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he were assuming some military stance. Twice, as I watched, he raised the glass and sipped; then he lowered the drink and his elbow stopped his forearm and held it level, stationary. I left the people I was with and went to him, my route as angled and skirting as I have imagined the lieutenant-commander’s was, and my true course as straight as I have imagined his, and also following or being drawn by history.
    Beneath the lieutenant-commander’s gold pilot’s wings were ribbons from Korea; he stopped talking to turn, hear my name from Willie, shake my hand as Willie said: “And this is Lieutenant-Commander Percy.” His eyes were brown and had that wet brightness, that intensity, of alcohol and vocal excitement. He said: “Pleased to meet you, Gerry.” My concern for Willie dissolved in adrenaline. Percy was from the South. Then I knew I had already known it, from his lips: they were thin and shaped by his pronunciation into a near-pout, as if they slouched toward his chin, and their corners drooped. They would have been sensual, were it not for a lethargic certainty about them, making him look pampered. They also grinned widely. And when he was intent, as he listened to my name and looked me up and down without appearing to, weighing my character, my worth as an officer, and later as he listened to me, or to Willie the one time he spoke, his lips were straight and grim, a mouth you would expect beneath eyes looking at you over a pistol barrel. I was trying to place his drawl when Willie said: “The Lieutenant-Commander is from Georgia.”
    â€œAtlanta?” I said.
    â€œOh hell no. Place called Rome. Little place. You’re a Southern boy yourself.”
    â€œYes sir. Louisiana. Sorry I said Atlanta. I’m from Lafayette— a little place—but people always think I’m from New Orleans. I mean even after I’ve told them.”
    â€œThat’s because they don’t know us. Atlanta. New Orleans. Memphis. Words to them. Cities. They don’t know our culture.”
    â€œLittle Rock,” I said.
    He missed the expression on my face (or the one I felt there) and the tone of my voice (or the one I heard there); I believed I was cold and challenging.
    â€œRight,” Percy said. “Little Rock. They saw it on T-V . Saw the 82nd Airborne following the orders of their Commander-in-Chief.” He looked at Willie. “Which I would have done too. Like that.” He snapped his thumb and a finger damp from stirring his bourbon and ice, then with his cocktail napkin wiped the drops from his palm. (Yes: I am not adding that as a prop; I could smell his drink, probably sour mash.) He wore a gold wedding ring. “Same as if Kennedy sends me to Russia. People up North didn’t see Little Rock. They saw a dumb governor and some dumb high-school kids and God knows what all, come to look at the soldiers. But they didn’t see our culture, that’s what they don’t know anything about. Little places like Rome and Lafayette. In the bayou country, weren’t you?”
    â€œYes sir.”
    â€œHow long you been in now?”
    â€œFour years and a couple of months.”
    His eyebrows raised and he cocked his head, looking at me with something like warmth. Hair in his eyebrows was bleached by the sun, but they were mostly brown, like his short hair.
    â€œAlmost a lieutenant. You staying in, then?”
    â€œYes sir.”
    â€œYou two are roommates.”
    â€œWillie puts up with me.”
    â€œSee?” He looked at Willie, then back to me. “You two boys’re shipmates. Liberty buddies. Go ashore and get drunk together. Right?”
    I told him yes, sir, we did some of that.
    â€œThat’s what I been telling Willie here.” He looked at Willie; then he shifted his feet to face him, leaving me as a point in the triangle, watching them. “The real Southerner is like Gerry. Not some poor ignorant son of a bitch