Private Trauma

Preston Wheeler went to Iraq to make a fortune, but came home a wounded man. From the March 21, 2008, issue of the Texas Observer.

Preston Wheeler woke up disoriented in a ditch along U.S. Highway 71 in western Arkansas.

Gradually, it came back to him: the 18-wheeler passing on the two-lane road, the sharp pop, the cloud of dust from a blown rear tire. The flashback came as he veered right to avoid the blowout’s debris.

As his car left the asphalt, a scene replayed: Preston was back on a dead-end road in Ad Duluiyah, north of Baghdad, trapped behind a flipped tractor-trailer. Four gunmen coaxed a fellow driver out of the truck ahead of his in the convoy. He heard the shots as the men executed the driver in the street. Their white pants flapped in the wind, the road behind them streaked with blood. Preston regained consciousness alone in his Chevy Cavalier.

His psychiatrist had warned him against returning to his job as a driver on the open road. So instead, he drove semitrailers in circles around a Tyson Foods Inc. lot, hauling live chickens to the slaughterhouse—100,000 a day.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He, of all people, should have known.

Read the rest at texasobserver.org