Monday, January 26, 2015

the last book I ever read (Phil Klay's Redeployment, excerpt nine)

from 2014 National Book Award Winner for Fiction Redeployment by Phil Klay:

On the screen, a line curled around a school building—Fairhope High School, I guess. It looked like the images of Iraqis queuing to vote during those first elections, everyone was patient and serious. This was Vockler’s wake. The whole community had come out to mourn. I thought I caught a glimpse of Boylan in his Alphas, but the video quality was too poor to tell. I closed the computer.

There was no alcohol in the apartment, and I didn’t want to go out. I didn’t know any vets in the city. I didn’t want to talk to any civilians. As I lay on my mattress, struggling with a violence you might as well call grief, I realized why no one had thought to inform me of Vockler’s death. I was in New York. I was out of the Corps. I wasn’t a Marine anymore.



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