“Two more weeks to Trinity and then it will all be over. Maybe it will fail.” He could feel her disappointment. “I hate arguments. I’m a coward. Arguments are full of words, and each person is sure he’s the only one who knows what the words mean. Each word is a basket of eels, as far as I’m concerned. Everybody gets to grab just one eel and that’s his interpretation and he’ll fight to the death for it. Roberto’s from Taos, which he thinks gives him the right to say up is down. Harvey’s from Texas, which makes it strange he and I agree on a goddamn thing. As for you and me?”

“Yes?”

“Which is why I love music. You hit a C and it’s a C and that’s all it is. Like speaking clearly for the first time. Like being intelligent. Like understanding. A Mozart or an Art Tatum sits at the piano and picks out the undeniable truth.”

“You’re going to hear about me,” she said slowly. “That I’m insane and a tramp. I don’t care what people say, but I want you to know that only one is true.”

“Which one?”

“Which one is important to you?”

He hesitated, and during that moment they neared the first checkpoint. Since he always kept the MPs supplied with cigarettes and ration coupons, he’d expected to be waved through as usual. But tonight the checkpoint was a Western scene, a tourist painting: the amber light of a shed reaching out to men on horseback, the riders slouched and weary, horses steaming in the night air. Also, jeeps with their headlights on blocked the road on each side of the checkpoint shed. He stopped and left the Plymouth’s lights on. “Stay here,” he told her as he got out. “If anyone asks, we were driving around, you don’t know where.”

The horses were lathered bright in the headlights. Among the riders was Sergeant Shapiro. Corporal Gruber had a sling around one arm.

Shapiro laughed. “Fell off his horse, Chief. Broke his fucking arm.”

As Joe pushed into the shed, Captain Augustino looked up from the map he was sharing with Billy and Al. The captain was sleek in an Eisenhower jacket. The two cowboys were crusty from a day’s riding. Al’s little eyes and mouth were drawn tight and there was a white stubble on his jawline. Billy’s hair hung lank, dirty and yellow.

“Speak of the devil.” Augustino looked delighted, as if some deserved amusement had come his way at the end of a weary day. “Come in, come in, Sergeant Peña. You know our friends Al and Billy from the Indian Service. Billy’s the one you tossed like a sack of manure at the dance.”