"Because he's a linguist, you mean?" the President asked.

"He'd be a linguist anyway," Sessions said. "But that would be a waste of his talents, even though people who speak Chinese and Japanese are damned hard to come by."

"We will now vote in the same order," the president said. "Unless someone wants to call him back and ask him something else?"

He looked up and down the table.

"Lieutenant?" he asked, when he saw that no one had any additional questions.

"I vote yes, sir," the lieutenant said.

One by one, the others said exactly the same thing.

"This board, whose president is not about to put his judgment in conflict with that of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, USMC…," the president said, and waited for the expected chuckles.

After they came, he went on: "Especially after he said- slowly, carefully, and with great emphasis-I think we ought to put bars on that boy's shoulders, if for no other reason than he seems to be the only one in the Marine Corps besides me and Chesty Puller who doesn't think the Japs can be whipped with one hand tied behind us.' "

He waited again for the chuckles, then concluded: "This board has in secret session just unanimously approved the application of Corporal McCoy to attend the Platoon Leader's Course at Quantico. Lieutenant, you are directed to make the decision known to the appointing authority."

"Aye, aye, sir," the lieutenant said.

"Call him back in here, will you?" the president said.

The lieutenant went to the door, opened it, and motioned McCoy back into the room. McCoy marched in and stood to attention beside the straight-backed wooden chair.

"Corporal," the president said, "this board has considered your application carefully, and after review by the appointing authority, that decision will be made known to you through channels. In the meantime, you will continue to perform your regular duties. Do you have any questions?"

"No, sir."

The president rapped his knuckles on the table. "This board stands adjourned until recalled by me."

McCoy, thinking he had been dismissed again, started to do another about-face.

"Hold it, Corporal," the president said. "Sit down a minute."

McCoy sat down, more or less at attention.

"Corporal, unofficially, what that Platoon Leader's Course actually is is Parris Island for officers. What it's really all about is to make Marines-Marine officers-out of civilians. To do that, they're going to lean hard on the trainees. That might be harder for a Marine corporal to take than it would for some kid straight from college. It would be a shame if some Marine corporal who a lot of people think would make a good officer were to say, 'I'm a corporal; I don't have to put up with this crap. They can stick their commission.' Do I make my point?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now, while I cannot tell you how this board has acted on your application, or whether or not the appointing authority will concur with its recommendation, I can mention in passing that the next Platoon Leader's Course begins at Quantico One September, and if I were you I wouldn't make any plans for the period following One September. Perhaps between now and One September, your platoon commander could see his way clear to putting you on leave."

"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Fogarty said. "No problem there, sir."

"Well, that's it then," the president said. "Unless anyone else has something?"

"I want to sec the corporal a minute when this is over," Captain Sessions said. "Stick around, please, Killer."

" 'Killer?' " the president asked, wryly. "Is that what you call him? My curiosity is aroused."

"With respect, sir, that is a little private joke between the corporal and myself," Captain Sessions said.

(Five)

Norristown, Pennsylvania

10 August 1941

Norristown was dingier, dirtier, grayer, and greasier than McCoy remembered; and he had a terrible temptation just to say fuck it and turn the LaSalle around and go back to Philly.

In China, McCoy had told himself more than once that he would never go back home, because as far as he was concerned there was nothing left for him there. That had been all right in Shanghai, but it hadn't been all right once the Corps had sent him to Philly. He knew he was at least going to have to make an effort to go see his sister Anne-Marie, who was probably a regular nun by now, and his brother Tommy, who was now eighteen and probably almost a man, and maybe even the old man.

McCoy told himself that at least he was not going back to Norristown the way he left… on the Interurban Rapid Transit car to Philly with nothing in his pocket but the trolley

transfer the Marine recruiter had given him to get from the Twelfth Street Station in Philly to the Navy Yard.

He was coming home in a LaSalle convertible automobile; he was wearing a candy-ass college boy seersucker suit like Pick Pickering wore; and he had a couple of hundred bucks in his pockets and a hell of a lot more than that in the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society bank.

At the convent, a pale-faced nun behind a grille told him that she was sorry she couldn't help him but she had never heard of anyone named Anne-Marie McCoy. A moment later, the door over the grill was once more shut and locked. After that he went to the rectory at Saint Rose of Lima's.

A young priest opened the door. He was a dark-eyed, dark-haired guy, who looked like he could be either some kind of a Mexican or maybe a Hungarian. He was only wearing a T-shirt; but the black slacks and shoes gave him away. Besides, McCoy could have told you this one was a priest even if he was naked in a steambath. He had that look. Still, McCoy was a little let down that the guy wasn't wearing a white collar and a black front.

"Can I help you?" the young priest asked.

"Is Father Zoghby in?" McCoy asked.

Standing in exactly this spot, he recalled, he had asked that same question at least a couple of hundred times before: When he was an altar boy. Later when he was in some kind of trouble in school and the sisters or the brothers sent him to see "the Father." And later still on the night when the old man went apeshit and came after him with crazy eyes, swinging the bottom of the lamp. McCoy came here that night because he hadn't known where else to go or what else to do.

"I'm sorry," the young priest said. "Father Zoghby's no longer at Saint Rose's."

"Where is he?" McCoy asked.

"He's in Saint Francis's, I'm sorry to say," the young priest said, and repeated, "Can I help you?"

Saint Francis's was a hospital near Philadelphia. It was where they sent you if you were going to die, or if you went crazy.

"I'm looking for Anne-Marie McCoy," he said. "She used to be in this parish, and then I heard she was at the Sisters of the Holy Ghost as a novice. But when I asked at the convent, they told me she wasn't there. And they wouldn't tell me where she went."

"What's your interest in her?"

"She's my sister," McCoy said. "I've been away."

"I see," the priest said.

There was recognition now in his eyes. McCoy thought the young priest had probably heard all about the grief and pain the incorrigible son had inflicted on good ol' Pat McCoy before they ran the incorrigible off to the Marines. Nobody but his family would believe it, but when good ol' Pat wasn't glad-handing people at the used-car lot or the KC or the 12th Street Bar Grill, good ol' Pat McCoy was pouring John Jamieson's into his brain. Only his wife and kids knew it, but good ol' glad-hand Pat was a mean, vicious drunk who got his kicks slapping his wife and his kids around. Sometimes he beat them because there was some kind of reason like not showing the proper respect, or for bad grades or a note from one of the Sisters or the Brothers, or for leaving polish showing when you'd waxed one of the cars on the lot. More often he beat them for no reason at all.