The Lucky One

by Nicholas Sparks

  He had to admit that the drill mostly worked. It broke people down, beat them down even further, and eventually molded them into marines. Or that's what they said, anyway. He didn't break down. He went through the motions, kept his head low, did as he was ordered, and remained the same man he'd been before. He became a marine anyway.

  He ended up with the First Battalion, Fifth Marines, based out of Camp Pendleton. San Diego was his kind of town, with great weather, gorgeous beaches, and even more beautiful women. But it was not to last. In January 2003, right after he turned twenty-three, he deployed to Kuwait as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Camp Doha, in an industrial part of Kuwait City, had been in use since the First Gulf War and was pretty much a town unto itself. There was a gym and a computer center, a PX, places to eat, and tents spread as far as the horizon. Busy place made much busier by the impending invasion, and things were chaotic from the start. His days were an unbroken sequence of hours-long meetings, backbreaking drills, and rehearsals of ever changing attack plans. He must have practiced donning his chemical war protection suit a hundred times. There were endless rumors, too. The worst part was trying to figure out which one might be true. Everyone knew of someone who knew someone who'd heard the real story. One day they were going in imminently; next day they'd hear that they were holding off. First, they were coming in from the north and south; then just from the south, and maybe not even that. They heard the enemy had chemical weapons and intended to use them; next day they heard they wouldn't use them because they believed that the United States would respond with nukes. There were whispers that the Iraqi Republican Guard intended to make a suicide stand just over the border; others swore they intended to make the stand near Baghdad. Still others said the suicide stand would happen near the oil fields. In short, no one knew anything, which only fueled the imaginations of the 150,000 troops who'd assembled in Kuwait.

  For the most part, soldiers are kids. People forget that sometimes. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty--half of the servicemen weren't old enough even to buy a beer. They were confident and well trained and excited to go, but it was impossible to ignore the reality of what was coming. Some of them were going to die. Some talked openly about it, others wrote letters to their families and handed them to the chaplain. Tempers were short. Some had trouble sleeping; others slept almost all the time. Thibault observed it all with a strange sense of detachment. Welcome to war, he could hear his father saying. It's always a SNAFU: situation normal, all f--ed up.

  Thibault wasn't completely immune to the escalating tension, and like everyone else, he'd needed an outlet. It was impossible not to have one. He started playing poker. His dad had taught him to play, and he knew the game . . . or thought he knew. He quickly found out that others knew more. In the first three weeks, he proceeded to lose pretty much every dime he'd saved since joining up, bluffing when he should have folded, folding when he should have stayed in the game. It wasn't much money to begin with, and it wasn't as if he had many places to spend it even if he'd kept it, but it put him in a foul mood for days. He hated to lose.

  The only antidote was to go for long runs first thing in the morning, before the sun came up. It was usually frigid; though he'd been in the Middle East for a month, it continually amazed him how cold the desert could be. He ran hard beneath a sky crowded with stars, his breaths coming out in little puffs.

  Toward the end of one of his runs, when he could see his tent in the distance, he began to slow. By then, the sun had begun to crest the horizon, spreading gold across the arid landscape. With his hands on his hips, he continued to catch his breath, and it was then, from the corner of his eye, that he spotted the dull gleam of a photograph, half-buried in the dirt. He stopped to pick it up and noticed that it had been cheaply but neatly laminated, probably to protect it from the elements. He brushed off the dust, clearing the image, and that was the first time he saw her.

  The blonde with the smile and the jade-colored mischievous eyes, wearing jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with the words LUCKY LADYacross the front. Behind her was a banner showing the words HAMPTON FAIRGROUNDS. A German shepherd, gray in the muzzle, stood by her side. In the crowd behind her were two young men, clustered near the ticket stand and a bit out of focus, wearing T-shirts with logos. Three evergreen trees rose in the distance, pointy ones that could grow almost anywhere. On the back of the photo were the handwritten words, "Keep Safe! E."

  Not that he'd noticed any of those things right away. His first instinct, in fact, had been to toss the picture aside. He almost had, but just as he was about to do so, it occurred to him that whoever had lost it might want it back. It obviously meant something to someone.

  When he returned to camp, he tacked the photo to a message board near the entrance to the computer center, figuring that pretty much every inhabitant of the camp made his way there at one point or another. No doubt someone would claim it.

  A week went by, then ten days. The photo was never retrieved. By that point, his platoon was drilling for hours every day, and the poker games had become serious. Some men had lost thousands of dollars; one lance corporal was said to have lost close to ten thousand. Thibault, who hadn't played since his initial humiliating attempt, preferred to spend his free time brooding on the upcoming invasion and wondering how he'd react to being fired upon. When he wandered over to the computer center three days before the invasion, he saw the photo still tacked to the message board, and for a reason he still didn't quite understand, he took down the photo and put it in his pocket.

  Victor, his best friend in the squad--they'd been together since basic training--talked him into joining the poker game that night, despite Thibault's reservations. Still low on funds, Thibault started conservatively and didn't think he'd be in the game for more than half an hour. He folded in the first three games, then drew a straight in the fourth game and a full house in the sixth. The cards kept falling his way--flushes, straights, full houses--and by the halfway point in the evening, he'd recouped his earlier losses. The original players had left by then, replaced by others. Thibault stayed. In turn, they were replaced. Thibault stayed. His winning streak persisted, and by dawn, he'd won more than he'd earned in his first six months in the marines.

  It was only when he was leaving the game with Victor that he realized he'd had the photograph in his pocket the entire time. When they were back at their tent, he showed the photo to Victor and pointed out the words on the woman's shirt. Victor, whose parents were illegal immigrants living near Bakersfield, California, was not only religious, but believed in portents of all kinds. Lightning storms, forked roads, and black cats were favorites, and before they'd shipped out, he'd told Thibault about an uncle who supposedly possessed the evil eye: "When he looks at you a certain way, it's only a matter of time before you die." Victor's conviction made Thibault feel like he was ten years old again, listening raptly as Victor told the story with a flashlight propped beneath his chin. He said nothing at the time. Everyone had their quirks. Guy wanted to believe in omens? Fine with him. More important was the fact that Victor was a good enough shot to have been recruited as a sniper and that Thibault trusted him with his life.

  Victor stared at the picture before handing it back. "You said you found this at dawn?"

  "Yeah."

  "Dawn is a powerful time of the day."

  "So you've told me."

  "It's a sign," he said. "She's your good-luck charm. See the shirt she is wearing?"

  "She was tonight."

  "Not just tonight. You found that picture for a reason. No one claimed it for a reason. You took it today for a reason. Only you were meant to have it."

  Thibault wanted to say something about the guy who'd lost it and how he'd feel about that, but he kept quiet. Instead, he lay back on the cot and clasped his hands behind his head.

  Victor mirrored the movement. "I'm happy for you. Luck will be on your side from now on," he added.

  "I hope so."

  "But you can't ever lose the picture."


  "No?"

  "If you do, then the charm works in reverse."

  "Which means what?"

  "It means you'll be unlucky. And in war, unlucky is the last thing you want to be."

  The motel room was as ugly on the inside as it had been from the outside: wood paneling, light fixtures attached to the ceiling with chains, shag carpet, television bolted to the stand. It seemed to have been decorated around 1975 and never updated, and it reminded Thibault of the places his dad had made them stay in when they took their family vacations through the Southwest, when Thibault was a kid. They'd stayed overnight in places just off the highway, and as long as they were relatively clean, his dad had deemed them fine. His mom less so, but what could she do? It wasn't as if there had been a Four Seasons across the street, and even if there had been, there was no way they could ever have afforded it.

  Thibault went through the same routine his dad had when entering a motel room: He pulled back the comforter to make sure the sheets were fresh, he checked the shower curtain for mold, he looked for hairs in the sink. Despite the expected rust stains, a leaky faucet, and cigarette burns, the place was cleaner than he'd imagined it might be. Inexpensive, too. Thibault had paid cash for a week in advance, no questions asked, no extra charge for the dog. All in all, a bargain. Good thing. Thibault had no credit cards, no debit cards, no ATM cards, no official mailing address, no cell phone. He carried pretty much everything he owned. He did have a bank account, one that would wire him money as needed. It was registered under a corporate name, not his own. He wasn't rich. He wasn't even middle-class. The corporation did no business. He just liked his privacy.

  He led Zeus to the tub and washed him, using the shampoo in his backpack. Afterward, he showered and dressed in the last of his clean clothes. Sitting on the bed, he thumbed through the phone book, searching for something in particular, without luck. He made a note to do laundry when he had time, then decided to get a bite to eat at the small restaurant he'd seen just down the street.

  When he got there, they wouldn't let Zeus inside, which wasn't surprising. Zeus lay down outside the front door and went to sleep. Thibault had a cheeseburger and fries, washed it down with a chocolate milk shake, then ordered a cheeseburger to go for Zeus. Back outside, he watched as Zeus gobbled it down in less than twenty seconds and then looked up at Thibault again.

  "Glad you really savored that. Come on."

  Thibault bought a map of the town at a convenience store and sat on a bench near the town square--one of those old-fashioned parks bordered on all four sides by business-lined streets. Featuring large shady trees, a play area for the kids, and lots of flowers, it didn't seem crowded: A few mothers were clustered together, while children zipped down the slide or glided back and forth on the swings. He examined the faces of the women, making sure she wasn't among them, then turned away and opened the map before they grew nervous at his presence. Mothers with young kids always got nervous when they saw single men lingering in the area, doing nothing purposeful. He didn't blame them. Too many perverts out there.

  Studying the map, he oriented himself and tried to figure out his next move. He had no illusions that it was going to be easy. He didn't know much, after all. All he had was a photograph--no name or address. No employment history. No phone number. No date. Nothing but a face in the crowd.

  But there were some clues. He'd studied the details of the photo, as he had so many times before, and started with what he knew. The photograph had been taken in Hampton. The woman appeared to be in her early twenties when the photo was taken. She was attractive. She either owned a German shepherd or knew someone who did. Her first name started with the letter E. Emma, Elaine, Elise, Eileen, Ellen, Emily, Erin, Erica . . . they seemed the most likely, though in the South, he supposed there could be names like Erdine or Elspeth, too. She went to the fair with someone who was later posted to Iraq. She had given this person the photograph, and Thibault had found the photograph in February 2003, which meant it had to have been taken before then. The woman, then, was most likely now in her late twenties. There was a series of three evergreen trees in the distance. These things he knew. Facts.

  Then, there were assumptions, beginning with Hampton. Hampton was a relatively common name. A quick Internet search turned up a lot of them. Counties and towns: South Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Iowa, Nebraska. Georgia. Others, too. Lots of others. And, of course, a Hampton in Hampton County, North Carolina.

  Though there'd been no obvious landmarks in the background--no picture of Monticello indicating Virginia, for instance, no WELCOME TO IOWA! sign in the distance--there had been information. Not about the woman, but gleaned from the young men in the background, standing in line for tickets. Two of them had been wearing shirts with logos. One--an image of Homer Simpson--didn't help. The other, with the word DAVIDSON written across the front, meant nothing at first, even when Thibault thought about it. He'd originally assumed the shirt was an abbreviated reference to Harley-Davidson, the motorcycle. Another Google search cleared that up. Davidson, he'd learned, was also the name of a reputable college located near Charlotte, North Carolina. Selective, challenging, with an emphasis on liberal arts. A review of their bookstore catalog showed a sample of the same shirt.

  The shirt, he realized, was no guarantee that the photo had been taken in North Carolina. Maybe someone who'd gone to the college gave the guy the shirt; maybe he was an out-of-state student, maybe he just liked the colors, maybe he was an alum and had moved someplace new. But with nothing else to go on, Thibault had made a quick phone call to the Hampton Chamber of Commerce before he'd left Colorado and verified that they had a county fair every summer. Another good sign. He had a destination, but it wasn't yet a fact. He just assumed this was the right place. Still, for a reason he couldn't explain, this place felt right.

  There were other assumptions, too, but he'd get to those later. The first thing he had to do was find the fairgrounds. Hopefully, the county fair had been held in the same location for years; he hoped the person who could point him in the right direction could answer that question as well. Best place to find someone like that was at one of the businesses around here. Not a souvenir or antiques shop--those were often owned by newcomers to town, people escaping from the North in search of a quieter life in warmer weather. Instead, he thought his best bet would be someplace like a local hardware store. Or a bar. Or a real estate office. He figured he'd know the place when he saw it.

  He wanted to see the exact place the photograph had been taken. Not to get a better feel for who the woman was. The fairgrounds wouldn't help with that at all.

  He wanted to know if there were three tall evergreen trees clustered together, pointy ones that could grow almost anywhere.

  3

  Beth

  Beth set aside her can of Diet Coke, glad that Ben was having a good time at his friend Zach's birthday party. She was just wishing that he didn't have to go to his father's when Melody came by and sat in the chair beside her.

  "Good idea, huh? The water guns are a big hit." Melody smiled, her bleached teeth a bit too white, her skin a shade too dark, as though she'd just come back from a trip to the tanning salon. Which she probably had. Melody had been vain about her appearance since high school, and lately it seemed to have become even more of an obsession.

  "Let's just hope they don't turn those Super Soakers on us."

  "They better not." Melody frowned. "I told Zach that if he did, I'd send everyone home." She leaned back, making herself more comfortable. "What have you been doing with yourself this summer? I haven't seen you around, and you haven't returned my calls."

  "I know. I'm sorry about that. I've been a hermit this summer. It's just been hard trying to keep up with Nana and the kennel and all the training. I have no idea how Nana kept it up for so long."

  "Nana's doing okay these days?"

  Nana was Beth's grandmother. She'd raised Beth since the age of three, after Beth's parents died in a car accident. She nod
ded. "She's getting better, but the stroke took a lot out of her. Her left side is still really weak. She can manage some of the training, but running the kennel and training is beyond her. And you know how hard she pushes herself. I'm always worried she might be overdoing it."

  "I noticed she was back in the choir this week."

  Nana had been in the First Baptist Church choir for over thirty years, and Beth knew it was one of her passions. "Last week was her first week back, but I'm not sure how much singing she actually did. Afterward, she took a two-hour nap."

  Melody nodded. "What's going to happen when school starts up?"

  "I don't know."

  "You are going to teach, aren't you?"

  "I hope so."

  "You hope? Don't you have teacher meetings next week?"

  Beth didn't want to think about it, let alone discuss it, but she knew Melody meant well. "Yeah, but that doesn't mean I'll be there. I know it would leave the school in a bind, but it's not as if I can leave Nana alone all day. Not yet, anyway. And who would help her run the kennel? There's no way she could train the dogs all day."

  "Can't you hire someone?" Melody suggested.

  "I've been trying. Did I tell you what happened earlier in the summer? I hired a guy who showed up twice, then quit as soon as the weekend rolled around. Same thing with the next guy I hired. After that, no one's even bothered to come by. The 'Help Wanted' sign has become a permanent fixture in the window."