They have been in Hohenfels for a week now and it has rained every day. The ground is so muddy the trucks are stuck in place. Henry has long ago given up on trying to stay dry or warm. They are here with the rest of the brigade combat team training for the upcoming Kosovo […]

Dear New Yorker: I am writing to express my discontent with my current subscription. I am living in Topeka, Kansas, and look forward every week to the new issue. I love the reporting and the essays, the Talk of the Town. The fiction? Hit-or-miss. Try not to take yourselves so seriously all the time. Anyway, […]

Henry had always hated the winter sun. It was too white, too bright, and never warm at the right time. Henry tried digging into the frozen ground, but the ice broke his e-tool. He swore and moved the snow away with his hands and sat down between two trees. His toes and fingers tingled. He […]

Matson and Henry sit in the Humvee waiting for Sergeants Woods and Paddock to return from the operations tent. The operations tent is a mystery to Henry. Every day Woods and Paddock come out with a new mission for the squad. Henry never knows what these missions are, doesn’t want to know. He is happy […]

Henry sits against a white stone marker high up in San Francisco’s National Cemetery. The marker is one of thousands formed in rows with military precision. They remind Henry of morning formation and he smiles. The grass is freshly cut and the morning dew soaks pleasantly through his pants and wets his legs. The sun […]

Henry and Matson had been in Germany and on the same MP team for a year before they deployed to Kosovo. She was tall as him with blond hair cut above her collar and bright blue eyes and small breasts. She was the driver and Henry was her gunner. She was tough. Ran faster than […]

“How do you always have money for weed and McDonald’s?” Vargas asks. “You got a job or something we don’t know about?” They eat Big Macs in the park just above the artificial waterfall. Sallie eats one too, her red and black tongue licking up mud and pine needles to get the last of it, […]

Henry met Nikki at a barrack’s party. She was a friend of Specialist Olsen’s girlfriend and Olsen was throwing a party because it was a Wednesday and he didn’t have to work. Henry was two weeks stop lossed and he sat in the corner next to the keg drinking Bud Light heavily. Music pumped from […]

Hippie Hill is just inside the park off Haight and during the afternoons, when it is sunny and the ocean wind isn’t so cold, it is littered with the street kids who come to San Francisco from everywhere else. They are hoping to catch something of Jerry Garcia, hoping to revive that summer of love. […]

Specialist Richard Henry, of the Fort Knox Military Police Traffic Detail, walks up Haight Street smoking a joint. He is coming from Alamo Square where he likes to sit in a tree and watch the fog move through the Financial District. Just beyond Masonic Avenue is Golden Gate Park and he is going there to […]