"Regulate the voice," Bobby whispered.

"So that was the second court-martial. But I defended myself this time. I questioned Rodriguez on the stand. I was proved not guilty of throwing my drink on him, which is technically an assault charge."

"How come here we are, having this talk?"

"They said I was guilty of a lesser charge. Wrongful use of provoking words to a staff noncommissioned officer. Article one seventeen. Bang."

"Slam the gate," Bobby said.

He wore faded utilities that still carried the imprint of long-gone sergeant stripes and he worked in the fields, clearing stones and burning trash. The guard wore a.45 and kept his gun side turned away from the prisoners. There was no talking or rest. They worked in the rain. There were great billowing rains that first week, rain in broad expanses, slow and lilting. Smoke drifted over the men, smelling of wet garbage, half burnt. Their useless work trailed them through the day. He thought there was a good chance he would go to OCS. He'd passed the qualifying exam for corporal before shipping out. He'd be in good shape if it wasn't for the shooting incident and the spilled-drink incident. He could still be in good shape. He was smart enough to make officer. That wasn't the issue. The issue was would they let him. He cut brush and cleared fields of heavy stones. The issue was would they rig the thing against him.

"I landed here like a dream," Dupard whispered that night. "I figure I'm already dead. It's just a question they shovel the dirt in my face."

"What did they charge you with?"

"There was a fire to my rack, which they accused me. But in my own mind I could like verbalize it either way. In other way of saying it, the evidence was weak."

"But you did it."

"It's not that easy to say. I could go either way and be convinced in my own mind."

"You're not sure you really wanted to do it. You were just thinking about doing it."

"I was like, Should I drop this cigarette?"

"It just seemed to happen while you were thinking it."

"Like it happened on its own."

"Did the rack go up?"

"Scorch some linen was all. Like you fall asleep a tenth of a second, smoking."

"Why did you want to start a fire?"

"It's a question of working it out in my own mind, the exact why I did it. Because the psychology is definitely there."

"Then what?"

"Mainly one thing. I deserted."

"Why?"

"Because I want to book on out of here," Bobby said. "I am not a Marine. Simple. They ought to see that and just call a halt. Because the longer it goes on, there's no chance I deal with this shit."

In the prison literature he'd read, Oswald was always coming across an artful old con who would advise the younger man, give him practical tips, talk in sweeping philosophical ways about the larger questions. Prison invited larger questions. It made you wish for an experienced perspective, for the knowledge of some grizzled figure with kind and tired eyes, a counselor, wise to the game. He wasn't sure what he had here in Bobby R. Dupard.

The next day he came back from a work detail and found two guards in the cell pummeling Dupard. They took their time. It looked like something else at first, an epileptic fit, a heart attack, but then he understood it was a beating. Bobby was on the deck trying to cover up and the two men took turns hitting him in the kidneys and ribs. One guard sat on Oswald's bunk, leaning way over to throw short lefts like a man trying to start an outboard. The other guard was down on one knee, biting his lip, pausing to aim his shots so they wouldn't catch Bobby's crossed arms. Bobby had a look on his face like this is bound to end someday. He was working hard to keep them unfulfilled.

They called him Brillo Head. He showed a little smile, as if only the spoken word might perk his interest. They went back to pounding.

Oswald stopped at the white line outside the cell. He thought if he stood absolutely still, looking vaguely right or vaguely left, waiting patiently for them to finish what they were doing so he could request permission to cross the line, they might be inclined to let him enter without a beating.

He hated the guards, secretly sided with them against some of the prisoners, thought they deserved what they got, the prisoners who were stupid and cruel. He felt his rancor constantly shift, felt secret satisfactions, hated the brig routine, despised the men who could not master it, although he knew it was contrived to defeat them all.

When a man was returned to his unit from the chicken-wire enclosure, a man from the cells took his place.

When a man in the chicken wire fouled up, he got a cell of his own, C-rats to eat, close and horrendous attention.

When a man from the cells fouled up, he was thrown in the hole, a junior-size cell with a dirt floor and a cat hole to crap in.

Because of the overcrowding, there was constant shifting of prisoners, many ceremonial occasions at white lines, inspections, friskings, shakedowns, foul-ups.

The night of the beating, Dupard had nothing to say, although Ozzie knew he was not asleep.

He tried to feel history in the cell. This was history out of George Orwell, the territory of no-choice. He could see how he'd been headed here since the day he was born. The brig was invented just for him. It was just another name for the stunted rooms where he'd spent his life.

He'd once told Reitmeyer that communism was the one true religion. He was speaking seriously but also for effect. He could enrage Reitmeyer by calling himself an atheist. Reitmeyer thought you had to be forty years old before you could claim that distinction. It was a position you had to earn through years of experience, like winning seniority in the Teamsters.

Maybe the brig was a kind of religion too. All prison. Something you carried with you all your life, a counterforce to politics and lies. This went deeper than anything they could tell you from the pulpit. It carried a truth no one could contradict. He'd been headed here from the start. Inevitable.

Trotsky in the Bronx, only blocks away.

Maybe what has to happen is that the individual must allow himself to be swept along, must find himself in the stream of no-choice, the single direction. This is what makes things inevitable. You use the restrictions and penalties they invent to make yourself stronger. History means to merge. The purpose of history is to climb out of your own skin. He knew what Trotsky had written, that revolution leads us out of the dark night of the isolated self. We live forever in history, outside ego and id. He wasn't sure he knew exactly what the id was but he knew it lay hidden in Hidell.

A naked bulb burning in the passageway. He watched Dupard in the shadows, sitting on the infested cot, showing an empty stare. His bony wrists dangled out of the faded shirt. He had a gangliness that made him seem sixteen, rompish and clumsy, but he moved well running-running in the compound, running to the head, eyeing those white lines. A long face, hangdog, sad-sack, and dusty hair, reddish brown. Eyes suspicious and hurt, quick to look away. Oswald lay still, aware of a drone in the block, a heaving breath, grimness, massive sleep. Dupard undressed, got under the blanket and began to masturbate, turned toward the wall. Oswald watched his top shoulder twitch. Then he turned to his own wall, closed his eyes, tried to will himself to sleep.

Hidell means don't tell.

The id is hell.

Jerkle and Hide in their little cell.

Oswald stood at the white line in front of the urinal. A guard moved alongside, peering in that inquisitive way, like what do we have here to pass the time.

Oswald requested permission to cross the line.

"I'm looking at your hairline, shitbird. What is supposed to be the length of the hair in the area of the nape of the neck?"