pale and tiny butterflies, borne like bleached petals in shimmering slow-motion across the dusty road. At one point Hobbs, the radioman, cruised by in a jeep with a fishpole antenna; he was laughing, taunting the marchers with a song--_I got romance in my pants_--and he waved a jolly fat hand. A tanager rose, scarlet and beautiful, from a steaming thicket and pinwheeled upward, down again, and into the meadow beyond: there Culver thought, for a brief terrified moment, that he saw eight butchered corpses lying in a row, blood streaming out against the weeds. But it passed. Of course, he remembered, that was yesterday--or was it?--and then for minutes he tried to recall Hobbs’s name, gave up the effort; it was along about this time, too, that he gazed at his watch, neither pleased nor saddened to find that it was not quite nine o’clock, began to wind it with careful absorption as he trudged along, and looked up to see Mannix looming enormously at the roadside. “Get up,” the Captain was saying. He had hardly any voice left at all; whatever he spoke with gave up only a rasp, a whisper. “Get your ass off the deck,” he was saying, “get up, I say.” Culver stopped and watched. The marine lay back in the weeds. He was fat and he had a three-day growth of beard. He held up one bare foot, where there was a blister big as a silver dollar and a dead, livid white, the color of a toadstool; as the Captain spoke, the marine blandly peeled the skin away, revealing a huge patch of tender, pink, virgin flesh. He had a patient hillbilly voice and he was explaining softly, “Ah just cain’t go on, Captain, with a foot like this. Ah just cain’t do it, and that’s all there is to it.” “You _can_, goddammit,” he rasped. “I walked ten miles with a nail in my foot. If I can do it you can, too. Get up, I said. You’re a marine....” “Captain,” he went on patiently, “Ah cain’t help it about your nail. Ah may be a marine and all that but Ah ain’t no goddam fool....” The Captain, poised on his crippled foot, made a swift, awkward gesture toward the man, as if to drag him to his feet; Culver grabbed him by the arm, shouting furiously: “Stop it, Al! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Enough!” He paused, looking into Mannix’s dull hot eyes. “Enough!” he said, more quietly. “Enough.” Then gently, “That’s enough, Al. They’ve just had enough.” The end was at hand, Culver knew, there was no doubt of that. The march had come to a halt again, the men lay sprawled out on the sweltering roadside. He looked at the Captain, who shook his head dumbly and suddenly ran trembling fingers over his eyes. “O.K.,” he murmured, “yeah ... yes”--something incoherent and touched with grief--and Culver felt tears running down his cheeks. He was too tired to think--except: old Al. Mannix. Goddam. “They’ve had enough,” he repeated.