GHOSTS OF WAR
A soldier carries home the radio he could not save his leader on
by Monique Washington
Sergeant Joe Lotta hears Lieutenant Lider die over a speaker he cannot shut off. In Iraq, an RPG knocks Joe out of the fight. Grounded in a tactical operations center, he is forced to listen as call sign Charlie 5 is ambushed in Taza. Lider bleeds out after exposing himself to free a pinned driver. Joe renders a last salute at the ramp ceremony and brings the silence home. Back in Italy, then Texas, the war does not end. Insomnia, hypervigilance, and alcohol fill the hours his company commander, Captain Craven, would punish him for filling with therapy. Fellow Ranger Ty Cash pushes him toward a chaplain and discreet civilian help. His wife Dana holds the line. An English bulldog named Winston does what orders cannot: he climbs into Joe's lap on the living-room couch and stops a suicide attempt before it starts. GHOSTS OF WAR is a literary novel of grief, survivor's guilt, and the long walk back from a war that keeps speaking. The ghosts do not leave. Joe learns he can still live while carrying them.
- Literary Fiction
- Historical Fiction
- Grief & Loss
- Character Study
- Relationship Drama
Static
Texas, 2005
The screen door moved with the wind, opening an inch before settling back against the frame. Joe watched it from the couch.
The television was on without sound. Blue light flashed across a half-finished bottle of whiskey, an empty glass, a can of Copenhagen, and a stack of unopened mail. Outside, cicadas screamed. Every few minutes headlights moved across the blinds, and Joe tracked them without meaning to.
Old habits.
He was tired, but sleep had become its own kind of work.
“What was it all for?”
There had been a time when the answers came easily. Duty. Honor. Country. The man to your left. The man to your right. Mission first. Never leave a fallen comrade.
Most of Iraq had faded into fragments. Faces without names. Roads without destinations. Villages that blended together until he could not tell whether he remembered the place or only a photograph of it.
But three things stayed.
The minefield.
The radio.
The airplane.
Especially the airplane.
He could still see the formation. Men who had spent months learning not to react to death standing perfectly still while failing miserably at it. Senior NCOs crying. Officers crying. Nobody pretending not to notice.
And the casket moving toward the C-130.
“Should’ve been me.”
On the floor beside the couch, Winston lifted his head.
Joe rubbed both hands over his face. “He had people who needed him.”
He closed his eyes and the radio returned. Not every word. Memory did not work that way anymore. But the call sign remained clean.
Charlie 5.
Then static. Urgency. Silence.
“I failed him.”
Winston stood.
“I fucking failed him.”
The bulldog crossed the carpet and pushed his broad head against Joe’s knee.
“Not now, buddy.”
Winston pushed harder.
Joe moved his leg. The dog followed.
“Seriously?”
Winston stared up at him.
Something almost resembling a smile touched Joe’s mouth. “You really don’t give a shit what I want, do you?”
Winston grunted.
Joe put one hand on the dog’s head and worked his fingers through the folds behind his ears. The dog leaned his full weight against him.
Joe looked toward the coffee table, then back at Winston.
The room was still there.
So was he.
For now.
Outside, the cicadas continued their endless noise. Inside, Joe kept petting the dog, and the static finally grew quiet.
New Jobs
Italy, 2002Morning sunlight cut through the blinds of the platoon office and striped Lieutenant Lider’s desk.Joe knocked twice against the open frame. “Sergeant Lotta reporting as ordered, sir.”Lider looked up from a stack of paperwork. “Come in.”Joe stepped inside, saluted, and took the chair Lider indicated.Lider lifted several sheets of paper. “…