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had asked for it, and within a minute the steaming cup was sitting in my hand.
    Van Houten had a stack of papers on his desk and a pen in his hand.
    â€œAll right with you if I ask a few questions?” he said.
    â€œSure.”
    â€œThat’s good,” he said. “’Cause I have a lot of them.”
    â€œFine with me.”
    Van Houten began with the basics. What was my full name? Where did I live? Where and when was I born? What were the names of my father and mother, and where and when were they born? What was my education? Was I married? How many kids did I have?
    I told him everything, but Van Houten slowed down a bit when we got to my family situation.
    â€œWhat is your wife’s name?”
    â€œBrandi Key.”
    â€œMaiden name?”
    â€œJohnson.”
    â€œAnd your kids?”
    I told him about Zackary and Adam and said we had a third child on the way.
    He raised one finger, stopped me right there, and spoke in a low, confidential tone.
    â€œAll right, not another word about your wife being pregnant, is that understood? We leave that part out. You can’t enlist if you’ve got three children, but if everything else checks out I can get you in if we leave that part out.”
    â€œOkay,” I said.
    â€œAnd whatever you do,” he said, “don’t mention it to the commanding officer here.” Van Houten offered to swing by my home to speak to Brandi about all the family benefits associated with life in the military, but he warned me to keep Brandi away from the recruiting station so that no superior military officers would notice her pregnancy. I got the message loud and clear.
    Van Houten told me to keep one or two other details to myself as well. He would not take down information about the two herniated disks from an early back injury, because he said that could complicate my entry into military life. He didn’t want me to say anything about the time I had been arrested for assaulting a police officer. When I began to raise the matter of my debts, which had made it impossible for me to join the marines, he stopped me once more. “I won’t ask and don’t you tell,” he said.
    Van Houten gave me the impression that, as a favor to me, he was leaving out all the details that might hurt my chances of getting into the military. He became my coach, my guidance counselor, my adviser, and my personal biographer, as well as the provider of coffee, doughnuts, and submarine sandwiches over the next five or six weeks.
    I had imagined that it would be possible to apply, be tested and checked out, and sign up in a day or two, but the process stretched out for the better part of six weeks.
    After completing the initial questionnaire, Van Houten told me to return at five-thirty in the morning a few days later to take an aptitude test.
    â€œHave a good meal, get a good night’s sleep, and eat breakfast before you come in for the test,” he said. “You’ll do better that way.”
    I showed up on time and spent two hours on a question-and-answer test dealing with math, English, mechanical understanding, and general knowledge.
    There were about thirty young men and women in the room, and we all got our scores as soon as we finished the test. I was told that 30 was the passing score and that 99 was the highest score possible. I got a 49, then saw to my amazement that not a single other person in the room had passed the test.
    Van Houten told me that 49 was a good score, but that if I wanted I could take the test one more time to see if I could get a 50, which would give me more choices about where to go in the military. I took the test again but got the same score.
    One of Van Houten’s colleagues, a short, thin, middle-aged government employee in civilian clothes named Daniel Russell, told me that I had three options. I could become an infantryman, a multiple-launch rocket systems driver, or a bridge builder.
    â€œCan I join the