In the cinder-block shack of my dormitory room, I sleep to dream and wake up to remember how one of us has failed boot camp, standing like the man his sergeant made him upright on the obstacle course, then machine-gunned down, flunked out of breath and blood. His death is foursquare fact, cramped as my slot in a basement dorm, but the rumoring tongues wear out to explain him around the world, the army issuing a report that he was bad material for them, while the local blur of the underground press types him into heaven. Before he failed, and passed his physical, I was his roommate once, and I know nothing except that barracks and reveille would keep him from the twenty hours a day he had to sleep to stay awake at all, and I know from a photograph how bad his khaki fit.