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hair, tightened its lines around jaw and eyes, thickened fingers and knuckles, but the brain didn’t feel as if it had grown in sympathy with the rest. It was still green; full of tall lush oaks and elms in summer; a creek ran through it, and the kids climbed around on its convolutions shouting, “This way, gang—we’ll take a short-cut and head them off at Dead Man’s Gulch!”
    Boat whistles blew their tops. Manhattan’s metal buildings tossed back an echo of them. Gangplanks clattered up and away. Men’s voices shouted.
    Johnny Choir was aware of it, suddenly. His wild, quick thoughts were stampeded by the reality of the ship nosing out into the harbour. He felt his hands trembling on the cold iron rail. Some of the boys sang “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” They made a lot of warm noise.
    “Come out of it, Choir,” someone said. Eddie Smith came and brushed Johnny Choir’s elbow. “Penny for your thoughts.”
    Johnny looked at all that dark, glittering water. “Why ain’t I in 4-F?” he said simply.
    Eddie Smith looked at the water, too, and laughed. “Why?”
    Johnny Choir said, “I’m only a kid. I’m ten years old. I like ice-cream cones and candy bars and roller skates. I want my mama.”
    Smith rubbed his small white chin.
    “You got the most distorted sense of humour, Choir. So help me. You say all you got to say with the perfect dead-pan expression. Someone else might think you were serious….”
    Johnny spit slowly over the side, experimentally, to see how long it would take the spit to reach the water. Not long. Then he tried to watch where it landed to see how long he could still see it. Not long, either.
    Smith said, “Here we go. Don’t know where, but we’re going. Maybe England, maybe Africa, maybe Who Knows?”
    “Do—do those other guys play fair, Private Smith?”
    “Huh?”
    Johnny Choir gestured. “If you shoot those other guys over there, then they got to fall down, don’t they?”
    “Hell, yes. But, why—”
    “And they can’t shoot back if they get shot first.”
    “That’s a basic fact of war. You shoot the other guy first, he’s out of the fight. Now, why are you—”
    “That’s all right then,” said Johnny Choir. His stomach eased down soft and nice inside him. Resting light and smooth, his hands didn’t twitch on the rail any more.
    “As long as that is a basic rule, Private Smith, then I got nothing to be afraid of. I’ll play. I’ll play war good.”
    Smith stared at Johnny.
    “If you play war like you talk war, it’s gonna be a funny kind of war, I’ll say so.”
    The sound of the boat whistle hit against the clouds. The ship cut out of New York Harbour under the stars.
    And Johnny Choir slept like a teddy-bear all that night….
    * * * *
    The African landing was warm, fast, simple, uneventful. Johnny lugged his equipment in his big easy-swinging hands, found his assigned company truck and the long hot delivery inland from Casablanca began. He sat tallest in his row, facing another row of friends in the rear of the truck. They bounced, jiggled, laughed, smoked, joked all along the way, and it was quite a bit of fun.
    One thing Johnny Choir noticed was how nice the officers were to one another. None of the officers stomped their feet and cried, “I want to be general or I won’t play!,” “I want to be captain or I won’t play!” They took orders, gave orders, rescinded orders and asked for orders in a crisp military fashion that seemed, to Johnny, to be the finest bit of play acting ever. It seemed a hard thing to act that way all the time, but they did. Johnny admired them for it and never questioned their right to give him orders. Whenever he didn’t know what to do, they told him. They were helpful. Heck. They were okay. Not like in the old days when everybody argued about who was going to be general or sergeant or corporal.
    Johnny said nothing of his thoughts to anyone. Whenever he had time he just kept them and mulled them over.