Stern, a non-flier in a flying service, yearned for Air Force comrades but had only friends. There were two of them, non-fliers, with parasitic functions like those of Stern. One was Neidel, the Jewish captain, a finance officer who made furtive afternoon calls to grain market brokers, picking up $20,000 in barley one day, dropping it in wheat the next. A regular officer, Neidel, pockmarked and in his forties, had never married for fear of having to divert money from soybean futures. Stern occasionally had lunch with him in Neidel's old car, telling him of gentile girls from college while Neidel sweated and wolfed down economy coleslaw sandwiches he had prepared in the bachelor officer rooms. Stern's other friend was Kekras, a Greek who had failed in jets. Once lean and blond, he drank heavily now and seemed a parody of gentile fliers, his hair grown long, his khakis soiled, his face swelled up with beer. Kekras burped a lot, said next to nothing, but was a great admirer of strength, and Stern got rises out of him only with apocryphal anecdotes of Charlie Keller, ancient Yankee outfielder. "He could carry seven baseballs in one hand," Stern would report, and Kekras would shake his head and say, "What a monster." "Some said he could even grab eight of them in his prime." "Jesus," Kekras would say. "I once saw him outside of Yankee Stadium," Stern would add. "He had the bushiest eyebrows I'd ever seen on a man, and you should have seen his arms. They hung down to the ground like an ape's." "What a horse," Kekras would say, grinning and shaking his head with affection. "What an ox." And Stern was thrilled that he was talking intimately with a gentile man of the air, even though a cast-off, heavy-lidded one whose senses were too dulled for the new jets. Stern felt like a thief throughout his Air Force tour, a sponger and a parasite, a secret vomiter masquerading in suits of Air Force blue with great heroic eagles perched atop his garrison cap. "I'd feel more comfortable wearing a different kind of uniform than the fliers," he'd tell Kekras, while the Greek burped and wondered whether Dolph Camilli's wrists were larger round than those of Johnny Mize. Only one brief moment did Stern feel in the Air Force and not an unwanted guest in a hostile house, each month taking money that should have gone to fliers. * * * * *