When the band took a rest between sets, two old farts, one white and one black, played a banjo duet of “Shanty Town” that brought tears to my eyes. Then a group of square dancers came in. They were miserable-looking middle-aged types in Western getups, the women with fat legs. You could sense their apprehension, and I realized that I had forgotten how frightening someone like Bobby Dean Steele, who had been copping an attitude of late, wearing an Afro and a pair of black gloves, must have seemed to people like them. Once the music began, however, the misery was erased from their faces and replaced by a hypnotic expression as they mechanically went through their paces. From my folding chair, swooning on phenobarbital, overly warm from all the body heat, I was in agony until I saw—with a rare and refined sense of objectivity—that their sufferings and miseries vanished in their dancing, as they fell into the rhythm of the music and the singsong of the caller’s instructions. And for a moment I saw myself as well; I saw myself as if from on high, saw the pattern of my whole life with a kind of geometrical precision, like the pattern the dancers were making, and it seemed there was a perfect rightness to it all.

One day after chow, Bobby Dean Steele was summoned to the meds kiosk by one of the doctors, and a corpsman buzzed a pair of enormous brig chasers through the heavy steel door of the ward. They cuffed Bobby Dean Steele, while the resident on duty shrugged his shoulders and told Steele that he was being transferred back to the brig to stand General Court-Martial for three counts of murder in the second degree. It had been decided, Chandler informed us, that Bobby Dean Steele was not especially crazy—at least not according to observation, the M.M.P.I., and the Rorschach. Chandler told us that Steele would end up doing twenty years hard labor in a federal prison.

My own departure was somewhat different. Eagle called me into his office and said, “I’m sending you home. Don’t ask me whether you’re cured or not. I don’t know. I do know you were an outstanding Marine, and I have processed papers for a full disability pension. Good luck to you, Sergeant.”

“Thank you.” I was dumbfounded.

“When you get home, find yourself a good neurologist.…And keep your ass out of the boxing ring.”

“Yes, sir.”

As I turned to leave, Eagle saluted me. I returned the salute proudly, and I heard his booming, operatic laugh start up after I pulled his door shut behind me.