As he drifts towards sleep he thinks about the man in the bright red ski sweater. He crosses over without knowing it, thought melting effortlessly into dream. "Sixty-nine and seventy were the hard years,' the man in the red sweater says. 'I was at Hamburger Hill with the 3/187. We lost a lot of good men.' Then he brightens. 'But I got this.' From the lefthand pocket of his topcoat he takes a white beard hanging on a string. 'And this.' From the righthand pocket he takes a crumpled styrofoam cup, which he shakes. A few loose coins rattle in the bottom like teeth. 'So you see,' he says, fading now, 'there are compensations for even the blindest life.'
Then the dream itself fades and Bill Shearman sleeps deeply until six-fifteen the next morning, when the clock-radio wakes him to the sound of 'The Little Drummer Boy.'