There before me was a man who was not young. The difference between him and the eighteen and nineteen-year-olds either side of him was plain. But neither was he old and wrinkled. I scanned him anew. He didn’t seem to be maimed—though I couldn’t see his legs. He’d asked me a question, so his brains weren’t addled to the level of insensibility. He had sandy-blond hair and an open smile, yet something in the set of his shoulders and his blue-gray eyes spoke of secrets.
