“Well, I don’t dislike them. But I joined up so I could stop living with them for a while. I got six sisters at home.” Harold made a comical face. “And not another brother they can spread their bossing to.

“It’s all the time, ‘Harold, do this,’ and ‘Harold do that.’ ‘Harold, fix your collar, comb your hair, don’t mumble.’ ‘Harold, I am going to wring your neck the next time you belch in front of a boyfriend I bring home.’”

His imitation of his sisters got us all laughing, though Apple said, “I wouldn’t mind me a girl who was a little bossy, as long as she was pretty.”

“Apple’s in the market for a girlfriend,” Nate explained.

By then we all pretty much knew each other’s girlfriend status. Sam had broken off with his before he joined up, for just what reason I didn’t know. Nate was between girls. I’d told them about Beatty, in a general way.

Harold said he hadn’t thought much yet about girlfriends.

“How far’s Corvallis?” Apple asked.

Harold looked alarmed. “Too far for my sisters to visit me here,” he said. “Honest. I want to spend my six months without one time hearing someone say, ‘Harold!’”

“That’s going to be kind of hard,” I said, “since that’s your name.”

“Unless you want a nickname,” Sam said. “It seems to be a CCC tradition.”

The four of us eyed the newcomer while we threw out suggestions that would fit. Sandy. Short Stuff. Kid.

“I got it,” I said. “Romeo.”

For a second there was silence, and then one by one the others started laughing.

“That’s perfect,” Apple said. “See, because Romeo was this romantic guy, and that’s just what you’re not, so . . .”

“Apple,” Nate said. “We all got it.”

Work began right after breakfast.

I’d expected to be pointed toward a pile of lumber and told which boards to carry where. Or maybe given a hammer and told what to start hammering on.

But instead, Pops unrolled a set of construction plans. The top one was a draftsman’s drawing of what the finished camp would look like: a horseshoe of buildings around a central field. “Rec hall, machinery-shop, garage, infirmary . . .,” he said. “We’re going to have us a regular town, but we’ll have to get cracking to get it built before the rest of the company arrives.”

The morning meeting was a regular thing, because Pops and the other LEMs were bound to see that us enrollees understood the why and how of each task we took on. First it was staking out the perimeters of buildings. Then it was preparing surfaces for the pillars that would support most of them and for the concrete slabs that would go under the shower house and garages.