“I can take care of myself.”

“Maybe if I’d been more—I don’t know—alert to the vibes around here, showed more devotion, been more attentive…”

For a moment she was silent. Then softly she said, “You spent too damn much time with Grady.”

“That’s my job.”

“And now it’s your father.”

“You think I could’ve prevented your kidnapping?”

Suddenly she realized that she was adorned only by her nakedness. She reached down for the sheath at her ankles. “Look,” she said tonelessly, “this is getting us nowhere.”

“Don’t,” I said.

“Don’t what?”

“The sheath.”

She hesitated.

“I don’t want to fight with you. I don’t even want to spar or bicker or… ever again.”

Her face softened. She opened her arms to me. My hands followed the route of the nice old geezer’s.

THIRTY-EIGHT
PATH TO GLORY

He ploughed along that backcountry footpath as if he were blinkered, looking neither right nor left. The khaki shirt was plastered to his back, the stain spreading across the scapulas and down his spine. He carried a pick and a long-handled shovel. Over his shoulder was slung a canvas musette bag, Israeli Army issue. A large paintbrush and a small one made bulges in his pockets, along with a spading fork. On his cartridge belt were lashed an entrenching tool, a canteen, and a knife with a six-inch blade. Small wonder he was sweating.

I had spent a sleepless night asking myself the same question: What the hell was he up to? His solitary expeditions had more of an aim than he’d claimed they did—I was sure he was keeping something from me. It wasn’t until the cusp of dawn that I realized the way to find out was to follow him, a simple expedient that, for reasons I cannot imagine, had previously eluded me.

Early that morning I hid in the woods behind his hut. When he emerged, I waited two or three minutes before I shadowed him down Main Street, into the trees, over the road that led to the nuke station, always keeping between us as great a distance as I could without losing sight or sound of him.

He moved fast, despite the oppressive heat and the cumbersome weight of his gear, yet the overall effect was that of a man in a shambling trance. I suddenly realized that we were following the same route we had taken last week on our training mission with Qazwini. A moment later he turned abruptly into the wilderness, down the wisp of path that led to the clearing. On the bank of the dry riverbed where the grayish stones had been overturned by the grenades he unloaded his tools. The shovel and the pick clanged in the silence as he dropped them. He ran a wet sleeve over his wet forehead and raised the canteen to his lips. Then he started to work.