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When he crossed the drainage canal in the middle of the golf course on Date Street, he dropped the package containing the knife into the water and watched the string of bubbles come up.

He was going to have a nice scar there, he thought with a giggle. The scars on a man’s body were like a written history of his life. Each one had its own story and memory, like a chapter in a book. And when a man died they buried them all with him and then nobody could ever read his histories and his stories and his memories that had been written down on the book of his body. Poor man, he thought whose written history is buried with him. Poor Fatso. He bet Fatso had lots of scar-histories. He had guts too, Fatso did. And Prewitt killed him. Poor Prewitt.

You’re getting silly, he warned himself, you better straighten up and fly right. You aint even to Kaimuki yet. You got a good piece to go yet, lets you and me go over our scars and see can we remember the stories. We’ve got a good many histories, too.

There was the one on the index finger of his left hand he had got that time in Richmond Indiana on the bum when the nigger saved him from the guy with the knife. But that was only a little one, he’d been a kid then. Wonder where the nigger is now? Wonder where the guy is?

Then there was the one on his left wrist. That was a bigger one. He had fell off the roof of the house in Harlan and gashed it on a nail and cut the artery. His mother run and got Uncle John and Uncle John stopped the bleeding or he would of died probly. When his father came home he laughed about it. His father was dead now. Uncle John was dead too. His mother was dead too. And it had all seem so important to all of them at the time, except his father, who wasnt there. And where was it now? It was on his left wrist, thats where.

And when you die?

Then its gone.

He come awful close to dyin lots of times. He had the scars to prove it. And he wasnt dead yet.

But you’ll have to die sometime.

Thats right. Thats true. And then they’re all gone. If they cremate you, it’ll be a regular book burning, wont it?

There was the scar under his left eyebrow on his eyelid, just a thin pencil line now, that he got at Myer in the ring. They wanted to stop the fight but he talked them out of it and won by a knockout. The doc was going to sew it up, but the trainer raised such hell and insisted so loud for an adhesive bridge that that was what they finally did and hardly left any scar at all. It would have been a hell of a scar if they’d sewed it or clamped it. Wonder where the doc is now? Wonder where the trainer is? Both still at Myer? At the time he’d wish they would of sewed it because he wanted a good scar then.

What a kid, Prewitt. What a wise punk. Well, you’ve got it now. You’ve got a lot of them now.

There was the scars he got in the Stockade, still new and red. And there was all the scars he’d got in all the barracks, coming in drunk and falling over the footlockers. He had lots of scars. He had a real history. Robert E Lee Prewitt, a history of the United States in one volume, from the year 1919 to the year 1941, uncompleted, compiled and edited by We The People. There were the scars he had got on the county road gang in Georgia, and the scars he had got in Mississippi in the city lockup. There were the scars he had got from the police, and the scars he had got from the enemies of the police.

He knew when it was Wilhelmina Rise Street because it was so goddam steep. It really winded him. Really getting out of shape any more. Ought to do a little roadwork. Getting old.

There was the two scars he had got the last year at Myer on the fatigue detail when he was working in the attic and fell through the skylight at the Officers’ Gymnasium. The glass cut a line from his left sideburn down to his mouth-corner, and a big gash in his right hip. It was the ony time he ever got to see the inside of the Officers’ Gymnasium. And now you couldnt even see the line on his face