"True." Joe explained to Edie and Mo that he'd enlisted in the Air Force and decided, midway through his hitch, that war was wrong, that people shouldn't kill each other. "Vietnam was heating up. The colonel at my courts-martial listened to my speech, smiled at two lieutenants who were doing on-the-job legal training, and said, 'Airman Burke, you may persist in your attitude and I will sentence you to one year at Fort Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary and a bad conduct discharge, or, you can keep your mouth shut, serve the rest of your enlistment, and I will sentence you to thirty days in the stockade, a five hundred dollar fine, and reduction in rank to Airman Basic. What will it be?' "He raised the gavel, the son of a bitch. I was twenty; I was stubborn; I had no idea what a federal pen was like. I opened my mouth for another statement of principle, and a voice sounded in my head--that's only happened to me twice. It said: 'you asshole, people kill each other. They have always killed each other. What do you think you're doing?' The voice saved me. 'Thirty days,' I said. The colonel smacked his gavel and read the sentence for the record. "'Yes, sir.' I said. 'My car is at the BX; I'll just park it behind the barracks.' Two AP's took me by the elbows and marched me to the stockade." "A near thing," Edie said. "It was a senseless war." "It sure was," Joe said. "And it was the poor boys from Kentucky who died in it." "And the Vietnamese," Mo added. They were silent. "It wasn't so bad in the stockade," Joe said. "We got to watch TV for an hour each afternoon--Perry Mason. The guys were always yelling for longer sentences at the end of the show. One of the guys was doing ninety days for swearing at an officer's wife. Stockwell, his name was. He was a bag boy, and she used to give him a hard time at the commissary. He called her a bitch one afternoon and she complained to her husband. Ninety days! They add it to the end of your hitch, too." "So you had to serve thirty extra days?" Mo asked. "Twenty-five. I got five days off for good behavior. It cooled me down. I got through the rest of my hitch without any problems." They settled the bill. Joe put half on his credit card, and Morgan asked what he was doing for money. "Nothing," Joe said. "You can't spend more than you earn, forever, you know." "Good point. I'm not quite broke; I'll figure something out." "Morgan says you're a computer expert," Edie said helpfully. "Was, Edie. The technology changes every couple of years and I'm sick of learning languages. It was something I did just to get by. I've given it up." "Oh, good!" she said.