"Detail commander, front and center, harch!" Corporal Pleasant barked.

McCoy, to his surprise, had been appointed to this role. He marched from his position at the left of the rear rank up to Corporal Pleasant.

Pleasant saluted.

"Take the detail, sir," Pleasant said.

"Take your post, Corporal," McCoy ordered.

They exchanged salutes again. Pleasant did a right-face and marched off to take a position beside the gunny and the first sergeant, just to the right of the reviewing stand.

McCoy did an about-face.

"Right- face!" he ordered, and then, "Fow-ward, harch!"

He gave them a column right, and then another, and when they got to the proper position relative to the reviewing stand, bellowed, "Eyes, right!" and raised his hand to the brim of his new Brooks Brothers $38.75 Cap, Marine Officers, with the cord loops sewn to its crown.

At the moment he issued the command, the Quantico Band, which had been silent except for the tick-tick beat of its drummers to give them the proper marching cadence, burst into the Marine Corps Hymn.

And the moment Second Lieutenant Pickering, USMCR, snapped his head to «he right, he saw two familiar faces on the reviewing stand. His father and his mother.

On the goddamned reviewing stand; not with the other parents and wives and whoever had showed up for the graduation parade. On the goddamned reviewing stand!

The officers on the reviewing stand returned McCoy's hand salute.

"Eyes, front!" McCoy ordered when he judged the last file of the formation had passed the reviewing stand. He marched them back to where they had originally been.

The officers marched off the reviewing stand, in order of rank. When the colonel got to McCoy, McCoy saluted.

"Put your detail at rest, Lieutenant," the colonel ordered.

"Puh- rade, rest!"

They moved their feet the prescribed distance apart, and put their hands and arms rigidly in the small of their backs.

"Congratulations," the colonel said to McCoy. "Welcome to the officer corps of the U.S. Marine Corps."

He shook his hand and simultaneously handed him a rolled-up tube of paper, which contained his diploma and his commission. Then, leaving McCoy at parade rest, the colonel, trailed by his entourage, went down the ranks and repeated the process, exactly, for each man.

Finally, the entourage returned to the reviewing stand.

"Lieutenant," the colonel called. "You may dismiss these gentlemen."

McCoy saluted, did an about-face, and barked, "Atten-hut. Dis-missed."

23- 41 just stood there for a moment, as if unwilling to believe that it was actually over and that they were now in law and fact commissioned officers and gentlemen of the United States Marine Corps.

And then one of them yelped, probably, McCoy thought, that flat-faced asshole from Texas AM who was always making strange noises. That broke the trance, and they started shaking hands and pounding each other on the back.

Captain Jack NMI Stecker walked off the reviewing stand, and then across the field to McCoy. As he approached McCoy, Pickering started for the reviewing stand. McCoy wondered where the hell he was going, but with Stecker advancing on him, there was no chance to ask.

He saluted Stecker, who offered his hand.

"Despite what some people think of China Marines, Lieutenant," Stecker said, "every once in a while some of them make pretty good officers. I think you will."

"Thank you, sir," McCoy said.

"I thought you might need a ride to the Impounding Compound," Stecker said.

"I got the car last night, sir," he said.

"Then in that case, McCoy, just 'good luck.' "

He offered his hand, they exchanged salutes, and Stecker walked away.

McCoy saw that most of 23-41 had formed a line by the reviewing stand. Corporal Pleasant was saluting each one of them. They then handed him a dollar. It was a tradition.

Fuck him, McCoy decided. Pleasant had been entirely too willing to kick him when he was down. And he wasn't even that good a corporal.

I'm not going to give the sonofabitch a dollar to have him salute me. He'll head right for the NCO Club with it and sit around making everybody laugh with stories about the incompetent assholes the Corps had just made officers.

And then he saw that Pick Pickering was not in the line. He was standing with a couple, the man well dressed, the woman in a full-length fur coat. Obviously, Pick's folks had come to see their son graduate. McCoy started to walk back to the company area.

Pickering ran after him and caught up with him.

"I want you to meet my mother and dad," Pick said.

"Wouldn't I be in the way?"

"Don't be an asshole, asshole," Pick said, and grabbed McCoy's arm and propelled him in the direction of the reviewing stand.

"I didn't see you giving Pleasant his dollar," Pickering said.

"I didn't," McCoy said. "Just because we're now wearing bars doesn't make him any less of a vicious asshole."

"My, you do hold a grudge, don't you, Lieutenant?" Pickering said.

"You bet your ass, I do," McCoy said.

Fleming Pickering smiled and put his hand out as they walked up.

"I knew who you were, of course," he said.

"Sir?" McCoy asked, confused.

"One Marine corporal can always spot another, even in a sea of clowns," Fleming Pickering said, pleased with himself.

"Flem!" Mrs. Pickering protested. She smiled at McCoy and gave him her hand. "You'll have to excuse my husband, his being a Marine corporal was the one big thrill of his life. I'm pleased to finally meet you, Ken… I can call you 'Ken,' mayn't I?… Malcolm's written so much about you."

"Yes, ma'am," McCoy said.

"I would like nothing better," Fleming Pickering said, "than to sit over a long lunch and have you tell me how you shepherded the lieutenant here around the boondocks, but we have a plane to catch."

"I'd forgotten about that," Pick said.

"This time tomorrow, we will be high above the blue Pacific," Fleming Pickering said. "Bound for sunny Hawaii. I was originally going by myself, but then some scoundrel told my wife about the girls in the grass skirts."

"I wasn't worried about the hula-hula girls," Pick's mother replied. "What concerned me was the way you behave on a ship. If they serve eight meals a day-and Pacific-Orient does-and I wasn't along, you'd eat all eight of them, and they'd have to take you off the ship in a wheelbarrow."

"You're coming back by ship?" Pick asked. "I thought you were flying both ways."

"No," Pick's father said. "I put off the meeting in San Francisco until the twentieth. That way, we can board ship in Honolulu on the tenth and still make it back in plenty of time.''

Pick nodded his understanding.

McCoy finally figured out what they were talking about. He had been a little impressed that Pick's parents would come all the way to Virginia just to see him get sworn in. But, so far as they were concerned, that was like a trip to the corner drugstore for cigarettes. They were about to fly to Hawaii. The only thing that had surprised Pick about that was they weren't going to fly both ways.

Pick and his family were people from a different world.

A world like Ernestine Sage's. A world where I don't belong, even with a gold bar on my collar.

(Three)

Washington, D.C.

1600 Hours, 28 November 1941

Before Pickering's parents had showed up, it had been understood between McCoy and Pickering that immediately after they were sworn in, they would drive to Washington. The LaSalle was already loaded with their luggage.

He had been sure that would change because of his parents. But that hadn't happened. Pick shook hands with his father, allowed himself to be kissed by his mother, and then the Pickerings left. Taking trips halfway around the world was obviously routine stuff for them.