by Tanya Biank
Delores never spoke of the dark side of her past to the other wives. She had simply picked herself up and moved on, focusing on the family she and Ski had created.
Halfway into their twenty-five-minute drive home, Delores noticed that the fog had turned Fayetteville’s roads into a blurry black-and-gray canvas. After more than twenty years of back-and-forth assignments to Bragg and Fayetteville, the Kalinofskis knew the landscape by heart. They had seen firsthand the last few cycles of transformation in what had started off as a small southern town on the Cape Fear River.
Fayetteville is really like two towns. The section just outside Bragg is where a lot of military families live—where I live, for that matter. The shopping district, the chain restaurants, and all the gaudy billboards are located here. Cross over McPherson Church Road, though, and the landscape takes a dramatic turn. Suddenly there are signs of Fayetteville’s bygone gentility. In Haymount, where homes date to the 1920s and 1930s, the Old South emerges like blossoms on a magnolia tree. In that original residential area of town, where descendents of old families live, the oaks and pines are mammoth, and each spring sees a burst of pink, red, white, and yellow as camellias, azaleas, magnolias, gardenias, jonquils, and forsythia come into flower, followed by the deep purple of wild wisteria and Fayetteville’s trademark dogwoods in delicate shades of pink and white.
A monument to the town’s Confederate Civil War dead is here, along with something many in Fayetteville are unaware of. Behind one old manor on Hay Street are former slave quarters that were converted into small apartments for officers and their families during World War II.
In the early 1940s Fayetteville’s metamorphosis from a small textile and railroad town to GI boomtown began as thousands of soldiers arrived by train for mobilization at Fort Bragg before shipping off to Europe and the Pacific. Many of the young enlistees, who needed thirteen weeks of training, didn’t know which state they were headed to until they got off the train at Fort Bragg. In one year the post grew from five thousand to sixty-seven thousand soldiers by the summer of ’41. Construction couldn’t keep up with the population explosion, which reached more than one hundred thousand soldiers during the height of the war, an astounding figure for a town that had fewer than eighteen thousand residents before Pearl Harbor. Soldiers lived “under canvas” in tent cities on Bragg, and residents did their part for the war effort by renting out their garages and spare bedrooms to GIs and their families. Cash flowed, romance budded, and North and South blended and at times clashed. Soldiers flooded the drinking establishments downtown and danced with local girls at the USO, then went on to marry them. Entrepreneurs built businesses that catered to the military, young women took clerical jobs at Bragg, and Fayetteville’s high society included Fort Bragg’s senior officers at events, with invitations that were reciprocated on post.
More than twenty years later, another war buildup changed everything again, as young draftees from across the nation tramped through town with Vietnam a sure thing in their futures. This time the councilmen and local merchants sold out Fayetteville’s soul, allowing strip clubs, topless bars, and brothels to multiply like bacteria in a petri dish. The 500 block of Hay Street filled with druggies, hookers, and transvestites. Nearby Gillespie Street was known as Combat Alley. Green Berets stationed at Bragg christened the town Fayettenam, and the name spread like Agent Orange.
Some days it seemed the entire community was under assault: Young men smoked dope and lost their virginity to whores downtown, mothers and wives watched Walter Cronkite announce the day’s body count, and local school principals had the sorry task of pulling kids from class and telling them their fathers were dead. After the war Fayetteville lay somewhere under the carnage. What remained was Fayettenam, a constant reminder of wild times and legendary violence.
To me Fayetteville has always been like the wise guy perched on the stool at the end of the bar night after night—you know, the one with the leathery skin and the scratchy voice from a lifetime of smokes. Fayetteville is the guy you always see but never bother to get to know, because you think you’ve already figured his kind out. In truth it takes time to understand this town. It’s a multilayered, flesh-and-blood community with war heroes and crooks, garden club socialites and strippers all in close proximity. As Ski would always tell me, “I just like it here, kiddo.”
Thanks to the military, it is a mix of ethnic groups, races, and religions living together as neighbors. And thanks to the military, more than $5 billion each year is pumped into the local economy. Only a small percentage of the 121,000 inhabitants can say they have roots in Fayetteville. And that’s part of the problem. Semiprofessional sports teams have never generated a strong-enough following to last long here. On game days people are at home in front of the TV rooting for their own teams. That lack of hometown pride has meant that some residents think nothing of throwing trash out of their car windows, or worse, robbing their neighbors. For a community of its size, the crime rate is surprisingly high.
Ski turned into Birch Creek, and then a few streets down turned right and into their driveway at the center of a cul-de-sac. White Christmas lights twinkled from the porch. Their house was a typical two-story, three-bedroom colonial with green siding, burgundy shutters, and beige trim. Delores had found it on Father’s Day 1994 while Ski was spending six months at the Sergeants Major Academy, at Fort Bliss, Texas. They’d always dreamed of owning their own home in this part of town, but at more than $150,000, the houses in Birch Creek were out of the Kalinofskis’ price range. When Delores found that a house she had fallen in love with was selling for $108,000, she called her husband in Texas and made an offer.
“Honey, just find a house you like,” Ski had told her. “I’m not going to be living in it, you are.” He was right. A month after they moved in, Ski left for a year’s assignment in Korea.
The Kalinofskis liked living off post. There were fewer rules and regulations, no garrison soldiers patrolling like yard nazis, writing residents up when they spotted weeds growing in sidewalk cracks, oil stains in driveways, double parking, uncut grass, litter, or kids out past curfew. Off post they didn’t have to attend the mandatory neighborhood meetings, which often turned into bitch sessions over whose yard needed mowing and whose guests had parked in the wrong spots.
In the early nineties the family had lived in Fort Bragg’s senior NCO housing, in a duplex with a small yard and a shared carport. When Delores came home to find a written notice stuck in her storm door for having a pile of dog poop on the edge of her lawn, she had had it. The problem wasn’t her own poodle but the big puppy next door. Delores couldn’t stand the fact that something she or her children—or her neighbor’s puppy—did would result in a citation in her husband’s file.
Too many citations can result in eviction from quarters. Living on post is rent-free, and all utilities—including heat, air-conditioning, and electricity—are paid by the government. Soldiers who live off the post receive a housing allowance. In return the Army expects soldiers and families to be good stewards of government property. The strict policies prevent old couches being left on porches, broken-down clunkers parked on the street, and toys scattered in yards. Still, when soldiers patrol the neighborhoods for violations, they seem not to spend much time in Normandy, where the senior officers live.
It was past midnight when the Kalinofskis came home, but Gary Shane wasn’t back yet. He had gone to a party with close friends from the neighborhood. They were all good boys, so Delores wasn’t too worried, but she still wanted to wait up for him. Ski and Cherish went to bed. Though Delores was exhausted, she changed into her nightgown, put on a housecoat, and went downstairs.
Admittedly she was having a hard time with her half-empty nest. She loved having Gary Shane home. Just that morning she had cooked him breakfast and washed his clothes. He had come back on December 19, on a flight from Atlanta that had been delayed till 1:00 A.M. by snow and ice. As he walked out of the gate, Gary Shane looked every bit the soldier in hi
s Class A’s and overcoat, the green uniform authorized for official travel. The boy who’d always walked with a slouch now stood as straight as a Georgia pine. He was smiling as always, his eyes half moons, and looking a bit self-conscious about his shorn brown head. When Gary Shane bent over to hug his mother, Delores held on so long that Ski had to loosen her grip.
Since being home, Gary Shane had spent much of his time sleeping in and catching up with his friends. He had no curfew, but when he stayed out late, Delores would wait up for him.
Gary Shane got home at 1:30 A.M. As he came in the door, Delores was struck anew by her son’s tall good looks. At six feet one and a half inches, he was bigger than her husband, and the morning stubble that still surprised her was thicker than her husband’s, too.
Delores followed her son upstairs, and the two sat on his bed and watched Saturday Night Live reruns for a while. Delores wanted to hear about everything her son had done that night, the party, cruising around town, where the boys ate and what they had.
“I love you, son,” Delores said a half hour later as she left Gary Shane’s room. He’d be gone again in six days, and she dreaded his leaving. If only this moment could stay frozen in time.
CHAPTER THREE
It was just after nine o’clock on Christmas Eve of 2000 when Rita Odom, disguising her disappointment, held up the Christmas present from her husband: a tomato-soup-red sweatshirt with 82nd AIRBORNE DIVISION stamped across the front. Rita hadn’t expected a romantic gift but maybe something picked out with a little more effort. The sweatshirt seemed too easy, and besides, the color clashed with her hair, which Rita dyed copper-penny red.
I had met Rita for the first time just a few weeks earlier on an overcast afternoon down at the barracks where her husband worked. I was writing a story about what it was like for soldiers to be on call for a mission during the holidays. There were a lot of rules and restrictions that spilled over into family life, and the knowledge that a soldier could be pulled away at any moment to respond to some crisis on another continent gave every ring of the phone an ominous meaning. I had come to talk with Rita and some other wives about that.
Rita placed the sweatshirt across her lap. She pasted on a smile, leaned over, and kissed her husband. “I love it, sweetie,” she said in a backwoods Alabama accent. “Thank you so much.” But Brian Odom could tell his wife was disappointed. Brian hated the gift Rita gave him, too. She had paid five dollars for his blue plaid flannel shirt at Family Dollar. Rita knew Brian loved flannel, and the blue matched her husband’s eyes. Besides he already had five red ones on his side of the closet. But Brian only wore red flannel, an eccentricity Rita hadn’t yet learned about her husband of five months. I love Brian, she said to herself, but I don’t know him from Adam’s house cat.
Brian was an infantryman and held the rank of specialist, an important-sounding title given to junior-ranking, lesser-paid soldiers who had been in the Army just long enough to break in their boots. Brian, like all the troopers who wore the maroon beret—don’t call it red—preferred the tag of paratrooper. Plunging from an airplane door at eight hundred feet into darkness with a Kevlar helmet on your head, a rifle strapped to your left side, and a seventy-pound ruck—filled with ammo, grenades, mortar rounds, water, and a vacuum-sealed pouch of vegetarian tortellini—across your thighs was an adrenaline rush. The Army couldn’t make you sign up for paratrooper duty, but for volunteers willing to face their fear and say yes to a challenge, the 82nd Airborne was the place to be. That’s why I loved writing about the unit.
Everyone in the 82nd jumped from airplanes, a trait that bonded the bottle washers to the graying generals. The division’s artillery guns, two-and-a-half-ton trucks, and Humvees exited aircraft the same way the paratroopers did. On my first plane ride with paratroopers late one night high above Fort Bragg, I witnessed what makes these soldiers unique. As the aircraft’s engines slowed down to a rumble, the doors opened. I was now standing on a steel ramp a few feet away, strapped into a harness tethered to the floor. I was close enough to see each face, each set of alert eyes, and each ramrod-straight body before it plunged into a vacuum of darkness. For me it was one of those mystical life moments, the ones you don’t always share. All the things that permeate society, a person’s skin color, status, age, religion, and politics didn’t matter in the belly of that flying tin can. What mattered was trusting the guys around you, completing the mission, keeping everyone safe, and staying alive. Rita knew little about those details, only that her husband was gone a lot.
But the Odoms were together this holiday, virtually under house arrest. Every time the phone rang, Brian scrambled to answer it as if he were expecting a call from the president. Brian’s unit, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was on a two-hour recall, the DRF-1. The Division Ready Force 1 cycle—shared during the year among all the units of the 82nd—meant that if called upon, Brian and his buddies, within eighteen hours of notification, could parachute into any hot spot in the world with enough firepower, fuel, and food strapped to their bodies to sustain themselves for three days. The possibility both frightened and excited Rita. For the Odoms, this cycle just happened to fall over Christmas.
The couple sat cross-legged on their mattress, which they had dragged into the family room as a last-stand barrier to keep Rita’s three sons from opening their presents before sunrise. With the boys tucked in bed, the couple sipped the one indulgence Rita allowed herself: mugs of Wal-Mart’s Great Value Pack instant cappuccino.
Rita snuggled close to Brian. “Do you realize a year ago tonight was the first time we ever laid eyes on each other?”
They had met the previous Christmas Eve in Rita’s hometown, Alexander City, Alabama. Alex City, as the locals called it. On that night Rita had just put her kids to bed and was wrapping a few gifts donated from Toys for Tots when the phone rang.
“Hello,” Rita said, putting the phone to her ear.
“Hey, Rita, you by yourself?” said her friend Felicia.
“Yeah.”
“Well, Andy’s cousin’s on leave from the Army, and he’s visiting for Christmas. He’s really cute, Rita. I’m not kidding. Why don’t we bring him on by later tonight?”
At age twenty-five, with three boys and a six-dollar-an-hour job answering phones at a Ford dealership, Rita had no time for dating. Real life had deadened her desire for courtship. On her good days she paid her $325 rent on time. On bad days fast-food ketchup packets mixed with hot water served as dinner.
But at least the misery had stopped.
She had ended a stormy marriage that had taken an emotional toll on her. Life looked so much more promising when she was younger. Rita had graduated near the top of her high school class. She was given a scholarship to Central Alabama Community College and planned to transfer to Auburn. She married a man right out of high school and got his named tattooed on her left breast. He was a welder by trade and could lay tile, but the bills weren’t paid, and the couple struggled to buy food. When Rita experienced complications during her first pregnancy, she left college. Someday I’ll go back, she had always told herself. But that day never came. Instead, Rita wasn’t allowed to work, own a telephone, or have a driver’s license.
Finally, on the first Sunday in February 1997 she came home clutching a church bulletin and found him gone. Before long her landlord came rapping on the door with an eviction notice. Rita got a job at Burger King, but she soon discovered she was pregnant with her third baby, the result of a brief fling with a friend from high school. She thought about having an abortion, but the baby’s father talked her out of it.
“Take the money I give you, and get a divorce. Don’t have an abortion,” he told her. Now every time Rita cradled Johnathan, a happy two-year-old with blond hair and blue eyes, she cried at the thought of what she had almost done.
“Rita, are you there?”
“Yeah, Felicia, I’m sorry.”
“I think Brian’s the one for you. Let me bring h
im over. He’s got a good paycheck. He might be the perfect man for you.”
“Look, Felicia, I don’t care if he’s the one. I don’t care if he’s Jesus Christ himself. Don’t bring him to my house.”
“Come on.”
Rita assumed Brian would be just another of Andy’s redneck cousins. Felicia was always trying to fix Rita up with somebody in her family or her husband’s. Rita’s broad smile and porcelain complexion dotted with freckles attracted suitors who wanted a girl who looked more like Miss Americana than Miss America. But who would take on three little boys and a mailbox of unpaid bills? Here I am, I’m twenty-five, divorced. I’ve had a hysterectomy because of cancer a couple of years ago. No one is going to want me, she thought.
“No, no, don’t bring him to my house,” Rita told her friend.
“Well, he’s got red hair, Rita.”
Rita cradled the phone between her cheek and shoulder and kept her voice deadpan. “Well, bring him over then.”
When Brian walked through Rita’s front door after a day of hunting, he had cleaned the deer blood off his face—smearing it on after a first kill was a local custom—but he still wore his camouflage cap with “Bud Racing” stitched across the front. An inch shorter than Rita’s five-foot-eight frame, he was lean and had a boyish look that appealed to Rita. She decided to have some fun.
She gave Brian a seductive look and accentuated her drawl. “Well, hello, sweetie, come on in.”
Brian’s eyes grew wide. What was up with this chick? He was taken aback by Rita’s body language and intimidated by her forwardness.
