What Armitage had, on the other hand, was a hard cot at Schofield Barracks BOQ and a bar tab that was liable to outdo Jane’s legal fees. He had the sympathy of some of the officers and men who knew what had happened to him. Others suddenly didn’t seem to want anything to do with him. Almost all of those were married men themselves. They might have feared he had something catching. And so he did: life in the military. If anything could grind a marriage to powder, that’d do it.

He sat on a bar stool soaking up whiskey sours with Gordon Douglas, another lieutenant in the battalion. “She knew I was an officer, goddammit,” he said-slurred, rather, since he’d already soaked up quite a few. “She knew, all right. Knew I had to take care of… this stuff.” He gestured vaguely. Just what he had to do wasn’t the clearest thing in his mind right then.

Douglas gave back a solemn nod. He looked like the high-school fullback he’d been ten years earlier. He was from Nebraska: corn-fed and husky. “You know, it could be worse,” he said slowly-he’d matched Armitage drink for drink.

“How?” Fletch demanded with alcohol-fueled indignation. “How the hell could it be worse?”

“Well…” The other man looked sorry he’d spoken. But he’d drunk enough to have a hard time keeping his mouth shut, and so he went on, “It could be worse if we spent more time in the field. Then she would’ve seen even less of you, and all this would’ve come on sooner.”

“Oh, yeah. If.” But that only flicked Fletch on another gripe of his, one older than his trouble with his wife (or older than his knowledge of his trouble with his wife, which was not the same thing). “Don’t hold your breath, though.”

“We do the best we can.” Gordon Douglas sounded uncomfortable, partly because he knew he was liable to touch off a rant.

And he did. Fletch exploded. “Do we? Do we? Sure doesn’t look that way to me. This is a hell of a parade-ground army, no bout adout it.” He paused, listened to what he’d just said, and tried again. “No… doubt… about it.” There. That was better. He could roll on: “Hell of a parade-ground army. But what if we really have to go out there and fight? What will we do then, when we’re not on parade?”