Scars of the Prophet by Mingo Kane

Author:Mingo Kane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, drama, ptsd, war, iraq, afghanistan, iraq war, us troops
Publisher: Diversion Books

A Place of Whispers

Part Nine

Secrets and Lies

“Let the lying lips be put to silence.” Psalms 31:18

We checked out of the lodge, then boarded a surrogate bus that grumbled away from the hotel, trailing a sad quaver of dust, leaving behind our peccadillo world of past indiscretions as the squat craft wound through the deserted and scalped mountains like a great phantom bearing a cargo of soiled flesh. Jessica and I made it to the final terminal of our shared journey without further incident, then offloaded the rhombus vessel, holding hands like we were in matrimony among a horde of degenerate clowns. We passed through the Charlestown station, then into the long term parking lot where Jessica’s car sat parked like an abandoned child, both dusty and neglected. A cobalt blue GEO Metro—the number one divorced and single economy-cruiser, she told me with a laugh.

We drove through post-industry coal towns where vacant buildings ruled in their ruinous collapse, then peeled the pint-sized vehicle into the southbound flow of interstate 81. Tractor trailers sped by like giant beetles that rattled the car with each sucking draft of air.

“It’ll take us about three and a half hours to get home, but I’m going to pull off the interstate in a couple hours to stretch and gas back up.” I nodded and stifled a yawned. Jessica noticed and gave me a thin smile. “I take full responsibility for keeping you up all night, so I’ll make it up by not smothering you with small talk.”

“I don’t mind… really.”

“No, you can take a nap until we stop for gas. I don’t want any excuses later on tonight about you being too tired,” she teased. I smiled and rubbed my eyes, then reclined the seat back.

“You don’t mind?”

“Nope… I’ll even turn the volume down on the radio so it won’t bother you,” she said and clenched my hand in the way that new lovers do. I started to pull away, but relaxed when I felt the tease of her warm flesh. The soft stroke of her delicate fingers had me feeling too secure. Drowsy and comfortable… the false security of that moment drew me back to a universe of past miseries like a pagan slave to war.

“What’s the hardest part for a Marine to accept about killing in combat,” I asked Johnson.

“You gotta train your mind to kill without emotion. Most men can’t understand that, so they let some kind of moral dilemma trigger their reluctance to fight…that hesitation will always give me an edge, and that’s why they call me the Goat…I am the Greatest of all Time.”

“How does something like that give you an advantage?” I asked, lighting two cigarettes and handing one over. He took the lit butt and grinned.

“I give myself an advantage by looking at this war from the sand nigger’s standpoint,” Johnson answered with a shrug, as if his explanation were a well known fact.

“What standpoint is that?”

“If the fucking sand worshippers wanna die for their almighty God and his

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