There are entire floors of women whose only job is to sew closed any gashes, holes, or tears, so a man can wear the uniform without feeling the death or injury of his shadow soldier, the one who came before. The shadow soldier. Another painting she will do, she thinks, setting the shirt aside. Whole lines of shadow soldiers. Fields dark with echoes of the past, all the men who came before. An arm that lifts a rifle, shadowed by other arms, like faint pencil marks on an oil painting.
