Like a Wary Blessing

<p><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </strong></p><p> These stories address ways that war alters lives in ways that persist long after the last firefight or strafing.</p><p> In Night Mission two Marines who scan aerial photography make an appalling discovery about the targets they have identified.</p><p> Cadence Count follows two Army draftees one white and one Black through weeks of basic training that turn surreal.</p><p> In Papa-san's Private War a Vietnamese peasant seeks revenge after an obtuse lieutenant refuses to compensate him for the water buffalo the troops at a firebase have killed by mistake.</p><p> In The Inland Sea the narrator searches in his history as the grandson of an educator and the cousin of a military officer for clues to his own decision to marry the wrong woman.</p><p> Harry and the Ugly Rug traces the descent of Harry Waters from his service as a fighter pilot in Korea where he strafed fleeing civilians to his retirement near an American air base in Germany where his guilt fuels delusions.</p><p> In Dawn Call an Air Force veteran who teaches English in Saudi Arabia takes a predawn jog in Riyadh. He flings epithets like Your Emptiness at God for causing the death by suicide of a close friend. </p><p> </p><p><br></p>