内容简介：
Is it all by chance? Is it by design? Is there a guiding force? Does it have a plan? Is it playing dice with the chaos of the stars? I am surely a part of the system, but I seem so insignificant. Yet all other things in nature taken singularly are insignificant; taken as a whole, all are necessary. And so am I. Ike thinks while confined to his wheelchair in the veteranas hospital in Dayton, Ohio. He looks at the stumps of his severed legs. During the last lonely days of his life, he remembers all the ways his legs have carried him through his firefly existence, trying to make his life hold together and find some order out of the chaos. He never really recovered from the hell of WWI, and he tries to reconcile his remaining horrible reactions to his life situation. His alcoholism was not thought of as a sickness during his lifetime. He fought with himself between his desire to support his family and his need to be a free spirit. Alcohol was his haven and his enemy. His adventures, from his familyas early migration from Scott County, Virginia, to his elephant tending with the Hagenback and Wallace Circus, flood over him during his final days. It adds up to an unlikely, but true, adventure for this man who loved his country, life, laughter, and a good drink.