DEL.ICIO.USONE TOWN'S WAR: ON HALLOWED GROUND
GI on leave from Iraq duty celebrates family, faithThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/20/05
Dublin, Ga. — Ricky Stanley sinks into the passenger seat of his wife's Chevy Impala and notices a white tassel dangling from the rearview mirror. He sent it to her from Iraq. A shopkeeper gave it to him after he bought hundreds of dollars of jewelry for his family, telling him, "This will bring you good luck, my friend."
Maybe it has. After months of running supplies on bomb-rigged roads where more than a dozen Georgia National Guardsmen have died, Sgt. Ricky Stanley is headed home for leave.
 Rich Addicks/AJC | |||
| Shortly after arriving home from the war zone in Iraq, Ricky Stanley falls to his knees, sayng, "Thank you, Jesus! "Thank you, Jesus!" | |||
|  | ||
|
MOST POPULAR STORIES
EMAIL THIS
PRINT THIS
MOST POPULAR"Hey, this is nicer than a Humvee," he says as he settles into the car for the last leg of his two-day journey from Baghdad. His wife, Belinda, met him at a shuttle terminal in Warner Robins and is driving him back to their house near Dublin. As familiar scenes of the Middle Georgia countryside speed by — piney woods and cotton fields and white frame churches — Ricky tries to put the war zone behind him and ease into his comfort zone.
The transition isn't seamless. Even as he enjoys the lush green landscape he missed so keenly, the perils of Iraq invade his thoughts. He can't help but feel vulnerable as Belinda stops for traffic signals and keeps on the right side of the pavement. Military convoys stop for no one in Iraq, and every soldier knows to stay in the middle of the road because bombs lurk on the sides. When the Chevy passes a man picking up a run-over snake for its skin, Ricky flashes back to the briefing before his first mission: Insurgents, he was warned, sometimes hide explosives in roadkill.
The jittery thoughts are fleeting. Ricky's little sister, Mandlyn — known to all as Tabby — keeps him busy from the back seat, where she dials family members and hands him the cellphone so he can say hello. She reaches their brother at a construction site.
"Whassup?" Ricky says. "Where y'all working? Naw, don't get him down."
Their father, brickmason Carnell Stanley, is up on a scaffold.
"OK," Ricky signs off. "Y'all come around the 'hood and see me when you get off."
Before they go home, Belinda wants to take Ricky by their church, which is building a new sanctuary. Ricky is a 36-year-old deacon at Mount Tilla Missionary Baptist Church and wants to become an ordained minister when his tour ends. He leads worship services in Iraq and regards his faith as the only thing that keeps him sane.
The congregation hadn't broken ground when Ricky left in May for his yearlong deployment with the Guard's 48th Brigade Combat Team. Now, seeing that the building is almost finished, he asks the crew if he can lay a few bricks. His father bricked the walls of the old sanctuary. Ricky wants to be able to say he helped build the new one.
From the church, it's a short drive home. Ricky brims with anticipation as Belinda steers into the driveway, which has been paved since he left. "We can cross that off the honey-do list," he says as he bounds out of the car, grinning.
He walks into the living room, drops his duffel bag, claps his hands and falls to his knees with outstretched arms. "Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Jesus!" he cries out. He scans the room and takes in a deep breath. "My home, my home." He bows down and almost kisses the carpeting. "I love you, I love you." Then he jumps up and peeks out the back door. "Look at those weeds. They're right where I left them."
Belinda, who has been watching all this with growing amusement, bursts into laughter. "Ricky," she says, "you are crazy."
She notices Tabby's eyes pooling up. "Are you crying? Don't cry. This is a happy day."
But in a few minutes, Belinda, too, dissolves into tears. She's already thinking about her husband's return to Iraq in a couple of weeks.
Ricky takes her in his arms and comforts her. "Oh, baby, Daddy's home now. Everything's gonna be all right. I've got five months out of the way. I don't have that much longer."
But as they hold each other, they both know that his time in Iraq could be far longer. A difficult decision they faced recently raises that possibility — a decision that pitted their fears against their faith and their hopes for their children.
Though he's jet-lagged and dog-tired, Ricky tries to stay awake into the evening. He's almost scared to fall asleep.
In Iraq, he would bunk down and dream of home and then wake to the cold realization that he wasn't in Georgia. Some dreams were so vivid he talked out loud; in one, Belinda was trying to cut the lawn on his riding mower, and Ricky told her to get off and stop messing up the grass. His buddies razzed him the next morning. "Belinda can drive that lawn mower if she wants to," one of them cracked.
Now that he's home, Ricky doesn't want to wake up and find that he's back in Iraq, his leave nothing but a memory, a pleasant dream.
But fatigue takes over and soon he drifts away. When his daughters, 13-year-old Chazmine and 14-year-old Ra'Teema, return from school, Belinda instructs them not to disturb their dozing father.
They obey for a while, but they're too excited to stay away. When they finally jump onto his bed, Ricky stirs, his voice groggy, and asks, "Are y'all my children?" Before long, they're joking and wrestling around like he never left.
On the third night of Ricky's leave, several dozen relatives and friends gather at a cinder-block community center down the road to welcome him home with a big dinner. Belinda and Tabby deck the place with American flags and other patriotic garnishes. The potluck fare includes many of Soldier Boy's favorites: his mother's ham and dressing, Aunt Betty's green beans, Uncle Anthony's deep-fried turkey, Cousin Judy's sweet potato pie.
When Ricky walks in, to spontaneous applause, everyone can see that there's something different about him. It isn't just his physique; he lost more than 20 pounds in the Iraqi heat and regained half of it by pumping up his arms and chest on weight machines. No, it's something about the way he carries himself.
After a round of testimonials, Ricky stands up and tries to explain how the war is changing him. "Since I've been over there," he says, "I've learned to be closer to God. I wear body armor and ride around in an up-armored vehicle, but nothing compares to the armor of God. He put me in a place of hostility so I would learn to trust him."
Ricky spares his audience the details of that hostility. During his first two months in Iraq, he went on two or three missions a week, hauling supplies and helping to man gun trucks that provided security for convoys throughout the country. They came under mortar attack and small-arms fire. Once his vehicle rolled over a daisy chain of explosives and barely missed detonating it. Another time he was sent to retrieve the wreckage of a Humvee bombing that killed four Georgia soldiers, a gory scene that left him retching on the side of the road.
"I just thank God that he spared my life and I rode on," Ricky tells his kith and kin.
Dinner done, it's time to celebrate his homecoming the way the Stanleys usually celebrate: by singing.
Chaz and Teema start by warbling "The Star-Spangled Banner" for their father, who sits at the head table marveling at how much his younger daughter's voice has matured in the past few months. He wonders what else he has missed.
Ricky dotes on his girls and would do almost anything for them. Above all, he wants to make a better life for them. He never went to college; he wants to make sure they have the opportunity.
Up on stage, other family members soon join the children, belting out a series of gospel songs that raise the rafters and rattle the windows. Ricky eventually gets up and chimes in. "Every time I turn around," he sings, "the Lord is blessing me."
He truly means it. Despite his fears, he has come to see his deployment as something positive because it gives him a chance to minister to other soldiers.
"He tried not to show it back in May," his older brother, Carnell Jr., says after the singing is over, "but he was afraid. I don't think he's afraid of anything now."
On a warm afternoon three days before Halloween, Belinda directs her daughters to drag out the Christmas decorations. Ricky has never been away from home for the holidays, and she wants him to store up some Yuletide cheer by helping trim the tree.
Not that he's much help. Ricky doesn't do garland. As Chaz and Teema assemble the artificial tree under their mother's supervision, their father looks on as uselessly as if they were all at the mall shopping for prom dresses.
"What do I do?" he asks.
What he does is cut up. He makes a lariat with a string of beads and swings it like a cowboy. He winds ribbon around Chaz's head, fashioning a sort of crown, and bows down as if she were the queen of Sheba. He picks through the family's heirloom ornaments — the handmade Santas and reindeer of yesteryear — and lingers on one that frames a picture of his beaming wife in the early days of their marriage.
"Look at that sexy girl," he says. Belinda, intently arranging angels, nods in assent.
Santa Claus is coming early to the Stanley house in more ways than one this year. Ricky and Belinda spent the morning buying a nearly new all-terrain vehicle that cost them $3,800. "It's my Christmas gift to my family," he says.
Before his deployment, Ricky worked two jobs to provide for his family: laying bricks with his father and supervising the loading dock on the overnight shift at the YKK aluminum plant in Dublin. While his income declined when he was activated, the family gets by on his combat pay and Belinda's salary as a receptionist with the county board of education.
Shortly after Ricky arrived in Iraq, the Guard made a sweet offer that promised to improve the Stanleys' finances immediately: If he re-enlisted for six years, he'd receive a $15,000 bonus upfront and tax-free. They'd even throw in a visit to one of Saddam's gaudy palaces, where he could have his photo taken during a swearing-in ceremony.
It was tempting. With 16 years of service, Ricky lacked only four more to qualify for a pension that would pay him upwards of $750 a month when he turns 60. Best of all, he could set aside most of the bonus for his daughters' education.
But his first weeks overseas staggered Ricky. It was his first time in a war zone, and the experience left him so homesick and fearful that he couldn't stand the thought of re-upping and possibly facing another tour of duty. He didn't care about the money. He was ready to chuck it all.
Belinda shared her husband's apprehensions. But when they discussed the matter over the phone, she reminded him of his goal to do 20 years and earn his retirement.
"You're not over here," Ricky said. "You don't know what I'm going through."
What about his faith? Belinda countered. God had preserved him so far. Maybe the worst of it was over. "Weeping may endure for a night," she said, quoting the 30th Psalm, "but joy comes in the morning."
Ricky promised to think about it some more.
Neither of them whispered a word of it to the girls.
And they still haven't mentioned it on this October afternoon as Ricky watches his family place the final bow on the Christmas tree, a scene he'll envision from halfway around the world as he tries to get through the holidays without them.
Ricky and Belinda talked about going somewhere together during his leave, maybe to Savannah. Instead, he stays on familiar turf during the rest of his break. He works construction with his father and brother. He visits co-workers at YKK. Mostly, he hangs around home doing chores and shooting hoops and riding the four-wheeler with his girls.
Before he knows it, it's almost time to go back to war.
On one of his last days, Ricky takes his daughters to Irish Motorsport in Dublin to buy helmets and goggles for their new toy. They pick out candy-colored models that make them look like NASCAR drivers in training, and Ricky phones Belinda to make sure the $203 bill meets her approval. Then he whips out the canvas GI wallet he wears around his neck when he's on active duty and hands his debit card to the clerk.
"I gotta go back to Iraq," he explains. "Everybody's getting their Christmas now."
He looks at Chaz and Teema. "I just want them to be safe while I'm gone."
They stare back silently, no doubt thinking the same thing about him.
After church a couple of days later, Ricky and Belinda finally sit down with the girls for a talk. He tells them that he decided to re-enlist and that he could be called for another tour of duty in Iraq. He tells them he did it for the retirement, for the family, for their education.
Neither girl says much. But Ricky believes the older one, Teema, understands the ramifications all too well. He notices her nervously biting at her fingers.
Two nights before his departure, Ricky is jolted awake by the sound of Belinda yelling in her sleep. Before he left for Iraq in May, he was the one who had nightmares about fighting the enemy in foxholes. In Belinda's nightmare, Ricky has fallen in a hole and is screaming for her to pull him out. She never quite reaches him.
They sit up talking until dawn, and Ricky is more convinced than ever that as tough as the deployment has been on him, it's tougher on his wife. He wonders if it wouldn't be better for her to drop him at the shuttle in Warner Robins instead of seeing him to the gate at the Atlanta airport. He decides that his daughters don't need to be there; he'll drive them to school and say goodbye then. No sense inviting a painful scene.
But Belinda wants to go the airport. She resolves not to cry.
When the dreaded day comes, they pile into a cousin's van with Ricky's father and brother and another guardsman returning to Iraq after leave, his battle buddy Darrell Taylor, and his wife.
Lounging in the airport atrium after he reports in, Ricky tries to keep everyone's mood light. Belinda is wearing high-heel sandals that show off her bright red toenails. He reaches down and strokes their glossy finish like some foot fetishist. "I won't get to feel these for a while. Do you think you could send them over to Iraq?" he says, cackling.
The flight is hours off. Taylor's wife has to go back to work, so the party won't be able to wait at the gate after all. They'll have to bid farewell before then.
The soldiers offer to escort the others back to the parking garage. They take last-minute photos and exchange long embraces and whisper words of love. As they part and the civilians retreat reluctantly toward the van, Ricky summons them back. He has forgotten something important.
He asks them to form a circle and join hands. He pulls something out of his pocket, a vial of golden anointing oil that he carries around like some men carry a cigarette lighter. He moistens his fingers and goes around the circle outlining a cross on every forehead. For good measure, he dabs some oil on the hand his father injured working in his hogpen.
And then, as cars crawl by in the middle of a garage in one of the world's busiest airports, Ricky Stanley leads his family in prayer.
He prays for his brother and his sister and his father. He prays for the soldiers and all their loved ones. He prays for his daughters and his wife. "God," he sings out, "please protect Belinda and look after her heart while I'm gone."
After the amens, Belinda kisses Ricky again and backs away, fluttering her hands in emotional exasperation. As the van eases out of its space, he can see a single tear roll down her cheek.
That afternoon, when Belinda returns home, the house is still and dim. She walks into her bedroom and smells her husband's cologne and thinks to herself: six more months of loneliness.
She can't bear an empty house just now, so she gets out and drives to the Wal-Mart in Dublin. There's always more Christmas shopping to do.
Services »
