I reached up, caught the edge of Brad’s handwritten card, and tore it off the trunk with one hard pull that took a strip of gray oak bark along with it.

I let the card fall into the mud and picked the broken plastic sign up out of the leaves.

I stood there at the edge of the woods, holding the torn pieces of my posted sign while the wind shook the dry oak leaves above me.

I tucked the crumpled paper into my coat pocket and drove straight down Highway 12 to Menomonie.

The lot at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post was nearly empty, apart from two dusty pickups parked by the side door.