I.M. Aiken spent 2006 as member of a military unit in Iraq as a government civilian. She has a new novel releasing this summer/fall that incorporate her journal entries and ties them to ancestral stories of a soldier during the Reconstruction Period that followed the American Civil War. This story is a revised chapter from that upcoming novel. Links to current events will pop for you. This journal entry is from precisely 20 years ago this month, the author (me) seems to pleading for a description of the end game. Not different from March of 2026. And actually, not too different from 1898 and 1871 America, either, a theme in the upcoming novel. Note that in fictionalizing the journals, the roll of the storyteller morphed from the author to a fictional soldier, and made it a letter home.

Brighid:

Your ancestor, Captain Henry, relates to Killeen, Texas. How’s that for an odd link across a century and a quarter? Your young Henry served as a private soldier near Chattanooga, Tennessee just after the American Civil War. There is a creek near Chattanooga called the Chickamauga. Confederate General Hood originally trained and served in the U.S. Army before rebelling against the United States. He lost his leg near Chickamauga in a battle against the United States Army. Earlier at Gettysburg, he lost the function of an arm. Adding insult to injury, Hood lost most of his battles. He violated his oath, fought against the United States, and proved to be a poor leader. In an effort to appease southern politicians, we named the Army post in Texas after this guy. Fort Hood. You’ve been there with me. One of our nation’s largest Army posts is named for a general of a rebellious army, and a treasonous criminal.

As you research this period of our history, you might keep your eyes open for names that seem heroic and honored, but are actually a hint of old political battles within our country. While fighting here in Iraq, my thoughts explore the closure and healing process that follows civil war.

At the end of our one-year tour here, these soldiers of the Fourth Infantry Division garrisoned at Fort Hood will move to Fort Carson in Colorado. These soldiers, who have been on the go since the wars began, have already been presented with a choice. If a soldier remains with the Fourth Infantry Division, they will return from combat to Texas and immediately move to Colorado. If a soldier decides that Texas and Fort Hood is their forever home, then the soldier must transfer to a different unit. But most of the units at Fort Hood who did not deploy this year will deploy to Iraq next year.

We’ve given our soldiers a Hobson’s Choice. They must decide to move to Colorado or return to combat nearly immediately. Many of the soldiers have already decided to use their mid-tour break to pack up their lives and their families.

If a soldier decides to remain with the Fourth Infantry Division, then they move to Colorado, then they will return to these battlefields within eighteen months. The only relief is retirement, injury, schooling, or end of service. And yet, there are hundreds of serving soldiers here who have already retired or have found themselves in active units during their supposed “terminal leave,” or trapped by stop-loss programs. The Army holds on to skilled and experienced soldiers. I am here with a lot of overweight soldiers, soldiers who have applied to separate from service, and soldiers who filed for retirement more than a year ago. Some do not expect to be released for yet another year.

Since 2003, our government has mobilized this division from Texas to Iraq then back to Texas then back to Iraq. From Baghdad, they will return to Texas, move to Colorado, unpack, then deployed again to Iraq or Afghanistan. I am counting the evolutions on my fingers: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. That will be seven complete moves of a heavy infantry division in under a decade. A division is approximately fifteen thousand soldiers. Add family, support staff, vehicles, office equipment, households, and sundry… the number of humans involved ranges between sixty and one hundred thousand. In addition to the people, their households, and offices, the moves include artillery, hundreds of M1A1 Abrams tanks weighing between sixty and eighty tons, thousands of Humvees, and thousands of shipping containers.

Young soldiers in our ranks, people my age, have experienced combat action in two countries and have been in a theater of combat for most of their very short careers. When command offers a young soldier a coin or a written statement of praise, they do not appear to care much. Young soldiers, young privates already awarded a Silver or Bronze Star, roll their eyes at being made soldier of the month from their own company. They have already seen multiple combat tours. Tired soldiers seeing years of combat operations in front of them. Letters of recognition fail to instill motivation like they once did.

With Iran in the news with such frequency, and the increasing violence in Iraq, I hope that our government does not expect that this Army to walk into Iran to solve the problems with Iraq. Iran and Iraq battled for a decade in the 1980s. The result was 1,000,000 people dead and a scared battlefield. Back then, Iraq was our friend and Iran held American hostages. Imagine the day when our elected officials announce that we are adding another battlefield. Such a decision will crush the souls and families of this generation of American soldiery.

Four of us got posted to tiny Camp Falcon. It is a short distance from my normal base. All of my stuff remains behind at divisional HQ. I live from my ruck, rotating between two uniforms and a handful of underwear and socks that I either launder in a sink or simply wear into the shower. I wash them with shampoo. I wring them out, then hang them during the night. The following morning, they are dry. Regrettably, my undies hold the shape of whatever I hung them on; they are just that stiff.

I barely sleep at night. I had been excited to have this small building to myself, with its walls and door; I did not feel welcome with the enlisted females as I am the only female officer on this base, and the rules state that I cannot rack out with my own squad because they are all dudes. I failed to understand that dozens of Chinook helicopters come in most nights. Chinooks date back to the Vietnam war. They have two sets of rotors and a loading ramp like a cargo plane. We fly them at night now because they are vulnerable to ground attacks during the day. They are heavy, slow, loud, and explain why this small building remained uninhabited by the soldiers serving here. Nobody wants to sleep in the landing path of Chinooks. Except me, I guess?

Most soldiers rack out in two-story buildings. These two-story buildings are dressed in the khaki-colored stucco that matches our equipment and the soil. The ground story of the building has a layer of tall concrete barriers—called either Texas barriers or Alaska barriers—which resemble the Jersey barriers of highways back home, except they stand three meters tall. Each window on the ground floor has three layers of sandbags. Ringing the buildings between the ground floor and the top floor is an exterior concrete trough that carries basic utilities. Our troops use this trough to carry communications wires and stack sandbags. The second story windows also have three layers of sandbags unless there is an air conditioning unit.

The roof deck of the building is flat and made of concrete tiles on a concrete base. Antenna masts and antenna dishes are weighted down with sandbags. Additionally, one can observe the ghosts of former sandbags. Regrettably, a lot of the bags we have used for making sandbags had been manufactured out of nylon or plastics. The sun destroys these plastics within a few months. The sandbags get bleached, then corrode in the sun. The result is leaking and spilling sand. The dense sand remains in its neat, round pile while the plastic fabric fades to dust. Thereby creating ghosts of former sandbags.

One layer of sandbags slows a bullet, reducing its lethality, but the dust and dirt from the sandbag enters a soldier’s wound which can introduce evil infections. Three layers of sandbags stack with greater stability and stop normal bullets and most shrapnel from IEDs, mortars, rockets, and grenades. As many urban kids know, before joining the Army, sleeping on the floor provides greater protection from bullets.

During my first tour into Iraq, a female master sergeant provided an informal class to female soldiers. One of the lessons was called feet-first. Before dressing, take care of your feet and treat for fungus. Then put on clean, dry socks. Do this before putting on underwear. The little bugs can’t jump through your socks. The little beasties from the feet have a more difficult time traveling to the nether regions covered by the underwear. Listen to the infantry. Another lesson involved urinating into a plastic bottle. She showed us how to make an oblique cut on a plastic water bottle, which, when completed, makes an anatomical match. Stand or squad, she said. Pee, then pour the contents into a bottle with a screw on top. Toss. With the lesson, we joined the world of those who can pee standing up. It makes peeing on a C-130 Hercules, peeing when doing surveillance, and peeing with a small squad of male soldiers just that much easier. It also makes peeing at night easier, too.

Camp Falcon occupies a few city blocks. It has three-story walls, made from Iraqi brick. It already had guard towers, so I assume that this facility was once an Iraqi military post. This is an urban base. The sounds of Baghdad remain constant and close.

The nightly body count in Baghdad approximates fifty citizens. That’s fifty Baghdadi folks, not U.S. troops; Iraqis killing Iraqis. We seem further from an end that we did when I got here. We appear to be traveling backwards, away from peace, the longer we are here. In the summer of 2003, when I deployed here for a few months as a sergeant, I believed we approached the end of the war. Instead, peace keeps retreating from Iraq.

I acknowledge that my foul attitude is due, in part, to living in quarters that would be condemned in any U.S. city. In Iraq, I call it home-for-now. I have made a nest in the corner. I fight with mice, ants, bugs, and spiders to defend my crappy piece of this room.

I noticed a dramatic down-tick in my emotional state when I read about a man in Afghanistan who converted to Christianity. I read that the government of Afghanistan now wants to execute him because of his conversion. In a country where we committed U.S. soldiers, we are faced with a government that wants to execute someone because of a religious preference. I am incensed by this. My stack is blown—as in, remains blown. Aren’t we here to defend freedom? Freedoms of religion and of the press, freedom from unwarranted searches, freedom to vote?

The fact that I carry the Constitution and Bill of Rights with me, even in this miserable place, expresses my desire to stand for these values. I do not wish to have American soldiers fighting to restore power to a government that completely eschews our soldier’s oath.

I know I am in Iraq, but the fluidity between Iraq and Afghanistan amazes me. Between Iraq and Afghanistan is the nation of Iran. Presently, Iraq and Afghanistan are two different battlefields against two different enemies being fought for two different reasons. Yet it is the same few Americans that deploy into, then out of, these two wars. Most Americans do not know the difference. Most Americans cannot point to either of these nations on a map.

I read what I can about Afghanistan. If I am not going there next, I’ll return here. I am certain I will see Afghanistan at least once.

At this moment, NATO is taking over forces in Afghanistan. Our troops are about to fight under a British general for the first time since World War II. At the same time, we are in a diplomatic fracas with the Mayor of Kabul (oh, I mean the “President of Afghanistan,” forgive me). Under Karzai, opium production is better than it has been in decades. Their constitution does not provide for a distinction between state and church, nor does it provide itself the ability to supersede traditional Islamic law. Under the new rulers, Afghans can return to lopping off the hands of thieves and stoning women.

The Taliban’s strict enforcement of Islamic law inspired the destruction of the ancient Buddhist sculptures carved into the mountain side. The Buddhas of Bamiyan were considered idolatry and sacrilegious by these religious zealots. Therefore, the Taliban—then standing as the Afghanistan government—blew them up. They filmed it. They filmed the process of destroying artifacts created in the sixth century. One stood thirty-eight meters tall, the other fifty-five. “One should not let idols stand,” said the nation’s boss, so they blew them up.

Let’s admit that part of the Islamic code remains as rigid and archaic as Leviticus. Imagine a nation run by the rules of Leviticus? If someone decided that America must be a truly Christian nation and follow the teachings of the Christian Bible, where would we be? Yet the U.S. government seems to be stumbling around with our proverbial knickers at our ankles. We must stand for real religious freedom; instead, we support a government that has outlawed converting to Christianity. We plea for a life sentence or an insane asylum in lieu of death. We are negotiating with the government we installed, the government presumed to be more liberal than the Taliban.

Let’s observe that we negotiate the sentence whilst ignoring the underlying law. We have put American soldiers into the line of fire so that this new government can codify laws that limit religious preference. None of this follows the tenants of my oath—our oaths—nor the words written in that slim document in my breast pocket. What is the difference between the Taliban or this new Afghanistan government if they both use the same laws and tactics?

Soldiers express shock, anger, and dismay over this issue. Things heated up on the anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq in March of 2003. Many here thought that Afghanistan was a model for success, a model that demonstrated to all of us how this war in Iraq could come to a good end. Victory by U.S. forces can never, ever tolerate religious persecution. That is the first of our amendments. 1791, the same year Vermont joined the union, the following words were written and accepted as law:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; of abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The authors found that freedom of speech and religion where exactly that important. We do not drain our blood, our credibility, our nation’s bank account, and destroy American families so that some damn government can just lock up—or kill—a guy with a Bible, a Koran, a Torah, a Bhagavad Ghita, or any other document. That is not in the bargain. We serve to support our values and our Constitution. We shall not yield the life of a single American soldier to support a government that would execute or imprison a citizen for his religious beliefs.

Reporters in Afghanistan tend to focus on the military as the story: The bodies, the tactics, the weapons. The news has not yet made an issue out of the limitations of the laws in Afghanistan. The reporters, and politicians, need to see past the Humvees and the patrols.

But you have to be here to see beyond. Footage of the most recent bombing is the same here as any other place: flashing lights, a reporter yelling into a mic while wearing a blue flak vest, a bloom of smoke over his shoulder and bits of car and debris all over the place. We’ve seen it. You’ve seen it. It is not news.

We should be reporting on stories that matter. Let me offer several. I mean, no one is listening, are they? But if I could research and write stories, I may start with one of the following.

Story option one for the world press:

When I was flying last week, I traveled repeatedly over the major roads that go from Baghdad to Karbala. I wish I knew the original Iraqi names for these roads; we’ve renamed them all for our own purposes. I think of this highway as I-95 running north to south through the major cities. Hundreds of thousands marched from their homes to Karbala. They marched in a way we could never know. Old ladies marched alone in their black clothing. Kids marched. Everyone marched. For days, they marched towards Karbala. No packs, no bags, no cars. Every few kilometers, there was a waystation with food and water. These waystations had been built from ancient trucks or mule-carts or upturned crates. Anything that could host food and water. I traveled almost one hundred kilometers in two days by Blackhawk. We flew up and down I-95 from mission to mission. I was amazed. I was in awe.

How did all of this get organized? Who did this? How did the people know? How did the people know to trust their neighbors and that there would be food, water, and bedding along the way? How does this happen?

That’s a story. It highlights a change since Saddam. It documents a means of communication unique to this area. It illustrates how people can simply walk a highway with trust. The pilgrims were rewarded with kindness, food, water, and shelter. I saw no violence. I would know more if someone in the media researched it then reported on it. It illustrates new religious freedoms.

Another story option for the world press:

Why are the counter-Iraqi forces winning at the PsyOps game? PsyOps is Army-speak for Psychological Operations. The U.S. is prohibited by law from doing propaganda. So, we call it PsyOps instead. We do it. They do it.

Only, they do it more effectively.

The enemy is a bad guy. His tactics work. These bad guys stand for a type of totalitarianism and religious regime governed by Islamic law. They may not win hearts and minds, but they do control the community with fear.

The Bad Guys capture people and torture them. They film this, then burn the images to DVDs. They then duplicate the DVDs and distribute them throughout neighborhoods. The Bad Guys will kidnap the family of another fellow and repeat the process with the filming and the DVDs and the midnight distribution process.

If a Good Guy lives in the community and wants the nation to progress towards democracy, then this Good Guy finds his family held captive by a Bad Guy. The Good Guy becomes compliant. So do his neighbors. The DVDs show images of people who had once served tea as friends and countrymen, now acting with unbelievable violence towards these same friends and countrymen.

This technique is highly effective. It sends a strong message. And given the electronic nature of the message, it is untraceable. They scrub the location and equipment metadata from the video feeds, then reproduce with inexpensive DVD cloning machines. There is no internet address to chase. It is a brilliant application of technology.

A third story for the press to explore:

Let’s write an article, or create a short documentary, about our enemy. I’d like to know who he is. Who is the enemy? Are we fighting bin-Ladenism? Are we fighting an Islamic reactionary force? Are we fighting against a backdrop of traditional tribal war? Are we fighting foreign insurgents from Iran, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey, all of whom have interests in controlling this region?

Turkey is afraid of the Kurds gaining autonomy. The Iranians seem to be supporting an Iranian-esque Shi’ah Islamic government. And the states to the west are likely to support the Sunni with an Islamic government. There is an American soldier in Iraq who would like to know the answer to these questions.

Many Iraqi I meet state some folks just want “The Chair.” They simply want power. They want to be rulers of their part of the land. “The Chair” seems to be a local term for throne or seat of power. They simply say, “The Chair.” Here, “The Chair” means power, and that means wealth, corruption, and respect. All of the above.

I offer a fourth story that the media could tell me:

I am a soldier on the ground, eating Iraqi dust, while wearing underwear that I can wag in the air like a stick. Please define success for me. What does the end –of this war look like to me and to the Iraqi people? What would they consider a natural state? What are their priorities? In my conversations, all I hear is security. With security comes all: utilities, benzene (gasoline), economy, family, growth, politics, and everything else. Without security, there is nothing.

I recognized my definition of the end when I thought through the question today. This conflict is over when I can walk out of Forward Operating Base Falcon and walk back to the division headquarters. I can see the hill next to the Z-shaped lake when I stand on a roof here. Imagine that I could step out of these gates, dressed in either my uniform or civilian clothing, then walk back to headquarters. If I could stop at an Iraqi bodega for water and a snack, greet people on the street, and make it the other side of my journey safely, that would be an accomplishment. I would accept that as an improvement in security.

Instead, I listen to frequent gunfire around me. In the morning briefings, we are informed of fifty dead Iraqis, or some other dreadful number. The evidence of kidnapping, torture, and street-based executions can be found in the DVDs we gather.

Blue fingers and elections don’t matter. Especially when the election can still result in the death of a man because he changed religions.

There are other stories like these that aren’t being investigated, that aren’t being told. And someone must. We’ve been at war since March 2003 in Iraq. It is March 2006. Therefore, we have entered the fourth year of this war. Where are the checks-and-balances in our culture to examine the situation? Like why fifty percent of our “fighting” force is contractors? How do we explain to U.S. citizens that a reduction in military presence here will be countered by an increase in U.S. contractors, filling roles traditionally held by uniformed military personnel?

If you do bump into any answers, please provide them to a dusty and tired soldier. Someday, I can sleep in a comfortable bed, then, in the morning, dress in soft underwear that doesn’t feel like cardboard.

Recently, when the daily death count of Iraqis killed by Iraqis escalated, we started describing our battlefield as a civil war. Our coalition forces stand on this same battlefield. All sides attempt to leverage us. They come to us with a whisper, an accusation, and sometimes proof. “Hey, old Freddy here, he was the one that mortared your base three days ago. He bought some weapons from the Iranians that came from China. I can show you.” We investigate. Do we arrest Freddy? In the early weeks, we did. We’d bang down doors, zip-tie or kill folks in Freddy’s building. We have wised up a bit. Maybe Freddy was set up. Maybe Freddy and Barney had a falling out. Maybe Barney is the real Bad Guy. We lost track.

Right now, we don’t know. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

Subscribe now

We did not necessarily understand we stood in a civil war. We took intelligence from people we knew and trusted and had served good intelligence before. This environment can be like drug wars in U.S. cities, where one rival gang provides information to the cops about another gang. The result is that the gang making the reports gains territory and trust with the police. The police earn recognition for seizing drugs and making high-profile arrests. If the police side with one gang or the other, they escalate the violence and corruption. But if the police do not act on intelligence, they fail to curb the violence and movement of drugs. We find ourselves in that situation here today. The bosses have not yet said: “This is a civil war.” The politicians have not said it either. The dead bodies on the streets tell their own story. The gunfire at night tells its own story.

I came to Camp Falcon because a counterintelligence team found a metric ton of anhydrous nitrogen. While this liquid product is used by farmers as a fertilizer, we believe that this stash was to be used for improvised explosives. Certainly, we have thousands of local farms growing dates and other fruits. They would love to get their hands on this fertilizer for their fields. Yet, the manner of storage and the location of the find indicates that someone planned on making hundreds of bombs from this material. To make a bomb from this anhydrous nitrogen, we need a trigger and a detonation source.

One of the dining facilities I have visited during my travels displays the makings of various improved explosive devices (IEDs). Someone mounted the wiring and detonation system for IEDs on a sheet of powder-blue plywood. A black marker described the components and how they work. I remember one that used an egg timer; one that used a Nokia mobile phone; one that used the timer from an electric clothes dryer. We stood in line for our meals studying these diagrams. I learned and memorized more from these boards than I had in classrooms. Reinforcing these lessons was the knowledge that these bits of wires, timers, and diagrams had been picked from IEDs that exploded near the base. The soldiers who made these displays used crime scene evidence to make functional diagrams of explosive devices. Soldiers waited in line for breakfast learning how to either make one, or, more importantly, how to recognize one.

A ton of explosive fertilizer, a small battery, a timer or trigger, then an ignition source… that’s all a bomb maker needs. When investigating a ton of explosive material, I tend to ask myself: “What did we miss?” I am working with Jim and Kyle, members of a human intelligence support team, or HST. Jim pays the guy who pays the guy who pays the guy who gets the information on shipments of bad-stuff and the location of these explosives. Kyle tends to write reports, analyze the data, and talk with bosses. Jim and Kyle created a team of two that has proven effective, even in this bizarre battlespace. They seem to be savvy enough to avoid the obvious attempts at passing on sectarian-based—or revenge-based—data. At the edge of this world, where spies do not call themselves spies, Jim and Kyle spy.

I look forward to yielding my corner back to the rats and bugs from whom I stole the space. I hate this hooch and do not feel very safe at Forward Operating Base Falcon. I never thought I would look fondly on a room that occupies one-third of an aluminum trailer. But back at that base, contractors do my laundry. I drop it one day, skip a day, then fetch my laundry. That’s the counter in my head: drop, skip, get. The clothing returns clean and with a hint of fluffiness. Life is better when dressing in soft underwear and a properly cleaned uniform. When I walk into the D-fac for my breakfast, the fellows at the griddle know my order and treat me well. I know I have it good, nestled in with the division headquarters staff. It is not Vermont, and I see them pour eggs from a carton. My morning egg comes from a shelf-stable egg-like product that pours from a box. In Vermont, eggs come from a chicken that scratched the dirt near someone’s home. In the ranking of good-better-best, Vermont remains at the top of the list, and it is best because it is my home. The divisional headquarters ranks as good. I acknowledge it as the best of all possible options when in Iraq. Camp Falcon is still better than sleeping rough and better than the conditions in which a lot of our soldiers live.

Leave a comment

FOB Falcon greeted me with two familiar insignias. First, the four green ivy leaves of the Fourth Infantry Division. Second, an artist painted the shoulder patch of the 506^th Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the 101^st Airborne Division. During World War II, it was known as the 506^th PIR. The shoulder patch displays six white parachutes in a blue sky near a green hill. Below the image is the word “Currahee.” The HBO series Band of Brothers followed the men of “E,” or Easy Company, of the 506^th PIR through World War II. This unit is now here in Baghdad with us. Many soldiers serve anonymously and quietly. We do take pride in our efforts, and the heritage of our units. The men of the 506^th landed during D-Day, parachuted into the Netherlands during Operation Market Garden, slept in the snow during the Battle of the Bulge. In the spring of 2006, the men and women of the 506^th display their colors at this urban outpost in Baghdad.

I shan’t complain about stiff underwear I wash in the shower, because I have access to a shower. So many do not. I shan’t complain about a morning egg that pours from a carton, given we often have to rely on ready-to-eat meals. I shan’t complain about displacing rats and bugs to create my own nest on a floor, because it is better than sleeping outdoors or in a tent. But maybe I should wonder about invading a nation without much of a plan for either building the nation’s government or the possibility of creating a civil war in our own battlefield. This month, I know of one ton of explosives that will not be used to kill hundreds of Iraqis. Regrettably, if there was another ton of explosives a kilometer away, I would not know.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

I.M. Aiken

• Author & narrator

• “The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County” (2024)

• “Stolen Mountain” (2025)

• “Trowbridge Dispatch” - fictional short stories/podcast

• “Captain Henry: 2½ Insurrections, 2 Wars, 1¼ Centuries and a Story of Love”

Leave a comment

I.M. Aiken

• Author & narrator

• “The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County” (2024)

• “Stolen Mountain” (2025)

• “Trowbridge Dispatch” - fictional short stories/podcast

• “Captain Henry: 2½ Insurrections, 2 Wars, 1¼ Centuries and a Story of Love”

A five am 911 call means: woke up dead or super sick. Whatever lays ahead, this morning offers the frigid beauty of a Vermont morning. Peeing, prepping before rushing into deep cold, I admire the monster-sized full moon approaching the horizon. I am again awed by the sparkling cascade of clear-sky snow that floats on days like these.

“Dispatch, 14RC1 acknowledging call for Trowbridge. En route shortly.” No, you cannot go from sound, warm, lovely sleep into a -5 degree dawn. At this age, I need the obvious bio stop and time to layer on socks and long underwear below proper warm clothes.

My phone buzzes with a message from Regina: “Pick me up. I’ll be at end of my drive on the road.”

I text back: “3 min and I’ll be in truck.”

Regina leaps up and in. Together now, we speed-ish down her hill and away from acres and acres of hayfields buried in feet of snow. My emergency lights reveal every crystal of ice that dances over the road and in the woods that close in around us. The snowbanks on the left and right stand taller than the hood of my truck.

I think—aloud, I guess—“The boys will wing that back today.” As if that is an obvious and stupid observation. With a clear, cold day between weekend storms, I envision the town road crew plowing with the wing extensions set high. They will trim the snowbanks down while spraying the top half deeper into the woods. Snowbank maintenance. Given we work, drive, and respond over rural Vermont 3-rod roads, when snow tumbles back onto the road, the pathway narrows as if the snow wishes to reclaim it all.

I slam on the breaks.

Regina exclaims (shrieks): “What the fuck?”

“Was that a flying reindeer? Are we in a Santa Claus movie?”

Now fully stopped, I get out of the truck. I hear Regina open, then shut, her door. I circle the truck sunwise and she circles the other way. We meet and continue. The routine reminds me of silliness from high school when we would evacuate a car at a red light, run circles, dance like fools, then jump back in before the light turned green and horns cussed at us for being kids.

My heart has immediately accelerated to 120 beats per minute. My eyes dilate. In fact, my entire sympathetic nervous system reinforces that we nearly collided with a flying (or leaping) deer. Climbing into the warming truck, we babble like civilian humans who saw something that threatened to kill. The deer made it over the truck and landed on the opposing bank. We both witnessed the track marks. He was gone. No blood, no fur, nothing but hoof prints on plow-packed snow.

As we drive towards the emergency, we both breathe to control the massive hit of adrenaline we loaded into our bloodstream. We are professional paramedics. We are cool and calm. We stride onto a scene with a plan and authority that tends to soothe others at emergencies. If we show up wired and sparking with fear, then we will (and have) infected everyone else at the scene.

We are not allowed to be afraid. That admitted, let me confirm that every one of us has blown our cool. Somehow, someday, some setting, we have each keyed the mic with some variant of “oh shit, send me everything.” Because on that day, we are too small, too weak, too overwhelmed to fully assess and report what is in front of us. The 200-car pile-up in an ice fog on the interstate where the first car has mom holding the decapitated head of her husband while the infant in the back falls silent while you fail to understand that this is only the first car you looked at. Or that day when I said “priapism” over the radio because I saw a lad curling into a decorticate posture and an erection often associated with strangulation, hanging, or massive neuro-trauma. The right and professional words evaporate as you key the mic. You can’t be cool while squeaking sterile medical terms into a radio.

You’re first. You’re trained. Breathe, see the facts as they are, invent some stupid plan, then communicate your needs calmly and smoothly over the radio. It doesn’t always happen, does it? Sometime in every rescuer’s career, you want your radio to have an “oh shit” knob.

Hitting a flying deer on a brilliantly dark January morning feels like “oh shit” to the body. But it isn’t. No damage to truck or deer or humans. And yet, a few more miles to travel, hoping now not to meet a town plow coming north on this same road. We breathe. We both actively engage in calming.

I flip the radio knob to the town frequency: “Hey guys, RC1. We’re flyin’ south.”

“Alex, we heard you go out. All clear. We’re still in the barn. Call us if you need help.”

“Thanks, Pete.” They will plow a driveway for us, unstick the ambulance, or make whatever magic we need in the snow.

As one might expect, the best I could do was push Regina and all of our kit out onto the drive while I backed a hundred meters to the road. I parked my running truck with lights telling all who came next which drive and dropping the hint to not come up it. The drive is too narrow for traffic.

“Dispatch, 14RC1 establishing Trowbridge command. Inform the ambulance that my truck marks the drive. Tell them the drive is plowed, but no turn around. They should back up. It is flat, straight, and clear.”

See, that is appropriate and professional communication.

I shuffle up the drive, listening to the snow squeak beneath each footfall. The lights of the house and my headlamp illuminate the falling snow. It is like being in an old-time cartoon, stars dancing around the head of an injured duck or coyote. The snow sparkles and flutters.

At the door, I get the standard urgent greeting: “Hey, my mother is in the downstairs bedroom. She’s having a stroke. Your partner is already in there.”

Every action must communicate: calm, control, confidence. I offer hope. “Strokes are not like they were when we were kids. There are fantastic treatments that often work.” I don’t need to worry about Regina. We, two, didn’t need a plan. I continue, “When did you last see her looking and acting normally?”

“Maybe last night.”

“Well, what time did you go to bed or last see her?”

“I dunno, nine, I guess,” answers the son.

As we say in the business, “Time is brain, meaning the faster we assess and move, the better the outcome for your mother will be. Can we sit for a sec? I need her name, date of birth, physician’s name, and all of her meds. Also, I need to write down her medical history.”

I use my voice to slow the pace down. My pen and index cards are poised to capture information that will round out Regina’s assessment and aid the hospital in locating records and planning their actions following our stroke alert.

With the front and back of my card filled, a fresh photo of the advanced directives that rested under a magnet on the side of the fridge, I slip into Mom’s bedroom. I touch Regina on the shoulder.

“Urinary Tract Infection,” she says softly.

I shrug.

“Problem is, this stupid stroke chart assumes symptoms fall on one side or the other. She’s pretty gorked.”

“Ambulance is en route. We’ve got time.” I see what she sees. Every rookie and most EMT-basics would not hesitate to identify this as a stroke and push the big red button called “Stroke Alert.” A stroke alert, made to the hospital via phone or relayed via dispatch, pushes the hospital into high gear. The guiding principle is that it is better to make the stroke alert than to be wrong. But Regina and I have decades of experience and thousands of hours of additional training.

“Wanna call medical control?” Give some overnight doc the data and take the decision from the hands of two medics in a small bedroom forty-five to sixty minutes from the nearest community hospital.

What happens when you call in a stroke alert to a community hospital? They may tell you that their CT machine is down or… or… In short, the hospital may tell you to go elsewhere. If the ambulance starts rolling, they may have to turn around to head west or head south. Because options don’t exist.

Regina dials the hospital from the home phone. She asks for medical control. In her hand, she holds a PDF version of the Vermont stroke protocol open. She identifies herself and asks for the doctor’s name, which comes across as Ted.

“Ted”—Regina looks at me, indicating that I am to write more notes—“What is your credential level? Are you a doc?”

“PA? Ok. I have an 86-year-old female exhibiting stroke-like symptoms. But I believe that she is deep in a UTI.”

Regina’s frustration flashes at me.

“Of course, I did a FAST assessment and checked her blood glucose and that is why I am calling. Her symptoms are bilaterial. She’s aphasic and not following commands well. Both arms drift. Her face doesn’t have a lot of tone, but appears symmetrical.”

“I understand that a paramedic can’t look into a brain. She scores a 5 on the FAST-ED.”

“Fine, then. Trowbridge command is calling in a stroke alert for…” She reads from my notecard, providing our patient’s name, date of birth, and key medical history.

“Ted, if we tell the ambulance to divert to Dartmouth, we will add at least ninety minutes, if not two hours, before this patient rolls through anyone’s door. Is this the best option?”

Regina holds her middle finger towards the phone for my benefit.

“Thank you, Ted.” She hangs up and looks at me.

“I’ll call Mass. I am NOT calling Dartmouth. The docs at Dartmouth will tell me to get an assessment locally.” She calls the next emergency department. Frankly, this ED is either the same distance or closer than our primary ED. “Hey, I’m a medic in Trowbridge, Vermont. Can you guys handle a stroke alert? Is the CT working? Got an MRI? Is your neuro telemed link working? All the things?”

“Nice, cool. Ok, I am calling in a stroke alert for an 86-year-old female. I honestly think she got a rippin’ UTI, but she ticks the boxes for a stroke. Also, I should add, she has that odor. Her symptoms are symmetrical and a bit sour smelling, if you get me.”

She listens. Then prattles off the history and demographic data as the ambulance’s backup alarm creeps closer.

It takes a few years to understand that, sometimes, a “stroke” can be treated with a course of antibiotics because the stroke isn’t a stroke.

We’re back in my truck as dawn starts showing, an hour before the sun will appear through the trees of our forest.

“You did fine.”

“I’m tryin’ tell a guy a thing and he’s not listening.”

“Shitty, huh?” I am not a great sympathetic listener, often too quick with solutions and advice.

“I’ve been thinking I am done.”

“Done, done? Like, not renewing? Like, giving up your license?” I ask.

“I think so,” she says with all the earnesty she can muster. “I work full time and been doing this for two decades. Then some runt tells me I haven’t run enough codes, or landed enough intubations, and I need remedial training in addition to all the other crap. Christ, I love dogs, but now I need to be fully trained and credentialed for treating police canines: IVs, intubations, meds. Only for Mass. Vermont not so much. Keeping my license in Mass and Vermont requires separate training and separate credentialling but they are both part of the national registry.”

“It feels like 100 hours of training per year.”

“Yeah, something like that. Oh, your Mass refresher missed this Vermont module, or God forbid I take a Vermont paramedic refresher and submit that in Mass. It was supposed to all be easier. Nope, I have to add one class in Mass because the modules don’t line up. Vermont doesn’t have Nero’s law mandating veterinary emergency care for dogs.”

“Your gran was a nurse, right?”

“Yeah, and she raised us.”

Regina pauses.

“What it really comes down to is I don’t want to manage the next big call. I don’t know that I need another dead kid, a teen suicide, to be my last call. Can’t I just quit on my terms? I am sixty-four years old. Am I doing this at seventy? Am I recerting so I can work until I am, what, sixty-six, or sixty-eight?”

“Pull the plug,” I offer, feeling much the same.

“But I am still doin’ good out there. I like being on a medic transfer truck. Tons of meds and pumps. I work my ass off. Then some f’n buck decides today is the day for a megacode refresher, and no matter what you do, he needs you to fail. He keeps changing parameters and yells elevating the emotional pressure. He feels he needs to add realism. Yet for a decade of doing codes, we whisper and use our eyes to coordinate. Why do I need that? Get through the human resusitation station, then queue up and wait for the dog station. I am so sick of it.”

She pauses. “It goes back to the old phrase: ‘if you can, then you must.’”

“Sure,” I answer. “That was the rule here. If you were between sixteen and eighty and able bodied and male, then you must be a member of the town militia. It isn’t the case anymore. That ethos died. It is better to drive an expensive car and bully first responders for being in your way.”

Silence.

“Just let it go. I am going let it go soon, too. It can be someone else’s turn. And if there is no one else, then someone younger, more energetic, and less pissed off can solve that problem. I’ve done tried.”

I say: “Regina, my friend, I think it is perfectly fine to acknowledge that not everyday has to involve a shot of adrenaline that comes with a life-or-death encounter.”

“Dispatch, Trowbridge Command terminated.” I say into radio’s mic with perfect professionalism. I wonder how many more times I can wake to the emergency tones then rush through dressing and peeing. How many more times do any of us have? From sleep to crisis in a millisecond. Then some young human buck decides that EMS training must resemble screaming, high-tension, combat operations. Or some deer buck decides that leaping from one snowbank to another over a red pickup truck makes good sense. Cortisol, the stress hormone, floods when the tones go off alerting us to a 911 medical call. Cortisol hits again after not hitting the deer. No doubt for Regina, another hit came when the PA at the local hospital ordered the patient to go direct, via road, to the trauma center in New Hampshire. At some point, done is done. Right?

It is ok to walk away, isn’t it?

She’ll miss it. I’ll miss her. At one moment, you are the one with the tools, and skills, and experience to make stuff better. You’re the hero. You save lives. You’re the person people want to see walking through the door. That’s a nice feeling.

“I don’t know.” She says as she gradually accepts that this maybe it.

I.M. Aiken is a Vermont-based novelist exploring the impact public service takes on us.

“The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County” – September 2024

“Stolen Mountain” – October 2025

“Trowbridge Dispatch – Short stories” – an ongoing series of written and audio stories

“Captain Henry: 2½ Insurrections, 2 Wars, 1¼ Centuries, and a Story of Love” – September 2026

Leave a comment

In the near quiet of the driver’s seat, I reflected on the calls during the recent days riding with Aaron. Denny sent him, sent us, to 911 calls related to veterans, regardless of where we posted in the city. It also meant that we got dispatched to calls involving street people. His hands and his recall of his time in Vietnam helped those who could barely be helped. Denny sent me to calls involving young people being victimized, abused, or just in the wrong place.

In four days, we earned a reputation as the hot ambulance. We sprinted from North Cambridge down to Kendal Square for a 111B. “26, Respond to Mr. Lincoln and his cane.” Mr. Lincoln was known to all crews. We told stories of how Mr. Lincoln swung his cane at people who were better off than him; or people who ignored him; or people who had paid attention to him. He stood in front of the big post office building threatening pedestrians and cars with his cane.

Mr. Lincoln, a Korean War vet, acknowledged Aaron as an army medic by using the honorific “doc.”

Mr. Lincoln shared his remorse and shame with Aaron, “Doc, I am so sorry. I did it again, didn’t I? What are they going to do with me?” Aaron flashed me hand signs. “Stay,” “Ok,” then after getting Mr. Lincoln to sit on the granite curb, Aaron flashed me the hand sign for five with all four fingers and the thumb spread wide. I knew the plan. I fetched Aaron’s bag from between the seats. The five-sign stood for either “five” or “fifth,” we were never particularly clear on that. Aaron’s use of code “five” stepped beyond the boundaries of established, legal, protocols. It worked for Aaron. Even better, it worked for his patients.

I placed the bag between Aaron’s feet. Aaron lifted a Zippo lighter and a pack of cigarettes. He shook one free, offering it to Mr. Lincoln. He then flipped the lighter open, igniting the cigarette behind the cupped hand of a combat veteran. An army’s medical symbol, the caduceus, had been engraved into the stainless-steel Zippo plus the date: “1970.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

Aaron reached into his bag, where he had a plain Hershey’s chocolate bar. Aaron slowly unwrapped it, like a kid with a special treat. He moved deliberately while Mr. Lincoln puffed. He broke a piece off, eating it himself. He offered me a square, then carefully he offered Mr. Lincoln half of the bar. I sat on the curb next to Aaron. I’ll admit the smell of folks who lived on the street proved challenging for me. My nose curled away from Mr. Lincoln.

We were three friends, three veterans sitting on a curb sharing chocolate and a smoke. Except neither Aaron nor I ever smoked. Nor was I a veteran. Mr. Lincoln enjoyed the smoke, stubbing the butt into the same street where he once swung his cane at people walking by.

“My friend, you might want to find another corner today. I don’t think the PD needs to find you here today.” Aaron stood, offering the old man a firm grip to help lift him to his feet. Once up, Aaron handed over the last two gifts. I’d seen him do this before. Aaron placed a fifth of gin wrapped in a five-dollar bill into Mr. Lincoln’s hand. Aaron forged Mr. Lincoln’s signature on the ambulance run form. He forged the signature, once again, on the “Against Medical Advice” release form.

The first time I helped Aaron with a “Code Five,” he said: “A drunk will die sober faster than he will die drunk.” Geez, man, if anyone went through Aaron’s bag during a shift, he’d get sacked in a second. You can’t carry booze on an ambulance. And nobody would ever recommend giving a patient a cigarette, at least not since World War II.

To Aaron, his “Code Five” protocol had everything he needed. Nicotine to calm, chocolate to bring up blood sugar, and booze to lift a soul one fifth of a gallon. I should add that I had previously looked in Aaron’s doctor’s bag. He carried a purple heart and his dog tags in there. He also had an old army shirt with rank, name tape, sweat stains, and a frayed neck collar. Aaron was always ready to treat and comfort one of his brothers. He spoke the right words and offered the right touch to bring peace with him, even if that peace meant passing a soul from his hands to Death’s hands. Peace is peace. We all find peace where peace is offered.

When called to a 111B, a rowdy street drunk, Aaron gifted a fellow vet with one minute of calm; one minute of kindness; one minute of brotherly understanding; one minute of warmth—both men knowing the demons would return for that is what demons do. Demons return. Unlike Death, demons prove themselves restless and furtive.

I did not yet know demons. I witnessed hints when they visited Aaron often enough. I suspected that the Captain, my own father, had a few demons of his own. I had seen my father, a Boston police officer, being haunted. I ought to amend my statement to say: I had not yet met my demons. Frankly, I never thought they’d come for me. At twenty, strong, healthy, educated, loved, and working a summer job while living with my family, I believed that I was not the person demons came for.

Aaron double parked at a CVS, hopping from the rig. Returning, he handed me a small jar of Vick’s VapoRub. After handing me the white paper shopping bag, he said, “Learn to apply it just below your nose on the upper lip. Do it quickly and quietly.”

Aaron said, without saying, “Never shy away from a patient again.”

I heard that lesson. Instead of telling me to man-up and toughen-up, he offered me a trick he learned a decade ago. Aaron walked into the suck with a ramrod straight back and eyes opened for the hundreds of things that may kill him or kill me. Never wince, never look away. He did say, “Alex, it isn’t your pain. It isn’t your stink.”

August 1982

For the last call of the day, Aaron and I pushed Unit 26 through the city from Haskell Street near Porter Square to the big post office building. “26. 111B with a cane. Post Office.”

“26. Responding for Mr. Lincoln.”

Aaron dropped me at the light when I saw Mr. Lincoln. Aaron said that he would loop the block to find a safer place for the rig. I grabbed Aaron’s Code 5 kit. I removed only the cigarettes and chocolate bar. I cannot get away with all of Aaron’s tricks. I swiped Vick below my nostrils then exited the rig.

I walked Mr. Lincoln back to the demi-wall near the granite steps of the large post office building.

“Here, sit.” I tapped the stone next to me. “What’s going on today? Are you ok?”

Mr. Lincoln kept talking. He talked about the incurable rudeness of the people who walked by and those who stepped over him while he slept. I put a cigarette down on the granite. I also placed a plastic Bic lighter. He picked both up.

I put my hand on his back. I could feel emphysema or pneumonia crackling inside of his barrel-shaped chest. I watched his carotid artery pulse at his thin lizard-like neck. At a rate of one hundred, it ticked faster than it should. He demonstrated irritation. I don’t know how his heart keeps beating week after week, month after month living on these streets.

After a few puffs, the rate of speech slowed. Speaking was a great vital sign, Aaron had said. It told me nearly everything. When speaking in complete flowing sentences, even when ranting insensibly, you know the A-B-Cs. Airway works. Breathing is happening. Circulation moves blood throughout the body. Short choppy sentences can foretell problems. One- or two-word sentences offered in a staccato rhythm between labored breaths indicates very real problems. And there was no reason to grab a wrist to take a pulse when you can see a carotid pulse bounding like Mr. Lincoln’s. Without a BP cuff, I know that his blood pressure is at least 90-over-something. Given his medical history, his BP could be disastrously high, even lethal. There is nothing we can do about that. He won’t remain in shelters for long. He never follows through on the required regimes of medications to keep himself healthier.

Aaron parked then joined us. He tore off a bite of Mr. Lincoln’s chocolate.

“Tough day today?”

I walked to the ambulance. I grabbed the metal clipboard while the two vets talked; while Mr. Lincoln talked; while Aaron listened. I returned to the demi-wall, sat, then started completing our run form. There is not much to write for a fellow who lives on the street. I then prepared the AMA—the Against Medical Advice form. We use the AMA to demonstrate that that patient refused treatment and transportation. We do call it “against medical advice,” knowing full well that we often recommend that people do not get transported and we suggest that they fill in the AMA.

“Mr. Lincoln?” I interrupt. “Would you like to go to Cambridge City Hospital or the VA today? We can take you?”

The abbreviated version of his answer was “no.” The complete answer involved him cussing at the treatment from the staff at both the VA and Cambridge City. I filled in his AMA / no-transport form. I put a blue ballpoint pen and the clipboard in his hands. With barely a look, he scribbled loops through the middle of both pages. Which I hoped Denny would accept as a signature. If not, I could re-write the forms then forge a better signature before end of shift. From my thigh pocket, I pulled out my frozen bottle of seltzer. The water had been thawing at the margins, yielding cool sips.

We sat longer than Denny would have liked and shorter than Mr. Lincoln wanted. Aaron patted the man on the leg offering him a ride as a kindness. “We can take you to a shelter or another neighborhood if you’d like.”

Aaron and I crossed through Harvard Square before Uncle Denny, our dispatcher, squawked at us again.

July 1984

In 1984, I often partnered with a tender soul named David. He and I responded to a man-down call near the big post office. David spoke his own name with an extra-ordinary soft “D” and an open soft “A,” an accent not common to our streets. That he worked for a few months surprised me. That he drifted away did not.

A call came in for us. “Unit 23, respond near post office at Mass and Inman. Man down.” I double keyed the mic in acknowledging the call from Denny. We wheeled east with the lights on. David chirped the siren at a few intersections.

One lady stepped into the road to wave. We parked between the two crosswalks and the two lights that pointed up Inman Street. People walked by. I did a quick scan to find my old friend Mr. Lincoln laying on the sidewalk next to a half-height wall made from granite. He had found a niche between the stairs and shrubs. Approaching, I swiped Vicks under each of my nostrils, then leaned in. “Mr. Lincoln?” I tapped his shoulder. His response was slow and incomplete. People walked by. Some looked at what we were doing, some did not. I tried to roll him over to his back. He held himself in the curled position of a sleeping dog. I put on a pair of gloves while walking back to the rig.

“He’s alive but not well. He is barely conscious.”

“Drunk?”

“I don’t know. Not sure I care. He’s not well. Bring the stretcher. I’ll see what I can find.”

Mr. Lincoln resisted me. I tried to remind him of our past friendship. He yelled at me like he had yelled at many others while swinging that cane. I pulled and tugged him from the corner. I forced him to roll over. He remained balled up. Instead of fighting with him, I examined what I could. I pulled up three layers of shirts. The skin near his low back and along his spine looked faintly yellow. I pulled the shirt up, exposing his ribs. I observed profoundly deep and large bruising. The coloring informed me that he had been hurt the night before or the day before. My heart broke for the old vet.

One asshole in an expensive grey suit with a perfectly executed Windsor knot barked at us while we worked with Mr. Lincoln. He said, “An ambulance. Is that how the city removes trash these days?” I can confirm that the man’s tie matched Harvard’s crimson.

David pushed the stretcher in front of me, preventing me from chasing that bit of human scum. I listened to the unspoken words. Right. Aaron’s voice came into my head. “Focus on the patient.”

We lifted Mr. Lincoln to the cot. David withdrew himself and his nose, displaying the same rudeness that Aaron trained out of me. I’ll have to introduce him to Vicks VapoRub, I thought. We loaded the patient then David returned to the front the second he got the cot locked. I was able to roll up Mr. Lincoln’s shirt and see that he had been severely beaten, likely kicked, or stomped. David did not use the lights nor the siren en route to Cambridge City. We wheeled Mr. Lincoln into an ER that knew him well. They knew him by sight. They knew him by smell. The first nurse told us to leave him in the hallway. I briefed her once. Then I briefed her again. Her response each time was, “We’ll get to him.”

He lay there all day. In and out of the E.R., we found Mr. Lincoln curled under the same blankets we had covered him with. I went to one of the doctors to describe the bruising and beating that the patient endured. “I’ll give him an exam.”

Late in day, the evening shift informed me that he was just sleeping it off and that when he waked, they’d street him. I again described the bruising and the injuries. I again heard, “We’ll get to him soon.”

On the way out, I walked up to the hospital bed that had been parked in the hallway for six hours. He smelled of old shit and new urine. He smelled of old urine as well. His odor resembled the smell of an underground T stop on a warm July day. Absolutely nobody had cared for this man during the hours. I touched him and felt nothing—no tension whatsoever. I pulled my stethoscope from my pocket and listened. First to his back as I could get to that easily. I then rolled him over. He rolled easily. His chest sounded as empty and hollow from the front as it did from the back. I looked up at the clock over the nurse’s station: 15:23.

I returned to the young doctor. “Mr. Lincoln is dead. I think he died a few hours ago. I feel a rigor in his fingers and his cheeks.” Mr. Lincoln’s cheek held the flat impression of his hand and the wrinkles of the hospital bed.

Mr. Lincoln, a veteran of the Korean War, spanned the arch of my rookie year at Atlantic Ambulance Service. With his passing, I felt my soul shift. The next time we rolled in, the bit of wall where I had parked Mr. Lincoln for his last lonely moments was clear and open. Someone had wheeled Mr. Lincoln to the morgue. Unless he possessed VA paperwork, dog tags, or something that proved that he was an American soldier, he would be cremated as an indigent and a pauper.

Is it better to be ignored by the gods or hated by them. The ancient myths failed to answer that question for me.

The End

Hey team, I. M. Aiken here: I used excerpts of my novel “The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County” to craft a short story. If you enjoyed this story or any of my stories, please either buy books or recommend them to friends and peers.

I am recovering nicely from my injuries. I got the internal fixators removed from under the skin on my forearms just over 2 weeks ago. I am touch typing again with 10 functional fingers. And yesterday, I swam laps. While a third of my current norm, I did it.

At present, I am recording novel #3 called “Captain Henry: 2½ insurrections, 2 wars, 1¼ centuries + a story of love”. This novel that I wrote several years ago accidentally highlights the 1870s and the Iraq War of 2006. The 1870s when the US passed expanded civil rights laws, the 14^th Amendment, and Posse Comitatus Act. More on that later. I landed on the story because Captain Henry is my own ancestor and his life, when I learned of it, screamed to be told.

Share Trowbridge Dispatch

Leave a comment

I am recovering nicely from my injuries. I got the internal fixators removed from under the skin on my forearms just over 2 weeks ago. I am touch typing again with 10 functional fingers. And yesterday, I swam laps. While a third of my current norm, I did it.

At present, I am recording novel #3 called “Captain Henry: 2½ insurrections, 2 wars, 1¼ centuries + a story of love”. This novel that I wrote several years ago accidentally highlights the 1870s and the Iraq War of 2006. The 1870s when the US passed expanded civil rights laws, the 14^th Amendment, and Posse Comitatus Act. More on that later. I landed on the story because Captain Henry is my own ancestor and his life, when I learned of it, screamed to be told.

Leave a comment

This is a conversation space exclusively for subscribers—kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post questions and updates that come my way, and you can jump into the discussion.

Join chat

How to get started

1. Get the Substack app by clicking this link or the button below. New chat threads won’t be sent sent via email, so turn on push notifications so you don’t miss conversation as it happens. You can also access chat on the web.

Get app

2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.

3. That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.

“What room are you in?” the boy asks in the elevator.

That Sam answers honestly shocks me.

The boy then asks, “How many languages do you speak?”

I explore: why would an eight-year-old ask a stranger, a tourist, such questions in a hotel elevator in Québec City. My Sam gives nothing away. She asks for eleven in French with all the pleases and thank-yous required for good manners. Sure, unlike most Americans, she accents her French with a growl and a rolling “R.”

She’s saying: “Bonjour. Onze s’il vous plait, merci.” These from the mouth of a woman who could barely communicate last night.

Innocence asks, “How many languages do you speak?”

She says, “I can order food and be polite in French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Arabic.” Except she hit each word in their native, Français, Español, Italiano, Deutch, und Arabique. She pronounces “Arabic” in French.

The boy’s eyes widen. His mother and father usher him to the door. The boy fails to release Sam’s eyes, exiting the lift with his face angled towards hers. Mom’s hand directs a left turn.

“Al wada,” acknowledging his departure in accented Arabic.

I see her as the child did, a child who looked deep into a woman who can cloak herself in ambient light. He looked deeply into my Sam and saw something many miss … today.

Most, when they see her, they hold a door or unnecessarily offer help. Some render platitudes to a woman on a cane. With practice of subjugating herself to past roles, she smiles at “dearie” and the sing-song version of “ma’am” offered by the ignorant. On good days, like this one, she rests her hand on a stick handcrafted from a maple sapling. Dried.

Polished to show the contours of the tree it was, in the stick it is.

Did this boy see the contours of the warrior that was in the woman that is?

The world would be better if everyone understood the warrior, ignoring the stick, the grey and the deep creases angling from her nares to the outer reaches of her infrequent smile. But when she does smile, it praises. When she does smile, it presents love and kindness and humor and intelligence.

I love that smile.

Years of squinting against far aways suns. Years of dirt, dust, and sand buried in each skin fold. Those scar too, don’t they? How many times have we cleared fungi and yeasts and bacteria from impossible places? How many years did the army drain her body of all, returning to me a walnut shell of a human?

The unsuspecting have offered to show her how a room key works, offered aid when suggesting she navigate to a website on a mobile phone. Stoic. And then repays such kindness with a thank you, offered in any of her twenty languages.

I softened from a girl to a figure-eight. Linear Sam sharpened.

How many languages do you speak?

That is not the million-dollar question, but from the mouth of a child, it came close. It probed deeply, didn’t it?

We arrive late, unprepared for a city that loves its traditions and formality. We, I should say, I, expect a ready meal in the hotel or at a nearby restaurant. But on a Friday night, we sit on chairs in a crowded hotel bar with seats just enough too low to induce wincing pain. Sam continues to fail at finding a position for her leg. It knocks against chair and table legs. When she holds it straight away from obstructions, staff and patrons knock it. She curls her chin down, places thumbs in each ear and her fingers pressing her eyeballs.

You don’t want to see my Sam this way.

When the staff position a charcuterie plate in front of her, she works from left to right picking up food in the Arabic way with three fingers of her right hand. Hand to mouth. Face zagged with pain, impatience, and fighting every trigger. She eats with the focus of a wolf. She catches the notice of people at neighboring tables.

People come out to be festive, to celebrate friendship, to talk loudly. That’s what people do, isn’t it? Hold a beer, a champaign flute, two-fingers of a lovely scotch while listening to the beat of familiar music. Then there’s Sam, with her leg locked straight, three fingers pinching food, moving it to her mouth, and eyes scanning the room for the next threat. Everyone knows not to touch the old dog when she’s over her bowl.

Nobody thanks her for her service as she escapes the horrors of the room. Nobody saw her cane. In fact, nobody saw her, for if they did, they may not have jostled her. Had they seen the pain on her face, they may have stepped aside begging forgiveness.

They didn’t, did they?

In the hotel room, we only have aspirin. She’d already discovered that booze was terrible. Narcotics damaging.

You don’t want to witness what I am seeing. Sam rocks in place. Thumbs over ears and her forefinger deliberately pressing her eyeballs. The rocking distresses me. Ok, so do the blanched fingertips on her eyeballs. The others in the noisy bar discretely peek at an adult woman rocking on a bar sofa.

They, the other patrons, become obvious with their stares as the food arrives. Clearly, there was no other place for us to eat. I had wished to avoid the added cost of room service. Stupid. Stupid decision. The food comes on a slate platter. Sam says, “Merci.”

The waiter responds, “Bon Appetit.”

I say, “Bon app,” while picking up a fork.

Sam starts on the left side of the plate. With two fingers of her right hand and her thumb, she lifts food. The food goes from platter to mouth. She chews, then lifts more food. She eats each calorie on the platter from left to right, even pinching the carrot kimchee. Local craft people spent years making these smoked and cured meats. Local fromageries invested months in their mature cheeses. The farmers, the makers, the kitchen staff exposed their souls in this food. Sam eats calories from left to right until she harvests her side of the platter. She then starts on the left again, trimming the dividing line between her food. She trims it two centimeters past the center.

All of them peek, stare, and silently question Sam’s behavior.

What do they see? I don’t know. Is it a woman of middling height and a sinewy composition framed like an athlete but with the focus of a lioness on a fresh kill? A woman with graying temples blocking sight and sound from her brain while rocking back and forth?

When we rise, Sam grabs her bad-day sticks, sleek, expensive carbon-fiber elbow crutches. People hinder her progress, as if they don’t see her. Anyway, wasn’t she the whacko rocking and squeezing her head? I step around her and take on the role of a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker, like the one we could see moored to the docks below.

“Pardon,” I say politely while jostling folks. Delete polite. Icebreakers are not polite to the ice. The ice moves. People move. We escape the din, the boom-boom of the bass. We escape the stares.

Sam’s “Pardon” sounds French, a bit of a growl and thwack on the last syllable that I can’t replicate. In cleaving the crowd, I leave little doubt to the 98.5% of the native French speakers here that I am 100% anglophone.

C’est la vie.

A dreadful night of ghosts, pain, anger, frustration, disappointment, and bone-deep restlessness result in a raw mattress showing at the bottom two corners and sheets/duvet tangled to ugly knots. Survival mode, for both of us. At home, she retreats from our bedroom to a chair, a fireplace, and half-drunk glass of whiskey.

She does the which sticks dance as we dress for the arctic chill visited upon us this April Saturday. Carbon-fiber provides more support and lets her travel further. The maple stick is cool looking, rustic, and passes for a hiker’s pole. The carbon-fiber elbow crutches announce: “Gimp approaching.” The maple stick says, “Hiker coming.” She spins the maple stick then snaps a bit of close-order drill: order arms, present arms, and when I look, she snaps an armed-guard salute my direction. Saturday shows hints of her inner Puck.

I prescribe feet-on-the-ground and a day of adventuring. Who cares if it is blowin’ a hooley straight from Baffin Bay? The Maple Leaf flags and the blue Fleur-de-lis of Quebec Province stand straight out. We did it. Ferry to nowhere. Carriage ride, where Sam stands to talk history and battles with our guide. Who knew that Québec had been invited to join early congressional meetings in the baby United States? But everyone there remembers the British invading, several times. We tour old wars in a horse-drawn carriage.

We erase our Sunday plans, opting to watch the fog and ice roll into the city from the 14^th floor. We erase our Sunday plans to avoid driving through an ice storm that spans the entire distance from Montreal to home.

On Monday, with all three sticks and our luggage on the bell staff’s trolley, she walks and smiles. Quick with a 5-buck tip to any uniformed hotel staff, she shakes hands and passes words in French. She smiles all the way through the lobby. And to my surprise, she hops behind the wheel.

We leave QC in ice. Every road sign carries a 200-centimeter beard, that’s eight-inches to those in Liberia, Myanmar, and the U.S.

I sing. She drives.

At the border, I hand Sam my border-crosser membership card and retrieve her blue passport. The border guard drops my membership card. I suppose he drops it because he thought he was grabbing two blue passports. He looks at my Nexus card and scans it. He bends down squinting to see me.

“Put your rear window down.”

Sam complies. We should get her a Nexus/Global Entry card.

The border guard studies her passport. It nears its own expiry. He thumbs through the booklet. It is clean, clear of stamps, apparently unused, and apparently new. He folds it back seeing a loose thread in the stitched binding. The thread-end sticks up. Ever looked? There are two threads running the height of the passport. The threads leave a dashed pattern alternating two-millimeter blue with two millimeters of white. The guard picks at the thread making it stand taller. He flicks through every page with precision. Returning to the opening page the one that quotes Abraham Lincoln “…And that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

“What do you have written here?” he asks Sam.

“Sir, sorry, I cannot see it.” She hits all the right tones and words for maximum politeness.

He turns her passport towards her, holding it like criminal evidence that damns the defendant.

“Oh, those? Those are the countries I have been to since that passport was issued.”

“But why are they here?”

“I wrote them there so I can remember the countries I have been too.”

I could not see border guard’s face. This seemed to be one of those conversations that ought to flow like warm water.

“There is nothing in your passport about travel.”

“I know, that is why I write them down.”

She is still smiling, but I see it changing.

“Why did you write them here?”

“Because if I need to tell someone where I’ve been, I look in my passport.” Yes, she does. I have seen her write in her passport then lock it up in our office safe. Here’s the problem. She’s one of the cool kids. She gets special benefits due to her career. I know what they are. Something like a third of the border patrol officers are military veterans. Sam expects to be understood by another in the cool-kid club. Every veteran of recent wars would understand what she is not saying and further would understand why she is not saying what she is not saying.

“Why don’t you have stamps or any records of entry?” He is annoyed now.

“Because I don’t use that passport when traveling internationally.” She holds her own. No retreat. Her smile remains at the mouth. The loving-lines at the corners of her eyes faded three questions ago.

He returns to the snagged thread. To him, maybe this is evidence of tampering, a felony. Who tampers with passports? Felons such as drug and people traffickers. He’s got a live one in an expensive Volvo. We have very little luggage and a clean car. Who travels internationally and uses multiple passports? Well, clearly felons.

“Are you a citizen of any other nation?”

“No.” The smile is fully gone. The Border Patrol guard eliminated one possibility. Sam is not a dual citizen of an EU nation nor Canada.

“Then you have to have used your passport for international travel. That is the law. So why do you have these letters written here?” He crossed the line into full-on frustration. And Sam isn’t helping him. “It is this a code?”

“Sort of. Q-8 is my spelling for Kuwait. QTR is my spelling for Qatar. That triangle is a pyramid for Egypt. The circle of stars is the EU. That stupid knot, that is Thailand.”

The question comes around one more time, “Why do you write them in this government document? It is illegal.” Oopsy. Sorry Joe Border Patrol guy, not actually illegal, is it?

“Every few years, I have to fill out a form called the SF-86. When I first did it, it was a stack of paper. Now I update a digital version of the SF-86. One of the questions is ‘what countries have you travelled to since your last update?’ When I see this question, I go get my passport from the safe, read it, and type the answer it. It is that simple.”

“Why would you do an SF-86?” He looks around the car again and sees the orange handicapped placard on the windshield.

“I have to do it for work, sir. And when I travel for my employer, I use other documents issued by them for legal international travel. Have you ever filled out an SF-86?”

He demonstrates frustration by putting my plastic Nexus card inside of Sam’s passport.

“Welcome to the United States. Do you have any fresh fruit, chickens, or meat?”

I fidget knobs on the dash, returning to the American measure system. 0C becomes 32F and the distance home about halves when the numbers convert from kilometers to miles.

“Why didn’t you tell him?”

“Tell him what?”

“Tell him that you are a colonel, full time with the U.S. Army reserve?”

“Because, I am an U.S. citizen with a valid passport. That is enough of an answer. If some border guard wants to make an issue of that, then he can. The lesson he won’t learn is that he can never know who he is greeting.”

“Wouldn’t he shit himself? Come on, that would be fun. Listen asshole, I am Lieutenant Colonel Sarah Ann Musgrave, U.S Army.”

“And what next, to prove my point, I grab my canes to stand? I saw myself as he saw me. Then what happens to the next person in line? I am no different, that needs to be his lesson. Most people can’t bully their way through a border crossing, can they? Then I should not have too either, should I? I am just another American coming home. End of.”

In five days of travel, few observed the contours of the warrior molded throughout the woman next to me. They saw the stick, the sticker, the angular face of a woman fading to the invisibility of age. The border guard saw something else, didn’t he?

Leave a comment

Leave a comment

20 years ago December 2005, I flew from Killeen Texas to Kuwait on the first leg of my one-year deployment to Iraq as a civilian member of the U.S. Army’s fourth infantry division. I thought I would share this fictional short story as commemoration of that day. for every day of this next year, I get to look at the journal entry or photograph and remember where I was and what I was doing in 2005 and 2006.

Kahlil’s Wall

audio read by author

I walk barefoot on soft New England soil. I wander my hills. I enjoy the moisture of the night’s dew between my toes. I know I don’t get any of Frost’s words right, but he doesn’t mind. I can swing birch trees, pause in a forest, and pick a path at the same time in my private version of his work.

I am in Tikrit, Iraq while writing this. My barefoot explorations of home arrive only after I close my eyes. We’re a tiny military intelligence unit in a busy, confusing war. We’re here on purpose. The bosses of bosses of bosses sent us here into the Sunni Triangle.

By now you know that I carry a copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with me. I keep the booklet tucked into my battle-rattle with two thousand calories of food, water, and the normal stuff one may need on a battlefield. My copy serves several purposes. Most obviously, the document serves as a talisman. I swore an oath to this document, why not make sure I know it? Two, it has secrets in it, literally. I underline passages such as, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal.” This serves me as a password. I take the first letter of each word in a phrase, then make a mess: Whtt2bse,all=.

The other secret is the Longfellow poem that Brie stuck in there. That’s a double secret, isn’t it, given Brie found a way into my pocket a half-planet away. We all know why that’s a problem, don’t we? I am a female soldier on a battlefield with poetry in my pocket and in my head. That’s the third purpose. This stapled document we got for free in Colonial Williamsburg transports me home.

Yes, I occasionally recite Frost’s work in my head. Frost lived in towns that surround Trowbridge. Shaftsbury, Vermont lays to our west-northwest (from home, anyway) and Amherst, Massachusetts due south. Frost is buried forty-five minutes away. The most famous guys from here in Tikrit are Saddam Houssein, Chemical Ali (Saddam’s cousin and architect of a massacre of Kurds), and—digging into history, now— Saladin. Saladin was a famous guy during the Crusades. A millennia of enemies were born in this town 140 kilometers northwest of Baghdad.

The soil here can be like concrete, and while it is green around the Tigris, we are surrounded by forest-free, trail-free, moisture-free desert, and heat like Vermont never sees. Regardless of my frequent deployments to Iraq since 2003, regardless of my rank, the longevity of the war means that I never really know who our enemy is today—whichever day today even is. I don’t intend humor. The classic soldier’s answer to enemy identification is the ratta-tat-tat of weapons. The guy firing at me is enemy. The guy next to me is friend. I am an intelligence officer and the best I can do is shrug.

My squad’s mission is to rebuild an office, something we now call a “fusion center.” Today, my unit is the boss unit and the host to everyone else in the fusion center. The rest of the alphabet soup of other governmental and defense agencies will roll in with the confidence, volume, and the kinetic energy of an army assault. My point is that they (the others) lack subtlety. I’ll reserve that struggle for another day. I will play the role of Officer in Charge. These boys will expect me to play hostess and nursemaid. I’ll save that fuss for another day, too.

My sergeant interviewed local laborers to help us. Ideally, we wanted Iraqis who support America and our vision for an Iraqi future. At the very least, men who will not kill us and maybe not pass on everything they see, hear, and read to the bad guys. Years of war against Iran. Then a war with America. Then peace? Then another war with America. Then an internal civil war while still at war with America. No one can draw a line on a map that describes “the front”.

We started on Sunday, still a week or so before the Dog Star rises, the annual harbinger of summer’s hottest days. We make plans for a pre-dawn start. We are not a “we.” The army team involves members of two reserve units who have now met but never trained together. We’ve stitched ourselves into a platoon of fifteen with a platoon lieutenant and a platoon sergeant. We have four third-country nationals in dark blue jump suits and high-vis vests, a group of labors universally identified as “TCN”. These guys come from the poorest areas of southern Asia and live in shipping containers provided by an army contractor we would never call “Prime Prisons Incorporated.” And we have our eight local Iraqi men. Languages on site: Arabic, English, Spanish, Bengali, Tamil, Urdu, and who knows what else.

Let’s ignore day one. That’s the day we learned we need six liters of cool water per worker. “Coolings,” a universal word augmented by the gesture of an empty plastic water bottle run against the face. “Coolings,” with an empty held out, is the phrase for, “I need water please.” I allocated three uniformed soldiers to the continuous transport of water and ice.

We can ignore day two as well.

And day three.

Day four, we started at 0430 in the dark with many starting their travels as soon as fajr prayers has been said. Nobody stole wheelbarrows, or mortar. We had the coolings truck making circles. Whither it went, so followed a stream of ice melt and leakage from broken bottles, drawing a dark line in the fine Iraqi dust. On day four, we included mealtime at the local D-Fac (civilian: dining facility) into our routine. We entered the D-Fac as a single unit (Iraqi, TCN, and uniformed Americans), sat together, ate in thirty minutes, then returned to the site. Rise in the cool dark, work under lights, eat after sunup. Rest on a full belly, drink, pray, undertake necessary ablutions, then work again. Eat, drink, pray, work.

On day five, teams shared duties. South Asian guys mixed mortar and passed it to Iraqis. American soldiers laid bricks. The LT established an armory and appointed armorers to guard weapons. I served as boss, big boss.

We were building walls from Iraqi brick. Humans have been building walls for tens of thousands of years. There’s no real trick to it. Follow a straight line on the ground and build vertically to the height of the ceiling. The Iraqi guys brought wooden boxes to serve as windows. One box is one window. Take the box out and lay the frame with glass. Done: window invented.

On day one, I wore my battle gear.

On day two, I dropped my battle gear and wore a pistol on my thigh and a combat helmet on my head.

On day five, I was in a baggy shirt with my head wrapped in an American-style blue bandana. Please recognize that “bandana” is a name and fabric we already borrowed from Hindi. I wore my pistol at the small of my back like a plain-clothed cop. I was the only worker on the wall with a weapon. From hand to hand, we passed bricks. From hand to hand, we passed ratty plywood boards loaded with mortar (yes, mortar boards, if you will).

Inshallah was the closest thing to vulgarity used by the team. Passing the liquid mortar was met with greetings of inshallah (“God willing”) and variations of shokran, or, from others, a more Hindi version: shukria.

As boss, I tried to confirm everyone had coolings and found shade now and again. One of my buck sergeants, Sergeant Brown, took up that responsibility. She shepherded the crews. She got sunscreen on the lighter skinned folks. She sent our folks off with soldiers to fetch water as a treat. A ride in an open truck, breeze, a few minutes without lifting bricks. You also get to pick up bags of ice and flats of cool, bottled water. Yes, a treat.

At the end of day five, with our new walls at various heights from thigh to shoulder, one of the Iraqi men came to me. He formally offered to shake my hand and greeted me in Arabic, “As-salamu alaykum, rayiysat ‘unthaa,” addressing me as boss. I returned the greetings in Arabic using his name, Kahlil. Then in English, he said, “You work hard. We see you work hard.”

In Arabic, I said, “You work hard too. All of the team works hard.”

“Good team.”

He stepped out of his shoes and took his place as the mud-mixer. Yeah, we don’t look a bit like an American worksite. The men mix mortar with their bare feet, kicking in Iraqi dust when too wet, adding water from a barrel when too dry. They take turns mixing mud. The careful eye would notice that the youngest get the afternoon mixing duties when the mixing water is as hot as the day. Through the afternoon, the guys use coolings to wash their feet after their turn as mixer.

Even the soldiers are calling bottled water coolings, using the same South Asian pronunciation. Please don’t interpret that as mocking or disrespect. We are hearing the early stages of a patois being developed by a crew. Instructions flow in Arabic, Urdu, and awkward English. Our bricks are universally called “toob,” Arabic for adobe.

The soldiers and Iraqis were the first to start trying jokes on each other, just little gags such as faking that a toob is falling or a little squirt of water. They tested each other for humor and boundaries. The third-country nationals were slower at playing along, but the bolder ones did.

At the close of day five, I paid every Iraqi in clean, crisp twenty-dollar bills. I also slipped the TCN guys a few twenties too, some off-book accounting that will be disguised as material costs or additional labor costs.

On day six, Friday, we rested for the sabbath.

On Saturday, Kahlil greeted me again at the start of the day. We exchanged formalities in Arabic. Then in English he said: “Good crew, hey boss?” And I answered, “Very good crew.” This time, each crew member greeted me with a handshake and words. Then we stripped down to our work clothing. Soldiers secured their rifles in our makeshift armory and removed layers of armor and clothing. The mortar-mixers dropped their shoes. Towels and fabric-wrapped heads and necks against the sweat and heat. We worked until breakfast. We also stop to pray: dhuhr and asr. Sometimes asr, the afternoon prayer, fell after our workday completed.

We did not build a great wall. We built a functional set of walls on the foundation of a building brought down during any one of the recent wars. We weaved our work into the existing, standing walls. By the time we brought in an American construction contractor to hoist the roof with modern diesel equipment, our old-world magic had broken. These guys with their big yellow machines and flatbed trucks yelled in English and fussed about the lack of level and plumb on our new wall. Our brand new, thousand-year-old wall.

My job now involved presenting myself formally in uniform and with military authority. I could no longer be a laborer in my own crew, bossed by Iraqis and young sergeants. But we weren’t done, not yet. I had one more duty before shifting focus back to the modern army.

I asked Kahlil for guidance on how to say thank you to the crew. I gave him three hundred dollars in American twenties. Before dhuhr, or midday prayers, we got word that a Toyota van was being held at the gate. The driver of the coolings truck drove me to the gate, where I met Fatima and her sister and Kahlil’s brother as the male escort. They drove an entire feast including a live goat to our military gate.

While we worked, the ladies prepared the goat and bread and chopped vegetables and herbs. Then, prior to asr prayers, they laid out the meal on a wool carpet placed neatly in the shade of our new wall.

We placed our tools in our boxes. The prayers were offered, then the formalities of the meal started. Our host offered welcoming words in broken English and familiar Arabic phrases. Then I stood in my army tunic with rank showing. A proper cap replaced my do-rag. I offered my thanks to all: the cooks, the goat, and the heavens. I unfolded a page upon which I had printed a copy of Frost’s Mending a Wall.

I read aloud and slowly. I let my voice crack. My efforts were answered with respectful silence.
I read Frost’s words in English, then Arabic. At the line, “Stay where you are until our backs are turned!” most responded Inshallah, and all chuckled in shared memories of toobs that tumbled, crumbled, and slid from position.

“We wear our fingers rough while handling them.” As understanding passed person to person, fingers were held up and wiggled.

“In each hand, like an old-stone warrior armed.” Yes, sorry Mister Frost, I adjusted the phrase. In response to this line, each person made a fist and showed strength.

“He says again, good walls make good friends.” Again, I shifted the language for easier translation and better comprehension. Frost won’t mind, will he? Could he have imagined that almost one hundred years after he scribbled a poem in New England, a military officer would be reading it during a war in Tikrit, Iraq as a gesture of peace?

I bowed my head in respect and touched my heart.
Shokran, shokran jazeelan.

They all answered with respectful silence. Then, as done in prayer, the men formally turned to their left and right to acknowledge and greet each neighbor.

“This poet, he writes of men, not walls,” Kahlil said.

“I always thought so. He wrote of us, I believe. No?” I answered in English and Arabic.

“Yes, he wrote of us. Yes.”

About I.M. Aiken (me)

A number of you reached out after my last post when I summarized my experiences after having falling off of a building and breaking both wrists. Thank you. From your responses I recognized I may not introduce myself and why I am posting short stories on substack.

I am an author with two books out, and two more coming out in the next two years. This sub stack and associated short stories are my effort to find readers and encourage sale of my books, and in fact, any books.

Book 1: the little ambulance war of Winchester County (2024)

book 2: stolen mountain (2025)

these books are available anywhere you could buy books. And if you prefer listening I will be the one to read this to you whether you buy from Libro.fm or audible.

This is not one of my short stories but in fact the truth. I fell from 12 feet onto a new concrete floor for a new garage. Entirely my own fault. And I landed within 4 feet of my roofing harness, which only reinforces the blame for my injuries. I fell on 11 October spent 11 days in the hospital, underwent two procedures, suffered a pretty severe concussion, and since being home just trying to get used to life again. It is hard to go from a mildly gamy leg to full on disability. Many days I was able to celebrate small accomplishments: getting new glasses, brushing my hair, brushing my own teeth, and even tying my own PJs up. Some days were just shit, sitting in a dark room with the shades drawn in the TV playing quietly.

I had thought that this might be a funny little story, but it isn’t, is it? This former paramedic did not play the role of patient well. I refused a C -coller and cleared my own C-spine. And I shouldn’t have. And apparently I objected to a medevac flight until I confirmed that I met the trauma transport criteria, as if I could evaluate better than the crew supporting me. I should’ve just kept my mouth shut.

I’m writing this on 18 November 2025, via Dragon speak dictation software (which doesn’t seem to like me swearing). Novel two came out nearly a month ago, on 21 October. I have been publishing short stories nearly monthly to keep you guys entertained and encourage you to buy my novels as they come out. So, at the moment book number two comes out, I was unable to communicate with my 10,000 followers. I have also been unable to sign books. I have a case behind me on the floor in my office. But with my hands I can’t even pick up the case. I can barely hold the book. In my signature is unrecognizable.

Thank you for your comments and follows during the last year and here is the announcement of novel number two. It is called “Stolen Mountain”. The tagline that the team at catalyst press came up with “nothing is as wicked or mean as massive small-town malfeasance.” You can find the novel as paperback, EPUB, and audiobook wherever you buy books. I of course encourage you to buy at your local bookshop, bookshop.org, and/or Libro.FM for Stolen Mountain.

Just do internet search for the title “Stolen Mountain” in my name “I.M.Aiken”. I started listening to the book last night and found myself chuckling. I have started to record the novel just about a year ago. Thank you

911 calls are both random and consistent. If the tones drop anytime between 0530 to 0800, you anticipate a long, slow, difficult call with little to do. It is the classic time for families to discover that Granny or Gump woke up dead. Nights and evenings: car wrecks. Wintertime: house fires. Springtime: chasing phantom barn fires while Vermonters boil sap.

When the tones drop from dispatch, I wake instantly. I need to pee, which I do whilst listening to dispatch. The next words are critical, though they will be said in uniformly professional tones with no particular emotion. All of this happens as I pee. Another adventure in my life that starts with, “No shit, there I was just minding my own business when...”

“Trowbridge Fire and Rescue, respond south of Nidoba Hill in Trowbridge for a report of a plane crash and possible wildland fire.”

Years from now, the squad will sit around a fire. Someone will say, “Remember the night when that plane crashed?” We’ll be slightly drunk, slightly stoned, and the story starts: “Remember…” Because we remember the unusual calls forever.

Things that don’t happen to a rescue squad covering forty square miles of forgotten mountains in Vermont include: bank robberies and planes falling from the sky. Things that do happen in Trowbridge include: excavators that roll over peoples’ legs, old people who die in bed, drunks who drive off of cliffs, houses that crush fingers, and the injuries and deaths associated with firearms.

Nidoba Hill is the hill that has been in Sam’s family since the Vermont Republic, and likely earlier.

Dispatch informs me that an airplane had just crashed on our land.

I wake Sam. It is her land, more than mine.

My mind explores the impact of a plane on our land and on our neighbors’. Jeez, shit, Marna’s house and barns would erupt in flames with the slightest spark.

“Stolen Mountain,” a novel that follows our Trowbridge crew through an adventure related to Vermont ski areas and bad guys doin’ bad things.

I begin my prep for a difficult night in the woods. First, I recognize that my normal routine of jumping into my truck and speeding off appears stupid. I am as close to the scene as possible. Second, without hopping into my truck, I don’t know what to do.

Our house sits on the shoulder of a hill. Below us is the village, with its church and church spire that stands about five degrees off from true vertical. Below us is a pasture that has hosted every critter from oxen to wild deer. To our west is the home field, more of a yard with gardens than pasture. The stone wall that holds the forest back sits about two hundred meters west of the office. You can easily see the foot trail that stretches from the gravel drive to the dark wall of trees (were it light out). The trailhead, marked by daffodils in the spring, opens like an archway. Our beloved landmarks such as the Douglas Tree, the Cellar Tree, and Lake Shore Drive interlace over Nidoba Hill.

Running on our property’s northern edge is an unpaved Trowbridge road.

We hop onto the side-by-side ATV, and then drive to the paved road. We wiggle south, easing off the crest of the hill. We can see the entire western aspect of Nidoba Hill.

“Dispatch 14RC5 establishing Trowbridge Command at Nidoba Hill.”

“Trowbridge Command established,” they answer me on the radio.

“Dispatch, Trowbridge,” I call out.

“Trowbridge, go.”

“Reporting nothing visual on the western and southern aspects of the terrain.”

Blessedly, the lands are brightening as the half-moon continues its ascent. We can see contours. We can see the outlines of northern white pines that stand proud of the forest’s canopy. We see no hints of smoke, of heat, of damage. Were the plane a Boeing, we’d see a rent torn across this landscape. Were the plane a small Cessna single engine, it would disappear into these forests with no visible scars.

“Command on two?”

“Command.”

“Hey, Brie,” I hear Al’s voice. “I am opposite you, south. I can see the backside of your hill. I can even see the lights of your house.” I can picture exactly where he sits in his truck. We occasionally see the flash of a headlight, especially in the winter after the trees drop their leaves.

“And?” I prompt him.

“Nothin.”

“Nothin-nothing?” I ask, doubting A-One.

“Nothin!”

“Want a dumb idea?”

“Sure,” Al answers.

“Stay there and watch from there. If something does break out, you are in a great spot.”

Sam mutters: “OP1.”

I question her with my eyes.

“OP1—observation post number 1.” Sam interjects standard military terms to my civilian rescue effort.

“Hey, A-One, you are designated OP1.”

“If you keep me here, I may run home to get some binos and a spotting scope.”

“Great.”

Sam is holding a lichen-encrusted lilac stick and has drawn lines and wavy circles deep into the driveway’s gravel. I recognize the conical shape of Nidoba Hill as if on a paper contour map. Straight lines represent our wiggly roads. She marks OP1 on the contour opposite us.

“14RC2 on tac 2 please.” I haven’t heard Harry on the radio yet. I know he is out there.

“2 on 2.”

“Harry, run to the top of Michelin Hill on the state highway. Take up a post looking south. Report from there.”

“Got it. I’ll stay on Tac 2.”

“Ok, you are OP2.”

That put a farmer on the tallest mountain over our mountain valley. His eyesight may not be what it was, but his eyes on that hill will safeguard us all.

Jay calls in from the east of us. “Brie, I got nothing.”

“Jay, do me this. Hold up at Hayes corner and set a perimeter there.”

I then ask Sam, “Why did I ask him to do that?”

“I don’t know, but it was perfect.” Sam marks her sand table with another X for Jay.

There is now a fire truck en route to our home. We hear the whine of the big diesel hit the bottom of the hill. I hear Thomas Reed shift down to first. I think about what to do with a truck loaded with a thousand gallons of water. I know that I am not qualified to organize a rescue or recovery mission following an airplane crash.

The moon climbs one finger of height for every fifteen minutes, or the fifteen-degree span of my hand stretched to the length of my arm each hour. It rises into the sky and shrinks in size, turning whiter and smaller.

“Hey, Chief, how about parking at the dry hydrant?”

Yap, we have a dry hydrant that includes a fire-truck-sized pull out. It also has a big pipe that connects the dry hydrant to our goose pond.

Alex arrives, stopping short of committing to our driveway. Instead, he pulls parallel to the stone wall, parking on our grass.

He looks down to Sam’s sand table. If the plane is not as big as a Boeing, then it is likely small, truck-sized, and the sort that can land on rural runways. You cannot readily find something as small as truck-sized in this forest without a lot of looking. There is a rusted 1930s pickup in a stream that has been found several times. There are rumors of Arthur’s Sword in a rock nearby that nobody has found. And as sad as the words sound, I hope a fire breaks out. Fire, heat, smoke would give us a location.

“Trowbridge Command.”

“Trowbridge answering,” I say after attempting to hand the mic to Alex. He may not be the fire chief, but he is the rescue chief.

“Status?”

“Dispatch, Trowbridge Command reports nothing found. We have established a visual and physical perimeter on the roads. We have at least a 270-degree view of Niboba Hill from observation posts at elevation.” I know that every firefighter and EMT who is awake is listening to my report across nearly one hundred towns in two, three states. They hang on my words.

“Do you have more information? Size of plane? Direction of travel? Any reports from the FAA or other callers?” I ask.

“Sorry, Trowbridge. A driver called from a mobile phone describing a massive orange glow that appeared suddenly at the crest of a hill in Trowbridge.”

“Do you have the lat/long? Did they say the name Nidoba Hill?” In a land of hills, who would know the specific name of that hill?

“Trowbridge, sorry. We used their phone’s reported position and located the car near the Musgrave property.” Do they know that I, as 14RC5, own that hill? Do they know that they are talking about a plane crash on our property? I cling to my professional objectivity and call them on my mobile instead.

“Hey, this is Brighid Doran Musgrave, 14RC5.”

“Hey, Brighid, what can we do for you?”

“Two things: first, can you play the 911 call for me? And second, can you tell me the time that the call came in? We live right here. This is our house and property. We heard nothing.”

“Call came in at 0023.” Meanwhile, I am waving hands and stomping feet to get Alex and Sam to join me on the phone.

“Huh, hold on. Let me put you on speaker.”

We three listen. The dispatcher plays the recording over the speakerphone: “I don’t know what I am looking at, but the trees at the crest of this hill just started glowing. It was really small at the start, then it grew. I’ve got to get home. I think either a plane crashed or there’s a really hot forest fire about to kick off. Sorry.” The call ended.

On the tactical frequency, I pass on the information. “Guys, the call came in at 23 past midnight. A driver reported a red-orange glow at the top of our hill here. Ask around. Did anyone else hear or see anything?”

I get a round-robin of guys keying mics and offering opinions from various hilltops, farm fields, and ridgeline roads.

Sam and Alex return to their map drawn in dirt. Drawing a map in soil or sand is a common military technique called forming a “sand table.” It is scaled to fit the width of the space between the grass and the gravel of the driveway. Sam drew it in the same orientation as the terrain, Harry’s OP looking south, A-One in his truck looking north.

I am listening to radios and thinking that except for being a landowner, I am the least qualified to be in command. I scan the fire truck to my north. I look through the night towards where Al is sitting in a truck. I look west toward the spine of the Appalachians. I turn slowly north again, thinking of Harry looking down over these hills.

Sam and Alex are standing on the northside of the sand table shoulder to shoulder over the map. Their arms raise in a slow point, each of them raising their separate index fingers towards the sky. They slowly point up, then drop their arms. They swap positions and execute the same dance-like maneuvers, tracing an arc in the sky with their hands.

“Hey, hon?” Sam calls to me.

“Yeah?”

“Come here a sec, will ya?”

I step away from my open truck door, the improv command post where I have electric power and multiple radios.

“Stand here.” Sam holds my shoulders, placing me. “There, that’s the road.” Sam points at the drawn road, then the real road. “That is Nidoba.” She points to the spot on the map. “You’re on the road here. Got it? It is twenty minutes past midnight, clear skies. Right?”

I am patient. I am on the path she’s laying out for me. I trust her.

“Look here.” She holds up Alex’s mobile phone. “According to the internet, the moon rose at 12:15 just here.” Alex had placed a round bit of white quartz on the ground, identifying the point where the moon appeared on an imaginary flat horizon. “Moonrise is measured from sea level, so it is a bit later up here. Where do you think the moon is at 12:20?”

I do exactly what they did. I point at the quartz pebble, then gradually raise my arm vertically while arcing southward.

“No shit?”

“A giant orange glow that is just past the halfway mark, as the moon glides through the lower atmosphere and hits the ridgeline.”

“It rose red orange, then as it climbed and marched southward, the color faded.” I see my finger pointing at a normal autumnal half-moon, small and white. There is enough light to give the land depth, but not enough spectrum to see colors except for blacks, blues, and purples.

“Really?” I ask of no one.

“This is tough to explain,” Sam says to me, “but I can see it happening. Give someone some edibles or whatever.”

“They’ll see what they see.”

I’ll call dispatch. At least I am not the one who reported it. I did spend an hour arranging rescue and recovery of a downed plane. The downed plan that wasn’t. Someone reported a fire-red moon rising over our home mountain.

Listen, you know-it-alls, we did the right things. We left a fire watch in place for another two hours. After dawn, we did all the possible search-and-rescue things with personal drones and a few ATVs. We spent the post-dawn morning searching our forest for evidence of a plane crash. We’re not complete idiots. We play the role of heroes. We are a rescue squad. And we rescue shit.

This should not be any more embarrassing than chasing barn fires during sugar season, except it will be. At some regional training center, someone will remember: “Trowbridge, eh? Weren’t you the squad that chased the moon and called it a plane crash?”

Ha-ha, asshole. What would you have done? Found it? You’re no different than me. Your squad is just like mine. But go ahead, laugh at Trowbridge. Oh, ha-ha, that was the night the moon crashed in Trowbridge, Vermont and every firefighter, medic, and EMT in the Connecticut River region knows it.

https://trowbridgedispatch.iamaiken.com/p/murmuration-audio

In a town this small, saying “that address is familiar” feels stupid. We’ve only got 70 miles of roads and a few hundred year-round residents. Paved road, steepish drive on the north side, opening to a small clearing that contains a beige double-wide home. Three steps up to the door centered on the building. I don’t know why, but the lady of the house fusses at me each time I show up. She’ll need a name because this story is about her, or it is about me, you’ll figure it out, I suppose, and tell me. We’ll call her Terri, a nice benign name. At squad meetings and when on the phone with Harry, I have explored my frustrations about Terri in the past.

Which means that when the tones drop telling us, the squad, we have a medical emergency, I can envision the driveway, the house lot, the home, and her, Terri, arms folded tight against her body at the door.

At my own door, I jump into my uniform, leaving linen skirt and shirt on the mudroom floor.

“Dispatch 14RC5 en route.”

In a minute, I hear “5, 2 on 2.” I flip my handheld to the dispatch frequency and tune my more powerful radio to the ground/tactical frequency number 2.

“5 on 2, 2?” Calling out to Harry, RC2, our assistant chief.

“B, I’m on my way. 20?”

“Just hit dirt. You?”

“Haley’s field.”

“Yeah, I thought you were hayin’”

“Call came when I was reloading twine.”

What we’re not saying over the rather public radio frequency is that by calling out landmarks we shall match arrival times without anyone noting that one of us might have slowed a touch. That’s the old rule we’re all taught: “Two in. Two out.” For Sam, my wife, it speaks more of Army battle buddies.

Two red trucks meet at the bottom of the drive, one from the east and one from the west. Harry’s truck carries echoes of Harvard Crimson. Mine is more whore’s lip red.

Hearing a call follows a cognitive process. First you catch the address and hopefully the nature of the call. I sometimes repeat it as the dispatcher provides the rest. Skills I learned before we had text- and app-based messaging to help. Skills I still need in a rural, hilly terrain where mobile phones often fail to find a tower. You hear the address, then you envision the address. Maybe it is a silent marker on the road near by: a neighbor’s house, the scene of an accident, a stone improbably balancing on its tip. If the house and family are known, then I do a run-through of the folks living there and who is the sickest and most probable patient. By now, I normally have pulled my EMS trousers up to the knees. Past treatments, past crises, medical histories, and social histories bubble forward.

The dread hits as I climb in the truck, starting it and waiting for the electronics to stabilize.

The dread.

Why I am walking out of my office? Why am I giving up hours of well-paid billable work to go get yelled at by some Terri? Why am I giving up income to volunteer, to deliberately walk, run, drive towards someone else’s shit?

Then they yell at you. Then they honk at you. Then they drive around barriers you erect.

Hearing Harry call for me on Tac 2 turned my mind from dread to joy.

I am here because he is here. He ran off of a hay field because I am en route to a call at 2 o’clock on a June Tuesday. Who is in Trowbridge, Vermont at 2 o’clock on a June Tuesday? Old folks, kids at the local school, their teachers and staff. The road crew and town clerk. Preschoolers and their guardians. Maybe someone sleeping off a night shift. At 2 o’clock on a Tuesday, I am often the only EMT in town.

Often, if I don’t go, no one else will. Game over.

Had Harry been on his tractor cutting or teddering or bailing, he would not have heard or felt the call. He’d be tucked in, Bluetooth headset on, listing to NPR stories while his fire/EMS pager buzzes invisibly against the vibrations caused by the blue Ford tractor.

One from a hilltop hayfield and one from a Scandinavian-inspired office overlooking a Vermont valley, two EMTs find each other at the bottom of a driveway at the same time. Each of us driving a red truck. Each of us with red-and-white emergency lights. Each of us with a long, whippy antenna, each of us with a nylon bag that carries our few tools.

Calm waves down my body the moment Harry says: “5, 2 on 2.” He says in the plainest possible language, Brighid, I love you and I am here for you, let’s do this together. Hands open on my steering wheel as I pace my landmarks against his. I drove up and right from the southwest. He approached from the northeast.

“Dispatch, 14RC2 on scene with 14RC5 establishing Trowbridge Command. Any word on an ambulance.”

“Trowbridge on scene, establishing command. No word from an ambulance.”

“Understood.” Yup, we all understand.

What’s-her-name meets us standing sentinel to her home, a few feet in front of the three steps that lead to the house. We each park for a quick exit, and to leave ample room for an ambulance to drive up, turn around, and also prepare for departure. Yeah, Terri, Right. That’s what I’m calling her this time. Terri.

I envisioned her arm position wrong. She stood akimbo, as a sentinel to her home.

I know she called us. She should be waving her arms at the end of the steep drive, no? Or standing aside briefing us in breathless speech. Or maybe deliberately leaving open the front door for us and greeting us with a yell of: “Hey, I’m back here!”

Terri dialed 911 asking for medical assistance then stood in front of the door like a guardian preventing entrance.

“Why is it that every time I dial 911 I get you two? I tell 911 to send anyone else. And I’ve told Langford Rescue to never come here again. They’ve nearly killed my husband with their bullshit.”

Harry believes himself to be a peacemaker. He’s lovely about it and sometimes misses the mark. I should be a natural peacemaker, but I kinda need to be in a better mindset. I can’t find peacemaker in the tool kit when one, I walked away from my afternoon’s income; two, I anticipated the hostility from my own dooryard; three, I’ve heard her do this before.

“How can we help? Did you call 911?” Let’s go back to basics.

“It is my niece. She’s not feeling well. She broke her leg the other day and had surgery. We just need a simple ride to the hospital. I called Starkville Ambulance directly, they are supposed to be coming.”

“Terri, I think Starkville forward the information to 911. We’re not in Starkville’s service area.”

“I don’t want you guys here. Can’t other people show up?”

Neither of us know how to answer this.

“How about we take some vital signs and help you get an ambulance here? That’s what our radios are for.”

She says neither “yes” nor “no.” She simply turns and walks into the house, leaving the door open. On our open-air stage, Harry and I look at each other, shrug theatrically, and step forward.

That wave of gratitude starts at my feet, crawls my spine, and finishes at my neck. I shake my head, thinking, at least Harry is with me. If I had written “caller prevented access to the scene” on my run report, I’d be just fine, because of the law. Landlord trespasses a visitor, and visitor must leave or be subject to arrest. If she tells me to go, I must go. But she dialed 911 because somebody needs help. Terri and I would have stood at an impasse.

Terri walks the narrow corridor and points to the small bedroom.

We enter and start talking with Niece.

“You’re not feeling well?” Harry asks, dropping his bag in the hallway.

My bag is behind me on the floor. I take Niece’s hand in my hand. Skin feels moist and cool. Skin doesn’t return to pink after I apply pressure. Pulse is too fast and too wimpy to be very effective.

In an instant, Harry and I both acknowledge, with deep dread, that this woman is sick. In the sick/not-sick assessment, the score and resultant needle point far, far into the sick column. We share a glance that lasts milliseconds. We each encode the silent message with the brevity of “5, 2 on 2.” I am low in a squat next to the bed. Harry is high near the door by the niece’s head. I toss a pulse ox on the finger. I scan her lower body. The leg is immobilized and has external fixators. The black fabric cast ends at the knee.

Harry asks about the basics: name, date of birth—he writes it on his glove in pen—allergies to meds, and then stalls out. He stalls because she stalls. She was answering in one-word or two-word phrases. She got her name out clearly. Date of birth took three breaths. Sometimes that is all you get.

Simultaneously, while I brace her up, grabbing knees, Harry grabs shoulders. In a grunt that sounds like “one,” we lift and pivot her to the bed. Harry shakes his head at me. I know this message too. In another grunt of “one,” we slide/lift/drop our patient to the floor. Then in symmetrical movements, we push the bed and all furniture to the wall giving us a small place on the floor to work in.

From his bag, Harry pulls a pony bottle of oxygen. From my hip, I pull my portable radio.

“Dispatch, Trowbridge Command.”

“Trowbridge?”

“Dispatch fire to the scene and please find us an ambulance forthwith.” I could have left the forthwith off. Even with a practiced cadence, and level tone, every dispatcher and listener on the frequency knows I just hit the “oh-shit” button.

They answer: “1434,” a banal reading of the current time.

Terri keeps yelling at us that Niece has a broken leg and is recovering from surgery. Yes, Terri, we know we need to be gentle or the leg won’t heal correctly.

“Jesus, What the fuck are you doing? Can’t you see she’s injured.”

I did just lift the lady from her knees and place her on the floor. Maybe you, Terri, should be looking up, where Harry is attaching oxygen to his BVM or Ambu bag. Terri is still yelling when Harry squeezes a breath down Niece’s trachea. I open a vein, laying in an IV with speed and precision.

“She only has a broken leg. Why are you doing all that?”

“Dispatch, Trowbridge. CPR started.”

“1435”

Harry looks at me. “EKG?”

“Alex, has it.”

Which is when Harry’s bag moves and we’re handed an EKG from the door from a bodiless hand.

In a second, I cut everything off the woman’s chest. Shirt, bra, and some thin necklace. We push our patient closer to the bed, watching as her off-side shoulder and hand go into the dark space. With an EKG, pads, a mechanical airway, and all the cardiac meds we have with us, we try.

Alex says: “1455.” A second clue that Alex silently arrived on scene. He’s called out the time hinting that we’ve done 20 minutes of CPR and thus hit the end of the protocol.

Harry and I make eye contact and stop.

“1455,” I say making the declaration of death official. “Alex, can you call it in?”

I hear him on the landline phone. First, to dispatch, cancelling the ambulance and requesting the police to the scene. Second, to the hospital for medical control where he recites each of our actions and our patient’s responses. Whereby the doctor decides that our patient is dead. A fact known by me and Harry for a goodly while now.

Terri had stopped yelling and recognizes the facts as they are. She attempts to loosen her grip on the facts she wants to believe. Terri steps around the mess in the corridor. Alex attempts to provide comfort to Terri with all the right words from the training. Yes, your niece is dead. Our crew did everything possible. Can we call someone for you?…etc.

Harry and I discretely remove the wire leads from the EKG. We disconnect the one-time use pads we shocked the patient with. We leave the airway open and the BVM attached. Harry turns off the oxygen, leaving the tubing. We drop our gloves on the floor and retreat from the room with our medical kits. Harry bends to retrieve his glove with the name and DOB. I recite both to him quietly. He drops the gloves to the floor.

“Ma’am, it will be thoroughly investigated, I assure you. The state police are on their way.”

Harry and I carry our bags out, securing them in our respective trucks. Harry pulls out a strip of police barrier tape and two pieces of duct tape. Back in the home, formally seals now-closed door identifying it as a crime scene – do not cross.

We three, the chief, the assistant chief, and me, the captain of a tiny rural EMS squad, now must remain at the beige single-wide home. We must sit, stand, wait quietly for hours for the state police to arrive, for detectives to arrive, for a call or visit from the associate medical examiner. We three must continue to communicate as a team while Terri spins through every emotion, including anger towards the EMTs that just killed her niece.

I envision the blood clot, or clots, that let loose from her leg. Eventually one squirted out of the aorta, taking the turn to the coronary branch, and then, with a left and right through the web, it finally came to rest when the left anterior descending artery got too narrow to let it through. Maybe another clot or two followed. A dam was built. The tissue distal to the clot started starving for oxygen. The tissue didn’t like that and started misbehaving. Tissue lives. It needs sugar, oxygen and a bit of this-and-that. Like all things that live, it poops waste. No tissue, no critter can live in a bath of its own waste. Starving and drowning in crap, the tissue dies. As tissue continues to starve for oxygen, the tissue nearby feels the effects. It convulses, stutters, and dies. A zone of death expands, eventually rending the heart non-functional. That happened about five minutes after we arrived. We did not kill her. A blood clot from her leg killed her. No amount of in-the-field advance cardiac life support will unfuck that artery, tissue, muscle, or heart.

I did not kill Terri’s niece. A blood clot did.

Harry did not kill Terri’s niece. A blood clot did.

Alex, as a senior, as chief, as paramedic, did not kill Terri’s niece for his lack of effort, even though he stood in the doorway watching.

Terri knows we killed her niece due to our ignorance, our lack of abilities, our inability to provide the right medications at the right time.

That’s not the point.

The point is that Harry heard the call from dispatch and said, “5, 2 on 2.” The point is that at no point was I alone. With skilled rhythms, intensive training, we moved through the call like a flock of starlings, weaving and swooping with nearly no words. During those thirty minutes, I shared in human magic. Harry and Alex and I mind-melded. We were one. For thirty minutes, I had six arms and three brains. Even dispatch, miles away across the river in another state was in that shared space with us. Every EMT and medic in the region knew that there was a tiny crew of people kneeling on a floor doing everything in the book to reverse the advance of death through a fellow human.

The spell broke when we lifted out medical kits and closed the door.

We wait our hours in post-spell fatigue, we brace for interviews, for the scrutiny over our every action. Some jackass will make sure that every drug, every modality we used was prior to the expiry date. Our credentials will be reviewed by detectives, again. And the louder Terri gets with her accusation that we killed her niece, the more pressure the medical doctor will, in turn, feel. Right or wrong, our next call will undergo intensive reviews. Why did Alex stand still while Harry, certified at a lower level, undertook so many tasks? Terri will tell anyone who will listen that the local rescue squad killed her niece.

Terri never again met emergency crews with akimbo arms.

Oh, right. She never dialed 911 again.

I would go on another call if only to feel that sense of belonging. So, I am a murderer. Whatever. I am loved too. I’m good with that.

https://trowbridgedispatch.iamaiken.com/p/murmuration-audio

In a town this small, saying “that address is familiar” feels stupid. We’ve only got 70 miles of roads and a few hundred year-round residents. Paved road, steepish drive on the north side, opening to a small clearing that contains a beige double-wide home. Three steps up to the door centered on the building. I don’t know why, but the lady of the house fusses at me each time I show up. She’ll need a name because this story is about her, or it is about me, you’ll figure it out, I suppose, and tell me. We’ll call her Terri, a nice benign name. At squad meetings and when on the phone with Harry, I have explored my frustrations about Terri in the past.

Which means that when the tones drop telling us, the squad, we have a medical emergency, I can envision the driveway, the house lot, the home, and her, Terri, arms folded tight against her body at the door.

At my own door, I jump into my uniform, leaving linen skirt and shirt on the mudroom floor.

“Dispatch 14RC5 en route.”

In a minute, I hear “5, 2 on 2.” I flip my handheld to the dispatch frequency and tune my more powerful radio to the ground/tactical frequency number 2.

“5 on 2, 2?” Calling out to Harry, RC2, our assistant chief.

“B, I’m on my way. 20?”

“Just hit dirt. You?”

“Haley’s field.”

“Yeah, I thought you were hayin’”

“Call came when I was reloading twine.”

What we’re not saying over the rather public radio frequency is that by calling out landmarks we shall match arrival times without anyone noting that one of us might have slowed a touch. That’s the old rule we’re all taught: “Two in. Two out.” For Sam, my wife, it speaks more of Army battle buddies.

Two red trucks meet at the bottom of the drive, one from the east and one from the west. Harry’s truck carries echoes of Harvard Crimson. Mine is more whore’s lip red.

Hearing a call follows a cognitive process. First you catch the address and hopefully the nature of the call. I sometimes repeat it as the dispatcher provides the rest. Skills I learned before we had text- and app-based messaging to help. Skills I still need in a rural, hilly terrain where mobile phones often fail to find a tower. You hear the address, then you envision the address. Maybe it is a silent marker on the road near by: a neighbor’s house, the scene of an accident, a stone improbably balancing on its tip. If the house and family are known, then I do a run-through of the folks living there and who is the sickest and most probable patient. By now, I normally have pulled my EMS trousers up to the knees. Past treatments, past crises, medical histories, and social histories bubble forward.

The dread hits as I climb in the truck, starting it and waiting for the electronics to stabilize.

The dread.

Why I am walking out of my office? Why am I giving up hours of well-paid billable work to go get yelled at by some Terri? Why am I giving up income to volunteer, to deliberately walk, run, drive towards someone else’s shit?

Then they yell at you. Then they honk at you. Then they drive around barriers you erect.

Hearing Harry call for me on Tac 2 turned my mind from dread to joy.

I am here because he is here. He ran off of a hay field because I am en route to a call at 2 o’clock on a June Tuesday. Who is in Trowbridge, Vermont at 2 o’clock on a June Tuesday? Old folks, kids at the local school, their teachers and staff. The road crew and town clerk. Preschoolers and their guardians. Maybe someone sleeping off a night shift. At 2 o’clock on a Tuesday, I am often the only EMT in town.

Often, if I don’t go, no one else will. Game over.

Had Harry been on his tractor cutting or teddering or bailing, he would not have heard or felt the call. He’d be tucked in, Bluetooth headset on, listing to NPR stories while his fire/EMS pager buzzes invisibly against the vibrations caused by the blue Ford tractor.

One from a hilltop hayfield and one from a Scandinavian-inspired office overlooking a Vermont valley, two EMTs find each other at the bottom of a driveway at the same time. Each of us driving a red truck. Each of us with red-and-white emergency lights. Each of us with a long, whippy antenna, each of us with a nylon bag that carries our few tools.

Calm waves down my body the moment Harry says: “5, 2 on 2.” He says in the plainest possible language, Brighid, I love you and I am here for you, let’s do this together. Hands open on my steering wheel as I pace my landmarks against his. I drove up and right from the southwest. He approached from the northeast.

“Dispatch, 14RC2 on scene with 14RC5 establishing Trowbridge Command. Any word on an ambulance.”

“Trowbridge on scene, establishing command. No word from an ambulance.”

“Understood.” Yup, we all understand.

What’s-her-name meets us standing sentinel to her home, a few feet in front of the three steps that lead to the house. We each park for a quick exit, and to leave ample room for an ambulance to drive up, turn around, and also prepare for departure. Yeah, Terri, Right. That’s what I’m calling her this time. Terri.

I envisioned her arm position wrong. She stood akimbo, as a sentinel to her home.

I know she called us. She should be waving her arms at the end of the steep drive, no? Or standing aside briefing us in breathless speech. Or maybe deliberately leaving open the front door for us and greeting us with a yell of: “Hey, I’m back here!”

Terri dialed 911 asking for medical assistance then stood in front of the door like a guardian preventing entrance.

“Why is it that every time I dial 911 I get you two? I tell 911 to send anyone else. And I’ve told Langford Rescue to never come here again. They’ve nearly killed my husband with their bullshit.”

Harry believes himself to be a peacemaker. He’s lovely about it and sometimes misses the mark. I should be a natural peacemaker, but I kinda need to be in a better mindset. I can’t find peacemaker in the tool kit when one, I walked away from my afternoon’s income; two, I anticipated the hostility from my own dooryard; three, I’ve heard her do this before.

“How can we help? Did you call 911?” Let’s go back to basics.

“It is my niece. She’s not feeling well. She broke her leg the other day and had surgery. We just need a simple ride to the hospital. I called Starkville Ambulance directly, they are supposed to be coming.”

“Terri, I think Starkville forward the information to 911. We’re not in Starkville’s service area.”

“I don’t want you guys here. Can’t other people show up?”

Neither of us know how to answer this.

“How about we take some vital signs and help you get an ambulance here? That’s what our radios are for.”

She says neither “yes” nor “no.” She simply turns and walks into the house, leaving the door open. On our open-air stage, Harry and I look at each other, shrug theatrically, and step forward.

That wave of gratitude starts at my feet, crawls my spine, and finishes at my neck. I shake my head, thinking, at least Harry is with me. If I had written “caller prevented access to the scene” on my run report, I’d be just fine, because of the law. Landlord trespasses a visitor, and visitor must leave or be subject to arrest. If she tells me to go, I must go. But she dialed 911 because somebody needs help. Terri and I would have stood at an impasse.

Terri walks the narrow corridor and points to the small bedroom.

We enter and start talking with Niece.

“You’re not feeling well?” Harry asks, dropping his bag in the hallway.

My bag is behind me on the floor. I take Niece’s hand in my hand. Skin feels moist and cool. Skin doesn’t return to pink after I apply pressure. Pulse is too fast and too wimpy to be very effective.

In an instant, Harry and I both acknowledge, with deep dread, that this woman is sick. In the sick/not-sick assessment, the score and resultant needle point far, far into the sick column. We share a glance that lasts milliseconds. We each encode the silent message with the brevity of “5, 2 on 2.” I am low in a squat next to the bed. Harry is high near the door by the niece’s head. I toss a pulse ox on the finger. I scan her lower body. The leg is immobilized and has external fixators. The black fabric cast ends at the knee.

Harry asks about the basics: name, date of birth—he writes it on his glove in pen—allergies to meds, and then stalls out. He stalls because she stalls. She was answering in one-word or two-word phrases. She got her name out clearly. Date of birth took three breaths. Sometimes that is all you get.

Simultaneously, while I brace her up, grabbing knees, Harry grabs shoulders. In a grunt that sounds like “one,” we lift and pivot her to the bed. Harry shakes his head at me. I know this message too. In another grunt of “one,” we slide/lift/drop our patient to the floor. Then in symmetrical movements, we push the bed and all furniture to the wall giving us a small place on the floor to work in.

From his bag, Harry pulls a pony bottle of oxygen. From my hip, I pull my portable radio.

“Dispatch, Trowbridge Command.”

“Trowbridge?”

“Dispatch fire to the scene and please find us an ambulance forthwith.” I could have left the forthwith off. Even with a practiced cadence, and level tone, every dispatcher and listener on the frequency knows I just hit the “oh-shit” button.

They answer: “1434,” a banal reading of the current time.

Terri keeps yelling at us that Niece has a broken leg and is recovering from surgery. Yes, Terri, we know we need to be gentle or the leg won’t heal correctly.

“Jesus, What the fuck are you doing? Can’t you see she’s injured.”

I did just lift the lady from her knees and place her on the floor. Maybe you, Terri, should be looking up, where Harry is attaching oxygen to his BVM or Ambu bag. Terri is still yelling when Harry squeezes a breath down Niece’s trachea. I open a vein, laying in an IV with speed and precision.

“She only has a broken leg. Why are you doing all that?”

“Dispatch, Trowbridge. CPR started.”

“1435”

Harry looks at me. “EKG?”

“Alex, has it.”

Which is when Harry’s bag moves and we’re handed an EKG from the door from a bodiless hand.

In a second, I cut everything off the woman’s chest. Shirt, bra, and some thin necklace. We push our patient closer to the bed, watching as her off-side shoulder and hand go into the dark space. With an EKG, pads, a mechanical airway, and all the cardiac meds we have with us, we try.

Alex says: “1455.” A second clue that Alex silently arrived on scene. He’s called out the time hinting that we’ve done 20 minutes of CPR and thus hit the end of the protocol.

Harry and I make eye contact and stop.

“1455,” I say making the declaration of death official. “Alex, can you call it in?”

I hear him on the landline phone. First, to dispatch, cancelling the ambulance and requesting the police to the scene. Second, to the hospital for medical control where he recites each of our actions and our patient’s responses. Whereby the doctor decides that our patient is dead. A fact known by me and Harry for a goodly while now.

Terri had stopped yelling and recognizes the facts as they are. She attempts to loosen her grip on the facts she wants to believe. Terri steps around the mess in the corridor. Alex attempts to provide comfort to Terri with all the right words from the training. Yes, your niece is dead. Our crew did everything possible. Can we call someone for you?…etc.

Harry and I discretely remove the wire leads from the EKG. We disconnect the one-time use pads we shocked the patient with. We leave the airway open and the BVM attached. Harry turns off the oxygen, leaving the tubing. We drop our gloves on the floor and retreat from the room with our medical kits. Harry bends to retrieve his glove with the name and DOB. I recite both to him quietly. He drops the gloves to the floor.

“Ma’am, it will be thoroughly investigated, I assure you. The state police are on their way.”

Harry and I carry our bags out, securing them in our respective trucks. Harry pulls out a strip of police barrier tape and two pieces of duct tape. Back in the home, formally seals now-closed door identifying it as a crime scene – do not cross.

We three, the chief, the assistant chief, and me, the captain of a tiny rural EMS squad, now must remain at the beige single-wide home. We must sit, stand, wait quietly for hours for the state police to arrive, for detectives to arrive, for a call or visit from the associate medical examiner. We three must continue to communicate as a team while Terri spins through every emotion, including anger towards the EMTs that just killed her niece.

I envision the blood clot, or clots, that let loose from her leg. Eventually one squirted out of the aorta, taking the turn to the coronary branch, and then, with a left and right through the web, it finally came to rest when the left anterior descending artery got too narrow to let it through. Maybe another clot or two followed. A dam was built. The tissue distal to the clot started starving for oxygen. The tissue didn’t like that and started misbehaving. Tissue lives. It needs sugar, oxygen and a bit of this-and-that. Like all things that live, it poops waste. No tissue, no critter can live in a bath of its own waste. Starving and drowning in crap, the tissue dies. As tissue continues to starve for oxygen, the tissue nearby feels the effects. It convulses, stutters, and dies. A zone of death expands, eventually rending the heart non-functional. That happened about five minutes after we arrived. We did not kill her. A blood clot from her leg killed her. No amount of in-the-field advance cardiac life support will unfuck that artery, tissue, muscle, or heart.

I did not kill Terri’s niece. A blood clot did.

Harry did not kill Terri’s niece. A blood clot did.

Alex, as a senior, as chief, as paramedic, did not kill Terri’s niece for his lack of effort, even though he stood in the doorway watching.

Terri knows we killed her niece due to our ignorance, our lack of abilities, our inability to provide the right medications at the right time.

That’s not the point.

The point is that Harry heard the call from dispatch and said, “5, 2 on 2.” The point is that at no point was I alone. With skilled rhythms, intensive training, we moved through the call like a flock of starlings, weaving and swooping with nearly no words. During those thirty minutes, I shared in human magic. Harry and Alex and I mind-melded. We were one. For thirty minutes, I had six arms and three brains. Even dispatch, miles away across the river in another state was in that shared space with us. Every EMT and medic in the region knew that there was a tiny crew of people kneeling on a floor doing everything in the book to reverse the advance of death through a fellow human.

The spell broke when we lifted out medical kits and closed the door.

We wait our hours in post-spell fatigue, we brace for interviews, for the scrutiny over our every action. Some jackass will make sure that every drug, every modality we used was prior to the expiry date. Our credentials will be reviewed by detectives, again. And the louder Terri gets with her accusation that we killed her niece, the more pressure the medical doctor will, in turn, feel. Right or wrong, our next call will undergo intensive reviews. Why did Alex stand still while Harry, certified at a lower level, undertook so many tasks? Terri will tell anyone who will listen that the local rescue squad killed her niece.

Terri never again met emergency crews with akimbo arms.

Oh, right. She never dialed 911 again.

I would go on another call if only to feel that sense of belonging. So, I am a murderer. Whatever. I am loved too. I’m good with that.

https://trowbridgedispatch.iamaiken.com/p/murmuration

I’m tired of traveling. I might blame the weather, but instead I’ll blame my boss. My boss is a passive aggressive, screaming, immature, crisis-creating, Seventh-day Adventist, vegetarian asshole. It is the “asshole” bit that matters the most, not his diets. We spent last Friday in Kodiak together. I got to listen to him misrepresent the capabilities of technology, misrepresent the scope of the mission, then I got to sit in his rental car while he drove around the island like a NYC cabby. All starting and stopping—break, gas—break, gas.

At the top of a mountain, on a razor’s edge, driving on gravel, with an extremely steep four-thousand-foot drop to the ocean, I want to see his hands at 10-and-2 on the wheel and his eyes glued forward. Instead, he is talking to me, looking out the side window, driving forward while looking sideways. I look over the hood of the car, all I see is ocean. Four-thousand feet below. Steep. This ridge is the top. No higher to climb. The fall would be far, quick, and deadly. Nobody would know we were gone, given the car would sink into the ocean. Goodbye us.

We don’t belong up here, certainly not in a tinny rental car. This is the domain of the mountain, the eagle, the mischievous raven. In their domain, I witness harmony, beauty, and grace. Feelings I did not share for myself.

I chirped, squeaked, then squealed. I hate being scared. And being scared from his recklessness is another thing altogether. To scare oneself, to push to the limit to work together to face the fear, that’s one thing. I don’t like it much, but I’ll do it as needed. Looking out two sides of the car and seeing nothing but a tumultuous ocean four thousand feet below while the car still rolls ain’t for me. Did I add that the wind was screaming at a gale? The little Ford rental sedan quaked. I removed my seat belt. My hand was on the door. I was ready to leap from the car before going over. I am not taking that fall.

That was Kodiak, Alaska.

Lies, racism, and fear while getting a neck-jerk tour of the crooked streets as the Boss tells me about the Seventh-day Adventist missionary corps that built the church there and their attempts to save Aleuts natives on the island.

Juneau

Better? Well the wind was blowing forty again. I was travelling alone, and now two hours away by airplane. Therefore, a different place, a different trip but I still worked for that same boss and the same federal agency-ish. The rain drove down from the sky in buckets. Rain so loud that when on the phone, people told me about a lousy static problem. Sorry, peeps, that’s the sound of the rain on the metal roof. I had perfect five-by-five reception on my mobile. The rain turned my Chevy rental into a crazy drum. I called the car “Blue Airbag”—airbag being the only word printed on the dash anywhere. Every other label had already fallen off this cheap piece-of-shit.

Wow! I thought the Kodiak rental car had it tough.

As I drove, I witnessed part of a mountain slide to the road below.

During one pass of the road, the mountain left a tongue of mud sticking out. It lapped down between trees across a pond. During the next pass on the same road, I saw that mud now included uprooted trees. The tongue, now bigger, lay between two houses.

That hillside road then had a big yellow digging machine and a cop car.

During my third pass by that road, I saw that the slide-down area had grown yet again. More trees claimed by the mountain. Trees with the bottoms pointing skyward, adult trees laying flat in the mud. The pond disappeared under mud and mess. A car with its wheels down crowned the mud pile that defined the bottom.

The little white car had come sliding down the mountain from its parking space three-hundred feet above. One minute, the owner could see it on the road. Then the rain and the mud carried it down the hill.

Like a jealous creature, the mountain stole, then stacked his new treasures. He stole from the forest. He stole from the homeowners. He shook his shoulders in the heavy rain, reminding us all that he’s the boss. You might already know this if you listen to the hills.

Imagine the owner of the car that was stolen by the mountain. Come winter this fella will have a new ski trail, nice and smooth, stretching from his living room to the remnants of the ice-skating pond below. Instead of appreciating his new private ski and sledding run, he’ll be yelling at All State Insurance that he wants a new white car and a fine new place to park it.

The local agent will tell him about the local Juneau deities and the special limitations in their policy protecting it from paying in the event of a natural act. The Agent will say: “If the Mountain decides to take your car as a gift, then you must honor that gift. And you must find a way to park your shiny new car and build your human house so that Mountain is less tempted by them.

A really good insurance agent in Juneau might even also suggest replacing the car with something that ravens won’t be jealous of. “He likes shiny things,” the agent will say, speaking now of ravens. “Get something older and rustier and don’t park it out so close to where Raven soars around all day, that’ll be better.” You live on the mountain with trees and ravens as your neighbors. Find harmony.

Regrettably, the claims adjuster actually lives in Ohio. That adjuster fails to understand the wisdom of an Alaskan insurance agent. He’ll have to take his big green stamp out from his left desk drawer, hit the forms once with an “act of god.” And with a bigger red stamp, the documents will get marked “denied.” What do Ohio Christians know of steep mountains and rain so loud you hear it through the phone? And cars so old and plain and blue that the only word remaining within them is “Airbag”?

Ravens and mountains never learn. They never repent. Why should they? They don’t have All State agents. If you listen, you know that they are the real bosses.

Imagine a Raven repenting, if only for a minute? Repentant Raven would transform into an insurance guy. Repentant Raven would invent a special insurance rider, mark it as paid, then with a flap, pay the homeowner fella extra money. That extra money might do so much, like buying materials to protect the house from the land sliding away beneath it. Then Raven will be able to tell the family the good news and maybe even hand them the keys to a newer car that has more chrome and silver and white. A car fresh from California or Japan. Wouldn’t that make him happy? Him being Raven. He likes new cars that are shiny and white with lots of chrome.

Repentant Raven is the good guy for the people. Happy people.

The mountain shudders . The mountain sends the car and the fella’s yard to the bottom of the pond. Repentant Raven makes Mountain look weak.

Who wins that fight? Raven will spend more time looking for good wind to ride, ‘cause that Mountain won’t want that old Raven sitting on his shoulder for a while. Raven would fuss and feud with Mountain. Ravens just do that. They fuss, don’t they?

Soon Raven will find new things to get into. He’ll fly off to tease someone else.

Too bad Raven can’t touch my boss. My boss has Jesus and that’s kind of like having a shield. Oh, and Raven can still make little messes and tease my Boss but unless Boss understands Raven, he won’t get the message.

My boss misses most of the conversation by listening to just one god. All the others scream at him. He refuses to hear them. My Boss feels their fury. And I feel fury from him all the time. Boss uses his fury to yell at others like me and the rental car. You have to have fury to tempt the fates by driving on a knife’s edge ridge four-thousand feet up with the ocean bubbling below the steep cliffs. When Boss find a quiet moment, he reads about the “Four Faces of Jesus as told in the Scripture.” Poor Boss, I doubt his mind ever had a quiet moment. That’s the book I see him reading when I leave him in the parking lot of Walmart on Tuesday.

I come out of the store. I see Raven sitting on a shopping cart.

Raven watches Boss read. Raven leans in to see the book and the chrome or maybe he wants some of Boss’ poofy fake-red hair.

Me? I know. I listen to Raven. I see his tricks sometimes. I tip toe, quietly, stealthily. I control my breath. Just by thinking about the next step, I move forward. Even this newly-filled plastic Walmart bag stays quiet for me. Just as I step behind old Raven, I let out a caw that shakes his tail feathers.

“Caw!!!!”

Raven doesn’t know what to do.

He turns his head towards me and starts to fly at the same time. Mistake, Raven. It is like he trips right there in the middle of the air. He’s all turned one way and flying the other. Like Boss up on the Kodiak Ridge. Except Raven tripped.

I roll with laughter. I am laughing and laughing for catching old Raven himself. Raven reading the back of a Jesus book. I got him. I got him good.

Luckily, I leave Alaska. Otherwise, I might be in for some trouble myself with Raven. But it is all fun. He knows I got him. He respects me better for trying. Maybe if Boss wasn’t reading about the faces of Jesus, Boss could have described Raven’s face before I scared the feathers off of him.

As it is, Boss missed the entire episode—looking up as the great black bird recovers flight. How do I tell him why I was laughing? I can’t.

I don’t. Jesus was born in a desert on the other side of the planet. The Boss will never understand the real world.

Call to Action

subscribe…

buy books

Stolen Mountain

Publication fall 2025, pre-order open

Print at Flying Pig Books

Print at Northshire Books

ePub at Bookshop.org

Audio link available soon

Of course, you can find these books at any vendor selling books.

The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County

Published fall 2025.

Print at Flying Pig Books

Print at Northshire Books

ePub at Bookshop.org

Audio at Libro.fm

If you enjoy these stories, keep listening and please buy books.

Stolen Mountain

Publication fall 2025, pre-order open

Print at Flying Pig Books

Print at Northshire Books

ePub at Bookshop.org

Audio link available soon

Of course, you can find these books at any vendor selling books.

The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County

Published fall 2025.

Print at Flying Pig Books

Print at Northshire Books

ePub at Bookshop.org

Audio at Libro.fm

Read more

As told by Alex Flynn

As I told you, this Boston kid was raised by a cop from Ireland. I studied Russian in school during the early 1980s. Not sure of the wisdom given I spent the nineties in dark spaces: windowless buildings in regions of the planet that were dark, or light, or hovered in forever dusk.

Sean …

Read more