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them to understand, so I think they were playing dumb with this “Tontay” nonsense. I kept that thought to myself.
    “If I break something, you’d all better start running,” Dolly mock-threatened, igniting another chorus of giggling. Then my wife—who had been a yoga practitioner since she was a child—jumped up, threw her hands toward the sky, and floated to the ground, landing in a perfect split.
    “Wow!” one of the cheerleaders shouted. They all applauded, as happy as if it was raining beauty on them.
    —
    “S omething else is going on, Dell,” she said to me.
    It was after midnight. We were in bed, and Rascal had planted himself at the threshold to our bedroom, like he’d trained himself to do.
    “With what?”
    “With that whole logging-road fight.”
    “Fight? It’s like some kind of hobby for them. They have to show how ‘green’ they are, like a damn religion. But it’s just talk. Like those anti-tax people. They always get stuck in their own glue.”
    “I know you don’t think much of—”
    “It’s not that, honey. It’s that circle thing. Uh…Okay, you remember when some of them started a campaign to ban the sale of cigarettes? Not to minors, to everyone. Statewide. But before they could even get it on the ballot, some of that
same
crowd said tobacco was sacred to Native Americans, and we couldn’t disrespect their culture. They kept going round and round, but they never
got
around. To doing anything, I mean.”
    “I know,” my wife said, a sad tone in her voice that I’d heard before. Not often, which is probably why I picked up on it so quickly. “But there’s a different…intensity to this thing.”
    “Because…?”
    “I don’t
know
, Dell. But it’s not like usual. That piece of ground, it’s, I don’t know how to say this, but…vibrating. Like a big train is coming.”
    —
    I didn’t know what people in the village thought of me.
    Most of them probably didn’t even know I existed. But those who did knew if anyone tried to hurt Dolly it would be the worst kind of mistake. Nothing to do with my pride, my self-respect,or my ego. And it wasn’t possessiveness, either. You don’t own a woman like Dolly. But protect her,
that
I could do.
    For me, Dolly was that
raison d’être
future-promised to all new legionnaires. A promise none of us ever expected would be kept, so we felt no disappointment when it turned out to be still another lie, part of our daily diet. To be disappointed, you must first be surprised.
    Olaf had never been a legionnaire. To us, “survivor” had a different meaning. Those who survived the training could never lie about it. Who would we lie to? Our commanders watched the training. They could count the survivors easily enough—they knew exactly what those survivors would have proved.
    The tests would get progressively more difficult. Not just physically—the assault on each man’s will never stopped. They said this tested the ability to “adapt.” To show fear, that was acceptable…so long as the fear did not alter your conduct. But to show despair, no. That was considered a sure sign of a man who would not succeed in the field.
    Our ranks were culled as a breeder of dogs would destroy runts from each litter. Only the “best” got to prance around in shows, pampered like royalty throughout their lives. But such a life was reserved for dogs. For men like us, passing all the tests meant we would be awarded the privilege of war.
    And
those
survivors could not lie, either. If you started out with eight men, you returned with eight men. Not necessarily alive, but all bodies had to be accounted for.
    Never abandon your dead or your wounded. Never. But instead of some
esprit de corps
, our only code was that of the criminal: Whatever you see doesn’t matter, not if you keep that information to yourself.
    I was there when a tall, ink-black Senegalese we knew only as “Idrissa” locked eyes with my friend Patrice, forming an invisiblebridge