Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Army Wives

by Tanya Biank

  Andrea had hurt her ankle playing softball in April and had to wear a leg brace herself. Her friends teased her that she “had to keep up with Brandon.” At home it was no joking matter. When she had asked Brandon to take her to the hospital, Brandon reminded her how she had blamed him for hurting his knee. “Drive yourself there, bitch,” he told her. “You did it to yourself, take yourself.” He wasn’t happy that she was on the team in the first place. She had enough to do.

  They arrived in Alliance after dark, the atmosphere between them so tense it was immediately obvious to Andrea’s mother. Although they were exhausted, the couple stayed for just two hours, kissed the children good-bye, then headed back to North Carolina so Brandon could leave the next day. They hardly spoke the entire way. Andrea was preoccupied, thinking back to the previous weekend.

  Brandon had been gone again. When Andrea had to work late and close the store, she asked Joanne if she would watch the kids overnight. As the athletic footwear manager, Andrea was also an assistant manager for the store. That meant she often closed the store at nine-thirty in the evening and left at ten. She’d seen the Stricklands only three times since moving to Stedman. When the couple were in town, they’d drop by the store to say hello.

  That Sunday Andrea drove back to Cameron and met Joanne and the kids at church. It felt good to be back, but odd, too. So much had happened since they’d moved away from the town. Things seemed simpler then, purer. She listened as Mark Strickland finished his sermon. “Now I’d like to extend an invitation for anybody who wants to pray to come forward to invite Christ into your heart. If you already know the Lord and are burdened and need help, come forward.”

  Andrea and several others stood up and walked to the front. Mark asked if anyone would like him to join in prayer, and Andrea, who was kneeling, nodded yes.

  “I feel like I’m not as close to the Lord as I once was,” she said.

  Andrea hardly ever cried, but now the tears streamed down her face. “I had a relationship with the Lord,” she went on, “and I need to rededicate my life to Christ. I haven’t been in church like I should be; I’m not happy that the kids haven’t been going. Since I left here I haven’t found a church where I fit in. I’m under a lot of stress. Pray that I can find peace.”

  Mark leaned over her and prayed for her to recommit to the Lord. Andrea felt better and gave Mark a hug.

  “I appreciate it,” she said. “You’ll always be my pastor.”

  After church Joanne and Andrea went to Food Lion for groceries. Since Joanne had watched the kids, Andrea paid for the pork chops. She tried hard to be peppy.

  But as they waited in line Joanne couldn’t help asking, “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, everything’s okay.”

  Joanne didn’t push it. Andrea and the kids stayed for dinner, then left as the Stricklands were getting ready for Sunday-night prayer service.

  That was a week ago. Now on the way back to Stedman, she blocked out Brandon sitting next to her. Andrea kept her eyes on the road, but her mind was elsewhere.

  She’d met another man.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Every Fourth of July thirty thousand people gather on Fort Bragg’s Main Post Parade Field for a day of relaxation and fun. In 2002, the FBI wanted to make sure the explosions remained the fireworks variety. The bureau had warned local and state law enforcement officials throughout the country of possible terrorist attacks. Fort Bragg took its own precautions, inspecting vehicles entering post and randomly searching bags and coolers along the parade field. The summer’s drought made Fayetteville feel like a preheated oven, and by 1:00 P.M. the temperature had hit ninety degrees. It would climb another five as the afternoon progressed.

  Army wife Marilyn Styles-Griffin spent the long holiday moving into the fifteen-thousand-dollar trailer she had rented. It was a first step for the thirty-two-year-old-woman, who was starting a new life apart from her estranged husband, Sergeant Cedric Griffin. Less than a week later, Marilyn was dead, and her new home had been swallowed up in flames. Soon after her husband was charged with her murder.

  Ever since I first heard the details of the attack, I’ve wondered what could have caused such violence. Was it rage? Madness? What could possibly lead to such a brutal act? New details that I have uncovered make clear that the attack was even more vicious than had first been reported.

  Marilyn, an attractive black woman, had separated from her twenty-eight-year-old husband in May. It was the third time during their eight-year marriage that she had tried to break away. Her two daughters, six-year-old Breaunna and two-year-old Kiana, were the children of other men with whom she had had relationships while the couple was separated.

  By the time Marilyn had moved into her trailer, things were finally coming together for her: She had recently gotten a job as a security guard, working at a chicken-processing plant in the next county. And now she had her own place. It wasn’t much, but it was hers, one that she hoped her estranged husband wouldn’t find.

  Cedric Griffin, a cook with the 37th Engineer Battalion, worked at the post commissary preparing ready-made meals. Marilyn had threatened to tell his supervisors that he had gotten a female subordinate pregnant. On Monday evening, July 8, he stopped by for a visit.

  Marilyn opened the door. She stood five feet eight inches tall, 164 pounds, her feet were bare with toenails painted bright red, the same color she had painted her daughters’. She wore her hair in a ponytail and had on a T-shirt and shorts. A heart-shaped tattoo with the name “Dale” was visible on her right outer calf.

  Cedric walked in, and three hours later Marilyn was dead. She had been stabbed with a kitchen knife more than seventy times, and her body set on fire. Many of her wounds were shallow half-inch punctures. But deeper gashes had punctured her liver, aorta, and jugular vein and fractured some ribs. She eventually died of internal bleeding, but I learned she had been alive for a short while after she was set on fire. Firefighters found her charred body under a pile of bed sheets, which had been lit. Part of a blue plastic milk crate had melted into her hair.

  Investigators told me there easily could have been three murders that night. When Cedric Griffin ran from the trailer, Marilyn’s two little girls were asleep in the bedroom they shared at the opposite end of the trailer. Marilyn had taught her oldest what to do if she ever heard the smoke alarm go off: Grab your sister and run for help. When Breaunna heard the blaring noise at 2:00 A.M., she got up and sped down the hall to her mother’s bedroom. The door to the bedroom was shut and too hot for her to open, so she ran back to her bedroom, took her two-year-old sister by the hand, and went next door to a neighbor’s.

  By Tuesday evening Cedric Griffin was in handcuffs, charged with first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, and first-degree arson. He hung his head and shuffled his lanky frame past the TV cameras as homicide detectives from the sheriff’s department brought him before the magistrate in the basement of the Cumberland County Law Enforcement Center. Soldiers all over Fayetteville cringed when they saw what Griffin was wearing—a gray PT T-shirt with the word ARMY in three-inch black letters stamped across the front.

  Just a few days earlier, in Carolina heat unparalleled for its humidity, thousand of people were moving along Fort Bragg’s Main Post Parade Field like ants over a slice of Wonder Bread. They had gathered for the post’s annual Fourth of July celebration, which was topped off each year at precisely 9:45 in the evening with fireworks and the 1812 Overture with enough cannon blasts, compliments of the corps artillery, to rattle the general’s bedroom windows. The festivities started at three o’clock with live bands, carnival games, kiddy rides, and food stands selling everything from bratwurst and beer to funnel cakes and fluorescent glow-in-the-dark necklaces. Some families staked out their turf with a blanket when the grass was still cool with morning dew, but the lucky ones could watch the festivities from their front porches.

  The Odoms had arrived an hour ago. As they maneuvered their way thro
ugh the throngs of people, Brian’s cell phone rang. (They could finally afford one.) He knew before he answered who the caller would be and what he would have to say. Brian had told Rita a few days ago that she should be prepared for him to deploy to Afghanistan on short notice. What he didn’t tell her was that his bags had been packed for weeks. He didn’t want to break any rules, but as the deployment window drew closer, he didn’t want to catch his wife off guard either. Instead it was Brian who was caught off guard. He had thought the call would come after the holiday weekend.

  “We’re leaving tomorrow,” his squad leader said. “Make sure you have everything. Be ready to leave in the morning.” Brian put the cell phone back in his pocket and looked into Rita’s eyes.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow. Do you want to stay or go?” Brian watched the color drain from his wife’s face. It was as if all the sounds around them had been muted.

  “I’m not in the mood to stay,” was all Rita could say. Even before the Army had entered her world, Rita knew that life wasn’t fair. “Play with the hand you are dealt” was her motto. If life gives you lemons, squirt someone with juice. And she had learned what every Army wife knew to be true: Believe it when you see it. For Rita that meant not when signed orders arrived or a phone call came, but when her husband was back in her arms, or left.

  She believed it now. The moment she had been dreading for almost two years had arrived. At least Brian had been there to celebrate their second wedding anniversary the day before. The Odoms headed home. Instead of watching the fireworks at Bragg, the couple lit sparklers for the boys in their front yard.

  The next morning Rita stood near Gela Street, where the 1st Battalion of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment had five sets of three-story beige concrete barracks, and watched Brian and the other soldiers lay out their weapons and rucksacks on the rocks.

  The “rocks” is the name given to what looks like a huge oblong sandbox, filled with stones, where soldiers line up for formation. The barracks and the battalion headquarters have a good location, across from the 82nd’s parade field on Ardennes Street. The disadvantage is that the path from the Division headquarters to Ardennes Street cuts through the battalion area. Every morning, the 82nd’s commanding general and his command group jog by and see what is happening. Some days that can be a positive thing, others not, but the battalion got a lot of visibility just by coincidence.

  Brian wore his desert camouflage uniform and his rank of sergeant, which he had finally pinned on the previous January. The promotion meant more responsibility and $163 a month more in pay.

  Suddenly the platoon sergeant announced, “We’re not going today, we’re going tomorrow.” The soldiers let out a collective groan.

  Departure times and dates are notorious for getting scratched, delayed, rescheduled, and then changed again, due to everything from bad weather to maintenance problems. Such changes rattle the soldiers and their families. It is like waiting for your execution, then having a couple hours’ reprieve.

  Brian had already said good-bye to Rita and the boys and sent them on their way. He would have to call Rita’s school and have someone track her down so she could pick him up.

  When she arrived, he wasn’t sure what to say. Finally he mumbled a less-than-convincing, “All right, the hard part is out of the way. It won’t be as bad the second time.”

  That night Rita and Brian lay in bed, naked under a sheet, as was their nightly habit. Instead of making love, they held each other and cried. Rita just wanted to soak in as much of her husband’s physical being as she could. What if he didn’t come home? When he was gone, she wanted to be able to close her eyes and see him and smell him. They never did sleep that night, just lay in the dark whispering and holding each other and focusing on their favorite memory.

  “Do you remember the night we met, Brian?” Rita said, her arms circling her husband’s waist. “It was a night that seemed like nothing. But it was the moment that defined our lives. Look how far we’ve come. Who knew that a few years later we’d be holding each other like this?”

  The following morning, a Saturday, Brian again laid out his equipment on the rocks and again said good-bye. And again the soldiers were told they weren’t leaving for another day. Brian and Rita were at Taco Bell when his cell phone rang this time. His squad leader told him to come back. They were leaving that afternoon.

  Back at the barracks one more time, Rita looked around at all the families grouped together near the picnic tables behind the flat-roofed buildings. Children ran after one another, and soldiers lined up their equipment and bags on the rocks.

  Rita stood near Sherry, who was holding Tiffany’s new baby. It was the first time Rita had seen Tiffany since she had flashed her backside at the guy at the Waffle House. Mandy had moved during the summer, and she had met Jenna only a few times at FRG meetings. The women started to catch up, but when the cattle cars lumbered to a stop and lined up on Ardennes, they broke off their conversations. They stared at the drivers as if they were ferrymen who had come to take their husbands across the river Styx. The cattle cars resembled windowless metal boxcars on wheels. Inside, soldiers burdened with rucksacks and rifles sat on wooden benches against the skin of the truck while others packed into the aisle. The trucks were an easy, albeit uncomfortable, way to transport large numbers of paratroopers wearing full battle rattle.

  “Okay, the cattle cars are here,” Rita said, sighing deeply. This time Brian really was leaving. Rita now knew what a soldier meant when he says, “The sooner I leave, the sooner I can come home.” Three good-byes in two days had left her as emotionally dried up as her tears. Rita rounded up her sons and made her way over to Brian.

  Brian looked down at the boys and gave each a hug. “Help your mama. Stay strong. You guys have to be the little men of the house. Don’t be fixin’ to get a free ride ’cause I’m not here,” he added. “Your mama’s softer than I am, but I’m coming back.”

  “Go kill the bad guys,” said Johnathan, who was now four. He had been telling everyone he came in contact with, from store clerks to his day-care teachers, that his daddy was going to kill bad guys.

  The chaplain had coached soldiers in what to say to their kids. Brian explained he was leaving so he could help their family and other families feel safe, and that it wasn’t their fault he was going away Rita showed the boys on the calendar how long their father would be away. “It’s going to be a long time,” she said.

  “If daddy just comes home for my birthday,” Johnathan piped up.

  Brian turned to Rita. All their problems seemed trivial now. He wouldn’t see her again until the following winter.

  “Thank you for sticking by me and putting up with me,” he said. It was one of those awkward moments where no words seemed to be the right ones.

  “Stay safe and keep your head down,” she said, her arms forming a wreath around his neck.

  “Rita, we’ve been training a long time for something like this—”

  “I know. Just be safe and come home to me.”

  “I will. Let’s go to the car now, Rita. It’s time to go.”

  The news crews were arriving, and Brian could tell that his superiors were antsy to have the families gone and their soldiers refocused.

  “Rita, it’s time.”

  Brian walked Rita and the kids to the car on Gela. Rita had parked in the B Lane, the yellow-lined middle strip of road designated for military vehicles. She had written Brian love notes and hidden them in his duffel bag.

  “Look through your bag, but don’t find them all at once,” she told him.

  Rita got in the car and rolled the window down and kissed Brian again.

  “Can you call my mom and let her know I got off?” he asked. “Write me and send me pictures and don’t forget to crank my truck once in a while.”

  Yes, she would do all those things.

  “Be sweet, but not too sweet,” Brian said. He always told Rita that. It was his pet saying, a way of telling her to be tough when s
he had to be.

  “I’ll be here when you get home,” Rita said. Brian had told her a lot of the guys were worried about Jody moving in once they moved out.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Brian asked.

  “No, I’m not going to be okay, but nobody’s gonna know I’m not okay.”

  How could you be when you were losing your right arm? Rita thought. As she watched Brian walk away, she realized how much she had come to rely on her husband. It took a certain level of trust to be dependent on somebody else. She had let Brian in, and it had taken away some of her personal power. I’m gonna have to get back in touch with the chick who didn’t need anybody, she told herself.

  Brian picked up his gear and headed for the cattle cars. He had wanted to join the Army ever since he watched the GI Joe cartoon as a kid. He never missed an episode. Now after five years in the Army, this was the moment he had been waiting for. It was like a surgeon practicing on cadavers for five years, then finally getting a chance to operate.

  As much as he wanted to stay with Rita, he was excited to go on a real mission. All the guys in his platoon were ecstatic, euphoric almost. Like Brian, most of them came from rough backgrounds, and they took pride in the fact that they weren’t preppy boys with Polo shirts and BMWs in high school. While a few had joined the Army for college money, most just wanted to be soldiers and go to war. And this mission, on the heels of 9/11, was a significant one.

  Rita sat behind the wheel with tears leaving wet trails on her cheeks. He’s gone. She started up her Ford Escort. We’re going to get through this and come out the other side better. I won’t fail. I’m not going to be weak. Brian’s going to come back to the same wife he left and to the life he left. Rita would make sure of that. He was going to be gone for seven months in a foreign country. Rita didn’t want him coming home to another strange land.