In Pharaoh's Army by Tobias Wolff Page B

gaze that followed the hand, the order that followed the gaze, the death that followed the order. Everything marched in lockstep from that one moment. If he had stood between us it would have been my shoulder the hand fell on, the other hand being occupied with his curved, fragrant, fatherly pipe. It would have been me receiving the father’s thoughtless blessing touch, me to whom he turned, me to whom he put the kindly question that had only one answer.
    It could have been me. I knew it even then, and Keith might have had the same thought. We were thesame rank, had about the same experience. We both stood about six feet. He was older by two or three years, but not so you’d notice. For the needs of this occasion either of us seemed about as plausible as the other. He had grounds for wondering why the hand had fallen on him. It could have been me, and he may even have thought that it should have been me. Certainly there were times, not immediately afterward but in the months and years to come, that I myself had the suspicion it should have been me—that Keith, and Hugh, and other men had somehow picked up my cards and stood in the place where I was meant to stand.
    I once confessed this dreary notion to someone, who, meaning well, told me it was caveman talk.
    “I know,” I said. “But still.”
    But still. In a world where the most consequential things happen by chance, or from unfathomable causes, you don’t look to reason for help. You consort with mysteries. You encourage yourself with charms, omens, rites of propitiation. Without your knowledge or permission the bottom-line caveman belief in blood sacrifice, one life buying another, begins to steal into your bones. How could it not? All around you people are killed: soldiers on both sides, farmers, teachers, mothers, fathers, schoolgirls, nurses, your friends—but not you. They have been killed instead of you. This observation is unavoidable. So, in time, is the corollary, implicit in the word
instead:
in place of. They have been killed in place of you—in your place. You don’t think it out, not at the time, not in those terms, but you can’t help but feel it, and go on feeling it. It’s the close call you have to keep escaping from, the unending doubt that you have a right to your ownlife. It’s the corruption suffered by everyone who lives on, that henceforth they must wonder at the reason, and probe its justice.
    I didn’t really know Keith Young. We saw each other in My Tho now and then, exchanged a few friendly words, but we didn’t take it any farther than that. He was too quiet for me, too careful. He struck me, I have to admit, as a company man, and it was pretty clear that I’d made no better impression on him. We never spent any time together until by chance we ran into each other while boarding the Kowloon ferry in Hong Kong. I’d been on R and R for four or five days already and Keith had just arrived. He was on his way to a tailor he’d heard about, and invited me to join him. This tailor was incredible, he said. For thirty dollars he could copy any suit; all you had to do was show him a picture of it. Keith had several pictures, advertisements he’d cut out of
Esquire
. You could pick up the suits in twenty-four hours.
    I didn’t have anything better to do so I went along with Keith and watched him being fitted for his wardrobe. At first I found the whole thing comical, especially a sign in the window of the shop: “Guaranteed by the Royal Navy.” I liked the idea of the Royal Navy taking an interest in my duds. And then I began to think it wasn’t that bad a deal, thirty bucks, and that it wouldn’t hurt to have a few good suits and the odd sport coat hanging around. Before leaving the shop that day I placed some orders of my own, for clothes that did not in fact resemble the ones in
Esquire
—“You look like a Chinaman,” a friend told me when I got home—and which quickly began to fall apart because of inferior thread. One of