by: Sarah Stodola
When December fell on the county of Hazzard, it usually did so quietly. The first snowfall, around Thanksgiving, had come and gone, and rain and snow would continue to grace the rest of the season’s weather as the temperature fluctuated from above to just slightly below freezing. Farmers had their crops in, the few small ranchers had either sold their stock or were in waiting for spring births, moonshiner’s had done much of their running before snow fell and were carefully enjoying their profits at home. ‘Boss’ JD Hogg was of course enjoying every cent he could gain from shoppers and clients of his bank, as well as the occasional, mostly quiet side scheme. Life was… peaceful enough. And cheery. For the most part.
At the Duke farm, fifteen minutes from town on Old Mill Road, the winter season was usually a time of mixed work and fun. This was the season for fixing anything that needed fixing in the house, or the barn, and for hunting to supplement what money and foodstuffs the family had stored away. It was also a season for fun – board and card games on the rugs in front of the hearth, cookie baking, snow flinging, horseback riding… and once in a while, if the roads were clear of too much mud, a danger-edged motorbike race with friends. The two youngsters in residence at the farm were both known for their own Duke brand of entertainment, one that occasionally turned a few more hairs on their Uncle Jesse’s head white.
However, this was not to be such a happy Christmas. The teenagers, a blond boy and brunette girl, visibly related by the tall, lean build and dark blue eyes they shared, watched silently, leaning into one another’s sides, as Jesse carefully rearranged a framed photo of another young man on the mantelpiece before stepping back and tossing an envelope into the fire with no small amount of vehemence. The older man turned and walked heavily across the living room, closing his bedroom door with a sound of finality. The blond swallowed hard, wide eyes going to the photograph again, and blinking as if to hold back tears. Slowly he sank to the floor, head buried in his arms and knees drawn up, body trembling slightly. His cousin crouched behind him and wrapped her arms around him, her head on his shoulder as much for her own comfort as his. The pair watched the fire almost numbly, the envelope and the letter it contained long since swallowed up by the flames, which continued now to flicker cheerily as if they had no idea what they had just help steal.
Mr. Duke,
We most sincerely regret to inform you that your nephew was reported missing in action on October the 28th. We extend our sympathies and condolences to the family. Please know that he was lost in the bravest course of action a man could take, that of sacrifice for his country and his unit…
********
The whine of mosquitoes was the first thing heard as the dark-haired young man curled in a ditch slowly awoke. Blinking pale blue eyes blearily past the encrusting of dirt, he remained very still, hardly breathing, trying to ascertain just what it was that had nudged attuned and highly fear-edged senses awake. He listened, peered around. Three other young men in equally as filthy and tattered camouflage lay still around him. One, a blond whose deep blue eyes reminded him all too painfully of another pair back home, lifted his head to look up. The darker man shook his head, silently proclaiming silence to be kept with the brief pinning of his gaze. He looked around again, this time daring to lift his head just a bit higher. The sounds of creaking frogs and humming insects were the only ones in existence.
Then he realized. The birds. The birds were gone. Eyes widening, he looked around quickly at the others, and all four young soldiers climbed slowly to hands and feet, crouching as low as possible as they made their near-silent way down the jungle ditch toward the cover of bushes a short ways away. Somebody; the leader wasn’t sure and didn’t care who, stepped on a small stick, which broke with a crack. It wasn’t an overly loud sound, but to four beating hearts and terrified ears, it may as well have been a death call. They scrambled faster to cover, and pushed through, the scratches received from branches and thorns irrelevant in comparison to the death awaiting in this land. They pressed on, finally freezing on the edge of a short clearing to check its perimeters cautiously before making the potentially deadly gamble to rise to their feet and run across the opening and into the trees beyond.
Luck, or God, was on their side. Once moving, the four’s will to live carried them on, further and further away from the danger that had been coming in pursuit, that the birds had warned of if a man knew how to listen. It was a skill they all had honed to a fine point by now, a piece of the leader’s mountain-bred former life that had proven life-saving. Through trees and across a shallow river they ran, the sound of splashing water the loudest one yet as the rotting vegetation of the jungle floor muffled footfalls. The absence of traps and tripwires showed just how deep from the usual front line the group was, but it was not an absence they took for granted, eyes scanning ahead and to either side with wide-eyed caution as they went. It was miles before the group finally came to a halt, breathing hard and hearts quick, but not daring to relax, muscles still on edge as they turned in place and peered around, listened… and finally sank to their behinds under a copse of large trees.
The leader was the last down, every instinct at high alert as pale eyes flicked from tree to tree, open space to open space. Slowly, finally, he sat beside his comrades, grabbing and uncapping his canteen to take a small sip of brackish water, lips dry but not daring to waste the precious substance. He recapped the canteen, and finally spoke. “Jerry, where’s the compass.”
Jerry, a freckled redhead who looked barely out of high school, unclipped the device from his belt and handed it over. The leader took it and flipped it open, eyes narrowing slightly at the dial before looking up, and turning in place, still sitting, until the needle pointed in the direction wanted.
“Wish we had a map,” he muttered, and no one answered, everyone understanding the ridiculousness of that statement. Finally the compass was snapped shut and given back to its owner, and another sip of water taken. Then he glanced back at the others. “If we’re damn lucky, we’ll get outta enemy territory in a couple days. We’re almost there, fellas.”
The blond scratched the back of his mud-flecked neck with equally as dirty fingers, voice pitched as low as the other man’s… instinct, in this place. “Coupla days… you really think we’re gonna make it through that hellhole, Sergeant?” Hope and doubt, along with a sense of discouragement that had tainted all the men’s minds for months, warred in his tone.
The sergeant shook his head just slightly to himself – only Collin still called him by rank in this group of war-torn prison camp escapees. There had originally been seven of them. One by one, three had been lost – one to an infection received while a guest of the North Vietnamese, one to a tripwired noose that had taken the near-boy up into the air by his neck as efficiently as any gallows, one to a distant shot that had sent the remaining four scrambling desperately in the hardest-made run yet until they had finally realized that pursuit was well behind, and the bullet that had taken their companion had been a stray from some unknown other location, traveled probably miles as was the wont of loose shots from a military rifle to do. These four had survived thus far – only miles from their destination now, if a sense of distance and time was not completely gone, and if the compass was accurate. Traveling by compass alone with no landmarks or contour map was a tricky business at best, but if they could at least get below the border separating the two countries and into friendlier territory, they could dare find a village and maybe even some of their own, American troops. Blinking and taking a deep breath, the leader spoke up again grimly. “What other choice do we have? We die here, or we die tryin’ to get to base. Personally, I’d rather have the chance of makin’ it home.” Blue eyes narrowed and stared each other gaze down until their owner was satisfied, then he sighed, dropping his head to rest it on his arms over his drawn-up knees.
Only kids. They were all only kids. He was the oldest, twenty-one among an eighteen-year-old and two who were supposed to be nineteen… though he wasn’t entirely sure that the redhead, Jerry, was honest about his age. He looked more like the age of the dark-haired leader’s younger cousins – just seventeen the end of November. Recently… if his time sense wasn’t as gone as he prayed his direction sense wasn’t, this should be late November sometime. He had only been in the camp a grand total of three, hellish enough, days before deciding to make a break for it at the next group march to dig a new latrine pit for their captors. Pride and disgust had long since been overrun by the need to survive, and the drainage ditch to the jungle edge had proven itself both the best place to stage a revolt, and the best place to dump the bodies. Of course the escape had been quickly discovered, and gunshots had been heard only minutes after the fleeing Americans had put wings on their whipped and soul-torn heels, heading south. The run for the border on foot had never been truly planned out, just came to be. They knew they weren’t too far away, at least they’d thought so. But this forced run-walk through the jungle had taken weeks already, with no way to judge when they would cross the border except for an old native farmer they’d accidentally met who had, in a broken version of even his own country’s Viet, informed them that America was four days’ walk south. Two days had passed since then. If the old man had been right – about Americans, not America…. the sergeant barely allowed himself a quirk of lips upward – then they should be entering the area known as the demilitarized zone, which was in fact the hottest and most deadly battleground of all, soon. If they were not already on some edge of it… or not way off course.
Finally he broke his own remembrances with a musing tone, desiring greatly to think of something other than death. “Matrix, maybe you’ll be home for Christmas. What’d’ya think of that?”
The other dark-haired man-boy, known only by his nickname and love of math games back at base, blinked up and summoned a small smile. Having been chest-wounded in action about two months prior to capture, and then taken prisoner, he had a good chance of discharge from the Army if – no, when they returned. “Yeah. I’d like to see my mama again.”
“We’d all like to see our mamas again,” Collin spoke up quietly. Then he glanced to the leader. “What’d’ya think, Duke? You think we could all get discharged?”
The sergeant, Lukas Duke, shook his head a little, face kept vaguely blank though emotions tightened within. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “Don’t know the details of how the Army works. I’m Marine, remember? I know that bein’ bad injured and captured both should get him out, but the rest of us ain’t had that same combination. Shoulder and leg wounds don’t count. It’s war, it’s expected.” His fingers circled absently over the hidden mark on his own thigh, a bullet taken shortly after he’d come to Southeast Asia nearly a year ago.
“After this, we all should get to go home,” Jerry groused, rubbing one hand across his forehead. Luke watched him carefully; there wasn’t much that could be done, or even said, but from the paleness, except for flushed cheeks, of the younger soldier, he worried that Jerry had a fever. It wouldn’t be unexpected in the jungle, with little good water or food, but… they’d lost enough men already. The rest of them needed to get back alive. Well… he finally decided, flicking his eyes away just as the red-haired boy looked his way, he’d let Jerry pretend otherwise until it got to be something he couldn’t work past. They couldn’t exactly stop to take care of any one of their number, now. They had to keep moving.
With that thought, Luke looked over his shoulder, in the direction they needed to move. He looked at “his” men carefully, then finally climbed to his own feet, brushing his hands off briefly against just-as-dirty clothing. “Come on. We need to get moving again.”
Low groans answered, but the ragged band slowly got up and started off again, after another brief checking of the shared compass, walking this time.
However, they were closer to home than any of them had anticipated… closer to either salvation or destruction, as they discovered when a sudden whistling howl of rotors swept past overhead and was answered just as sudden with fire from all too nearby. The young men stopped and spun, turning around with backs to one another, hearts pounding with fear and the instinct for flight. Rapid-fire anti-air arced into the sky, barely winging one of the narrow, weapons-bristling gunships that swooped back sideways and around, firing back into the trees before leaving the four refugees’ sight.
“American..!” Collin yelled over the sound, looking up. His face flushed and eyes shone bright with a rare boyish joy. Luke was reminded all too much, almost painfully, again of another blond, half a world away… then all hell broke loose.
The roar of the choppers again, this time low against the treetops, was deafening, nearly knocking Luke to the ground. The ground shook with an explosion nearby, and Jerry lost his footing with a grunt as he went down on his hands before scrambling up again. Hearts pounding and breath coming hard, the four men ran, zigzagging between shots and explosions. Luke couldn’t stop praying, Please Lord, please Lord lemme get home, please lemme get home… He skidded sideways on some wet leaves, hearing shouts off to the side as they were spotted. A bullet whistled past overhead, the Americans ducking reflexively though it wouldn’t do any good. Several seconds later, a cry came from behind; Luke spun to see Collin stumble and clutch his shoulder, but keep moving. They broke from the jungle into the open, where Viet Cong and American troops were running, firing. The world was nothing but destruction and survival and flames, and the four escapees, without ammunition, were in the middle of it.
Luke could never say what all exactly happened after that. It was explosion and flare, cries and roars, the howl of rotors and the scream of ballistics… and then, sudden and breath-stealing with a choked sound he couldn’t avoid, a burning, ripping pain in his left side… and as he doubled over, stumbling to his knees, another tear through his shoulder. He rolled onto his side, gasping, unable to think, only see as he lifted his hand from his middle, covered in bright red blood. Stars swam in his vision, and he heard shouts, saw familiar and unfamiliar faces hover over, and the rough grab of hands on his body, before the world went mercifully black.
*********
The sounds of voices woke him. Blue eyes fluttered slowly open, flicking around with a now-innate suspicion and fear, before a deep breath escaped at the sight of American uniforms, English writing… they’d made it. They were back.
Or… were they? He’d been hit; he remembered that much plainly. What about the others? A flare of panic rose and his hand clenched in the bed sheet – then a nurse was there, and calling for the doctor on duty and giving him a shot which he dully knew was to calm him… then a rugged, brusque but not entirely unfriendly face hovered over.
“Well, boy,” the doctor spoke. His voice was rough but pleasant enough. More so than his looks, Luke thought randomly, fighting an inane smile. He was drugged… “Looks like you’ll pull through. Good. I lose enough patients. Get well and get out.” Then, with the slightest of smiles, so faint that Luke wasn’t sure he wasn’t imagining it, a letter was dropped on his chest. The younger man fumbled for the paper one-handed. The doctor beat him to reading it by speaking again. “You’re on the next boat out, soldier. Go home and kiss your mama and get married for me.” Then he was gone.
Luke lay still, mind reeling. It didn’t even occur to him how ridiculous either of those suggestions sounded given his own home situation – no parents and no steady girl – for a few seconds… and even when it did he hardly cared. He struggled to unfold the letter with a trembling right hand, blinking at it until the ill-typed letters swam into focus. He mumbled to himself as he scanned. “Duly note….honor….awards….medical discharge.” Finally coming to the part that made his pulse skip, he read it again more carefully. “Due to injuries causing unfitness for duty, the awarded is hereby granted an honorable medical discharge from the United States Marine Corp and passage to San Diego on the ship the USS Lexington on December 4…” His heart missed another few beats, then began to race. He looked up, calling out, roughly, his stitched gut hurting with the effort. “What day is it? What day is it?”
The same nurse as before came into view, giving him a brief frown for the shouts. “It’s November 27th. Now hush… get some sleep and get well. You have a boat to catch.”
And maybe the holidays to catch up to, too… Luke couldn’t help a small, breathless smile… which faded again quickly. “What happened to my guys?”
“Which unit are you in?”
“No… no…” He struggled to find words. “We weren’t in a unit… we escaped, north… came south… Jerry, Matrix, Collin…”
“Ahh… you’re one of them.” The nurse nodded briefly. “They made it. Was a close call on Corporal Lancer. He’ll be on your boat.”
Lancer… His mind struggled briefly before recalling that that was Matrix’s real name. The drug was beginning to take full effect again, the world going darker. He closed his eyes, a slight smile of relief touching his lips, and murmured, “Good… Deserved… to go home… anyway…”
And then sleep took him again.
********
Snow was falling, coating the world in white and shadow. Jesse Duke looked across the back fields to the woods beyond, through the mist of tiny flakes. Nothing moved, except… he narrowed his eyes against the snow and peered toward a spot he thought he saw move. Ah… shadow on shadow. A deer; if he was lucky, a buck. He didn’t have his rifle with him at the time; only a covered pail of evening milk, but deer were known to return to an area for a certain time. He’d lay out some salt tomorrow; attract the group this singleton belonged to, and pick out the most likely buck that arrived. The key to good hunting, including the survival of the herd and a man’s own conscience, was culling out only younger bucks, and not the strongest ones either… nor the current sire – which was contrary to the way of many city hunters who came out only for the trophy racks – nor a doe. Jesse nodded slightly to himself in thought and continued on toward the house, the only other life seen a crow circling slowly overhead to land in the oak tree, feathers puffed miserably. The farmer tilted his head up and sideways at the bird, and snorted slightly.
“Why don’t ya go south, like the rest of the feathered fowl?” The crow only fluffed farther, and Jesse climbed the porch steps carefully to the kitchen door. The layer of white on the ground was only a couple inches deep, but it was enough to slip if a body wasn’t careful. He stomped the snow off his boots and brushed it from his jacket, then opened the door and went in.
The kitchen was warm, welcoming, inviting with its smells of cookies and cider. His kids… his remaining kids he thought sadly… were sitting at the kitchen table, signing Christmas cards to pass out at church the next morning. He rested a hand gently on Bo’s shoulder as he went by to put the pail in the sink, to keep the water dripping off the outside off the counter. The blond boy half-turned to look up at him with a small smile, but the normally shining dark blue eyes were dulled, the brightest spark of life gone out of them. A similar look was in Daisy’s gaze, if not quite as hopeless. Jesse sighed slightly and rubbed the thin shoulder beneath his hand before going to get the milk jug from the dish drainer where it had been placed after washing, and pour the goat milk from the pail into the jug on the counter. Wordlessly, Bo turned around to continue scribbling.
Jesse watched the cousins for a moment as he was rinsing out the pail. Luke’s… disappearance, he couldn’t bring himself to think loss… had hit both of the teenagers hard. Bo had hardly spoken for weeks. Quietly, Jesse sighed, turning his gaze to his work as he carried the milk to the refrigerator. His own pain he kept under control most of the time. His nephews and niece were as his own sons and daughter, but Luke was the most like his own flesh and blood. More steady even as a child, even past the wilder edges taught by country life, more focused and more in love with the land than either of the others. Luke was the one he’d counted on to take the reins when he was too old, someday… Realizing that his hands were shaking, he leaned them against the counter, head bowed briefly against tears. This was not the time for crying… it was Christmas Eve. It was a night to be giving thanks for the children he had left, and the home they shared… the life…
“Oh Lord…” he whispered. “If You give me nothin’ else in the whole world, for the rest of my life… give me my boy back…”
Hands rested on his shoulders silently; Bo and Daisy. His niece leaned against his side, his head against his arm. He opened the arm to hug her close, half-turning then to repeat the gesture for Bo, kissing both foreheads. The seventeen-year-olds nestled into him, neither looking up. Sometimes… they were so very alike…
A knock came at the front door. Jesse turned, and the kids with him. He saw Bo surreptitiously wipe his hand across his eyes before stepping back and lifting his chin. Jesse nodded Daisy to answer, turning to wipe dribbled water off the counter with a small rag. He heard the door open, and heard a familiar – not entirely welcome – voice. Sighing, he turned and went out into the living room to face JD Hogg. “Evenin’, JD,” he greeted a bit reluctantly.
“Evenin’, Jesse.” Boss nodded almost sagely, bundled in white coat, gloves, and hat.
“What’re you here for this time, JD? Bills due?”
Hogg frowned. “Jesse..! I can’t believe you’d believe that of me…”
Jesse sighed. “Then what is it, JD?”
“I… well I…” Hogg paused as if to find the right-and-proper words. “I wanna offer my condolences, at this Christmas time.” He didn’t quite smile… Jesse sighed. Even under the wallet, Boss Hogg had a heart.
“Thank you, JD,” he finally nodded, and took a step back. “Would ya like to come in?”
“No thank you, Jesse…” JD shook his head, taking a step back. “Just was on my way past… I’ll leave you be. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas, JD,” the farmer replied quietly, shutting the door as the white-coated, shorter man turned away and moved into the snow toward his car. Daisy made a shivering sound from beside him, and moved toward the fire to warm up again, her cousin beside her. Jesse moved away from the door and watched them. He couldn’t help but feel melancholy. He had what he had… but… “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” he murmured to himself, and turned away, back to the kitchen.
********
The bus hissed as it came to a halt at the Hazzard bus stop, and the doors slid open. Only one figure stepped off the stairs, and paused to heft a bag carefully over the shoulder that wasn’t held in a sling, before moving away from the bus, breath fogging into the air. The snow level was minimal so far, relative to how it could be after some storms, but… it had been too long… to see it at all instead of heat and humidity and insects was a blessing. The young man took a deep breath of the cold and started down the sidewalk, feet crunching lightly as he went, eyes half-squinted and peering through the falling flakes and clumps. It was a few cold miles’ hike home, but he welcomed it in a way… welcomed the slow night-time view of home. He turned his feet westward, and strode down the scraped asphalt that would soon turn to snow-covered dirt, where buildings would turn to trees, and flatland to hilly outlooks over a pond.
Where town would become open country… and open land become a farm…
********
Jesse sighed and half-turned when he heard a knock to the door… again. He looked to his kids, who peered up at him from a game of checkers next to the fireplace, unwilling to move. He sighed again and flopped his newspaper from his lap onto the coffee table, grasping the chair arms to lift himself up and out, and move toward the door. Grumbling about JD and Rosco and whoever else might be out here again at this time of night, he opened it almost roughly – and froze.
Pale blue eyes blinked back at him, the face looking almost hesitant, but wistful… tired… hopeful… scarred within in a way Jesse had only ever seen in another man, a friend who had gone to another war. But this… half-stranger… was no stranger. Jesse’s throat tightened, and his eyes blurred, and he could barely speak to whisper as he reached out.
“Luke…”
The young soldier closed old eyes, a slight hitch to his breath as well as he leaned into his uncle’s embrace. Jesse held him, held on tight, stroking the back of his head like he had done to the child years ago, and murmured a choked, tearful prayer of thanks. He couldn’t find it in him to care that the cold was coming into the house quickly through the open door, hardly caring that his other kids were scrambling up, scattering checkers every which way, to launch themselves across the room and at their lost, re-found cousin. Jesse moved aside just enough to let them in, leaving a hand on Luke’s back as the muscular young man hugged both cousins as well as he could with his left arm in a sling. The younger ones didn’t seem to care, leaning in and wrapping both arms around him anyway, heads on his chest and shoulder. Daisy was crying… Bo wasn’t, but he was swallowing hard, the urge visibly there.
“Lukas…” the blond boy whispered, voice almost rough… the first word spoken since another few had been, days ago. “Missed you… scared.”
“I know,” his older cousin murmured, brushing kisses into blond and brunette hair without discrimination, before looking up again at Jesse. Blue eyes blinked, a visible wetness there as the snow swirled behind… the voice choked. “I’m home, Uncle Jesse…”
Jesse could not hold back the wide, slow smile that was growing steadily if he had wanted to. “You’re home,” he nodded, clapping his hands briefly and gripping them together, heart singing praise, before putting a hand on his oldest child’s back to guide all three of his babies in. His family was finally whole again, safe and home… through the storm, home for Christmas.
END