Discharge - Derek Wilson, illustrator
Discharge Sitting in the back of a Greyhound bus, you find out who you are without orders. Without family meeting you there to fuss, you get dismissed last. At o dark thirty you might sleep, but you can’t, and there’s no rush. Two hundred miles to Brookings. Forty more to Cairn Station. And then you walk a mile to the house and whoever you find there, strapped for cash, fast asleep and unable to meet you, hug you, tell you where to toss your reeking, desert-dusted duffel bag. You drive to McDonalds, and then you give the orders: Big Mac, Coke, side of Kabul. You’ve choppered, jeeped, flown, bussed, walked and driven for two all-beef patties in the free world, and in the world, water-tight as a sieve, gonna have to figure out how to live.