The Only Dead Soldier I KnowThe only dead soldier I know
didn’t die in the war: he rode his motorcycle up from Miami to Sarasota to meet up with some fellow soldiers, one with a pickup truck to carry his bike, en route to South Carolina where they were all stationed. They convened at a Chili’s, ordered beers to get drunk and celebrate the end of their leave before deployment, but after a few drinks he began to feel the fatigue of the long drive up and told his pals he was going to go sleep in the bed of the truck, to wake him when they were ready to go. Only he climbed into the wrong truck, fell asleep on the warm plastic lining, too drunk and tired to notice his bike wasn’t there, just as the truck owners must have been too drunk or tired to notice a stranger curled up like a rescued kitten snoring lightly in the back and drove off into that moonless night. My friend must have thought he was deployed in his sleep as a paratrooper, waking to roaring wind and black sky, thinking he wasn’t trained for this, mistaking the screaming highway traffic for the drone of a plane engine, confused and hungover, but didn’t bother to check for a parachute, didn’t question the situation or the high-beams of the trailing car as he stood up, took hold of the tailgate for balance, crossed himself once and stepped into the light.
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