My shins were still itching from the stony military roads of the West Highland Way when I headed south along the coastal fringe of the Gàidhealtachd. I had to change buses in Inveraray. Waiting on the next coach, I wandered the high street, trying to squeeze through doorways with my bulging pack. The soundtrack in the whisky shop was the fast picking and dulcet drawl of Jerry Reed. Across the high street, the outdoor shop, filled with wellies and deerstalkers and fishing rods, rotated through bro-country hits. And at Campbell Coffee a few doors down, the barista chicks looked as if they’d been plucked from Clemson ADPi rush. No matter where you go, you’re never far from home.

(If you’re not caught up, here’s where we started:)

Despite being called the Gàidhealtachd, the Scottish Highlands seem to have little more Gael-ness to them than the road signs. The influx of outsiders has the most to do with this. The Highlands have for two centuries now been a destination for holiday-goers, and the growing popularity of international travel only seems to make the roads and towns even more crowded at certain times. Indeed, without tourism there might not be an economy to speak of in the Highlands, and yet this economy is not exactly what is best for the region. The novelist Neil Gunn wrote in Scots Magazine in 1937,

“The best the Inverness Town Council could suggest the other night at a public meeting was tourism as the solution of all our ills, and the Highlands no longer as a brain or a heart or a creative force but as ‘a lung’ . . . so folk from south of the Highland line could clamber into its emptiness to breathe.”

Breathe freely is exactly what many incomers intend to do. When Covid struck, the Highlands were hit by a phenomenon like many other peripheral places around the world: anxious to escape the cities (whether because of fear of the virus or anger at the lockdowns or an expectation of societal collapse), anyone with gumption went where there was space. I spent an evening talking with a Welsh couple who had left Wales during Covid and moved up to Scotland for that very reason. Even before Covid, the re-population of certain Hebridean islands in the wake of community buyouts has seen — gasp — Sassenachs among their number.

Incomes are lower in the UK than the States, but still one could have a renovated five bedroom house on gorgeous North Uist for less than the price of your average ‘80s split level in any major city in the American South. Throw in your wife’s email job and a Starlink and you are set. Or just rent it out to travelers — “self-catering” as it’s called over there — and have reliable side income.

Given this, when I saw new housing being built, not just near desirable vacation spots, but off distant rural roads, I wondered, are these homes going to locals? or to incomers? Just as when Those People sell up and leave the DC-NJ-NYC-Boston arc for south of the Mason-Dixon, the incomers to the Highlands and islands bring disproportionate purchasing power. One by default must assume these new homes are by and large not going to young Highlanders.

Gunn concluded his remarks on tourism:

“In virile life, however employed, there is a future, because free men will not bear indefinitely the evils of our present industrial system. But when this free virile life is absent, then not all the deserving old women attending to all the tourists of the world and prattling of the scenic beauty of empty glens can save the ancient heritage from decay and death.”

Yes, Scotland is like all of Europe, losing population. This has been true for decades, but certain areas are emptying out faster than others now, such as Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway. The Scottish Government, regardless of party or persuasion, says that newcomers are vital to simply maintain a workforce for essential services. This argument puzzled me at the start of my journey. Rural Scotland, especially the Highlands, is not densely populated, and yet every time I saw a young Highland family, they had two children, oftentimes three. Where is the next generation?

Then I started getting into conversations, and when they finally worked out my nationality, near on every Scot said, “Och, you’re from the States? I have a brother/daughter/cousin who lives in Texas/Florida/Atlanta/Louisiana.”

No wonder, then. Four hundred years and everyone was still heading west for warmer climes. Should it change? Should no one be allowed to leave lest the country disappear? But wouldn’t that, at this point, be to change something as Scottish as shortbread?

Others backfill them. At the Free Church in Tarbert, I met an African couple with two young children. They lived nearby and had come to see off the minister, an Irishman, on his retirement day. The church in microcosm, that confluence was, prefiguring the eternal home: there is a place set for us, regardless of where we get off of this strange merry-go-round we call global civilization. Still one wonders, until that final arrival, are we all fated to leave what we know, to move to each other’s backyards?

Perhaps not always; or better said, in the long view, there are unexpected results. One of the ladies who cleaned my accommodation in Campbeltown struck up a conversation with me. “I don’t sound like it, but I’m from here.” She’d been born in Campbeltown, but left as a child. Her family settled in Northhamptonshire (the city name eludes me) amongst other Scots who’d moved down to England to work in the factories. It was a good place to live back then, she said, but not now. The city had grown and become taken over by crime. Drugs were rampant, she said, and human trafficking — she shuddered the last words. “I didn’t dare go out after dark.” A few years ago, she left everything and moved back to her birthplace. “This is a real community,” she said. Everyone looked out for each other, there was a sense of responsibility about the town. She seemed quite content to live out the rest of her days there. Sometimes you have to leave to come back.

“May I be allowed to say one word to my friends who regard this whole question as trivial — trivial compared with the great economic problems with which we are faced to-day? I do not deny for a moment the gravity of these other problems, but, believe me, this question is not trivial; it goes to the very root of the future not only of Scotland but of Britain and of the Empire. Britain cannot afford, the Empire cannot afford, I do not think the world can afford, a denationalised Scotland. In Sir Walter Scott’s famous words, If you un-Scotch us, you will make us damned mischievous Englishmen. We do not want to be, like the Greeks, powerful and prosperous wherever we settle, but with a dead Greece behind us. We do not want to be like the Jews of the Dispersion — a potent force everywhere on the globe, but with no Jerusalem.”

• John Buchan

News of Scotland’s death are premature, though, at least in Kintyre, the “mainland island.” The Sunday I visited the Tarbert church, after a waterfront night of having my eardrums pummeled by Elephant Sessions, the retiring minister took concern with me, as I missed my bus to stay for the service. He introduced me to a family that was headed south to Campbeltown — “They won’t mind giving you a lift.” So it was that I piled with the McKinnons (so I’ll call them) into their Vauxhall and made the drive down to the Wee Toon. The father, Rab, happily regaled me with equal parts stories and good-humored ribbing. Gigha, “God’s Island,” and the Paps of Jura were across the water to our right. Coming around a corner, you could see the northern cliffs of Ireland, where in January the fires of the Orangemen could be seen with the naked eye, Rab said. Then the turn for the base at Machrihanish: Rab remembered the planes and many American families that lived in the town, though no longer. Did I have any family connection to Campbeltown, he asked. I did, in fact: a couple of spinster sisters had compiled an in-depth genealogy of the family and in the mid-’90s had come over to do research. They believed that our namesake had been a tenant on Baraskomill Farm in the early 1700s.

“Oh, aye, Baraskomill, I know it. Do you want to go see it?”

How could I say no?

“Right, Tara, pet, look up Baraskomill. The farm’s got to be near the burn.”

The teenage daughter set to searching Google Maps for Baraskomill. “It’s at the Scottish Water plant, isn’t it, Tara, pet?”

“No, Da’, it’s after.”

“Pet, the plant is at the burn, that must be where the farm is.”

“No, Da’, you keep going.”

Reaching Campbeltown, we passed the waterfront and went up the coastal road. Rab pulled into the access road for the water works, only to admit his daughter, armed with the map, was right. We continued another tenth of a mile or so and there was the farm, looking the same as the black-and-white photo from the family genealogy.

“Aye, it’s still a working farm. So your ancestor lived here?”

Yes, so we think. It’s possible he might have lived on the neighboring farm.

“Oh, you mean Crossibeg?”

Why, yes.

He didn’t know who owned Baraskomill now, though it had once been owned by a man named Houston. “I lent him a boat once, years ago. If anyone in your family is a Houston, you tell him I want it back!”

They left me at my accommodation with handshakes and well-wishes. I was instructed to come by the Free Church near the waterfront for tea on Wednesday. I didn’t make it; the genealogical magnet pulled me even farther south.

The Wednesday bus dropped me at Southend, almost the exact tip of the Kintyre peninsula, and within spitting distance of the Keil Cemetery. The cemetery sat just above the narrow road and pebbled strand. The sea was mirror-flat, all the way to Ireland. Hardly a breath of wind. You could have kayaked over and back without any trouble. My photocopy of the genealogy in hand, I went prowling amongst the headstones. The marker was all the way at the back; its distinctly deep engraving was still legible all these centuries later.

The records in those days were spotty at best and the connection between the supposed ancestor on Baraskomill or Crossibeg and this theorized many-greats-grandmother was speculation on the part of the spinster genealogists. Still, something felt right. After the requisite pictures, I wandered around the large cemetery. There was a roofless stone building with graves inside, the ruins of the Chapel of Kilcolmkil.

Kilcolmkil — why was that name familiar?

Gaelic terms were beginning to stick in my head. I knew mor meant big, beag meant small, dubh dark or black. And I recalled Colmkil was the Gaelic name of St. Columba. Hold up, was this his?

I should have read the signage outside. Though weathered by the Irish Sea, it still proclaimed that this chapel had been dedicated to Columba, as this very spot was the first place he landed in Scotland. Indeed, just go look up there.

Climbing the hillock behind the cemetery, the ancestral grave not twenty yards below me, I found the rock with St. Columba’s footprint, where he first stood on these shores upon starting his evangelizing mission. Now there are two footprints, one added by a local in the 1800s, but the other, less distinct one, dates to Columba’s time. Is it actually Columba’s? Or was it used as a place of ritual by a local chieftain, where he might be inaugurated into power? Even if it was the latter, Columba knew what he was saying by stepping in it. I’ve come to save you, yes, but to lead you, too.

I left Kintyre with more answers than I had questions. An unusual outcome for me.

Being an American, I expected to take grief given our current head of state while over there. My first time in Scotland was during the Bush administration and virtually every Scot was prepared to hold me personally accountable for the invasion of Iraq. This time, no one minded bringing up “your president,” as they called him, and in fact did so more than they ever did with Bush, but I noticed a timbre in their voice that told me despite their condemnations, they were projecting. It made sense, though, their discomfort. After all, Trump is half Scottish through his mother and shares many characteristics of his maternal cousins: the gift of gab, the wild swings from ebullient to morose, the easily wounded sense of loyalty, the grudge never released, the workaday comfort with insults. Even his aesthetics are not far off: twenty-four hours on the streets of Glasgow and you’ll see his predilection for spray tan is entirely genetic. Scots may not like him, but he’s more like them than they care to admit.

Edinburgh: pho takeaway. Chain bars announcing karaoke on chalkboards. Fourth wave artisan coffee. Graffiti grunting cryptically. Beer gardens of boomers texting. Boba. Money drinking after work, bossgirls in clean duotone ensembles powerwalking with Airpods jabbed into the eardrum. No smiles. A girl blows vape in your passing face. Chinese students stumble in talking clusters turned inward, crashing into you, oblivious. Any Western city, now.

Back then, not so much. A mere fraction of the tourists. The pubs got you uncomfortable stares, the women were uglier. What was Harry Potter? Only two old haunts unchanged by the onslaught of two decades, but those two my favorites and testaments to, well, something. Perhaps it’s doing something unexpected, perhaps it’s sticking with whatever you’ve got. Perhaps it’s both.

That continues in other ways, that synthesis. I saw Brighde Chaimbeul perform her new album. The first word that came to mind was minimalist, but that was wrong. No, it is elemental. The older, baroque elements of the piobaireachd, the traditional high composition of Scottish bagpiping, have been stripped away, taking piping back to essentials, and then rebuilt.

For all the decay, the emptying out, the selling of patrimony, the pandering to the dull dull dull international palate, there is still something to the Scots that keeps going. Their music is the best, and perhaps the final, example. In song, they do not repeat old forms ad infinitum, the dumb loop of the way the dead did it. Nor do they embrace only the new, forgetting what came more than five minutes prior. The techniques and forms of old are not forgotten: someone is always practicing them, but so too will someone come along and take from them what they need and begin again, in a new way. Take what they need: no, it’s just as likely given. This, then, is true tradition: handing over, which too means letting go.

If the gentry of the crises, the power-addicts and the geo-egoists who cracked the deathly whips, wanted big words, then all right let them have ‘em; tell them we’re going in search of a real civilization, one of our very own, distinguished by a way of life which had as it economic doctrine and its philosophy, its work and its religion, its duality in unity: a sure hand at the tiller and love behind the wave.

• Neil Gunn, The Lost Chart

“Have we . . . grown afraid to escape, become dominated by the idea of a social duty that must keep our noses to the human grindstone, the grindstone that an ever-increasing mass hysteria keeps whirling with an ever-increasing madness of momentum? Work, records of unemployment, misery, conflicting politics, wars, and the lowering nightmare of a universal war, until sensitive beings can hardly listen to the wireless news, so grisly its tales of disasters and mass human destruction. Are we in social honour bound to increase this ghastly momentum by adding the thrust of our own forebodings and fears? or has a time come when it may be the better part of courage to withdraw sufficiently far from it to observe with some sense of proportion what exactly is taking place? Not to mention the purely personal point of view that one has only one life to live and that, before shuffling off, a little peace may be necessary in which to exercise one’s mental attributes and try to get some glimmering of what all the madness is about, or even of what is due to oneself, despite all the man-made duties in the world?”

• Neil Gunn, Off In A Boat

It was a Tuesday when I began to walk. Point A was on the high street, as they call the main drag across the pond. It was a stone’s throw from the railway station. A German couple offer to take my picture to commemorate the start. I could fill my water bottle from a public tap. My trailheads at home are gravel affairs, offering entrance through laurel portals, emblazoned with a strip of paint on a tree trunk. This was quite different.

I set out through the parking lot. Yes, a parking lot: different again. The first two miles were a stroll befitting a city greenway. The top of a hill offered a vista over cloudy Strathclyde, and then reminded me: the camera. I checked my pack. Don’t tell me. I hefted my pack and hoofed it back to town. I must have left it on the bench by the tap. Reaching the plinth I had started from, there was no camera. What a start. “Excuse me, are you looking for something?” said a lilting voice behind me. A dark-haired woman leaned out of the stationary store. “A camera!” I replied. She held it up. She’d seen it abandoned, picked it up, scrolled through the pictures, and memorized my face in case I came back. Yes, this certainly was different from home.

I needed different. I’d been ill for months. Tests on tests, but the docs couldn’t say why. A virus, their best guess. Perhaps stress, too, they said — have things been bad at work? Dadgum, son, let me tell you — both ends have been lit ‘til there’s no wax between the wicks.

Because of, or parallel to such exhaustion, the writing had just stopped. The writer’s work gets shoehorned into the dusks that shoulder the salaryman’s working day, but That, the Drying Up, had never happened before. Concerning, to say the least.

And for that, dear reader, I apologize. I had a novel I had planned to release chapter by chapter in the full flood of summer. I had even activated paid subscriptions for it. As it turns out, the best authorial plans can be laid low by mere flesh and the concatenations of life.

Life, always delivering that one-more-thing: in this case, the big birthday, the halfway mark. As much life lay ahead as behind me. I could not let that stop me. I could not get stuck at that wall. If I wanted over, I would have to go around, however long that took. I owed that to myself, a way forward without reference to our whirling world of anxiety and terror, which, in human terms, is not substantially different that described in the opening quote. And if I owed it, there was debt already, some sort of credit already rendered. Something I had desired or loved once, but never acted upon. It could have been many things. But of all of them I picked the one that meant going far just to get back: ninety-six miles through the Scottish Highlands, the West Highland Way.

Walking lays things bare, be it things unknown or forgotten. That lost camera on the very first day — to think I had equivocated for a moment on the top of that hill, considering writing it off! Emotion said, it’s probably stolen, people are terrible. Reason said, you only had a dozen photos snapped anyway, just write it off under your trip insurance. But something, perhaps the trail already at work, or perhaps it was the need of the trail going ahead, like faith before understanding, that said, No, silence them both, and listen. Intuition will speak. It does so calmly, concisely, and correctly, but it does not demand. Intuition is a kind of love, in its own way, because, like Paul says, it does not insist on its own way. And intuition said, go back. Everything will be fine. And it was. I was reacting to the world, not acting with clear intention in spite of it. Was that the root of my maladies, my scars, the burns of white-knuckling this “ever-increasing madness of momentum” we find ourselves aboard? Perhaps one root, though certainly not the taproot. There would be more to be seen.

I walked on with my camera, then, grinning like an idiot. I certainly felt an idiot, in the ancient Greek sense of a private person, outside the realm of public life. An ocean away from my own polis, it was just me and whatever I was carrying with me, literally and metaphorically. Already an inkling that the interior was overburdened, the ups and downs over the gentle glens also told me I literally had too much on my back. Too much food, water, and canister gas. I was getting smoked by gaggles of boomers with day packs (a recurring theme). Is this what I had come all this way for? I shucked my pack to suck wind and read a signboard: the many huts in this area were built in the ‘30s when outdoor enthusiasts had begun training to fight in Spain. I was doing nothing even close; I was just trying to finish a walk. So, then: pack on, walk on. Crest ridges, pound up and over high fields of sheep, and across and along tannin-browned burns bubbling with foamy eddies. What’s that? A distillery? Who could resist? Perhaps I should have. The break cost me my momentum. I returned to the trail leaden, aching in the left knee. Ah, but that’s normal, I said. All a part of the first day.

In my sleeping bag that night, my legs curled up on their own, my sinews shortening under cover of sleep. At awakening’s first stretch, I gasped for the stiffness of my knees. Illness had snatched away my fitness, I knew, but to feel thirty years older than I was? A poor omen for the overcast miles ahead.

That second morning I put three miles under foot with decreasing ease. The LCL, on the outside of my left knee, screamed worse with each step. No stretching seemed to extend my range of motion. At a trail junction, I shucked my pack and sucked down water. Conic Hill was visible ahead, a molehill by my past standards, but now? By what standard now? Where do you stand? My intuition knew Robert’s Rules, it had never ceded the floor since the day before, and for this I was grateful, for it told me what to do. Reluctantly, I turned away, ego checked.

You are no spring chicken anymore.

I half-limped along the bypass Balmaha and then up the shore of Loch Lomond. The stiffness and pain would not abate. At a caravan park store just about to close, I bought ibuprofen in near desperation. Two tabs kicked in quickly and carried me the rest of the way to the campsite. I pitched in a fresh downpour, somehow setting up without drenching everything. The pitter patter on the fly abated and I emerged from the nylon cocoon to cook noodles. Mere yards below, the waves of Loch Lomond crashed on pebbles. Spooning sardines out of a can, I looked up: a wall of white passed the westerly ridge line and blotted out the far shore. Time to get in the tent.

For twelve hours the rain shot against the fly, which dipped inward as the sustained wind bent the carbon fiber poles back on themselves. I lay there, listening, waiting for catastrophe. Why do we do this to ourselves? I had no answer, not in any intellectual capacity. But it’s light now. Get up, pack up, and get going.

Three miles to Ben Lomond and I threw in the towel. Perhaps this was it. My adventuring days were over. No more horseback on a rickety saddle across the Gobi. No more rat soup with the tribal chief in the highest reaches of Zomia. Caution as the rule rather than “let’s try.” At a bunkhouse below Ben Lomond, I stopped for the day, far too early. Showered off my stink. A gray-haired Glaswegian named Brendan was crashing in his sleeping bag in the common room. This marked his twentieth time on the trail. He’d hiked at all times of year, seen the best and the worst of the Way, knew all the contingencies. Through his Clydeside patter, he conveyed the best options for the coming days, and I took quick notes. A trio of youths arrived, cousins from three different corners of Germany. They cooked an elaborate bolognese with vegetables they’d been lugging for three days. Ah, so I was not the only one.

Recalling Brendan’s advice, the next morning I took the high road, fitting for Loch Lomond. I stopped but once, and that to watch a white burn seething down a mossy slope under dark pine canopy. Therein lies a lesson, I thought. Water, as almost a physical law, takes the path of least resistance. Were it not for the water itself, the most direct way to go anywhere is water’s course, a river or stream. Shouldn’t it be so with life? I have always been one to try the hardest possible thing, but why do I not try to make progress by seeking the path of least resistance?

Seven miles that day in steady rain before the knee gave way. I was already headed for the boat at Inversnaid when I ran into Brendan. I told him my intention, the exact contingency he had outlined. “Oh, aye, yir no gonnae want tae up that way wi’ a bad knee, it’s rock scrambling th’ whole way and the rain’ll do ye no favors.” Bidding farewell for a second time, I caught the boat across the loch. A tourist on board insisted on snapping a photo of me with the walking stick Brendan had snagged for me out of the trees. On the western side, I caught the bus north. Once upon a time, it would have felt like cheating. For now it just felt like what had to be done.

The bus dropped me close to my next campsite. I cooled my heels with a pint and took in the setting sun. The West Highland Way is peculiar to Americans in that it is very civilized. This is both off-putting and charming. Every day, you will pass through a village, or least close by a pub, and one of your meals can be cooked by someone else, accompanied by a pint or three. While right-to-roam laws in Scotland mean in theory one can pitch a tent virtually anywhere north of the central belt, in practice the sheer soddenness of the terrain and the prevalence of livestock means one has to be judicious with choosing a wild campsite. At numerous places along the trail, one can pay a few pounds to pitch one’s tent close to the trail and amenities. As an American, I naturally feel the woods are for being a weekend savage, but when in Rome . . .

The German youths from the bunkhouse arrived. Indeed, most of the walkers I encountered were from the Continent: German, Spanish, Swiss, Belgian, Dutch. Their universally curious aspect, almost without variation, was their lack of curiosity. They simply did not seem to be interested in anything around them. The whole journey for most of them seemed to be a transfer of daily civilized routines outdoors. Get up, pack, cook oatmeal, check your messages, get on the trail, make good time, arrive, set up, scroll Instagram while you do a load of laundry, cook, eat, sleep. Constant fretting about being able to charge phones. From my conversations with these young Continentals, I gleaned they hiked many different trails similar to this around Europe, and I could see their habits were the same there, too. What was the allure of such a tame hedonism? I could understand doing something like this once, but again and again? Was that the point of life in Europe? Perhaps this American would simply never understand.

The next day the weather did not improve, but the knee relented in its wailing and landscape became more dramatic. Loch Lomond was little different from at home; when my brother asked how the Way was, I had texted him a picture, and he replied, “I know that trail.” But now began classic Highland scenery. Glacial glens are the same the world round, and while the woods were mossy and ferny like the highest reaches of my Appalachians, these open valleys and ridges reminded me of a wet Wyoming. Just substitute the sagebrush with heather.

The clouds broke and wisped away, granting brief but beautiful sightlines before the rain surged back in. The River Fallon ran tea-dark, reminding me of the Neuse at New Bern. Dry stack stone walls, standing five feet high, were white with lichen or hanging gardens of moss. The rain blew up and under every crevice of my jacket and poured off the pack cover and ran down my back in rivulets. I was wet and well-chilled by the time I reached the clear-cuts above Crianlarich. The vistas here improved, the slopes full of farms cut by long strings of white where the burns surged from crest to bottom. Descending and crossing the A82, the rain grew only colder. The Strathfillan ran dark and demanded permits to swing bushy and sparkly flies down its riffles. On the far side, in the ruins of a farm lay the ruins of Saint Fillan’s priory. Crossing the river again, the battlefield of Dalrigh, where a many-greats grandfather fought a rearguard and made his escape. All the way along the river, I looked for spots to wild camp, but found nothing. I ventured out into the woods, wandering here and there, but anything clear of moss and even remotely level was standing water. The only reasonable place was on the sandy shore of the Strathfillan, but with heavy rains in the forecast, I was keen to not be swept away. On I walked. Above the pool where many-greats-granddaddy hid his sword, I ran across a schoolteacher from Yorkshire. We walked and talked, parting at Tyndrum, where I kept on through town and past the railroad viaduct. Every campsite there was sodden or littered with sheep droppings, so I backtracked to a lone clear spot next to the cemetery. The weather cleared over the meeting of the three glens in time for sunset.

The night was bitterly cold, the sodden ground no help. Camp though I did on the far side of town, I still could not beat the earliest walkers: two Englishmen blathering on and on:

“Mate, oim tellin’ ya, we can do this whole ‘fing in ‘free days.”

“Maaaaaate, there’s no way—”

“Mate, oim naught jokin’ — ‘free days, tops. We know all the stops, eh? We just got ta’ traing fo’ it.”

“Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate—”

The walking was easy down the glen. Who should come from behind but Brendan. We walked together, his brisk pace (for he only carried a day pack) stirring mine to match. “Diyye know abowt th’ Auch Estate wir waulkin’ through here? Oh, but there wis a murder here no five year ago.” He regaled me with the story of how the two brothers who ran the estate hit a cyclist in the dark after leaving the hotel bar at Bridge of Orchy. Suddenly we ran up on the teacher from Yorkshire and all began talking like best friends. Brendan continued, explaining that the brothers had dumped the cyclist with the dead cows “just up there,” and had only been caught because one of them had admitted the fact to his new fiancee. Indeed, the man showed his fiancee the spot of burial and the woman left a Red Bull can crushed on the spot to mark it, used by the police to later locate the corpse and convict the brothers. Soon enough we reached Bridge of Orchy, where this by-Scottish-standards shocking tale began, and the teacher split away. Brendan and I took coffee at the hotel beside the A82, lorries and tour buses surging past, trailing clouds of mist. Across the road came two familiar faces: a tall, busty Dutch blonde and a German redhead of even larger proportions. We had said hello and nodded in acknowledgment several times over the prior three days. Now we actually talked, even though we never exchanged names. Coffee flowed; the clouds began to gather.

The women of the impromptu gathering were camping in town beside the bridge. Brendan was continuing on all the way to Kingshouse, light as his load was. I was not ready to stop, my knee feeling better and better. As the rain rolled down the glen, I set out again, curling along and over the ridge and descending down to Inveroran. There I camped next to another bridge, a favored spot by the number of other tents pitched there: Belgians, a Slovenian, and an English kid with the worst single-man tent I’ve ever seen. Again, there was the possibility of pints at the hotel there and every walker indulged. Upon sauntering back to the bridge-side pitch, we spooked twenty-five red hinds and their young. To our surprise, two red stag remained amongst the tents. These ungulates clearly had no predators on either four or two legs, because they wandered right in among us. As I prepped for an early bed, the rain rolled in.

Up before the rest, I shared instant coffee with the Slovenian and ate Rolos. I needed to shuck more weight, so I cooked a freeze-dried chicken tikka masala I’d forgone the night before. The meal choice didn’t seem absurd, it seemed natural, like everything about this walk. Wake up, eat, pack up, walk and walk walk walk, then pitch camp, eat, and sleep. Life was reduced to essential elements. At last. Is this what it took? A contrived if pleasant journey on the other side of the world just to remind myself of what was always true? Worse: was what was true not simply effectual, pushing its way into my daily living, but required seeking out?

Walking before the crowds, I passed an estate and its dense, dark conifer plantation on the right before it gave way to Rannoch Moor. The largest uninhabited area in Britain. Which isn’t much, something like fifty square miles, but the atmospherics are certainly there. Someone described it as the Dead Marches from Lord of the Rings.

Never could there be more wonderful solitude. No rain fell. Fog slunk down off the mountains to the west. The slopes were incredible variations and contrasts, serried green cut by craggy gray. One high lip between slopes seemed ready to spill a whole high hidden valley’s secrets down onto the moor. Uninhabited, I said? Twice I stepped off the rough-cobbled drover’s road to let a pick-up truck hauling timber pass. The driver wore a tweed cap and vest and a collared shirt — no cowpoke.

The walking was truly joyous. One foot goes in front of the other as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And indeed isn’t it? Why couldn’t I just keep walking from here until the end of time? Every day I ate enough, every night I slept enough, and whatever else came was gratis. What else was there?

The rain started as I ascended the ridge after Ba Bridge. As I crested and began to drop down into Glen Coe, it began to hit hard and cold. Buachaille Etive Mor stood on my left like an iceberg in the mist as I limped, wet and chilled, down to Kingshouse. I asked at the pub and they said I could pitch beside the stream or back in the trees. I chose the latter. The damp had gotten into my bones and I spent the rest of the day, well into the evening, warming myself with fire and drink in the hotel pub. It was quite the convergence: the Dutch blonde and German redhead each occupied their own leather loveseat by the fire, and the Yorkshire teacher I’d met was there, too, chatting idly with a Korean backpacker. Everyone seemed happy to acknowledge the other with merely a nod and a smile — the weather had taken conversation out of us.

Worn down to nothing, I had begun to think clearly again: and the thought was: it is dangerous to view the world as you want it to be. You begin to make compromises with yourself when you attempt to analyze and discern. One quickly finds one’s self on shifting ground, and so one must shift, too, lest he be swept away. Where, then, is the self in all this? And where is the world you wanted? Maybe it came, but only in part, or not in the way or shape you expected, or maybe it wasn’t what you wanted at all. Maybe it was what someone else wanted.

What, then? Was this what had plagued me? had sent me over the edge to the point of sickness? Piles upon piles of civilizational artifice accreting in my person until I was fighting implanted desire with implanted desire, without regard to what actually was right or good?

Perhaps so. Perhaps the world I want is not at all relevant, because I cannot know if it is actually my desire or someone else’s. But even more importantly: it is not what is right here. Here, in the space between myself and all I come in contact with, sparks fly as our wires touch — is that the only thing I can really know, because those sparks mean an exchange of charge and thus something real, something baked into the structure of reality?

I awoke to surprise sunlight. Buachaille Etive Mor glowed in the cloud-cladded sunrise. A rainbow touched down nearby. Though I was the first one up in the pine stands crowded with tents, I was the last to leave — too much time marveling. My bic lighter failed me as I tried to make coffee. An Asian chick breaking down her tent nearby came and lit the stove for me. I thanked her and she and her European friend with the long wavy tresses waved goodbye.

The walk up Glen Coe was slow. My inner left thigh was pretty tender and I didn’t want to pull anything. But all the better to marvel at the mountains green and gold under the sun, then menacingly black and gray when the clouds rolled in. Blue skies returned quickly; the side of the Mor was shining as sunlight speckled the water running down the rocks. The Devil’s Staircase is set of switchbacks much warned of by certain people on the Way. In truth, it was no harder than anything at home and not even challenging in my condition. I stopped plenty of times for pictures, this southern aspect windy but warm. At the top, I drank water and enjoyed the mottled mountainsides under the clouds.

Oh, here comes the rain. Best go.

When I turned, never have I seen a finer sight than the mountains to the north.

I moved fast on the descending track, making up for lost time and staying ahead of the cold air now whipping down from the peaks. Rain pelted me from behind at times, but the walking had never been easier. The undulating, pebbly trail led down into the glen and then onto tarmac that ran straight into Kinlochleven. There I would wild camp on the far side of town. Or so I’d planned.

Once again, the lure of the pub proved irresistible. I stopped in the last possible place for a pint and a pie. Ease said, just pitch here, they’ll let you. But intuition was behind it, nudging my sloth ahead so it didn’t have to speak itself. I paid a few pounds to pitch over beside the hotel’s cabins, just for sheer ease. I’ll rough it again when I’m back in Pisgah or Nantahala, I said. Unpacking my tent, I found that the ferrule joining the center pole has come unglued and pushed back down inside the pole. Try as I might, it wouldn’t poke loose. Of all the days! With just one night left! Annoyed as much as relieved, I went prowling for a solution. In a musty camp kitchen, I found abandoned tent stakes. Peeling off duct tape wrapped around my water bottle, I bundled the thin steel stakes around the center pole in a makeshift splint. Well, I really would have to make it to Fort William tomorrow, wouldn’t I?

Who should be lounging on the porch of one of the cabins, but the Asian chick and her friend with the wavy tresses. She asked if I was camping down there, I said yes and explained my difficulties. In an an accent not quite French, “Oh, well, you are welcome to stay with us, even though it is not our cabin.” Huh? She explained: they’d met a nice Dutch guy who’d accidentally rented a whole cabin, not just a bunk. They were going to camp out but he offered to let them stay with him. He wasn’t here yet, but they were sure he wouldn’t mind me taking up the fourth bunk. Once again, the strange companions and generosities of this trail. I’m fine, but thank you very much, I said. I ate my last freeze-dried meal and poured the last of the Glengoyne into my camp mug. On the other side of the fence was the town football pitch. I drained the whisky and watched the local boys play five-a-side under the spotlights, while the up-glen breeze whipped a huge Palestinian flag from a rabid SNP supporter living on the other side of the field.

I was awakened in the dark by a familiar voice hovering over my tent. “My friend, are you awake?” It was the Asian chick, whom I’d found out was from Belgium.

“I am now.”

“He is here and he says you can stay with us, it’s no problem.”

“Thank you so much, but I’m fine.”

“Oh, but it will be so cold tonight, are you sure, are you going to be all right?”

“Yes, ma’am, I really appreciate it, though.”

Again, up early, though not by plan. I got going anyway. The climb out of Kinlochleven was stiff and rocky. But once up high, it was fine sailing down the glen. Sailing indeed — the wind from behind filled my jacket and pack cover like a topgallant, speeding me down the track toward Larigmor, “the great pass.”

Rain rolled like waves of static on an antenna TV. Clouds cladded the peaks again. One foot in front of the other, it was the easiest, most joyous walking I’ve ever done. The glen was gloriously weathered, raw, isolated. Even sheep were absent. The slopes were mottled with red-purple heather, green turf, and blue-gray streaks of rock.

Crossing the pass, better weather soon followed. I passed a cairn commemorating the Campbells’ retreat from the Battle of Inverlochy — supporters of the MacDonalds and Montrose (and the Crown) were to add a stone, while supporters of the Campbells and Argyll (and the Covenanters) were to take one. I knew my family history and took away two, just for good measure.

The final miles to Fort William became progressively anticlimactic. Ben Nevis was socked in with fog (not unusual, I heard) and the Way changed to logging road and then tarmac all the way into the center of town. I was not happy to reach the end, although the touristic trappings of Fort Bill had little to do with it. I realized, crossing the finish line, that I would not sleep on the ground that night, nor walk in the morning.

Well, why shouldn’t I keep walking? I had everything I needed on my back, and then some. And if even some of that I felt was excess and could give away, why then did I need a single thing shelved and closeted in my house? Just give it all up and go.

Perhaps that was what was due myself, to return to Neil Gunn’s comment. But was that ever a debt fully paid? Or was it, more likely, that even a perceptive man would never know when the debt was satisfied and now accustomed to indulging himself, he would continue on and on paying himself back, to detriment of all others in his life? This, most likely. A man is Man, after all, there’s nothing he can get away with in the end.

Better, then, for this power, this ability to walk and be content, to remain as a loaded gun. A round chambered, hammer back, riding just back of the hip bone, ready for the smooth draw when the time demands. There’s the old canard about hoping you never have to use it, but that’s false, any man who packs a power of any kind has imagined using it and using it right and using it well and being satisfied with that. It’s a hope in being competent one day, when such an act is a boon and not a cost. So then would I leave the walking on my hip, ready for catastrophe, ready for the day when everything in life goes straight to hell and there’s nothing left to hold on to so I might as well just walk. May it never happen. But at least I know what’ll set me straight and where to keep it.

Now look-ee there, that just about fixed me up.

That final night, it seemed all the walkers converged on the Ben Nevis pub. The mighty blonde and the German redhead, the Dutch guy who’d lent the cabin to the Belgian gals, the Yorkshire schoolteacher and the Korean backpacker, the Kansan walking the trail with his Outlander-obsessed mother, plus many others who’d dipped in and out of view the past week or so. We downed pint after pint and shared stories of our walk and other travels. A local lad and his mate struck up a conversation. He was an MMA promoter and was only in town to see family. He couldn’t understand why people came here to walk. “It’s a bit shit, innit? Ah’ve never even climbed Ben Nevis. Right there, mah whole life! Never once.” He showed me pictures of his trip to Las Vegas for a fight; he loved Vegas, wanted to move there as soon as possible. He had to, it was his future — he was so certain he’d make it soon — he had to make it, he was really on the cusp — did I think he could make it? what was my advice? I just asked more questions in return until the topic changed. He was white-knuckling this madness of momentum, wasn’t he? Maybe he had to go over to my side of the pond find what was due himself. Look how far I’d come to do the same, who was I to judge? I only hoped he could find solace as I did, arising at first light to just plod ahead to the repetition of the right words:

Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; for in thee do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul to thee.

- Psalm 143:8

Today is Armistice Day, 117 years on. I was thinking this morning of my great-grandfathers, one of whom never deployed farther than New Jersey, the other serving in the 60th Coastal Artillery Corps, heavy artillery that gave the Huns a good shellacking during the St. Mihiel offensive. What must have been their thoughts on that day when they heard the news? And what did they expect their lives would be like afterward? Despite a familial proclivity to preserve our history, I don’t have any accounts of their experiences, not least because my great-grandfather who commanded the big 155mm guns was notoriously reticent about literally everything.

Perhaps, then, this lack of knowing about the Great War was a subconscious drive to writing the character of Wade, the father of the protagonist Arlen, in my novel Victory Ruins. It’ll be three years next week (three years already!) since it was published, and another excerpt is fitting to commemorate the anniversary. In this part, Wade reluctantly speaks of his war, as his son is on the cusp of his own. He is speaking for himself, for men of his generation, and for men of all times who try to make sense of the cataclysms they find themselves caught up in. In the end, there is only one instrument in their hearts that can make sense of what they passed through, and it ain’t a terrible thing.

I hope you enjoy.

“Y’all call a doctor!”

But how? There was no telephone. If someone could have hollered for the doctor, they would have. But even if one of them had the lungs for it, who around would have known what the holler meant? Things weren’t quite that way anymore.

Still, there was plenty of shouting from Arlen as he came toward the house. “A doctor!”

From the barn, Wade came running. Legenia and Arlen’s sister Elizabeth emerged from the back door of the house. They shielded their eyes against the August sun. They didn’t seem terribly worried.

“One of y’all want to help?” shouted Arlen. The weight was about to break him. Only then did Wade begin to scoot over to them.

“Come on Roy, just keep breathin’. Keep it coming.” Arlen pulled Roy’s arm further over his shoulder and hefted his huge friend as much as he could bear.

“Ain’t like I can — aw, shit — ain’t — ain’t like I can stop Arlen. Just — shit — just hurts like hell when I do.”

“Reckon you broke a rib.”

It had been a long hobble from the mule pen and Arlen could not bear the weight anymore. Just as his strength was about to give out, Wade caught Roy’s other arm and hefted the big young man. “Y’all make way!” said Wade as they came up to the back door. Legenia and Elizabeth both got out of the way as they threaded sideways through the door with their gasping neighbor.

“Put him in Arlen’s room,” said Legenia.

“Ain’t no way we’ll get him upstairs,” said Wade, clearly feeling the strain himself.

“Just lay me down on the porch,” wheezed Roy.

“The porch? That’s no place for the boy,” said Legenia.

“Aw, hell, just put him out there!” said Arlen. They dragged him through the house, out the front door, and laid him down.

“No, prop him up, Arlen. He’ll suffocate himself like that!” said Elizabeth.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” said Arlen.

“Pick him up.”

Roy batted away their arms. “Leave me here,” he gasped.

“What happened to him?” said Wade.

“Mule kicked him square in the chest,” said Arlen.

The women gasped. Wade’s eyes went wide. “How come you ain’t dead, Roy?”

“Pa, ain’t like he ain’t wondered it himself,” said Arlen.

“He should be thankin’ the Lord Almighty. A kick square to the chest should have burst his heart. Did you see it coming, son?” said Wade, putting his hand on Roy’s shoulder.

“Pa, leave him be, he can’t talk.”

“That might’ve saved him.” Wade cocked his head back. “Or maybe it’s just ’cause you’re a hoss, Roy.”

Roy nodded through a grimace of pain. “I’m a big ol’ boy,” he choked out.

“You think he needs a doctor?” said Arlen.

“You run out in the truck to fetch the doctor, by the time you come back, Roy’ll be fine or dead.”

“If I’m gonna die,” said Roy, “I need one thing.”

“Oh, Arlen, do it for him,” said Legenia.

Roy waggled his head. “Don’t want it from Arlen.” He raised his eyes. “I need just a peck from sweet Elizabeth here.”

Legenia gasped. Elizabeth snorted, less offended than her mother was. Arlen stood up. “You sonuvabitch, she’s a married woman.” He gave Roy a sharp kick to the side with the toe of his boot. That set off a spasm of racking coughs. “Hope that mule did bust something up in you.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Arlen, don’t be too upset. Just the courage of a dyin’ man. Brave enough to ask for now what he had years to try and steal but never did.” She leaned over Roy. “Ain’t that right?”

Roy grimaced and it was hard to tell the real pain from the fake.

“Mama, we got to go,” said Elizabeth. “That train ain’t going to wait.”

Wade sighed. “Reckon I got to drive y’all to the station now, don’t I? My work’s got to wait on the world, world can’t wait on me, can it?”

Nobody said anything. Wade was not mad at the world. He was upset that his children wanted their parents to come visit them at their homes, when Wade thought they should come to visit him at his. Elizabeth had tried to split the difference and came for a couple of days before taking Legenia back to Charlotte to help decorate her new house, but it was not enough for Wade. His mind was set: this was the family seat and life did not take place out there.

The woman gathered their bags and took them to the car. Elizabeth bid a farewell to her brother. “You stay safe. Don’t let yourself get kicked. You ain’t got the sense to stay down like Roy here.”

Arlen nodded. “I’ll be seein’ you.” Roy moaned a farewell.

The mule would not be broken today. But Arlen would not give up on it. He went back out to the pen and kept at it until the mule was worn out. Not broke, but worn out. Neither of them had prevailed for the day, but there was always tomorrow. Roy would spend the night and maybe would be feeling better in the morning.

Arlen ate cold biscuits, buttermilk, and ham for supper. The inside of the house was orangish-yellow from the oil lamps on the table. Finishing his meal, Arlen opened the kitchen window. The night air, slightly damp on the skin, came wafting through the house from the open front window. Outside on the porch there was the sound of Wade tuning the fiddle. Short little squawks of the bow on the strings, rough like bristly hairs or pea gravel. Longer strokes — A-A-A-D——A-A-D-A went the notes — were smoother, but not by much. Wade had the bow too tight. Arlen heard him work his way through the beginning notes of several songs, skipping from one to another. Filling a cup with water, he went out on the porch.

Roy was now propped up against one of the porch columns. Arlen handed him the water. He sucked down about half of it before he began to choke.

“Easy now,” said Arlen.

“That mule busted you up pretty well, Roy. You feel any better?”

“Don’t feel better, but I’m feelin’, that’s for sure.”

“Well, that’s something,” said Wade. “What do you say we celebrate feelin’ something. That and the womenfolk not being around.” Wade looked up at his son. “Arlen, you pick a little and I’ll fiddle.”

Arlen knew that picking and fiddling meant more than just that. He was excited. When he came back out on the porch with his guitar, twilight had almost passed, but it was still light enough to see the glint of the bottle Wade held in his hand. Wade was running his finger over his chin. “One of y’all tell me: what did you do to that mule to make him kick?”

“Nothin’,” said Arlen. “That mule’s just a loose cannon. All over the damn place. Couldn’t get the halter anywhere near his face.”

Wade rested the fiddle on his knee. “What changed?”

“That mule’s the same as the day Calvin and I came over to take a look at him,” said Roy. “Ornery, that’s all. Angry, even.” Roy shifted his weight and winced in pain. A racking cough shook his body. He recovered his breath and his face seemed to ease. “I wasn’t sure if we should buy that mule in the first place, but, I’ll tell you, I got even more reservations about it now.”

“Well, we’ll figure out something.” Wade handed the bottle, the cork gone, out to Roy. “Take a few sips of that, son. It’ll help that cough.”

“That what it smells like, Mr. Breckenridge?”

“Drink up.”

They sat in the dark, the lamp light from inside nearly imperceptible to them. They played music and drank one by one from the bottle. Roy said nothing the whole time, for pain and whiskey silenced him, and hardly a dozen sentences passed between Arlen and his father. They only spoke about the songs they played. And play they did, each in his own way. Wade did not fiddle with speed or passion. He certainly could if he wanted to, dropping the fiddle down off his shoulder almost into the crook of his arm and bowing with a sharp, snapping motion of the wrist, hand gripping the bow quite high. At gatherings with neighbors — which came fewer and fewer than in days before — he played like that and some folks found his rhythm so infectious they couldn’t help but make an impromptu dance. But that was Wade in the light, amongst people. He was not a man to wear a mask, but he knew what people thought of him. If he showed them a good time, they would question their own judgments upon him. But any time he gave them mystery and complexity, they found him a baffling character, an eccentric whose set ways seemed to provoke more and more confusion and revulsion as the years went on. He was a living reminder of an uncomfortable fact and both he and they knew it.

Wade knew, too, that manners meant knowing what to show and what to hide and when to do each. So it was here, in the dark, that Wade played, not with speed but with feeling. He had loosened up the bow and Arlen could tell from the sound that it had a better touch on the strings. The tempo seemed to slow and slow some more. Arlen picked the harmony on his cheap guitar, just simple notes backing his father. Wade would hit one note softly and the next one with a quick but deep burst of effort, letting the note blossom from the full weight of his hand on the bow. Then the note would die off in a lonesome taper and there was a nearly soundless pause between it and the next note, which Roy and Arlen hung onto, waiting for the next one, like waiting for another breath that might not come. Each song ended and with only a few words, the next one began in the same pattern. Eventually, Wade stopped and set the fiddle on the porch and folded his hands across his stomach. “You play one, Arlen.”

“I ain’t good leading. You know that.”

“I ain’t tellin’ you to lead. I want to hear just the guitar.”

Arlen fingered the stubble under his chin. “Which one?”

Wade leaned back in his chair. Its joints creaked. “Long way back, I taught you a couple of tunes. You were too little for that guitar, but you got the fingering just fine.” Wade stretched out his hand toward Arlen. “Let me see that.” Arlen handed over the guitar. Wade tucked the guitar in close and hunched himself over it, face intent. He was silent. The crickets chirped and droned out in the thick, warm darkness. Then Wade’s fingers set to the strings and began to play for a minute. He stopped and handed the guitar back to Arlen. “Wasn’t the first one I taught you, but it was the one you played the best.”

Roy finally broke his silence. “What’s the name?”

“Old Stepstone,” said Arlen. “Now that you played it, the tune’s back in my fingers, but the words ain’t in my head.”

“Then I’ll sing it.” Wade licked his lips, leaned forward with elbows on knees, and waited for his cue from his son. Arlen played the tune through one time, then nodded to his father.

“I stand on the doorstep at evening time now, the wind whispers by with a moan.” Wade’s voice was clear but he had added an edge of ache to it. “The fields will be white and I will be gone, to roam o’er this wide world alone.”

Arlen kept playing, head down, listening to the words.

“Goodbye dear ol’ stepstone, goodbye to my home, God bless those I leave with a sigh. I’ll cherish fond memories when I’m far away, to roam o’er this wide world alone.”

Wade abruptly stopped and leaned back in his chair. Arlen quickly finished off the tune, but let the last notes ring in the guitar, fading and giving way to the sound of the crickets again.

“Where did you learn that one, Mr. Breckenridge?” Roy said. His words flowed whiskey-smooth over the cracked rib.

Wade was absolutely stock still and perfectly silent. After a moment, Arlen started to wonder if he had fallen asleep. Then his father’s voice rolled out into the night air. “A feller in the Army with me taught me that song. He was a mountain boy. Can’t quite remember where he was from, maybe up Madison County way. He came down to Hickory, worked in the Piedmont Wagon factory there, and joined up with the rest of us when the war started. We were all nervous, ’cause we didn’t know where we were going. And this feller, his name was Buckner, and he said he already knew what that was like, leavin’ home. Said he’d learned that song when he was young, but he didn’t know how right it was until he moved down to Hickory. I don’t think he ever liked working in that factory. The Army didn’t suit him neither.” Wade took a sip from the bottle and let it wash around in his mouth. “Some of the other fellers didn’t care for him, and I don’t know how much he cared for us ‘flat-landers,’ but I liked Buckner. He taught me that song.”

There was a length of peacefulness after Wade finished speaking. He cradled the bottle in his lap for a while, then set it down on the porch, within reach of them all.

“Was it bad, Mr. Breckenridge?” said Roy loudly, shattering the quiet. He was quite drunk.

“Was what bad?”

“Going off to fight. In the war.”

“Which part? Leavin’ home?”

“All of it.”

“Leavin’ home was hard. I hadn’t ever been farther than Statesville before that.” Wade stopped.

Roy persisted in his questioning. “Well, how was it hard?”

Arlen felt a little sour. He and not Roy should be asking Wade these questions. But I ain’t ever had no mind to ask. Pa never talked about it.

Wade drank from the bottle again before he replied to Roy. “I never had been away from this place and I didn’t know what was out there in the wide world. I was excited, of course I was, but it got to my nerves at times.” Wade stopped. Arlen could not see if he was pondering a point or just had nothing more to say. But eventually his voice cut again through the dark. “Reckon that was because everything was always changing. We were always going someplace, packin’ up, unpackin’. They’d give us an officer, then switch him out after a week ’cause he was a fool, or sometimes promote him because he was too good, and then they’d assign us a fool. There was a lot to learn – marchin’, salutin’, all the little bits of drill. And then we had to just about forget all that when we were put on the line and we had to learn how to fight all over again.”

“What do you mean? They didn’t train you the way to fight?”

“No.”

Arlen had never ever heard Wade’s voice that terse. He felt the need to put himself between his friend and his father, just in case Roy went a little too far. “Pa, I reckon Roy was just curious. Just tryin’ to get an idea of what it was like.”

“I reckon there ain’t much to tell. I didn’t do nothin’ too important. Hell, I didn’t even see a German worth shootin’ at. Only ones I ever came across were already dead or prisoners.”

“So you ain’t ever shot a man?” Roy said.

“I was in charge of laying the wire for the field telephones. I spent all my time hoofin’ back and forth between the major and the telephone exchange in the rear.”

“That’s all you did? Lay wire?”

Wade’s disembodied voice rumbled sternly through the humid purple-black air. “It was an important job. All the shellin’ kept you busy, ’cause the shells would cut the line and you’d have to run out and replace it. There were other fellers who rotated in and out, but not many of ’em liked it. Weren’t much good at it, either.”

“How’s that?”

“If the wire’s cut, most of the time you got to get out of the trench and run out in the open to fix it. If the Germans had a crack shot or a machine gun sighted in, they’d put bullets around you. They’d snap around your ears. Most fellers didn’t like that. ’Course, I didn’t either, but I was good at the job. You boys should have seen me back in my day. I could carry a hog on each shoulder and go anywhere with ’em, even up a ladder. Runnin’ with wire, that was nothin’. There was only one other feller who could do it. He was farm boy like me, from Minnesota. He’d been doing it longer than me, showed me a few tricks. We got on real well, we’d lay wire together. Thing was, he was a mite tall. One day, we ran out of wire and needed more. He told me he’d go back and get more. He scooted down into a shell hole and I reckon he stood up a little bit too much as he went across the bottom. German shot him through his helmet.” Wade cleared his throat. “His name was Arlen. He didn’t have no family of his own, so I named my son after him.”

Arlen’s face flushed. Roy looked over at him, as if he could feel the heat from Arlen’s cheeks. “How about that?” he said. Arlen said nothing. He knew he had been named for his father’s friend. But he had never heard the truth until now. It was a strange time to mention it, strange for Wade to talk about the war so freely. The whiskey was not lubricating the way, there was something else pressing it out of Wade, some other need that did not come from within, but from out there.

Why now?

Before Arlen could speak, though, Roy was at it again. “It was a rough time, then?” Roy asked Wade. “Did you have some close calls?”

Wade’s voice was very low. “Yes.”

Roy forged ahead with his questioning. “Mr. Breckenridge, I just want to know what it was like,” he said, his words slurring from the drink. “And I reckon I wanted to know what we have to do if there’s a war. I mean, what do you think we should do, Mr. Breckenridge, when we get into a war?”

Wade took his time and his voice was very low when he did speak, but reply he did: “Do what’s right. Do your duty.”

“I’m gonna do my duty, Mr. Breckenridge, I guarantee you that. You mean my duty to my country, don’t you?”

“If that’s what your duty is.”

“Well, ain’t that duty, Mr. Breckenridge? Weren’t that your duty? Why’d you go to fight?”

Wade’s voice was no louder than before when he eventually spoke. “I won’t go into why we went, what we thought we were fightin’ for. Doesn’t matter now, because none of it came to pass, not like folks said it would. But going was the right thing. Not going would’ve been worse. And a man’s duty ain’t a terrible thing.”

The hairs on Arlen’s neck prickled in a wave to the top of his scalp.

If it ain’t terrible, then why does he sound like it is? And how can stayin’ here be worse?

Wade hefted his bulk out of the chair and slowly bent over to pick up the fiddle and bow. “All right, boys, now that’s enough. I’m going to bed. Roy, you going to be all right?”

“If I’m still warm to the touch in the mornin’, you can count on me for breakfast.”

“Arlen’ll fix up a place for you to sleep. See y’all in the mornin’.”

“’Night, Pa.”

“’Night, Mr. Breckenridge.”

They didn’t say anymore. Arlen just took the bottle from Roy and had another long pull, then set to barely picking the guitar, no louder than the crickets.

In the hope y’all’ll (that’s “y’all will,” for those who don’t know) stick around, I wanted to drop another chapter from my novel Victory Ruins. Not just for kicks, but for the anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, which started 80 years ago today. When I think of the protagonist, Arlen, and how he might have remembered that battle, it comes down to things he knew little of on his Carolina farm: snow, cold, danger, loneliness. No, not loneliness exactly, not at least as we think of it. He is lonely, but he is not alone. As you shall see, he has a comrade with him, of the closest kind. But when someone so close is not well, they might as well not be there. In such trials, which can stretch on for years in one’s life, one becomes lonely out of the hope for something better. For that yet-to-be time and place where things are set right, for one’s self but also for the other who is close by. Knowing not the contours of eternity, we settle in such moments on what we have known, in a time and place we have already been. And we are not wrong — it is nostalgia in the best sense, a longing for home. For we would not be so alive and capable in this world if home had been bad, if things had not been just so, back then and right there. I think Arlen would have thought of that battle in those terms, that deepening trial that sees too the sharpening of care for another at the same moment.

Without further ado, here is Chapter XV from Victory Ruins. If you want to read the rest, it’s available on Amazon.

“Fuckin’ First Battalion. Goddamn pigs, all of them.”

William Buford Paine’s voice rang from the cellar of the house beside the truck. He was a fast one. The convoy had hardly stopped and no order dismount their trucks had come. But he was already rooting around for a place to stay, just in case. Peering around the corner of the tarpaulin, Arlen looked up the street. It looked like a stop for sure. Arlen jumped off the tail of the deuce-and-a-half. For once, it was cobblestones and not ankle-deep mud. Before they could ask, Arlen told the men, “Y’all go on ahead and find yourself a billet.” He peered up the length of the convoy. “Before Lieutenant Venters sees you,” he added.

“Won’t he be mad?” said Private Wood.

“You just let me worry about that. Y’all go on and burrow in like a tick.”

Poking his head into the cellar, Arlen called out, “Buddy? You in there?”

“Fuckin’ First Battalion . . .” muttered Paine.

Arlen descended into the stone room. It was mighty large and looked like a decent place for a billet, if a little chilly. “And what’d those boys ever do to you?”

“Look at this place. It’s a mess.”

Arlen’s eyes had not quite adjusted to the darkness. “Looks fine to me.”

Paine grumbled over in a dark corner.

“Buddy, if you want, we can take one of the upper floors.”

Paine turned around. His scowl was sinister in the shadows of the cellar. “Are you crazy? The Krauts will know we’re here.”

“Oh, I reckon they already do. You know, there’s a family up there. But we can run ’em out.”

“Walking around up there, the Krauts would see me and call in arty on the house.”

“We ain’t close enough to the front for that.”

“Then they’ll shoot me through the window when I go to the crapper.”

Arlen repressed a sigh. Sometimes his words just did not get through. “Reckon you want me down here, too.”

“I’m not letting you get shot either,” muttered Paine.

Arlen let him be. He shucked his musette bag and rifle and went out onto the street. The regiment had liberated this town nearly two months ago. Now it was a safe spot for the men to rest and relax. For weeks since their perfect infantry attack, the G.I.s had been out there on that awful plain of mud. They had assaulted and patrolled; they were shelled and sniped at; they struggled through quagmires and across swollen streams; they hauled their dead and wounded back the same way. The Krauts hid in the towns and the land around them; the G.I.s killed them amongst the bricks and in the mud. Now that awful offensive was behind them and they could get a little peace. A little was all they needed, a G.I. could make it go quite far. It was a week until Christmas. They would not celebrate in Berlin. But that was all right with Arlen. If he could just go down to the little church where the Germans sang carols, that was just as good. Just let there be peace in Kolscheid, even if not on earth. Then they could send him out again.

The rest of the squad was tucking themselves nicely into the adjoining houses. Some of the other squads had not even dismounted their trucks, still waiting for the order. Poor suckers, they would be left with whatever billets the officers didn’t snap up. Arlen noticed a stack of empty C ration boxes outside the cellar door. He quickly snatched them and went back down into the cellar. Making a neat pile of cardboard cartons in the middle of the floor, Arlen lit them and began an important ritual. Canteen, cup, and instant coffee appeared from his musette bag. Quickly, he made a strong mix.

A tin can scattered across the floor, tinging on the stones.

“Buddy, you want some coffee?”

Paine did not reply. He scuffled across the cellar, nudging empty C ration cans with his toe.

“Get your cup, I’ll make you some.”

Paine shuffled over to his kit. He pulled out his blanket and wrapped it around him. With a grunt, he continued scuffling back and forth. The fire was smoldering. Arlen blew gently on the embers and the cartons finally caught and put up a strong flame. Arlen held his canteen cup of water over the fire and waited for it to heat. His dry, cracked hands prickled at the warmth of the fire. Paine kept making his circles, around and around the cellar, grumbling under his breath. He kicked a can again, sending it scattering into Arlen’s little fire.

“Dammit, you quit that right now.”

“Quit what?”

“All of it. The damn pacin’ most of all. You keep that up, you’ll wear a hole all the way to China.”

Paine scowled. “Why are you in such a good mood today?”

“You ain’t exactly a ray of sunshine yourself.” Arlen looked back to his coffee. It was beginning to steam lightly.

Paine swore indistinctly, and he lashed out, trying to throw something from his hand against the wall. But his arm got caught in the blanket and the object disappeared into the folds, leaving Paine searching for it, swearing under his breath.

“What are you so damned angry about?”

“What do you think, Arlen? Those fuckin’ First Battalion pigs left all these cans and cigarette butts everywhere.”

He was still on about that. “Didn’t know you cared so much,” said Arlen.

“Well, I do.”

“Ain’t so sure we left our positions much cleaner when we left for Kerkrade.”

What a place, Kerkrade. A few weeks back, the whole battalion had retired to the old monastery there for a couple days. It was their first real rest in months. The ancient halls were so ornate that Arlen could not believe men had the patience to carve stone like that. He would have admired the place for hours, but the sound of falling water snatched him away from his gaping. There were showers. Arlen had hung limply under the hot and endless stream like a flag in a summer rain. He had emerged flush, alert, and weak, and the clean towel had made his skin crawl. They ate bowl after bowl of stew and whole loaves of thick bread on captured German china. Others had played cards and written letters, their voices echoing up and down the halls of the college, but Arlen had just slept and slept and slept until he awakened the next day groggy and heavy-limbed. He could laugh and smile and snarl in anger again. Others had recovered, too: Paine had gotten his humor back, for a little while. That was what clean was. Was, was, was — things were always past tense for Arlen. He could remember after he forgot, and he remembered what others forgot. But these days it was harder and harder to think back, as if there was some limit, some bend in the earth where memory stopped. It seemed closer and closer behind him every day.

Arlen coughed, waving his hand in front of his face. The waxy smoke of burning cardboard was beginning to hang against the ceiling like a fog. He dipped his pinkie in the coffee. Just another few minutes. He stirred the dark liquid with his bayonet blade.

“Did you have to build that in here, Arlen?”

“You want me to go build it in the street?”

“The damn smoke is getting my eyes.”

“I ain’t got no heatin’ tabs.” Hopefully the looie would get them more. They needed more of everything. The Army could never seem to get them enough or on time. Arlen’s toes prickled on pinpoints most of the time, for his socks were wearing thin and they had received no winter boots. He had half a mind to write his mother asking for socks, for he had not received any from her. It wouldn’t be much use to write her now, though. Once she received the letter, knitted a pair, and posted it, it would be too late. And she surely couldn’t go out and buy a pair. Things were very tight for the family. He knew that from the last letter she wrote — the letters were always from Legenia, never from Wade, who proclaimed many a time he was no good with a pen. Arlen had already sent home most of his pay. He would not ask for anything more from his parents.

What about Rebecca and Elizabeth? Or Ruth? Maybe they could send a pair.

If only he knew their addresses. He could not remember.

Was there anyone else? Arlen felt there was, but he could not picture who it might be. It was so hard to imagine these days. Whatever it was, he had to see it in front of him or else it remained beyond that creeping horizon that shadowed his memories.

The carton fire was dying out. Arlen fetched more cardboard and returned to the cellar. He piled up the cardboard again and set fire to it again with his cigarette lighter. The flames let off black, waxy smoke again and he set his canteen cup over the fire to let it warm back up. Paine came scuttling over. His arms poked out from the swaddled-up blanket and he put his bare hands over the fire, pushing Arlen’s cup out of the way.

“Buddy, you’d better cut that out.”

“I’m cold.”

Arlen’s face flushed in anger. He was sick and tired of Paine’s griping. He pushed Paine’s hands out of the way with the hot cup. “Go on, now, get out of the way. Let me finish. You can have it after I’m done.”

“Goddamn you, Arlen, you are so greedy.” Paine stomped off to the corner and in between a hiss and a growl, said, “Can’t you see how cold I am? Some fucking friend you are.”

“You’re one to talk!” snapped Arlen. “How about you just leave me be for once? How ’bout you quit doin’ whatever you want and then come whinin’ to me when things ain’t like you like ’em?”

Over in the corner, Paine sat in a lump, his eyes boring a dull hole through some distant thickness. His lips twitched every now and then, but there was no audible mutter.

Lord, what do I do with him?

Arlen dipped his pinkie in the coffee again. It was almost warm enough. Arlen tasted the coffee. Another minute and Paine could come warm his hands.

“Sergeant?”

The voice boomed like an 88 in the cellar. Arlen jumped to his feet. “Yessir?”

Lieutenant Venters was hunched over in the low cellar door. “Get your ass out here,” he said.

“Yessir.” Arlen grabbed his gear and was out of the cellar in two leaps.

Lieutenant Venters’ armor-piercing stare did not waver from Arlen as he spoke. “I had to get your squad out of these houses myself, Sergeant, because you were nowhere to be found.”

“Yessir, I’m sorry, sir.”

“No one told you to secure billets.”

“No, sir, but I figured—”

The convoy cranked up one by one. Arlen’s mouth hung open.

“Mount up, Sergeant.”

Arlen hesitated for a moment, then disappeared into the cellar. The shelter was unnecessary, and Venter’s wrath had been expended, short and sharp like the MG 42. Arlen emerged with Paine beside him. The blanket trailed behind his buddy and Arlen carried his gear.

“Lieutenant, I—” said Arlen.

“Sergeant, the Krauts have broken through. Launched an attack last night.”

Like a knife stropped on old denim, Arlen’s fear came sharp quickly, ready to cut the unknown small enough to handle. “Where’d they break through? Don’t tell me Inden.” Lord, anywhere but Inden, don’t send us back there.

“To the south, Sergeant. Down in Belgium.”

“Ain’t there someone else they can send? I mean, why pull us off the line just to send us back out again? We’re mighty worn out.”

Venters was looking at his watch and not listening.

“Sir, we do all the damn fightin’ in the Army, seems like. Do they have to send us? They sendin’ the battalion? The regiment?”

The lieutenant raised his eyes to Arlen’s. “They’re sending the whole division, Sergeant. And many others.”

“It’s that big, sir?”

“The biggest yet.”

Arlen gnawed on his lip.

“Sergeant, you’re right. We’ve fought more and fought harder than any other division in the Army. We all need a rest. And these Krauts know that. They think they’ve caught us with our pants down. Well, we will show them.”

“Sir—”

“They’ve left their defenses, Sergeant. All they have done is give us a better chance to kill them in the open.” Venters grinned pearl-white. “And this platoon will kill more Krauts than any other in the division.”

Arlen looked away from the maw of the gleeful shark. Paine was trying to pull the dirty blanket over his skinny shoulders with a single shivering hand.

“Sir—”

“Mount up.”

Wordlessly, Arlen boosted Paine into the back of the truck and his buddy disappeared under the dark of the tarpaulin with the rest of the squad. Arlen threw in their gear and climbed in himself. The convoy rumbled into motion and as the truck pulled away, Venters leapt into the back. He hung from the truck, peering around the side at the passing town. His grin still shone brilliantly against the drab houses and grey sky. His thoughts were not with his soldiers. They were already in the fight ahead of them.

Don’t matter to the looie what we can give. He’ll get it from us.

Ask and you shall receive.

Arlen felt a finger on his thigh. Paine was feeling his pants leg. Arlen saw that it was stained. He must have dropped his cup without knowing it when he ran from the cellar. Paine wiped his finger across the brown mark and sniffed his finger. “At least it’s coffee this time.”

This time, at least this time.

A frigid gust of wind lifted the rear tarpaulin and the taped-up headlights of the following truck peeked in. The tiny beam cut across the hunched-over men like a miner’s lamp through a crowded pit. The occasional ember of a cigarette traced the orbit of their heads bobbing on a turbulent tide of no known ebb or flow. Another gust came rushing in under the tarpaulin and chilled them all to the bone. The men shuffled around on the wooden benches, trying to find relief. Their rear ends were asleep and their toes were numb in their leather boots. After dusk had fallen for the second time on this journey, they all stopped asking when they would get there. The roads were choked with tanks and jeeps and trucks and refugees fleeing west, but these elicited no response from them except for the occasional “You got any smokes?” Yet another gust bellowed the tarpaulin and Arlen shivered. He tucked his head further into his thin jacket until his chin grafted itself to his Adam’s apple.

The engine revved and the transmission yawned as the clutch searched for the gear. It engaged with a jerk, yanking everyone onto each other. The truck rolled steadily along at a faster pace. But as soon as the G.I.s settled back onto the benches, the truck slammed to a stop. The G.I.s grabbed onto each other and cursed. The engine coughed to a stop, then instantly ground to life again. The clutch caught and they crawled forward again in an agonizingly low gear. The truck swayed and shifted gears again. Arlen closed his eyes, feeling the truck beginning to gain speed. His heart jumped and his eyes opened to the dark as the truck banged to a stop again. The driver caught the lowest gear this time, and they sat idling for almost a minute before once again the wheels began to turn and they bobbed over the obstruction.

“Don’t they know how to build a damn road in this country?”

Which country was that? Arlen peered through the gap in the tarpaulin. A glimpse revealed dark firs and fields dusted in white. Then the cold wind slapped his face and even his eyeballs went numb. He jerked his head back.

The convoy pounded along at five miles per hour at best. The cigarettes were all gone and it was completely dark now. The truck downshifted again and the shaking and jolting stopped. Smooth paved road flowed under the tires and every man felt the vibrations filter out through their fingers and toes. Relieved, a few fell asleep. The convoy climbed in elevation. Wind whipped stronger and stronger up the ridge as they ascended. Arlen tied the tarpaulin shut tighter against the wind. The miles, taken at no great speed, wore on and on. Arlen laid his head down on his knees and closed his eyes. He dozed off, his mind dropping off into a pool of blankness. He lay like that for some time before hearing the rush of water; he even smelled it. The convoy slowed, stopped, and waited. Someone outside was walking up and down, shouting to the drivers, who shouted back argumentatively. The trucks started again at a creeping pace.

And suddenly the engines reverberated on stone. Arlen opened the tarpaulin and saw houses of brick and carefully fitted stone. There was a sign: Malmedy. There were no lights in the town, but the streets seemed alive: fair-haired young girls and older women, a grandfather, a policeman waving the convoy on in a habitual yet unnecessary gesture, even a couple of young kids, all watching from street corners and doorways, revealed by the slight gleam of the truck lights. The convoy passed through the center of the town. The cobbled streets changed to paved road and the wind whipped up again. Nothing but darkness and, barely audible over the rumble of the trucks, the rattle of tree branches tossing against each other in a violent gust.

Arlen didn’t look up when the trucks stopped again. He just sat, nose tucked beneath his buttoned-up collar, trying to wiggle each toe as much as possible. There was a bang of a falling tailgate, then another, and another. Only then did he look up, the cold nipping down onto his neck before he had a chance to adjust the collar again. The soldiers in the squad began raising their heads. Shouted orders and clamoring voices began to fill the sharp air.

“Well, reckon we’re here.”

The G.I.s jumped off the truck, wincing as they landed on cramped calves and stiff knees. “Y’all hold down the fort,” said Arlen, and he immediately went in search of the lieutenant. Venters found him first. “Give me a minute to find out where we are headed, Sergeant. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.”

“You got ’em, sir?”

The platoon leader tossed him a pack of Kools. Arlen went back to the truck, and passed out the cigarettes. The men took them reluctantly.

“Where are we, Sarge?” said another.

“I heard Belgium.”

“Belgium? Why Belgium?”

Arlen did not answer. He tried to smoke his Kool, but it really was too much for a cold night.

“Sarge, are we retreating?”

“Yeah, I heard everyone’s on the run.”

“Ain’t nobody on the run,” said Arlen. “They’re sendin’ us to finish these Krauts off.”

“Yeah, but what if our old positions got hit after we left? What if the Krauts are attacking all over?”

Arlen shook his head in the dark. He didn’t want to listen to all this.

“The Krauts are out there in American uniforms. They dress up like G.I.s, I heard.”

“Shit, so they can sneak past our outposts?”

“Yeah, and ambush us from behind.”

“Those sneaky bastards.”

The rumors went on and on. Nothing stood between the Krauts and the Channel, they were going all the way to Dunkirk, just like in 1940. Hitler himself was at the head of the lead panzer divisions and the SS had orders to take no prisoners. General Eisenhower was back in Washington and Field Marshal Montgomery would take over the defense of the Allied line. The last one angered Arlen. “All right, y’all can cut that out. I ain’t gonna hear nothin’ ’bout us fightin’ for fuckin’ Monty.”

“But what if it’s true, Sarge?”

“Shut up, all y’all,” said Arlen.

Venters finally returned. “Captain Reaser says this is the end of the line for the whole battalion. Get your bedrolls out of the trucks, we’ve got to march to our positions.”

“Tonight? In the dark?” said Arlen.

“The Krauts are out there, close by. We’ve got to get in a strong position and quickly. There might even be a fight tonight.”

The men took the news laconically. They retied their boots, checked their equipment, and loaded their rifles. Hefting their bedrolls, they formed up in a squad column, waiting. One by one, the platoons moved out, each in a different direction, each to be on its own. Venters appeared again. He looked harried and Arlen felt a little knot twist up in his stomach. “Form up, Sergeant. First Squad’s in the lead. Have your scouts fall in with Sergeant Proctor.”

The scouts set out with Venters and Proctor, the platoon guide, and the rest of First Squad followed, each man of the remaining nine pausing until the soldier ahead was five paces ahead. Before them, an open field of snow sloped sharply upwards toward a crest covered with firs. The dim truck lights were gone and with snow-threatening clouds covering the sliver of moon, only the barest silhouette of the man ahead gave any indication of direction. The scouts, moving quickly and confidently, disappeared, and Arlen had to search for their boot prints to find his way. The wind blew stronger and stronger and their steps grew slower and slower. The snow soaked right through their leather boots. Arlen’s feet went numb. Nearing the treeline, Arlen stopped and made a count of his followers as they trickled up to him. All eight. Without a word, he set off again, following the boot prints into the dark forest at the top of the ridge.

The firs were oppressively close, but they broke the wind, at least. Arlen still could not see Sergeant Proctor and the scouts, but he heard snatches of their voices in between the long gusts whistling through the trees. We could fumble about here all night and never find our way out. He stopped and looked for the rest of the squad. There was movement out there, darkness moving on darkness, visible only in the periphery. There was a loud clank and he heard someone swear.

“Y’all all right?” he said.

“Calloway ran into a tree,” said a voice. It sounded like Hazlett, a retread like Calloway. His voice was tense; he had never done this before. Neither had Young, the replacement. Three new men: the latter green, the other two stripped away from their cushy jobs and sent up to the line. Was the Army that desperate? Was the whole enterprise stretched that thin, just like the line here in Belgium had been?

Good Lord, what if we’ve gone as far as we were ever going to?

He shivered. The firs rattled as a gust ran up the length of the ridge.

I want out of these trees.

Arlen left the private behind. His steps fell heavier and faster. He could not see the scouts. He lost sight of their trail through the trees and all he could do was fumble forward.

Twigs cracked like rifles underfoot.

The Krauts are out there, close by.

Venters repeated himself in his head. He could not shake the looie’s words. The resident tactician had rented a room for good.

They were on the wrong side of the slope. They had to get up to the crest. It was safer up there.

Arlen thrashed ahead, kicking through any logs and limbs that stood in his way. Up and up he went, ducking and weaving between branches. He saw nothing except black forest. He had a vague sense of going uphill and so he kept on, tripping and crawling through the trees. Bashing his knee on a stump, Arlen stopped, holding in his swearing. He stayed stock still. The forest was dark and swaying, full of movement and not a sign of life. Where were the scouts? How did they move so quickly?

He dared not look back, but for what reason, he did not know.

Up the slope. Get up that damn slope.

Twigs cracked and snapped underfoot. The wind stroked the trees and the boughs overhead hissed.

Arlen stepped around a big fir and he felt that he was over the crest, headed down the reverse slope. He let out a long breath. If he met any Krauts in the woods, he was in the uphill position. At least that was to his favor.

Another hundred yards passed under his numb feet before he saw the tree line of the far side of the woods. There were figures squatting just inside the tree line. Arlen’s steps slowed, instinctively, not willing to trust his first assumption. He unslung his rifle and lightened each step so he could listen. He heard nothing distinct — they all spoke in hushed tones.

Arlen stopped, catching his breath and composing himself. He waited in the dark until he heard movement behind him. At last able to look back, he held his hand straight up in a signal to halt, hoping that the squad would see it. Once the snapping behind him stopped, he cautiously approached the dark figures.

Venters was waiting with Proctor and the scouts. The lieutenant rubbed his hands together frantically to keep warm. “Sergeant, this is as far as we go tonight.”

“We diggin’ in here?”

“That’s right, Sergeant. First Squad will be here on the right, Second Squad in the center, and Third Squad out there on the left.”

“No reserve?”

“We’re spread thin, but we have to cover as much ground as possible.” Venters made a gesture in the dark. “There’s a crossroads down there, Sergeant, and I want your squad to cover it and the road running out of it toward our position. Understood?”

“Yessir.”

“Good.”

“Lieutenant?”

“Sergeant?”

“We stayin’ here long?”

“Things may change in the morning. But for tonight, prepare like we’re going to stay.”

“Yessir.”

Arlen passed the word along to his men. Close to the edge of the forest, they spread out, staggering themselves in a rough arc along the treeline. Soon the sound of chopping on wood and the clank of entrenching tools drowned out even the wind. Arlen scraped away a thick layer of twigs and needles to get to the hard ground. He slammed the entrenching tool against the dirt, over and over, but he only knocked loose a few frozen clumps of earth.

Arlen stopped his rhythmic swinging as Paine sat down slowly next to him, settling as though a great weight bore on his shoulders, his arms dropping as though he was about to faint. “What is it, buddy?”

“Fuckin’ lost my musette bag.” Paine’s voice was flat, drained of all feeling.

Arlen’s face fell. “Where’d you put it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t know?”

“It’s next to the tree.”

Arlen looked back into the hopeless forest. He laughed. That short chuckle led to another, and one more, until he could say, “Oh, I know which one you mean. The tall one, right?”

Paine said nothing. Arlen saw his face disappear into the dark — perhaps he was looking down at the ground. Arlen rested on his knees for a minute, watching his closest friend. Then he went back to digging. I’ll finish it.

He got as deep as he could go in the frozen ground, just deep enough. He set the entrenching tool aside, feeling the little bit of sweat he had worked up beginning to grow cold already. But the chill that would stay with him all night was not on Arlen’s mind. He thought about Paine. Arlen scooted over to him. “Hey, buddy, you get down there in the hole. Just go on to bed. And don’t you worry ’bout sentry. I’ll stand guard all night.”

“I’m cold. Really cold.”

“Here, take my blanket. We’ll find yours in the morning.”

“Okay.” Paine slid numbly down into the foxhole, taking the blanket. Again his eyes bored into the distant nothing, and yet they were the only part of Paine which seemed to hold onto life. The rest of his thin body and his grimy, gaunt face was beating a retreat. Arlen pulled the blanket up around Paine’s neck and tucked it behind his shoulders. Paine hardly moved a muscle himself.

The boy needs to go home. Why won’t they pull him off the line?

Lord, what do I do with him?

Arlen shivered and jabbed his hands under his armpits. He needed to check the perimeter. Slinging his M1, he made a slow clockwise trip around his patch of the forest. He found each of his men by their raspy breathing and coughs. Everyone was dug in good and deep. They would add logs to their foxholes tomorrow morning. The BAR, set at the apex of the position, was in good hands with Wood, and Sayers already had the spare magazines laid out. Everything looked safe as could be, way out here, the flanks in the air, the Germans out there in the snow and trees, headed who knew where.

After a few wrong turns, Arlen found the foxhole again. Paine was curled up in the bottom and Arlen slid in slowly so as not to wake him. He rested the M1 on the hump of earth he’d built up in front of the hole and settled down to wait.

His heart leapt when Paine spoke.

“Arlen, why me?”

Paine’s eyes were fully open, though he lay curled up.

“What’s that, buddy?”

“Why haven’t I been hit?”

Arlen tried to answer as quickly as he could. “’Cause you’ve got me around, remember? Your lucky rabbit’s foot?”

The platitude had no effect on target. “You weren’t there at Mortain, and I didn’t get hit there. Why?”

“Buddy, you ain’t gonna be hit, all right? Ain’t yours to worry ’bout. You know what to do. You just go with your gut and don’t get careless and you’ll be fine.”

“No,” said Paine, voice dull and hollow, “my number’s up. Everyone else got theirs. You and I are the only stateside guys left. And you got wounded. You got your number. It wasn’t the million dollar one, but you punched that ticket. You don’t have to worry. But me . . .”

Paine stopped and was quiet for so long that Arlen’s stomach began rising into his throat. The boy was so still.

Oh, Lord, don’t take him from me now. Not like this, not out here.

His buddy spoke again, his voice just as empty as before. “I’ve gone so long — so many close calls — not even a scratch. Never even opened my aid kit.” He went quiet again for a while. Then, thinly, he said, “When it comes, it’ll be the real McCoy. The big one. It’s coming soon. I can feel it.”

And Paine went silent. His time had come, the well had run dry. There was no filling it back up again. Pain and fatigue had crystallized him into this man he was now — not malleable, adaptable, renewable, but hard, frozen, transparent to all the world’s brutality. And the only remaining change in his nature was the right tap with the right force in the right place.

Arlen settled into the foxhole, his rifle in his lap and his back against the foxhole side, his bones becoming one with the frozen earth. Paine began to snore — at least he could sleep. At least he did not have to lay here knowing that there was no relief for him, that there was no returning to safety.

Lord, what can I do for him?

God spoke, but it was not the voice in the flash of light on high. The inevitability of the thing to do was the answer.

But I’m already standin’ beside him, Lord, don’t you see?

And maybe he don’t have to, but I got to fight. Even if he ain’t there.

Lord, you didn’t even give him a chance. You gave me a second chance, dammit, give him one, too.

Arlen wrapped his arms tighter around him and dug his chin into his collar. He looked at Paine. A thin curl of breath whistled between the young soldier’s teeth.

What can I do?

Arlen stayed awake beside him all night.

I have a novel — the Novel In The Drawer, I call it — that is begging to get out. I started it years ago, while I lived overseas. The story came to me more easily than anything I’ve ever written, all except the last act. I wrote it as three novellas that were tied across time by the interaction of the characters with a folktale. The folktale exerted a captivating effect on them regardless of time, leading them to make decisions, for good or ill, they never would have otherwise. I intended to publish each novella individually, then compile them into a three-part novel. Didn’t get there, so it went in the drawer — but I’m there now.

The fly in the ointment: this Novel In The Drawer is very off-brand for me. My novel Victory Ruins is distinctly Southern lit, maybe with a hint of historical fiction, and my current WIP runs in the same vein. But this novel’s setting is quite different. For a while I thought it would be a distraction or confusing. “I’ll go the normal publishing route and see if I can get it out that way.” It’s probably more appealing to contemporary audiences than Victory Ruins, I’ll admit. But I just don’t have the patience any longer. I’m just going to put it out there.

So in coming months, I’ll be posting this Novel In The Drawer, chapter by chapter. Once a week, once every other week, I don’t know yet. Depends on how the final edit goes. I’ll probably leave it free at first. Eventually it’ll go behind the paywall. And once it’s all out, I’ll put it out as a paperback and ebook.

In addition to this novel, I also have short stories that I intend to publish here. And some occasional essays and commentary. Oh, and I have an idea for a story that follows the journey of post-apocalyptic Hebridean sailors to find the lost kingdom of Prester John, which I might serialize here. Yes, I know, more than I can chew.

I have no idea what I’m doing, but I can promise you it’ll be worthwhile. I’m in a busy season of life and will publish as frequently as I can, and more and more frequently as we go — but whatever I post, will be good. There’s too much “content” out there, too many emails in the inbox. I promise to keep each post worth your time.

I’m glad y’all are here at the beginning with me.

Much of Victory Ruins came out of my conversations with WWII vets in my adolescence. In those days, the late ‘90s and early 2000s, they began to share things that they never had Perhaps it was the cultural milieu, perhaps a sense of impending mortality. I had a good sense for what those men were like as men, but it was hard to grasp what they went through. I remember my grandfather’s friend telling me over the dinner table about how he escaped capture during the Battle of Bulge and about the seeing the Germans kill Americans. He choked up badly in front of us all. He’d never told anyone before, even his children. He could hardly articulate it, even after all those years. What had he seen?

As the book took shape, I encountered a conundrum. Call it the demands of competing fidelities. On the one hand, I wanted to portray the historical truth of the war such that the reader might understand, through an accurate setting and well-described action, how that war was fought, so that through the details they might know something of how external forces irrevocably transformed those men. On the other hand, I also wanted to capture the inner experience of the G.I. and how he as a man found his way through. But being no soldier myself, having seen no war, how could I speak of it? In what possible way could my judgments about the matter at all be accurate and thus truthful?

The drafts sprawled on and on, swaying between pedantic and melodramatic. The war was becoming the whole book, when it should have been only the second act. I set it aside for a while. When I returned, I had a clearer view. Perhaps I’d remembered my grandfather’s friend’s moment of bared memory. Perhaps it was some distillation of all the stories I’d heard not just from WWII veterans, but from veterans from Korea, Vietnam, and the GWOT. Even when they would freely speak about war, they could not say what it was.

Wittgenstein wrote, “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” If this is this true, then those who have “seen the elephant” have seen an entirely different world than their own. For they experience the limits of language in trying to convey what they went through. No matter the volume or clarity or accuracy of the words, they still fell short of that full, embodied experience.

When I realized this, the way ahead for the book became clear. It was not mine to do what others could not. The new fidelity was to speak as those men had. I readjusted the story and the prose to fit the way men of that age wrote, like Eugene Sledge in With the Old Breed and Frank Irgang’s Etched in Purple. And it all came together.

In memory of those men, I offer you an excerpt from Victory Ruins. I feel it is fitting to honor them, and also relevant for the rest of us today. Whether we like it or not, we are caught up in a war. It is fifth-generation warfare, waged in and against the spirit and the mind. It comes at us from all sides, from and against all nations. And we all have the sense that it is about to become much greater and more terrifying, but in what way we do not know. We are sitting on the edge of our own Channel, waiting to cross to face what we may hopefully be prepared for, but which is not guaranteed.

I hope you enjoy.

Victory Ruins

Chapter XVII

The din of the rain on his steel helmet sounded like a tin roof under a hurricane.

“Why couldn’t he have picked a place under some goddamned trees?”

No one should be talking now, not with the enemy close by. He turned his head to see who. A rivulet of water that had gathered on a fold of his poncho hood poured down his back. Cold Tennessee rain. Indian summer had gone. He pulled his M1 rifle in closer and kept his hand over the action to keep it dry. The platoon was exposed, silhouetted at the crest of a hill. The road was a morass of red clay.

“All right, up and at ’em. We’re moving out.”

The whole squad rose to its feet quietly. Sling rifles, heft gear, look ahead, and wait: one, two, three, four, five paces — now step off. Long strides covered distance quickly. The rain began falling harder. It was really hard this time. Hitch up your poncho, lower your head, press ahead through the muck. Legs spattered with mud, red clay dripping down calves. The heavens opened like a spigot. The deluge shook tree branches and drummed through the poncho like fingers on a piano.

“Halt!”

They stopped in the open. He felt warm vapor rising from his collar and caught the rancid smell of his wet, dirty self. The squad stood perfectly still, taking the brunt of the downpour, the din against their helmets a choir of misfit bells.

Time rolled back: it rained like this once. But when? The past year’s rains at Camp Blanding were brief, soaking showers of a warm Florida afternoon. Before that, the rain at Fort Jackson was a steamy patter. This rain was hard and steady, unrelenting, nourishing or destructive, the difference between its gift and its wrath all in the duration of its uncontrollable volume.

Rain like this sours corn and leaves it fit only for the hogs.

Why did that cross his mind? It was familiar for some reason. Familiar, but not immediate.

“Move out!”

They stumbled along again, a few who still did not know left foot from right. What good had all that drill done? All the back and forth, stirring up dust that coated their eyes and choked them. Certainly it gave them endurance. Or perhaps they had the officers to thank for that: endlessly obsessing over the tiniest hanging thread or unkempt necktie, they taught you to bear with anything, for there was no dignity for you, not even for the volunteer. And a volunteer he was and deserved respect for it. He fought them back, overtly and covertly, and his time was filled with KP and sentry duty, and the squad suffered for his sins just as he suffered for those of others. The only thing he understood was the march and the rifle, the two things he had thought of when he thought of war before he thought of going to war. He had tough feet and shot expert, so in the end, the Army forgave all. He did not.

Be magnanimous. Look at what Uncle Sam made you. Stronger, quicker, a razor edge put on his woodsman’s senses: he was more than he ever had been. And in secret he could admit that he loved his new strength and that while he regretted the way it had come to him, he gladly accepted that it had and thought of no other way it could be. They beat him down and they built him up and he had vowed that though it was worth it, his Army days would be over.

Yes, he had, hadn’t he? So certain at the end of year one. Then the politicians made noises about keeping the troops, enlisted and conscripted, in the service longer. All in the name of national defense. Along with the other soldiers, Arlen had scrawled on the barracks wall O.H.I.O: Over the Hill In October. Word came filtering down from on high: Old Hickory, the 30th Infantry Division, his outfit, would be demobilized in December. Worry not, they would have Christmas at home.

Pearl Harbor came first. In truth, he could hardly remember before that. Much of what he knew of the Army came after, even if it felt like before. Yes, it all blurred together as it grew faster and more complex. The division was like a deck of cards flying through the air. One regiment was split off for another division. Soldiers were transferred to other divisions or branches. New volunteers and draftees poured into their places. The regiments and companies had been filled with North and South Carolinians and Tennesseans and Georgians, each one drawn from a small town or modest city. Overnight, those transplanted communities vanished and an olive drab wind blew in, new draftees and volunteers from the North and the Midwest. They all had two left feet and odd accents and outlooks, and there was no trust to be had. The division began again from scratch. A year lost.

Yes, that was how it was. But why think of it now? For all that had changed, it was all still the same.

Indeed, he had remained. Men came and went, the propaganda slogans changed, and the officers were replaced. Nothing stayed the same, but he stayed right where he was. Almost another year at Fort Jackson, almost two total, close enough to home that maybe he could have gone, if there were not a war on. No liberty for him. Not even for home.

And then Florida. Forced marches and calisthenics under rays of sun so harsh they could make a man sick. Drill, shoot, march, and repeat. That was where he qualified as expert and his already calloused feet became impervious to any road. And the division having been gutted, filled up again, and hammered back into shape, the big brass ordered Old Hickory to Tennessee, to these mock battles in the hills against the Second Army.

And only now were they finding out if they had the skills to fight.

How long had that taken? He counted: Camp Forrest this year, Camp Blanding last year; Fort Jackson for most of ’42; Jackson for all of ’41. And I got there the September before that.

That made it three years. Almost to the day.

For all he knew now, it could have been the only three years in his life that mattered. He was a soldier now. What else did he know? Oh, yes, home, that’s right. There was a home for him. Wade and Legenia and all that, that something else.

Three years, a long time for a young man. It could have been thirty times longer in reality. What did he know? How could he measure? Only the growth of his callouses seemed to mark the passage of time, like rings on a tree.

“Halt!”

The sergeant appeared through the grey rain. “Corporal, you’ve done your orienteering work, come with me.”

At the front of the long column, the lieutenant huddled under the platoon guide’s poncho, scowling, contorting his peach-fuzz cheeks into all manner of wrinkled shapes. “Ah, Corporal, there you are. The sergeant here says you know your way around a map and compass. Maybe you can settle this for us.” He pointed to a mess of contour lines. “I think we’re here, but the sergeant disagrees. I know for a fact I’ve maintained a north-by-northwesterly course and haven’t deviated one bit. It’s the damn map that’s wrong.”

“Lieutenant, I don’t think the map is wrong,” said the sergeant. “Arlen, tell him what you see.”

His eyes told him the truth before the sergeant even spoke. They were not lost. The lieutenant was simply shooting azimuths down the road every time they halted and matching it to a miniscule section of road on the map. A fool’s way to navigate.

“Well, Corporal? Who’s right?”

He snatched the map and compass from the lieutenant and hopped out up onto the overgrown grassy bank and vaulted a barbed wire fence beside the road. The lieutenant and sergeant both shouted hoarsely at him, but not too loudly, for fear of alerting the opposing side. Crossing a small field at the double, he began climbing the small hill on the far side. Bent nearly in half, he slipped again and again on the long, wet grass. The rubber tread of his boots went wee-ick, wee-ick. Near the treeline, he stopped for a second, leaning forward and resting slightly on his fingertips. He crept around the curve of the hill until the treeline moved up higher and the view of the land opened. Crouching behind a knobby piece of ground, he flattened down a patch of grass and rested the map there, with the compass atop. Find magnetic north, adjust the compass, shoot a bearing on that hill off on the left — from that peak crease the map with his thumbnail along the azimuth. That hill over there: do it again. The spot where the two lines was where he stood. It was actually far to the front of where the lieutenant thought they were. Check again: yes, it was right.

He didn’t walk down the hill, but just tried to control his slide on the wet grass with an outstretched hand, the other clutching his rifle sling. He was moving too fast to stop and the momentum carried him across the small field right to the fence. Climbing over, he sank almost immediately up to his ankles in the red mud. He put the map in front of the platoon commander.

“Marvelous, Corporal. How did you know how to do that?”

The sergeant’s face said, Don’t say anything.

“But, Corporal, don’t you ever go off alone like that. Never again. You need to wait for orders, and take a buddy with you when you do.”

Dutifully, he just stood there and let the lieutenant lay into him for another minute or two. He didn’t even nod in acknowledgment. He just stood there and resisted the temptation to gnaw on his lip. “All right, let’s move out,” the lieutenant said with absolute confidence in himself, as if everything was moving according to plan. And look here, it’s the company commander, marching up the road with his entourage, surely upset about the hold-up. The lieutenant puffed himself up like a peacock, drenched though he was, and strutted toward his commander. With his skinny shoulders thrown back and fists confidently on his hips, there was no doubt in the looie’s mind who made the map solution.

That sonuvabitch, I made that solution. You bastard, you officers are all the same, I ain’t no draftee, ain’t no greenhorn, I volunteered, I’m a Guardsman, I’ve been in three years and you can’t treat me like that, not no more, no sir, you bastard, you come here—

“Hey,” said the sergeant, grabbing his sleeve before he could charge at the lieutenant.

Fuckin’ greenhorn looies, bastards gonna get us all killed, ain’t gonna get me killed, you come here—

“Arlen!”

The jerking on his sleeve was fierce now.

I ain’t going to war with the likes of you, you sonuvabitch, this ain’t what I signed up—

“Arlen!”

His eyelids burst open to bright light. He blinked painfully until he could see again. The skies were a dull silver, sun shining from somewhere behind a thin, even ceiling of clouds. The air was damp, but no smell of rain.

“Arlen, wake up.”

Arlen smacked away the hand that grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t touch me.”

“Oooh, testy, aren’t we?” The short man next to him took a last drag on his cigarette and flicked the butt away.

Arlen sat up. His head was pounding as if he had a hangover, but he hadn’t touched alcohol, not since they were moved down to the staging area.

“You were grinding your teeth. What were you dreaming?”

“We were back in Tennessee, on maneuvers.”

“Oh, God, that’s a nightmare. Was I there?”

“We got any coffee?”

“It’s one o’clock in the afternoon, no, I don’t have any coffee. You were asleep for a couple hours. Was I there?”

“Where, Paine?”

“In your dream,” said Paine.

“No.”

“Why not? I was on maneuvers with you. That was the first time we shared a foxhole.”

“Paine, I don’t know. I don’t remember. I don’t remember a lot of things.”

His fellow soldier snorted. “Then what do you remember?”

The dream had slipped past him, like a skinny woman in a crowded corridor who turned your head but was gone. You looked back, trying to catch a glimpse of her as she was farther and farther away, but there was so much that was closer. Like General Hobbs telling them a week before that it — the big it, the invasion — was coming soon, and the very next day they awoke to thousands of planes in the air, headed south. And then the division was turned out of its billets in a frenzy and loaded into trucks and driven here to the big tent city, where they had waited and filled out wills and written letters — oh, how the officers insisted they should — and waited some more. Waiting to board the boats that the big brass said were here. Waiting to get across the Channel and through the narrow door into Fortress Europe that the Allies had knocked in. Waiting for the fighting.

None of that was in his dream. He knew that there was something missing from it and it wasn’t Paine. He rolled back and back in his mind, wondering where it was. He remembered rain in the dream and tried to recall what kind of rain, but the only rain he could picture at the moment was the perpetual English drizzle. Good Lord, had this place become all he knew? Back and back, grabbing for that sensation that had left him wondering what he was missing, but all he got was the frigid walk up the gangplank onto the troopship in Boston harbor. The winter seas had scared them all to death. The ship would crest a wave and then pitch forward steeply down the other side; the screws burst from the frigid water into the air and the ship’s engines screamed through the hull as the propellers turned without resistance; and then as every G.I. stomach heaved, they plunged back in and a muffled hum fell over the ship as the screws churned along through the water as they began to ride up the next wave. Eighteen days of constant sickness and anxiety. Every ship had to take its turn as the last one in the convoy, the “graveyard position.” Colonel Ward ordered life jacket drills, and the men practiced putting them on and scrambling topside from the lower decks. Arlen had questioned aloud what good a life jacket would do in icy black water that would freeze you as surely as suck you down. The division had landed in Glasgow and there was the solace of rich green hills and solid ground under their feet. They entrained and moved south under bombing raids. Soldiers and equipment packed the island so tightly it seemed the whole of the country would sink under the weight. Everywhere you went, there was war and preparations for more of it. The big it was coming, although nobody knew where or when. A few times a week, they escaped their drafty quarters to a pub and drank watery war-time beer and swapped rumors, always betting on their next destination. Half said France, half said Norway; the next day some switched from one to the other, and on rare occasions, threw a curveball: Denmark, or Holland. Or no invasion at all: they would be transferred to the Italian front. Or the Rooskies would cut a deal with Hitler and no more second front. Paine would often tell a newcomer to their table that Field Marshal Montgomery was taking command of the division. Nobody wanted that cocky Limey s.o.b leading them into battle and the G.I. would swear endlessly until the others assured him it was all a prank.

That was all there was. He had not left anything out.

“Arlen, wake up.”

“I just closed my eyes for a minute.”

“You want me to go find you some coffee?”

Arlen shook his head.

“Look alive, Sarge is coming.”

Arlen sat up. Sergeant Gunderson was nearly on them. “Private, Corporal, do you have any final letters? Last chance before we get on the boat.”

“When are we going?” asked Paine.

“Soon,” said the sergeant. It was the perpetual answer. “Letters?”

“Not me, Sarge,” said Paine.

Arlen hopped to his feet. “Sarge, you got any mail for me?”

“It’s not mail call. I’m asking you for letters.”

“I was just hopin’ something came through.”

Sergeant Gunderson laughed. “What, are you afraid your gal forgot you?”

Arlen felt a chill up his spine.

Oh Lord, that’s what it was. I forgot her.

He plopped down on the ground.

Paine’s mouth moved, but the sound of passing trucks drowned him out. He looked in annoyance at the convoy, then turned back to Arlen. “What is it?”

It would do no good to admit anything to Paine. He still hardly knew the boy. Arlen thought of him as a boy, for although he was only a few years younger, he had been with the division only a year. He was a randy, foul-mouthed, energetic boy who lusted after — and bedded with shocking regularity — every red- and tow-headed nurse and lonely girlfriend he could. Paine had no self-control, what could he possibly understand about holding onto the hope of the same girl for so many years? How could he understand? They were not the same men.

How could I forget you, Caty? How could I let you go? Why did I let myself?

But he did not. It was not his doing. It was the dream. He had no control over the dream, indeed, no control in it. He did what he did, remembered what he remembered, suffered what he must, and that was that. There was no guarding himself against his baser impulses, no yearning for his Caty that sustained and tormented him. When he had no control, she did not exist to him.

Oh, Caty, I’m so sorry.

But she did not know and never would. What did it matter?

“Arlen, what is it?”

Too embarrassed, Arlen blurted out, “Caty forgot to write me.”

“Oh, hell, you can’t be worrying about her.”

“Dammit, Paine, I do.”

When his comrade spoke again, it was with a more comforting tone. “She didn’t forget you, there’s no way she could.”

“I don’t want her to forget me.” Arlen looked at Paine. “How do you forget all those girls?”

“Is that what you want to do?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I’ll just say this: I don’t spend my time writing them letters and looking at their pictures every fucking day.”

Arlen looked down dejectedly. “I just want to put everything right. I had so much time . . . I wish I had put things right. Reckon I didn’t. Got to carry that with me.”

Paine snorted. “No way, Arlen. Don’t do that. That’s an extra piece of gear. One piece too many. You carry a woman like that, checking on her all the time, wondering if she’s still there, one day she might not be and then what were you so worried about? And think about what you’d miss in the meanwhile.”

He was not a complete fool, that Paine. Arlen could miss a lot of things: a sniper in the trees, a machine gun nest, an ambush.

“You can do that,” said Paine, “or you can take her, your little piece of kit, and just put her in your foot locker. Lock her up tight and send her on ahead. She’ll be waiting there for us in Berlin. But you gotta forget about her until then.”

Another convoy rumbled up. The G.I.s shouted and made rude gestures to Paine, who hopped up and gave it right back to them. “Those Company L bastards! Look at them, they get to ride in the deuce-and-a-halfs! Those sonsabitches. We get all the hard breaks.”

Paine’s gleefully griping grin was wiped away as he turned back up the road. He grew serious and reached for his helmet. “Grab your pot, Arlen. We’re going.”

And down the road came the company commander, Captain Smith, carbine in hand. It was indeed time. They were going to the boat.

So the final movement was here at last, the time they had prepared for all those years. They were so prepared, it seemed routine. And so perhaps that was why Arlen did not hesitate too long before putting on his helmet. He reached into his chest pocket and pulled out the photo of Caty that he carried there. She had sent him a new one last fall — she looked better than ever. He gave her one last look, like a long drink of cool water from the bucket before walking to the plow and taking up the reins. Then he put her picture inside the front of his helmet, nestled in the liner. He set his helmet on his head, but took it right off again. Too easy to see her there. He moved the photo to the back. There, now she could see where he was going, and he could just look ahead. It was only war that he needed to see now.

“Arlen, let’s go.”

“All right, all right, hold your horses.”

“I’m pissed about having to march. Wish we had those deuce-and-a-halves.”

“You quit your bellyachin’,” said Arlen, smiling suddenly. “You’re gettin’ an all-expenses paid tour of Europe courtesy of your Uncle Sam. You never had it so good.”

“Jeez, aren’t you sore,” said Paine.

“I ain’t. I’m just tired of hearin’ you run your mouth all damn day.”

“Well, you’re stuck with me now,” said Paine.

“And don’t I know it.”

The platoon formed up and fell in with the rest of the company. The long, olive drab column tramped its way down and down, the smell of salt air growing stronger. The smell of the English Channel. Yes, the war really was coming.

Lord, it’s just you and me now. I might forget you at times, Lord, but don’t you forget me.

For years, I’ve had multiple fiction projects going. At least two novels are sitting in a drawer, one complete but bad and the other good but needing its third act fixed. And there’s a third novel that is my current WIP (more on that later). I thought I could get that novel out this year, but in truth it needs steady and not frenetic work. It’ll be another year.

Meanwhile, these other novels keep banging around my head, and more stories keep coming to mind. And the world keeps on getting wilder and wilder, and I thought, Ain’t no way I’ll be able to write whatever I want in five years. To publish as I please. Ain’t no way.

So I’m going to get what I’ve got out to the world, and I’ll start here. Not sure what that looks like yet, but if you follow me, I promise it’ll be worth your while.

Cheers,

Troop