Every night for fifty years, he has poured coffee for the dead.
September 1969, Fire Support Base Buttons, Phuoc Long Province. A Douglas kid who expects nothing from anybody drinks his first canteen-cup coffee before patrol with Ed Martinez, a man who will not make it home. Bisbee comes back to the rail yards, a Harley, and a trailer on the edge of town. Then one night in 1974 he steps into a bar fight for a stranger, takes a knife in the ribs, and wakes in an abandoned smelter with somebody else's blood in his throat.
Coffee for Ghosts is his own account of the fifty years that follow: the fire years, the rules he makes so he can stay hidden, the lost fledglings who stumble through his town, the federal agent who keeps getting closer, and the row of mugs on his counter that grows every time somebody doesn't come home.
A first-person Vampires of Tucson novella. It stands on its own and spoils nothing in the novels.
Content note: references to the Vietnam War, combat death, Agent Orange, suicide, overdose, and supernatural violence. Mature themes, restrained depiction.
