Where was old Sarge now? he wondered. Dead, could be. Twenty years ago, he and Emma had already been well along in years. He’d been a brilliant martial arts teacher. Why they had taken Mark in, he had never really understood. They didn’t run a foster home and he was their only state-assigned child. Mark had loved the Walkers. In his early years, he’d known profound loneliness, and he was forever grateful to them.

After he left Palo Alto, Christmas cards were exchanged for the two years until he was sent on assignment to the Middle East. Since then, they had dropped off his radar, and because his work stateside was so secret, he could not even tell them he was here. He’d surfed for them on the Internet, and a lot had come up, but nothing personal. He didn’t know their state of health, their hopes and plans, anything like that, only that they were distinguished people.

In the years with Sarge and Emma, only one thing had happened that had left him with an uneasy feeling. Once in the night, he’d woken up and seen two men standing over his bed. One had been Sarge, the other a civilian. He had asked them what they were doing there, but Sarge had put his finger to his lips, and they had left. Afterward, Mark’s left temple had hurt, and he’d seen flashes in his left eye for days.

Absently rubbing his temple, remembering the event, he gazed at the far side of the street, where a restaurant called the Glade had another old-fashioned neon sign, this one in the shape of a palm tree, above its rustic front. A persuasive neon-sign salesman must have come through here back fifty years ago or so.

He watched a man emerge with a toothpick in his mouth, turn, and head off down the sidewalk. Maybe a local lawyer or barber or somebody from the mill, assuming that the whistle was real. It had not sounded to him like steam, though, but a recording of steam.

Mark felt a regard for the man coming out of the restaurant that was not love but was as deep as love. Soldiers suffer this feeling for those whom they protect, and it can make them hard to be with. A soldier’s roughness, even coldness, may conceal tenderness too great for him to bear.

Now two girls on bicycles came riding past, their hair flowing, their long, smooth limbs bright as grace.

All of these people were in harm’s way. But what could he do with five soldiers? He kept his God to himself, but he prayed now, looking out across the smiling noontime. His was a soldier’s religion: Pray a lot, but carry your own damn gun.

Once again, he looked up and down the street. Quiet, his ears told him. Normal, his eyes observed.