BROKEN CROWN
TAMA, THE GENERAL KING
20 years earlier
The desert never broke me, but home just might.
My bike rumbles beneath me, steady like a heartbeat. Mine’s a little slower these days, more tired than it used to be, but the steel horse doesn’t forget the road. And I don’t forget home.
Mount Pleasant looks smaller than I remembered. The roads feel tighter, the air more brittle. Everything’s a little too quiet, too tame. Like the soul of this place went somewhere and never came back.
I pull up to the old gas station on Mission Street. The one next to the meat market that used to be owned by a guy named Sal, who always smelled like cigar smoke and fryer grease. Now, it’s boarded up with busted windows. A half-burned mattress leans against the wall.
I kill the engine and sit for a minute.
Still wearing my old fatigues. The jacket’s a little ragged around the edges, and my boots are dust-caked from the desert. My beard’s fuller now, threaded with more silver, but my eyesare sharper, harder. They’ve seen too much and forgotten how to blink.
Three tours overseas. Two confirmed kills. One fractured rib that never healed right. They called me "The General" over there, even though I never asked for the damn name. I led good men into bad places and brought most of them back alive. Most. Not all.
A part of me stayed buried in the sand.
But the part that came back? It's looking for a fight.
I ride down Broadway next and take a left toward my old block. The closer I get, the harder it is to pretend that this town didn’t rot from the inside out while I was gone.
A kid stands on the corner, maybe thirteen, with eyes like mine. He’s seen too much and lived through worse. He's got a red rag tied around his wrist and a pocket knife sticking out of his hoodie like he wants someone to try him.
He looks away when I make eye contact. Not out of fear, but out of shame.
The further I ride, I notice the community center is closed. The windows are tagged, and the doors are boarded up. Football games used to take place here on Saturdays, along with cookouts in the summer. Now it’s nothing but broken swings and silence.
I ride past the underpass off Kinney. It used to be just dirt and gravel, but now it’s littered with empty bottles, burnt foil, and the ghosts of men nobody bothers to count anymore.
I slow down.
There’s a tent made from a blue tarp and scrap plywood, barely holding against the wind. Beside it sits a man on a plastic crate, rocking back and forth, whispering to himself as if he’s caught in a conversation no one else can hear.
I stop my bike.
He doesn’t look up. He just keeps muttering under his breath, eyes locked on some invisible battlefield. His handstwitch. One clutches an old canteen. The other rests on his knee like it’s holding down a rifle.
That’s when I see it, stitched to the ragged sleeve of his coat. A faded 82nd Airborne patch. Worn smooth at the edges, but still there. Still clinging.
I blink, and for a second, I’m back in the goddamn desert. Dust in my throat. Blood under my boots. The smell of burning rubber and gun oil thick in the air.
He served, and now he’s here, forgotten under a bridge, trapped in a war that never ended. I want to say something. A salute. A thank you. A goddamn prayer. But nothing comes. My throat’s tight, like grief has a hand wrapped around it.
I reach into my saddlebag and pull out the protein bar I always keep for long rides. I set it next to his crate, careful not to spook him. His gaze flicks toward it, then toward me. Just for a second, recognition flashes in those glassy eyes, not of me, but of the life we both walked away from and never stopped carrying.
He nods. Just once. I nod back.
Then I ride. Faster this time because rage lives behind my ribs now, burning hotter than before. Not just for me. For him. For the broken. For the discarded. For the warriors turned invisible, because it’s easier for the world to forget what it owes.
This town didn’t just lose its soul. It buried its soldiers right alongside it, and I’m digging that shit back up.
I stop in front of the church. The one where I got married. The one where Isaiah was baptized. A preacher is sweeping the steps, a skinny white guy with gray hair and more wrinkles than sermons in his head. He recognizes me and nods but doesn’t say anything.
Not sure if he sees a soldier or a ghost.
