While he collected disability, it was not enough, and he had done it, the thing that most animals do but which only a few animals grieve, he had been up close and found it fetid and strange, killing for his country—a country that, once he was back home, reminded him that patriots could be shell-shocked, could be spangled in Arlington grass, but absolutely could not be Black. And after having walked around with a child’s blood underneath his fingernails, at home the banks, the churches, the women, were nothing. He saw that the people at home did not see Black men like him among them, that they
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