Page 4 of Rowan: His Exception

MIA.

We never spoke the words, only used the abbreviations. Because actually saying, killed in action or missing in action, hangs in your throat like vomit you can't swallow.

Hearing it out loud means it's real.

I didn't keep those papers that day. I left them on the desk at the VA office. The same desk where a doctor with soft hands told me the headaches weren't going away, that the blurred vision, the rage that came out of nowhere, the nights I couldn't remember how I got back to the barracks, was the TBI talking, not me. Said the blast had scrambled things that don't unscramble.

Six years in.

Discharged.

When in reality, they were just cutting out the damage. Getting rid of what wasn’t of any use to them anymore.

That same day, I walked out into a world that felt wrong. Too bright. Too loud. Civilian life doesn't know what to do with men like me.

But the mountains are different.

The mountains don't give two shits if you're honorable or not. They don't care what you've done or what you've failed to accomplish. Only sitting…waiting. Ready to break you if you fuck up bad enough.

Cedar Ridge isn't on most maps. The sign at the edge of town is a set of rules. No welcome.

Help your neighbor. Don't ask about their past. Never leave anyone stranded. There's none of that cheery bullshit.

The truck’s engine roars, the leather steering wheel warm against my palms. I drive until the roads turn to dirt, then to nothing. I bought this cabin with money I didn't need, repairing the bare minimum with skills I can't use anywhere else. There’s no drywall, only bare logs for walls. I have a cast-iron stove in a kitchen that provides the bare minimum, with a sink that drips unless you jiggle the handle. There’s a couch sitting in the middle of the main floor that I bought for next to nothing from a foreclosure three towns over. My bed, still a mattress on the floor. It’s not a shithole, but nothing fancy either. Over the years, I've fixed what I had to. Replaced the roof when it leaked. Put in a water heater that actually works. Nothing substantial. Nothing that would make someone think I plan to stay forever.

When I finally stop, the silence is worse than the engine. I sit there for a minute, listening to the metal tick as it cools. Then I get out.

Every day, this place seems smaller than the first. Or maybe I'm just bigger now, carrying more weight than muscle. The door sticks like always. I shoulder it open, and the smell hits me first…pine, wood smoke, the ghost of every bad decision I've made.

My eyes land on the Kevlar I hung on the hook by the door six years ago, still smelling like sweat and someone else's blood. I stand in the center of the room, listening to the wind push through the tree line, waiting for some semblance of peace to wash over me.

It doesn't. It never does.

From the beginning, a world that should feel normal has felt all wrong. My fingers start to twitch, causing them to ball into fists at my side. My hands know what to do with a weapon, but they don't know what to do with stillness.

Every day, it’s the same. I come home to an empty house, dwell on the silence, and stand here until my legs ache, bracing for something to happen.

Nothing ever does.

That's the part that'll kill you.

Which is why I started the wilderness survival school. I needed something to do, keeping my mind and hands busy. And because the only thing I’ve ever been trained and good at is keeping people alive in conditions that want them dead.

Some people might debate the fact now, and the days when the mirror argues louder than others. But my hands don't shake anymore, even when it remembers the grip, the weight of a body when the legs stop working, and the sound of someone trying to breathe through a chest that won't expand. Every day, I tell myself I did everything right. But the telling doesn't always take.

I spent one summer clearing trails, marking hazards, and building a course that could kill you if you weren't paying attention. Added another cabin for an office. A storage shed for the gear that keeps people from dying out here.

The very first class I had, there were only three sign-ups. Two quit on day one when they realized I wasn't going to carry their pack. The third made it through and wrote a review that brought me five more the next year. Now I run six groups a season, spring through fall. Winter's mine.

People think paying someone to hurt them is character-building. They're not wrong, but they're not right either. I don't do it for their character. I do it because without the work, I'm in this cabin with nothing but the silence and the walls closing in. Because teaching some software engineer to purify water with a plastic bag means I'm not doing it myself at three in the morning just to have something to do with my fucking hands. Because if I'm checking their pulse, I'm not checking mine. And some nights, I check. Some nights I sit in the dark with two fingers on my wrist, counting, wondering if this is the time I hit sixty and it just stops. But when it doesn’t, it keeps going. I still sit there. Waiting for something that won't come.

The first group of the season arrives in a few days. People who have paid to suffer, and it’s the same routine every time. Day one: I stand in front of them and tell them the mountains don't give a shit how bad they want to live. Satisfied, as I watch their faces go pale, realizing I'm not here to be their friend, that I'm the only thing standing between them and a body bag.

I need them to know it.

Some quit before we even leave the parking lot. Sending them away to puke in the bushes, cry in their cars, whatever gets them out of my sight. And there's always that one motherfucker, whose ankle snaps or knee blows. Then suddenly, I'm the fucking mule hauling sixty pounds of gear and another hundred and eighty of entitled civilian six miles through terrain that wants them dead.

Not my job. Not what I signed up for. But I do it anyway. I don't know why.