Page 6 of Mountain Hero

I’m not stationed at Fort Campbell, living in a small apartment off-base that was empty just as often as not.

I’m not risking my life each time I get sent out on a mission, never knowing if this will be the time I don’t make it home.

I’m not part of a team anymore. My teammates—my brothers and sisters, really—are voices on the phone or messages on a screen, instead of the people I saw almost every day.

Ten months out of the Army, I’m still adjusting to civilian life. No longer weapons sergeant and sniper for my team, but owner of an outdoor equipment store, an old farmhouse, and ten acres of land just north of Stowe, Vermont.

When my uncle said he was leaving everything to me, at first I tried to refuse it. As he looked up at me from his hospital bed, so terrifyingly pale and thin, his voice barely more than a whisper, my mind didn’t want to accept what he was saying. “You’ll get better,” I insisted. “I’ll take some leave, help out until you’re back on your feet. But you don’t need to give me anything.”

But he was dying, no matter how badly I wanted to deny it.

Uncle Caleb, the man who was a thousand times more a father to me than my biological one, who took me and my mother in without question, showed me how to pitch, and helped me prepare for basic training, was dying.

A few days later, once the inevitability had finally set in, I asked him, “What about the rest of the family? Mom? Your brother? His kids?”

“Your mom… is all… set.” By that point, he had to stop every few words to take a weak, gasping breath. “I put… money aside. For her… trips. Retirement. My brother… his kids… they’ve never… been around. I don’t want…”

With tears in his eyes, he held my gaze as he said, “Enzo. You’re my son… in every way… that counts. Bliss… this place… I want you… to have it. You’ll be happy… here. I know it.”

From that moment, I knew my life was about to change.

I promised to take over everything. And after Uncle Caleb passed—just a few days later, like he’d been hanging on, waiting for me to say yes—I informed the Army I wouldn’t be renewing my contract.

Two months later, I packed up my small apartment in Kentucky and moved back here.

And now I’m back in the small town I spent eight years in, seeing the same people I went to school with, the same restaurants, the same stores, even the same gazebo in the park, just with a fresh coat of paint.

It’s surreal, really. Like everything else stayed the same and I’m the only one different.

Well. The house is different, too. Before, there was always someone here—my mom, my uncle, my friends, Rascal—and now it’s just me.

There are plenty of times I’m glad for the solitude. On the days when the memories get too sharp and vivid, I’m relieved to have a place where I don’t have to pretend everything’s okay. When the losses sneak up on me—Uncle Caleb, Jeff, all the innocents we couldn’t save—I can walk for hours around the property until my mind settles again.

And there are nights like this, sitting on the wraparound porch and enjoying the cooling summer breeze and the rhythmic chirping of crickets and remembering the nights when I sat out here with my uncle, hearing stories from when he was a kid.

Most of the time, I’m happy to be back here. But I can’t help wondering if a dog might make it feel more like home again. Maybe an older dog who’s given up on finding a family. A dog who’s been through things, who might be rough around the edges, just like me.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea.

Maybe I’ll check online to see what the local shelter has available. If I find a dog that looks like a possibility, I could swing by on Thursday afternoon, when my part-time employee, Will, is working.

Leaning back in my chair, I prop my feet on the porch railing, and I can practically hear Uncle Caleb scolding me, saying, Enzo, you’re going to fall over and break your skull or the chair. Put your damn feet on the ground.

“Living on the edge,” I murmur, smiling as I leave my feet where they are. Then I think, wouldn’t that just be the worst kind of irony; surviving helicopter evacs and being trapped by insurgents and barely escaping a building rigged with explosives only to give myself a skull fracture on my own front porch?

Chuckling, I lower my feet back to the ground, and I can imagine Uncle Caleb laughing along with me.

I’m just reaching for my phone when it buzzes with an incoming text. My smile grows wider when I glance at the screen to see a message from my old teammate, Cole. We served in the same Green Beret company, though he was on the other split team. He left the service five years before I did, but we still keep in touch and I’ve visited him a few times in Sleepy Hollow, where he runs an elite security company.

How’s it going? We were just talking about funny stories from training and Zane brought up the time you got stuck in that tree. We thought we’d have to uproot the tree to get you through the course.

A small snort escapes. Of course, my old teammates would remember that incident from our unconventional warfare training, one of the hardest requirements to become a Green Beret. Shaking my head, I shoot back a reply.

Yes. I remember. But did you guys talk about that time you were bitten by that harmless spider and swore it was a black widow? Even though we told you it wasn’t?

A few seconds go by before his response appears.

It had red on it. You would have thought the same thing.

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