Beyond the Point
Page 1
Dedication
To women on every battlefield, in every uniform.
You are not alone.
Epigraph
When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”
“Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?”
Judges 6:12–13
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Before
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Between
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Beyond
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Begin Again
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Acknowledgments
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the Author
About the Book
Advance Praise for Beyond the Point
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
November 10, 2006 // Tarin Kot, Afghanistan
Assuming her gear scared him, Hannah Nesmith took off her helmet and sunglasses and placed them on the ground.
“Da sta lapaara day,” she said. This is for you.
The boy couldn’t have been much older than seven. He wore navy blue pants and a threadbare shirt, both at least two sizes too big. Dirty toenails peeked out of his sandals, and his heels threatened to strike the rocky ground. Every student at the school was dressed this way. Nothing fit. Everything was covered in sand. His arms and neck and face were tanned and smooth. Any other day, in any other country, Hannah would have been tempted to reach out and stroke his head. He was just a child.
A U-shaped concrete building stood behind them, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by large rocks the color of the desert. There were no roads. The infrastructure for education had crumbled under Taliban rule, which had turned this area of Afghanistan into a haven for opium production and sharia law. Hannah wondered how far these children had to walk to school, what their parents did all day, and whether or not there was even food at home when they returned at night. In Afghanistan, the average life expectancy was only fifty years. Nearly half of the population was younger than fourteen. And these children were caught in the crossfire.
The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Markham, sent Hannah’s platoon on humanitarian missions like this specifically because she was a woman. He said her presence would put the children and teachers at ease. But these students would think she was a Transformer robot before they believed she was a female. She wore an ID patch on the bicep of her uniform and an M16 slung over her shoulder. A Kevlar vest flattened her chest, and before she’d taken it off, her helmet had hidden a bun at the nape of her neck. But surely this boy could overlook her dirty-blond hair and blue eyes for the sake of a free, fully inflated soccer ball, Hannah thought. When their convoy had pulled up an hour earlier, the children were using a ball of trash tied together with string.
She gripped the soccer ball in her hands and raised it a few inches higher. The boy took two steps backward, his mouth closed tight, like he was trying to swallow something bitter.
“For you,” she repeated in English, wishing once again that she’d listened to Dani.
Sophomore year at West Point, her closest friend had tried to persuade her to take Arabic instead of Spanish. Of course, Afghan people spoke Pashto, something Hannah hadn’t known until she arrived in March. But she wished she had familiarity with the tones and rhythms of Middle Eastern languages, and would have, had she listened to Dani. But the add-drop period for classes had ended in August—two weeks before the towers came down. The Arabic department at West Point was inundated after that. But the truth was, even if she’d known the future, she probably would have stuck with Spanish. West Point was hard enough without adding another challenge to her schedule. Plus, even if they could speak the same language, the boy wasn’t listening.
Hannah wiped a stream of sweat from her forehead. Heat dragged its fingers up the sleeves of her uniform, down her back, against her neck. It was hard to breathe here. Hard to think. She recalled watching heat waves rise from the ground on her grandfather’s ranch every summer of her childhood, distorting her vision, like transparent oil in the air. But this—one hundred and twenty degrees—was a formidable home-field advantage.
The heat made the days run together. Hannah had arrived in Afghanistan eight months earlier, in March. She’d taken two weeks of rest and recuperation in the summer with Tim, and now was staring down the barrel of seven more months in the Middle East. She closed her eyes and imagined her husband out kayaking on the water.
Husband. That word sounded as foreign in her mouth as any word of Pashto. The time they’d spent together on Jekyll Island during her R & R was a memory Hannah could hold on to until they were together again. She could still feel the grit of sand in his hair, taste the salt of his skin. She’d never seen him so tan.
People constantly asked her how they did it. By “it” she assumed they meant the deployment, the Army, or long-distance marriage. But to Hannah, it was just part of the package. She wouldn’t have wanted to be married to anyone else. So if this was what it took to be Mrs. Timothy Nesmith, then so be it. No part of her felt resentful of the path they’d chosen. Somehow, it felt right for them—even if it was hard. Maybe specifically because it was. Their time apart intensified their time together, making every moment that much more romantic, that much more precious. They were like a magnet and steel: they felt the pull when they were apart, and when they were together, they couldn’t be separated. The sacrifice was part of the sacrament.
She had a canned response ready to dismiss people’s concerns. “We just try not to think about it,” she’d say with a shrug.
But the truth was, she thought about the calendar all of the time. She counted down the days, the months. June 2007 lingered in the future as though it were their wedding date—even though they’d already had one of those. In less than a year, they’d be back together again. It wasn’t that long, really. Not when you compared it to forever. If they could just endure, all would be well in the end. And as the days ticked off of her deployment, moving her closer to home, Hannah had never been more confident that the waiting would be worth it.
The little boy had started to cry. He looked back over his shoulder at his classmates, who were busy running after Private Murphy and Sergeant Willis. Willis and Murphy were terrible at soccer, bobbling around with the ball, holding their M16s to the side so they wouldn’t swing around their backs. The children were laughing. It had turned into a game of chase.
“Look,” Hannah continued. “See?”
When he turned back to look at her, the little boy’s eyes narrowed with ha
te. Before she could move out of his way, a loogie of spit flew out of his mouth and landed on the shoulder of her uniform. Then he wiped his mouth, ran across the schoolyard to his classmates, and put his hands in the air. The boy was yelling. He pointed back toward Hannah, then at the soldiers, at the sky. Everyone froze, watching the veins in the boy’s neck pulse. Wetness spread across his cheeks as deep guttural screams flooded out of his throat.
Slowly rising from the ground, Hannah put her helmet back on her head and had a dismal thought.
How were they supposed to win the war if they couldn’t even give away a gift?
INBOX (7)
* * *
From: Avery Adams
Date: November 16, 2006 5:36 PM EST
To: Dani McNalley
Subject: hi
I just heard. call me.
From: Wendy Bennett
Date: November 16, 2006 6:24 PM EST
To: Dani McNalley
Subject: Hannah
D, we just heard. Please let us know when the funeral is set. We will be there.
We love you.
From: Locke Coleman
Date: November 16, 2006 02:59 AM EST
To: Dani McNalley
Subject: r u ok
this is so fucked up. r u ok?
From: Eric Jenkins
Date: November 16, 2006 5:58 PM EST
To: Dani McNalley
Subject: My deepest sympathy
Dani,
I’m not sure if you remember me, but I was Class of ’03 at West Point, and Tim and I were both on the parachuting team. I’m stationed at Fort Bragg and my wife and I live right down the street from them. I got your e-mail address from Avery Adams.
We’ve decided to stay here through Thanksgiving. I just wanted to let you know that everyone here is in shock. They were an incredible couple. Again, I am so sorry for your loss. It’s a loss for all of us.
Eric B. Jenkins
Captain, US Army
82nd Airborne Division
From: Sarah Goodrich
Date: November 17, 2006 1:26 AM HST
To: Dani McNalley
Subject::-(
I can’t believe this is happening. Has anyone heard from Hannah’s family?
From: Avery Adams
Date: November 17, 2006 4:37 AM EST
To: Dani McNalley
Subject: re: re: re: **hi
I have a key to the house. Tim gave it to me before he deployed.
From: Laura Klein
Date: November 20, 2006 05:59 AM GMT
To: Dani McNalley
Subject: Bereavement Leave
Technically, you only get two weeks of bereavement leave. But that’s only for immediately family members. You should check with HR.
Can you resend me your latest draft of the insights deck? I can’t find it in my inbox.
Also, for future reference, if you need to leave a meeting, please say so. We have processes in place for emergencies.
I’m sorry to hear about your friend.
LK
Before
Senior Year of High School
Winter 2000
1
Winter 2000 // Columbus, Ohio
From the beginning, Dani McNalley wanted to be known for more than basketball.
Her father had introduced her to the sport in the driveway when she was three years old, teaching her the mechanics of dribbling and switching hands and dodging defenders. She’d grown used to the feeling of thirty thousand little bumps under her fingertips and the hollow sound of the ball hitting pavement. Over the years, she’d advanced from the driveway to club teams, from club teams to a travel squad, and from the travel squad to the roster of the top point guards in America. College scouts had written Dani McNalley’s name on their recruiting lists as early as her thirteenth birthday. That she would play NCAA Division I ball was a foregone conclusion—everyone said it was her destiny. What they didn’t know was that while athletics was a big part of her life, it certainly wasn’t her whole life.
That’s why, on a cold February morning of her senior year in high school, Dani didn’t feel nervous at all. What was there to be nervous about? She’d get up, go to school, go to practice, and then come home. Sure, there would be news crews, photographers, and a dotted line to sign. But once she announced what she’d decided, the story wasn’t going to be about basketball. Not anymore.
Her small-minded suburban town of Columbus, Ohio, had tried to put her into a box. After she’d earned a near-perfect score on the PSAT, a reporter from the Columbus Dispatch named Mikey Termini had arrived at her house with a camera and a recording device. He’d only asked her about basketball, and the photo that ran in the cover story was of her shooting baskets in her driveway. He’d buried the fact that she was a National Merit Scholarship finalist below a list of her basketball accolades, and when she’d tried to take him inside to talk, he’d stopped her and said, “I can’t take a picture of you doing calculus. People want to see you play.”
It was the same story everywhere she went. But Dani worked too hard to believe in foregone conclusions. Anything was possible. Even now, she knew she could surprise herself and change her mind at the last minute. But she wouldn’t. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, deep in her psyche, there was something about this day that felt as though it had already happened. Like she could remember it if she closed her eyes and imagined herself from the future.
Grabbing a Pop-Tart from the counter, Dani stuffed her AP Physics homework in her backpack and took the keys to the family sedan from the hook by the door.
“I’m going!” she yelled to no one.
At that moment, her mother, Harper McNalley, shuffled into the kitchen and looked her daughter up and down with the warm disdain of a woman who thought she’d raised her child better. Five foot nothing, Dani’s mother had metal-rimmed glasses and facial expressions that spoke louder than words. Her eyes grew large as she scanned Dani’s choice of wardrobe: sneakers, jeans, and a loose-fitting Nike T-shirt.
“What?” said Dani, sticking her hip out.
Harper reached for the coffee carafe and filled her travel mug. “Why don’t you do something with your hair?” She swirled the carafe through the air, indicating her daughter’s head. “Fix that situation.”
Ever since she was young, Dani had worn her hair in a spiky ponytail. The edges near her forehead were frayed and broken, but athletic pre-wrap headbands did a decent job of keeping the wild parts off her face. She knew her mother was annoyed she hadn’t made an appointment to get her hair relaxed at the salon. But there was no time for that nonsense. Dani didn’t have the patience to sit in a chair and have her head doused with chemicals. There were better things to do with her time. Plus, if they were going to put her picture in the paper, it might as well look like her. Afro and all.
“Go on,” her mother said, pressing her. “Comb it. They should at least know you’re a girl.”
Begrudgingly, Dani ran back upstairs to the hall bathroom, dropped her backpack by the door, and stared at the light-skinned black girl in the mirror. A constellation of freckles graced her face, as if God had decided at the last minute to splatter dark paint against a light brown canvas. Eighteen, with the attitude and swagger to go with it, Dani pulled a brush through her tangled hair and smothered the ends with oil.
They should at least know you’re a girl. Of course they knew she was a girl! She had boobs, for God’s sake. She played women’s basketball. Just because she didn’t wear makeup or wear skirts didn’t make her less of a woman. Her mother of all people should have known that. Harper McNalley was a
chemical engineer—a black woman at the height of a white man’s profession. At times, Dani thought her mom was the wisest, most progressive person in the world. Then she’d go and say a thing like that.
A heavy fist pounded against the bathroom door three times in a row. Bang, bang, bang.
“Just a minute!” Dani shouted.
“Dani, I’ve got to go!”
High-pitched and incessant, her little brother’s voice had yet to change. She could imagine Dominic standing outside the door with his little Steve Urkel glasses, holding his crotch and crossing his ankles. Dominic was a confident little boy, always reading some book too advanced for his age. A few nights earlier, he’d recited a Shakespearean soliloquy for the family at dinner. She loved him for how fiercely he chose to be himself. Of course, their father would have liked it better if their talents had been switched at birth, Dani knew. Tom McNalley had hoped to have an athletic son and an artistic daughter. But realizing there was no changing his children, he’d enrolled Dominic in every music lesson, acting class, and audiovisual club the greater Columbus area had to offer. And when Dani showed promise on the driveway basketball court, he’d signed her up for club teams, private coaches, and ultimately, the AAU team that had shaped Dani into the point guard she was today. All opportunities available to white children were equally available to the McNalleys: Tom and Harper had worked hard for that to be so.
Dani knew the stories. Her parents had both grown up in the South—her mother was among some of the first children to integrate her white North Carolina elementary school. After meeting at Howard University in the late 1970s, Tom and Harper uprooted and replanted in Ohio, hoping to chart a new future for their family. They lived in a gated community, the children attended great public schools, and they had two cars in the driveway. By every measure, they had “made it”—whatever that meant. Dani still wondered sometimes if they’d swung the pendulum a bit too far. They were the only black family within a twenty-mile radius, and though it didn’t bother Dani to be different, she wondered if there was something she was missing, some experience that she’d lost, in the shelter of their suburban zip code.