Lee drew his blankets around his shoulders. Ever since he had landed in France, he had felt a subsonic rumble, Olympian-sized earth-pounding equipment striking the horizon line. It was there day and night. It invaded his dreams.

No guns. No distant bombs, mortar fire, shouts in enemy voice. No distant airplanes, or mass movements of troops over barbed wire. He was alone. His dogs raced in circles, crunching through the ice sheets on the ground. They stopped, pointing in opposite directions, and then they ran again, making small woofing sounds, since they had not yet found their voices.

“Hello?” he cried. Dogs at his heels, he made it to the center of the base, which was deserted. “Hello?”

Then to the prisoners’ barracks. The door was open, chairs were knocked over, bed linens scattered. He was reminded of the Mary Celeste, and how his mother had frightened him with stories of abandoned ships, rigging upright, becalmed, the captain’s dinner table set and untouched.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon of November 11. As the world would later commemorate, the war had ended—a real armistice this time—at eleven that morning. Lee had slept through it. The men of the 135th had abandoned their posts en masse for the village, to drink, to dance with the townspeople. But Lee did not know this. He felt a viselike fear in his stomach that the world had come to an end.

He grabbed his dogs—they were looking at him with curiosity about what he was going to give them to eat—and put them in his lap as he sat in the open doorway of the empty prisoners’ barracks. They tumbled off, and dashed inside to snuffle through the detritus left behind.

He sat down on Harry’s cot. He saw a cream-colored envelope. It was addressed to Lee. Inside was a letter.

Dear Corporal Duncan:

I have been a terrible, or perhaps a mediocre teacher. But thank you for listening to me. I think you will keep the dogs. I think you have kindness in you. It is not true that anything you want badly enough will be taken away from you. It is only true nine occasions out of ten.

They are good dogs. They want to please you.

You are looking for where your talents may take you. I think you would be good with the dogs. Take them on your stage with you and give demonstrations of their worth. Show they are loyal, kind, protective &c. and show that heroes exist. Maybe at the end of the day you will turn back a little darkness. For yourself, for them, for someone who has met them.

Of course, I must go now.

Thank you for not describing to me how my winery must look.

Harry