Free And West Is West by Ron Childress

shriek if she does not have water soon—sooner than the four hours it will take her to walk out of the desert.
    â€œAll right,” she says, relenting to the voice. “But I keep the pants and boots.”
    The sun does not argue.
    Jessica claws out a foxhole deep enough to crawl into and she lets fall into it her camouflage cap and military ID. Then she removes her shirt and after folding it neatly, honorably, lays it in the hole so that the identification tags ALDRIDGE and US AIR FORCE are visible to the sky. She is nameless now. As she buries her past, the sun licks her bared skin.

CHAPTER 8
    Florida
    Dear Jessica,
    As you sent no response to my last letter I have been reluctant to write again. But as I am where I am today because of bad judgment here goes. I especially hope writing you is no mistake after what happened here a few weeks ago.
    The guards went through my cell and took all my old papers away. Everything I wrote about and everything you wrote to me about is gone. I thought it was punishment for a contraband pack of cigarettes I got caught with. But afterward a guard told me that your letters contained secret military information.
    Nothing you wrote seemed that secret. Even the part about the wives of that terrorist guy. Though what does a fool like me sitting in a cell know? I hear the country out there has gone crazy. That you cannot climb into a plane without getting a naked x-ray now. That the police have cameras watching every street corner. Are steel bars the only difference anymore between being in a prison and being on the outside? The length of a leash though certainly does count so I hope those letters they took from me have not shortened yours. I wish I could turn back the clock and warn you about what not to write. But then my keepers would have read the warning. No matter how I turn it around this was going to be a lose-lose situation. And now I have lost you.
    My child I guess I dont have anything else to write. You know where I am if you ever want to drop a line. If not bless you for the letters sent. That they were taken from me proves they were more than I deserve. Good thing I read them over a thousand times. I can remember every word.
    Your loving father,
    Don

CHAPTER 9
    Nevada
    â€œWhat the devil is willful defiance?” Voigt, at his desk behind closed doors, asks his wife. Linda rarely disturbs him at work. It’s about their son Luke, suspended for two days.
    â€œSome catch-all the schools use now,” Linda says.
    Voigt hears a horn beep. Linda’s on her way to pick up their son at Canyon High.
    â€œApparently he was defending you to his homeroom teacher. It got heated.”
    â€œThe teacher bring up the subject?” Voigt asks. Recently there’d been drone protests outside the base. People arrested for lying down in the road and blocking traffic. It’s not a mass movement yet, just an indicator of dissatisfaction. Is Luke’s suspension another? If it weren’t for that, he might admire the teacher for taking up the pacifist side in a school with a good percentage of students from military families. Isn’t this, theoretically, what he’s fighting for? Freedom.
    â€œI don’t know,” Linda says. “Luke threw a book at the blackboard and they have zero tolerance for any hint of violence.”
    â€œHell,” Voigt says. “I’ll speak with him tonight. At least it’s only two days.”
    Linda pauses a moment. “Everything good there?”
    This is the Voigts’ code. “Yeah, we’re good.” What Voigt means is that there were no strikes today. That he won’t come home brooding. For other than this, he cannot go into details about what he does. “Just some paperwork from DC today.”
    â€œGood. See you tonight then.”
    â€œYou bet,” he says and rings off.
    He turns to the letter again—a copy of Don Aldridge’s latest correspondence to Jessica. A Janet