Read Online One September Morning by Rosalind Noonan - Free Book Online

block we secured and lost yesterday, but I say we click our boots three times and say ‘There’s no place like home.’”
    Noah swallows past a lump in his throat as he opens another of John’s documents. This was not the way John planned to go home.
    Rage flares in his chest. He wants to mourn John, wants to think benevolent thoughts, but whenever he thinks of him, Noah’s perverse mind goes to the negative things his brother has done. He can’t help but remember the times John bullied him as a kid, wrestling him to the ground and pressing marshmallows down his throat at a Cub Scout cookout. The way John ostracized him because he enjoyed growing things in their little plot of a garden, because he used to get a thrill out of nurturing a plant until it brought forth cucumbers or carrots or watermelons. Punching him in the jaw when he beat John in the Fourth of July race when they were kids. Sticking Noah with the blame when they got caught snooping in forbidden caves when their dad was assigned to Okinawa. Giving him a wedgie, slap-fighting behind their parents’ backs, embarrassing Noah in front of countless girls…
    I hate him for all those things, and for the times that I was invisible, lost in the shadow of John Stanton.
    Hatred is a sour taste in Noah’s mouth as he scrolls through his brother’s files, sure he is going to hell for thinking ill of the dead.
    “I know your brother leaves a wife behind,” Sgt. Dweeb calls over in the conciliatory tone of a father. “A beautiful woman. Seen her picture online. Did they have any children? Any pets?”
    “No.”
    “Probably a blessing, given the circumstances.”
    Noah nods, an image of John’s wife tugging at him, her dark eyes always full of questions and concern. Someday, he would share John’s writings with her but for now…now, he would just send the documents to himself as attachments, a way to have a backup in case anything happened to this thumb drive.
    Noah’s chest feels lighter as he logs on to the Internet and starts sending John’s files into the electronic cosmos. At least, he would have this. The army could take his brother’s body, his clothes and worldly possessions, but these—John’s thoughts—would not be put under lock and key.
    That, Noah vows, picturing his brother handing out pencils to Iraqi school children, is my promise to you.

Chapter 8
     
    Forty-two Miles Away
Flint
     
    D amn technology.
    You can order groceries online, send a message to a friend on the other side of the planet, or buy a song through your computer, but now that he really needs his laptop to work it keeps freezing up on him, when he’s thousands of miles from home with no malls or Apple Stores where he can slap down his credit card and purchase a replacement.
    Dave Flint runs two fingers along the seam of his open laptop, wiping the powder and grit of sand out of the crevice. He was working outside under a tent when the Sharqi started blowing with a violent burst that sent sand and debris and anything that wasn’t anchored whipping through the air. Now the screen is frozen and his final story from Iraq isn’t transmitting back to his editor in Seattle as it should be. If that’s not enough bad luck, his flight home that’s scheduled to leave at noon, just eleven hours away, is probably going to be cancelled due to the sand storm spewing a wall of sand and dust into the air. Nobody can get in or out during one of these storms; Sharqis have been known to last for days this time of year.
    Just his luck.
    He’s been embedded with the 121st Airborne Division since July, and though he didn’t really want the assignment in the first place, it provided him with his first chance to file breaking stories—pieces printed above the fold, nearly every other day—as well as an opportunity to step away from his life in Seattle, a rote routine coordination of job, girlfriend, online gaming, and late-night drinking. Not a horrible life by any means, but one that