Dauphine

Dauphine shrugged her daypack onto her back and walked out of the construction site, her final paycheck in her pocket ready to hit the bank first thing in the morning. The Chicago winter was starting to bite, a frigid wind whistling in from Canada, across Lake Michigan, down La Salle and straight into the neck of her thick Old Navy jacket, bringing some horizontal rain with it. She grunted in annoyance and tightened the Schemagh around her neck. The roughness reminding her of simpler times in the desert when the only concerns were getting the battle wagons reloaded in time to go back out and make it to the mess tent in time for whichever of the three squares a day the army was next due to dish up.

Illinois winters to Afghan summers were a massive difference, 104-degree dry heat to thirty-five damp degrees of misery. As she boarded the bus to head back out to her one-bedroom place in Cicero she reflected the chances of getting shot in Afghanistan were only marginally higher than in West Garfield on the way home. To help pass the journey she started scrolling through the local vacancies for loader operators or lifting operatives, what the rest of the world would call crane drivers. A skill the US Army had given her to pay back for the eight years she gave them from seventeen to twenty-five. At thirty-five she'd now been out longer than she'd been in, a fact that always came as a shock when she worked it out, in her mind she'd left the camaraderie and brotherhood of the infantry only recently, it still dominated her world view and self-image.

Crane driving was one of the few transferrable skills she'd come out of the service with, the others being an ability to sleep anywhere at the drop of a hat, looking busy when doing nothing by use of a clipboard and walking with a purpose, and the ability to consume an entire meal inside two minutes, including dessert and coffee.

An advert caught her eye, snapping her away from Kandahar in 2010. 'Tower Crane Drivers required. Union Rates' below that was a hyperlink to an email address. At the bottom of the advert it said, 'proud to support our Veterans.'

Cynically she thought that just meant they didn't need to offer medical insurance as her VA package was better than most corporate deals at her level, but when she got home she sent an email with her list of qualifications and a copy of her medical discharge certificate signed in facsimile by a grateful President that she hadn't voted for. She included the citation for her Purple Heart, gained in action near Sangin.

It was probably getting shot by a US issued weapon that put her off guns in general, even if local forces were wielding it. A seventeen-year-old boy, recruited into the Afghan Army and terrified out of his wits, had been cowering behind a wall babbling when she took cover beside him. In her body armour and LBE she was clearly a US soldier, but such was his panic that he'd let rip with half a magazine of 9mm from his Sig Sauer M17 pistol, one of which went through her leg, chipping a thigh bone and making an almighty mess when it came out the other side.

He so terrified once he'd shot someone that he pissed his pants there and then, dropped his gun, and collapsed on the floor, pushing his face into the dirt, none of which helped Dauphine. She knew she had to act quickly, before shock and blood loss finished the job the Taliban had tried to start. With her good leg she kicked him hard in the shoulder. "Schemagh, now. Give me." Another kick and he reacted, undoing the scarf, and handing it over. She tied it tight around her thigh above the wound then took her bayonet in its sheath and twisted it through the binding, building up the pressure and seeing the blood slowing before she passed out.

She came to two days later looking up at a British Army nurse in Camp Bastion Military Hospital. Her leg was bandaged and elevated and she had a raging thirst. The nurse brought her some water and because it was a British hospital, tea, then called the surgeon across. Colonel Philips came to see her around ten minutes later.

"Hello Sergeant LeBron, you look better than last time I saw you. Less blood and gore on show. Your Afghan friend probably saved your life, getting that tourniquet applied like that. I think we've had the Schemagh washed if you want to give it back to him. The Damage wasn't too bad, looked messy but almost entirely soft tissue. You'll be up and around again in no time."

She was a few days in hospital in Bastion then got helicoptered back to Sangin where she tried to put the record straight about her medical assistance by the Afghan soldier, but by then he'd been decorated and feted as a hero, he was being lauded as a success story and was all over the news back home. As her CO said to her, "Sometimes we serve better by remaining silent Sergeant LeBron, do you understand?" So, she got a medal and a citation and an early return from the combat zone, being packed and despatched within eight hours of returning from hospital. Twenty-three hours after that she was in a helicopter ambulance flying away from Harrisburg airport to an army hospital in Fort Indiantown Gap where she recuperated for five weeks.

It was while at the Gap that she got qualified as a lifting equipment operative. A grateful nation shows its thanks by sticking you on top of a metal tower for eight hours a day with only a bucket to piss in. Thank you for your service.

She kept the Schemagh. It had been doing a halfway adequate job of keeping the Illinois weather out of her jacket. Now who's laughing Ahmed, you little shit.

Next morning, she had a response to her email, thanking her for her service and inviting her to the site office on the corner of West van Buren and South Clinton, asking if she had an issue with Democrat presidents. She acknowledged the invitation, adding, "Not when they're road names" and left it at that. They both thought they'd been funny, although if either thought the other had been, would be a different story.

The interview was no more than a confirmation of her qualifications, confirmation she had her own hard hat, safety jacket, harness, safety glasses, gloves, and boots. They haggled a little over hourly rates, she pushed them up to twenty-seven dollars an hour with weekends at thirty-seven dollars. An assessment day was booked for later in the week and subject to proving she could drive a crane she was in, starting the day after the assessment. She could, so she did.

Getting booked in was the usual confusion from a new manager, "Daphne Lee Brown?"

"No" she replied, "It's Dauphine LeBron. French, my family's from Louisiana. Pronounced Doe Feen. Call me Daphne I ain't answering."

"OK, DoeFeen, you'll be paired with Bobby here. He'll show you round, you can split shifts with him then we're moving him to days and you to the 2 to ten shift. Is everybody happy?"

The assembled crew came back with "You betcha life we are" and to be fair, Dauphine was happy enough. She didn't much like working with people but if she had to these were her sorts of people, tough but challenging work needed tough but straightforward people. Much like her time in the Army, there was a job needed doing and they were expected to get it done.

She surprised a few of them on the first few days, lifting bags of cement like they were nothing, she wasn't in the same league she had been back in Afghanistan where she prided herself on being able to perform as well as any man and better than some, lifting shells and ammo packs into the fighting vehicles for hours on end. Her arms and back as tightly muscled as any of the male soldiers. Her party trick was to offer to work naked from the waist up if one of them could unload and reload a Hummvee quicker than she could, she had plenty of takers, but no one ever got her top off.

She went off into a memory, there was one soldier got her top off, Staff Sergeant Kevin Dare of the Third Battalion, Fifteenth Infantry Regiment. Dauphine had been part of his unit based at Camp Hartford, a forward operating base fifteen miles outside Sangin where the patrolling soldiers could come back for a day or two's recovery after being up-country for four or five days.

There were strict rules against 'fraternisation' between female and male troops, the rules were supposed to be there to (1) maintain the sanctity of relationships at home (2) ensure good military discipline amongst all members of the US forces (3) ensure no distractions are in place to the job of bringing peace and stability to the people of Afghanistan. It was a rule that had been in place since Korea when a couple of guys from the 73rd Airborne were both screwing the same (female) Aircraft mechanic. One of them ended up killing her and the other soldier in a fit of anger, that said it was a rule that wasn't strictly enforced.

Kevin and Dauphine had been restocking his command vehicle together when a mortar attack came in on the base. All personnel not assigned to the QRF were called to take cover, as Kevin and Dauphine only had their weapons, no body armour and LBE to hand they couldn't realistically get involved in the fighting and as they were in an armoured vehicle the safest thing to do was to lock the doors from the inside and lie down together on the floor.

How they got from there to pulling each other's clothes off in a frenzy she never could really remember, but they did. She knelt beside him on a pile of BDUs and sank his cock deep into her mouth, staring into his eyes as she did. He grew hard and long under her desperate attack, the explosions echoing around the compound only adding to her desire. If she was going to die then dying with a dick in her mouth was as good a way to go as any.

A rattle of small arms fire marked the end of his blowjob, with a smile she sat upright, her brown arms and neck contrasting startlingly with the white of her firm, perky breasts, their pink nipples standing proud in the dimly lit vehicle.

"OK Soldier, now I got you standing to attention let's see if you are any good in action." She smiled lustily down at him and swung a leg over. She'd been in the field for five weeks at that stage so was rather less groomed than she would have hoped in normal circumstances but if Kevin was in any way disappointed he didn't show it, giving a groan of delight as she sank down his rigid cock.

The urgency, the danger, even the sounds and smells of combat seeping into the back of the dusty four-wheel-drive all added to Dauphine's arousal and she gave a bark of delight as she came on the Staff Sergeant's meat, giving herself a fleeting moment to catch her breath then leaned forwards so he could reach her tits and thrust into her from below.

Neither of them lasted long, which was as well because the skirmish was done in twenty minutes giving them time to get dressed again and exit the vehicle before Kevin's platoon commander came round to check on his troops. The smell of sex was in the air and their faces gave them away, but nothing was said apart from a request for the back of the vehicle to be given a thorough cleaning.

A sudden snapping of fingers and a "Dauphine, hello? Were we boring you?" brought her back to reality. "No, sorry, I was just thinking of...something I used to do." Bobby, her split shift partner snorted derisively, his big belly shaking. "Yeah, I know what y'all were thinking. Probly shoes, haircuts, or somethin'. I said it before, this ain't no place for a woman. Still, we got all Woke and they get to try and be like a man. C'mon Daphneen, lessgo."

Dauphine saved herself some time and effort by taking an instant dislike to Bobby, the fat sexist piece of crap. The crazy thing was, he was a confirmed second amendment advocate, having a collection of guns at home that ranged from a Beretta 9mm to an AR-15 with an AK-47 for fun, and if she'd told him about her military background he'd have worshipped the ground she walked on, however she found the whole 'Thank you for your service' fetishizing of the military embarrassing, and while her service dominated her thoughts and outlook she very seldom mentioned it to anyone. Her supervisor knew because her qualifications were from the army, and she'd included her Purple Heart citation in her Resumé, but she'd asked him to keep it to himself.

Despite her co-workers being her sorts of people Dauphine was itching to get up the tower, solitary work was her preference, mixing with people she didn't know made her uneasy, and she didn't open up easily to get to know people. That was another relic of her time in the army, thanks to Staff Sergeant Kevin Dare.

Each time he'd come back in from patrol they'd take the opportunity for some intimate R&R, the back of his Hummvee was their favourite place but they found a few other locations, behind the ammo store was one, the narrow blast walls gave some semblance of privacy, and the opening times were usually well known in advance, that said they were caught there once with her kneeling in front of him with her shirt pulled up and his cock in her mouth. It wasn't elegant and the junior chef that found them had a joint in his hand, so he wasn't about to spill the beans, but they moved on to less hazardous locations after that.

Kevin got rotated back a week or two before Dauphine got shot, they got together in the back of an ammunition truck and as they lay there naked in the heady afterglow she asked him where he would be posted to on his return, and she'd request the same posting. He froze, then relaxed and turned to her, "Dauphine, babe, I've got a wife waiting for me. I'm not giving all that up. This was a here and now, love the one you're with thing. That's all. Move on and move up baby."

Her illusions shattered around her in a moment. She stood up and kicked him hard, "You bastard, you fucker, I risk it all for you, I thought we were important to each other, and it turns out I was just to save you the effort of jerking off. Well FUCK YOU. ASSHOLE." She pulled on her trousers and shirt, slipped her boots back on and slung her rifle round her neck then grabbed all the remaining clothes in the truck and threw them out of the rear, quickly jumping down leaving him up there naked with a rifle and spread his clothes around the camp.

They never spoke again but she'd given so much of herself to the relationship that she determined never to be so vulnerable again. She had the odd one-night stand, when she got too stressed she'd go to a bar, drink a few margaritas until the guys hitting on her started to look attractive and then go home with one, usually to his hotel as they all seemed to be travelling on business. The more she did it the lower her self-esteem sank, the lower her self-esteem sank the less she cared about other people.

Bobby was proving to be a bigger asshole than she'd first imagined. He would take every opportunity to belittle her, he thought he was shit hot when it came to cars and would always swing the conversation round to his Camaro and how you had to be a man to handle something like that, usually following it up with "Hey Duphneen, how's the bus?"

Life got better when she started working full shifts in the cab and Bobby got moved to the early shift, so they only saw each other at change-over. She found her time perched a hundred feet in the air gave her a unique perspective on life and the lives around her. The site they were on was a new office block but around it was a mix of office and residential buildings, she enjoyed watching the character of the city change as the office lights blinked out and the apartments lit up. The cranes were fitted with cameras at various parts of the rig, some could pan tilt and zoom, primarily to allow the operator to check load clearances and safe delivery spaces, they also meant un-curtained windows were a view into other people's world.

She started watching out for different people, there was Yoga Lady, every evening at 6.30 she'd roll out her Yoga mat and spend an hour bending and stretching, she wore a sports bra and a pair of spandex shorts and would finish every evening by rolling up the mat, putting it away and stripping off her clothes before throwing them in the wash bin. Friday was wash day when she'd separate her white and colours and do two sets of washing. She must have a washer dryer because the whole two load cycle took close to four hours.

There was Piano man, Tuesdays, and Thursdays an older lady came over and sat with him while he played an upright piano in his living room, after every lesson he would make her a hot drink and they'd eat a cupcake each.

There was nice young couple, they had a cat which seemed a bit unfair in a seventh-floor apartment. Dauphine would see it sitting on the windowsill watching the pigeons on the balcony. Once they were late back leaving the cat unfed until nine thirty in the evening and she watched it curl out a turd on their bed. It was a cute cat, but it reminded Dauphine why she didn't have pets.

One shift change Bobby had come down early and was holding forth in the canteen, "Course, ya gotta be real tough to get tattooed. Hurts like hell, look at this one." He shed his jacket and shirt to display a Harley Davidson emblem in the middle of his back, only two things were wrong, and Dauphine took a great delight in pointing them both out.

"You haven't got a Harley; can you even ride a bike? And they're called Harley DaviDsons, your back tat says Harley Davison. If you want a Hells Angel's Tramp-Stamp you'd be better off spelling it right. He won't like looking down at that and seeing it spelled wrong, might put him off his stroke."

Bobby blustered, firstly he was going to learn to ride right away that weekend and when he did he was going to get himself a Hog. The spelling he was less sure about, demanding a mirror, then swearing revenge on his colleague for making him look like a fool and the tattoo artist for the mistake.

With a parting shot of "It's not me that made you look stupid; I think you did that yourself." Dauphine started the long climb up the ladder, her colleagues laughter at Bobby's misfortune ringing in her ears.

His revenge was petty and exemplified his misogyny, the next day when she popped in through the door in the base of the cab high in the air there were two or three open porn magazines strewn around, the pages showing heavily tattooed men roughly penetrating women in a variety of positions and every possible place. The women all bore a passing resemblance to Dauphine but the piece de resistance was the scrunched up stuck together tissues in the middle of the seat and the suspicious sticky fluid on the controls.

Fortunately, Dauphine had gloves, tissues, and antiseptic alcohol gel in her pocket, there's got to be some Covid benefits, right? In a few minutes, all traces of Bobby's activities were gone and the chemical toilet in the tiny service area behind the cab was a little bit closer to full.

On the second day of the same thing happening Dauphine decided enough was enough and arrived early so she could meet Bobby coming off shift. She confronted him in the canteen.

"Hey, Bobby. You want to stop leaving the residue of your little jerk fest in the cab? What's up? Can't you go for eight hours without beating off? I mean, it's not like my life is that great anyway but clearing away your cum? That's about my definition of hell so it stops, today. I'm going to climb up that ladder now and if I need gloves and disinfectant I will feed it to you. You dig?"

He tried to laugh it off, denying anything untoward. "OK, so I took some magazines to help pass the time, and I sneezed once or twice. Stop making it look bad, so everyone feels sorry for ickle baby Duphneen, you fuckin lesbians want equality, you fuckin suck it up bitch." He turned and walked out. A couple of the other guys looked awkward, one of them approached Dauphine, "If you want to make it official, we'll back you up. He's an asshole."