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is popularly called. I named it my enemy then, hating it as the Roman soldier who pierced Christ’s side must have hated Him. Salvation is a hateful thing: surely the memory of man proves that.
    No, I didn’t hear the pain in Novotny’s voice, the grinding agony of having no meaning. I fell asleep, thinking, Surely soldiers gripe in Heaven… no one understands the reward for virtue… only the penalty for guilt. Then I dropped away to visions of a scarred leg dancing alone in the desert, a vast stone leg pursued by a girl-child, pretty and pink, but when she caught it, her hands rotted black and fell away as my father’s voice tolled, “My name is Ozymandias, king of despair: / Look on my works, ye warrior and king.” (I always dream what I’ve read, though changed in my mind as if I’d written it. A mighty conceit.)
    * * *
    Later that night I dreamed of home, a cool spring morning, soft and fresh. As I walked to my car, the sweet air tickled my face and sprinkled goose-bumps with a quick shiver among the sun-white hair of my arms. The chill, pleasant and deep, touched with excitement, caused me to pee in the thick grass where the washing machine emptied. It was right, the sky open and blue and the long run of the pasture glistening clean and dark green with the dew, and the patch of grass curled and thick, and all this mine, and the sky and the fields and the grass, all mine, and me, young and king in the heart of her.
    The stream, golden arch into the tight grass, sparkled and slowly rolled, then I too, like a wisp, toward the dark tangled hairs flew. As I drifted, the grass bore my Ell, my first, naked and green in the sudden night, arms and shining legs lifted. Then finished, easily I rested in her, lovers on the patchwork fiber of my back seat, my car half-hidden in a low brush thicket, and I lost in her, in the ease and softness of her under the wide sky of night, my Ell, my fallen breath cupped in the curve of her neck. But quickly she whispered of things wet, warm, and dangerous, of spermy traps, and I leaped away to clutch the condom bloated with the tinkling afterthought of a pee. The thin walls burst, flooded the shame of my waste across the moonlight plain of our loins. I cried in guilt for she saw… and woke crying in fear of the loneliness too she must have seen. Else why she should love me? I asked half-dreaming as I crawled from the damp bed.
    I stripped the bunk, flipped the mattress, and wandered to the latrine to shower. Back in the room I smoked, leaning against the screen. I wonder if John Wayne ever peed the bed? The stretch of a grin on my face only eased the mood for a second.
    Ah, you crazy bastard, Krummel. What are you doing here? Came to laugh. You dream of being a warrior? Seems to me you pee the bed and cry for yourself. What else should I do? You could have been anything? I wanted to be everything. I couldn’t decide. I always got to places too late. Now you’ve learned the worth of a limited choice. No, I just made the wrong ones. So now you wait for a war like a fool? Why not start your own? You know your history. You need nothing else. Whatever I say, you’ll say I’m just afraid, which I am. I can only be what I am. And your history, your memory as you call it, dictates what you must be? Yes. You wandering purposeless fool, out of time and place, remembering wars that never happened, heroes that never died much less lived. I couldn’t stop dreaming of a better time, of honor and heroism and virtue. Where else can I find them? They told me that is where they were, cast in the fires of battle. Maybe they’re right in some way they don’t understand. Maybe you’re a fool? Maybe.
    I watched the rain suck at the curling blue smoke, the mourner’s rain, chokingly heavy and black, and the glittering drops plummet to earth, to earth and who knows how much farther.
    * * *
    The next morning Sgt. Tetrick gave me a guided tour and lecture on Clark Air Force Base, Philippines. Clark Air