"Wow...There really is a Woodshed," Mark Milley thought to himself as he entered the dilapidated shack behind the main house. 

He had been summoned to this place, he didn't understand how — but some unknown force had compelled him to suddenly appear in this broken-down shed full of tools, stacked wood, and cobwebs. There was sawdust everywhere, especially mounds of it on a long work table with a bandsaw at one end. A shaft of warm sunlight streamed in and pooled in the middle of it with an ethereal glow. Sitting right in the center of it was a figure, somewhat diminutive, with highly polished shoes not quite touching the floor and a perfectly tailored light grey suit that drew no dust, dirt, or smudge.

Milley cocked his head to one side like a puppy, unable to process at first. This was confusing, he thought to himself. It was beyond confusing. It was...it was really really weird. He also noticed that he was wearing his Class A uniform with Screaming Eagle patch, campaign ribbons on his breast. "What the hell happened to my powder blue cardigan and argyle socks?" That was weird, too. He was now retired, he thought as the figure before him quietly took off a grey Stetson and placed it in his lap. 

The man he stood before looked familiar. Round steel-rimmed spectacles and a natty bowtie...

"Harry...Truman?"

"That's right, Gen'ral Milley. You win a cookie."

"What...what's going on here? Am I dead? Aren't you dead?" Milley stammered.

"Not as dead as you think, Boy," Truman replied calmly. "But you're here now because I have a few words for you."

General Mark Milley, formerly Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was suddenly in the news again for his comments in a new book by Bob Woodward in which he had admitted assuring his counterpart in the People's Liberation Army of Communist China that he would give him advance notice if Donald Trump ever planned to launch an attack. Furthermore, he said that he feared being recalled out of retirement and court-martialed should the former president be re-elected in a few weeks. Now, Milley was unsure if it had been wise to say that.

"Gen'ral," Truman began, "I know about this call to Red China. Knew about it the minute you did it. Made me sick to my stomach. Asked Gen'ral Patton if he wanted to come down here with me today to express his thoughts on the matter. Said he'd rather keep his tee time with Eisenhower because you made him sick too." 

In spite of the whole paranormal thing going on, Milley felt the tops of his ears begin to redden as he started to take umbrage at the former president's words. It was as if he had been called to the Oval Office for a dressing down by a commander in chief. He knew this was just some bad dream prompted by spoiled shellfish from the night before, but he was still beginning to get pissed off.

Truman grinned. "I can see that I have your attention, Gen'ral." Then he pulled out a few envelopes from the pocket of his double-breasted suit, along with a book of stamps. As he began the daily ritual of preparing his personal correspondence, he continued.

"You know what treason is, Gen'ral? "

"Now you wait just a minute, whatever you are!" Milley spoke up. "I'm a patriot!"

"Shut up, Boy. You don't interrupt, and you don't go anywhere until I say you can...one of the perks of good living," Truman looked up with a wink. "Article 94 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice...says a lot of things, but also says it's mutiny if you usurp or override the authority of your commander. And mutiny against your commander in chief is treason. You committed treason, Gen'ral Milley...Yes, you did, in fact."

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Milley regretted the shrimp from Foo Young's, but could not convince his brain to enter the state of lucid dreaming, which might offer an escape. "This is bullsh*t!" he shouted at the man in the grey suit.

Truman licked a stamp with a smile and smacked it on an envelope without looking down. "Treason, Gen'ral; treason...yes indeed." He paused, looked at Milley, and Milley looked back with bushy frowning eyebrows. Defiance. At this, Truman upended his Stetson and dumped the letters inside before placing it on the filthy dusty table in the woodshed. His hat remained immaculate. Truman then hopped from the workbench and took five steps into Mark Milley's face, landing about an inch or two from it. He leaned in, drawing closer. The "Gen'ral" felt a coolness waft across his face, along with a hint of Top Brass Cologne for good measure. 

"Gen'ral, not only did you undercut your commander by going to an enemy behind his back, you did that with the promise you'd tell that enemy if an attack was forthcoming. Maybe nobody wants war, but your job is to follow policy. You don't make policy, you son of a b*tch, you follow it. And if you can't follow it, then you resign. And if you don't resign, you get fired. By golly, if you'd have done this to me, I'd have put my foot so far up your ass it'd come out of your big mouth right after the teeth. One day, you might get to ask MacArthur himself how that feels."

Truman leaned out a bit as Milley suddenly noticed he was getting the shakes. But the ghost of the former president had more to say. He gave the shamed military officer a sidelong glance.

"Do you know why I dropped the bomb on Japan? Do you know why I did that twice?" MIlley knew...or had always assumed he did. But right now, he didn't feel he could be sure of anything.

"I dropped those bombs to kill a lot of people. I hated to do it, and I struggled with it for weeks, but I knew that if I didn't kill a lot of people, it wouldn't convince the Japs that they were going to lose, and if they didn't believe they were going to lose, they would keep fighting. And, Gen'ral, if they were going to keep fighting our people were going to keep dying....How could I have explained to America's mothers that I had a weapon so powerful it would have ended the war almost immediately but instead chose not to use it? How would I explain to America's fathers that I let that damn war go on for another two years while it killed off  all their sons?"

Truman stepped back and stared at Milley through his thick lenses. He put his hands on his hips as if addressing a wayward schoolboy.

"An American president has an awesome responsibility you could never imagine. A terrible responsibility whether or not to wield incredible power. He knows things you don't. He is privy to information you don't have. And the system of government you swore to uphold sees to it things remain that way. At least it did in my time. Now you come along and think you know better than your president. Nobody elected you and yet you come along and violate the Constitution by undercutting him. There's three branches of government, not four. You don't get to be your own branch. So when you talk to the enemy behind a president's back, when you tell the enemy if an attack is coming, you've assumed power you don't have a right to. That's how dictators find their beginnings, my friend, and you make me sick. Sick enough to come back down here when I thought my time here was complete." Truman saw the beads of sweat turning into rivulets. And now was the time to really let Milley have it.

"So one day, you believe your president is going to attack. And you get on the phone to call the Chairman of the Army of Red China to tell him so. What if you're wrong? What if your information is horsecrap? But you know better than your president does, so you call the man up and tell him an attack is forthcoming. What do you think this man is going to do? He's going to tell his boss, the Chairman of the Communist Party, And the Chairman says, "Well, do you believe this traitorous American general whom we would shoot dead were he one of our own?" And the Chairman of the Army says, "Well, I don't know, Comrade. I really cannot imagine any sane man in that position warning his adversary of an impending attack...maybe they are both crazy."

And the Chinese Premier says, "Perhaps not. Or perhaps so. When the wise man cannot act, he waits and bides his time. But we may not have time. Maybe we must attack first!" And so Red China pushes the button first, and congratulations, Gen'ral Milley, you've just sired the Third World War. Millions die, and that's all because of you, you self-righteous little (expletive deleted)."

By now, Milley was melting into a puddle of insecurity on the woodshed floor as Truman finished up. "I was a Democrat, but I also had common sense. Something which seems to be in short supply for you people these days. But if I were still around, I'd like to see your former president drag you back into the Army as a general and then send you to Leavenworth as a private. And now you're crying like a baby that he might haul you back into the service for that court martial...You should have taken MacArthur's advice and just quietly faded away. Now you're back on the front page."

Truman turned and picked up his Stetson, placed it atop his head just so, and then faced Milley as his visage slowly began to disappear. "We had a saying back in Jackson County...Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day."

A faintly mocking smile, and then he was gone.