Inside I expected green marmite cans up-the-ass and I was more than right. The ensuing shift in the pot shack was very much the same as the preceding, except that I was even more tired and the color was leached out of my hands as they were filled with dozens of stainless-steel slivers. I began to long for the dull, sluggish, futile, languorous and aimless days of life on the boxing team. The pot shack was nothing but hustle.

That afternoon, Sergeant Myers, the boxing coach, showed up while I’m struggling with a grungy-ass pot caked with mashed potatoes. “Where in the hell have you been?” he says.

I started to explain about my underuse of Kiwi shoe polish, Brasso, and rifle-cleaning gear when Mississippi shot me a look of hatred for my falling output. Myers said he would talk to Captain McQueen and after he left, like a prisoner on Death Row, I began to entertain the slight hope that the governor might be a commie liberal opposed to the ultimate punishment. Or that Joan Baez would sing a sweet song to Lyndon Johnson, have him crying his eyes out and soon dispatching Air Force One to pick up such an intelligent, sensitive, and promising young man as myself, and send me to Harvard College on free government scholarship after a two-week vacation at Camp David.