Soldier Girls (12 page)

Later that spring, the 113th Support Battalion traveled to Fort Polk, Louisiana, to spend two weeks in joint readiness training exercises. While most of Bravo Company flew to Louisiana, Desma instead rode in a convoy down to Louisville, Kentucky, where she helped load trucks onto river barges. The barge operators balked at allowing Desma herself to board, as there were no other women in the flotilla, but after a short commotion during which she cursed a lot, she was allowed onto a barge. They floated slowly down the Ohio and then the Mississippi. At Fort Polk, the contingent that had come by water met up with the others who had come by air, carrying Debbie Helton's potatoes in their rucksacks. Hoskins grew frustrated when he discovered that only Bravo Company could use their radios; soldiers in the other companies kept causing the radios to malfunction. And if the soldiers couldn't talk to each other, they couldn't do joint readiness exercises. The whole point of joint readiness was acting in concert, which was only possible if they could communicate.

Hoskins sent Desma around to fix what was wrong. She walked all over Fort Polk, stopping at one truck after another, giving impromptu courses on the radio's digital timing. Desma delivered her lessons in plain language, never made people feel dumb, cracked jokes about the idiocy of the military in giving them this complicated shit, and made the radios work. At one point, Desma realized she had been retiming radios
straight through the night and had not slept at all. The Louisiana sun blazed overhead. She crawled under a trailer because the shade looked so inviting. A sergeant major found her napping there.

“Soldier, get out from underneath that truck!” he hollered.

Desma snapped, “Sergeant Major, I've been running my ass off for twenty-three hours out of the last twenty-four. What have you done today? When did you get out of bed?”

He marched off in a huff and she went back to sleep.

When she got all the radios up, Hoskins was so relieved that he gave Desma a medal of commendation. “Specialist Brooks was selected by the joint readiness training center's observer controllers as a unit logistics warrior for the training period,” wrote her commanding officer. “Her knowledge of the SINGCARS operation was instrumental in the success of the mission. . . . Specialist Desma D. Brooks devoted attention to all of her many responsibilities with resourcefulness and enthusiasm. Specialist Brooks displays a winning personality coupled with a positive attitude which resulted in her surpassing the standard in setting the example for other soldiers to follow.”

Years later, Desma would call that moment her single greatest achievement. Sometimes Desma seemed compromised in other areas of life, yet when the military put her in front of a piece of technology, she performed like a virtuoso. Her friend Stacy Glory was the unit's most adept user of the complicated military software known as SAMS (Standard Army Maintenance System), and she taught Desma the system's rules and kinks. Soon Desma became known as a whiz on the SAMS system, too. In the summer of 2000, when it came time to renew her contract, Desma did not hesitate to sign up for another three years. “I got friends,” she said. “I only have to show up one weekend a month and hang out for two weeks in the summer. Yeah, it's a bitch, but it ain't so bad. It's an extra paycheck, you know? They ain't going to send me anywhere, no big deal.” She got another $2,500 bonus for reenlisting.

That fall, Desma voted for George W. Bush for president. She did not consider herself a Republican, necessarily; she voted for the person who struck her as the most real human being, regardless of their place on the political spectrum. She was moved by small, idiosyncratic revelations of character—she followed the news closely, and read current events like
a novel, zeroing in on particular moments she found telling. She decided not to vote for Gore after she saw him fail to recognize a marble bust of George Washington, for example. She voted for Bush because she thought he was no bullshit. Also, she had liked his father. Back in the 1990s, Desma had devoured news of the Persian Gulf War. She had been surprised to learn that before the war, the United States had helped to bolster Saddam Hussein's hold on power so as to thwart Iran. Desma thought if you were going to carry a gun, you might as well try to understand the context in which it might be fired.

Initially, she had applauded getting the US troops out of the Gulf quickly, before too many American soldiers lost their lives, but in the years that followed, after she heard about Hussein's alleged atrocities, she came to view the decision to leave him in power as a mistake. Desma was troubled by Hussein's alleged barbarity, such as the killing of thousands of Kurds in what became known as the Halabja massacre. “If you didn't agree with him and you were not of his particular Muslim belief—Sunni, Shiite, whatever—he mustard-gassed them. He drew them into an auditorium, offering land by parcel, first come, first served, shut the doors, and killed four thousand people with mustard gas.” She did not believe in allowing despots to remain in power.

Early in 2001, Desma's marriage fell apart. Desma recounted the developments in this way: her husband started a new job and told her he was earning enough to cover their bills, but somehow the mortgage payments did not get paid, and the bank announced it was going to put the house into foreclosure. Dennis moved out, and they began divorce proceedings. Josh started third grade that fall, while Desma was still in the middle of trying to unsnarl the financial tangle. The girls were only two and three years old, and spent their days at home with Desma, or with her cousin Lesley, when Desma had to go to work. One morning that September, Desma put Josh on the bus and turned on
Good Morning America
while she fixed eggs for her daughters. Jury selection had begun in the trial of Andrea Yates, a woman who was accused of drowning her five children. Then the hosts interrupted the show. “There's been some sort of explosion at the World Trade Center in New York City,” said Diane Sawyer. “One report said, and we can't confirm any of this, that a plane may have hit one of the two towers of the World Trade Center.”
Desma stared at a live image of black smoke billowing out of the tower, then she watched as a second airplane plowed into the other tower.

“My God!” cried Diane Sawyer. Her cohost, Charles Gibson, announced, “This looks like some sort of a concerted effort to attack the World Trade Center.”

Desma agreed; she knew what she had just seen was not an accident.

A neighbor called. “Are you watching this?” she asked in disbelief.

“Holy shit, what does this
mean
?” Desma said.

“I don't know—I just needed to call somebody,” her neighbor replied.

Desma heard from her readiness NCO later in the day, but all he said was, “We're not going anywhere, we're not doing anything right now. Just wait for more instructions.”

“Well, if you need me, I'm here,” Desma said.

That evening, she kept the television on, hoping for survivors, but every time Josh saw the airplanes fly into the skyscrapers he told his mother that another attack was occurring. “Pick a movie,” Desma finally told him. They turned off the news and watched
The Lion King.
That was how 9/11 unfolded for Desma—live TV, phone calls from friends in the Guard, and then a Disney movie. She did not find it incongruous to yaw from conversations with fellow soldiers to caring for her children; these were the various aspects of her life, her incoming and outgoing tides, and they felt to her like an integrated whole. She happened to be both a soldier and a mother, and did not see the two roles as being at odds.

In the days that followed, anti-Muslim sentiment flared across southern Indiana. Desma drove through Petersburg and saw a sign in the window of a family-owned gas station that said,
RUN, RAGHEADS, RUN.
She and Stacy Glory made bets on who would utter the most racist comments inside the Bedford armory, but neither of them anticipated hearing that kind of talk from one particular leader, a man they had always respected.

“Drop a bomb, kill 'em all,” Desma heard him say. “Fuckin' ragheads.”

“How can you say that?” she objected. “I can understand you being angry, but Jesus Christ! You can't just wipe out an entire nation of people because of a small group of extremists. Then you're no better than Hitler, or those people in Rwanda!”

But she might as well have been speaking Latin.

Although Desma did not like the blanket hatred that she saw around
her, she supported President Bush's “war on terror.” He had to take decisive action, she thought, he couldn't just stand by and let it happen; otherwise more people would do the same thing. She took note of the subsequent vote in Congress, and felt scorn for the individual who had cast the lone dissent. How could you vote against a war on terror? The new security measures at the airport should have been adopted long ago as far as she was concerned. At the same time, Desma held part of herself in reserve, waiting for fallout. That was what she did in a crisis—put part of herself away for safekeeping. He has to do something, God help him, Desma thought; I think he's doing the right thing, but I'm going to wait and see.

In the months that followed, Desma tried to track the course of the war in Afghanistan, but she had trouble finding good news coverage. It drove her crazy that the reports were so niggling; only BBC Radio seemed to disburse much information. As casualties began to accrue, she was struck by how few people around her seemed aware that the war was resulting in deaths. The following year, Desma sold her house in lieu of foreclosure, and used the proceeds to pay off the outstanding property taxes and mortgage payments. She made no money on the deal, but succeeded in wiping out their debt. After her divorce became final, Desma got a new job waiting tables at a nearby truck stop. It served food and fuel to the traffic flowing along Interstate 64. A modern-day river of freight, I-64 echoed the course of the nearby Ohio as it cut from east to west across southern Indiana. The truck stop was near the town of Dale, right where the interstate crossed Highway 231, then the longest north-to-south route in Indiana. Desma dropped her children off at her cousin Lesley's house on her way to work; she paid her cousin to care for the two girls while Josh went to school. Sometimes Lesley watched Josh, too; Lesley had two children of her own, one of them a boy close to Josh's age, and the pair of them wrangled like brothers.

At the truck stop, Desma learned how to carry a big tray, and joshed amiably with the regulars. Steel haulers stopped by for dinner, killing time as they waited for their rigs to be loaded at AK Steel's cold mill facility, down beside the Ohio. It produced the widest steel sheet in North America. Other drivers ate lunch while their rigs were loaded with shiny rolls of aluminum over at the Alcoa smelting facility in Warrick. Desma
also got to know the truckers who worked for Heartland Express, an Indiana-based trucking company that specialized in short to medium hauls for the automotive, plastic, paper, manufacturing, food, and retail industries, as well as the drivers for Montgomery, an Ohio-based trucking company that specialized in refrigerated goods and dry freight. She knew the drivers by their CB handles. Bone Hauler carried steel; Old Man worked for Heartland Express; Scatterbrain and Outlaw did repo work, confiscating rigs from owner-operators who could not make their payments. The truckers appreciated the outgoing waitress with the saucy manner. You could walk in looking pretty rough and you would not faze Desma. She took home several hundred dollars a week in tips.

Desma met Jimmy on a cold night in November 2002. He delivered brand-new rigs to truckers all over the states of Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Jimmy sat down at one of Desma's tables with a group that was telling jokes that got dirtier as the sky darkened. Jimmy grew chagrined after spotting a plastic bracelet on Desma's wrist that said
WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?
Josh had brought it home from Bible school one Sunday afternoon as a gift for his mother. It wasn't Desma's style but she wore it for his sake.

Jimmy assumed she was church-going and said they better stop telling such bad jokes or they were going to offend their waitress.

“What screws like a tiger and winks?” asked Desma.

“What?” said Jimmy.

“Roar!”
said Desma and winked.

The other truckers slapped at the Formica until their plates jumped. Jimmy asked her what she was doing that evening. She had plans, Desma said. It was karaoke night. She was going to make a fool of herself with some of the other waitresses. Jimmy came along and watched. Then he asked if Desma would like to go out to dinner sometime. She said no thanks, because the transmission had just dropped out of her car, and it was in the shop, leaving her stranded.

“I have a Firebird you can drive,” said Jimmy.

“I'm not going to drive your car,” said Desma.

“Just until you get yours fixed.”

“I've got kids,” said Desma.

“I understand,” said Jimmy.

He drove her back to his place and gave her the keys to his Firebird. It was red, fast, and low to the ground. Jimmy told her not to wreck it. That evening, snow started falling, and did not stop until the following day. While trying to pick up Josh, Desma spun the Firebird into a four-foot bank of plowed snow. The car was not damaged, but she couldn't get it to move. She called Jimmy.

“I got your car stuck,” she confessed.

“What the hell!” he said. “You haven't had it for twenty-four hours!”

She laughed that chugging belly laugh. Jimmy and his father came to dig the car out. Jimmy was ten years older than Desma, lean, rough-looking, with dark hair and a long mustache that drooped down either side of his mouth. He had never been in the military and had no enthusiasm for her service, but he liked her and he liked her children. He had some of his own, although they were older. Desma and Jimmy dated for a few months, fell into a routine, and decided to try living together. They found an old concrete garage in Hatfield, Indiana, that had been converted into a living space. It was twelve hundred square feet and prone to flooding. When they got heavy rain, Desma had to walk up and down the street, cleaning out the old leaves and debris from the ditch. Otherwise water came in through her front door. “I'd be out there up to my knees in mud,” said Desma. “But you can't have three inches of water in your living room while you're raising children. It doesn't work.” Desma and Jimmy split the rent, which was $550 a month.