It’s race day, and Michael Carmichael is standing outside one of NASCAR’s great Cathedrals, the Charlotte Motor Speedway, listening to an Army veteran share what’s on her heart.

The last six hours have been soggy. The red, white, and blue tent we’re hovering under is dripping water. Fans make the pilgrimage through puddles in rain boots and ponchos. At the Geico tent across the blacktop, a girl yells like a street preacher, punctuating her words with the side of her hand in the air: "Who wants to go? Who will it be? Tickets to Talladega!"

Michael, a tall, blue-eyed Montanan wearing blue jeans and cowboy boots, seems not to hear the noise. The Green Beret and Check A Vet founder and CEO is laser-focused on the conversation at hand. This, for him, is a ministry of companionship.

Since 2001, more than 127,563 active-duty service members and veterans have died by suicide. That’s according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Among post-9/11 veterans, suicide is the second-leading cause of death, with suicide deaths among active-duty personnel and veterans far outpacing deaths in combat.

Check A Vet’s message: Suicide is preventable. It’s a view the organization shares with the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and a whole host of psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals.

Healing begins, according to the group’s leader, with meaningful and routine connection with others. It begins with a deep and rooted sense of community. Michael jokes that, before his senior year of high school, he joined the Montana National Guard because his best friends were doing it. He was 17 years old, riding bulls in the National High School Rodeo Association and chasing girls, and figured it would be a good time with his buddies.

When Operation Desert Storm started in 1991, Michael was a student at Montana State University. He did what he thought his grandfather, the driving moral force in his life even now, would do. He traded his backpack for a rucksack and volunteered for active duty. Michael spent more than two decades with U.S. Special Forces, which means he’s a thinking man’s soldier. He’s there for his guys. Calm under pressure. He saw 11 combat deployments (including the initial invasion of Afghanistan).

He did some things he can talk about and a lot of things he can’t, and in December 2015, he retired as a chief warrant officer four. After Michael got out of the Army, things got dark. "The way that operators get turned out," he tells me, "it’s rough. I went from being at the top of my game to putting a dent in my bed. That’s all I wanted to do. I isolated myself. People would call me, and I was terrified to even look at the phone. I was just like, 'Leave me alone.'"

He doesn’t hold back tears when he talks about the experiences that some of his friends had during their transition from military to civilian life. In a 2016 interview with NPR’s Scott Simon, author and director Sebastian Junger put it this way: "The odd thing about war — one of the many odd things about war is that the experience of combat produces an incredible human closeness between the soldiers involved. And when soldiers come home, there’s this sort of existential loss of community. You’re not in a platoon. You’re not sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder with other people that you would die for."

Rediscovering community is what got Michael back out into the sunshine. "My neighbors kind of called me on my s***," he says. "They knocked on the door and came in. They were like, 'God, you look awful. Go take a shower.' So it was tough love. But they were also like, 'We’re gonna be back in 30 minutes. We’re going to get on the pontoon boat, and we’re gonna go cruise the lake.'"

"Not only did they call me on my s***," he says. "They put me back into the light."

Michael is here under this tent in front of the speedway in Charlotte, North Carolina, on race day, trying to help put other veterans back into the light. It’s not hard to see how this slab of concrete (a space donated by Speedway Motorsports for this purpose) is the ideal place for Check A Vet to carry out its mission. According to Nielsen Scarborough research, NASCAR fans are more than 65% more likely than members of the general public to be military veterans. They’re more than 12% more likely to be active duty. The proof is in the Air Force jabs.

Check A Vet is here to support veterans, but it’s also here to educate and provide resources for civilians. There’s literature under the tent about how to connect with veterans, how to recognize risk factors, what to do if a veteran you love needs help, and who to contact (locally and nationally) for more support.

Ultimately — with the support of former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller and with buy-in from local, state, and federal political leaders — the organization’s goal is to create community-based, peer-to-peer support groups for veterans, their families, and their friends that are grounded in the most up-to-date psychology, mental health, and counseling doctrine.

In the meantime, Check A Vet volunteers are here, listening.

"It can be hard," a Marine Corps veteran with a full beard says from under his hoodie. "You get out, and you’re back home, and you try to explain, but no one understands your experiences. So you isolate."

An Army veteran in a rain jacket talks about how hard it can be to get the help he needs and the help his friends need. "I check on my vets every day," another Army veteran in a green cap says. "They’re my best friends. My brothers. They’re doing fine. Good even. I don’t care. I still check."

This, Michael says, is the way forward.

"The first thing you have to do is get people involved," he says. "There’s a heck of a lot more civilians than there are veterans. You cast a net of support. Use the model. Check on your veterans, just like my neighbors did. Say, 'Hey, man, inject yourself into that situation. Break down that isolation. Replace it with companionship. No, replace it with fellowship. Then we’re getting somewhere.'"

The race will be delayed. Most of the fans will make their way back to cars and then to hotel rooms or houses. But right here, right now, at America’s Home for Racing, we’re getting somewhere.

Farahn Morgan is a writer living and working in Southern Appalachia.