My Detachment Page 21

  As he continued, saying that he wanted to travel more, that it was in his blood, it occurred to me that he had just stated the essential difference between us, back when we’d been soldiers. He had wanted to have an interesting life. I had wanted to be interesting.

  We lingered over coffee. Finally, it seemed as though there was nothing more to say. We got up to leave. Sliding out of the booth, I knocked the cushion off the bench. It fell beneath the table. I got down on one knee, stuck my hand under the table, and was groping for the cushion, when I heard Pancho say, musingly to himself, “Same old lieutenant.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TRACY KIDDER graduated from Harvard and studied at the University of Iowa. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes. The author of Mountains Beyond Mountains, Home Town, Old Friends, Among Schoolchildren, House, and The Soul of a New Machine, Kidder lives in Massachusetts and Maine.