But Kesey stood his ground. Slowly he moved his shoulders back and his chin came up. His dark eyes had always looked mournful to me, and dispirited. But today he folded his arms on his chest and bored into me with his gaze. “Nevare, I got something to say. Lots of people in the regiment don’t like you, but me, I think you’re a decent fellow, just really fat, and that shouldn’t count against you no more than me being bald or Gimper having only two toes left. It’s just how you are. Now we got an inspection coming up, and if every man don’t look good, it’s going to come down hard on all of us. Maybe you think we aren’t much of a regiment, and maybe we haven’t been since you joined us, but once we were plenty proud and a damn crack outfit. Things aren’t the best for you, I know, what with the rumors about you and that fancy woman making a big squawk that you said something dirty to her. You might think going native is a way out. You wouldn’t be the first to just walk off into those woods and never come back again. But don’t you do it, Nevare. You take some pride in what you are and who you are and you tough it out like a true-born soldier son. Nobody says it much anymore around here, but I’ll tell you this. You owe it to this regiment to be the best soldier you can be.

Not just when we’re stepping smart and pretty, and we’ve got our banners flying and good days rolling along. Not just when there’s gunpowder and smoke and blood. But during times like this, when no one thinks much of us, not even ourselves, and we know we’re going to get our comeuppance from that inspection team. Even in times like this, we got to do what we can, and be soldiers like our fathers was before us. You hear me?” He took a deep breath after he’d spoken his piece. It was the longest speech and the most sense I’d heard out of the man since I’d met him. There he stood in a wrinkled uniform jacket with one button dangling from a thread and the knees of his trousers gone shiny with wear. His hat was dusty and rain had speckled the dust. What hair he had stood out in tufts above his ears.

But he stood as straight as a ramrod, and his words sank into me like rain falling on parched soil. They moved me as I hadn’t been moved in a long time. They restored my true self just as absolutely as the forest food had satiated my Speck self. Nothing could have stirred the dormant duty in my soul as plainly as the heartfelt call to arms of that wizened old soldier.

I lifted my eyes to meet his. “You’re right, Kesey. You’re right.” That was all I said to him, but he beamed as if I’d just given him a commendation.