PO WER B EYO ND CO M PA RE
Ghosts In America BY DOMINIQUE SINAGRA ILLUSTRATED BY KARL FITZGERALD
T
here were definitely ghosts in Oklahoma. I could see them and hear them. Not literally, with my eyes or anything like that. No, I never felt a cold chill pass through me like a window had been left open nor did I ever see anything inexplicably move across the room. But nevertheless, I could see the ghosts in the soldier’s eyes and in Indian land. Lawton was nothing like what the land used to be. It used to be where the Apache and Kiowa lived. In the 1800’s, it was settled along with Fort Sill, a military post to keep the same Apache and Kiowa at bay. I came to Lawton by myself to interview people for a project about opposites, about how seemingly disparate lives can have a great deal in common if the right questions were asked, if the right parts of their humanity were spoken to. I was staying with Justin, a former soldier, a veteran of the war in Iraq. He was amongst the first boots on the ground in Baghdad and came back deeply emotionally scarred from the things that he witnessed and did. Justin lived with his fiancé in a small brown house with brown walls and a brown sofa. The home reminded me of the desert but maybe that was only because of the Iraq connection. Justin and his fiancé work five jobs between them. He woke up at 3am every day to sort boxes at UPS and then he worked at a newspaper office and then in the late afternoon Justin went to work as an assistant at a law office. I asked him once I how he managed on so
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