Big Bob had been stationed in Korea with the U.S. Marines during and after the war there. He had married a younger Korean woman and brought her back to the States, eventually settling in the vicinity of Fort Sill where there were enough Koreans to prevent his bride from feeling completely isolated. Their oldest daughter had met, and briefly and unhappily married, Rufus’s dad. That whole generation was a little bit of a sparse patch in the family tree, though. Rufus’s mom had died young in a car crash and his dad, as the polite euphemism went, "was not in the picture"; a charming pathological gambler, he had faded away, when Rufus had been in his teens, as a steadily widening circle of family and acquaintances had called him on his bullshit. All of which helped to explain why Rufus had simply joined the army upon graduation from high school, and why he had completed his twenty years’ service while still a young and healthy man.