from Oz,” John always used to joke. “The wizard wants us to reclaim the city block we secured and lost yesterday, but I say we click our boots three times and say ‘There’s no place like home.’”
Noah swallows past a lump in his throat as he opens another of John’s documents. This was not the way John planned to go home.
Rage flares in his chest. He wants to mourn John, wants to think benevolent thoughts, but whenever he thinks of him, Noah’s perverse mind goes to the negative things his brother has done. He can’t help but remember the times John bullied him as a kid, wrestling him to the ground and pressing marshmallows down his throat at a Cub Scout cookout. The way John ostracized him because he enjoyed growing things in their little plot of a garden, because he used to get a thrill out of nurturing a plant until it brought forth cucumbers or carrots or watermelons. Punching him in the jaw when he beat John in the Fourth of July race when they were kids. Sticking Noah with the blame when they got caught snooping in forbidden caves when their dad was assigned to Okinawa. Giving him a wedgie, slap-fighting behind their parents’ backs, embarrassing Noah in front of countless girls…
I hate him for all those things, and for the times that I was invisible, lost in the shadow of John Stanton.
Hatred is a sour taste in Noah’s mouth as he scrolls through his brother’s files, sure he is going to hell for thinking ill of the dead.
“I know your brother leaves a wife behind,” Sgt. Dweeb calls over in the conciliatory tone of a father. “A beautiful woman. Seen her picture online. Did they have any children? Any pets?”
“No.”
“Probably a blessing, given the circumstances.”
Noah nods, an image of John’s wife tugging at him, her dark eyes always full of questions and concern. Someday, he would share John’s writings with her but for now…now, he would just send the documents to himself as attachments, a way to have a backup in case anything happened to this thumb drive.
Noah’s chest feels lighter as he logs on to the Internet and starts sending John’s files into the electronic cosmos. At least, he would have this. The army could take his brother’s body, his clothes and worldly possessions, but these—John’s thoughts—would not be put under lock and key.
That, Noah vows, picturing his brother handing out pencils to Iraqi school children, is my promise to you.
Chapter 8
Forty-two Miles Away
Flint
Damn technology.
You can order groceries online, send a message to a friend on the other side of the planet, or buy a song through your computer, but now that he really needs his laptop to work it keeps freezing up on him, when he’s thousands of miles from home with no malls or Apple Stores where he can slap down his credit card and purchase a replacement.
Dave Flint runs two fingers along the seam of his open laptop, wiping the powder and grit of sand out of the crevice. He was working outside under a tent when the Sharqi started blowing with a violent burst that sent sand and debris and anything that wasn’t anchored whipping through the air. Now the screen is frozen and his final story from Iraq isn’t transmitting back to his editor in Seattle as it should be. If that’s not enough bad luck, his flight home that’s scheduled to leave at noon, just eleven hours away, is probably going to be cancelled due to the sand storm spewing a wall of sand and dust into the air. Nobody can get in or out during one of these storms; Sharqis have been known to last for days this time of year.
Just his luck.
He’s been embedded with the 121st Airborne Division since July, and though he didn’t really want the assignment in the first place, it provided him with his first chance to file breaking stories—pieces printed above the fold, nearly every other day—as well as an opportunity to step away from his life in Seattle, a rote routine coordination of job, girlfriend, online gaming, and late-night drinking. Not a horrible life by any means, but one that will definitely require some fine-tuning when he returns home. It’s time to make some adjustments, shake things up a bit.
He’s already broached the topic of change with Delilah during their few spare phone calls, his attempt to seed their inevitable parting but, typical of Delilah, she only picks up what she wants to hear. And right now all she seems to want to hear is the “C” word. Commitment…it’s the bane of Flint’s relationships. Nothing can make him feel like he’s looking down the dark barrel of the rifle of unhappiness quite like the prospect of having to sign on with one person for a lifetime. Not that he’s ever cheated on Delilah or any of his girlfriends before that. He’s a monogamous guy, just not ready to sign it all away for eternity.
Why do women want the big commitment? They want you to promise something that no person in their right mind can truly guarantee. Forever and always…like those songs played at friends’ weddings, right around the time when Flint grabs a glass of scotch and heads out to the terrace to join the cigar smokers. He hates the smell of old stogies but even the scent of burning rubbish is preferable to the glaze in a woman’s eyes when she’s smitten with the notion of idyllic love.
Yes, he’s going to have to end it with Delilah. Even if it means ending up a lonely old crone, as Fanteen always threatens.
Flint leans forward and blows dust from the keyboard, then tries turning the laptop on one more time. At last, an Internet connection. His fingers moving deftly over the keyboard, he e-mails the piece to the Seattle Trib, and it uploads quickly. Done.
He lets out a grunt of relief, then lets his eyes scan headlines on the server’s homepage. John Stanton’s name catches his eye, and he clicks on the link to find just a few lines of copy, reporting that John was killed by a sniper’s bullet just outside Fallujah. He was with Camp Desert Mission, a Forward Operation Base some forty miles west of Baghdad.
Shit.
John Stanton can’t be gone. He’s one of those guys you expect to see going on forever, charging through life with voracity and determination just as he’d charged through linebackers on a football field.
Flint knew Stanton through Abby Fitzgerald, one of his suitemates in college back in New York. Ancient history, but they were good friends back in the day. For a time, Flint and Abby had a little flirtation going, but Abby fell hard when she met John Stanton, her Scarlet Knight. Suddenly Abby was a football fan, coaxing them on a road trip to see a Rutgers game. It was a beautiful fall weekend and they had papers due back at the Wag, but who could stand to hole up in the library all weekend when you could kill yourself late Sunday night? Abby, Fanteen, Hitch, and him—they’d been inseparable until John came along and stole Abby’s heart. Once she got an eyeful of him in a football uniform, Abby never looked twice at anyone on campus, Flint included. If anyone was destined for a happily-ever-after, it was John and Abby.
And now this.
It sucked. It was the shorthand of the newsroom: shit happens.
Hopefully, you can find some meaning along the way before everything goes bad.
Flint searches for more information about the incident with John, but so far details are sparse.
When was Abby and John’s wedding? He counts back to a year ago June when they walked together under the crossed swords of John’s fellow soldiers. It was the last time they’d all been together, Abby and Hitch and Fanteen and him. Fanteen was pregnant with her second, and Hitch kept joking about how he was going to quit his job and become a househusband. Flint had brought Delilah to the wedding, and Abby had joked that she wanted an invitation to their wedding. Ha-ha. Again, the commitment thing. Delilah had loved hearing that, though she was still waiting. Waiting for Flint to become the marrying kind? Waiting for freakin’ Godot.
John’s death here in Iraq is going to be a huge story. The guy was already considered a hero. One of the best college running backs this decade, and then a star player for the Seattle Seahawks who left a promising career in the NFL to enlist in the army with his brother. And now that John