Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Army Wives

by Tanya Biank

  “Take off your hat,” she said.

  Brian obliged, revealing a head shaved to the skull.

  “Oh, God,” Rita said, turning away. Andy and Felicia laughed. The twenty-two-year-old had found that shaving off his strawberry blond hair made for easier maintenance in the California desert, where he was stationed at Fort Irwin.

  The four listened to Garth Brooks and played spades and smoked Marlboros past midnight, until Andy and Felicia fell asleep on the couch. Only then did Rita drop the hoochie mama routine and show Brian the real her. Rita walked outside onto her porch. She lived in an old A-frame clapboard house across from a convenience store, and she loved her porch. It was ten feet wide, the kind of porch perfect for sipping sweet tea and passing time on a summer evening, but this night was cold and bright. Rita huddled in the green sweater she’d had since she was fifteen. Maybe the air would clear her head. It seemed as if she and Brian had known each other forever, but it had only been a few hours. They had talked about growing up, hard times, and broken hearts, things you don’t normally discuss with strangers. God, she liked him so much, maybe could even love him if she let herself. She felt she was handing him her heart, all taped and bandaged together.

  Brian followed her outside, and the two shared some awkward pauses.

  “Let me show you something,” she said, as she leaned close to him. She could smell his cologne now. “See those three bright stars? They make up Orion’s belt.” It was the only constellation Rita knew, something she’d learned from an eighth-grade science project. What she really wanted to say was, “Just kiss me, it’ll be all right.” Instead, the two went back inside and talked some more. At 5:00 A.M. Brian remembered his family had no idea where he was. Rita wrote down her address and phone number, and then they hugged good-bye.

  “Well, it was nice talking with you,” Brian said a bit awkwardly as he headed out the door. “Merry Christmas.” He didn’t plan on seeing her again.

  Rita closed the door and leaned her back against it. Her heart was beating so fast. Brian wasn’t like anyone she had ever met. She was intrigued, too, by the Army. Soldiers were supposed to be wild and crazy, but Brian didn’t even drink a beer that night. I’ll bet he’s got lots of girls after him, Rita thought. Put a guy in uniform in Alex City, and you’ll have girls coming out of the woodwork.

  For the following months Rita couldn’t get Brian out of her mind, and she often asked Felicia if she had heard from him. When a letter came to Felicia and Andy, asking about Rita in passing, she scribbled a note on the back of her grocery list and had Felicia tuck it inside a package Andy was sending to Fort Irwin.

  “Hey, I still remember you,” Rita wrote. “You can write me or call me.” Brian never bothered. At twenty-two, he was focused on the Army, and besides, he thought, if I can’t throw it in the back of my truck, I don’t need it.

  That spring, on the last Saturday in April, Rita’s phone rang. It was Felicia.

  “Hey, we’re having a barbecue at my place. I know it’s short notice. Why don’t you come on over?”

  “I’m kind of tired, Felicia.”

  “Well, Brian’s here.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Rita canceled a date for the evening and dropped her two older boys off at her mother’s. She brought Johnathan, who was still in diapers, with her. She hoped Brian was what she remembered. Would he recognize her?

  Brian wasn’t there when she arrived. For an hour Rita sat on a lawn chair in the shade and swatted mosquitoes. Frustrated, she got up to leave, but then she saw him—his eyes and his smile just as she had remembered them. When Brian grinned at her, she couldn’t breathe. For the rest of the evening Rita sucked down wine coolers and flirted with Brian. By nightfall they were holding hands, and her head was swimming. When she finally crashed on a bed in a spare bedroom, there was a knock on the door.

  “If you’re going to sleep, good night,” Brian said.

  “I’m not going to sleep,” Rita said, propping herself up on her side. “I just don’t feel well. But you can come and lie down with me if you want.”

  Brian stretched out on the bed and began stroking Rita’s arm. Soon they were taking each other’s clothes off.

  “Are you sure?” Brian asked her.

  “No,” Rita said. He wasn’t sure either, yet neither wanted to stop. It was the first time Brian had ever made love to a woman, but he didn’t want Rita to know that. How would that look? A virgin in the Army? All his buddies thought he had lost it long ago, but secretly Brian had wanted to wait until he got married.

  The next morning he left for Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia, where soldiers learn how to jump from airplanes. Before he left for the three-week course, Brian asked for Rita’s phone number and address and promised to see her on weekends. As she watched Brian’s truck roll away, she realized that she didn’t have to be on her own in order to be free.

  True to his word, every weekend Brian drove an hour and ten minutes from Fort Benning to Alexander City. By now they were sleeping together, spending every free moment as a couple. That May, Rita attended his Airborne School graduation. When Brian introduced her to his family as “my friend, Rita,” he saw her face fall. She refused to look at him. Okay, it’s time to end it, Brian thought. He didn’t want a girlfriend anyway, especially one with three kids by two different fathers. But he couldn’t stay away. During his month of leave, Brian found himself going back to Alex City and Rita.

  He was just like part of the family, Rita thought. She wasn’t the only one who thought so. One evening during the second week of his leave, Brian sat on Rita’s couch, and her four-year-old son, Alan, asked, “Are you my daddy?” Heartsick, Rita covered her face and started to cry.

  “No, no, I’m not,” Brian said. He knew he had to make a decision. Either he was in this for the long haul, or he had to call it quits.

  On June 20 Brian left before dawn for his new duty assignment at Fort Bragg. In Brian’s mind only real soldiers went to Bragg. That was the reason he had gone to Airborne School. He didn’t want to be a soldier fifty miles from the front lines. He wanted to be in the thick of things, and that’s where the guys at Bragg always were. They kissed good-bye in Rita’s driveway, and she waved to him from her porch. Then she crawled back into bed and cried. He’s a soldier. He probably has lots of girls, she thought. What does he want with me?

  During the eight-hour drive, Brian thought only of Rita. He admired how she got by despite the odds. He never did have a whole lot of respect for people who had had a smooth ride in life. But did he want a woman with so much baggage, who had had such violent relationships? He’d dated Rita for only a month and a half. Even if they got married, she would never be able to give him children. As he drove into Fayetteville, Brian found himself at a proverbial crossroads. Do I pass up the soul mate of a lifetime and look for someone who can give me children but who I don’t feel strongly about? As soon as he arrived at the Knights Inn, a shabby hotel on Bragg Boulevard, he called Rita from his room.

  “I cried all the way to Atlanta,” he said. “Between Atlanta and Fort Bragg I decided I want you to marry me.”

  “Well, are you asking me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, ask me.”

  “Will you marry me?”

  “Yes.”

  Two weeks later Brian headed south over the long July Fourth weekend and married Rita in a ceremony in her living room. Barefoot, in front of her sons and a few friends, Rita said her vows. Her electric blue nail-polished toes peeked out from under the hem of the light blue flower-print dress she often wore to work. The groom wore an Alabama Crimson Tide shirt and starched, rodeo-style Wranglers, creased down the front and cinched with a Confederate flag belt buckle the size of a slice of white bread.

  The next day Brian headed back to Fort Bragg, unsure when he would be able to get Rita and the boys to Fayetteville. All he knew was that he was spending the next two months in the field and had to do sit-ups the
following morning at 6:30 A.M.

  By the end of August, after phone calls and tears, Brian risked a month’s worth of wages and weekends cleaning latrines and left without a pass, heading to Alabama to pack up his new family. Brian was at the wheel of a seventeen-foot U-Haul, and Rita drove her husband’s beloved 1987 GMC Sierra, its bumper covered with Confederate flag stickers. She discovered the broken windshield wipers and busted blinkers during a rainstorm outside Atlanta. Her hands tightened around the steering wheel, her palms were sweaty, and she could feel the moisture in her armpits. Her back and legs ached. She was afraid she’d kill herself and Jay, her oldest son, who was in the cab with her.

  At one point Brian looked in his rearview mirror to see Rita nowhere in sight. He got off at the nearest exit, and ten minutes later found her on the side of the road, sitting on the bumper, crying. The traffic around Atlanta had terrified her. Rita had only had her driver’s license a few months. How was she supposed to drive in the rain with no windshield wipers?

  “I can’t take it anymore,” she told Brian. “I hate your truck, and all this traffic scares me. Just get me a hotel.”

  Brian ran his hand across the stubble on his head. How could she just pull off on a four-lane highway? He was furious. He couldn’t afford a hotel. He had to get his ass back at Bragg in time for Monday-morning formation. The Army didn’t care if she was tired. Didn’t she know anything?

  “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not driving anymore. I want a hotel.”

  What he wanted to say was, “Get back in the truck, dry your tears, suck it up, and drive.” Instead, after fruitlessly looking for a hotel for a half hour, he came back and gently urged her on.

  “Honey, I had no idea you were this petrified. I had no idea, but you’ve got to drive. Even to get to a hotel, you’ve got to drive, Rita. You’re gonna get in front of me and drive.”

  By the time they stopped to get gas in Bishopville, South Carolina, two hours from Fayetteville, Brian could see that his wife was physically and emotionally whipped. He got her a room at a Holiday Inn and told her he would be back the next evening. Brian arrived at Fort Bragg at 4:00 A.M., barely in time for a few hours of sleep before PT (physical training). After work that afternoon, he drove back to get Rita. With him was his buddy Griffin. Brian introduced him to Rita by his last name, which was stitched on his uniform. That’s what soldiers all called each other. It wasn’t even unusual for friends not to know each other’s first names. This time Griffin drove Brian’s truck, and they arrived in Fayetteville just as it was getting dark.

  The only thing Rita knew about Fayetteville and Fort Bragg was what most people knew about the place—the MacDonald murders. In 1970 Jeffrey MacDonald, a handsome Green Beret doctor, had killed his wife and kids here, an act that received enormous amounts of publicity for decades.

  People still associate Fayetteville with the crime. It was one of the things that had fascinated me about the town. When I did a story on the thirtieth anniversary of the murders, I went over to the renovated MacDonald quarters at 544 Castle Drive and talked with the current residents—a sergeant and his family. I was taken aback when I saw all the angel pictures and figurines inside. Sometimes, the sergeant told me, late at night after his family had gone to bed, he’d see the shadowy face of a little girl peeking at him from the stairs. He had no idea what had happened in the house so many years before. The Army never told him. Instead the family learned of its notoriety when they noticed people constantly stopping by to take pictures.

  While I was reporting the story, MacDonald wrote to me from prison, sending a handwritten, four-page letter on his physician’s letterhead. He still proclaimed his innocence, believing that DNA evidence and the appeals process would vindicate him, and in the process chaining Fayetteville to a time it wanted desperately to forget.

  Rita’s first impression of Fayetteville was a blur of billboards in every size and color, and a mess of fast-food joints, pawn shops, and used-car lots. She didn’t spot any of the tall buildings you’d expect in a city, just highways and an endless stream of commercial franchises. How was she ever going to get comfortable driving here? Rita knew she was a long way from Alex City, where the nearest mall was forty miles away.

  Their journey ended on the west side of town in front of a chocolate-brown brick house with overgrown bushes. But Suga Circle was unlike any place Rita had ever lived. Rita’s parents had divorced when she was a baby, and her father had died when she was eleven. Her mother worked in the cotton mills. Rita had grown up in a house with no heater and busted-out windows. Her whole life she’d wanted to live in a brick house. She was overjoyed.

  Rita followed a worn carpet into the family room. “Look, boys, a fireplace!” She spotted the dishwasher next and started to cry. “People are going to say I’m spoiled, Brian.”

  He considered the house an average one, much like the place he grew up in, in Cocoa, Florida, but he knew it would be special for Rita. The house rented for $635 a month and had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, central heating and air-conditioning, and a garage-door opener. Rita had never dreamed of that.

  “My little podunk self is going to live here?” she said as the boys ran from room to room. “This is like a Cinderella fairyland.”

  Later that night Brian took Rita and the boys to the barracks, where he still had some boxes to pick up. It was too dark for Rita to see much. Home to single, junior enlisted soldiers, the barracks smelled like an eighth-grade-boys’ locker room. The odor just about knocked Rita over. In the hallway a soldier with his shirt off strummed a guitar.

  “Hey, Scrotum,” a soldier with a skull tattoo greeted Brian. “Scrotum!” yelled another. Scrotum? Then Rita got it. Odom. Scrotum.

  At 4:30 A.M. Brian got up and told Rita he wouldn’t be seeing her much in the coming weeks. He had to work on his Expert Infantryman’s Badge, a must-have for every grunt in the 82nd Airborne Division.

  Rita didn’t know a soul and didn’t know her way around. After several days, any romantic visions she had of marriage to a soldier were fading with every piece of furniture she lugged off the U-Haul by herself. The next four months were a polarity of accomplishment and frustration. She tried hard to be a housewife, but when she found herself staring at a daytime TV schedule, she knew she was in trouble. She talked to Brian about getting a job at Burger King, but he wouldn’t hear of it. So she looked at car dealerships but never got any calls back. That was fine with Brian. He wanted her to stay home and take care of the house and the “little ones,” as he called them.

  “Rita, you’ve had it hard all your life,” he said. “Now you can rest. I’m going to support you.” Brian’s conviction was heartfelt, but it felt odd to Rita, who had learned the hard way how to be independent, to ask for grocery money. She wanted to finish school and earn a paycheck at something other than a dead-end job. Potty training and ironing her husband’s BDUs was not the life she had imagined. BDU was one of the first Army terms Rita learned; it stood for battle dress uniform, the everyday attire for soldiers at Fort Bragg. Brian, like many soldiers, was particular about how he looked in his uniform. After her first failed attempt to crease his pants properly, he picked up the iron himself.

  “Okay, Rita,” Brian said, standing in front of the ironing board, his legs apart. “I’m gonna show you how to do it this ooone time. Are you ready? It has to be this way.” And with that Brian ironed a ruler-straight crease down the seam of his green-and-black camouflage-print pants. Perfect. “Got it?”

  Rita pressed her lips together and tried to look serious. “Okay, honey.” That was one memory she kept to herself.

  Brian used so many Army acronyms that Rita often didn’t know what he was talking about. His truck was his POV (privately owned vehicle), the mess hall was the DFAC (dining facility), 11 Bravo was his infantryman job, and so on. When he told her he had to be at work at 0600 and to expect him home at 1700, Rita had no clue. Brian explained military time to her, and she spent several months counting on her fing
ers before she learned the system without thinking about it.

  At least she’d figured out how to juggle their meager finances. Brian got paid the first and the fifteenth of every month, and Rita had quickly learned to avoid Wal-Mart and grocery stores on those days. The Odoms were digging their way out of credit-card debt; they lived paycheck to paycheck. Every dollar went to bills and food. Even then they couldn’t always stretch the funds to the next payday, so Rita fed her family by using “floating” or “hot” checks, as she called them. She paid by check at the grocery store on a Saturday, knowing it wouldn’t be cashed before payday. This system worked well, and Brian was proud he had a wife who was so resourceful. Floating checks was such a common practice in the Army that in October 2004 the Army and Family Readiness Groups (FRGs) disseminated e-mails and flyers to soldiers’ families informing them of a new law by which checks would be cleared electronically within minutes.

  They’d been lucky with furniture, too. For months they sat on boxes and lawn furniture; then a soldier in Brian’s unit gave the couple a dinette set and a wood-frame couch with a Western print. Its tan cushions showed a fireplace with a pot on the hearth, a deer head and rifle hung above, and a horseshoe nailed onto the mantelpiece. In front a cowboy hat teetered on the back of a rocking chair. When Brian brought it home, Rita thought it was the most godawful thing she had ever seen, but it was functional. It’ll keep my butt off the floor, she said to herself.

  Rita got up and made herself another mug of cappuccino. Near the window on a table stood a ten-dollar artificial Christmas tree that looked nothing like its picture on the box. It, too, came from Family Dollar.

  “Rita, it’s Christmas, we’ve gotta have a tree, at least for the kids,” Brian had said despite Rita’s protests. It seemed like a waste of money. In the past she had simply put her boys’ gifts in the corners of her house.