Bert Morrison had been gone from Riverside, Colorado for five years. Five years since he had said goodbye to his mother at the bus station, since he had left behind his job at the hardware store, since he had signed away the comfortable predictability of small-town life in exchange for the possibility of becoming something more.
He was going to be a soldier. In the minds of people in Riverside—a town of about three thousand people nestled in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains—being a soldier meant something specific. It meant coming back with stories of heroism. It meant returning with military decorations and commendations. It meant earning respect through visible symbols of achievement: medals, ribbons, advanced rank insignia on dress uniforms.
Everyone in town had expectations about what Bert Morrison would become.
But when Bert stepped down from the Greyhound bus on that cold November afternoon, he looked nothing like what anyone had imagined.
He was thin. Not the healthy thin of someone who had been training and staying fit, but the hollow thin of someone who had endured something that had consumed him from the inside out. His eyes had a quality that was hard to describe—a kind of haunted quality that belonged more to someone who had seen things he would never be able to unsee than to someone who was supposed to return home as a hero.
And most noticeable of all—covering his arms, his neck, disappearing down the collar of his shirt—were scars.
Not little scars. Not the kind of minor injuries that soldiers might acquire and talk about over beers. These were significant scars. Thick, white, clearly substantial injuries that had healed but that had permanently altered his skin. There was a particularly brutal-looking gash on the left side of his face, running from his temple down to his jaw, the kind of scar that looked like it had come from a blade or shrapnel, the kind of scar that made people look away.
He carried a single duffel bag. No footlocker full of souvenirs. No new dress uniform in a hanging bag. No chest full of medals displayed in a shadow box.
Just an old duffel bag, worn and stained, looking like it had been through as much as Bert had.
The Judgment Begins
Word spread through Riverside the way news always spreads in small towns—fast, distorted, and often cruel.
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