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Mel got great shots, including one of a mournful immigrant couple sitting against the post of a for sale sign in the yard. It would make a perfect cover. So far, she’d scored three covers. Not bad for two months at a new job.
Her job was exactly as great as she’d dreamed it would be. Arizona News Day wasn’t afraid of the tough stories, allowed its journalists to take risks and gave tons of editorial space to photos.
She’d picked up shortcuts and tips from veteran photographers, honed her instincts and was proud that her candid images often seemed lit and composed as well as a studio shot.
Her editor loved her initiative and the managing editor, Randall Cox, called her “magic behind the lens,” though he seemed to dole out praise to distract them all from their less-than-fabulous salaries. Her highest compliment was that Dave, their top reporter, often asked for her to accompany him.
As the weeks passed, she’d loaded her print clips and photos into her portfolio so that it was always current and kept her eye on openings at bigger papers in other cities.
She would miss her mother, but when a spot opened up, she was ready to go. She longed to take the kind of world-changing photos she’d carried on about to Noah—whom, after a mere three emails, she hadn’t heard from in a month. Noah who, it turned out, had gotten her pregnant.
It was her fault. When they’d run out of condoms, they could have simply hit the gift shop, but, oh, no, she’d told Noah she had it handled.
Evidently not.
On the way home, she dropped into a Planned Parenthood clinic to learn how the impossible had happened. It turned out she’d missed the warning about elevated pregnancy risk while switching methods. As to her fallopian tubes, “The body is amazingly resilient, Mel,” the nurse practitioner told her sympathetically, then went through her options, giving her pamphlets for each. “Are there questions I can answer right now?”
“Yes. How could I have been so stupid?”
“No contraceptive is flawless. And we’re all human. We make mistakes. Think this through, talk about it with people you trust. Family. Clergy. A counselor. Are you in contact with the father?”
“No. He’s not in the country.” When Noah heard about this…
She cringed. She was already embarrassed by how often she replayed their time together—the sex and the conversation. She’d made too much of it, she knew. He’d warned her that he disappeared, so she had no right to feel hurt, yet she did. She’d thought they had a connection.
They did now, all right. A baby—the last thing either of them wanted.
“Do you feel faint?” the nurse asked, reaching toward her.
She shook herself back to the moment. “No. I’m just shocked. You’ve been very helpful.” She left the clinic, desperate to go home to think, but she’d promised she’d stop by Bright Blossoms, her mother’s day-care business, to take photos of the Fourth of July party.
Mel parked in front of the strip mall where her mother’s business nestled. An American flag proudly jutted from its eaves, waving in the light breeze. It was muggy, with monsoon clouds heavy on the horizon and the muted sunlight looked nearly golden. The magical smell of creosote filled the air from last night’s warm drizzle.
Bright Blossoms stood out among the bland shops in the mall. The bricks were painted canary-yellow and covered with tropical flowers and birds matching what Irena remembered of how her father had painted their small home not far from San Vicente in Salvador.
The place was so much like Mel’s mother—bright and colorful and cheerful. Though, behind Irena’s constant smile, Mel knew she missed her family terribly. Irena’s father had died a year after she left, and her mother, brother and two sisters never forgave her for leaving. Irena had visited three times, bringing Mel when she was five, but Irena found the trips almost more painful than missing her people from half a continent away.
Inside the building, Mel’s ears were hit with a Sousa march and a confusion of percussion. Through the glass wall, she saw the preschoolers marching around the refreshment table, wearing patriotic paper hats, beating toy drums, shaking maracas, banging cymbals or clacking castanets. A few parents sat in the tiny chairs, clapping along.
In the hallway, her mother crouched beside a sobbing toddler. Irena wiped his tears with a flag-decorated napkin. “Where does it hurt, mi’ jo?” she murmured, her voice rich as music.
“My finger,” he said, holding it out, clearly not in pain. He wanted the little ritual that came next. Her mother gently rubbed the boy’s finger while reciting the Spanish rhyme that translated as: “Get well, get well, little tadpole. If you don’t get well today, you’ll get well tomorrow.” All through Mel’s own childhood, Irena had soothed her with the incantation that magically took away all hurts, big and small.
Her mother had filled Mel’s life with poems and songs and sayings. Spanish was so beautiful, sensual and full of rhymes. Whenever Mel heard it, she remembered the comfort of childhood in the tiny apartment they’d lived in until Mel had graduated high school.
“Next time, keep your fingers away from drumsticks that are playing, eh, muchacho?” her mother said, giving the boy a hug. He nodded solemnly and ran into the parade room.
“Mamá,” Mel said.
“Melodía, you’re here.” Her mother smiled, but her eyes stayed serious.
“Is everything okay?”
“Of course. Come take the pictures.” She motioned Mel into the room. Her mother was in her element, surrounded by children. She’d never made a big deal of it, but she’d clearly wished for more babies after Mel, though it wasn’t possible. Bright Blossoms helped relieve that sorrow, Mel believed.
Mel nodded at Rachel and Marla, two of the caregivers who’d been here since they’d opened five years ago, then moved around the room taking shots of the kids marching and playing along with “God Bless America.”
As always, the song put tears in her strong mother’s eyes. The promise of America had sustained Irena through her terrible trip and the dark days and nights in a foreign land, where the warm welcome she’d hoped for had been denied over politics. She’d survived…and, in the end, thrived.
The final activity was decorating cupcakes and soon the small faces were smeared with bright frosting. As Mel took shot after shot, her mother’s words played in her head: You modern girls, you wait and wait for children. You will have gray hair and be chasing your niños with a cane if you’re not careful.
And that was without knowing about Mel’s fertility problem. Against all odds, a miracle had occurred. Mel was pregnant. What would her mother say?
“Estás bien, mi’ ja?” her mother asked, her eyes lingering on Mel’s face.
Mel forced a smile. “Will you be home soon?”
“Soon. Yes. And we will talk.” Her mother started to walk away, then came abruptly close and hugged Mel hard. “Mi cariña.” My beloved. “Mamá? What’s up?” Her mother was an affectionate person, but this felt as though they were parting for years, not an hour or so.
“Hablámos en casa.” We’ll talk at home.
An hour later, Mel’s mother shut the front door behind her and said, point-blank, “It is cancer,” pronouncing it the Spanish way—kahn-sare. “In the ovaries. There is treatment, now, the doctor says to me, that is better than before. First a surgery, then chemotherapy and, perhaps, radiation.”
“Oh, Mamá.” She threw her arms around her mother, who was holding herself stiffly erect, fighting emotion, Mel was certain.
Cancer. Her mother had cancer. She might die.
And Mel was pregnant.
She felt as though the world was closing in on her. “You’re strong, Mamá. You’ll beat this,” she said, holding back the tears, keeping her voice steady. “We’ll get you through this.” The idea of losing her mother was almost more than she could bear. Her mother was so vibrant, so alive. She had so much to live for. She was Mel’s best friend, her entire family. She fought a swirl of nausea.
“The doctor says that with my fibromyalgia, the treatment will be difícil. I will be more sick for longer times and some medicines will not work so well.”
“We’ll do what we have to do to get you better.”
“Of course. I have to live to be an old woman if I am to finally be a grandmother.” Her mother winked, making a joke she had no idea was no longer funny at all.
What if her mother died?
Ice froze Mel’s heart in her chest.
She had to be strong for her mother. She had to hope for the best. It’s what Irena would do. But Mel was too realistic to deny the terrible possibility. If the worst happened, if her mother’s life was cut short, then Mel would make every day that remained as happy and joyful as possible.
The answer was obvious. Mel would keep the baby. It would turn her life upside down, ruin her plans, but así es la vida. That’s how life is. She would make the most of it. Man plans, God laughs. Professor Stockton had foretold her future the night she’d met Noah.
Noah. What about him? Should she tell Noah about the baby?
Would he even want to know? He didn’t want children, he’d told her that first night. She would raise the child on her own, so what was her obligation to him? Her head was already spinning with too many questions.
Noah Stone would have to wait.
Five months later, near Balad, Iraq
“SO, NO BULLSHIT, YOU’RE seriously going to quote me about my girl in your article?” Sergeant Reggie “Horn Dog” Fuller turned from his shotgun seat in the Humvee to talk to Noah, sitting behind him.
“Of course. It’s a great quote.” Fuller was squad leader and Noah had convinced him to allow Noah to jump onto the patrol from Forward Operating Base River Watch, east of Balad, along the Al-Dhiluya peninsula, promising the quote, which would appease Fuller’s girl who was angry at him for reenlisting.
Fuller had discretion to patrol as he saw fit, but his commanding officer, Captain Gerald Carver—the officer Noah answered to—would not be pleased if he learned about it. Carver was totally by the book. Fully squared away, with combat experience in Afghanistan, he was primed for advancement, eventually to become a general, and would want no blot on his command.
Carver made it no secret he considered reporters deadweight best kept in the dark and tucked to the rear—the polar opposite of Noah’s purpose. Noah liked the guy. He was smart, worked hard, stood up for his officers and the enlisted men trusted him. He wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty—he had once fixed an engine rather than wait for the mechanic to arrive.
Not clearing this reporter-carry with his CO would be a minor infraction for Fuller, who might get “smoked”—given some humiliating duty, such as filling sand bags in front of the chow hall—so Fuller wasn’t that concerned.
The patrol consisted of three vehicles—two HMVs and a small troop carrier. Noah rode in the lead Hummer, keeping his eyes open for the turnoff he wanted. What he hadn’t told Fuller was that he intended to be dropped off for an interview with the Iraqi captain, Sajad Fariq.
Regulations forbade embedded reporters from traveling on their own, but the elite Iraqi unit Noah wanted to meet with was being trained by Carver’s men and the area was virtually secure.
There were rumblings of an insurgent assault being planned farther north, and Noah wanted to talk with Fariq, who spoke decent English. If he could manage it, Noah hoped to ride north with the Iraqis. He’d be off his embed and Carver would ream his ass later, but it was easier to get forgiveness than permission, in Noah’s experience.
The deal was he needed a big story. His editor, Hank Walker, was demanding more blood, guts and glory and Noah was determined to get it. The stories he’d been writing were rich with characters and insights about U.S. troops here, Iraqi troops and the future of Iraq. They were some of his best work, important human stories, he believed, but if he wanted to keep writing them, he had to satisfy Hank’s bloodlust.
“So why did you volunteer for patrol?” Noah asked the driver, Bo Dusfresne, a trucker from Georgia.
“’Cause I’m sick of sittin’ on my ass,” he said, scratching at his head beneath the ghutrah, the white Arab scarf he wore do-rag style. “I’d rather be making a goddamn motocross track for the Hajjis to practice RPG runs on than sit around the base, stewin’ in my own tang.”
Noah brushed his boonie back on his head. The canvas cap with a soft brim was far more comfortable than the helmet he’d had to wear on his first embed, early in the war. He shook out the ends of his ghutrah, which kept sun and mosquitoes off his neck, to generate a tiny breeze. Fuller had insisted Noah wear body armor, which made Noah feel like roast in a pot.
Over the Kevlar, he wore a khaki T-shirt, then his pocketed vest, stuffed with a mini tape recorder and his digital camera, along with spare media cards and batteries for both. He worked mostly old-school—pencil and small pad.
The Humvee stank of sweat and hot metal. The humidity was high this close to the Tigris. Flies were few, but mosquitoes buzzed at dawn and dusk. The dust wasn’t bad here and haboobs—gigantic wind storms—were rare. The one he’d experienced had been strange. It was as if dust had instantly coated every nook and cranny, human or object, inside the CHU—Containerized Housing Unit—that served as barracks.
The road beside them was lined with short palm trees. They passed a small orchard of pomegranate trees.
“Somethin’ at my eleven,” Specialist Chuy Gomez barked from where he stood in the gunner position beside Noah. A sharpshooter, Gomez hailed from East L.A. and claimed he’d honed his skills in drive-bys. Half his blood-curdling stories were total bull, designed to distract the guys from their poker hands, but they were convincing as hell. Shee-it. You crackers believe any evil thing a Mexican says.
“Can’t you tell goat herders from a hunter-killer RPG team?” Private First Class Emile Daggett growled. “You been in the sun too damn long, Spic.”
“Be glad I have crystal clear vision, Hick. If I hadn’t eyeballed that trip wire on that dud IED, you’d be missing the family jewels at least, cholo.”
“Who you calling cholo? There are no cho-los in the Upper Peninsula.” Daggett talked nonstop about the bait shop he intended to buy and run when he returned to his small town in northern Michigan.
“There will be if I buy that worm shack you keep talkin’ ’bout. Serious investment opportunity, amigo. Get me one of those hot Upper Peninsula shorties. Oye, cabrón, that’s the life.”
“Shut the hell up,” Daggett said. The two men, who’d named each other Spic and Hick, kept up running insults, but had each other’s backs.
The goat farmers, now visible, wore the traditional taloub—a long tunic, loose pants and head wrap. They whistled and called to their animals, urging them across the narrow irrigation ditch at the side of the road. The pastoral sound of “baas” and bells seemed proof the country was striving for normalcy. If only the government could keep the uneasy peace.
Noah snapped a photo of an Iraqi on a horse, sagging in the saddle, looking as dispirited as the town council in Balad after mortar fire had destroyed the new police building.
He checked the image. Not bad, but not brilliant. Mel would have managed a far more striking shot, he was certain. She’d been in his thoughts a lot in the months since they’d slept together. Too much, really.
“So what’s that picture for?” Fuller asked. “Some symbolic shit about tired old Iraq riding its broke-back nag into the sunset?”
Noah shrugged.
“You gotta be bored as shit watching us sweep sand into the sea.”
Noah scribbled notes: Soldiers pissed and bored and bitter. Missions seem pointless…sweeping sand into the sea, according to Fuller.
The buildings and mosques of Balad rose in the distance. He picked up the tinny murmur of a prayer playing over loudspeakers.
“Hear the prayers?” Chuy said to Noah. “Five times a day, hombre, right? So we’re driving down this street in Balad… Real narrow and twisty, sniper spots every-damn-where, and the prayer blares out. After, comes this eerie silence.” He paused, milking the moment for drama.
“Yeah?” Noah said, unobtrusively clicking on his tape recorder.
“Yo, so, they all s’posed to be in their houses or mosques, prayin’ like crazy. So anybody still runnin’ the street is up to no good, right?”
“Right.”
“I’m up in the gun, scalp pricklin’, adrenaline so high I’m not even blinkin’—you can’t blink when your blood’s hitting that hard—watching for movement, any change, a clue to something coming down. So I see this kid at my three o’clock. He’s holding something. A candy bar? An orange? Or maybe a detonator to an IED we’re about to drive over.”
“Sounds terrifying.”
“Nah, man. ’S cool. Just a day in the neighborhood in East L.A.” He laughed, but Noah could tell this situation had been bad.
“Then what?”
“The kid runs in front of us, across the road. Seconds later, boom. Direct hit on the troop carrier behind us. Driver got shrapnel, a first-class flight to the States, champagne all the way, and a Purple Heart. We all envied his ass.”
Noah stayed silent, taking in the real story Chuy was telling. He’d had the lives of the men in his HMV and those in the vehicles behind in his hands. He could never have shot the kid because he possibly held a detonator, but that explosion could have killed a dozen of his comrades and it would be on Chuy—at least in his mind. That was a catch-22 that would be tough to endure, day after day, patrol after patrol. It was no wonder post-traumatic stress disorder rates were so high among Iraq vets. Friend and foe were impossible to tell apart, making civilian casualties common, but no less horrifying.
Bo hit a bump in the road and swore as the tobacco he constantly chewed missed the window and dribbled down the inside of his door.
They passed the low mud-brick wall with a chunk blasted away that Noah had been watching for. The turnoff was close. He leaned forward to talk to Fuller. “Half mile up, there’s a road going west. I need you to drop me there. I want to walk up to talk with Captain Fariq.”
“Say what?” Fuller shifted to glare at Noah. “This is not a bus line. You don’t ring the bell at your stop. You go on patrol, you stay on patrol, Stone.”
“It’s Fariq. You know him. You work with his men. Drop me off and I’ll meet you at the turnoff on your way back.”
Fuller stared at him, unmoved.
“Look, I need this interview or my editor will yank me home. It’s the dirt road up ahead. There’s a sign pointing to Al-Talad. The area’s secure.”
Fuller turned and stared out the mud-spattered windshield. “No such thing as secure in this godforsaken land. Give a reporter an inch and he takes out a convoy,” he muttered, but Noah picked up assent in his tone, so he kept his mouth shut.
When they reached the village sign, Fuller grumbled, “Halt.” Yards back, spaced for safety, the other vehicles slowed, too.
Up the road, Noah could see corrugated-steel structures and smaller buildings, some military vehicles and a few Iraqi soldiers.
