When Edward Hale passed through the low stone gate of the military cemetery, the sun was already high and the heat had begun to settle over the fields like a tired hand. The road behind him was empty. Only a few bicycle tracks in the dirt, a few flies, and the long, quiet hum of summer. In front of him, rows of white headstones. Nearly all the same. Clean. Silent. So orderly that for a moment they felt like an insult. As if someone had come after the slaughter to straighten the lines, to place the boys in rows, to say now everything is all right, now the chaos has been arranged.