Sex and the Tent City

I was stunned. I squinted, barely able to adjust my eyes to the darkness. Suitcases were everywhere, clothes were piled on cots as far as I could see. Flak jackets and helmets were hung at the end of the beds. I slowly walked down an aisle way searching for an empty cot. At the opposite side of the tent, I found one. I had been issued two blankets and one very flat third-world pillow. I tossed them onto the cot, and turned around. To my left was an ancient silver child’s bunk bed with a bent frame, the kind that you see in pictures of Russian orphanages. I imagined several children living in that bunk, grabbing at the high rails, reaching out for someone to hug them, eventually dying of starvation. Hangars were hung on one end of it, with neatly pressed blouses lined up by color. Stacks of shoe boxes were lined up along the floor, apparently arranged by occasion. An ironing board was propped against the side of the tent, poking the fabric wall outward. To my right was a cot, with an ugly blue blanket that had a giant face of a German Shepard on it. I figured it was inevitable that I would have nightmares about the blue blanket dog attacking me. I sadly gazed at my two blankets: both a diarrhea
brown floral print. The tag proudly announced ‘Made in China’. Martha Stewart does not live here.

I walked back down the aisle way, dodging the clutter. The tent
was hot, even with all three air conditioners running. The aisle was
about thirty feet long, with the darkness it was hard to see from
one end of the tent to the other. There were standard issue
military green cots along each side of the tent, and two rows along
the middle. I guessed there were about fifty beds inside, half cots
and half framed beds. My cot did not have a mattress, but most of
the remaining beds did. It was going to be a hard night’s sleep.
Emerging from the tent, I returned to the area we had been
dropped off. Simon and Jeff were there talking with our greeting
committee: Dick, the head of HR, and a South African man from
billeting. We were each given a liter and a half bottle of water. I
pondered why the heads of HR are inevitably named Dick.

“Drink four of these a day. It is crucial that you drink until you can
drink no more. Drink even if you aren’t thirsty.”
I glanced at Jeff, stunned. “That’s six liters!”
“A gallon and a half,” he said, smiling at me.
“A day??” I asked incredulously.
“Yup.”

I was thirsty enough, but had not ever heard of anyone drinking
that much water every day. I pictured my bloated body in a
hundred degrees, feet swollen, head throbbing, fingers stiff with
water retention. Don’t you die if you drink that much water?

“You will have the rest of the day to rest if you want. Push the
water today. Get settled in your tents. The latrines and ab units are
across from your tents: female and male. The bus is available to
take you to dinner tonight. It also runs to the PX if there is anything
you need to pick up.” He pointed to the bus parked near us, a small
blue and white Nissan of international extraction. “Lights out in the
tents at 10PM. Lights on at 5. Everyone understand? There is
absolutely no smoking in or near the tents. They are coated in
kerosene to control the dust. Also, absolutely no food or drink in
the tents. Food brings mice, mice brings cobras. We had one in the
camp a few weeks ago.”

I looked at Jeff, wide eyed. “Cobras?” I croaked.
“What’s an ab unit?” Simon asked.
“Where the showers are,” Dick calmly explained, pointing to some
trailers not far from where we sat.
“Coated in kerosene??” I mumbled, sure that this had to be some
sort of joke. “And we are sleeping in them?” My mind raced: did
OSHA know about this? Whose great idea was that? Where is the
Safety Department around here, anyway? Visions of flames licking
at my cot, my officially-un-flameproof-not-for-use-by-children
blankets torched in an instant, the blue blanket dog melting into a
soupy synthetic mass of death over my yet unseen cot-mate.

We gathered our remaining possessions and returned to our
assigned tents. I was worn out, the temperature was in the high
90’s and still rising.

“Howdy, I’m Joanne,” the blond drawled. “You are our new girl?”
“Yeah. What do you do?”
“I’m in Admin. I’ll take you over to our trailer."

We walked back across the dirt lot to a complex of identical
portable trailers. I immediately panicked: how the hell do you find
your way around when all the trailers look the same? I pictured
myself lost forever amidst the portables: where did that new girl
go, anyway? Would they even miss me if I didn’t show up the first
day? Yeah, go down here, past that pile of brown dirt, take a turn
by the white trailer. No, not that dirt. This dirt. That white trailer.
What’s wrong with you??

“Hey guys, this is our new girl!” she stated as we crossed beneath
the camouflage netting and walked into the office. I wondered from
the camo netting if we were frequent attack targets.

I entered the small office, squeezing by the narrow entry. Three
desks were inside, and five people were spread across them.

“Hi, I’m Brent. I’m your Supervisor. You’ll want to sit down at that
desk, go ahead and set up your computer there.”
“No, Brent, she’s not Admin,” Joanne chided.
“Leave it to Brent. Why did you assume she was Admin? Hi, I’m
Geneva. Welcome to Iraq!”
Brent looked down at his lap. “Isn’t she Admin?” he asked, now
ignoring the fact I was listening.
“No, Brent, this is your new employee,” Geneva scoffed, smiling at
me. “I don’t know why he would assume that just because you are
female, you are Admin. We have had female employees, Brent.”
“Oh, Jeez. Don’t know what I was thinking. Sorry,” he waffled.
“That’s OK. Happens all the time,” I smiled.
“Geneva, take her over to the trailer and introduce her.”

We walked across the gravel, across a driveway to a blue 30 foot
transportation container like the ones the railroad hauls. She threw
open the door. The inside was painted white, with makeshift
plywood desks lined along the wall.

“This is Akantha. She’ll be working with you.”
The heads turned, a couple guys chimed , “Welcome to Iraq.”
Geneva scolded, “Treat her well, guys…” and turned to leave.
“We’ll get you set up tomorrow. We need to take your computer to
IT to have it scrubbed-bring it back to me today. Also, I’ll take you
over to Payroll and introduce you to Lois. If you have questions, see
her. Have you had anything to eat?”
“Not since yesterday, but I’m not that hungry.”
“Well, we have breakfast around 7, if you want to come in then we
will take you over.”
“Sure, see you then.” I started back to the tent.

Even after the sun went down, my exhausted body could not sleep.
I had put in ear plugs, but could still hear the incessant rattling of
fifty chatty women as they filed in over the course of the evening.
They took no notice to the new body on the cot, saying nothing. I
drifted in and out of an uneasy sleep, still not synchronized to my
new Middle Eastern clock. Every few minutes I was awakened by
the sounds of another jet taking off. It was a routine that became
normal.

When morning came, I had had only two hours sleep. The cot
without a mattress was harder than concrete, and I was no longer a
limber 20 year old. Even turning like a rotisserie each hour was not
enough to keep from bruising. I rose in the dark half crippled,
feeling every bit my age. I fumbling for something to wear,
dreading my first public shower since my last workout in 1993. I was
thinner then…the cruelties of time. I still did not have a towel, so I
grabbed an extra t-shirt and walked across the gravel.

Two trailers sat side by side. One had a large placard ‘FEMALES
ONLY’. The other had a picture of a small stick girl: ‘SHOWER’. I
pulled the door open and no sooner stepped inside and ran into a
naked woman.

“Howdy, girl!” the woman drawled.
I strained to recognize her. No, it didn’t seem to be Geneva or
Joanne. But there she was, naked as a jaybird, and she apparently
knew me. Faces spun around in my head, and I smiled to cover the
fact that I had absolutely no idea who this was.

“How was your first night?” she asked, drying off her back, her
breasts swinging.
“OK, didn’t sleep much.” I squeezed past her to the other end of
the trailer. It had been a while since I had had a conversation with
a naked woman. A very long while. As a matter of fact, I could not
recall ever having a conversation with a naked woman. I laughed to
myself. Where are the instructions for this? I pondered the legal
aspects of sharing nakedness with those that you work with:
blurring reality, blurring the lines of sexual harassment litigation.
But this could not be considered a ‘normal’ workplace: we live,
eat, shower, and sleep with the people we work with. Is it OK to
see the breasts of those you work with? I thought back to other
jobs, my mind spinning with gratefulness that I had not seen any of
those people naked. I thought of MR, and wondered how she would
size this up. What legally defines a workplace, Akantha? What is off
the clock? What is the legal definition of ‘pervasive’ and
‘offensive’? Research that for me, Akantha. I pondered a case in
the 80’s or 90’s concerning new female firefighters that had to live
in a firehouse together with men: the prevalence of Playboy
magazine was considered hostile environment. Interesting.

My reverie was broken by the clumsy process of undressing while
attempting to maintain maximum coverage…hard to do without a
towel. I pulled off my clothes, self consciously looking around, but
not wanting to look directly at another naked body. There was
some unwritten rule, I decided, that you are not to look at others in
a public shower. Everyone seemed to be going about their business,
pretty much ignoring the naked bodies in their proximity. I shyly
hopped in the shower, thankful to finally be behind the shower
curtain. What are the social rules here, I nervously wondered as I
shampooed my hair. How can I dry off with a t-shirt and still remain
covered? I knew I was doomed, my nakedness inevitable. I suddenly
wished I was a whole lot thinner. And younger.

I finally emerged, no longer able to hide, determined to put on my
best “I don’t give a rat’s ass” face. I dried my back, carefully
turning so I felt less exposed. I dried so quickly that I left gaping
areas still wet, but the attempt to preserve some dignity was worth
a bit of wetness. As I turned to walk away, Joanne exited the
shower.

“Hey, girl!”
“Hi Joanne. How are you?” I asked, then immediately regretted it
as she answered, standing there in the nude, reaching for a towel.
“Doing great. How was your first night?”

I paused uneasily. Where do I look when I talk to her? I aimed my
gaze at her feet, pretending to drop something, shuffling my
bathroom stuff like an idiot. “Fine. See you later.” I rushed to exit
the trailer before we had to talk more, no longer caring if she
thought me rude. This is a fine situation. How do you talk to a nude
woman that you have to work with? I suddenly feel disoriented, my
tidy Puritanical world upside-down.

I scurry to the ‘hair trailer,’ the one concession the camp had made
to its female presence. Since the voltage is 220 in the camp, most
of our hair dryers will not work. So there is a separate trailer that
has a transformer hooked up, just for blow dryers. Seemed like a
good idea, until you get five women trying to use the same
transformer. And the transformer does not preclude the necessity
for separate plug adapters, so merely drying hair in the morning
can be a process, particularly since many of the women here are
‘two-canners’ from the south (…and we all know how long they
spend teasing and spraying their damn hair). But I manage to dry
my hair without anything going up in flames, so I feel much better
than when I left the shower trailer. Yes, some might require
makeup, some might require curlers, and some even need to iron
everything. Me? The only thing I need to be presentable is a hair
dryer and two and a half minutes. I call it the middle-aged-I-don’tgive-
a-shit beauty routine. You won’t find it in Cosmo.

“Go to Payroll and get yourself a time sheet,” Geneva instructed.
“They’ll tell you how to fill it out.”

I wandered across the gravel courtyard to yet another white trailer.
Luckily, this one had “PAYROLL” on it. I entered, then gasped.
There she was, only this time she was dressed. I stared for a
moment, wondering if she noticed my surprise. It was Lois, the
naked lady from the shower. I did some quick mental comparisons,
but, yes, this was Lois from Payroll.

“Do you have a timesheet for me?” I whispered, my throat suddenly
becoming dry.
“Sure, let me find it.” She smiled, and I looked down at the candy
dish, seemingly entranced by the convenient distraction. “Here you
go.”

I took the sheet, not waiting for proper goodbyes. What was I
supposed to say? Gee, Lois, your tits sure are low. But I guess
you’re doing pretty well for your age. Nice hair today. My, you wear
a lot of padding in that bra. Yes, I dragged my eyes across the room
and accidentally spied your ass. Yes, it’s hanging low also. Sorry,
didn’t mean to stare. I tried to move my glance more rapidly, but
got dizzy looking for a location sans nakedness. Oh, you wear those
big old lady undies in coordinating colors. I shouldn’t know this
much about you! Do you really paint your toenails red every day
here in the desert? Why? Missed a spot shaving, ole girl. Aaaargh!


Debbie is one of those women that one pictures when one thinks of
Texas. Big hair, big heart, big laugh.

“I’m going to call him Trouble,” she laughs, holding up a stuffed
horse. “My grandchild sent me the-iss…” she said in that mysterious
Texan way of making one syllable words sound like two. “Ain’t he
the kewtist thang y’all did ever see?”
“I love him! He needs a hug.” I reached for him, and kissed his
large brown nose. His silly horse face made me smile. “How long
have you been here?”
“Came in with Linda in August,” pointing at the cot next to me. She
was rearranging her stacks of boxes.
“What’s in all those boxes?” I asked.
“Clothes and shoes,” she replied, proudly holding up a pair of black
leather pants in one hand and a pair of red high heels in the other.
“Where the hell are you going to wear those?”
“You never know. Sometimes I like to dress up.”
“Where do you work?”
“DFAC Admin.”
“Is there much dressing up out there?” I asked, incredulous, sweat
beading on my face. The thought of leather anything in this heat
was unimaginable. But here I was, in the desert, sleeping next to a
real, live girly girl.
“Oh, sometimes. But mostly I keep them for R&R.”
“Oh. When do you leave?”
She laughed as she opened a package from Victoria’s Secret and
held up a black lace negligee, carefully examining it. “Don’t know
yet. Will be a while.”
“Well, guess you’ll be prepared for just about anything…” my voice
trailed off, wondering what ‘anything’ might arise that would call
for black leather pants. The differences between us were like night
and day: me with one small suitcase of cotton, non-wrinkle, easy fit
work clothes and Debbie with giant Texas hair, leather pants, spike
heels, lace underwear. The world really isn’t as complicated as
some make it. People get caught up in expensive psychological
studies, but I have learned-after many years of sitting at Starbuck’s
and contemplating such things-that such studies are superfluous. I
can tell you what kind of person you are by the underwear you have
on. And Debbie was one of those women who expected the door to
be held open, worked meaningless jobs in between raising kids, and
had never, ever gotten dirt under her finger nails. We were
opposites. I decided I liked her, but her underwear annoyed me.

“Hey girl!” she yelled across the aisle. “Meet our new roommate.”
“I’m Linda, she replied walking around her cot and throwing down
her backpack.
“What do you do?"
“Billeting. Where are you from?”
Debbie interjected, “She’s a Northern girl.”
“How do you like the heat?” she combed her straggly hair.
Was it my imagination, or did she have a moustache? I laughed.
“It’s horrific.” Yes, she does have a moustache.
“Don’t worry, it gets a lot worse. It has just broken. A few weeks
ago we were still 120. It’ll go to 140.”

My mouth opened involuntarily. The thought was impossible to wrap
my mind around. 96 was killing me. Every fiber was swelling,
hurting, sweating. I could physically drink no more water. I spent
half my time in the bathroom as it was, and still was only drinking
three liters a day, not the four that they required. It seemed
hopeless. I longed for snow.

“Deb, I’ll be out tonight,” she turned and walked toward the door.
“Gotcha…” she turned to me. “She has a boyfriend. She isn’t here
much at night. I have one, too!”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, they have restrictions against sleeping with your boss, or
sleeping with one of the Marines, but it happens anyway. You know,
they sell condoms at the PX…”
“Oh, yeah?”
“…who do they think is using them?” she chuckled.
“So they restrict sex, but sell condoms?”
“Girl, they run out of foot powder, run out of tampons, but never
run out of condoms. Seems to be the only supply that the PX is sure
to have. You are treating your feet, right?”
“Yeah, got some powder at Victory.”
“Good. Your feet will get really messed up here.”
“Hey, where did you get your shelves?” I asked, trying to unpack.
“Get ‘em at the Hajji shop. And a mattress, too.”
“Yeah, that cot damn near killed me. What’s a Hajji shop?”
“Over by the PX are some shops run by Iraqis that they let on the
base. They basically steal supplies and resell them to us. Some of
them have been killed coming to work here. Of course, you can
always work a drug deal.”
“Drug deal?”
She laughed again, “That’s what they call it. That’s how most of us
got our beds, or any of the wooden shelves that you see.”
I looked around the tent. About half of the people had plywood
shelves. Without them, there was nowhere to stack anything. We
were issued a cot, period. No mattress, no shelves, nothing.
She continued, “You have to trade something to get furniture.”
“Trade something?” I felt a sudden dread. This was worse than high
school.
“You know. Sleep with someone. Or trade something that you havesome
of the truck drivers have liquor. They bring it back when they
go out to Baghdad. In spite of what they say, liquor is not illegal in
Iraq, they just want you to think it is. If you hook up with a driver,
you can get just about anything.”
“How much is the stuff at the Hajji shop?”
There was a pause. “Hmmm. Don’t know. I worked a drug deal.”
She smiled, hanging her lacy panties and matching teeny-tiny bra
on a hangar.

I reviewed a mental checklist: no, none of my panties matched my
bra. And none of them were lace. Besides, eyeing the hangar, it
would need steel reinforcement to sustain the weight from my bra.
And the last time I even had a negligee was approximately 1989. My
brow furrowed. I had arrived in my new land without currency. I
was doomed.

“They call this the ghost tent, you know…” she plainly stated.
“Why’s that?”
“Take a look around. There are fifty women assigned to this tent.”
I looked around. All the beds had stuff on them: suitcases, clothes,
books. But there was no one sleeping in the beds.
“Where are they?” I stupidly asked.
“Drug deals…” she trailed off. “…they have furniture, but they
don’t sleep here at night.”

And it was true. Each night when I rose for my 2AM trip to the
bathroom, I looked around. Out of fifty beds, the maximum night
count was six. It is a lonely, depressing, exhausting life here in the
desert. But apparently there was quite a bit of consoling going on
amidst the date palms and wide, starry skies…

I slowly woke up, confused and not sure where I was. My feet felt
wet, but I wasn’t sure if I was still dreaming. I shut my eyelids,
trying to force my way back in to my dream of cold wetness. I
turned over. Cold wetness consumed my legs; the sound of dripping
water became louder. I turned back over, now fully awake. My legs
were sopping wet. Startled, I sat up and reached for a flashlight
just as someone turned on the tent lights. I felt something sting on
my face and looked up. Water was pouring from the tent ceiling
down onto my cot and the brand new flimsy $20 mattress that I had
purchased the day before, onto my new navy blue twin sheets that
proudly proclaimed my rising wealth and seniority.

“Jesus!” I shouted.
“Shit! The tent’s leaking!” Linda screamed. It was the first time she
had slept in her bed all week.
“Gawd dammit. My clothes!” Debbie leapt out of her bunk in one
movement, grabbing her boxes of shoes and tossing them away
from the water. “Fuck!”
Suddenly, nighties were flying, women were yelling, and the tent
became a cacophony of noise as furniture scraped across the
cement floor.

“Help me move this!”
“What’s in this rain? It stings!”
“Kerosene from the tent…” I wiped the yellow stained liquid off my
face.
“Here, put your bed in between the leaks.”
“Fuck! Help me move my TV!” Emma screamed.
“Let’s get this bed away from here-this girl’s on leave.”
“Push. Push this dresser to your left.”
“Got it.”
“Unplug EVERYTHING!” I yelled, waiting for that first short that
would kill us all. I raced around the aisles, ripping cords from the
walls. “Someone help me move this!” I struggled with a large,
plywood bookcase, now soaked with filthy yellow water. The
nightlight flickered.
“Does anyone have a bucket?”
“I do,” Debbie shouted across the noise.
“Is that all we have, just one?”
“I use it to hand wash my underwear-it took me forever just to find
one!”
“Shit.”

There was no way to stop the water. Everything was leaking. The
water was coming in the sides of the tent, across the cement floor,
into the suitcases that lined the aisles. The ceiling was sagging, full
of water. Parts of the ceiling were ripping with the weight, the
water cascading onto beds, clothes, everything. I frantically
wrestled with my suitcase, lifting it off the ground onto my wet
cot. I pushed my cot out of the leak, but now I had to sleep right
next to Debbie’s bed, which she had turned parallel to mine to
escape the flood.

We had moved everything we could. We stood in our nightgowns,
wet and shivering.

“Billeting One, come in!” Debbie yelled into the radio, idly fluffing
her hair.
A long pause, then “Billeting Two here.”
“We need help. The tent is leaking. Send help.”
Five minutes later, Henry knocked on the tent door. “I have
blankets.”
“Henry, we don’t need blankets. We need buckets.”
“No buckets. Blankets,” he said in his broken English.
I took two blankets from him. “I can move you to another tent,” he
said.
“No, I don’t want to move.” The prospect of having to sleep on a
cot after finally sleeping on a mattress was too much to bear. “I’ll
stay here.”
“Your bed is wet,” stating the obvious.
“I’m fine. We’re all wet.”
“Can we get plastic?” Debbie asked.
“No plastic here.”

We looked at each other. There was nothing to do but return to our
wet beds and try to get some sleep. I took off the wet blankets, but
only had one set of sheets. The mattress was completely soaked
through, as were the sheets. I placed one of the blankets over the
bottom of the mattress, trying to block the wet. It was better than
nothing.

“Well, they said the rainy season started November first,” Linda
said as she gathered the covers over her feet. “Right on time.”

The following day the sun came out, the temperature rose to 98.
The putrid stench in the tent sickened us: wet mattresses molding,
suitcases that had not been rescued in time dripped contaminated
water. Clothes and blankets had been draped across every surface
to dry. The humidity rose, the tent was akin to an August vacation
in Calcutta.

“Jesus, turn on the A/C,” Debbie asked.
I walked over to the thermostat. “It’s on, full blast.”
“This is bullshit. My lamp is ruined. My clothes are soaked.”
“I know.” I peeled back all the blankets, putting them into my
laundry bag. “This stuff stinks.”
“You going to the laundry?”
“Yeah, I have to. These are the only sheets I have.”
“Don’t take your underwear. They steal them.”
“What?”
“Yup. The laundry guys steal your underwear. I hand wash mine
now. They’re perverts.”

Hmmm. Would they really steal my underwear? They weren’t lacy.
They most likely did not inspire lustful thoughts, no matter how
hard up you were. I cringed as I thought of some Turk from the
laundry dancing around with my undies on his head. Or, God forbid,
streaming the video across the Internet. Look! For 29.95 you can
view the largest American panties in Iraq!! Sign up now. Visa, MC,
Amex accepted. Click here to verify you are over 18…

I decided to risk it. I sent three pairs of panties, one bra, four pairs
of socks, and a set of sheets to the laundry. The sheets came back,
nicely folded and creased. On top, my socks and brassiere. And only
one pair of undies…all the white ones were gone. Great. Not only
do we have perverts in the laundry, but they have some sort of
weird Elvis-virgin-white-panty thing going on.

Somewhere out there, someone is downloading video of my white
panties. I just know it.

The rain started again while I was walking back to the tent at the
end of another long day. Kathy, from the warehouse, had managed
to re-appropriate a roll of plastic for us. We wrapped it over our
beds, covering all that was precious. For Debbie, it was her lace
underwear and Trouble. For Linda, her hair conditioner and
rubbers. For me, my mattress and dresser holding my last three
remaining pairs of underwear. We slept in our new bubble-like
existence, dry at last, but anything left out of plastic continued to
get soaked. After weeks of complaining, they had finally located
some fuel bladders, $50K apiece, and placed them over the worst
of the leaking tents. But they had not tied down the sides, and the
wind blew under them, forming a perfect airfoil.

By the time I had walked the half mile to the tent, the skies had
opened up. I had never seen it rain so hard-not since the summer
storms of the southeast. I was soaked, completely wet to the skin. I
opened the tent door and scurried inside. The only one home was
Debbie, already in her pajamas and in bed. I walked past her bed to
mine, and saw the first of the looming disaster.

“Debbie, get up!”
She jumped out of bed. “Help me!”
The entire ceiling above her bed had sagged, and was perilously
close to ripping open. Water was streaming in faster than we could
ever hope to bail it out. We stared at each other.

“It’s going to collapse,” she looked at me, eyes bulging.
I looked up. Water was coming in everywhere. All the way around
the tent perimeter, water had collected. The sides of the tent
started to move outward, the poles straining.

“Help me push it up,” I screamed over the noise, pushing up the
lowering ceiling.
“What’s going on?” Margaret walked in, stunned. “Oh, Lord. Lord
Jesus, help us. Lord Jesus…”
“Margaret, grab that pole and push the water off the ceiling.
Anyone got a radio?”
Debbie grabbed her radio and screamed into it.
“Operations, operations, DFAC 2 Admin. We need immediate help
in Tent 7. The ceiling is collapsing.”
A long pause. “Can you repeat that transmission, ma’am?” the
voice in the radio calmly inquired.
“WE NEED HELP. THE TENT IS COLLAPSING!”
“Did I understand you to say that the tent is collapsing?”
“Listen, get help here immediately.” She was yelling into the radio
now. There was no answer. She grabbed a pole and poked at the
ceiling, to no avail. The ceiling was now too heavy for us to lift it.
“Did you say Tent 7?” the man asked again.
I picked up her radio, “Tent 7. The rain is collapsing the tent. Send
everyone that you can, as fast as you can.”
“Yes, ma’am. Help is coming. Labor 1, did you copy?”
“Labor 1, I copied. On my way.”
“Labor 2, Labor 2, Labor 1. Did you copy?”
“Labor 1, Labor 2. Good copy.”
“Carpenter 1, Carpenter 1, Base Ops. Did you copy?”
“Carpenter 1 copied. All Carpentry units report to Tent 7.
Carpenter 1 out."
“Billeting 2, copy.”

The chatter continued, the air alive with activity. The women who
had not been home came running to the tent to see if they needed
to rescue their stuff. Entering, they stood in the aisles aghast,
staring at the ceiling now streaming rivers of water and groaning
under the weight. The first men were tall enough to reach the tent
ceiling, and made repeated trips around the edges trying to push
the water off. Debbie, Margaret and I followed suit, running back
and forth pushing at the ceiling.

Five men pulled up in a truck and unloaded lumber.

“Get some poles made, and prop this up,” one of the men
instructed. Three of the men dragged in cords and saws, and
searched for plug-ins.

“Sorry, don’t mean to mess up your stuff,” one of them apologized
to Debbie as he dragged his equipment across her bed.
“Don’t worry ‘bout it, hun,” she said, standing in the crowd of men
in thin pajamas that proclaimed ‘God Loves Texas’. Her hair was
wet, and hung in straggly clumps across her face. Her hangars of
frilly underwear had fallen on the floor and were wet with
kerosene.

I turned around, and saw Dave, a fellow employee, at the door. I
smiled. “Where did you come from?”
“Are you OK? I was on the way to the DFAC. We heard you on the
radio-they turned the whole bus around and brought them all back
here.”
“You’re kidding!” I was unexpectedly touched.
“No. Look outside.”

I walked out the door. Fifty men, many I had never seen beforemany
of them not even Americans, were lined up in the pouring
rain tugging on the ropes that held up what was left of the tent.
The fuel bladder that had been tenuously attached to the top had
mostly blown off, and they struggled to reattach it. The carpenters
inside were busy sawing support poles and propping up the entire
ceiling. The laborers were moving the sand bags around, re-digging
up the tent supports with their bare hands. Everyone was soaked to
the skin. The wind was shrieking, the rain continued.

“Jesus. Amazing. Are you OK?” I asked. Dave was shivering.
“Yeah. I just got wet. I should get out of these clothes. Are you
going to be OK?”
I looked at everyone working on the tent, “We’re fine. Thanks. Go
change before you die of something. Thanks for coming back.”

A half hour later our tent was propped up with a myriad of creative
supports. The ropes had been tightened, the tarp reattached to the
sides. The rain had stopped, and a bright moon was in the sky. The
men had all left, gone back to their own leaky tents.

“ ‘Night girls,” Debbie chirped.
I shook my head. “ ‘Night Deb.”
“Tomorrow’s another day,” she smiled.
“Hey, Grandma. You looked pretty good standing around in your
wet pajamas for the men!”
She laughed. “Yeah, but my hair was a mess.”
“Looks like it’s just us here again,” I chuckled, looking around. The
rest of the women in the tent had gone off for the night. Hopefully
they were somewhere drier, warmer, and less lonely. I closed my
eyes and turned over. The plastic on my bed crinkled.
Debbie laughed. “That’s why we’re getting paid the big bucks,
girl.”
“Yup.”