Veteran Stories

What war actually requires — and what our own hands are doing in Gaza. The people who decide what war requires have mostly never been in one. I have. Two tours — Iraq and Afghanistan, helicopter crew chief. Air Medal with Valor. And I need to tell you something the men who've never stood on a battlefield keep getting wrong on purpose, because the lie they tell depends on you not knowing it. Our rules of engagement were simple. You could fire when you were fired upon. Positive

I keep waiting to be ready. Put that first, because it's under everything else. I've been living as if a day is coming when I'll be finished — land bought, water secured, the pantry full, the man complete — and only then does the real life start. Broke as I am, scattered as I am, I've been grading every day against that finish line. And every night I lose, because the finish line isn't there. Nobody gets to be ready. I wrote that once and thought I understood it. I thought it

A Meeting of Souls I met David the day before I started drinking after years, then months. That's not his name. I've changed it, and I've changed it to mine, because of what I'm about to tell you. He wanted a cigarette. I only had a vape, so I shared it. He was disheveled, standing out in that heat. He talked — about his girl, about hating being in Española, about how you have to watch out for people here because people are no good. He had scratches on his neck. He told me sh

I did the algebra without thinking about where it came from. I've used the word algorithm my whole life without knowing it's a Latinized mangling of al-Khwarizmi's name — the man whose book gave us the word "algebra" itself, working in Baghdad a thousand years before anyone in Rio Arriba County dug a ditch. I know the acequia outside my door by its Arabic root, as-sāqiya, carried through Al-Andalus into Castilian and then into this valley. I have neighbors whose grandmothers

The exhaust camshaft was one tooth out of time. That's the whole problem, mechanically speaking. One tooth, out of however many, on a chain that has to be exact or the engine bends its own valves against its own pistons the first time it turns over. I didn't know that when I started. I didn't know a lot of things when I started. I pulled a 2011 Prius apart in my driveway because nobody else would, and I found that out the hard way, staring at three timing marks that were supp