we come but us North Carolina boys wasn't goin' to start learning ourselves how to run this late in the day. So the scythe just come sweepin' into us. Couldn't move forward. That goddamn wall was just a wall of smoke with fire comin' through it there fifty yards away. I seen Lieutenant Colonel Davis of the 5th—Old Bill his boys called him—get his regiment down into that low area there to the south. See about where that line of scrub brush is? Not nearly so big as a ditch, but it give 'em some cover, not much. But us in the 20th and Cap'n Turner's boys in the 23rd didn't have no choice but to lie down here in the open and take it."

The old man advanced slowly for a dozen yards and stopped where the grass grew thicker and greener, joining with tangles of what I realized were grapevines to create a low, green thicket between us and the wall. Suddenly he sat down heavily, thrusting his wooden leg out in front of him and cradling the pistol in his lap. I dropped to my knees in the grass near him, removed my hat, and unbut-toned my tunic. The yellow tag hung loosely from my breast pocket button. It was very hot.

"The Yank's kept pourin' the fire into us," he said. His voice was a hoarse whisper. Sweat ran down his cheeks and neck. "More Federals come out of the woods down there ... by the railroad gradin' ... and started enfiladin' Old Bill's boys and our right flank. We couldn't fire back worth horseshit. Lift your head outta the dirt to aim and you caught a Minie ball in the brain. My brother Perry was layin' next to me and I heard the ball that took him in the left eye. Made a sound like someone hammerin' a side of beef with a four-pound hammer. He sort of rose up and flopped back next to me. I was yellin' and cryin', my face all covered with snot and dirt and tears, when all of a sudden I feel Perry tryin' to rise up again. Sort of jer-kin', like somebody was pullin' him up with strings. Then again. And again. I'd got a glimpse of the hole in his face where his eye'd been and his brains and bits of the back of his head was still smeared on my right leg, but I could feel him jerkin' and pullin', like he was tuggin' at me to go with him somewhere. Later, I seen why. More bullets had been hittin' him in the head and each time it'd snap him back some. When we come back to bury him later, his head looked like a mushmelon someone'd kicked apart. It wasn't unusual, neither. Lot of the boys layin' on the field that day got just torn apart by that Yankee fire. Like a scythe, Boy. Or a meatgrinder."

I sat back in the grass and breathed through my mouth. The vines and black soil gave off a thick, sweet smell that made me feel lightheaded and a little ill. The heat pressed down like thick, wet blankets.

"Some of the boys stood up to run then," said Captain Montgomery, his voice still a hoarse monotone, his eyes focused on nothing. He was holding the cocked pistol in both hands with the barrel pointed in my direction, but I was sure that he had forgotten I was there. "Everybody who stood up got hit. The sound was ... you could hear the balls hittin' home even over the firin'. The wind was blowin' the smoke back into the woods so there wasn't even any cover you usually got once't the smoke got heavy. I seen Lieutenant Ollie Williams stand up to yell at the boys of the 20th to stay low and he was hit twice while I watched.

"The rest of us was tryin' to form a firin' line in the grass and wheat, but we hadn't got off a full volley before the Yanks come runnin' out, some still firin', some usin'

their bayonets. And that's when I seen you and the other two little drummers get kilt, Johnny. When they used them bayonets..." The old man paused and looked at me for the first time in several minutes. A cloud of confusion seemed to pass over him. He slowly lowered the pistol, gently released the cocked hammer, and raised a shaking hand to his brow.

Still feeling dizzy and a little sick myself, I asked, "Is that when you lost your ... uh

... when you hurt your leg, sir?"

The Captain removed his hat. His few white hairs were stringy with sweat. "What?

My leg?" He stared at the wooden peg below his knee as if he had never noticed it before. "My leg. No, Boy, that was later. The Battle of the Crater. The Yankees tunneled under us and blowed us up while we was sleepin'. When I didn't die right away, they shipped me home to Raleigh and made me an honorary Cap'n three days before the war ended. No, that day ... here ... I got hit at least three times but nothin'

serious. A ball took the heel of my right boot off. Another'n knocked my rifle stock all to hell and gave me some splin-ters in my cheek. A third'n took off a chunk of my left ear, but hell, I could still hear all right. It wasn't 'til I sat down to try to go to sleep that night that I come to find out that another ball'd hit me in the back of the leg, right below the ass, but it'd been goin' so slow it just give me a big bruise there."

We sat there for several minutes in silence. I could hear insects rustling in the grass. Finally the Captain said, "And that son-of-a-bitch Iverson never even come down here until Ramseur's boys finally got around to clearin' the Yankees out. That was later. I was layin' right around here somewhere, squeezed in between Perry and Nate's corpses, covered with so much of their blood an' brains that the goddamn Yanks just stepped over all three of us when they ran out to stick bayonets in our people or drive 'em back to their line as prisoners. I opened my eyes long enough to see ol' Cade Tarleton bein' clubbed along by a bunch of laughin' Yankees. They had our regimental flag, too, goddamnit. There was no one left alive around it to put up a fight.

"Ramseur, him who the Richmond papers was always callin' the Chevalier Bayard, whatever the hell that meant, was comin' down the hill into the same ambush when Lieutenant Crowder and Lieutenant Dugger run up and warned him. Ramseur was an officer but he wasn't no-body's fool. He crossed the road further east and turned the Yankee's right flank, just swept down the backside of that wall, drivin' 'em back toward the seminary.

"Meanwhile, while the few of us who'd stayed alive was busy crawlin' back towards Forney's house or layin' there bleedin' from our wounds, that son-of-a-bitch Iverson was tellin' General Rodes that he'd seen our reg-iment put up a white flag and go over to the Yanks. God-damn lie, Boy. Them who got captured was mostly wounded who got drove off at the point of a bayonet. There wasn't any white flags to be seen that day. Least-ways not here. Just bits of white skull and other stuff layin'

around.

"Later, while I was still on the field lookin' for a rifle that'd work, Rodes brings Iverson down here to show him where the men had surrendered, and while their horses is pickin' their way over the corpses that used to be the 20th North Carolina, that bastard Iverson..." Here the old man's voice broke. He paused a long minute, hawked, spat, and continued. "That bastard Iverson sees our rows of dead up here, 700 men from the finest brigade the South ever fielded, layin' shot dead in lines as straight as a dress parade, and Iverson thinks they're still duckin' from fire even though Ramseur had driven the Yanks off, and he stands up in his stirrups, his goddamn sorrel horse almost steppin' on Perry, and he screams, 'Stand up and salute when the general passes, you men! Stand up this in-stant!' It was Rodes who realized that they was lookin' at dead men."

Captain Montgomery was panting, barely able to get the words out between wracking gasps for breath. I was having trouble breathing myself. The sickeningly sweet stench from the weeds and vines and dark soil seemed to use up all of the air. I found myself staring at a cluster of grapes on a nearby vine; the swollen fruit looked like bruised flesh streaked with ruptured veins.

"If I'd had my rifle," said the Captain, "I would have shot the bastard right then." He let out a ragged breath. "Him and Rodes went back up the hill together and I never seen Iverson again. Captain Halsey took command of what was left of the regiment. When the brigade reas-sembled the next mornin', 362 men stood muster where 1,470

had answered the call the day before. They called Iverson back to Georgia and put him in charge of a home guard unit or somethin'. Word was, President Davis saved him from bein' court-martialed or reprimanded. It was clear none of us would've served under the miserable son-of-a-bitch again. You know how the last page of our 20th North Carolina regimental record reads, Boy?"

"No, sir," I said softly.

The old man closed his eyes. "Initiated at Seven Pines, sacrificed at Gettysburg, and surrendered at Appomattox. Help me get to my feet, Boy. We got to find a place to hide."

"To hide, sir?"

"Goddamn right," said the Captain as I acted as a crutch for him. "We've got to be ready when Iverson comes here today." He raised the heavy pistol as if it ex-plained everything. "We've got to be ready when he comes."

It was mid-morning before we found an adequate place to hide. I trailed along behind the limping old man and while part of my mind was desperate with panic to find a way out of such an insane situation, another part—a larger part—had no trouble accepting the logic of everything. Colonel Alfred Iverson, Jr., would have to return to his field of dishonor this day and we had to hide in order to kill him.

"See where the ground's lower here, Boy? Right about where these damn vines is growin'?"

"Yessir."

"Them's Iverson's Pits. That's what the locals call 'em according to John Forney when I come to visit in '98. You know what they are?"

"No, sir," I lied. Part of me knew very well what they were.

"Night after the battle ... battle, hell, slaughter ... the few of us left from the regiment and some of Lee's Pio-neers come up and dug big shallow pits and just rolled our boys in where they lay. Laid 'em in together, still in their battle lines. Nate 'n Perry's shoulders was touchin'. Right where I'd been layin'. You can see where the Pits start here. The ground's lower an' the grass is higher, ain't it?"

"Yessir."

"Forney said the grass was always higher here, crops too, when they growed them. Forney didn't farm this field much. Said the hands didn't like to work here. He told his niggers that there weren't nothing to worry about, that the U.C.V.'d come up and dug up everythin' after the war to take our boys back to Richmond, but that ain't really true."

"Why not, sir?" We were wading slowly through the tangle of undergrowth. Vines wrapped around my ankle and I had to tug to free myself.

"They didn't do much diggin' here," said the Captain. "Bones was so thick and scattered that they jes' took a few of 'em and called it quits. Didn't like diggin' here any more than Forney's niggers liked workin' here. Even in the daytime. Place that's got this much shame and anger in it ... well, people feel it, don't they, Boy?"

"Yessir," I said automatically, although all I felt at that moment was sick and sleepy. The Captain stopped. "Goddamnit, that house wasn't here before." Through a break in the stone wall I could see a small house—more of a large shack, actually—made of wood so dark as to be almost black and set back in the shade of the trees. No driveway or wagon lane led to it, but I could see a faint trampling in Forney's field and the forest grass where horses might have passed through the break in the wall to gain access. The old man seemed deeply offended that someone had built a home so close to the field where his beloved 20th North Carolina had fallen. But the house was dark and silent and we moved away from that section of the wall.

The closer we came to the stone fence, the harder it was to walk. The grass grew twice as high as in the fields beyond and the wild grapevines marked a tangled area about the size of the football field where our Troop prac-ticed its close order drill. In addition to the tangled grass and thick vines there to hamper our progress, there were the holes. Dozens of them, scores of them, pockmarking the field and lying in wait under the matted foliage.

"Goddamn gophers," said Captain Montgomery, but the holes were twice as wide across the opening as any burrow I had seen made by mole or gopher or ground squirrel. There were no heaps of dirt at the opening. Twice the old man stepped into them, the second time ramming his wooden leg in so deeply that we both had to work to dislodge it. Tugging hard at his wool-covered leg, I sud-denly had the nightmarish sense that someone or some-thing was pulling at the other end, refusing to let go, trying to suck the old man underground.

The incident must have disconcerted Captain Mont-gomery as well, because as soon as his leg popped free of the hole he staggered back a few steps and sat down heav-ily with his back against the stone wall. "This is good enough, Boy," he panted.

"We'll wait here."

It was a good place for an ambush. The vines and grass grew waist high there, allowing us glimpses of the field beyond but concealing us as effectively as a duck blind. The wall sheltered our backs.

Captain Montgomery removed his topcoat and canvas bag and commenced to unload, clean, and reload his pis-tol. I lay on the grass nearby, at first thinking about what was going on back at the Reunion, then wondering about how to get the Captain back there, then wondering what Iverson had looked like, then thinking about home, and fi-nally thinking about nothing at all as I moved in and out of a strange, dream-filled doze.

Not three feet from where I lay was another of the ubiquitous holes, and as I fell into a light slumber I re-mained faintly aware of the odor rising from that opening: the same sickening sweetness I had smelled earlier, but thicker now, heavier, almost erotic with its undertones of corruption and decay, of dead sea creatures drying in the sun. Many years later, visiting an abandoned meat process-ing plant in Chicago with a real estate agent acquaintance, I was to encounter a similar smell; it was the stench of a charnel house, disused for years but permeated with the memory of blood.

The day passed in a haze of heat, thick air, and insect noises. I dozed and awoke to watch with the Captain, dozed again. Once I seem to remember eating hard bis-cuits from his bag and washing them down with the last water from his wineskin, but even that fades into my dreams of that afternoon, for I remember others seated around us, chewing on similar fare and talking in low tones so that the words were indistinguishable but the southern dialect came through clearly. It did not sound strange to me. Once I remember awakening, even though I was sitting up and staring and had thought I was already awake, as the sound of an automobile along the Mummasburg Road shocked me into full consciousness. But the trees at the edge of the field shielded any traffic from view, the sounds faded, and I returned to the drugged doze I had known before.

Sometime late that afternoon I dreamed the one dream I remember clearly. I was lying in the field, hurt and helpless, the left side of my face in the dirt and my right eye staring unblinkingly at a blue summer sky. An ant walked across my cheek, then another, until a stream of them crossed my cheek and eye, others moving into my nostrils and open mouth. I could not move. I did not blink. I felt them in my mouth, between my teeth, removing bits of morning bacon from between two molars, moving across the soft flesh of my palate, exploring the dark tunnel of my throat. The sensations were not unpleasant.

I was vaguely aware of other things going deeper, of slow movement in the swelling folds of my guts and belly. Small things laid their eggs in the drying corners of my eye.

I could see clearly as a raven circled overhead, spiral-ling lower, landed nearby, paced to and fro in a wing-folding strut, and hopped closer. It took my eye with a single stab of a beak made huge by proximity. In the dark-ness which followed I could still sense the light as my body expanded in the heat, a hatchery to thousands now, the loose cloth of my shirt pulled tight as my flesh ex-panded. I sensed my own internal bacteria, deprived of other foods, digesting my body's decaying fats and rancid pools of blood in a vain effort to survive a few more hours. I felt my lips wither and dry in the heat, pulling back from my teeth, felt my jaws open wider and wider in a mirthless, silent laugh as ligaments decayed or were chewed away by small predators. I felt lighter as the eggs hatched, the maggots began their frenzied cleansing, my body turning toward the dark soil as the process acceler-ated. My mouth opened wide to swallow the waiting Earth. I tasted the dark communion of dirt. Stalks of grass grew where my tongue had been. A flower found rich soil in the humid sepulcher of my skull and sent its shoot curl-ing upward through the gap which had once held my eye.

Settling, relaxing, returning to the acid-taste of the blackness around me, I sensed the others there. Random, shifting currents of soil sent decaying bits of wool or flesh or bone in touch with bits of them, fragments intermingling with the timid eagerness of a lover's first touch. When all else was lost, mingling with the darkness and anger, my bones remained, brittle bits of memory, for-gotten, sharp-edged fragments of pain resisting the inevita-ble relaxation into painlessness, into nothingness. And deep in that rotting marrow, lost in the loam-black acid of forgetfulness, I remembered. And waited.

"Wake up, Boy! It's him. It's Iverson!"

The urgent whisper shocked me up out of sleep. I looked around groggily, still tasting the dirt from where I had lain with my lips against the ground.

"Goddamnit, I knew he'd come!" whispered the Cap-tain, pointing to our left where a man in a dark coat had come out of the woods through the gap in the stone wall. I shook my head. My dream would not release me and I knuckled my eyes, trying to shake the dimness from them. Then I realized that the dimness was real. The day-light had faded into evening while I slept. I wondered where in God's name the day had gone. The man in the black coat moved through a twilight grayness which seemed to echo the eerie blindness of my dreams. I could make out the man's white shirt and pale face glowing slightly in the gloom as he turned in our direction and came closer, clearing a path for himself with short, sharp chops with a cane or walking stick.

"By God, it is him," hissed the Captain and raised his pistol with shaking hands. He thumbed the hammer back as I watched in horror.

The man was closer now, no more than twenty-five feet away, and I could see the dark mustaches, black hair, and deepset eyes. It did indeed look like the man whose visage I had glimpsed by starlight in the old tintype.

Captain Montgomery steadied his pistol on his left arm and squinted over the sights. I could hear hisses of breath from the man in the dark suit as he walked closer, whistling an almost inaudible tune. The Captain squeezed the trigger.

"No!" I cried and grabbed the revolver, jerking it down, the hammer falling cruelly on the web of flesh between my thumb and forefinger. It did not fire. The Captain shoved me away with a violent blow of his left forearm and struggled to raise the weapon again even as I clung to his wrist. "No!" I shouted again. "He's too young! Look. He's too young!"

The old man paused then, his arms still straining, but squinting now at the stranger who stood less than a dozen feet away.

It was true. The man was far too young to be Colonel Iverson. The pale, surprised face belonged to a man in his early thirties at most. Captain Montgomery lowered the pistol and raised trembling fingers to his temples. "My God," he whispered. "My God."

"Who's there?" The man's voice was sharp and assured, despite his surprise. "Show yourself."

I helped the Captain up, sure that the mustached stran-ger had sensed our movement behind the tall grass and vines but had not witnessed our struggles nor seen the gun. The Captain squinted at the younger man even as he straightened his hat and dropped the pistol in the deep pocket of his coat. I could feel the old man trembling as I steadied him upright.

"Oh, a veteran!" called the man and stepped forward with his hand extended, batting away the grasping vines with easy flicks of his walking stick.

We walked the perimeter of the Pits in the fading light, our new guide moving slowly to accommodate the Cap-tain's painful hobble. The man's walking stick served as a pointer while he spoke. "This was the site of a skirmish before the major battles began," he said. "Not many visi-tors come out here ... most of the attention is given to more famous areas south and west of here ... but those of us who live or spend summers around here are aware of some of these lesser-known spots. It's quite interesting how the field is sunken here, isn't it?"

"Yes," whispered the Captain. He watched the ground, never raising his eyes to the young man's face.

The man had introduced himself as Jessup Sheads and said that he lived in the small house we had noticed set back in the trees. The Captain had been lost in his con-fused reverie so I had introduced both of us to Mr. Sheads. Neither man paid notice of my name. The Captain now glanced up at Sheads as if he still could not believe that this was not the man whose name had tormented him for half a century. Sheads cleared his throat and pointed again at the tan-gle of thick growth. "As a matter of fact, this area right along here was the site of a minor skirmish before the se-rious fighting began. The forces of the Confederacy ad-vanced along a broad line here, were slowed briefly by Federal resistance at this wall, but quickly gained the ad-vantage. It was a small Southern victory before the bitter stalemates of the next few days." Sheads paused and smiled at the Captain. "But perhaps you know all this, sir. What unit did you say you have had the honor of serving with?" The old man's mouth moved feebly before the words could come. "20th North Carolina," he managed at last.

"Of course!" cried Sheads and clapped the Captain on the shoulder. "Part of the glorious brigade whose victory this site commemorates. I would be honored, sir, if you and your young friend would join me in my home to toast the 20th North Carolina regiment before you return to the Reunion Camp. Would this be possible, sir?"

I tugged at the Captain's coat, suddenly desperate to be away from there, lightheaded from hunger and a sudden surge of unreasoning fear, but the old man straightened his back, found his voice, and said clearly, 'The boy and me would be honored, sir."

The cottage had been built of tar-black wood. An expensive-looking black horse, still saddled, was tied to the railing of the small porch on the east side of the house. Behind the house, a thicket of trees and a tumble of boulders made access from that direction seem extremely dif-ficult if not impossible.

The house was small inside and showed few signs of being lived in. A tiny entrance foyer led to a parlor where sheets covered two or three pieces of furniture or to the dining room where Sheads led us, a narrow room with a single window, a tall hoosier cluttered with bottles, cans, and a few dirty plates, and a narrow plank table on which burned an old-style kerosene lamp. Behind dusty curtains there was a second, smaller room, in which I caught a glimpse of a mattress on the floor and stacks of books. A steep staircase on the south side of the dining room led up through a hole in the ceiling to what must have been a small attic room, although all I could see when I glanced upward was a square of blackness.

Jessup Sheads propped his heavy walking stick against the table and busied himself at the hoosier, returning with a decanter and three crystal glasses. The lamp hissed and tossed our shadows high on the roughly plastered wall. I glanced toward the window but the twilight had given way to true night and only darkness pressed against the panes.

"Shall we include the boy in our toast?" asked Sheads, pausing, the decanter hovering above the third wine glass. I had never been allowed to taste wine or any other spirits.

"Yes," said the Captain, staring fixedly at Sheads. The lamplight shone upward into the Captain's face, emphasiz-ing his sharp cheekbones and turning his bushy, old-man's eyebrows into two great wings of hair above his falcon's beak of a nose. His shadow on the wall was a silhouette from another era.

Sheads finished pouring and we raised our glasses. I stared dubiously at the wine; the red fluid was dull and thick, streaked through with tendrils of black which may or may not have been a trick of the flickering lamp.

"To the 20th North Carolina Regiment," said Sheads and raised his glass. The gesture reminded me of Reverend Hodges lifting the communion cup. The Captain and I raised our glasses and drank.

The taste was a mixture of fruit and copper. It re-minded me of the days, months earlier, when a friend of Billy Stargill had split my lip during a schoolyard fight. The inside of my lip had bled for hours. The taste was not dissimilar. Captain Montgomery lowered his glass and scowled at it. Droplets of wine clotted his white whiskers.

"The wine is a local variety," said Sheads with a cold smile which showed red-stained teeth. "Very local. The ar-bors are those which we just visited." I stared at the thickening liquid in my glass. Wine made from grapes grown from the rich soil of Iverson's Pits.

Sheads' loud voice startled me. "Another toast!" He raised his glass. "To the honorable and valiant gentleman who led the 20th North Carolina into battle. To Colonel Alfred Iverson."

Sheads raised the glass to his lips. I stood frozen and staring. Captain Montgomery slammed his glass on the ta-ble. The old man's face had gone as blood red as the spilled wine. "I'll be goddamned to hell if I..." he splut-tered. "I'll ... never!" The man who had introduced himself as Jessup Sheads drained the last of his wine and smiled. His skin was as white as his shirt front, his hair and long mustaches as black as his coat. "Very well," he said and then raised his voice. "Uncle Alfred?" Even as Sheads had been drinking, part of my mind had registered the soft sound of footsteps on the stairs be-hind us. I turned only my head, my hand still frozen with the glass of wine half-raised.

The small figure standing on the lowest step was a man in his mid-eighties, at least, but rather than wearing the wrinkles of age like Captain Montgomery, this old man's skin had become smoother and pinker, almost trans-lucent. I was reminded of a nest of newborn rats I had come across in a neighbor's barn the previous spring—a mass of pale-pink, writhing flesh which I had made the mistake of touching. I did not want to touch Iverson.

The Colonel wore a white beard very much like the one I had seen in portraits of Robert E. Lee, but there was no real resemblance. Where Lee's eyes had been sad and shielded under a brow weighted with sorrow, Iverson glared at us with wide, staring eyes shot through with yel-low flecks. He was almost bald and the taut, pink scalp re-inforced the effect of something almost infantile about the little man. Captain Montgomery stared, his mouth open, his breath rasping out in short, labored gasps. He clutched at his own collar as if unable to pull in enough air. Iverson's voice was soft, almost feminine, and edged with the whine of a petulant child. "You all come back sooner or later," he said with a hint of a slight lisp. He sighed deeply. "Is there no end to it?"

"You..." managed the Captain. He lifted a long finger to point at Iverson.

"Spare me your outrage," snapped Iverson. "Do you think you are the first to seek me out, the first to try to ex-plain away your own cowardice by slandering me?

Samuel and I have grown quite adept at handling trash like you. I only hope that you are the last."

The Captain's hand dropped, disappeared in the folds of his coat. "You goddamned, sonofabitching..."

"Silence!" commanded Iverson. The Colonel's wide-eyed gaze darted around the room, passing over me as if I weren't there. The muscles at the corners of the man's mouth twitched and twisted. Again I was reminded of the nest of newborn rats.

"Samuel," he shouted, "bring your stick. Show this man the penalty for insolence." Iverson's mad stare returned to Captain Montgomery. "You will sa-lute me before we are finished here."

"I will see you in hell first," said the Captain and pulled the revolver from his coat pocket.

Iverson's nephew moved very fast, lifting the heavy walking stick and slamming it down on the Captain's wrist before the old man could pull back the hammer. I stood frozen, my wine glass still in my hand, as the pistol thud-ded to the floor. Captain Montgomery bent and reached for it—awkward and slow with his false leg—but Iverson's nephew grabbed him by the collar and flung him backward as effortlessly as an adult would handle a child. The Cap-tain struck the wall, gasped, and slid down it, his false leg gouging splinters from the uneven floorboards as his legs straightened. His face was as gray as his uniform coat.

Iverson's nephew crouched to recover the pistol and set it on the table. Colonel Iverson himself smiled and nodded, his mouth still quivering toward a grin. I had eyes only for the Captain.

The old man lay huddled against the wall, clutching at his own throat, his body arching with spasms as he gasped in one great breath after another, each louder and more ragged than the last. It was obvious that no air was reach-ing his lungs; his color had gone from red to gray to a ter-rible dark purple bordering on black. His tongue protruded and saliva flecked his whiskers. The Captain's eyes grew wider and rounder as he realized what was happening to him, but his horrified gaze never left Iverson's face.

I could see the immeasurable frustration in the Cap-tain's eyes as his body betrayed him in these last few sec-onds of a confrontation he had waited for through half a century of single-minded obsession. The old man drew in two more ragged, wracking breaths and then quit breath-ing. His chin collapsed onto his sunken chest, the gnarled hands relaxed into loose fists, and his eyes lost their fixed focus on Iverson's face.

As if suddenly released from my own paralysis, I let out a cry, dropped the wine glass to the floor, and ran to crouch next to Captain Montgomery. No breath came from his grotesquely opened mouth. The staring eyes already were beginning to glaze with an invisible film. I touched the gnarled old hands—the flesh already seeming to cool and stiffen in death—and felt a terrible constriction in my own chest. It was not grief. Not exactly. I had known the old man too briefly and in too strange a context to feel deep sorrow so soon. But I found it hard to draw a breath as a great emptiness opened in me, a knowledge that sometimes there is no justice, that life was not fair. It wasn't fair. I gripped the old man's dead hands and found myself weeping for myself as much as for him.

"Get out of the way," Iverson's nephew thrust me aside and crouched next to the Captain. He shook the old man by his shirtfront, roughly pinched the bruise-colored cheeks, and laid an ear to the veteran's chest.

"Is he dead, Samuel?" asked Iverson. There was no real interest in his voice.

"Yes, Uncle." The nephew stood and nervously tugged at his mustache.

"Yes, yes," said Iverson in his distracted, petulant voice. "It does not matter." He flicked his small, pink hand :n a dismissive gesture. "Take him out to be with the oth-ers, Samuel."

Iverson's nephew hesitated and then went into the back room to emerge a moment later with a pickaxe, a long-handled shovel, and a lantern. He jerked me to my feet and thrust the shovel and lantern into my hands.

"What about the boy, Uncle?"

Iverson's yellow gaze seemed absorbed with the shad-ows near the foot of the stairs. He wrung his soft hands. "Whatever you decide, Samuel," he whined. "Whatever you decide."

The nephew lighted the lantern I was holding, grasped the Captain under one arm, and dragged his body toward the door. I noticed that some of the straps holding the old man's leg had come loose; I could not look away from where the wooden peg dangled loosely from the stump of dead flesh and bone.

The nephew dragged the old man's body through the foyer, out the door, and into the night. I stood there—a statue with shovel and hissing lantern—praying that I would be forgotten. Cool, thin fingers fell on the nape of my neck. A soft, insistent voice whispered, "Come along, young man. Do not keep Samuel and me waiting."

Iverson's nephew dug the grave not ten yards from where the Captain and I had lain in hiding all day. Even if it had been daylight, the trees along the road and the grape arbors would have shielded us from view of anyone passing along the Mummasburg Road. No one passed. The night was brutally dark; low clouds occluded the stars and the only illumination was from my lantern and the faintest hint of light from Iverson's cabin a hundred yards behind us.

The black horse tied to the porch railing watched our strange procession leave the house. Captain Montgomery's hat had fallen off near the front step and I awkwardly bent to pick it up. Iverson's soft fingers never left my neck. The soil in the field was loose and moist and easily ex-cavated. Iverson's nephew was down three feet before twenty minutes had passed. Bits of root, rock, and other things glowed whitely in the heap of dirt illuminated by the lantern's glare.

"That is enough," ordered Iverson. "Get it over with, Samuel." The nephew paused and looked up at the Colonel. The cold light turned the young man's face into a white mask, glistening with sweat, the whiskers and eyebrows broad strokes of charcoal, as black as the smudge of dirt on his left cheek. After a second to catch his breath, he nodded, set down his shovel, and reached out to roll Captain Mont-gomery's body into the grave. The old man landed on his back, eyes and mouth still open. His wooden leg had been dragging loosely and now remained behind on the brink of the hole. Iverson's nephew looked at me with hooded eyes, reached for the leg, and tossed it onto the Captain's chest. Without looking down, the nephew retrieved the shovel and quickly began scooping dirt onto the body. I watched. I watched the black soil land on my old veteran's cheek and forehead. I watched the dirt cover the staring eyes, first the left and.then the right. I watched the open mouth fill with dirt and I felt the constriction in my own throat swell and break loose. Huge, silent sobs shook me.

In less than a minute, the Captain was gone, nothing more than an outline on the floor of the shallow grave.

"Samuel," lisped Iverson.

The nephew paused in his labors and looked at the Colonel.

"What is your advice about ... the other thing?" Iverson's voice was so soft that it was almost lost beneath the hissing of the lantern and the pounding of pulse in my ears.

The nephew wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, broadening the dark smear there, and nodded slowly. "I think we have to, Uncle. We just cannot afford to ... we cannot risk it. Not after the Florida thing..."

Iverson sighed. "Very well. Do what you must. I will abide by your decision." The nephew nodded again, let out a breath, and reached for the pickaxe where it lay embedded in the heap of freshly excavated earth. Some part of my mind screamed at me to run, but I was capable only of standing there at the edge of that terrible pit, holding the lantern and breathing in the smell of Samuel's sweat and a deeper, more pervasive stench that seemed to rise out of the pit, the heap of dirt, the surrounding arbors.

"Put the light down, young man," Iverson whispered, inches from my ear. "Put it down carefully." His cool fin-gers closed more tightly on my neck. I set the lantern down, positioning it with care so that it would not tip over. Iverson's cold grip moved me forward to the very brink of the pit. His nephew stood waist-high in the hole, holding the pickaxe and fixing his dark gaze on me with a look conveying something between regret and anticipation. He shifted the pick handle in his large, white hands. I was about to say "It's all right" when his determined stare changed to wide-eyed surprise.

Samuel's body lurched, steadied, and then lurched again. It was as if he had been standing on a platform which had dropped a foot, then eighteen inches. Where the edges of the grave had come just to his waist, they now rose to his armpits. Iverson's nephew threw aside the pickaxe and thrust his arms out onto solid ground. But the ground was no longer solid. Colonel Iverson and I stumbled backwards as the earth seemed to vibrate and then flow like a mudslide. The nephew's left hand seized my ankle, his right hand sought a firm grip on thick vines. Iverson's hand remained firm on my neck, choking me.

Suddenly there came the sound of collapsing, sliding dirt, as if the floor of the grave had given way, collapsing through the ceiling of some forgotten mine or cavern, and the nephew threw himself forward, half out of the grave, his chest pressed against the slippery edges of the pit, his fingers releasing my ankle to claw at loam and vines. He reminded me of a mountain climber on a rocky overhang, using only his fingers and the friction of his upper body to defy the pull of gravity.

"Help me." His voice was a whisper, contorted by ef-fort and disbelief. Colonel Iverson backed away another five steps and I was pulled along. Samuel was winning the struggle with the collapsing grave. His left hand found the pickaxe where he had buried it in the mound of dirt and he used the handle for leverage, pulling himself upward until his right knee found purchase on the edge of the pit.

The edge collapsed.

Dirt from the three-foot-high mound flowed past the handle of the pick, over the nephew's straining arm and shoulder, back into the pit. The earth had been moist but solid where Samuel excavated it; now it flowed like frictionless mud, like water ... like black wine.

Samuel slid back into the pit, now filled with viscous dirt, with only his face and upraised fingers rising out of the pool of black, shifting soil. Suddenly there came a sound from all around us as if many large forms had shifted position under blankets of grass and vines. Leaves stirred. Vines snapped. There was no breeze.

Iverson's nephew opened his mouth to scream and a wave of blackness flowed in between his teeth. His eyes were not human. Without warning, the ground shifted again and the nephew was pulled violently out of sight. He disappeared as quickly and totally as a swimmer pulled down by a shark three times his size. There came the sound of teeth.

Colonel Iverson whimpered then, making the noise of a small child being made to go to his room without a light. His grip loosened on my neck.

Samuel's face appeared one last time, protruding eyes filmed with dirt. Something had taken most of the flesh from his right cheek. I realized that the sound I now heard was a man trying to scream with his larynx and esophagus half-filled with dirt. He was pulled under again. Colonel Iverson took another three steps back and released my neck. I grabbed up the lantern and ran.

I heard a shout behind me and I looked over my shoul-der just long enough to see Colonel Iverson coming through the break in the fence. He was out of the field, staggering, wheezing, but still coming on.

I ran with the speed of a terrified ten-year-old, the lan-tern swinging wildly from my right hand, throwing shift-ing patterns of light on leaves, branches, rocks. I had to have the light with me. There was a single thought in my mind: the Captain's pistol lying where Samuel had laid it on the table.

The saddled horse was pulling at its tether when I reached the house; its eyes were wild, alarmed at me, the swinging lantern, Iverson shouting far behind me, or the sudden terrible stench that drifted from the fields. I ig-nored the animal and slammed through the doorway, past the foyer, and into the dining room. I stopped, panting, grinning with terror and triumph.

The pistol was gone.

For seconds or minutes I stood in shock, not being able to think at all. Then, still holding the lantern, I looked under the table, in the hoosier, in the tiny back room. The pistol was not there. I started for the door, heard noises on the porch, headed up the stairs, and then paused in indeci-sion.

"Is this ... what you are after ... young man?" Iverson stood panting at the entrance to the dining room, his left hand braced against the doorjamb, his right hand raised with the pistol leveled at me. "Slander, all slander," he said and squeezed the trigger. The Captain had called the pistol a "double action." The hammer clicked back, locked into place, but did not fire. Iverson glanced at it and raised it toward me again. I threw the lantern at his face.

The Colonel batted it aside, breaking the glass. Flames ignited the ancient curtains and shot toward the ceiling, scorching Iverson's right side. He cursed and dropped the revolver. I vaulted over the stair railing, grabbed the kerosene lamp from the table, and threw it into the back room. Bedding and books burst into flame as the lamp oil spread. Dropping on all fours, I scrabbled toward the pistol but Iverson kicked at my head. He was old and slow and I easily rolled aside, but not before the burning curtain fell between me and the weapon. Iverson reached for it, pulled his hand back from the flames, and fled cursing out the front door. I crouched there a second, panting. Flames shot along cracks in the floorboards, igniting pitch pine and the framework of the tinder-dry house itself. Outside the horse whinnied, either from the smell of smoke or the attempts of the Colonel to gain the saddle. I knew that nothing could stop Iverson from riding south or east, into the woods, toward the town, away from Iverson's Pits.

I reached into the circle of flame, screaming silently as part of my tunic sleeve charred away and blisters erupted on my palm, wrist, and lower arm. I dragged the pistol back, tossing the heated metal from hand to hand. Only later did I wonder why the gunpowder in the cartridges did not explode. Cradling the weapon in my burned hands, I stumbled outside.

Colonel Iverson had mounted but had only one boot in a stirrup. One rein dragged loosely while he tugged vio-lently at the other, trying to turn the panicked horse back toward the forest. Toward the burning house. The mare had backed away from the flames and was intent on run-ning toward the break in the wall. Toward the Pits. Iverson fought it. The result was that the mare spun in circles, the whites of its eyes showing at each revolution.

I stumbled off the porch of the burning cottage and lifted the heavy weapon just as Iverson managed to stop the horse's gyrations and leaned forward to grab the loose rein. With both reins in hand and the mare under control, he kicked hard to ride past me—or ride me down—on his way into the darkness of the trees. It took all of my strength to thumb the hammer back, blisters bursting on my thumb as I did so, and fire. I had not taken time to aim. The bullet ripped through branches ten feet above Iverson. The recoil almost made me drop the gun.

The mare spun back toward the darkness behind it.

Iverson forced it around again, urged it forward with vio-lent kicks of his small, black shoes.

My second shot went into the dirt five feet in front of me. Flesh peeled back from my burned thumb as I forced the hammer back the third time, aiming the impossibly heavy weapon between the mare's rolling eyes. I was sob-bing so fiercely that I could not see Iverson clearly, but I could clearly hear him curse as his horse refused to ap-proach the flames and source of noise a third time. I wiped at my eyes with my scorched sleeve just as Iverson wheeled the mare away from the light and gave it its head. My third shot went high again, but Iverson's horse gal-loped into the darkness, not staying on the faint path, jumping the stone wall in a leap which cleared the rocks by two feet.

I ran after them, still sobbing, tripping twice in the darkness but keeping possession of the pistol. By the time I reached the wall, the entire house was ablaze behind me, sparks drifting overhead and curtains of red light dancing across the forest and fields. I jumped to the top of the wall and stood there weaving, gasping for breath, and watching.

Iverson's mount had made it thirty yards or so beyond the wall before being forced to a halt. It was rearing now, both reins flying free as the white-bearded man on its back clung desperately with both hands in its mane.

The arbors were moving. Tall masses of vines rose as high as the horse's head, vague shapes seeming to move under a shifting surface of leaves. The earth itself was heaving into hummocks and ridges. And holes.

I saw them clearly in the bonfire light. Mole holes. Gopher holes. But as broad across the opening as the trunk of a man. And ribbed inside, lined with ridges of blood-red cartilage. It was like looking down the maw of a snake as its insides pulsed and throbbed expectantly.

Only worse.

If you have seen a lamprey preparing to feed you might know what I mean. The holes had teeth. Rows of teeth. They were ringed with teeth. The earth had opened to show its red-rimmed guts, ringed with sharp white teeth.

The holes moved. The mare danced in panic but the holes shifted like shadows in the broad circle of bare earth which had cleared itself of vines. Around the circumfer-ence, dark shapes rose beneath the arbors.

Iverson screamed then. A second later his horse let out a similar noise as a hole closed on its right front leg. I clearly heard the bone snap and sever. The horse went down with Iverson rolling free. There were more snapping noises and the horse lifted its neck to watch with mad, white eyes as the earth closed around its four stumps of legs, shredding the ligament and muscle from bone as eas-ily as someone stripping strands of dark meat from a drumstick.

In twenty seconds there was only the thrashing trunk of the mare, rolling in the black dirt and black blood in a vain attempt to avoid the shifting lamprey teeth. Then the holes closed on the animal's neck.

Colonel Iverson rose to his knees, then to his feet. The only sounds were the crackling of flames behind me, the rustling of vines, and the high, hysterical panting of Iverson himself. The man was giggling.

In rows five hundred yards long, in lines as straight as a dress parade and as precise as battle lines, the earth trembled and furrowed, folding on itself, vines and grass and black soil rising and falling, rippling like rats moving under a thin blanket. Or like the furling of a flag.

Iverson screamed as the holes opened under him and around him. Somehow he managed to scream a second time as the upper half of his body rolled free across the waiting earth, one hand clawing for leverage in the undu-lating dirt while the other hand vainly attempted to tuck in the parts of himself which trailed behind. The holes closed again. There was no screaming now as only the small, pink oval rolled in the dirt, but I will be certain to my dying day that I saw the white beard move as the jaws opened silently, saw the flicker of white and yellow as the eyes blinked.

The holes closed a third time.

I stumbled away from the wall, but not before I had thrown the revolver as far out into the field as I could manage. The burning house had collapsed into itself but the heat was tremendous, far too hot for me to sit so close.

My eyebrows were quickly singed away and steam rose om my sweat-soaked clothes, but I stayed as close to the fire as I could for as long as I could. Close to the light.

I have no memory of the fire brigade that found me or of the men who brought me back to town sometime before dawn.

Wednesday, July 2, was Military Day at the Great Re-union. It rained hard all afternoon but speeches were given in the Great Tent. Sons and grandsons of General Longstreet and General Pickett and General Meade were present on the speakers' platform.

I remember awakening briefly in the hospital tent to the sound of rain on canvas. Someone was explaining to someone that facilities were better there than in the old hospital in town. My arms and hands were swathed in bandages. My brow burned with fever. "Rest easy, lad," said Reverend Hodges, his face heavy with worry. "I've cabled your parents. Your father will be here before night-fall." I nodded and stifled the urge to scream in the inter-minable seconds before sleep claimed me again. The beating of rain on the tent had sounded like teeth scraping bone. Thursday, July 3, was Civic Day at the Great Reunion. Survivors of Pickett's brigade and ex-Union troops from the Philadelphia Brigade Association formed two lines and walked fifty feet north and south to the wall on Cemetery Ridge which marked the so-called high water mark of the Confederacy. Both sides lowered battle flags until they crossed above the wall. Then a bearer symbolically lifted the Stars and Stripes above the crossed battle flags. Every-one cheered. Veterans embraced one another.

I remember fragments of the train ride home that morning. I remember my father's arm around me. I re-member my mother's face when we arrived at the station in Chestnut Hill.

Friday, July 4, was National Day at the Great Reunion. President Wilson addressed all of the veterans in the Great Tent at 11 A.M. He spoke of healing wounds, forgetting past differences, of forgetting old quarrels. He spoke of valor and courage and glory which the ages would not di-minish. When he was finished, they played the National Anthem and an honor guard fired a salute. Then all the old men went home.

I remember parts of my dreams that day. They were the same dreams I have now. Several times I awoke screaming. My mother tried to hold my hand but I wanted nothing to touch me. Nothing at all.

Seventy-five years have passed since my first trip to Gettysburg. I have been back many times. The guides and rangers and librarians there know me by name. Some flat-ter me with the title historian.

Nine veterans died during the Great Reunion of 1913—five of heart problems, two of heatstroke, and one of pneumonia. The ninth veteran's death certificate lists the cause of death as "old age." One veteran simply disap-peared sometime between his registration and the date he was expected back at a home for retired veterans in Ra-leigh, North Carolina. The name of Captain Powell D. Montgomery of Raleigh, North Carolina, veteran of the 20th North Carolina Regiment, was never added to the list of the nine veterans who died. He had no family and was not missed for some weeks after the Reunion ended.

Jessup Sheads had indeed built the small house south-east of the Forney farm, on the site where the 97th New York regiment had silently waited behind a stone wall for the advance of Colonel Alfred Iverson's men. Sheads de-signed the small house as a summer home and erected it in the spring of 1893. He never stayed in it. Sheads was described as a short, stout, redheaded man, cleanshaven, with a weakness for wine. It was he who had planted the grape arbors shortly before his death from a heart attack in that same year of 1893. His widow rented the summer house out through agents for the years until the cottage burned in the summer of 1913. No records were kept of the renters.

Colonel Alfred Iverson, Jr., ended the war as a Briga-dier General despite being relieved of his command after undisclosed difficulties during the opening skirmishes of the Battle of Gettysburg. After the war, Iverson was en-gaged in unlucky business ventures in Georgia and then in Florida, leaving both areas under unclear circumstances. In Florida, Iverson was involved in the citrus business with his grand-nephew, Samuel Strahl, an outspoken member of the KKK and a rabid defender of his grand-uncle's name and reputation. It was rumored that Stahl had killed at least two men in illegal duels and he was wanted for ques-tioning in Broward County in relation to the disappearance of a 78-year-old man named Phelps Rawlins. Rawlins had been a veteran of the 20th North Carolina Regiment. Stahl's wife reported him missing during a month-long hunting trip in the summer of 1913. She lived on in Macon, Georgia, until her death in 1948.

Alfred Iverson, Jr., is listed in different sources as dying in 1911, 1913, or 1915. Historians frequently con-fused Iverson with his father, the Senator, and although both are supposed to be buried in the family crypt in At-lanta, records at the Oakland Cemetery show that there is only one coffin entombed there.

Many times over the years have I dreamt the dream I remember from that hot afternoon in the grape arbors. Only my field of view in that dream changes—from blue sky and a stone wall under spreading branches to trenches and barbed wire, to rice paddies and monsoon clouds, to frozen mud along a frozen river, to thick, tropical vegeta-tion which swallows light. Recently I have dreamed that I am lying in the ash of a city while snow falls from low clouds. But the fruit and copper taste of the soil remains the same. The silent communion among the casually sac-rificed and the forgotten-buried also remains the same. Sometimes I think of the mass graves which have fertil-ized this century and I weep for my grandson and great-grandchildren.

I have not visited the battlefields in some years. The last time was twenty-five years ago in the quiet spring of 1963, three months before the insanity of that summer's centennial celebration of the battles. The Mummasburg Road had been paved and widened. John Forney's house had not been there for years but I did note a proliferation of iris where the foundation had once stood. The town of Gettysburg is much larger, of course, but zoning restric-tions and the historical park have kept new houses from being built in the vicinity.

Many of the trees along the stone wall have died of Dutch elm disease and other blights. Only a few yards of the wall itself remain, the stones having been carried off for fireplaces and patios. The city is clearly visible across the open fields. No sign of Iverson's Pits remains. No one I spoke to who lives in the area remembers them. The fields there are green when lying fallow and incredibly productive when tilled, but this is true of most of the surrounding Pennsyl-vania countryside.

Last winter a friend and fellow amateur historian wrote to tell me that a small archaeological team from Penn State University had done a trial dig in the Oak Hill area. He wrote that the dig had yielded a veritable goldmine of relics—bullets, brass buttons, bits of mess kits, canister fragments, five almost intact bayonets, bits of bone—all of the stubborn objects which decaying flesh leaves behind like minor footnotes in time.

And teeth, wrote my friend.

Many, many teeth.

Shave and a Haircut, Two Bites

Introduction

My family moved frequently when I was a child. One of the problems of moving—at any age—is the tedious chore of finding a new doctor, dentist, favorite grocery store

... and barber.

When I was about eight we moved to the small Illinois town of Brimfield, population less than a thousand, and although the town barely had one of everything—one store, one doctor, one school—it had two barbers. I re-member my mother taking my younger brother Wayne and me downtown and entering the first barbershop we saw.

The wrong one.

I remember the desiccated cactus and the dead flies on the window ledge. I remember the musty, chewing-tobacco-and-old-sweat smell of the dark interior and the mirrors that seemed to absorb the light. I remember the old men in bib overalls who scurried away like cock-roaches as we entered; I remember how startled the elderly barber was at our intrusion.

I had my hair cut that day, Wayne didn't. It was a ter-rible haircut. I wore my Cub Scout hat, indoors and out, for three weeks. Mom soon learned that the real barber-shop was a block down the street. No one went to the shop we had blundered into. Even the old farmers who hung out there were bald or had never been seen in a bar-ber chair.

The only interesting part to this anecdote is the epilogue: that same barbershop—or one just like it—has been in every town I've lived in since.

In Chicago, it was tucked away on an unnamed sidestreet just off Kildare Avenue. In Indianapolis, it was a short block from the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. In Philadelphia, it was on Germantown Avenue just across the street from a three-hundred-year-old haunted house named Grumblethorpe.

In Calcutta—where most people get their haircuts and shaves from sidewalk barbers who squat on the curb while the customer squats in the gutter—the old shop was just off Chowringhee Road, tucked under a hundred-trunked banyan tree which is said to be as old as the earth.

Out here where I live in Colorado, it is on Main Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues.

Of course it's not the same shop, it's just ... well, the same. Look around. You'll find it in your community. You don't get your hair cut there, and no one you know has ever had a haircut there ... and the prices are from a pre-vious decade if not century ... but ask around. The locals will shake their heads as if trying to remember a dream, and then they'll say—"Oh, yeah, that place has always been here. That barber's always been here. Don't know nobody who goes to

'im anymore, though. Wonder how he gets by."

Go on. Work up the courage to go in. Ignore the mum-mified cactus and dead flies in the window. Don't be dis-tracted by the old men who scurry out the back door when you come in the front.

Go ahead. Get your hair cut there.

I dare you.

* * *

Outside, the blood spirals down.

I pause at the entrance to the barbershop. There is nothing unique about it. Almost certainly there is one sim-ilar to it in your community; its function is proclaimed by the pole outside, the red spiralling down, and by the name painted on the broad window, the letters grown scabrous as the gold paint ages and flakes away. While the most ex-pensive hair salons now bear the names of their owners, and the shopping mall franchises offer sickening cutenesses—Hairport, Hair Today: Gone Tomorrow, Hair We Are, Headlines, Shear Masters, The Head Hunter, In-Hair-itance, and so forth, ad infinitum, ad nauseum—the name of this shop is eminently forgettable. It is meant to be so. This shop offers neither styling nor unisex cuts. If your hair is dirty when you enter, it will be cut dirty; there are no shampoos given here. While the franchises demand $15 to $30 for a basic haircut, the cost here has not changed for a decade or more. It occurs to the potential new customer immediately upon entering that no one could live on an income based upon such low rates. No one does. The potential customer usually beats a hasty re-treat, put off by the too-low prices, by the darkness of the place, by the air of dusty decrepitude exuded from both the establishment itself and from its few waiting custom-ers, invariably silent and staring, and by a strange sense of tension bordering upon threat which hangs in the stale air.

Before entering, I pause a final moment to stare in the window of the barbershop. For a second I can see only a reflection of the street and the silhouette of a man more shadow than substance—me. To see inside, one has to step closer to the glass and perhaps cup hands to one's temples to reduce the glare. The blinds are drawn but I find a crack in the slats. Even then there is not much to see. A dusty window ledge holds three desiccated cacti and an assort-ment of dead flies. Two barber chairs are just visible through the gloom; they are of a sort no longer made: black leather, white enamel, a high headrest. Along one wall, half a dozen uncomfortable-looking chairs sit empty and two low tables show a litter of magazines with covers torn or missing entirely. There are mirrors on two of the three interior walls, but rather than add light to the long, narrow room, the infinitely receding reflections seem to make the space appear as if the barbershop itself were a dark reflection in an age-dimmed glass.

A man is standing there in the gloom, his form hardly more substantial than my silhouette on the window. He stands next to the first barber chair as if he were waiting for me.

He is waiting for me.

I leave the sunlight of the street and enter the shop.

"Vampires," said Kevin. "They're both vampires."

"Who're vampires?" I asked between bites on my ap-ple. Kevin and I were twenty feet up in a tree in his back yard. We'd built a rough platform there which passed as a treehouse. Kevin was ten, I was nine.

"Mr. Innis and Mr. Denofrio," said Kevin. "They're both vampires." I lowered the Superman comic I'd been reading. "They're not vampires," I said.

"They're barbers."

"Yeah," said Kevin, "but they're vampires too. I just figured it out." I sighed and sat back against the bole of the tree. It was late autumn and the branches were almost empty of leaves. Another week or two and we wouldn't be using the treehouse again until next spring. Usually when Kevin an-nounced that he'd just figured something out, it meant trouble. Kevin O'toole was almost my age, but sometimes it seemed that he was five years older and five years youn-ger than me at the same time. He read a lot. And he had a weird imagination. "Tell me," I said.

"You know what the red means, Tommy?"

"What red?"

"On the barber pole. The red stripes that curl down." I shrugged. "It means it's a barbershop."

It was Kevin's turn to sigh. "Yeah, sure, Tommy, but why red? And why have it curling down like that for a barber?"

I didn't say anything. When Kevin was in one of his moods, it was better to wait him out.

"Because it's blood," he said dramatically, almost whispering. "Blood spiralling down. Blood dripping and spilling. That's been the sign for barbers for almost six hundred years."

He'd caught my interest. I set the Superman comic aside on the platform. "OK," I said, "I believe you. Why is it their sign?"

"Because it was their guild sign." said Kevin. "Back in the Middle Ages, all the guys who did important work be-longed to guilds, sort of like the union our dads belong to down at the brewery, and..."

"Yeah, yeah," I said. "But why blood?" Guys as smart as Kevin had a hard time sticking to the point.

"I was getting to that," said Kevin. "According to this stuff I read, way back in the Middle Ages barbers used to be surgeons. About all they could do to help sick people was to bleed them, and..."

" Bleed them?"

"Yeah. They didn't have any real medicines or any-thing, so if somebody got sick with a disease or broke a leg or something, all the surgeon ... the barber ... could do was bleed them. Sometimes they'd use the same razor they shaved people with. Sometimes they'd bring bottles of leeches and let them suck some blood out of the sick person."

"Gross."

"Yeah, but it sort of worked. Sometimes. I guess when you lose blood, your blood pressure goes down and that can lower a fever and stuff. But most of the time, the peo-ple they bled just died sooner. They probably needed a transfusion more than a bunch of leeches stuck on them."

I sat and thought about this for a moment. Kevin knew some really weird stuff. I used to think he was lying about a lot of it, but after I saw him correct the teachers in fourth and fifth grade a few times ... and get away with it ... I realized he wasn't making things up. Kevin was weird, but he wasn't a liar.

A breeze rustled the few remaining leaves. It was a sad and brittle sound to a kid who loved summer. "All right," I said. "But what's all of this got to do with vampires? You think 'cause barbers used to stick leeches on people a couple of hundred years ago that Mr. Innis and Mr. Denofrio are vampires? Jeez, Kev, that's nuts."

"The Middle Ages were more than five hundred years ago, Niles," said Kevin, calling me by my last name in the voice that always made me want to punch him. "But the guild sign was just what got me thinking about it all. I mean, what other business has kept its guild sign?"

I shrugged and tied a broken shoelace. "Blood on their sign doesn't make them vampires."

When Kevin was excited, his green eyes seemed to get even greener than usual. They were really green now. He leaned forward. "Just think about it, Tommy," he said.

"When did vampires start to disappear?"

"Disappear? You mean you think they were real? Cripes, Kev, my mom says you're the only gifted kid she's ever met, but sometimes I think you're just plain looney tunes."

Kevin ignored me. He had a long, thin face—made even thinner looking by the crewcut he wore—and his skin was so pale that the freckles stood out like spots of gold. He had the same full lips that people said made his two sisters look pretty, but now those lips were quivering. "I read a lot about vampires," he said. "A lot. Most of the serious stuff agrees that the vampire legends were fading in Europe by the Seventeenth Century. People still believed in them, but they weren't so afraid of them anymore. A few hundred years earlier, suspected vampires were being tracked down and killed all the time. It's like they'd gone underground or something."

"Or people got smarter," I said.

"No, think," said Kevin and grabbed my arm. "Maybe the vampires were being wiped out. People knew they were there and how to fight them."

"Like a stake through the heart?"

"Maybe. Anyway, they've got to hide, pretend they're gone, and still get blood. What'd be the easiest way to do that?"

I thought of a wise-acre comment, but one look at Kevin made me realize that he was dead serious about all this. And we were best friends. I shook my head.

"Join the barbers guild!" Kevin's voice was trium-phant. "Instead of having to break into people's houses at night and then risk others finding the body all drained of blood, they invite you in. They don't even struggle while you open their veins with a knife or put the leeches on. Then they ... or the family of the dead guy ... pay you. No wonder they're the only group to keep their guild sign. They're vampires, Tommy!"

I licked my lips, tasted blood, and realized that I'd been chewing on my lower lip while Kevin talked. "All of them?" I said. "Every barber?" Kevin frowned and released my arm. "I'm not sure. Maybe not all."

"But you think Innis and Denofrio are?"

Kevin's eyes got greener again and he grinned. "There's one way to find out." I closed my eyes a second before asking the fatal ques-tion. "How, Kev?"

"By watching them," said Kevin. "Following them. Checking them out. Seeing if they're vampires."

"And if they are?"

Kevin shrugged. He was still grinning. "We'll think of something."

I enter the familiar shop, my eyes adjusting quickly to the dim light. The air smells of talcum and rose oil and tonic. The floor is clean and instruments are laid out on white linen atop the counter. Light glints dully from the surface of scissors and shears and the pearl handles of more than one straight razor.

I approach the man who stands silently by his chair. He wears a white shirt and tie under a white smock. "Good morning," I say.

"Good morning, Mr. Niles." He pulls a striped cloth from its shelf, snaps it open with a practiced hand, and stands waiting like a toreador.

I take my place in the chair. He sweeps the cloth around me and snaps it shut behind my neck in a single, fluid motion. "A trim this morning, perhaps?"

"I think not. Just a shave, please."

He nods and turns away to heat the towels and prepare the razor. Waiting, I look into the mirrored depths and see multitudes.

Kevin and I had made our pact while sitting in our tree on Sunday. By Thursday we'd done quite a bit of snoop-ing. Kev had followed Innis and I'd watched Denofrio.

We met in Kevin's room after school. You could hardly see his bed for all the heaps of books and comics and half-built Heath Kits and vacuum tubes and plastic models and scattered clothes. Kevin's mother was still alive then, but she had been ill for years and rarely paid at-tention to little things like her son's bedroom. Or her son. Kevin shoved aside some junk and we sat on his bed, comparing notes. Mine were scrawled on scraps of paper and the back of my paper route collection form.

"OK," said Kevin, "what'd you find out?"

"They're not vampires," I said. "At least my guy isn't." Kevin frowned. "It's too early to tell, Tommy."

"Nuts. You gave me this list of ways to tell a vampire, and Denofrio flunks all of them."

"Explain."

"OK. Look at Number One on your stupid list. 'Vam-pires are rarely seen in daylight.' Heck, Denofrio and Innis ire both in the shop all day. We both checked, right?"

Kevin sat on his knees and rubbed his chin. "Yeah, but the barbershop is dark, Tommy. I told you that it's only in the movies that the vampires burst into flame or something if the daylight hits them. According to the old books, they just don't like it. They can get around in the daylight if they have to."

"Sure," I said, "but these guys work all day just like our dads. They close up at five and walk home before it gets dark."

Kevin pawed through his own notes and interrupted. "They both live alone, Tommy. That suggests something."

"Yeah. It suggests that neither one of them makes enough money to get married or have a family. My dad says that their barbershop hasn't raised its prices in years."

"Exactly!" cried Kevin. "Then how come almost no :ne goes there?"

"They give lousy haircuts," I said. I looked back at my list, trying to decipher the smeared lines of pencilled scrawl. "OK, Number Five on your list. 'Vampires will not cross running water.' " Denofrio lives across the river, Kev. I watched him cross it all three days I was following him."

Kevin was sitting up on his knees. Now he slumped slightly. "I told you that I wasn't sure of that one. Stoker put it in Dracula, but I didn't find it too many other places."

I went on quickly. "Number Three—'Vampires hate garlic.' I watched Mr. Denofrio eat dinner at Luigi's Tues-day night, Kev. I could smell the garlic from twenty feet away when he came out."

"Three wasn't an essential one."

"All right," I said, moving in for the kill, "tell me this one wasn't essential. Number Eight—'All vampires hate and fear crosses and will avoid them at all cost.' " I paused dramatically. Kevin knew what was coming and slumped lower. "Kev, Mr. Denofrio goes to St. Mary's. Your church, Kev. Every morning before he goes down to open up the shop."

"Yeah. Innis goes to First Prez on Sundays. My dad told me about Denofrio being in the parish. I never see him because he only goes to early Mass." I tossed the notes on the bed. "How could a vampire go to your church? He not only doesn't run away from a cross, he sits there and stares at about a hundred of them each day of the week for about an hour a day."

"Dad says he's never seem him take Communion," said Kevin, a hopeful note in his voice.

I made a face. "Great. Next you'll be telling me that anyone who's not a priest has to be a vampire. Brilliant, Kev."

He sat up and crumpled his own notes into a ball. I'd already seen them at school. I knew that Innis didn't fol-low Kevin's Vampire Rules either. Kevin said, "The cross thing doesn't prove ... or disprove ... anything, Tommy. I've been thinking about it. These things joined the bar-ber's guild to get some protective coloration. It makes sense that they'd try to blend into the religious community too. Maybe they can train themselves to build up a toler-ance to crosses, the way we take shots to build up a tol-erance to things like smallpox and polio."

I didn't sneer, but I was tempted. "Do they build up a tolerance to mirrors, too?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I know something about vampires too, Kev, and even though it wasn't in your stupid list of rules, it's a fact that vampires don't like mirrors. They don't throw a reflection."

"That's not right," said Kevin in that rushy, teacherish voice he used. "In the movies they don't throw a reflec-tion. The old books say that they avoided mirrors because they saw their true reflection there ... what they looked like being old or undead or whatever."

"Yeah, whatever," I said. "But whatever spooks them, there isn't any place worse for mirrors than a barbershop. Unless they hang out in one of those carnival funhouse mirror places. Do they have guild signs, too, Kev?" Kevin threw himself backward on the bed as if I'd shot him. A second later he was pawing through his notes and back up on his knees. "There was one weird thing," he said.

"Yeah, what?"

"They were closed on Monday."

"Real weird. Of course, every darn barbershop in the entire universe is closed on Mondays, but I guess you're right. They're closed on Mondays. They've got to be vam-pires. QED, as Mrs. Double Butt likes to say in geometry class. Gosh, I wish I was smart like you, Kevin."

"Mrs. Doubet," he said, still looking at his notes. He was the only kid in our class who liked her. "It's not that tney're closed on Monday that's weird, Tommy. It's what they do. Or at least Innis."

"How do you know? You were home sick on Mon-day."

Kevin smiled. "No, I wasn't. I typed the excuse and signed Mom's name. They never check. I followed Innis around. Lucky he has that old car and drives slow, I was able to keep up with him on my bike. Or at least catch up." I rolled to the floor and looked at some kit Kevin'd given up on before finishing. It looked like some sort of radio crossed with an adding machine. I managed to fake disinterest in what he was saying even though he'd hooked me again, just as he always did. "So where did he go?" I said.

"The Mear place. Old Man Everett's estate. Miss Plankmen's house out on 28. That mansion on the main road, the one the rich guy from New York bought last year."

"So?" I said. "They're all rich. Innis probably cuts their hair at home." I was proud that I had seen a connec-tion that Kevin had missed.

"Uh-huh," said Kevin, "the richest people in the county and the one thing they have in common is that they get their haircuts from the lousiest barber in the state. Lousiest barbers, I should say. I saw Denofrio drive off, too. They met at the shop before they went on their rounds. I'm pretty sure Denofrio was at the Wilkes estate along the river that day. I asked Rudy, the caretaker, and he said either Denofrio or Innis comes there most Mon-days."

I shrugged. "So rich people stay rich by paying the least they can for haircuts."

"Sure," said Kevin. "But that's not the weird part. The weird part was that both of the old guys loaded their car trunks with small bottles. When Innis came out of Mear and Everett's and Plankmen's places, he was carrying big bottles, two-gallon jars at least, and they were heavy, Tommy. Filled with liquid. I'm pretty sure the smaller jars that they'd loaded at the shop were full too."

"Full of what?" I said. "Blood?"

"Why not?" said Kevin.

"Vampires are supposed to take blood away," I said, laughing. "Not deliver it."

"Maybe it was blood in the big bottles," said Kevin. "And they brought something to trade from the barber-shop."

"Sure," I said, still laughing, "hair tonic!"

"It's not funny, Tom."

"The heck it isn't!" I made myself laugh even harder. "The best part is that your barber vampires are biting just the rich folks. They only drink premium!" I rolled on the floor, scattering comic books and trying not to crush any vacuum tubes. Kevin walked to the window and looked out at the fad-ing light. We both hated it when the days got shorter. "Well, I'm not convinced," he said. "But it'll be decided tonight."

"Tonight?" I said, lying on my side and no longer laughing. "What happens tonight?"

Kevin looked over his shoulder at me. "The back en-trance to the barbershop has one of those old-style locks that I can get past in about two seconds with my Houdini Kit. After dinner, I'm going down to check the place out." I said, "It's dark after dinner."

Kevin shrugged and looked outside.

"Are you going alone?"

Kevin paused and then stared at me over his shoulder. "That's up to you." I stared back.

There is no sound quite the same as a straight razor being sharpened on a leather strop. I relax under the wrap of hot towels on my face, hearing but not seeing the barber prepare his blade. Receiving a professional shave is a plea-sure which modern man has all but abandoned, but one in which I indulge every day. The barber pulls away the towels, dries my upper cheeks and temples with a dab of a dry cloth, and turns back to the strop for a few final strokes of the razor. I feel my cheeks and throat tingling from the hot towels, the blood pulsing in my neck. "When I was a boy," I say, "a friend of mine convinced me that barbers were vampires." The barber smiles but says nothing. He has heard my story before.

"He was wrong," I say, too relaxed to keep talking.

The barber's smile fades slightly as he leans forward, his face a study in concentration. Using a brush and lather whipped in a cup, he quickly applies the shaving soap. Then he sets aside the cup, lifts the straight razor, and with a delicate touch of only his thumb and little finger, tilts my head so that my throat is arched and exposed to the blade.

I close my eyes as the cold steel rasps across the warmed flesh.

"You said two seconds!" I whispered urgently. "You've been messing with that darned lock for five mi-nutes!" Kevin and I were crouched in the alley behind Fourth Street, huddled in the back doorway of the barber-shop. The night air was cold and smelled of garbage. Street sounds seemed to come to us from a million miles away.

"Come on!" I whispered.

The lock clunked, clicked, and the door swung open into blackness. "Voila," said Kevin. He stuck his wires, picks, and other tools back into his imitation-leather Houdini Kit bag. Grinning, he reached over and rapped 'Shave and a Haircut' on the door.

"Shut up," I hissed, but Kevin was gone, feeling his way into the darkness. I shook my head and followed him in.

Once inside with the door closed, Kevin clicked on a penlight and held it between his teeth the way we'd seen a spy do in a movie. I grabbed onto the tail of his windbreaker and followed him down a short hallway into the single, long room of the barbershop.

It didn't take long to look around. The blinds were closed on both the large window and the smaller one on the front door, so Kevin figured it was safe to use the pen-light. It was weird moving across that dark space with Kevin, the penlight throwing images of itself into the mir-rors and illuminating one thing at a time—a counter here, the two chairs in the center of the room, a few chairs and magazines for customers, two sinks, a tiny little lavatory, no bigger than a closet, its door right inside the short hall-way. All the clippers and things had been put away in drawers. Kevin opened the drawers, peered into the shelves. There were bottles of hair tonic, towels, all the barber tools set neatly into top drawers, both sets arranged the same. Kevin took out a razor and opened it, holding the blade up so it reflected the light into the mirrors.

"Cut it out," I whispered. "Let's get out of here." Kevin set the thing away, making sure it was lined up exactly the way it had been, and we turned to go. His pen-light beam moved across the back wall, illuminating a raincoat we'd already seen, and something else.

"There's a door here," whispered Kevin, moving the coat to show a doorknob. He tried it. "Drat. It's locked."

"Let's go!" I whispered. I hadn't heard a car pass in what felt like hours. It was like the whole town was hold-ing its breath.

Kevin began opening drawers again. "There has to be a key," he said too loudly. "It must lead to a basement, there's no second floor on this place." I grabbed him by his jacket. "Come on," I hissed. "Let's get out of here. We're going to get arrested."

"Just another minute..." began Kevin and froze. I felt my heart stop at the same instant.

A key rasped in the lock of the front door. There was a tall shadow thrown against the blind.

I turned to run, to escape, anything to get out of there, but Kevin clicked off the penlight, grabbed my sweatshirt, and pulled me with him as he crawled under one of the sinks. There was just enough room for both of us there. A dark curtain hung down over the space and Kevin pulled it shut just as the door creaked open and footsteps entered the room.

For a second I could hear nothing but the pounding of blood in my ears, but then I realized that there were two people walking in the room, men by the sounds of the heavy tread. My mouth hung open and I panted, but I was unable to get a breath of air. I was sure that any sound at all would give us away.

One set of footsteps stopped at the first chair while the other went to the rear wall. A second door rasped shut, water ran, and there came the sound of the toilet flushing. Kevin nudged me, and I could have belted him then, but we were so crowded together in fetal positions that any movement by me would have made a noise. I held my breath and waited while the second set of footsteps re-turned from the lavatory and moved toward the front door. They hadn't even turned on the lights. There'd been no gleam of a flashlight beam through our curtain, so I didn't think it was the cops checking things out. Kevin nudged me again and I knew he was telling me that it had to be Innis and Denofrio.

Both pairs of footsteps moved toward the front, there was the sound of the door opening and slamming, and I tried to breathe again before I passed out. A rush of noise. A hand reached down and parted the curtain. Other hands grabbed me and pulled me up and out, into the dark. Kevin shouted as another figure dragged him to his feet.

I was on my tiptoes, being held by my shirtfront. The man holding me seemed eight feet tall in the blackness, his fist the size of my head. I could smell garlic on his breath and assumed it was Denofrio.

"Let us go!" shouted Kevin. There was the sound of a slap, flat and clear as a rifle shot, and Kevin was silent.

I was shoved into a barber chair. I heard Kevin being pushed into the other one. My eyes were so well adjusted to the darkness now that I could make out the features of the two men. Innis and Denofrio. Dark suits blended into black, but I could see the pale, angular faces that I'd been sure had made Kevin think they were vampires. Eyes too deep and dark, cheekbones too sharp, mouths too cruel, and something about them that said old despite their middle-aged looks.

"What are you doing here?" Innis asked Kevin. The man spoke softly, without evident emotion, but his voice made me shiver in the dark.

"Scavenger hunt!" cried Kevin. "We have to steal a barber's clippers to get in the big kids' club. We're sorry. Honest!"

There came the rifle shot of a slap again. "You're ly-ing," said Innis. "You followed me on Monday. Your friend here followed Mr. Denofrio in the evening. Both of you have been watching the shop. Tell me the truth. Now. "

"We think you're vampires," said Kevin. "Tommy and I came to find out." My mouth dropped open in shock at what Kevin had said. The two men took a half step-back and looked at each other. I couldn't tell if they were smiling in the dark.

"Mr. Denofrio?" said Innis.

"Mr. Innis?" said Denofrio.

"Can we go now?" said Kevin.

Innis stepped forward and did something to the barber chair Kevin was in. The leather armrests flipped up and out, making sort of white gutters. The leather strops on ei-ther side went up and over, attaching to something out of sight to make restraining straps around Kevin's arms. The headrest split apart, came down and around, and encircled Kevin's neck. It looked like one of those trays the dentist puts near you to spit into.

Kevin made no noise. I expected Denofrio to do the same thing to my chair, but he only laid a large hand on my shoulder.

"We're not vampires, boy," said Mr. Innis. He went to the counter, opened a drawer, and returned with the straight razor Kevin had been fooling around with earlier. He opened it carefully. "Mr. Denofrio?"

The shadow by my chair grabbed me, lifted me out of the chair, and dragged me to the basement door. He held me easily with one hand while he unlocked it. As he pulled me into the darkness, I looked back and caught a glimpse of my friend staring in silent horror as Innis drew the edge of the straight razor slowly across Kevin's inner arm. Blood welled, flowed, and gurgled into the white enamel gutter of the armrest.

Denofrio dragged me downstairs.

The barber finishes the shave, trims my sideburns, and turns the chair so that I can look into the closer mirror.

I run my hand across my cheeks and chin. The shave is perfect, very close but with not a single nick. Because of the sharpness of the blade and the skill of the barber, my skin tingles but feels no irritation whatsoever.

I nod. The barber smiles ever so slightly and removes the striped protective apron. I stand and remove my suitcoat. The barber hangs it on a hook while I take my seat again and roll up my left sleeve. While he is near the rear of the shop, the barber turns on a small radio. The music of Mozart fills the room.

The basement was lighted with candles set in small jars. The dancing red light reminded me of the time Kevin took me to his church. He said the small, red flames were votive candles. You paid money, lit one, and said a prayer. He wasn't sure if the money was necessary for the prayer to be heard.

The basement was narrow and unfinished and almost filled by the twelve-foot slab of stone in its center. The thing on the stone was almost as long as the slab. The thing must have weighed a thousand pounds, easy. I could see folds of slick, gray flesh rising and falling as it breathed.

If there were arms, I couldn't see them. The legs were suggested by folds in slick fat. The tubes and pipes and rusting funnel led my gaze to the head. Imagine a thousand-pound leech, nine or ten feet long and five or six feet thick through the middle as it lies on its back, no surface really, just layers of gray-green slime and wattles of what might be skin. Things, organs maybe, could be seen moving and sloshing through flesh as transparent as dirty plastic. The room was filled with the sound of its breathing and the stench of its breath. Imagine a huge sea creature, a small whale, maybe, dead and rotting on the beach for a week, and you've got an idea of what the thing itself smelled like.

The mass of flesh made a noise and the small eyes turned in my direction. Its eyes were covered with layers of yellow film or mucus and I was sure it was blind. The thing's head was no more defined than the end of a leech, but in the folds of slick fat were lines which showed a face which might once have been human. Its mouth was very large. Imagine a lamprey smiling.

"No, it was never human," said Mr. Denofrio. His hand was still firm on my shoulder. "By the time they came to our guild, they had already passed beyond hope of hiding amongst us. But they brought an offer which we could not refuse. Nor can our customers. Have you ever heard of symbiosis, boy? Hush!" Upstairs, Kevin screamed. There was a gurgle, as of old pipes being tried. The creature on the slab turned its blind gaze back to the ceiling. Its mouth pulsed hungrily. Pipes, rattled and the funnel overflowed.

Blood spiralled down.

The barber returns and taps at my arm as I make a fist. There is a broad welt across the inner crook of my arm, as of an old scar poorly healed. It is an old scar. The barber unlocks the lowest drawer and withdraws a razor. The handle is made of gold and is set about with small gems. He raises the object in both hands, holds it above his head, and the blade catches the dim light.

He takes three steps closer and draws the blade across my arm, opening the scar tissues like a puparium hatching. There is no pain. I watch as the barber rinses the blade and returns it to its special place. He goes down the basement stairs and I can hear the gurgling in the small drain tubes of the armrest as his footsteps recede. I close my eyes.

I remember Kevin's screams from upstairs and the red flicker of candlelight on the stone walls. I remember the red flow through the funnel and the gurgle of the thing feeding, lamprey mouth extended wide and reaching high, trying to encompass the funnel the way an infant seeks its mother's nipple.

I remember Mr. Denofrio taking a large hammer from its place at the base of the slab, then a thing part spike and part spigot. I remember standing alone and watching as he pounded it in, realizing even as I watched that the flesh beneath the gray-green slime was a mass of old scars.

I remember watching as the red liquid flowed from the spigot into the crystal glass, the chalice. There is no red in the universe as deeply red, as purely red as what I saw that night.

I remember drinking. I remember carrying the chalice—carefully, so carefully—upstairs to Kevin. I re-member sitting in the chair myself.

The barber returns with the chalice. I check that the scar has closed, fold down my sleeve, and drink deeply.

By the time I have donned my own white smock and returned, the barber is sitting in the chair.

"A trim this morning, perhaps?" I ask.

"I think not," he says. "Just a shave, please." I shave him carefully. When I am finished, he runs his hands across his cheeks and chin and nods his approval. I perform the ritual and go below. In the candlelit hush of the Master's vault, I wait for the Purification and think about immortality. Not about the true eon-spanning immortality of the Master ... of all the Mas-ters ... but of the portion He deigns to share with us. It is enough. After my colleague drinks and I have returned the chalice to its place, I come up to find the blinds raised, the shop open for business.

Kevin has taken his place beside his chair. I take my place beside mine. The music has ended and silence fills the room.

Outside, the blood spirals down.

The Death of the Centaur

Introduction

I was a teacher for eighteen years. Not a college professor ... not even a high school English teacher ... "just" an elementary teacher. Over the years I taught third grade, fourth grade, and sixth grade, spent a year as a "resource teacher," (sort of a lifeguard for kids in dan-ger of going under because of learning problems) and ended my career in education by spending four years creating, coordinating, and teaching very advanced pro-grams for "gifted and talented" (i.e., smart and able) stu-dents in a district with seven thousand elementary-aged children.

I mention all this as background to the next story.

Teaching is a profession which is not quite a profes-sion. As recently as twenty-five years ago, teachers bal-anced their low pay with whatever satisfaction they could find in the job—and there is plenty for a good teacher—and by enjoying a certain indefinable sense of status in the eyes of the community.

Some years ago when I was a sixth grade teacher, I stepped outside one winter evening to see the Colorado skies ablaze with a disturbing light. It was the aurora borealis, of course, in what may well be the most dramatic display I'll ever see from these latitudes.

As I stood watching this incredible light show, a young student of mine and her mother came down the street and asked what was going on. I explained about the aurora.

"Oh," said the mother. "I thought maybe it was the end of the world like it predicts in Revelation, but Jesse said you'd know if it was something else." I think of that moment occasionally.

It used to be that teachers were—if not exactly the sages of society—at least respected as minor but necessary intellectual components in the community. Now, when parents go in to a parent/teacher conference, the odds are great that the parents are better educated than the teacher. Even if they're not, they almost certainly make signifi-cantly more money than the teacher.

Of course it's not just the low pay that is driving good people out of teaching; it's not even the combination of low pay, contempt from the community, contempt from school and district administrators who see master teach-ers as a liability (they would rather have beginning teach-ers whose tabulas are perfectly rasa and ready to be programmed with whatever new district fads the admin-istration is pushing), and the fact that many children to-day are not pleasant to be around. Perhaps it's all this plus the reality that teaching is no longer a place for peo-ple with imagination. Creative people need not apply. Most don't.

The point of all this is that just at the time when we most desperately need quality teachers, just when our in-tellectual survival now demands men and women in the classroom who teach so well and make our children think so well that we'll have no choice but to pay that teacher the ultimate teacher's compliment—condemnation to death by hemlock or crucifixion; just at the time now when families and all the other traditional institutions are abdicating their responsibilities in everything from teach-ing ethics to basic hygiene, abandoning the effort it takes to turn young savages into citizens; surrendering and handing these duties to schools ... that happens to be the time when the schools lack the small but critical mass of brilliant, creative, and dedicated people who've always made the system work.

To compensate, teachers hang signs in their faculty lounges. The signs say things like—"A teacher's influence touches eternity."

It may. It may. But take it from somebody who was in there pitching for eighteen years—good teachers are invaluable, more precious than platinum or presidents, but a bad teacher's influence touches the same eternity.

* * *

The teacher and the boy climbed the steep arc of lawn that overlooked the southernmost curve of the Missouri River. Occasionally they glanced up at the stately brick mansion that held the high ground. Its tiers of tall win-dows and wide French doors reflected the broken patterns of bare branches against a gray sky. Both the boy and the young man knew the big house was most likely empty—its owner spent only a few weeks a year in town—but ap-proaching so close afforded them the pleasurable tension of trespass as well as an outstanding view. A hundred feet from the mansion they stopped climb-ing and sat down, backs against a tree which shielded them from the slight breeze and protected them from the casual notice of anyone in the house. The sun was very warm, a false spring warmth which would almost surely be driven off by at least one more snowstorm before re-turning in earnest. The wide expanse of lawn, dropping down to the railroad tracks and the river two hundred yards below, had the faint, green splotchiness of thawing earth. The air smelled like Saturday.

The teacher took up a short blade of grass, rolled it in his fingers, and began to chew on it thoughtfully. The boy pulled a piece, squinted at it for a long second, and did likewise.

"Mr. Kennan, d'you think the river's gonna rise again this year and flood everythin'

like it done before?" asked the boy.

"I don't know, Terry," said the young man. He did not turn to look at the boy, but raised his face to the sun and closed his eyes.

The boy looked sideways at his teacher and noticed how the red hairs in the man's beard glinted in the sun-light. Terry put his head back against the rough bark of the old elm but was too animated to shut his eyes for more than a few seconds.

"Do you figure it'll flood Main if it does?"

"I doubt it, Terry. That kind of flood only comes along every few years." Neither participant in the conversation found it strange that the teacher was commenting on events which he had never experienced first hand. Kennan had been in the small Missouri town just under seven months, having ar-rived on an incredibly hot Labor Day just before school began. By then the flood had been old news for four months. Terry Bester, although only ten years old, had seen three such floods in his life and he remembered the cursing and thumping in the morning darkness the previ-ous April when the volunteer firemen had called his father down to work on the levee.

A train whistle came to them from the north, the Dopplered noise sounding delicate in the warm air. The teacher opened his eyes to await the coming of the eleven a.m. freight to St. Louis. Both counted the cars as the long train roared below them, diesel throbbing, whistle rising in pitch and then dropping as the last cars disappeared toward town around the bend in the track where they had just walked.

"Whew, good thing we wasn't down there," said Terry loudly.

"Weren't," said Mr. Kennan.

"Huh?" said Terry and looked at the man.

"We weren't down there," repeated the bearded young man with a hint of irritation in his voice.

"Yeah," said Terry and there was a silence. Mr. Kennan closed his eyes and rested his head against the tree trunk once again. Terry stood to throw imaginary stones at the mansion. Sensing his teacher's disapproval, he stopped the pantomine and stood facing the tree, resting his chin against the bark and squinting up at the high branches. Far overhead a squirrel leaped.

"Twenty-six," said Terry.

"What's that?"

"Cars on that train. I counted twenty-six."

"Mmmmm. I counted twenty-four."

"Yeah. Me too. That's what I meant to say. Twenty-four, I meant." Kennan sat forward and rolled the blade of grass in his hands. His thoughts were elsewhere. Terry rode an invisi-ble horse around in tight circles while making galloping sounds deep in his throat. He added the phlegmy noise of a rifle shot, grabbed at his chest, and tumbled off the horse. The boy rolled bonelessly down the hill and came to a contorted, grass-covered stop not three feet from his teacher. Kennan glanced at him and then looked out at the river. The Missouri moved by, coffee brown, complicated by never repeating patterns of swirls and eddies.

"Terry, did you know that this is the southernmost bend of the Missouri River?

Right here?"

"Uh-uh," said the boy.

"It is," said the teacher and looked across at the far shore.

"Hey, Mr. Kennan?"

"Yes?"

"What's gonna happen on Monday?"

"What do you mean?" asked Kennan, knowing what he meant.

"You know, in the Story."

The young man laughed and tossed away the blade of grass. For a brief second Terry thought that his teacher threw like a girl, but he immediately banished that from his mind.

"You know I can't tell you ahead of the others, Terry. That wouldn't be fair, would it?"

"Awww," said the boy but it was a perfunctory whine, and something in the tone suggested that he was pleased with the response. The two stood up. Kennan brushed off the seat of his pants, and then pulled bits of grass from the child's tangled hair. Together they walked back down the hill in the direction of the rail line and town.

The centaur, the neo-cat, and the sorcerer-ape moved across the endless Sea of Grass. Gernisavien was too short to see above the high grass and had to ride on Raul's back. The centaur did not mind—he did not even notice her weight—and he enjoyed talking to her as he breasted the rippling waves of lemon-colored grass. Behind them came Dobby, ambling along in his comical, anthropoid stride and humming snatches of unintelligible tunes.

For nine days they waded the Sea of Grass. Far behind were the Haunted Ruins and the threat of the ratspiders. Far ahead—not yet in sight—was their immediate goal of the Mountains of Mist. At night Dobby would unsling his massive shoulder pack and retrieve the great silken um-brella of their tent. Intricate orange markings decorated the blue dome. Gernisavien loved the sound created as the evening wind came up and stirred a thousand miles of grass while rustling the silken canopy above them. They were very careful with their fire. A single care-less spark could ignite the entire Sea and there would be no escape.

Raul would return from his evening hunt with his bow over a shoulder and a limp grazer in one massive hand. After dinner they often talked softly or listened to Dobby play the strange wind instrument he had found in the Man Ruins. As the night grew later, Dobby would point out the constellations—the Swan, Mellam's Bow, the Crystal Skyship, and the Little Lyre. Raul would tell stories of courage and sacrifice handed down through six genera-tions of Centaur Clan warriors. One evening after they had carefully doused the fire, Gernisavien spoke. Her voice seemed tiny under the blaze of stars and was almost lost in the great sighing of wind in the grass. "What are our chances of actually finding the farcaster?"

"We can't know that," came Raul's firm voice. "We just have to keep heading south and do our best."

"But what if the Wizards get there first?" persisted the tawny neo-cat. It was Dobby who answered. "Best we not discuss the Wizards at night," he said.

"Never talk about scaly things after dark, that's what my old Granmum used to say." In the morning they ate a cold breakfast, looked at the magic needle on Dobby's direction finder, and once again picked up the journey. The sun was close to the zenith when Raul suddenly froze and pointed to the east.

"Look!"

At first Gernisavien could see nothing, but after taking a handful of Raul's mane to steady herself and standing on his broad back, she could make out—sails! Billowing white sails against an azure sky. And beneath the straining canvas she could see a ship—a huge ship—creaking along on wooden wheels that must have been twenty feet high.

And it was headed right for them!

The classroom was ugly and uncomfortable. For a long time it had been used as a storeroom and even now the walls were marked and gashed where boxes and metal map cases had been stored.

The room, like the school, was old but not picturesque. It evoked no Norman Rockwell twinges of nostalgia. The once-high ceilings had been lowered with ill-fitting accoustical tiles that cut off the top third of the windows. Tubular fluorescent lights hung from gray bars that emerged through holes in the ceiling tiles. The floors once had been smooth and varnished but were now splintered to the point that students could not risk taking off their soaked tennis shoes on wet days. Twenty-eight plastic pink-and-tan metal desks filled a space designed for three rows of wooden schooldesks from a previous century. The desks were old enough that their tilted tops were carved and scratched and their ugly, tubu-lar legs gouged new splinters from the floor. It was impossible to place a pencil on a desktop without it rolling noisily, and every time a child lifted the desktop to reach for a book, the little room echoed to the sound of screech-ing metal and notebooks falling to the floor. The windows were high and warped and all but one refused to open. The previous September, when the tem-perature continued to hover near ninety degrees and chil-dren's sneakers sank into the asphalt playground, the little room was almost unlivable with only a rare stirring of breeze coming through the windows. The chalkboard was four feet wide and had a crack running along the right side. Kennan had once used it to illustrate the San Andreas Fault. On his first day he had discovered that the room had no chalk, only one eraser, no yardstick, no globe, only one pull-down map (and that pre-dating World War Two), no bookshelves, and a clock per-manently frozen at one twenty-three. Kennan had requisitioned a wall clock on the third of September and an old one was mounted next to the door by the end of January. It stopped frequently so Kennan kept a cheap alarm clock on his desk. Its ticking had become back-ground noise to all the other sounds in the room. Occa-sionally he set the alarm to signify the end of a quiz or silent reading period. On the last day before Christmas va-cation, he had let the alarm go off at two o'clock to herald the end of work and the beginning of their hour-long Christmas party. The other classes reserved only the last twenty minutes of the day for their parties and although Kennan was reprimanded by the principal for not reading the school policy booklet, the incident confirmed the sus-picion of most of the children in the school that Mr. Kennan's class was a fun place to be.

Kennan's memory of that Christmas season would al-ways be linked with the musty, dimly lit basement of Reardon's Department Store, a faded and failing five and dime store on Water Street, where he had shopped for his fourth graders' presents late one evening. One by one he had selected the cheap rings, jars of bubble-blowing liquid, toy soldiers, balsa wood gliders, and model kits—each with a special message in mind—taking them home to wrap until the early morning hours. Kennan had covered the chipped walls of the class-room with posters, including the illustrated map of Boston which had hung in his dorm room for three years. He changed the one bulletin board every three weeks. Now it boasted a huge map of the planet Garden on which the events of The Story were marked.

There was nothing he could do about the faint odor of rotting plaster and seeping sewage that permeated the room. Nor could he change the irritating buzz and flicker of the overhead lights. But he bought an old armchair at a fleamarket and borrowed an area rug from his landlord and every afternoon at one-ten, just after lunch period and just before language arts, Kennan sat in the sprung chair and twenty-seven children crowded into the carpeted corner and the tale resumed.

Gernisavien and Dobby paid their last two credit coins to enter the huge arena where Raul was scheduled to fight the Invincible Shrike. All around them were the dark al-leys and gabled rooftops of legendary Carvnal. They pushed through the entrance tunnel with the crowd and came out in the tiered amphitheatre where hundreds of torches cast bizarre shadows up into the stands.

Around the circular pit were crowded all the races of Garden, or rather, all those races which had not been ex-terminated resisting the evil Wizards: the hooded Druids, brachiate tree dwellers from the Great Forest, a band of fuzzies in their bright orange robes, many lizard soldiers hissing and laughing and shouting, stubby little Marsh Folk, and hundreds of mutants. The night air was filled with strange sounds and stranger smells. Vendors bellowed over the noise to hawk their fried argot wings and cold beer. Out in the arena, work crews raked sand over the drying pools of blood that marked the spots where earlier Death Game contestants had lost to the Shrike.

"Why does he have to fight?" asked Gernisavien as they took their places on the rough bench.

"It's the only way to earn a thousand credits so we can take the Sky Galleon south tomorrow morning," Dobby answered in a low voice. A tall mutant sat down next to him on the bench, and Dobby had to tug to retrieve the end of his purple cape.

"Bat why can't we just leave the city or take the raft farther south?" persisted Gernisavien. The little neo-cat's tail was flicking back and forth.

"Raul explained all that," whispered Dobby. "The Wizards know that we're in Carvnal. They must already be covering the city gates and the docks. Besides, with their flying platforms we could never outdistance them on foot or by raft. No, Raul's right, this is the only way."

"But no one beats the Shrike! Isn't that right? The thing was genetically designed during the Wizard Wars as a killing machine, wasn't it?" Gernisavien said miserably. She squinted as if the light from the stadium torches hurt her eyes.

"Yes," said Dobby, "but he doesn't have to beat it to earn the thousand credits. Just stay alive for three minutes in the same arena."

"Has anyone ever done that?" Gernisavien's whisper was ragged.

"Well ... I think..." began Dobby but was inter-rupted by a blare of trumpets from the arena. There was an immediate hushing of crowd noise. The torches seemed to flare more brightly and on one side of the wide pit a heavy portcullis drew up into the wall.

What's a portcullis?

It's like a big, heavy gate with spikes on the bottom. So every eye in the stadium was on that black hole in the wall. There was a long minute of silence so deep that you could hear the torches crackling and sputtering. Then the Shrike came out. It was about seven and a half feet tall and it gleamed like polished steel in the light. Razor sharp spikes curled out like scythe blades from various parts of its smooth, metallic exoskeleton. Its elbows and knees were protected by rings of natural armor which also were covered by short spikes. There was even a spike protruding from its high forehead, just above where the red, multi-faceted eyes blazed like flaming rubies. Its hands were claws with five curved, metal blades that opened and closed so quickly that they were only a blur. The claws went snicker-snack, snicker-snack. The Shrike moved out to the center of the arena slowly, lurching along like a sharp-edged sculpture learn-ing how to walk. Its head lifted, the fighting beak snapped, and the red eyes searched the crowd as if seeking future victims. Suddenly the stillness was broken as the hundreds of spectators began booing and jeering and throwing small items. Through it all the Shrike stood motionless and mute, seemingly unaware of the barrage of noise and mis-siles. Only once—when a large melon flew from the stands and headed straight for the Shrike's head—only then did it condescend to move. But how it moved! The Shrike leaped twenty feet to one side with a jump so in-credibly fast that the terrible creature was invisible for a second. The crowd hushed in awe.

Then the trumpets sounded again, a tall wooden door opened, and the first contestant of the Late Games entered. It was a rock giant much like the one that had chased Dobby when they were crossing the Mountains of Mist. But this one was bigger—at least twelve feet tall—and it looked to be made of solid muscle.

"I hope he doesn't beat the Shrike and take the prize before Raul gets to fight," said Dobby. Gernisavien flashed the sorcerer-ape a disapproving glance. It was over in twenty seconds. One moment the two opponents stood facing each other in the torchlight and an instant later the Shrike was back in the center of the ring and the rock giant was lying in various parts of the arena. Some of the pieces were still twitching.

There were four more contestants. Two were obvious suicides—whom the crowd booed loudly—one was a drunken lizard soldier with a high-powered crossbow, and the last was a fierce mutant with body armor of his own and a battle-axe twice as tall as Gernisavien. None of them lasted a minute.

Then the trumpets sounded again and Raul cantered into the arena. Gernisavien watched through her fingers as the handsome centaur, upper body oiled and glistening, moved toward the waiting Shrike. Raul was carrying only his hunting spear and a light shield. No—wait—there was a small bottle hanging from a thong around his neck.

"What's that?" asked Gernisavien, her voice sounding lost and quavery even to herself.

Dobby did not take his eyes off the arena as he an-swered. "A chemical I found in the Man Ruins. May the gods grant that I mixed it right." Down in the arena the Shrike began its attack.

Dear Whitney,

Yes—you're right—this part of the country is the sev-enth circle of desolation. Sometimes I walk down the street (my "home" here is on a hill, if you can call fur-nished rooms in a rotting old brick house a home) and catch a glimpse of the Missouri River and remember those great days we had out on the Cape during spring break of our senior year. Remember the time we went riding along the beach and a thunderstorm came boiling in from the Bay and Pomegranate got so spooked? (And we had to ... ahem ... wait it out in the boathouse?) Glad to hear that you enjoy working in the Senator's office. Do all you Wellesley girls ascend directly into jobs like that or do most end up at Katie Gibbs School for Fu-ture Secretaries? (Sorry about that—someone stuck in the Meerschaum Pipe Capital of the World as I am shouldn't throw stones ... or stow thrones for that matter. Did you know that every corncob pipe in the western hemisphere comes from this town? I've got two inches of white soot on my windowsill and on the hood of my car to prove it!) No—I don't get into St. Louis very much. It's about a fifty mile trip and the Volvo has been sitting by the curb for over a month. The head gasket is shot and it takes about ten years to get a part sent out here. I was lucky even to find a garage with metric tools. I did take the bus into the Big City three weeks ago. Went right after school Friday and got home Sunday evening in time to get de-pressed and to do my lesson plans. Ended up not seeing much except three movies and a lot of bookstores. Finally took a tour of the Gateway Arch. (No—I will not bore you with the details.) The best part of the weekend was enjoy-ing the amenities of a good hotel for two nights.

To answer your question—I'm not totally sorry that I came out West to go to grad school in St. Louis. It was a good program (who can beat an 11-month Masters pro-gram?) but I hadn't anticipated that I'd be too poor to es-cape this goddamn state without teaching here for a year. Even that might have been OK if I could have found a po-sition in Webster Groves or University City ... but the Meerschaum Pipe Capital of the World? This place—and the people—are straight out of Deliverance.

Still—it's only a year, and if I get a job with Hovane Acad or the Experimental School (have you seen Fentworth recently?), this year could be invaluable back-ground experience.

So you want to hear more about my students? What can you say about a bunch of bucolic fourth graders? I've already told you about some of the antics of Crazy Don-ald. If this podunk district had any real special ed or reme-dial programs he'd be in them all. Instead, I throw a lassoo on him and try to keep him from hurting anyone. So let's see, who does that leave to tell you about?

Monica—our resident nine-year-old sexpot. She has her eye on me but she'll settle for Craig Stears in the sixth grade if I'm not available. Sara—a real sweet kid. A curly-haired, heart-faced lit-tle cutie. I like Sara. Her mother died last year and I think she needs an extra dose of affection. Brad—Brad's the class moron. Dumber than Donald, if that's possible. He's been retained twice. (Yes ... this dis-trict does flunk kids ... and spank them.) Not a discipline problem, Brad's just a big, dumb cluck in bib overalls and a bowl haircut.

Teresa—Here's a girl after your own heart, Whit. A horse nut! Has a gelding which she enters in shows around here and in Illinois. But I'm afraid Teresa's into the Cow-girl Mystique. Probably wouldn't know an English riding saddle if she sat on it. The kid wears cowboy boots to school every day and keeps a currycomb in her desk. And then there's Chuck & Orville(!) & William-call-me-Bill & Theresa (another one) & Bobby Lee & Alice & Alice's twin sister Agnes & etc. & etc...

Oh, I mentioned Terry Bester last time, but I do want to tell you more about him. He's a homely little kid—all overbite and receding chin. His hair hangs in his eyes and his mother must trim it with hedgeclippers. He wears the same filthy plaid shirt every day of the year and his boots have holes in them and one heel gone. (Get the picture? This kid's straight out of Tobacco Road!) Still—Terry's my favorite. On the first day of school I was making some point and waving my arm around in my usual, histrionic fashion and Terry (who sits right up front, unlike most of the other boys) made a dive for the floor. I started to get mad at him for clowning around and then noticed his face. The kid was scared to death! Obviously he was getting the shit beat out of him at home and had ducked out of habit.

Terry seems determined to fit every poor-kid stereo-type. He even drags around this homemade shoeshine box and makes a few quarters shining these hillbillies' boots down at the Dew Drop Inn and Berringer's Bar & Grill where his old man hangs out.

Anyway, to make a long story short, the little guy has been spending a lot of time with me. He often shows up at the back porch here about five-thirty or six o'clock. Fre-quently I invite him to stay for dinner—although when I tell him I'm busy and I have to write or something, he doesn't seem to resent it and he's back the next night. Sometimes when I'm reading I forget he's there until ten or eleven o'clock. His parents don't seem to care where he is or when he gets home. When I got back from my week-end in St. Louis, there was 'ol Terry sitting on my back steps with that absurd shoeshine kit. For all I know he'd been sitting there since Friday night.

Last weekend he calmly mentioned something that made my hair stand on end. He said that last year when he was in third grade "Ma and the Old Man got in a terrible fight." Finally Ma locked the front door when the drunken father stepped out onto the porch to scream at the neigh-bors or something. The guy just got madder and madder when he couldn't get back in and started shouting that he was going to kill them all. Terry says that he was hugging his six-year-old sister, his Ma was crying and screaming, and then the Old Man kicked in the door. He proceeded to hit Terry's mother in the mouth and drag the two kids out to his pickup truck. He drove them up Sawmill Road (in nearby Boone National Forest) and finally jerked the chil-dren out of the cab and pulled his shotgun off the rack. ( Everybody carries guns in their pickups here, Whit. I've been thinking of getting a gun rack for the Volvo!) You can imagine Terry telling me all of this. Every once in a while he'd pause to brush the hair out of his eyes, but his voice was as calm as if he were telling me the plot of a TV show he'd seen once.

So the father drags eight-year-old Terry and his little sister into the trees and tells them to get down on their knees and pray to God for forgiveness because he's got to shoot them. Terry says that the old drunk was waving the double-barreled shotgun at them and that his little sister, Cindy, just "went and wet her panties, then and there." In-stead of shooting, Terry's father just lurched off into the woods and stood there cussing at the sky for several mi-nutes. Then he stuck the kids back in the pickup and drove them home. The mother never filed charges.

I've seen Mr. Bester around town. He reminds me of whatshisname in the movie version of To Kill A Mocking-bird. You know, the racist farmer that Boo Radley kills. Wait a minute, I'll look it up. (Bob Ewell!) So you can see why I'm allowing Terry to spend so much time with me. He needs a positive male role model around ... as well as a sensitive adult to talk to and learn from. I'd consider adopting Terry if that were possible. So now you know a little bit of how the other half lives. That's one reason why this year's been so important even if it has been sheer purgatory. Part of me can't wait to get back to you and the sea and a real city where people speak correctly and where you can walk into a drugstore and order a frappe without being stared at. But part of me knows how important this year is—both for me and the kids I'm touching by being here. Just the oral tradition of the story that I'm telling them is something they would never get otherwise. Well, I'm out of paper and it's almost one a.m. School tomorrow. Give my best to your family, Whit, and tell the Senator to keep up the good work. With any luck (and the head gasket willing) you'll be seeing me sometime in mid-June.

Take care. Please write. It's lonely out here in the Missouri woods. Love,

Paul