Little by little, he coaxed 58 into top speed, glancing at his watch, leaning back against the seat, the cushion solid. A shaft of light came in. The periscope was excellent. The viewer clean. He leaned forward and wet his lips with his tongue, something like a smile on his face. Landel was occupied with his map, his phone wobbling against his Adam’s apple, black, cancerous: his bald skull teetered stiffly, pencil between his fingers. Directly in front of 58, a tank rolled along, another M4, grey, lobbing up dust. Dennison contrasted its size with the immensity of the desert. The M4 climbed out of a bomb crater, flicked its fantail, ducked, disappeared. Dennison realized that the men inside were as lonely as he: men riding inside nothingness, gaping at dunes and flats of sand. Wasn’t that a knock in the motor? What was that strange vibration in the port tread? Wasn’t that a clicking sound in the transmission shaft? And the motor temperature? Heat began to close in. Driving ports were wide open, the turret was open, the fan was rotating; yet it was growing hot rapidly. Dennison mumbled to himself about the vents. The roaring of the treads knocked the roof of his brain; he felt that the old deafness was returning. When gasoline and oil fumes increased he let up on acceleration but not before Zinc came down with a harsh coughing spell. Fear came ... It crawled along his spine, yesterday’s fear, last week’s, the past mucking up death, Robinson’s arms in the sand, Al screaming, a village gouting smoke and fire. He saw, as in another world, another man’s world, his years in Ithaca, at Cornell. The bronze figure of Ezra Cornell was hazed by leaves--then blurred by falling snow. He saw tree-fogged paths winding to his flat on the hilltop above Cayuga. He saw the lake gleaming, blue as a smudged blueprint. He saw himself rowing with the university crew, his body synchronized to the dim bodies of his mates: Locksley ... Neilson ... Murphy ... Lee ... Lee was coxswain: Steady boys, steady now ... But all this was dead: his mother was dead: Aunt Therèse was dead, Uncle Victor, Landel and Zinc were dead: all were travelling through a fog, a distant fog. Without being aware of it, Dennison began to rub his neck at the base of his skull. His head was pounding. He wanted to drink. He wanted to close his fingers around a tangerine, strip the peeling, smell the strong smell. His mother used to buy tangerines at Christmas, tangerines from California, tangerines and purple grapes, oranges, avocados--pile them on a platter on the dining table. He wanted a piston to jam, he wanted the radiator hose to split. He longed to sleep during the afternoon or all night. Sleep, he thought, sleep ... * * * *2* The Ermenonville rain was a cold autumn rain, falling out of a dull sky, slanting in a light wind.