All around, talk was growing louder and more familiar as guys finished squaring away their areas. Facts about who people were came at me faster than I could remember them. Four guys with Polish names were from Butte, signed onto the CCC because their fathers had lost jobs in the copper mines. A guy from Pennsylvania said it was the same thing with him, only it was a steel mill job that his pop had got laid off from.

Compton had to call us to order twice before everybody heard that the sergeant was on his way in.

Sergeant Mackey took one look at the beds, not any two of them made up the same way, and just shook his head.

Forty-five minutes later—after the junior leaders had us make and remake our beds till we’d got them close to right—Reese finally said it was time to knock off. “You’ve got fifteen minutes until lights-out at 2130. Be in your bunks when they do.”

His last words got drowned out in the stampede to the latrine.

I’d done all right up till then, I thought, or at least I’d done as well as anybody had getting through the confusing day. Not counting the dustup with Klein and Compton, of course.

But waiting for my turn at one of the sinks, jostled by guys on both sides, it suddenly hit me how this was going to be my life for the next six months. How, from now on, I was going to be doing everything in a group. Sleeping, eating, working. Even brushing my teeth.

Had it really been just that morning that I’d waked up in the Monroe House, still a guy on my lonesome?

I had to clamp down every leg muscle to keep from bolting.

When I finally reached a sink, I dawdled while the latrine emptied, till I had the place to myself. For the first time in hours I didn’t have somebody within two feet of my elbow.

The door opened, and Compton stuck his head in. “Enrollee, you’re—” he began, as I turned. “Trawnley!”

He looked provoked, and I expected sharp words. But then Reese came in and said, friendly enough, “You’re going to have to find your bunk in the dark, enrollee, since you just missed lights-out.”

“I didn’t mean to,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Compton got the last word. “Apologies don’t cut it, Trawnley. Do things right from now on.”

Chapter 8

“Church services are voluntary,” Reese said the next morning, after we’d stumbled through an unfamiliar schedule of barracks tidying and formation and another mess hall meal. “Everybody line up.”

After that there was a big dinner, and then Reese told us, “The afternoon’s yours. You can go where you want, as long as you stay on post. There’s a recreation hall, lots of places for a ball game—”

“Can we just sleep?” someone asked.