But time keeps carrying you forward, despite your feeling lately that each new day can be nothing save a mistake, because time, you believe, stopped for you long ago. Yet, without your willing or quite believing it, your history has continued to develop. Four years ago, you were released from the hospital and—though you don’t recall exactly how—you ended up in college. The people there thought the things in books were important, and you decided to go along with them. What harm could it do? you’d thought, everything seeming more doable ever since you’d discovered a way to dull the pain in your leg and the memories; there wasn’t a day that went by that you weren’t a little sauced. Just a little. Just enough. You kept that pleasant pitch so constant that everyone thought you were just a little wild, you had just a little gleam in your eye. They thought you were alive like them.

They knew you were a Marine, but they didn’t know what you’d done, except—you couldn’t hide this fact—lose your leg. You didn’t want them to know more. To know that you were a monster masquerading as a real guy, as Old Joe College. In a frat with a bunch of kids too young to have fought, most of the other vets over in married housing. (You exchanged nods with them, when you saw them, but you and they both knew it was not a time for talking, for letting down the masks you wore.) You were like a big brother to all the frat kids, or so they said. They elected you president, junior and senior year both. You knew it was bullshit, but it was a little gratifying, too. You envied their innocence, the life in them. You kept them at bay with your laughter. You were always up for a good time, one more drink. Flirting with the coeds who fluttered their eyelashes and said they thought it was romantic you were in the war, the ones that hit you about as deep as a mosquito bite.

Always, you felt alone, hollow. Always, though, there was something to do: a party, play rehearsal, an exam to study for, someone to bullshit with. You didn’t play sports, but you managed the football, basketball, and baseball teams, practicing with them when your leg allowed it. You chose history for a major because you wanted to make sense of the past, and put it all in order in your disordered mind.