All around me as I fired at the charging Yankees, our men died, melting too, but only once, into gray pools in which bits of hair and thread floated, pools smelling of garbage, and death, and sickness. Soon there were so few of us it seemed we could hold them off no longer and the General turned to me, tore his head roughly from his shoulders, so I could hear the veins and bones cracking and groaning, the sound of pulling up a handful of grass, and tossed the head to me. His trunk stood facing me. I cradled the bleeding head in my arms like a baby, and all the while it yelled up at me, “Run, boy! Save it! Run for a touchdown, boy!” And as always, always, I would stand tasting a sickness from the pit of my stomach, the blood soaking into the cloth of my shirt until the cloth stuck to me, and I would know I wouldn’t be able to move, would realize already even before I attempted the first step that I was paralyzed from the waist down.

That was the first thing I thought about when those kids left; that God-damn nightmare. I don’t think I’ve thought about it or even dreamed it for about two years. I used to have it all the time when I was younger and was afraid of my father. I knew why I dreamed it; guilt feelings brought it on. I’d get a B on a test and—boom—the dream; I’d forget to do something he asked me and—boom—the dream. But when I got to be a senior in high school, I began to really hate him—that’s about the time he completely stopped talking to Mama, distant and withdrawn, and really a bastard—and stopped being afraid of him.

Anyway, that’s what I was thinking about, only it didn’t take as long as it did to tell it. I imagine I thought about that because just standing there in the middle of all that mess, and finding out from the kids how it happened gave me that same sick feeling. I was scared because I didn’t really know or understand what was happening, and when I get scared I get sick. I have a doctor friend at school who tells me I’m a gut-reactor. Some people get headaches; others, like myself, get sick to their stomach.

The dream wasn’t the only thing I was thinking about. I tried to think a little bit more constructively after a while, tried to find some cause, some reason for Tucker doing what he did, like something that had happened to him in the past, that he could brood about, that would get him mad, and the only thing I could think about was last summer, when John died.