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there’d been no response whatsoever. I was too busy with my knife.
    But Tib brought my attention to it by yelling loud and clear: “Yipee! C’mon around and walk in the front door like a white man, Noah! Nobody’s home!”
    I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Nobody’s homemeant that I wouldn’t have to confront my brother. But nobody’s home meant that the experimental gun—the only one like it—was on the open market; David was gone. Once again the gun was open to bids from foreign governments that meant us harm. (The State Department had heard whispers that Germany had had “informal” talks with Mexico about someday invading America with German help, giving the Germans a sure foothold on this continent.)
    â€œBe there in a minute!” I shouted.
    I slid my knife back into its scabbard, grabbed my carbine. I heard James laugh about something and then Tib laugh, too.
    I’d taken maybe three or four steps, still pretty far away from the rear corner of the barn, when the world came to an end.
    That was what it sounded like, anyway. All the rage and commotion I’d heard when David had demonstrated his gun in a few short bursts for his visitors was quadrupled in the fury that ripped the night now. This was David’s gun put to full power. Somewhere in the tumult of the bullets tearing from his experimental weapon I heard the screams of James and Tib.
    My mind formed an instant picture of them. Their faces stricken with the knowledge that death had set upon them, their arms and legs flying in contrary directions, their screams so startled that they weren’t even real screams—just choked, gasping sounds exploding from their throats.
    That was my last thought: James and Tib are dead. The machine gun turrets were relentless. And now they were turned on me, the bullets ripping through the weathered wood of the barn.
    And then I had no other thought at all because I felt several bullets tearing into me. I had just time enough to make my own screams; just enough time to feel my own arms and legs fly in contrary directions; just enough time to feel my own death set upon me.

Chapter 4
    T he mayor of a prosperous Colorado town once told me that the mark of a town that was going somewhere was twofold. First, it got itself an important railroad connection, and then it got itself a hospital with at least two doctors who’d graduated from an accredited medical school.
    I woke up in a white room made even whiter by the late morning autumn sunlight. A squirrel sat on the ledge of my window, as curious about me as I was about it. The pain in my upper back made even the slightest movement difficult, but somehow I was able to fasten my full attention on the nervous squirrel. I like to think that we exchanged smiles of a sort but that, I realize, was probably drugged-up nonsense.
    I lay there listening to the hospital sounds. After the war I’d visited a number of friends in the big vets’ hospital in Washington, D.C., the one where they dealt with the amputees. The same faces told conflicting stories—happy to be alive, resentful that they’d never be whole again. Some of them adjusted pretty damned well, considering—probably a lot better than I would have—but some of them wereheaded to angry, bitter lives with the whiskey bottle their only consolation. I didn’t have any bitterness or conflict of feelings. Wherever I was exactly, I was happy to be alive.
    She came through the door in a uniform as crisp and white as her personality. A slender blonde wearing a shy smile on her pretty, melancholy face. She carried a tray with three small bottles of medication on it. She brought it to the table next to my bed and said, “I understand that you’ve already talked to the doctor.”
    â€œHe didn’t tell me much.”
    â€œWell, there isn’t that much to say, really.”
    â€œA bullet in my right