The cell at Leavenworth was four feet by eight, barely large enough for Joe to sit at one end on an upended pail, but there was room in the dark for a circle of figures. Nearest Joe was a mountain lion as gray and white in color as a snowfall at night. The cat’s spine was a rattlesnake and the snake’s scaled head peeked over the lion’s shoulder. There was a girl with the body of a bird, a swallow. She had a beautiful triangular face and her eyes looked modestly down, away from Joe, who was only in dirty GI underpants. Across from her was a minotaur, a blue man with a shaggy buffalo head. At the far end was an officer who had brought his own chair to sit on. He had a long skull and sallow skin and ears pressed almost flat into close-cut black hair. He wore the patient manner and tailored uniform of a career officer and didn’t seem the least bothered by the overhead ring of golden sticks that beat against one another in subdued claps of light.

“You’re from New Mexico, Sergeant Peña?” the captain asked.

“Yes, sir,” Joe said.

The minotaur hummed softly and rocked from side to side. Joe tried to ignore it and the captain paid no attention at all.

“You know the Jemez Mountains, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sergeant Peña, as I understand it, you’re in here for insubordination,” the captain said. “But the real fact of the matter is, you were sleeping with an officer’s wife.”

“Not lately, sir. I’ve been in the brig for twenty days, the last ten in the hole on nothing but water.”

“Which is what you deserve. There is nothing dumber in this man’s Army than consorting with the wife of a superior, you’ll admit.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any ill effects?”

“Some hallucinations.”

Joe had started seeing things after the fifth day in the hole. Guards banged on the door every time he lay down, so he hadn’t slept, either. The cat had come first. Joe thought the stench of the cell would drive out even a phantasm, but after the cat came the woman on wings. It wasn’t a religious experience; it was just crowded.

“You have the feeling you’re never getting out of here, Sergeant?”

“It occurs to me, sir. I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t catch the name.”

“Augustino.”

“You’re a defense lawyer?”

“They didn’t want to admit you were even in the brig, Sergeant. They’ve as good as buried you. No, I’m not a lawyer, but I can get you out.”

The snake twisted its head to regard the captain with more interest.

“Why don’t you tell me how, sir?” Joe suggested.

“You haven’t been back to New Mexico recently?”

“Not for years.”

“Wasn’t too stimulating?”

“Not stimulating enough.”