Walker was nineteen years old, with sandy hair, a bony build, and a face waiting for manhood to line it with years. His light blue eyes, like empty Caribbean pools, stared nowhere. He rested his chin on his M-16 and answered the intruder from his vision of gloom.

"Ah don' care what happens to the outfit. Ah don' care what happens to anybody. Ah don' care anymore. Ah'm gonna die and that's that."

"How you know you're gonna die, boy?" asked the other recruit, who always seemed to know more than Walker. He was from the big city, Charleston.

Walker had been to Charleston, South Carolina,

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only twice, once to sell a funny rock he had found to a university feller who was supposed to pay a good price for such things. It was a real good price too, $15.35, and Walker trudged nineteen miles each way to get that price. The second time he had been to Charleston had been to enlist in this special unit that paid for everything and gave you everything.

The other recruits knew Walker was "real country" because he liked the food. Walker thought chipped beef on toast was a treat for months until the other recruits teased him out of it. But he still went back for seconds and ate the leftover portions. He just didn't smack his lips as much anymore. That was all.

Walker cried at Gene Autry movies when the other recruits booed because the show was in black and white.

Walker prayed before he went to bed.

Walker did his calisthenics even when the drill sergeant's white stick wasn't there to prod.

Walker carried the packs of others on forced thirty-mile hikes.

Walker turned himself in for falling asleep on duty.

Walker cried when "Dixie" was played. When the national anthem was played. When Geritol commercials came on television, because it was "so nice to see people in love at such an old age." The old age, for Walker, was thirty-four.