As the morning cast its very first shade of gray, he lay down again on his cot and closed his eyes. He remembered how he had felt about Mr. Moriyama long ago, when he had not acknowledged the man’s favor of the Fresno scraper lent to level the cotton field. He felt a prick of remorse. Perhaps he had been wrong.

Sleep came quickly. Jivan woke him moments later. “It is time to go,” he said.

BY DAWN, THEY HAD ARRIVED AT THE TRAIN DEPOT. The band was again playing, quietly, but still the sounds slashed the morning air. The soldier boys were in uniform now, and they no longer seemed like people of the Valley. Their families milled around the platform, subdued and quiet. The Singhs found Amarjeet standing in line, wearing the standard-issue green uniform and a dastar of dark green. When he saw them, he smiled, but it was without the openness of the previous night. They were not allowed to approach. The band stopped playing and the crowd was grateful. The train was waiting. Far behind them, in the last car, the Negro soldiers had already entrained. The line of other boys moved slowly, solemnly in the open air, and Amarjeet turned again and again to his family, but did not wave. There was an expression on his face that Ram could not discern, then an Anglo boy clapped him jovially on the back and Amarjeet grinned. A moment later, he turned, raised his arm above his head, and disappeared into the train. Leela kept waving. The Singhs did not speak.

The band began to play again, destroying the peace. The train sent up a wisp of smoke and inched forward. Several young women dabbed their eyes. Parents clutched at each other. A great hurrah went up from a group of youths clustered at the end of the platform.

Ram could see Amarjeet’s face framed in the train window, Harry’s profile beside him. The youths cheered as the train passed, their faces turned up to the soldiers in admiration; in their eyes Ram saw their awe, anxiety, jealousy. He knew that, seeing them, Amarjeet would not be sorry that he had enlisted.

THAT NIGHT, AFTER DINNER, they sat together on the porch behind the house. No one opened the whiskey bottle. Rosa joined them too, her legs propped up on a low stool. Leela sat near her, playing with a small wooden horse that Amarjeet had given her the previous day. She suddenly ran to Kishen and settled on her lap.

“When Jeetu Veer-ji comes back, Ma, I want him to take me to that fair.” She still spoke in Punjabi at home; English had not yet overtaken her.

“That fair?” Kishen said. She smoothed the girl’s hair and looked at Ram with an expression that revealed she did not know what Leela meant. “He will take you,” she said, anyway.