Playing the guitar—or the piano, drums, even some saxophone when the mood called— brought the world back into focus for him by paring everything down. Only notes at his command remained. Sprawling back on the lumpy sofa at the Minot AFB temporary lodging facility, he propped his tennis shoe against the coffee table, flight suit exchanged for jeans and a T-shirt. His right hand plucked while his left fingered along the frets in routine scales that somehow became a song of their own in the rhythmic musicality of warming up. His buddies didn't seem to object to his tunes, so he kept picking away, scales shifting to Bach on the guitar. Rather than separating the crew into officer and enlisted quarters, they'd been bunked together in a suite with four rooms attached to a common room, as per the flight orders, maintain crew integrity. Not that Quade's closed door invited much camaraderie or bonding as called for in the orders. Tag's door, however, stayed open while he sprawled on his bed talking to his wife on the phone.
