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seems kind of irritated.
    â€œGood for you, Cabbage. Good for you, hero.”
    I keep walking toward the angel. Behind us, Gillespie is still raving to Squid about the military command structure.
    â€œIs there something wrong with that?” I say to Marquette, and I have to admit this is the angriest I’ve been at any time in Vietnam. Even when I killed somebody, I wasn’t this angry.
    â€œNo, nothing wrong with that at all, Cabbage.” Idon’t like my nickname right now. For the first time, the way he’s saying it, I don’t like it at all.
    â€œGood,” I say, and I say it strong because I feel like I accomplished something there.
    â€œI mean, somebody’s got to kill all those dangerous, unarmed, bound-up little prisoners for us. You keep up the good work, and we’ll all sleep better.”
    Controlled fury. That is what a Marine is supposed to harness. He is not supposed to lose control of his emotions because that’s when he makes bad decisions.
    I am a Marine. I am a very good Marine.
    â€œI killed an enemy soldier.”
    He laughs at me, the kind of laugh with spit in it. That’s not supposed to happen anymore. I’m not in Boston anymore. I am a Marine. They’re not supposed to laugh like that.
    â€œYou killed a piñata,” he says.
    I have my M-16 over my shoulder, like always. Usually, it just hangs against my back and I hardly know it’s there. But now, I feel it. Now, I know it’s there. I’m reaching behind me, feeling for it, gripping it.
    â€œI am a US Marine,” I say. “Which I guess is more than I can say for you.”
    He laughs again. He has to stop doing that. He has to.
    â€œYou are a US joke,” he says.
    Of all the things that have happened to me, from the fright of my induction notice to the punishment of boot camp, to the shooting and the heat and the killing of the war, nothing has knocked me as sideways as I feel right this minute.
    Fourth grade. Fourth grade, second time. That was when I got to know my friends, my guys, Morris and Beck and especially Ivan. They showed up like angels — tough angels — right when I needed them. These two fifth-grade idiots, Arthur and Teddy, had me on my knees. On my knees in the gutter of Moraine Street among all the stuff from my book bag. They’d dumped all of it out — books, pencils, an oversize eraser that I got from the science museum, and half of a tuna-and-potato-chips sandwich that I was saving for cartoons when I got home ’cause there probably wasn’t much else there. Only now it was stepped on.
    I was praying. I was praying with my hands folded and my knees hurting from pebbles. Arthur and Teddy were forcing me to pray, because that’s the kind of thing that made them happy and I was the kind of guy that asked for it.
    Only when I prayed this time, it worked. They showed up. Like angels. And some people don’t believe in that kind of stuff, but I do — or I did, from the time those guys answered my prayer. Ivan and Beck andMorris chased those jerks away and let them know I was not to be their whipping boy ever again, and that was how we came together forever.
    Only they aren’t here now. And I suddenly feel like I’m on my knees on Moraine Street.
    I’m startled when I feel a quick, hard grip on my hand. I look down, where I had half swung my rifle around front without even realizing it. On my hand, on the gun, I see Gillespie’s hand. I turn to see him staring hard at me, but talking to Marquette, all as we keep walking up the beach.
    â€œMarquette, man,” Gillespie says, “why don’t you just do your own war your own way and leave Cabbage to do his his way. Right?”
    Marquette looks sideways at Gillespie. It feels tense, but he doesn’t say anything.
    â€œHey, I can do one of those,” Squid says as we come up on Hunter, who is now admiring his sand angel. Squid throws himself