Joe said, “Anyway, I don’t have any friends. I’m the new boy. They hate me.”

“They don’t hate you. They don’t know you. If anything, they’re afraid of you. Don’t let them know you—keep them in the dark—and they’ll go on being afraid.” He touched Joe’s scar. “Treat them like that mad dog.”

Misled by the scar, his father had the idea that Joe, in the struggle, had fought off the dog’s attack and somehow defeated him; the man did not know, or could not understand, that Joe had hugged himself and fallen, going rigid in his terror, submitting to the dog’s jaws, overwhelmed and terrified until the owner called the dog off.

“Are your men afraid of you?”

“Yes, sir, damn right! That’s why they respect me,” he said. “And that’s why they obey. What sort of an officer would I be if I gave orders that weren’t obeyed?”

He seemed to be exhausted when he was home, sitting in the armchair in the parlor with the shades drawn. He smoked, he drank, he scratched his scalp. He always wore khakis.

Drinking calmed him and sometimes he smiled, his eyes watering, and at those moments he became affectionate, calling his wife “Swee’ Pea”—“Come over here, Swee’ Pea, and give the Colonel a kiss”—which embarrassed Joe, who would hurry to his room when his mother approached the man in the chair, patting his lap. “Sit here, Swee’ Pea.”

“I wish I spoke French,” he said in a rare instance of regret—probably drunk. “I’m glad you’re learning it.”

“J’essaye,” Joe said. “Au moins, j’essaye.”

And his father looked closely at him with wet delighted eyes.

“The French made a mess of things,” he said, confiding, because he was pleased to hear Joe speaking French. “Now it’s our problem.”

“How long will you be there?”

“Joey, don’t you see? I take orders too.” He sipped his drink—it was always bourbon. “I don’t know. But even if I did know I wouldn’t tell you.”

They were no longer on the base, so he couldn’t compare his father with other officers anymore. They lived among civilians, and the fathers on this suburban street were home every night. They drove to work each morning and returned at six. But his father’s life was the army; he did not live in the house, he visited it, dropping in on his wife and son on short notice, as though in a surprise inspection. His real home was the base in Vietnam. He was a full-time soldier who kept in touch with his family and who brought the tone and command of the army to the little bungalow in Manoa.

“Not a job,” he said. “It’s a calling. It’s a duty. Special Forces.”