Side by side, Elliot and I crawled on our bellies beneath sagging loops of barbed wire, over field dirt, as live rounds of cadre-fired ammunition hissed and whined twenty inches above our steel-helmeted heads. It was here that Elliot met, head-on and face to face, his first Alabama scropion. Elliot was the scorpion's first Bronxite.

Both parties appeared unprepared for a social.