018/365 09/08/2025

Camp Pendleton sits on a small rise on the far end of town. Each day at dawn, Private Gunner First Class Milton Shawshank wakes before his bunkmates. He retrieves his brass bugle from its small case and parade-marches to the small, raised dias in the center of camp. He blows revelry for exactly one minute, eight seconds. He is never too sick. He is never too tired. He has blown revelry now eight thousand five hundred seventeen times. He is beginning to suspect that might be too many. He is beginning to suspect that he should be through with it by now. He is beginning to suspect that he might need to seek paperwork for filing. Something to get to the bottom of this. Maybe.