The one where I got my husband arrested
Those of you who have more recently friended me on Facebook, if you're here, may be thinking at this point:
Husband?!!?!? What husband? I thought you had sworn off men!
I'm gonna sound a bit Miracle Max here, but I've only mostly sworn off men. I say that because one thing I've learned as I stagger through middle age and trip over things is this: just when I think I have figured something out, here comes evidence that I haven't. Don't get smug, genderdorks. I don't mean the immutability of human anatomical sex. Anyway, I'd say I've 99% sworn off men. But that 1% is so unlikely that you might as well say I've sworn off men. At this point the only two possible men I'd even look at twice live on another continent across a whole-ass ocean and barely know I'm alive. Plus I look like a troll. Plus I have a really hard time trusting men anyway. It ain't happening.
And speaking of which. You are correct that I am single these days. I got married once in my life and I left my husband literally half my life ago. Bizarre to think.
Wanna hear why I left him?
YEAH! I mean, the title of this essay alone has got you curious. Okay. Pull up a chair. You really need to quit walking around with your nose in your phone.
Anyway. Setting the stage. So, I met this guy named Mike who lived in my barracks in Savannah, Georgia in my final six or seven months in the Army. And I had this really bad habit, for a long time, of thinking I'd fallen in love with a guy LESS than six months after I'd met him, and usually a lot quicker than that. It was no different with Mike; to be fair, it's not like he did anything to discourage me. (He may have even been the first one of the two of us to say "I love you." It's been too long now. Can't remember.) Unfortunately I had failed my last physical fitness test (sort of on purpose, as in letting myself get enough out of shape; I was fed up with the Army and viewed my enlistment in same as a huge mistake) and so I was due to be discharged soon. I had a few local friends, but no serious community; once I was discharged, I was very likely to go home, which at that time was just north of Memphis. But Mike proposed first and I thought the whole thing was crazy but I also thought we loved one another, so I thought we'd figure it all out. I accepted.
We married in March of '95. We were wed at the courthouse in downtown Savannah by a judge who later went on to swear in Savannah's first black mayor, so that was nifty. But it was an elopement, I had once promised my maternal grandfather he could dance at my wedding, and I really did want my family involved somehow, so we decided to not tell them we were marrying and we'd just throw a wedding later and invite everyone. It didn't really matter when people thought my anniversary was, so long as everyone was happy.
(I am pretty sure there are still people from my old life who think my wedding was shotgun. Nope. Math's all wrong. If birth legitimacy weren't a bullshit concept, my son is 100% legit.)
We had my son a year later, at a time when Mike didn't want to be a dad yet, and money was an early and then perpetual stressor in our marriage, and Mike had to navigate his career, too. Plus there were quirks in my personality that he found irritating and offputting. Other stuff went on that undermined me emotionally that was in no way his fault. There were all sorts of things going on. I'm honestly surprised we lasted as long as we did. Second longest relationship after my daughter's father -- four years (in person, including but not only the marriage) to Matt's five. (Everything after that five years was just Matt and me trying to raise our daughter and not murder one another.) But eventually things did decay a bit too far and in November '98, Mike said the D word. Not that D word. The one involving lawyers.
"Let's try marital counseling first," I suggested. He agreed. God knows we needed it.
But we never got around to it.
By the late nineties we were living in North Carolina. The Army has this standard that you can only serve so many years in a pay grade before they ask you to leave because you're not progressing. I cannot for the life of me remember why, but Mike opted to go Green Beret if they'd have him, because by the time he got done with training they would have promoted him to sergeant. He was accepted along with a guy named Scott from his old unit in Georgia who had also relocated to North Carolina and then split with his wife and moved in with us. It was a whole thing. (Not THAT sort of thing.) Anyway, they completed their phase-one training and came home.
Mike had this hobby of constantly trying to find deals on parts for our computer. He used to buy that huge honkin' Computer Shopper magazine back when shopping online wasn't a normal thing yet. He'd been trying to get our scanner working, an endeavor that frequently saw him swearing horribly and almost throwing it out the window (it had a SCSI connector, and those of you who are computer geeks are now nodding your heads in sympathy), and he had this other friend from his old Georgia unit who supposedly knew a guy (relative?) who could get him a deal on some other parts. I don't even remember now. He made plans to go to Savannah and look into it during the holiday break, pretty much spur of the moment (I thought then).
New Year's Eve '98 (going into New Year's Day '99), he and Scott left the house to go on their little road trip. I had exacted a promise from him that he'd get his shit done and come back in time for me to go to work. I had been out of work for literal months and had finally found a part-time job at Kroger AND a daycare provider (Sean was two, a bit young for preschool) who had nighttime and weekend hours, but I couldn't bail out of the former at the last minute and couldn't ask the latter to take my son at the last minute either. Mike said no problem, he'd be back, and he and Scott went out the door.
He'd gotten the scanner working, so I was organizing photos and scanning some right as he walked back through the door maybe two hours later, grimy and breathing hard.
"What?" I said. "I thought you were going to Savannah."
"We didn't go to Savannah," he replied. "Honey, we have to talk."
We were in the den, me still seated at the computer desk, him at the doorway going into the kitchen. He crouched down facing me and leaned against the wall, still breathing hard. I saw he was euphoric.
He explained that he and Scott had taken Scott's pickup truck, which Scott had recently fitted with a camper shell, over to Fort Bragg to Mike's old parachute-rigger shop. There were garage doors (or one, anyway) on the building and apparently some way to enter the building by way of the roof. So one of them climbed up, let himself in through the roof, and opened the garage door to let the other one drive the truck in. When they closed the garage door, no one could see what was going on from the outside.
They then proceeded to steal at least one complete computer system, several other pieces and parts, at least a couple of printers, and a whole-ass Xerox machine. Yes, the big office tanks. One of those. He and Scott had put it all in the workshop in our backyard.
Oh, and they'd been planning the whole thing. For six fucking months. I suddenly remembered having overheard them discussing the camper shell on Scott's truck. No context, just heard them mention it.
You know that weird electrical humming thing you get down in your gut when shit has suddenly gone completely and irreversibly wrong?
"Why did you do it?" I asked him.
"Well... think of it as a disgruntled-employee kind of thing."
Disgru-- what the fuck? His employer was the Army, not merely some fucking parachute-rigger outfit, no matter how he had felt about the latter. The Army had just put its faith in him to be worthy of special-ops training. Background-checked him, found a clean record, found some Good Conduct medals and his promotion to corporal which most E-4s didn't even get anymore, and then decided to elevate basically his whole fucking career -- and he was fucking disgruntled?
I was too shocked to say any of this, and in those days I had maybe two vertebrae, not even what you would call a spine. I don't even remember what I said. Probably not much of anything. He was pretty caught up in his burglar's high, or whatever it was, in the first place. Either my words wouldn't have moved him or they'd have put me straight into danger. Neither he nor Scott were small men, both were now facing serious legal and career consequences, and both were in the house.
That was early in the morning of New Year's Day 1999. I know at some point I went to bed, and probably had trouble falling asleep. I went in to work later that day (at Kroger, in the deli department) and when I went on break, I just sort of sat there trying to figure out what the fuck to do. I have never been very good at being told No, and that time was no different: I racked my brains trying to figure out a way out of the mess where Mike would not also have to go to jail. But I was drawing a blank.
The rest of it's kind of a blur.
I remember feeling like I had to tiptoe constantly around a couple of ticking time bombs. I would go to bed at night and lie awake, far too aware of one of those time bombs in bed next to me.
I remember Mike and Scott installing one of the stolen computer systems in Scott's room and discussing how to get the Army logo off the desktop and screensaver.
I remember Mike thinking out loud about what to do with their stolen shit and finally concluding, "I think I'll just keep it all!"
I remember Mike noticing me looking at all the stolen shit they'd brought into the house and remarking to Scott, "Look, she's happy about it."
I think that was when I made up my mind I would definitely go to the police. It was one thing if Mike decided to throw away his own ethics, or quit pretending he had good ethics, or whatever the fuck was going on with him. It was quite another, after four fucking years, for him to assume I'd be happy about this thing he had done which had betrayed the Army, wasted taxpayer money (in at least two ways), and thrown our little family into jeopardy. What the fuck kind of person does he think I AM? I asked myself, not without rancor.
I think that was on the second of January and, after I'd made up my mind thusly, the Kroger deli called. I was supposed to be off on the third, but would I come in? They needed me. Mike was standing right there. Oh sure, you bet, I said. I felt terrible, because I knew I wouldn't be going in and I couldn't even tell them why.
On the third, I had pretext to run errands and go to the bank. I couldn't think of a reason to take my son Sean along with me, but I knew I had to, and I suspected that if I just made for the door, he'd demand to be taken along. I was right. "Outside!" he crowed, and ran to the door ahead of me. Whew.
So I drove us to Fort Bragg, and first place I went was the ATM where I withdrew as much as the machine would allow (I think it was around $700), and first place I went after the ATM was the post exchange because they had pay phones. (No cell phones for normal people in those days, y'all.) I knew I had to call my former stepmom, Reba, who'd been basically my mother figure from age three onward. (Oh, and we also memorized phone numbers in those days, y'all.) We'd had our differences over the years, but she was the sort of person who always seemed to know what to do, and she would go full-on Mother Bear if that was also needed.
She answered her phone and I burst into tears for the first time since the whole ordeal began.
Told her the story, and told her that I was hoping for some sort of "out" or middle ground where Mike didn't have to be in trouble, but she quickly disabused me of that notion. You have to go to the police, she said. However, I did not have to go back to the house afterwards. She would help me and Sean check into a motel once I got done talking to the cops, and it would be under an assumed name. That was a lot easier to do in the days before 9/11, and she had used to work in motels and hotels as a night auditor, so she understood that whole process and could properly tip the front-desk staff to what was going on. Of course I agreed. The idea of having to go back to the house scared the shit out of me. I hadn't been a hundred percent sure where I would end up after the police interview was over. Come stay with us when you can, she said. We have an extra bedroom here. Well, okay then.
So on the kiddo and I went to the military police (MP) station. I walked into this hallway with a window and a speaker set into it along the right side. There were two MPs behind the glass. "Can I help you?" one of them asked.
"Yes, there's been a burglary at the [parachute-]rigger shop on [forgot the name] road?"
"...We just found that this morning. How did you know?"
"I know who did it."
That got their attention.
Next thing I know I'm seated at a table in a little side office because, they explained, as the stolen goods were taken off-post, they had no jurisdiction to make an arrest. They would contact CID (“see-eye-dee,” Criminal Investigation Division) and bring one of their guys in to talk with me.
The CID guy came in after several minutes and the first words out of his mouth were "Why are you doing this?"
Well, I had to, didn't I? Either I had to say something or else he'd get caught and I'd be an accessory after the fact. Of course I didn't want to go to prison. Not to mention what in the world would have happened to our son with both of us in prison. I have thought about it off and on over the two and a half decades since, though, and that was only part of it: Also I was angry at Mike for thinking I'd actually approve of his thievery. Also I was angry that I had been forced into a choice of put my husband in prison or go to prison myself. I hadn't wanted to do either. I hated him for forcing that on me.
I also thought, though I don't think I said it to the CID guy, that if by some miracle they had not caught Mike and Scott, there was some risk greater than zero that the rigger shop's company fuckup (there is at least one fuckup in every company in the Army) would have been blamed for the missing equipment and possibly punished. And that wouldn't have been fair either.
Turned out Mike and Scott had committed breaking and entering and grand larceny, both felony crimes, which together at that time carried a sentence of up to fifty years at Fort Leavenworth. Remember that "up to." It will be important later.
The talk with the CID guy took a while, probably at least a couple hours, during which my son decided it was time to go Number Two, and he wasn't toilet-trained yet, and he leaked up his back. In my distress I had left his diaper bag at the house. I am not sure now whether I simply forgot it or whether I feared Mike would suspect I was up to something if I took it, even though it would have been reasonable to take it. So that added a nice layer of desperation to the situation.
After the interview, the CID guy gave me his card and some info for contacting victim assistance services -- I was now a victim. How about that. Problem was we were fresh out of the New Year weekend, it was the coldest month of the year (in the Northern Hemisphere), and the people I needed to talk to were stuck in a blizzard in fucking Oklahoma. Great.
I went back to the post exchange after that to get Sean some diapers and clothes. (Walked in and this man going the other way remarked to me that my son had had an accident. Oh, thanks, that must be what that smell is. Fucking thought I was going to have a seizure.) Then went on to a motel Reba and I agreed on and checked in under an assumed name Reba invented.
And it turned out that was the wise option. I don't remember when this happened relative to the arrest, but apparently Mike started calling around trying to find me, and then he called Reba, sure that she'd had something to do with my disappearance. His rage was something to behold. She was more than equal to it, though I'm sure she was grateful to be about two states away from him (she in western Tennessee, he in eastern North Carolina). But try as he might, I wasn't under my name so there wasn't anything he could do short of going around looking for my car. I will never know why he didn't. Bullet dodged. Probably not literally (we didn't own a gun), but in the mood he was in, best not to risk it. I mean, he wasn't a convicted felon yet. If he'd wanted to get a gun, no one would have stopped him.
My mother-in-law got angry with me later for being afraid of him. It's one of the reasons she's on my shit list, because she and Mike's stepdad were the ones who later cleaned out our house and they could not have missed the two or three holes in the kitchen wall. Mike had put them there over the space of a year and a half. With his fist.
Anyway. Sean and I settled into that motel room and I made some calls. Everyone at Bragg who could have helped me (or would have helped me, I think is more likely) was still in the wind. The arrest had happened and they'd caught Mike and Scott with the stolen property. I called work and told them what was going on and that I would not be able to come back since my husband wasn't locked up. Weirdest job resignation I've ever done. Reba and I also talked and things had changed with her. While I was going through my own struggle, she and her boyfriend were set upon by four thugs trying to rob them and were left with some pretty good bruising and a lot of trauma. The police were involved. It was a mess.
I think Sean and I stayed in the motel maybe two days. During that time, I tried to get things wrapped up, but I couldn't go back to the house. I called Mike's training company trying to see if he was there so I'd know it was safe to go home but got lectured by his commander for not going up chain of command when all I'd done was asked the secretary when she answered the phone; Mike told me later he had short-timer syndrome. I called our next-door neighbors and they helped me get some things out of the house, mainly my jewelry boxes and a few clothing items for us both and that kind of thing. They told me Mike had tried to give the husband one of the stolen printers and he, thinking it seemed a bit hinky, politely declined. I was appalled. Gus had just done the Green to Gold program, going from enlisted to officer, and he had three kids under the age of five, one with a serious genetic disorder, and here Mike had tried to screw him. I think he and his wife would have stood watch to let me empty out that entire house had I been willing to put us all at risk. I wasn't.
I remember stopping in at some pharmacy, probably CVS or Walgreens, because I knew we were going to hit the road soon and I was so constantly upset that I had to pick up some Immodium if I wanted to be able to drive more than ten minutes at a time and have no accidents. While walking through the store I spied one of those front-of-store display bins holding a bunch of blank journals. A large one with a pink, white, yellow, and green floral cover particularly caught at me, so I bought it. I would later journal in it for a good bit of the year. In fact, I sill have it a quarter-century later.
Sean and I traveled overnight from eastern North Carolina to western Tennessee. We spent some time going back and forth between my stepmom's place and my brother's (her son's) place because Reba and I bonked heads at the best of times, and now we were both traumatized and so was her boyfriend (soon husband; they married not long after I got there) who wasn't exactly normal in the first place. Not a fun time.
In getting things sorted out on his end, Mike got me kicked off medical coverage. I found this out when I tried to go to therapy to process the whole situation and the therapist, who normally took Tricare, informed me that insurance had not paid up. I had done medical admin when I was in the Army and I knew for a fact I was still entitled to benefits because we hadn't gotten divorced yet. I will never understand what Mike did there. I wound up quitting therapy over it after week two or three, which didn't help my situation at all.
Mike was court-martialed, knocked down from E-4 (corporal!) to E-1 (private), and sentenced to two years at Fort Knox. Initially looking at fifty years in Leavenworth, they'd caught him dead to rights, but it was like the burglar version of Brock Turner. Can't ruin the guy's life, yanno. Gus attended the court martial and told me Mike had cried like a baby on the stand while Scott, who Mike had talked into it, was stoic and accepted his fate (one year at Knox).
With the court martial the Army froze Mike's pay, but that was supposed to be delayed six months and the money was supposed to come to me. Other than $1000 I was able to withdraw from the joint account because for some reason I had Mike's ATM card (probably a holdover from when he'd been in Special Forces phase one training) even though he had frozen mine after my escape... I got nothing else from him. His mother angrily informed me that none of that was my money and I had no rights to anything. North Carolina was, probably still is, a community property state.
In the long run I ended up losing my son to my in-laws because they tricked me. They offered to keep him temporarily til I got on my feet, then as soon as they got him home they informed me they would be suing for custody. I had sent him to stay with them with an in loco parentis document, set up for both medical care and school permission, which the local judge advocate general (JAG) office had helped me draw up. My in-laws were perfectly capable of caring for him. This was just their way of punishing me. I had no real assets to speak of and certainly no legal funds (the JAG visit had been free, and JAG didn't do divorces or custody battles), plus I was in Tennessee and they were in Florida and the cost of the trip to attend court was beyond me, and so they got what they wanted in court and, from what I could tell by the paperwork they sent me, basically they lied to the judge ("we just can't care for this child properly without custody, Your Honor"). Eventually they adopted Sean. I've seen him twice since Cheryl walked out the door with him. The last time was twenty years ago.
Mike's "two years" wound up being less than one and last I heard from his mother about the situation, his parole officer loved him and was looking into setting him up with an honorable discharge. I never heard how that turned out. But I did hear he lost the ends of two fingers to a table saw. Shame it wasn't the end of something else. He did remarry, though, and that's a weird story all on its own, and they had a daughter. I wonder if he was ready to be a dad yet when it happened. I hear he is estranged from Sean, though, which is weird because he was there for most of Sean's childhood.
I last heard anything about Scott on Facebook when I looked him up and I vaguely remember him on his profile spouting some right-wing bullshit. That's an essay all on its own: you wouldn't believe how many of those "morally righteous" assholes have hinky backgrounds. Trump is not an outlier at all. But I digress.
That whole situation left me vulnerable to everything that came after and lacking resilience for any of it unless you count white-knuckling it through life as "resilience." It was a twenty-five year road to losing absolutely everything; I'm not quite to absolutely, but I'm pretty fucking close. So when I was homeless last year and it turned out I qualified for veteran services in Ohio, I accepted help from them.
It was about fucking time the military did something positive for me.
And there was so much more that went on in 1999. I had so much fucking fail packed into that ONE year, and then even MORE fail that branched off of it LATER. But this is too long already. I'm sure I'll find some reason to talk about some of it eventually.