It’s weird—I can feel exhausted but still, I just lie there wide awake, staring up into the dark with all sorts of ideas bombarding me like dead pelicans. Tonight, for example, I get to thinking about Geech’s stale military school proposition, wondering if maybe it’s not such a terrible idea after all. Maybe I should’ve joined up when I was about fourteen or fifteen, worked hard for a year—marching ten miles a day, hustling through obstacle courses, scuttling under barbed wire with a wooden rifle cradled in my arms. Then come back home muscled up and spit-shined and tight as a snare drum on the inside. How else are you supposed to know when you’re not a kid anymore in this society? I remember reading about these primitive initiation rituals in school. They had one where they take the kid way out into the wilderness and drop him off and he has to get back by himself without any weapons or tools. He’s just out there with his bare hands, digging up roots to eat, making fires with rocks and sticks or whatever.
