by Sara James
“These guys live right on the edge. First of all, it is hot as hell—50 degrees in the shade at times. What’s that for you, around 110 degrees? Then they have very little water to drink, sometimes no water at all. How can they live here? It’s nuts, or maybe I’m nuts, but I’m going to try and figure out how they manage to survive.” That was it, his future in a paragraph.
In an instant I realized that it might possibly be mine. This was the story I was looking for, another ticket out of town.
“Need any help?”
Conrad looked pleased and skeptical. “Okay, why not. Let’s give it a month.”
This was one of the countless times I’d longed for a phone. A pen would have to do. I couldn’t wait to write to Sara.
6
SARA (1990–1991)
I WAS PANTING AS I rounded the corner toward our brick bungalow, the steamy Charlotte air making four miles seem like forty, wondering if one run could erase the five pounds I always wanted to shed—especially when my husband was about to return from a trip. As I reached the front door, I discovered a thin blue international envelope tucked inside the batch of bills poking through the mail slot. I ripped it open and read where I stood. Then I kicked off my shoes, sat down on the pink wing chair in sweaty clothes, and read it again. My friend with the Gucci loafers had moved to a canyon with a total stranger and a bunch of monkeys.
My protective instincts kicked into overdrive. Couldn’t Ginger see that once again she’d linked her destiny to a man? Who was this “Nad” playing Me Tarzan, You Jane? I felt both alarmingly underinformed and somehow responsible. After all, I’d introduced Gin to the woman who had the parents who barely knew the man who was now the only living human within thirty miles of my friend. It might be her life and I might live far away, but I felt entitled to worry. Was he trustworthy? Was he kind? Would he treat her well?
I tried to calm down. Julie was one of my best friends, and her parents, Jen and Des Bartlett, were people of great integrity in addition to being legendary filmmakers. If they liked Tarzan, he couldn’t be an ax murderer. Still, after everything Gin had been through, he’d damn well better be a Boy Scout. Besides, what a gamble. From the letter it sounded as if Ginger expected to find a film and transform her future, all in four weeks or less. Talk about a tall order. Was she daring or desperate? The handwriting was as neat and steady as ever—no loopy, lurching scrawl like that of a couple of lunatics who occasionally wrote me at the television station. And Ginger sounded excited, even happy. But why the hell couldn’t she have a phone like everyone else so I could call her, get a sense of how she really was? I’d been the biggest supporter of Gin’s career change, but I feared she was in a free fall, this potential film the third parachute she’d attempted to open in as many months.
SEVERAL HOURS LATER at the station, I thought about Ginger’s gamble in a different light. The truth was, it sounded fun. Free-spirited and gutsy, brimming with adventure. The kind of life most people fantasize about without ever getting up from the sofa. In fact, uncomfortably close to the future I’d once imagined for myself with CD. Instead, he still traveled the globe making films while I read the news at six and eleven. At the ripe old age of twenty-nine, I was growing restless and bored.
“Simon says face left. Simon says cross your arms. Uncross your arms. Got you, Sara!”
“Excuse me?” My colleagues chuckled.
“You must be daydreaming. I didn’t say ‘Simon says’!”
“Sorry.” I quickly recrossed my arms, brought my right shoulder forward, lifted my chin, and flashed a blazing smile as the photographer resumed snapping. We were two hours into the shoot for the latest WBTV Channel 3 “On Your Side” billboard and my smile wasn’t the only thing cracking. The makeup felt like spackle and there wasn’t a freckle in sight. My turquoise jacket was clipped in the back with clothespins for a smoother fit, and the stylist had back-combed my hair until it looked like it had been inflated with a bicycle pump. The only things larger than my hair were my earrings. Thank God no one saw us up close.
MY COANCHOR, Bob Inman, smiled indulgently at the group gathered by the back door. The most respected newsman in town, Bob somehow also found time to write lyrical novels, and his first book, Home Fires Burning, had been turned into a television movie. By 11:35 P.M.. he was ready to head home to his adored wife, Paulette, and their two girls.
“Where to this time?” Bob asked.
“We’re going to the Artists’ Café to hear Margaret,” I replied. My friend Margaret Kennedy was an engineer at WBTV as well as a gifted musician. “But I can’t stay long—CD’s coming home tomorrow and I’ve gotta get ready.”
“Where’s he been?” asked Baron Murphy, a station photographer.
“Africa.”
Baron shook his head. “Doesn’t all that traveling drive you nuts?”
I hesitated. “Not really. It keeps things fresh, makes for great home-comings.”
He rolled his eyes. “You in-love types make me sick.”
BUT LITTLE COULD he suspect that in spite of my cheery response, I already had a knot in my stomach from wondering how this homecoming would play out.
I’d set the table with our wedding china but the sauce on my half-eaten chicken had congealed, the candles in their crystal candlesticks had guttered to stubs, and just as it had during that billboard photo shoot, my smile felt forced and frozen. “So, overall, the trip went well?”
“Yes, it did.”
Suddenly fed up with trying to spark a conversation, I blurted out, “I just feel like there’s so much you’re not saying. I mean, you’ve been gone so long. Didn’t you miss me?” Playfully, I reached a hand across the table.
“I’m just tired, okay? Long flight.” He pushed back his chair. “I think I need a hot bath, then a good night’s sleep.”
I stayed up late with a bottle of wine and our wedding album for company. There we were in the limo. What giddy grins. And there, dancing. Both of us laughing as he stepped all over my toes. I came across a picture of Gin watching, her expression a cipher. Had she worried as Mom did that I’d Married in Haste? Or was she thinking, Lucky you, you found your guy, why wouldn’t you Seize the Day? She’d never told me. And I’d never asked. I’d been twenty-six and certain about everything. I’d only just landed a job as weeknight coanchor at the CBS affiliate in Charlotte, North Carolina, a large, successful station in market 32. It had been a major step up, and CD had quit his job to come join me.
At first, moving up had brought nothing but excitement and perks. The station paid for my frothy new hairstyle, then sent me to Dallas to join a fashion consultant on a clothes-buying spree. I especially loved a new turquoise dress with enormous shoulder pads I hoped made my waist look small. At the news desk, Bob, sports anchor Paul Cameron, and weathercaster Mike McKay were bright, talented, and welcoming. I relished the anchoring and reporting. From the excesses of Jim and Tammy Bakker at the crumbling religious empire PTL, to profiling a woman with multiple personalities whose saga was portrayed in the movie The Three Faces of Eve, to covering hurricanes, work was exciting and engrossing.
So were our new friends, people like Julie and her husband, Jim. When they weren’t trekking with their travel company, Old World Safaris, CD and I would meet them for breakfast. Sporting a Polo shirt and African kikoi, Jim would pour the French-press coffee and Julie would serve one of her signature vegetarian dishes. Sometimes Margaret would join us as well as another new pal, Fiona Ritchie, a gifted raconteur whose Celtic music show on National Public Radio, The Thistle & Shamrock, had a growing national following.
But our marriage was another story. Before producing documentaries CD had been a local television reporter, but because I was in such a prominent position as coanchor, his own on-air options proved limited. He’d started his own business and seemed to relish the freedom and autonomy, traveling the globe for a variety of creative projects, including one film we bankrolled ourselves. But as any freelancer knows, it’s hard, lonely, and o
ften thankless work. I flinched whenever a stranger called him “Mr. James.” After three years in Charlotte, he seemed frustrated. I felt guilty. It was a miserable, toxic mix.
I slammed the wedding album shut. How had we spiraled from smiling newlyweds to discontented husband and wife? Was it that we hadn’t really known each other? Or was it that we hadn’t entirely known ourselves? Sometimes I wondered if each of us in part craved what the other had. While the prestige and platform that came with being in front of the camera were certainly seductive, at twenty-nine years old, I found myself hankering for the freedom, the travel, and the soulfulness of the life he led. Like Ginger, he’d taken one of author William Least Heat Moon’s “blue highways,” while I’d stuck to the interstate. Which explained how I’d wound up with my face on a billboard, just another brunette with a big smile and a red suit. Like the Channel 3 billboard, our marriage looked a lot better from a distance.
THE NEXT MORNING I awoke groggy and CD was already up. His cool expression made my stomach hurt.
“How can you live like this?” he asked quietly.
“Like what?”
He pointed to a mug of tea from the day before that I’d left on an end table. Suddenly I remembered the clothes in a heap on the bedroom floor, the half-opened mail strewn across the dining room table. My mess and clutter could drive anyone crazy.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
But he was already out the door.
SOMETIMES WHEN YOU least expect it, life changes overnight. That’s what happened for thousands of people at 2 A.M. on August 2, 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Thousands of miles away, I was one of them.
“Sara, the 1454th Transportation Company from Concord has been called up as part of Operation Desert Shield.” News director Bill Foy looked grave. “If you’re interested, we could send you to Saudi Arabia with them. Of course we don’t know when—or if—the U.S. will decide to strike. And Saddam could launch a Scud missile anytime, even use chemical weapons. You don’t have to go. This is volunteer only.”
My friend Linda Pattillo, now a network correspondent for ABC News, would also be covering the conflict. I couldn’t wait to tell her.
“I’d love to go,” I told Bill.
While my husband was supportive, Mom was far less enthusiastic. My sister Elizabeth had gotten married a few years before to John Gallagher, a handsome, wry history major she’d met at Indiana University. John’s childhood passion for flying had prompted him to join the U.S. Marines, where he became a captain and a Harrier pilot. Everyone in the family already worried about the dangers John would face. But my parents also knew this was the kind of story I’d always wanted to cover. Besides, this time when I headed to a war zone, I wouldn’t have to take vacation time. I wouldn’t have to pay for my ticket. I’d even get a paycheck. I wanted to prove to myself that I’d learned a thing or two since the mistakes I’d made in Nicaragua. And I was hardly the first person to escape trouble at home by running away to war.
NORTH CAROLINA BRISTLES with crack troops at military bases from Fort Bragg. But these men and women were engineers and teachers, real estate agents and factory workers. After all, they’d joined the National Guard, not the regular army, and normally drilled just one weekend a month, plus two weeks a year. Their last major deployment had been clearing away wreckage left by Hurricane Hugo. Now they’d be stationed in the Gulf until someone back in Washington decided it was time to come home.
“Never in my wildest imagination did I ever think I’d be in Saudi Arabia at fifty-one years old,” one man told me. “It’s payback time. Gotta get over and ride the camel.” From misty-eyed grandpas to bright-eyed college kids, most of the 165 soldiers in the unit were men, but 8 were women, some moms. Overnight they’d gone from tucking a baby in bed to tucking a clip in an M-16, from racing after toddlers to racing toward army trucks, because their role would be to support the infantry in an invasion. After a farewell kiss, each soldier grabbed a forty-pound pack and boarded a waiting Pan Am jet, one of the civilian aircraft ferrying troops to the Mideast.
When we arrived in Saudi Arabia, I was shocked to see this desert up close. Ginger had written of a magical kingdom where soaring dunes twinkled with garnet dust, an oasis where flamingos frolicked and even sober elephants cavorted. This sandy wasteland was vast, scrubby, and gray, scabbed with oil derricks. Highways tracked like varicose veins across the empty expanse. Forget Lawrence of Arabia. I didn’t see a single camel. While the predators in Ginger’s world were jackals, hyenas, and spitting cobras, here we feared Saddam’s crack troops, the Revolutionary Guard. His forces were out there, just across the border, watching, waiting. How strong was he? we wondered. How strong were we?
At night we ignored the frosty stars and scanned for satellites. They were comforting beacons, since we knew the U.S. government used them to monitor Iraqi ground troops. “What happens if he launches a Scud missile?” I asked one soldier.
“They might try to knock us out,” he acknowledged, “but we’re trained for that, too.”
I shivered, hoping the troops would chalk it up to the evening desert chill. At least I wasn’t alone, but with Steve Ohnesorge, who was field-producing, and our photographer, Tom Atkins, not to mention the soldiers themselves. I looked around and realized I wasn’t the only one nervous. “Tom,” I whispered, pointing to a G.I. whose clenched jaw and tense expression said it all. By instinct we’d discovered the favored trick of journalists in danger zones the world over. Whenever you’re scared, try to look at fear through a long lens. It’s the best way to keep it at bay.
WE LIVED WITH the troops and I liked bunking in the women’s tent. It smelled of talcum powder, suntan lotion, and chocolate. Late each night I shook out my sleeping bag before tumbling in, checking for scorpions, a small worry compared with the uncertainty and anxiety all around us.
Each morning I’d rise before the sun creaked over the horizon, splash water on my face, scour my teeth with toothpaste and bottled water. Seeing how far I could spit in the sand was immensely satisfying—the kind of uncouth behavior frowned upon if you’re female and born south of the Mason-Dixon. Conditions were primitive. A shower was limited to three minutes or less. The latrines came equipped with screened windows for ventilation, so a trip to the loo was not exactly a private affair. Still, it beat conditions in the field. One day the convoy I’d been riding in had squealed to a sudden, unscheduled stop. The sergeant jumped out, hand already at his belt buckle. “No need to panic, Sara, but turn your head,” he advised. “Just gonna wet the wheel.” I immediately decided to drink as little as possible, willing to risk heatstroke rather than pee in front of an audience.
While sometimes the raw humor was a jolt to my southern sensibilities, I loved the rough-and-ready camaraderie, and proximity bred laughter and confidences. We chuckled about the favorite spot for a tryst—the huge cement pipes that surrounded the compound to protect us from some suicide bomber driving a truck loaded with explosives. Suffice it to say those tunnels were often noisy at night, and the sound of such uncensored passion filled me with an unsettling mix of loathing and longing. How could they be so carefree? And why was I settling for so much less?
I concentrated on thinking about the soldiers’ lives instead. One morning, after dining on western omelets drenched in Tabasco at the mess, Steve, Tom, and I spied a cluster of soldiers huddled around a radio. We hustled over, notepads in hand, Tom’s camera already rolling, wondering what ominous news report had them looking so serious. As we got closer we heard a voice on the radio say, “First down, and the ball’s at the twenty.” A soldier grinned, “Tuesday morning—Monday Night Football.”
But reminders of the real mission were never far behind, like the accessory worn at all times, even with shorts and a T-shirt on a training run—a gas mask. “What bothers me most, I think, is to know he has chemical gas, being as close as we are to Kuwait,” one soldier admitted. Off camera later another added, “If he does strike, we’ll never have time to grab those s
uits. And they say he has biological weapons, too.” He shuddered. We all knew Saddam Hussein had used them on his own people, so why would he hesitate to turn them on us?
While everyone in the unit expressed pride in the transportation company and in serving their country, there were nagging doubts, a few reservations. “This is all about oil,” more than one told me off camera. “That’s the real reason we’re here.”
Some women pointed out drily that they were risking their lives to protect a country where women weren’t even allowed to drive. “We get a lot of stares, maybe they think we can’t perform as well under these conditions,” a female truck driver observed. But for some dads and especially moms, the greatest frustration was realizing that a second job they’d taken to support their families had instead taken them thousands of miles away from those they loved.
“I have children and I think it’s harder for a mother because when my daughters fall down and get hurt, they call for me, not my husband,” another woman worried.
As for soldier Tracy Smith, she simply held out her arm and tapped her wrist. “I’m not gonna adjust my watch. It’s gonna stay on North Carolina time and I’m just gonna add eight to it and I guess I’ll know what time it is here. I’ll look at it and say, ‘Mama’s asleep, and it’s about time for Jess to get up for her midnight feed.’”
As I fell into my sleeping bag on my final night in Saudi Arabia, I thought for the first time in a long time about being a mom. I liked children, but still couldn’t imagine having my own. I wondered if that would change. After all, I was nearly thirty—hardly a kid anymore. I hadn’t dared to tell any of these women about the nightmare I’d had only a few months before.
I’d dreamed that I’d had a baby but I’d lost her and simply couldn’t remember where I’d left her. I’d been frantic, terrified for her safety, but also keenly aware of how absurd it was to misplace a baby. And then I’d remembered that I’d put her on the roof of the car, which seemed even worse. Who puts a baby on a car? And was she still there? I’d reached up to check, desperate to find the child, and woken up, panting, heart thumping, never to know if she’d been there or not. The dream had been so potent and terrifying that I’d had to remind myself I didn’t have a child at all.