Among the men there would be grumbling, of course, and maybe worse, because their days would seem longer and their loads heavier, but Lieutenant Jimmy Cross reminded himself that his obligation was not to be loved but to lead.

On the morning after Ted Lavender died, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha’s letters. Then he burned the two photographs. There was a steady rain falling, which made it difficult, but he used heat tabs and Sterno to build a small fire, screening it with his body, holding the photographs over the tight blue flame with the tips of his fingers.

They were flying. The weights fell off; there was nothing to bear. They laughed and held on tight, feeling the cold slap of wind and altitude, soaring, thinking It’s over, I’m gone!—they were naked, they were light and free—it was all lightness, bright and fast and buoyant, light as light, a helium buzz in the brain, a giddy bubbling in the lungs as they were taken up over the clouds and the war, beyond duty, beyond gravity and mortification and global entanglements—Sin loi! they yelled.

They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely re-strained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden

They were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it.

They would touch their bodies, feeling shame, then quickly hiding it. They would force themselves to stand. As if in slow motion, frame by frame, the world would take on the old logic—absolute silence, then the wind, then sunlight, then voices. It was the burden of being alive.

He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a conse-quence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war.

He was buried with Martha under the white sand at the Jersey shore. They were pressed together, and the pebble in his mouth was her tongue. He was smiling. Vaguely, he was aware of how quiet the day was, the sullen paddies, yet he could not bring himself to worry about matters of security. He was beyond that. He was just a kid at war, in love. He was twenty-four years old. He couldn’t help it.

It was this separate-but-to-gether quality, she wrote, that had inspired her to pick up the pebble and to carry it in her breast pocket for several days, where it seemed weightless, and then to send it through the mail, by air, as a token of her truest feelings for him. Lieutenant Cross found this romantic.

. He remembered kissing her good night at the dorm door. Right then, he thought, he should’ve done something brave. He should’ve carried her up the stairs to her room and tied her to the bed and touched that left knee all night long. He should’ve risked it. Whenever he looked at the photographs, he thought of new things he should’ve done.

To carry something was to hump it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Mar-tha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive form, to hump meant to walk, or to march, but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive.

They were signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant.

She was a virgin, he was almost sure. She was an English major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterm exams, about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf. She often quoted lines of poetry; she never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself.

He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love.

Down in my chestthere was srill rhat leaking sensarion, somerh ingvery warln and preciousspilling out, and I was .ou.r"d wirh blood ;rnd hog-stink, ",ld for along while I just concentrated on holding myself rogetl-rer. I rernernbertaking a hor shower. I remernber packing a suitcase and carrying ir ourto the kitchen, standing very srill for a few rninures, looking carefullyat the familiar objects all around rne. The old chrome roasrer, rhe tele-phone, the pink and whire Forrnica on rhe kitchen counrers. The roomwas full of brighr sunshine. Everything sparkled. My hor_rse, I thoughr.My life. I'm nor sure how long I srood rhere, bur later I scribbled our ashort note to my parenrs

Ar some point in mid-July I beuan thinking seriously about Canada. 1of}e border lay a few hundred miles norrh, an eight-hour drive. Bochmy conscience and my insri'crs were telling ffre -ro make a break forit, just rake off and run like hell and never srop

The draft notice arrived onJune 17,1968.Ir was a humid afrernoon,I remembea cloudy and very quiec, and Id jusr conle in from a roundof golf. My mother and farher were having lunch our in the kitchen.I remember opening up the letter, scanning the firsr few lines, feelingrhe blood go rhick behind my eyes. I remember a sound in my head. Itwasnt rhinking, jusr a silenr horvl. A million rhings all ar once - I wasrco good for rl-ris war. Too sffrarc, too compassionate, too everything.It couldn't happen. I was above it. I had the world dicked

In any case rhose were my convicrions, and back in college I hadtaken a modesr srand against rhe war.

. The very facts were shrouded in uncerrainty: Was ir a civil war?A war of national liberarior-r or simple aggressioni Who started it, andwhen, and whyi What realLy happened ro rhe llSS Maddox onthat darknight in the Gulf of Tonkini Was Ho Chi Minh a Communisr stooge,or a nationalist savior, or both, or neitheri What abour the GenevaAccordsi What about SEATO and rhe Cold Wari

n. Even now I'll adrnit, the story makes me squirm, For morethan twenty years I've had to live wirh ir, feeling rhe shame, rrying ropuslr ft away, and so by this act of remembrance, by putting the factsdown on paper, I'm hoping to relieve at least some of the pressure on mydreams. Sdll, it's :r hard story to tell. All of us, I suppose, like to believethat

She seized the iron skillet from the stove and struck a defensive pose, which act surprised him greatly, coming from her. It cowed him and he did not strike her as he usually did.

With all this they left the store, with Sykes reminding Bertha that this was his town and she could have it if she wanted it.

"We oughter take Syke an' dat stray 'oman uh his'n down in Lake Howell swamp an' lay on de rawhide till they cain't say Lawd a' mussy.' He allus wuz uh ovahbearin' niggah, but since dat white 'oman from up north done teached 'im how to run a automobile, he done got too biggety to live--an' we oughter kill 'im," Old Man Anderson advised.

Dat wuz fifteen yeahs ago. He useter be so skeered uh losin' huh, she could make him do some parts of a husband's duty. Dey never wuz de same in de mind."

Anything like flowers had long ago been drowned in the salty stream that had been pressed from her heart.

She seized the iron skillet from the stove and struck a defensive pose, which act surprised him greatly, coming from her. It cowed him and he did not strike her as he usually did.

Don't gimme no lip neither, else Ah'll throw 'em outand put mah fist up side yo' head to boot."

Mrs. Hall walks out of the hospital in full remission. Not a trace of the cancer left. Her hair grows back, soft and downy. She takes up running to drop the steroid weight. She is working up to marathons. Angela trains with her.

He is still skinny, his hips slimmer than hers, so she slides underneath him; the weight of her, it seems, might smother him, but the weight of him tethers her to something. He is too gentle with her even after she tells him not to be; after he is finished she has to fake an orgasm to get him to stop

When they kitten-pile into the grass, Claire turns to Angela. It is a love that requires touch, and so Claire snuggles against her, nuzzles into her neck to say it out loud against her. Love love love. Angela is her best friend, her other self. Someday they will go to college together. The world will unravel for them, fall at their feet.

She prints out a copy of the flag and tapes it to her dorm window. She calls the reporter from the student paper back and tells him she is simply celebrating her heritage, like any number of groups on campus encourage students to do. She affects a lilt to say so, but as soon as the words are out of her mouth she realizes that the affect is a mistake. She doesn’t sound like herself. She sounds like Angela.

. Claire prints a photo of the Confederate flag and scrawls in loopy cursive on the back Welcome back! I hope you

Claire is fascinated by their accents, and, yes, by the dark tint of their skin, but mostly she is anxious to be seen.

“You look like white trash,” Puppy says to her the first time she sees the bikini.“You would know,” Claire says back. The bathing suit becomes a habit, even after the temperature dips.

He gives her the bikini at the end of the first week, after she complains that her father’s move to Florida caught her off guard—she is used to winters that at least make an effort to be winter, but her father’s new life in St. Pete is relentless sunshine, sunburn weather in December.

Maybe he was all right. Maybehe was just alone. She had been alone herself for three years. The illness hadstripped her, killing her children one by one, killing her husband, her sister, herparents...

Rye had had close calls of her own. As a result, she never wentunarmed

The driver grunted back through bared teeth. Frightened, the woman drew away.

The bus did not move, but Rye moved away from it. She intended to wait untilthe trouble was over and get on again, but if there was shooting, she wanted theprotection of a tree. Thus, she was near the curb when a battered blue Ford on theother side of the street made a U-turn and pulled up in front of the bus.

Shewatched the two carefully, knowing the fight would begin when someone's nervebroke or someone's hand slipped or someone came to the end of his limited abilityto communicate.

They stood in the aisle, grunting and gesturing at each other, eachin his own uncertain T stance as the bus lurched over the potholes. The driverseemed to be putting some effort into keeping them off balance. Still, their gesturesstopped just short of contact—mock punches, hand games of intimidation toreplace lost curses.

She had put off going until loneliness andhopelessness drove her out