Thank You for Your Service by David Finkel

Author:David Finkel [Finkel, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-385-68097-4
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2013-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

Hunting in Kansas

He drives off. He doesn’t know where else to go, so he gets back on the highway.

Four hours later, checked into the hotel, thoughts creeping back into his mind of wanting his life to be over, he gathers with the other wounded soldiers and their families in a conference room for welcoming speeches and receives his first gift of the weekend.

A shotgun? he thinks as he sees the box. Really?

Back in his room, he removes it from the box and assembles it so he’ll be ready to go in the morning, and things slide downhill from there. He sets his alarm. He asks someone to wake him up just in case. He doesn’t hear his alarm. No one knocks on his door. He gets to the hunt two hours late and sees more people than he expected. Who are they? he wonders, his mood darkening even more. Volunteers? Sponsors? Those people who drive around with “We Support the Troops” signs on their cars, as if a sign on a car makes any difference? The ones who have never been to war and will never go to war and say to soldiers, “Thank you for your service,” with their gooey eyes and orthodontist smiles? They’re certainly not hunters, not the way they’re wandering around, and look at them now, fawning over the soldiers with visible injuries, the one with gunshot scars, the amputee. And here come the inevitable thoughts. Those soldiers are injured. He’s not. They’re wounded warriors, and he’s weak, a pussy, a piece of shit. He stands off by himself. He talks to no one. He has lost the capacity to see that his behavior is the behavior of the wounded. At some point, a few pheasants rise into the air, and when a dozen guns begin blasting away, he decides he’s had enough. He goes back to the hotel, packs in a fury, and leaves, and soon he is back in Junction City.

Home again.

And once again, he has a shotgun.

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