The Fog After the War

Many hours of the day were still unfilled. "I was just feeling worthless," he said. He tried reading "just to finish something, to feel like I'm actually doing something with my day instead of TV," he said.

He'd sleep past noon, "just because I can," he said. "It feels good at first. And then I said, 'You're so lazy. I wasn't like this before. I was a Marine. I should do better than this.' " He said he thought, "It should be easy when I get out. It'll be clear sailing. . . . Well, after three months of doing nothing, it's not that easy."

Friends told him he deserved to take it easy. Relax, they said. But he was sick of relaxing.

"I was trying to find something that stayed intact from before I went in, something that feels the same," he said. "Because everything is so different."

His girlfriend suggested he try acting again. Maybe the Timonium Dinner Theatre has a show coming up, she said. He thought about it for a couple of days, then looked it up on the Internet. The Web site said tryouts were that afternoon.

A Stage Presence

The director was impressed with Young's a cappella rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner." This young man clearly was comfortable onstage and had an authoritative bearing, director Roger Siskey remembers thinking. He would be perfect for the part of Mr. Macy, the patrician owner of the famous New York department store where much of the play is set. He offered Young the part.

He memorized his lines, the choreography, his songs. The old feeling returned. He didn't know what he was going to study, or what he was going to do after college, outside of vague notions of working for the FBI or the CIA or of becoming a teacher.

But pretending to be someone else felt familiar. It reminded him of his past life and became one of the only "things not tainted by everything else," he said.

So Young threw himself into the into the feel-good holiday tale, which could not have been more removed from the world he left. "If my [Marine Corps] buddies were here and saw this, they'd kick my a -- ," he said during a recent rehearsal.

Others in the cast knew that he was a former Marine, but little else. Which is just how he wanted it. To them, he was not Patrick Young the Marine Corps corporal or Patrick Young the Iraq war veteran. He was not even Patrick Young.

He was Mr. Macy.

The Curtains Rise

Opening night. He arrives at the near-empty theater two hours early on a Friday evening earlier this month. Just a couple of the other cast members are backstage with him. One of them, a cute 7-year-old girl who plays one of the kids who sits on Santa's lap, says in a lilting voice: "Are you excited, Mr. Macy?"

"I am excited," he replies, his eyes widening to mimic hers.

"Good," she says with a smile. "Me, too."

It's showtime. The crowd hushes as the lights go out. He waits for the theater to become pitch-black before stepping out onto center stage. Then the spotlight shines on his face and casts a long shadow behind him.

The music begins, and Mr. Macy starts to sing.