Above: Phil McDowell in Toronto, with the wooden boat he built himself.

If you were walking down the street in Toronto and you happened to bump into Phil McDowell, here is what you would notice: nothing. You probably wouldn't even see McDowell, because that's the kind of guy he is. At five feet nine, he is neither tall nor short, he tends to shuffle a bit when he walks, and he favors the kind of outdoorsy Beanwear that fades into the Canadian landscape like snow. All told, he cuts a rather ordinary figure for an international fugitive.

The first time I met up with McDowell, in December, we took a long walk through Toronto in the rain at night, chatting about the threat of imprisonment that hangs over his life, then we ambled into a pub for a drink. The moment we sat down, McDowell seized upon the beer menu, flipping through the pages like a novel, frowning at some, nodding at others. Then he placed the menu back on the table without a word. This, I now realize, was vintage McDowell. He has been brewing his own beer for the past seven years and is something of a bottle fanatic, yet he approaches tasting and brewing, like the rest of his interests, with a fervor that is entirely private. Some men are modest; McDowell abhors attention. Faced with almost any question about himself, he will answer in the smallest possible number of words, even if it means not really answering at all. Occasionally, on a matter of real importance like beer, he will overcome his natural reticence long enough to dispense advice, but only so long as he can do so without drawing any attention to himself. He may suggest that you order a lambic Cantillon Lou Pepe Gueuze 2005, and then, when you have finished making a butchery of the name to a deeply offended Quebecois waiter, he will quietly order a Sam Adams for himself.

What is remarkable about McDowell is that, when he explains the bizarre predicament of his life—the deeply unsettling chain of events that changed him from a Soldier of the Month to a fugitive on the lam, and the sensation of waking up each morning without knowing if he will be in jail the next—he tends to relate the experience with the same laconic reserve with which he discusses almost everything else. It can be unnerving to speak with a man about his own impending doom in such a matter-of-fact way. You might ask, for example, about his great-aunt Frances. You might have heard from his mother that he and Frances were unusually close, that they went out for ice cream each time he returned from college and then later, whenever he was home on military leave. You might know from McDowell's sister that Frances wrote to him almost every week after he arrived in Canada four and a half years ago—three pages here, five pages there, a lifeline of encouragement from home—and you might know from McDowell's father that early last year, the letters from Aunt Frances trailed off. You might have heard from McDowell's wife that his mother called to explain how Frances was not doing well and that everyone was preparing to say good-bye, and you might know that soon afterward, Aunt Frances died. You might be able to imagine what it was like for McDowell not to attend her funeral, or his grandmother's funeral a few months later, or his grandfather's soon after that—or, last year, his sister's wedding. You might stand outside McDowell's apartment on a dead-end street in Toronto and try to imagine what it's like to live in a country that is not your own and that you cannot leave. But you won't hear any complaints from McDowell.

Once, over dinner, I asked him what it's like to have the entire U.S. Army after you, and he thought for a moment and said slowly, "It's like I'm carrying a heavy rock in my backpack." This is as close to introspection as McDowell gets. Most of the time, if you ask why he did it, why he refused his command and fled his country, he'll just shrug his shoulders and say, "I couldn't do it anymore—it was wrong." By it, of course, he means a lot of things: the army, the war, the orders he received; the price he's paid, and the even bigger price to come. But it's the things McDowell doesn't say which make his story so perplexing: the things he's never said before; the things no one ever asked; the things that, when his orders came down, left him with no other way to protest except his suitcase and his feet.