He read about the German in Brawley who had been tarred and feathered for refusing to buy Liberty bonds. He read about the German who had been lynched in Illinois. This too made him sick. He had not hated the Germans during the war. Harry had not hated them either. The Germans, the French, the British, the Americans—they had been a bunch of farm boys, wishing for their mothers, dreaming of their sweethearts, shooting at each other across a no-man’s-land. The morning the armistice was announced, some men on the line had run forward to embrace the German soldiers they had shot at just hours earlier. The farm boys had not wanted the war. They had never wanted the war. If he—Amarjeet Singh of Tarkpur village, Ludhiana district, son of Gurinder Singh—had shot and killed people, he did not want to think about that now.

To him, the war had been about carrying supplies to the front line on his cart and coming back to the rear with that same cart loaded down with bodies. There had been so many, many, bodies. There had been no difference between them, save the tint of skin or hair: Irish and Chinese, Sicilian and Jew, Mexican and Arab and Japanese. If he had served alongside Negroes, he knew there would have been no difference there either.

He told himself he had made a good decision; he had his citizenship. Why, he was capable of anything! When he walked among the locals in town—how many had seen what he had seen? How many could have done what he had done? To witness carnage, to come close to the essence of life because one had been close to death, to see humanity’s depravation—it was not the same as wisdom, but it was close. He knew why the army did not want Negroes on the front lines. It was not because other soldiers would not accept them, or that was not the only reason. It was not because they could not exercise valor—of course they could. It was because the U.S. government did not want them to be admired, lionized, when they returned.

IN JULY, Amarjeet passed Everett Pike, one of the boys from the war, on Main Street in front of the post office. Everett waved first.

“Hey, Jeet! Where ya been all this while?” he said, his smile big, his voice bigger. “What’re you up to?”

Amarjeet was glad to see him too. “Farming again.” He felt a whiff of embarrassment.

“Me too. You know, my old man’ll never let me off that damn farm.” They laughed.

Shortly after they had returned, Everett had organized a ball game in the field outside of town for the boys from the military. He had been a great batsman in high school. Sam was there, so was Herb, a few others Amarjeet did not know as well. After the game, they had stayed in the park, drinking hooch under starlight, talking about men they had known in the war. It had been good to do that.