by Ryan Hyatt
“I admit, that’s one hell of a tactic,” Ray said, surprised by the shrewdness of his nation’s enemies. “Iran or Russia or China hires mercenaries to terrorize us. Maybe it will only instill fear in our forces, but maybe it will disrupt or even deter operations.”
“Precisely,” Schnell said. “Pretty smart, hey?”
“Pretty scary, especially when you think what’ll happen when we proceed forward with the mission, as we will,” Ray said. “You have to find these guys before they cause any serious problems.”
“I’m doing my best, but it’s like trying to capture ghosts on film,” Schnell said with a sigh. “These are the best spooks I’ve encountered in my career.”
Ray and Schnell disconnected, and Ray’s thoughts returned to his family. Dee refused to respond to the email messages he sent since they last spoke. Ray eventually took the hint and stopped trying to contact her for the time being. However, he wondered about her and Sara’s status, and it took all of his effort to keep his Liberator standing at attention in the Sahara and not fly it across the world and drop in for a visit in Flagstaff to see his wife and daughter.
Ray thought Schnell was right. Not one shot was fired, and already the Iranians were winning the war, destroying his morale.
Ray’s guess was that his wife and daughter were holed up at his in-laws’ ranch. Their house was situated at the end of a rural road overlooking a grassy plain. It made sense in terms of keeping stalkers away. Her father was armed and knew how to shoot. Anyone approaching the site could be spotted from far away. The location also made sense in terms of keeping Ray away, since Dee’s parents never approved of their relationship.
Dee was the youngest of two sisters and three brothers. Her father, Jared, and mother, Kylee, were devout Mormons, and they ostracized Dee because Ray refused to join their religion when he married her.
Standing guard in his Liberator, gazing out at a vast desert, not unlike what he might find in some parts of his home state, Ray recalled with profound regret when the family feud began.
It was during college. Having met Dee at a house party after a football game, Ray kissed her that night, and they quickly fell in love. Soon they were inseparable. During the upcoming Christmas holiday, Dee wanted Ray to meet her parents.
“You won’t really know if you want me in your life, unless you know you can handle having them in your life,” Dee said at the time.
“They can’t be too bad,” Ray said. “After all, they had you.”
“Okay,” his future wife said. “Suit yourself.”
Dee’s caution about her parents surprised Ray, since she was so pleasant, tolerant and open-minded, and he struggled to imagine how they could be much different. Ray soon discovered that Dee was the person she was, not because of her parents’ positive influence, but in reaction to their strict upbringing.
As they ate their holiday ham, Jared, seated at the head of the table, turned to Ray with a question.
“If you and Dee plan on being together, does that mean you plan on becoming Mormon?” he said.
Ray felt like he was blindsided on the football field. A variety of emotions stirred through him at Jared’s suggestion. Among them were shock, anger and remorse, but he tried to stay focused and keep his eyes on the goal: a life with Jared’s daughter.
“Let me get back to you on that one,” Ray said to Jared with a wink, but the joke didn’t fly.
Not long after the visit, Ray responded to Jared’s question by eloping with Dee in a non-religious ceremony, surrounded by friends on a Sedona hilltop.
Ray’s parents, recently deceased from a car accident, didn’t make it. Neither did Dee’s parents, who declined to attend.
An unspoken disagreement ensued, and it festered in the years since. At first Ray didn’t mind, because he didn’t respect Dee’s parents enough to work out their differences, but when the grandparents didn’t show for Sara’s birth or her subsequent birthdays, he became deeply disturbed. It was one thing for Dee’s parents to have an issue with Ray and his wife over something as dumb and divisive as religion, but it was another thing altogether to take that issue out on Sara, an innocent infant and family nonetheless.
Subsequently, Ray made a point of calling his in-laws from his garage during Sara’s birthdays. No one ever picked up the phone. After downing a few beers, Ray liked to leave Jared a long descriptive voicemail message about his thoughts on his faith.
“If you let something as petty as religion divide you and your family, you’ve just proven you’re neither spiritual nor family-oriented,” Ray said. “What will I tell your granddaughter as she grows up and wants to know why you and Kylee never visit her? Because you’re a bunch of assholes?”
On Sara’s third birthday, perhaps having heard too many of Ray’s free-flowing rants, Jared took the call. Ray and Dee’s father exchanged brief, superficial pleasantries before moving toward emotionally-volatile ground. Instead of rattling off a list of expletives, as Ray reverted to during his one-way communications years prior, the father of one tried to establish more rational, solid footing with his paternal in-law.
“Jared, when you let religion get between you and family, you’ve got to ask yourself a question: is it God’s will or your own ignorance that’s gotten the best of you?” Ray said.
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Jared said. “My will is to do God’s will. Therefore, are you telling me God’s will is stupid?”
“No, I’m just saying maybe you are, or rather, maybe you have been …”
“Oh, here we go again, Mr. Potty Mouth …”
“Wait a minute, just hear me out,” Ray said. “I think I can put this in terms you can understand. You love God, right?”
“Right.”
“You think your religion is right, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, maybe we’re finally getting somewhere,” Ray said. “I don’t believe in your God, or your religion. I’m an atheist, which means I think most of your beliefs are rubbish. What do you think of that?”
“I think that’s rubbish.”
“Fair enough, and that’s my point,” Ray said. “You’re not the only person alive who has ideas about who we are, how we got on this planet and what we’re doing here. Do you understand that by insisting I join your religion, it’s as offensive to me as it would be to you if I insisted you lose yours?”
“Okay, I guess so.”
“So, why is it you have insisted for all of these years I join your religion, Jared, but I’ve never insisted you lose yours?”
“I don’t know,” Jared said. “I guess because I felt in my heart I was, I was …”
“Right?”
“Right.”
“And who knows, maybe you are, but the way you’ve acted definitely has been wrong,” Ray said. “For all of these years I’ve tolerated your beliefs, but you haven’t tolerated mine. I think you owe me an apology, and I think you’ve owed me one for some time, sir.”
“You’re never going to get it, Mr. Potty Mouth, so either put Sara on the line, or shut up for good!” Jared said.
Ray refused to allow Jared to speak to his granddaughter until Jared apologized.
Jared, furious, disconnected.
Ray had gone too far, and he knew it. His effort had backfired, but he was too proud to call Jared and let him speak to Sara.
That last incident was nearly a year past, and Ray hadn’t spoken to anyone in Dee’s family since. If Dee wanted to keep her distance from Ray and his work problems, she needn’t have gone any farther than northern Arizona, where she was able to hide out with her relatives that her husband despised.
As for Ray, the solution became clear. He had to settle his differences with Dee’s family if he hoped to settle his differences with Dee.
CHAPTER 13
“You’ve got real nerve calling here after all you’ve done to foul up my daughter and granddaughter’s life,” Jared said, a glare of disapproval beaming over the Telenet.
He was on his return flight to Arizona.
“What do you want?” Jared said.
“Peace,” Ray said. “I want us to accept each other for who we are.”
“It’ll never happen. Not in our lifetimes.”
“Not even for Sara’s sake?”
“I doubt it.”
“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”
“She sure is,” Jared said. “Hard to imagine she came from you.”
Ray ignored the slight and said, “Isn’t it time to let bygones be bygones?”
Jared puckered his lips together, as if he might explode. He stepped away from the screen, but he didn’t disconnect. His image was replaced with Dee’s.
“Where’s Sara?” Ray said.
“Taking a nap,” Dee said. “What do you want?”
“You know what I want.”
“It’s too late to reconcile.”
“Please, Dee,” Ray said, and he apologized for putting Dee and Sara in danger. He expressed his wish to see Sara while he was on leave over the coming week. He asked Dee to return home and hold Sara’s birthday party in Phoenix as originally planned. He insisted she and Sara would be safe at their home while he was in town. He told Dee she and their daughter should return to Flagstaff before he departed for his mission.
Sara recently had her surgery, and Ray was anxious to see firsthand how his daughter was managing with her new vision.
“Please, Dee,” Ray begged. “I can’t fight some despicable war without spending time with my little one first. I’d like to give her a few days of normalcy before I’m gone. Try to understand.”
“Of course I understand, Ray,” Dee said. “I always have.”
Despite her differences with her husband, Dee didn’t want Sara to miss a chance to see her father.
“I wasn’t sure I’d ever step foot in that house again,” Dee said. “It’s a crazy idea, Ray, but it’s not your first. What should I tell Mom and Dad?”
“Tell them to come, too,” Ray said. “It’s about time all of us spent Sara’s birthday together.”
“Fine,” Dee said. “You win. This time.”
“Yes!” Ray said, and she disconnected.
It was Wednesday, February 1, 2023, and the Eagle Scouts returned the Liberators to the Generic Motors proving grounds for servicing before their departure for the Middle East. There they were to undergo monitoring, maintenance, refueling and rearming for the first leg of Operation Park Walk. After parking Mama’s Boy One, the captain wished his men a pleasant reprieve, and then he drove away in his pickup truck.
Schnell was waiting in Ray’s driveway with a team from Defense Intelligence. They scanned and scoured room to room of the Salvatore residence in search of surveillance devices. They took apart appliances, lighting fixtures and electronics and put them back together again. The effort took several hours, during which Ray bought groceries, including a strawberry birthday cake and four candles. He also made a purchase at the pet store, and left Sara’s present with old man Thomas, the neighbor down the street, who was to keep it as a surprise for the birthday party.
“Your place is clean,” Schnell said to Ray at sunset, and then he and his team departed.
Ray had the house to himself. Content that Dee and Sara would soon be by his side, Ray slept soundly his first night back in the United States, Beretta tucked under his pillow.
The next afternoon, Ray watched a light rain fall while he lifted weights in his garage. Dee and Sara arrived just as the clouds cleared, leaving a bright, almost magical sheen over their xeriscape lawn. The parting sky seemed to be affirmation for why Ray re-enlisted in the first place, so his daughter and he might enjoy gazing together at such splendid natural spectacles.
“Daddy!” Sara said, and she ran out of her car seat and into her father’s arms.
Ray smothered his daughter with kisses and hugs, and then he held her before him and took a long look into her eyes. Sara hadn’t fully recovered yet from the trauma of her operation, he noticed. There was still the vague imprint of the cast across her face. The cast might have been gone, and her eyes beamed brightly and eagerly, but there remained deep purple recesses beneath them. A sudden influx of color must have been a shock to someone whose sole visual spectrum prior to the implant surgery was relegated to shades of black, white, and gray. The strain to Sara’s brain revealed itself with her bruised, swollen eye sockets. Her mind was likely working overtime to adjust to the neural sensory overload.
At least the worst was over, Ray thought. His darling little one could see the world as he did, as it was. He pointed at the glistening plants and trees in the yard.
“Pretty wild, hey?” he said.
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Are you tired?”
“A little.”
Ray cradled Sara in his arms and slowly spun her around to watch the slowly setting sun. He pointed at the heavenly panorama – the omniscient orange star, pulsating pink clouds and brilliant blue sky suspended above them.
“Isn’t this a beautiful world we live in?” he said, almost blinded by his own tears of joy.
“Yes, Daddy.”
“I’m so glad you can see it now, sweetie.”
“Me, too.”
Ray noticed Sara was no longer focused on the heavens above, but his own eyes. She reached out, mesmerized, touching his eyelashes and examining the area around his pupils. He wondered what she was thinking.
“What is it, sweetie?” he said, but Sara was too young to put her thoughts into words.
“What about me?” Dee said, interrupting dad-daughter duo. “I could use a hug, too, you know?”
“Of course,” Ray said.
The three embraced in a long and happy Huggy Time, and then they began to unpack the bags from Flagstaff, unwind, and return to an illusion of everyday life, at least for one weekend.
“I hate to say it, but it’s nice to be home,” Dee said, and she looked at her husband with an odd combination of suspicion and relief. “Please don’t let me regret saying so.”
Ray hushed Dee with a wave of his hand, and he and Sara played catch on the back patio with a neon bouncy ball as Dee made dinner in the kitchen. The family of three fell quickly into the rhythm of old times, and they remained physically close to each other as they once had, before Ray’s job, when they were too poor to afford anywhere else to go.
Part of the agreement between Dee and Ray to meet at their home over Sara’s birthday weekend was that they were to always remain within view or earshot of each other.
“Time to eat!” Dee said, and Ray and Sara joined her inside.
The trio partook in a Happy Food Dance, for old-time’s sake, and then they sat down at the table and enjoyed a homemade pizza loaded with toppings. Ray washed the dishes afterward as Dee washed Sara in the upstairs bathtub. At one point Ray listened with amused wonder at the sound of his daughter’s laughing and splashing. It filled the rooms of the house, and a void in his heart, which he realized he had felt since he left for training.
The next day, Friday, they celebrated Sara’s fourth birthday at Stuffy’s, a family restaurant with games, pool, arcade, and buffet. They had a swell time, except for the fact Sara’s only living grandparents declined to make the drive to Phoenix to take part in the festivities.
“I wish Papa and Nana were here,” Sara said, her names for her mother’s parents.
“They plan on having a separate celebration with you when we return to Flagstaff,” Dee said to Sara as Ray lit the birthday cake.
Any disappointment Sara might have had was quickly forgotten as she blew out her candles and took a bite of strawberry cake.
Ray handed her the barking box, and Sara was startled to open it and discover a hyper Labrador pup inside.
“Yay!” Sara said, and her father helped her lift and cradle her new companion, which licked the icing off her face.
Dee rolled her eyes, but
Ray knew his wife was as happy as he was with his purchase, because of their daughter’s delight. The fact the gift also would likely annoy Dee’s parents only made it seem more worthwhile.
Maybe God is just after all, Ray thought.
The gift-giving didn’t stop at Stuffy’s. Sara had a present waiting for her father at home. The three of them that evening watched a movie cuddled up on the living room couch. Ray stood up to get a can of beer. Glancing at the refrigerator, he noticed a new drawing next to the black flower Sara drew over the summer. This new drawing showed a red rose with a green stem basking beneath a large smiling sun. In the upper corner of the paper Dee must have inscribed some words on Sara’s behalf, “To the sunshine of my life, thanks for helping me see…I love you, Daddy!”
Ray leaned against the refrigerator, spellbound. He silently wept. Dee and Sara gazed at him from the couch. In the kitchen light, they saw the picture dangling from his hand and tears streaming down his face. He smiled at them.
That became Sara’s first and most enduring memory of her father, Marines Corps Captain Ray Salvatore. Unlike the world around her, suddenly full of color, her father’s eyes were not blue like the sky, as her mother once claimed. They were actually gray, like her own. Gray was a hue Sara recognized first and foremost in the world, because it was the color she saw the most the first years of her life. Likewise, it was the color she found most warm and familiar, a feeling ingrained in her.
It was as if at that moment, gazing at her crying father with his gray eyes so much like her own, in a world surrounded by so much color, Sara’s young mind finally solved some grave problem it had been tackling for some time.
Sara smiled back at her crying father, in peace. Even if he wasn’t always around, she understood how much he was always part of her.
PART TWO
Fired
CHAPTER 1
Every day for Chuck Shaw started the same, and that was when he woke. At that moment, for a brief instant, he was unable to remember who he was, what he was doing and why he was doing it. For him the feeling was both exhilarating and frightening.