Charlie was older and slower on the banks of Disneyland’s sham Missouri than he’d been at Fort Benning or in France. As he stood, he saw that his opponent was a good deal smaller, sinewy, with a floral-print shirt and horn-rimmed glasses, currently focused on trying to pull Violet, who had collapsed in the mud, to her feet. Charlie didn’t recognize him, but he realized that Violet’s flop onto the banks, purposeful or not, gave him an opportunity. Charlie charged.

The man sidestepped Charlie’s lunge and tripped him. Charlie staggered and turned just in time to take a judo kick to his abdomen, which knocked the wind out of him, bringing him to his knees. The man attempted to kick Charlie in the chin, but Charlie grabbed the man’s leg, lifted him, and tossed him onto his back.

He suddenly wondered if this man truly sought to kill him and whether lethal force was necessary. It was in that moment of hesitation—the precise second-guessing that he’d been warned about at Fort Benning—that Charlie heard the click of a switchblade, then saw its metal gleaming in the moonlight, the foil grip held in the right hand of his opponent.

The knife came for Charlie, the assailant lunging for his abdomen; Charlie jumped to his right, splashing into the shallows. He snapped to it, chasing away any questions about whether both men would be able to walk off this beach. He ran and dived into the man and felt the tip of the blade enter the back of his left shoulder. He felt it again and again, going into the muscle in his back. Then the man tried to bring the knife to Charlie’s throat. Charlie grabbed the man’s head, ripped off his glasses, and plunged his thumbs into his eyes.

He locked his elbows, sat forward, pushed his thumbs deeper, and dragged him headfirst into the water. The man writhed and splashed, swinging to bring the blade back to Charlie’s throat. Charlie looked away as the man’s spasms weakened. A sign at a nearby wooden building advertised AUNT JEMIMA’S PANCAKE HOUSE.

The man stopped resisting.

The knife fell into the water.

Charlie felt light-headed. He vomited, violently, into the faux river until everything inside him, every drop of liquor that wasn’t in his bloodstream, dissolved in the water. He felt utterly sick. In his body, in his heart. The bile and alcohol, like poison in his throat, on his lips.

He crawled out of the water and collapsed from exhaustion. Minutes passed; Charlie didn’t know how many. Then his mind reentered the full context of his situation. Music echoed from down the river.

A whispered voice: “Charlie, that you?”